#si

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. ↗

— Jonathan Kozol

#children #commodities #into #jobs #line

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. ↗

— Jonathan Kozol

#almost #been #blame #cases #children

Apartheid education, rarely mentioned in the press or openly confronted even among once-progressive educators, is alive and well and rapidly increasing now in the United States. ↗

— Jonathan Kozol

#among #apartheid #confronted #education #educators

At present, black children are more segregated in their public schools than at any time since 1968. In the inner-city schools I visit, minority children typically represent 95 percent to 99 percent of class enrollment. ↗

— Jonathan Kozol

#black #children #class #enrollment #i

By far the most important factor in the success or failure of any school, far more important than tests or standards or business-model methods of accountability, is simply attracting the best-educated, most exciting young people into urban schools and keeping them there. ↗

— Jonathan Kozol

#any #attracting #best-educated #exciting #factor

Consider what it is like to go into a new classroom and to see before you suddenly, and in a way you cannot avoid recognizing, the dreadful consequences of a year's wastage of so many lives. ↗

— Jonathan Kozol

#before #cannot #classroom #consequences #consider

I emphasize teachers because they are largely left out of the debate. None of the bombastic reports that come from Washington and think tanks telling us what needs to be 'fixed' - I hate such a mechanistic word, as if our schools were automobile engines - ever asks the opinions of teachers. ↗

— Jonathan Kozol

#automobile #because #come #debate #emphasize

I once made a check of all books in my fourth-grade classroom. Of the slightly more than six hundred books, almost one quarter had been published prior to the bombing of Hiroshima; 60 percent were either ten years old or older. ↗

— Jonathan Kozol

#been #bombing #books #check #classroom

Instead of seeing these children for the blessings that they are, we are measuring them only by the standard of whether they will be future deficits or assets for our nation's competitive needs. ↗

— Jonathan Kozol

#blessings #children #competitive #deficits #future

Many of those who argue for vouchers say that they simply want to use competition to improve public education. I don't think it works that way, and I've been watching this for a longtime. ↗

— Jonathan Kozol

#been #competition #education #i #improve