Countdown Shame of the Nations Chapters 1-6

Shame of the Nations Chapters 1-6 Countdown

5 Sentences on the Big Picture

Kozol mainly talks about the inequality of urban schools in America, and how race is a huge issue in what type of education a child will receive. Kozol shows how the poor schools are suffering drastically by there extremely low graduation rates and test scores. I understand that when a school is doing poorly that the government may need to intervene, but some of their curriculum are lacking, like SFA. I agree with Kozol that students should be shown the opportunities they have, because in the school where they taught their kids to want to grow up to be managers, the kids knew nothing other than what they were taught, so they should be told that they do have choices. Some changes obviously need to be made in the public school system, so that all students have a fair chance at going to a good school.

4 Key Passages

“It’s as if you have been put in a garage where, if they don’t have room for something but aren’t sure if they should throw it out, they put it there where they don’t need to think of it again.”(page 28)

Black school officials in these situations have sometimes conveyed to me a bitter and clear-sighted recognition that they’re being asked, essentially, to mediate and render functional and uncontested separation between of their race and children of white people living sometimes in a distant section of their town and sometimes in almost their own immediate communities. Implicit in this mediation is a willingness to set aside the promises of Brown and, perhaps while never stating this or even thinking clearly in these terms, to settle for the promise made more than a century ago in Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court ruling in which “separate but equal” was accepted as a tolerable rationale for the perpetuation of a dual system in American society.” (page 34)

“When minority parents ask for something better for their kids, she says, the assumption is that these are parents who can be discounted . These are kids that we don’t value.” (page 43)

“Whatever the rationale for all of this, it opens up no doors to understanding. Although the principals in these schools are constantly reminded to hold out high expectations for low-income children, I thought the expectations here were very low. I thought the intellects of children were debased when they were asked to parrot language they did not understand and weren’t invited to explore and figure out.” (page 84)

“Even in good suburban schools where scores are generally high, I don’t know how many principals and teachers believe that the repeated measuring of children’s skills by standardized exams has a positive effect upon the processes of education; I know many more who feel it has the opposite result.” (page 110)

3 Key Terms

Apartheid – Kozol talks about the segregation in schools based on race

Equality – the lack of equality in schools across America is discussed by Kozol.

Racial – a term used to describe how many schools feel negatively about other races

2 Connections

When Kozol talks about the schools where they are supposed to be silent for most of the day, this reminded me of a class I took last semester on early literacy. One of the most important things for a child to do when developing their literacy skills, is to talk all the time. Another important factor to their development is having other people talk to them, and they lose many opportunities to hear new words when they are not allowed to talk with their neighbors.

I can also relate to Kozol’s thoughts on standardized testing not being helpful in the education process. I went to a school where the majority of students scored well, and so the teachers did not have to stress the test throughout the year. Even though I did well, I do not think that test benefitted my education. Knowing that information for the standardized tests, showed very little of what I learned from the entire year.

1 Question

Kozol does not completely agree with standardized testing, but would schools be any better off without these tests?