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.
Those with a gift for action, for their part, often express contempt for those whose gifts are more reflective. Men of action like to say, 'Those who can, do, those who can't, teach,' forgetting that those who teach get to write the history books.
I was desperate to understand money. Not to make it, to understand it. I wanted to know how it worked, and I wanted to know so that I would have enough and would be able to make good financial decisions. That led me to Ariel.
The teacher who allows his scholars the freedom of the city of books is at liberty to be their guide, philosopher and friend; and is no longer the mere instrument of forcible intellectual feeding.
What I really mean is that a great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.
History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth.
You have to dream. We all have to dream. Dreaming is OK. Imagine me teaching from space, all over the world, touching so many peoples lives. Thats a teachers dream! I have a vision of the world as a global village, a world without boundaries. Imagine a history teacher making history!
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