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.
Interpretation
Kozol critiques the educational system, highlighting inequalities that perpetuate privilege and detachment from societal issues.
In this quote, Jonathan Kozol sheds light on the systemic issues in education, suggesting that schools efficiently serve the status quo rather than address deeper societal inequalities. He points out that affluent children receive a quality education that reinforces their privilege, while those from marginalized backgrounds attend underfunded schools that prepare them primarily for servitude. This stark contrast promotes a cycle of privilege and ignorance among the privileged, thereby detaching them from the struggles faced by the less fortunate.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about education reform at a community event.
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.'
Children are not simply commodities to be herded into line and trained for the jobs that white people who live in segregated neighborhoods have available.
No one should be held back from realising their potential by fears that they will not be able to afford to go to university or that they will graduate with unmanageable levels of debt.
Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.
I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.
As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together.
So I believe in singing to such an extent that if I were asked to redesign the British educational system, I would start by insisting that group singing become a central part of the daily routine. I believe it builds character and, more than anything else, encourages a taste for co-operation with others. This seems to be about the most important thing a school could do for you.
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.
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