People rarely speak of children; you hear of 'cohort groups' and 'standard variations,' but you don't hear much of boys who miss their cats or 6-year-olds who have to struggle with potato balls.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the neglect of individual children's unique experiences in educational discourse.
Jonathan Kozol's quote points out the tendency in educational discussions to focus more on abstract concepts and statistics, such as 'cohort groups' and 'standard variations,' and less on the real, emotional lives of children. By mentioning specific examples like boys who miss their cats or young children struggling with simple tasks, Kozol emphasizes the importance of recognizing and valuing the personal experiences and feelings of children in education.
In practice
Using this quote in a speech about the importance of personalized education.
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.
Anything that is worth teaching can be presented in many different ways. These multiple ways can make use of our multiple intelligences.
Teaching players during practices was what coaching was all about to me.
My favorite subject was recess. Fortunately for me, I had a mother who believed I was smart.
If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.
That best academy, a mother's knee.
I learnt to read when I was five, and I think that is the most important thing that happened to me.
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