Kozol Chapter 6

“Even before this new phenomenon had been observed, many of the better elementary schools in major cities like New York already had in place admissions policies that clearly favored children of the ‘savvy parents,’ as the press in New York City frequently describes well-educated and well-connected people.” (Kozol, 135)

      How are the unconnected and uneducated people going to get an education?  It is sad that school systems deny students education because they don’t know anyone. 

“How do parents who are not so well-informed at first identify the schools that are considered really good?” (Kozol, 137)

Yes, how do they?  These folks appear to read local magazines written about schools that have good standings.  They want to give their children the best education possible.  Because students are being “out sourced” to other institutions to receive the better education, thus the local schools are not getting the opportunity to educate these students.

“Most of the children in the neighborhood have ended up at one of the large and low-performing high schools in the Bronx.” (Kozol, 142)

      ‘Large’ and ‘Low-performing’ don’t go together.  The combination of these status usually show downfall in a school.  Low performing schools are not good to have no matter what the size.  These schools typically receive poor score on standardized tests which is caused by student’s lack of knowledge.  Large, low-performing schools are worse because this means that there is a greater number of students who are not performing up to standards and the school is responsible for getting them to the standards.

“The steep climb to the top floor of the building was a challenge for the many students who had asthma.”  (Kozol, 143)

      This is a pretty intense fact.  These students appear to be not in that great of shape, could this be because the school is not providing enough physical education.  The schools are so focused on improving test scores that the schools remove these classes from students’ schedules.  Additionally, this quote speaks of ‘steep’ stairs; does this mean that the building itself is no longer to code, as it is so old.  School systems need to continue to update their buildings so students can work with some of the latest technology and learn about recent event/happening.

“The second elementary school I visited was cordoned off by signs that read ‘RESTRICTED AREA’ and ‘DANGER.’” (Kozol, 153)

      This is not good for a school.  How is the school supposed to issue all of the required standardized tests?

      Come to find out, the school Kozol wrote about was partially condemned already because the roof started collapsing and such.  Classes we combine in a section of the school that was still usable.  This means that classes were 2 or 3 times as large.  How is a student supposed to learn in these types of conditions?  The ratio of students to teachers needs to be minimal to give every student a chance at an equal education.

“‘Keep Roosevelt students out of East Meadow,’ residents were warned in flyers handed out kids and parents in East Meadow.” (Kozol, 158)

      The following sentences go on to explains that Roosevelt schools are failing with “rampant violence”, “drug sales”, “continual assaults”, and “wide spread violence.”  The folks in the community in which the students attend East Meadow schools, are assuming that if the students from Roosevelt join the district, East Meadow will now face these problems.  I feel at though this is racist because (though there is not a specific race) the East Meadow people are looking down on the Roosevelt folks.  This is not fair for the students in Roosevelt schools that may not be causing the listed issues.

Kozol, Chapter 5 & 6

“The debates about standardized examinations have been raging in this nation for several years.”  (Kozol, 109)

      Really, I did not see this coming.

      Of course standardized testing is a highly debated topic.  Teachers are being forced to drill examples into the students.  Most curriculums appear to revolve around preparation for the standardized tests.  Teachers are no longer given the freedom to teach the topic as they wish.  It is upsetting to see that most education revolves around standardized tests, which really are not an accurate method of assessment.

“A kindergarten teacher said she thought her job was to make children love to come to school.” (Kozol, 115)

      Yes her job is to rope children into going to school so that they could be tested… day in and day out.

      This quote was talking about a teacher’s feeling about giving standardized tests to kindergarten students.  I don’t remember taking a standardized test until I was in 2^nd grade (1997); and, this test was given for one week in October or November, thus not much prep time.  The great number of standardized tests is going to start turning students away from education and they’ll end up on the streets.

      On the other hand, maybe it’s good to start testing students in kindergarten.  Students will get used to standardized testing from the get go and know what they will have to face every year for the next 12+ years.

“The banishment of recess from the normal school day is perhaps the ultimate penurious denial.” (Kozol, 120)

      No recess?!?!?!  This is inhumane!  I realize it is important for students to do well in school, but they also need a chance for physical activity too.  If there were no recess, the students would be bored because of all of the testing that probably replaced recess.  I recall watching and episode of Disney’s Recess in which they did this.  The episode started in bright color, and faded to dull color (almost black and white).  The students became robot like when they took a test every day; initially, the test scores were up but they went down the longer amount of time they went without recess.  By the end recess was reinstated and test scores went back up.  This proves that the removal of recess may not be as successful as administrators may think.

“Even before this new phenomenon had been observed, many of the better elementary schools in major cities like New York already had in place admissions policies that clearly favored children of the ‘savvy parents,’ as the press in New York City frequently describes well-educated and well-connected people.” (Kozol, 135)

      How are the unconnected and uneducated people going to get an education?  It is sad that school systems deny students education because they don’t know anyone. 

“Most of the children in the neighborhood have ended up at one of the large and low-performing high schools in the Bronx.” (Kozol, 142)

      ‘Large’ and ‘Low-performing’ don’t go together.  The combination of these status usually show downfall in a school.  Low performing schools are not good to have no matter what the size.  These schools typically receive poor score on standardized tests which is caused by student’s lack of knowledge.  Large, low-performing schools are worse because this means that there is a greater number of students who are not performing up to standards and the school is responsible for getting them to the standards.

“The second elementary school I visited was cordoned off by signs that read ‘RESTRICTED AREA’ and ‘DANGER.’” (Kozol, 153)

      This is not good for a school.  How is the school supposed to issue all of the required standardized tests?

      Come to find out, the school Kozol wrote about was partially condemned already because the roof started collapsing and such.  Classes we combine in a section of the school that was still usable.  This means that classes were 2 or 3 times as large.  How is a student supposed to learn in these types of conditions?  The ratio of students to teachers needs to be minimal to give every student a chance at an equal education.

Kozol, Chapter 4

“Work-related themes and managerial ideas were carried over into almost every classroom of the school.”  (Kozol, 90)

      Schools appear to be trying to get kids into the work force quicker than ever.  The “jobs” schools give students allow them to feel successful.  Though they actually have assigned tasks, these are mostly titles.  All of the titles given have “manager” in the name.  Though it is important for students to feel like a manager, not all students will become a manager.

“Turning a corner, I encountered a ‘Help Wanted’ sign.” (Kozol, 91)

      ‘Help Wanted’?  It is certainly odd for a sign of this nature to appear in the hallway of an elementary school.  According to the book, this sign was a request for ‘managers’ as listed in the first quote.  These positions are giving students responsibilities they may one day see in ‘the real world’.  These jobs were given based on applications which required recommendations.  It is odd that schools would be getting students to ‘apply’ for ‘jobs’ at such a young age.  The other half of the matter is that these ‘jobs’ require a recommendation to accompany an application.

“In the Columbus schools, as we have seen, children are actively ‘incentivize’ (this is another term one hears in many inner-city schools) by getting reimbursements for the acquisition of a skill in terms of simulated cash.” (Kozol, 96)

      This is one of my favorite things to hear and read about.  It bothers me that students are being rewarded for learning.  In the real world the reward for learning is the knowledge gained.  I always feel rewarded when I learn something new because I know something I didn’t before, it is especially rewarding when I share what I learned with someone else.  In the workforce you may receive a bonus or a raise for completing a task that you know, but, chances are that, that task may not involve learning something new.

“In the olden days, he said, ‘public schools prepared students for the workplace by teaching them to come to the same place every day,’ to ‘stay there for a prescribed number of hours’ and to ‘follow the teacher’s (boss’s) instructions.’” (Kozol, 105)

      When you think about this, it is really sad.  This is what many people end up doing with the remainder of their lives; waking up at 5:00 a.m., jumping on the train to New York by 6:00 a.m., into work by 7:30 a.m.—it is a repetitive schedule that takes place 5 days a week for most individuals.  I don’t believe that schools should be ‘training’ students for this because they could get jobs that don’t have a schedule like this.  I remember being in school and disliking the fact that I would have to wake up to be into school by a certain time, though as I look into my future, this will be a part of my daily activities for the next 35+ years.

“It is not unusual these days to come into and urban school in which the principal no longer even calls herself ‘the principal’ but chooses instead to be described as the ‘building CEO’ or ‘building manager.’” (Kozol, 107)

      This quote show how schools are turning into businesses.  Everyone, including the students, is given a title that is related to managing.  Not all students are going to go into business.  Additionally as a teacher, I would be offended to be called the Classroom manager’.  Sure managing the students in the classroom is a part of my responsibilities, but my main goal is to educate my students.  Schools are not businesses meant to make money, they are put in place to educate the youth of the communities.

“It is as if they’re looking back at an ideal of education that they valued deeply when they started on their career, and value still, but they feel they have to set aside in order to respond to the realities before them in the neighborhoods they serve and to deliver those empirical results that are demanded of them.” (Kozol, 108)

      Teachers are hired for schools to teach.  They are the one’s educating the youth of America.  As I look at toward the future I feel that the students are the most important thing in the classroom, and that I need to do everything I can to help them learn.  Unfortunately ‘doing everything I can’ will create some expenses; this leads to one of the example ideals I have.  The expenses required for the students to learn should be covered by the school, but sometimes teachers must draw finances from their own pockets to assist in the education of their students.  Though I don’t wish for this to happen, it is inevitable and something I will have to deal with.

*The above listed quotes are from:The Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol.  The opinions of the blog author are only opinions and are not meant to offend anyone.

Kozol Chapters 1, 2, & 3

“Racial isolation and the concentrated poverty of children in a public school go hand in hand, moreover, as the Harvard project notes.”  (Kozol, 20)

      When you look at schools, there was a lot of racial isolation.  Schools were even separated by the color of students’ skin.  In addition to separate schools, within the schools there was much poverty with some families have more money than others.  According to the next line from the book, 15% of the segregated schools have over 50% of the students in major poverty.  It is unfortunate that this great number of students can qualify for free or reduced meals.

“If you want to see a really segregated school in the United States today, start by looking for a school that’s named for Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks.” (Kozol, 24)

      WOW!  I did not see not realize this, though it does seem accurate.  Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks both stood up for people of color, thus it would make sense that they would attend schools with these names.  According to the next line of the book, a school in San Diego named after Rosa Parks has a population where 86% of the students were people of color.  The name and situation seem to go hand in hand.

“In another elementary school, which had been built to hold 1,000 children, but was packed to busting with some 1,500 boys and girls, the principal poured out his feelings to me in a room in which a plastic garbage bag had been attached somehow to cover part of the collapsing ceiling.” (Kozol, 41)

      This quote is from the second chapter, which begins to talk about the conditions of the schools Kozol visits.  The quote demonstrates the need for more schools because our population is growing so fast.  Many schools are overcrowded with students who are not getting the best education possible because the student to teacher ratio is too great.  The second part of the quote talks about the school’s structure.  Many school systems don’t have sufficient funds to make repairs.  Schools with building damage often mean that the school does not have the latest and greatest equipment for education.

“‘There are cheap children and there are expensive children,’ writes Marina Warner, an essayist and novelist who has written many books for children, ‘just as there are cheap women and expensive women.’” (Kozol, 49)

      As much as this quote of a quote seems true, it really comes down to what the students put into their education.  Generally, the cost of a student’s education is going to be the same across an entire school system.  Most of the cost is the salary of the teachers.  However, the “more expensive” students cost more because they want more.  These students would participate in extracurricular activities and sports, which do cost the schools.  It is important to note that students need to put an effort into educations if they want to succeed and be the best they can.

“New vocabularies of stentorian determination, new systems of incentive and new modes of castigation, which are termed ‘rewards and sanctions,’ have emerged.” (Kozol, 63)

      It is crazy that schools now have to rely on a reward system to get students to stay interested.  Additionally, schools do have to watch what they say as they could say something legitimate that may offend someone.  There are particular ways to phrase certain topics.  It is sad that students now longer want to get an educations to benefit themselves but to obtain a reward for going to school.

“Teachers who are forced to spend so many hours in compiling these lists and charts and matching mini-skills with numbers for each lesson that they teach have told me that they sometime feel reduced, as one Massachusetts teacher worded it, ‘servile tabulation’” (Kozol, 76)

      According to the book, schools that use Skinnerian curriculum require the teachers to post signs for the students.  Some of these signs include ‘Meaningful Sentences’, Active Listening’, and ‘Best Workers’.  The signs appear as though they are supposed to help students give the students the answers, meaning that is the students can’t think of what to say, they can refer to the signs.

      The other half of this quote is that the TEACHERS are required to gather these signs, the issue is that the teachers have enough to do with planning lessons and all.  If these signs do help the students great, but it is the teacher’s lessons that are educating them.

*The above listed quotes are from:The Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol.  The opinions of the blog author are only opinions and are not meant to offend anyone.

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