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Books : The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America |
List Price: $14.95Amazon.com's Price: $10.17 You Save: $4.78 (32%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 379.2630973
EAN: 9781400052455
ISBN: 1400052459
Label: Three Rivers Press
Manufacturer: Three Rivers Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 432
Publication Date: August 01, 2006
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Release Date: August 01, 2006
Sales Rank: 8032
Studio: Three Rivers Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
Over the last 15 years, the state of inner-city public schools has been in a steep and continuing decline. Since the federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, segregation of black children has reverted to its highest level since 1968. In many inner-city schools, a stick-and-carrot method of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons is now used with students. Meanwhile, as high-stakes testing takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction that would be rejected out of hand by schools that serve the mainstream of society.
Filled with the passionate voices of children, principals, and teachers, and some of the most revered leaders in the black community, The Shame of the Nation pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, but directly challenges the chilling practices now being forced upon our urban systems by the Bush administration. In their place, Kozol offers a humane, dramatic challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some 50 years ago to all our youngest citizens.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Kozol does something extraordinarily well in this book, and that is to point out all that is going wrong with our schools. There's a point, though, when we must stop agonizing over what is wrong with the system, and make some real proposals on how to make things better. Anyone is capable of doing what Kozol did in this book, which is to simply point out the many pitfalls of our schools. In order for this to be considered a good book, he needs to complete the circle and make some recommendations about how to fix it. Simply complaining will get us nowhere, even if we complain extraordinarily well.
Rating: -
this book is new...fresh....new....really good looking...however the shipping and handling fee was freaken $17.99 for expedite shipping...i got the book overnite! GreAT on that but..the feee is definitely too much.
Rating:  -
Sheesh....if Kozol is suppose to be some type of expert in public education, you think he would have marshaled a few facts to bolster his case. If, as other reviewers assert, the target audience for this book is the comfortable suburban parents and schools, then the book has failed. Suburbanites are sophisticated enough to require valid data to support an argument. Kozol offers nothing but anecdote and appeals to emotion. Not very convincing.
Rating: -
Kozol's got this rag doll in his mouth and won't let go. Who can blame him? The schools are in bad shape and, one supposes, someone is at fault. Why not blame everyone except the students? An alternative perspective might suggest the rise of a new phenomenon rarely mentioned by those advocating increased funding: Willful ignorance and the cult of pride. I work in the inner city. Many of my students refuse to do anything and are backed up by their parents. "You can't make me" is their slogan. No administrator will back up a teacher who assigns homework to kids who won't do it. The kids come to school three days a week and routinely take 6-weeks to visit their grandparents south of the border. The girls wear $100 nail jobs, $150 tennis shoes, and won't carry their books because they have bad backs. 25% of the kids stay home on rainy days. Charter schools make the rules the public schools refuse. The kids drop out because they won't accept discipline programs based on "consequences." After years in the local PS, they can't cope with being forced to take responsibility. No doubt, Kozol knows well that some schools have more lap tops than others. This may be a "savage inequality," but for the life of me I can't see how a lap top is going to make up for the lack curiosity in students devoted to gang culture.
Rating:  -
Jonathan Kozol is very good at exposing the shameful conditions of inner city schools serving an overwhelmingly poor and minority student population. As after I read his earlier book "Savage Inequalities" a number of years ago, I came away shocked at just how bad things still are for so many of this nation's schoolchildren.
Kozol's solution to all the problems facing urban schools is simply to fund them at the same level as the wealthiest suburbs. There is no examination of whether that funding target is appropriate, which is a very important question. Perhaps the ritzy suburbs are spending too much and wasting money on frills such as lavish sports facilities and so on. It's one thing if the residents in that community are willing to pay for those frills but quite another to ask the overburdened taxpayer to provide the same to all schools.
Kozol takes the typical educrat position on all the hot button issues, from vouchers to standardized testing to phonics to gifted & talented programs (all of these are bad in his view) to universal government-run preschool (good in his view). He doesn't provide much in the way of convincing data to support his arguments, which suggests that they are based on ideology rather than sound research.
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