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.
Interpretation
Education should be a national priority, not dependent on local wealth or resources.
In this quote, Jonathan Kozol emphasizes the need for equitable funding for schools across the United States, arguing that education is a fundamental right for all children, regardless of their local context. He believes that children should be educated as Americans with a shared national identity, rather than being limited by the resources of their specific communities, which can lead to significant disparities in educational opportunities.
In practice
This quote can be used during a school board meeting to advocate for more equitable funding 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.
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.
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.
The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn't been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him.
The Spirit is not given to make Bible study needless, but to make it effective.
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.
You can't just declare that you have a growth mindset. Growth mindset is hard.
There's no such thing as a writer's block. If you're having trouble writing, well, pick up the pen and write. No matter what, keep that hand moving. Writing is really a physical activity.
On the whole, books are indeed less finite than ourselves. Even the worst among them outlast their authors - mainly because they occupy a smaller amount of physical space than those who penned them. Often they sit on the shelves absorbing dust long after the writer himself has turned into a handful of dust.
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