Jonathan Kozol- The Shame of the Nation: Essay 1
Dear President Barak Obama,
Thank you for giving me this opportunity to be apart U.S. Commission for Improving the Quality of Education Opportunity for Marginalized Children in the United State. It is such a honor to be able to represent for the teachers. Jonathan Kozol’s book The Shame of the Nation was a must read book for me, and all future educators around the nation. Before reading the book I didn’t know what to expect from such a great book. The thesis of shame of the nation is the social issues in education, which are presented in schools, revolving around racial segregation politically, economically, and legal discrimination.
Politically it deals with what individual surrounding the schools can do to make the education better, for example what can the major of a school in Atlanta Georgia do to ensure that every school is receiving the same education even though they are in to different areas. Is the testing necessary for the students to have to graduation from high school and ensure they have a high school diploma? Is this necessary considering that all students put in 12 or 13 years of school to find out that they wont be receiving their high school diploma because of the states standardized testing in Texas and other states around the nation. This issue generally surrounds African American students and Hispanic Americans. Stating this does not mean that white Americans do not pass the standardized test or that African Americans and Hispanic Americans do pass. This issue deals with are the students receiving the same education? The suburban area schools generally have a better graduation rate and testing numbers because of their economically resources. Kozol mentions the high-stakes testing within inner-city schools is in chapter 5. There’s one passage on page 118 that stands out to me: “One of the distorting consequences that is taking an especially high toll on children of minorities, she notes, is the increasing practices of compelling children to repeat a grade or several grades over the course of years solely on the basis of their test results and, in some districts, almost wholly independent of the judgments of their principals and teachers. … Now, with non-promotion rules mandated by a number of our states and cities, many experts are convinced that the non-graduation rates among black and Hispanic students will increase, and some believe this escalation may already be observed.” Chapter 5 page 118
Economically there are some schools that can afford to bring in the better teachers with the good resumes and background. Why? The salary of the suburban schools, have the ability to offer to teachers a salary that has a massive difference then the schools that are in the rough neighborhoods or the low poverty to middle class neighborhoods. Teachers jump to the opportunity of being apart of those schools districts because those schools give the teachers the resources and the ability to bring the technology and material to ensure that every student within the schools will learn everything they need to know. Kozol shows the Apartheid Schooling throughout the book by discussing the issues of students. I think the whole showed the separation issues, how the students were treated everyday. The issues weren’t just racial separation, there was separation of the students that were smarter than the other students in the school which showed humiliation. “Advocates for school to work do not, in general, describe it as a race-specific project but tend instead to emphasize the worth of linking academic programs to the world of work for children of all backgrounds and insisting that suburban children too should be prepared in school for marketplace demands, that children of all social classes ought to have “some work experience” in high school, for example, But the attempt at even-handedness in speaking of the ways that this idea might be applied has been misleading from the start. In most suburban schools, the school to work idea, if educators even speak of it at all, is little more than seemly decoration on the outer edges of a liberal curriculum. In many urban schools, by contrast, it has come to be the energizing instrument of almost every aspect of instruction.” Chapter 4 page 99. In conclusion I would to mention that President Obama reading this book will allow you to remember something’s that occurred back when you were in school in Chicago Illinois.
Sincerely,
Will Cartwright
Baylor University Student
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I thought your letter to the President was really good, and had some valid points! I liked how you talked about standardized testing, and how you think the value of standardized testing needs to change. I agree with what you said about how holding students back solely based on their standardized test scores is wrong, and their understanding should be tested in some other form also. I also agreed with you on why teachers choose to teach in a suburban neighborhood. Most teachers would want to teach in a school where they have the most resources and opportunities to enhance learning, over an inner city school where they would have to scrounge for materials. Overall, I thought your paper was great - good job!
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