In many of the high schools in the South Bronx, more children will end up in prison than will go to college.
Interpretation
The quote points out the stark reality of educational and social challenges faced by children in the South Bronx.
This quote by Jonathan Kozol highlights the alarming situation in many high schools in the South Bronx, where systemic issues result in a greater likelihood of children ending up in prison rather than pursuing higher education. It underscores the profound impact of socioeconomic factors and the urgent need for reform in the education and justice systems to ensure that every child has the opportunity to succeed and thrive.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the education reform needed in struggling communities.
A great deal has been written in recent years about the purported lack of motivation in the children of the Negro ghettos. Little in my experience supports this, yet the phrase has been repeated endlessly, and the blame in almost all cases is placed somewhere outside the classroom.
Schooling should not be left to the whim or wealth of village elders. I believe that we should fund all schools in the U.S. with our national resources. All these kids are being educated to be Americans, not citizens of Minneapolis or San Francisco.
An awful lot of people come to college with this strange idea that there's no longer segregation in America's schools, that our schools are basically equal; neither of these things is true.
Hypersegregated inner-city schools - in which one finds no more than five or ten white children, at the very most, within a student population of as many as 3,000 - are the norm, not the exception, in most northern urban areas today.
I wrote the first book, and I thought people would say: 'Separate and unequal schools in the City of Boston? I didn't know that. Let's go out and fix it.'
The trouble is not that schools don't work; they do. They're excellent machines for achieving historically accepted purposes. In suburban schools are children of the rich, who grow up to privilege and anesthetic oblivion to pain - and who then use the servants produced by ghetto schools.
Their military training will ensure success in war, but they must maintain unity by not allowing the state to grow to large, and by ensuring that the measures for promotion and demotion from one class to another are carried out. Above all they must maintain the educational system unchanged; for on education everything else depends, and it is an illusion to imagine that mere legislation without it can effect anything of consequence.
I grew up to be indifferent to the distinction between literature and science, which in my teens were simply two languages for experience that I learned together.
Schools teach you how to work for money, but don't teach how to make money work for you
I believe in teaching just a few students, as teaching requires a constant alert observation on each individual in order to establish a direct relationship. A good teacher cannot be fixed in a routine, and many are just that. During teaching, each moment requires a sensitive mind that is constantly changing and constantly adapting.
Stop worrying about the 'dumbing down' of our language by bloggers, tweeters, cableheads and MSM thumbsuckers engaged in a 'race to the bottom' of the page by little minds confined to little words.
To educate girls is to reduce poverty.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.