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.
Deftly they opened the brain of a child, and it was full of flying dreams.
I think itβs the books that you read when youβre young that live with you forever.
You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.
When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'
Why administrators are respected and schoolteachers are not: An administrator is paid a lot for doing very little, while a teacher is paid very little for doing a lot.
So many young decorators are trying to reinvent the wheel, and the results are sometimes very dubious. They're striving to do things that have never been done before. Quite often it is done without authority, without knowledge, and without a background in taste. They need to be educated about the past, and they need a richer vocabulary.
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