We are now operating a school system in America that's more segregated than at any time since the death of Martin Luther King.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the ongoing issue of segregation in the American school system, suggesting it has worsened since the civil rights era.
Jonathan Kozol's quote emphasizes the alarming reality of increased segregation in American schools, which he argues is a regression from the progress made during the civil rights movement, particularly following the work of Martin Luther King Jr. It serves as a critique of the current educational policies and social structures that perpetuate inequality and division among students, drawing attention to the need for reform in order to provide equitable education for all children.
In practice
During a school board meeting discussing educational policies.
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.
I always think of books as being like people. Even the dull ones are worthy of decent respect, but you don't have to seek them out and spend time with them.
Something stopped me in school a little bit. Anything that I'm not interested in, I can't even feign interest.
The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.
Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences.
Children have to have access to books, and a lot of children can't go to a store and buy a book. We need not only our public libraries to be funded properly and staffed properly, but our school libraries. Many children can't get to a public library, and the only library they have is a school library.
I went to an extreme for literary purposes because I felt all the self-help books out there were so gooey and Pollyanna-ish and nauseating. It was making me angry.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.