“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.
You picked some good quotes Johnny, I particularly like your third quote and response.
ReplyDelete“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.”
I have felt that there is a need to increase the number of schools in out national school system. You cant expect to reach every student when you are physically limited by the building you are in. Everything you as a teacher try to do becomes a task and it begins to effect the teachers ability and time to teach because they have no or extremely limited resources. for example if you are teaching a class that should have 25 students in it but really has 32 students then how can one bring their class to a computer lab that may only have 25 computers in it. Sure you can "share" a computer (although no work will really get done) but now there is another obstacle in place for the teacher to jump over and figure out a solution, taking away from the teachers job...to TEACH!
I completely agree with what you said and this relates to our field (Technology Education) really well because our classes don’t allow for extra students. Equipment in our labs really limit class sizes. If we are teaching classes in a wood working lab having extra students may not allow some student access to the equipment and it could create unsafe working conditions. In classes where the students use computers we can team up on one machine, but they are not getting the same experience as when they use their own computer. It is really terrible to have too many students in a class.
ReplyDeleteI had the same though initially about teaming up children on a computer, but the more I thought about it the more i thought it was a bad idea. One reason is something that you had mentioned in your comments "but they are not getting the same experience as when they use their own computer." Its not the same thing, especially with computers, there is more then one way to get a correct result, so each child would look at a problem differently. This would lead to one dominating student and one follower. This could be good if it we were doing group work, but not ideal for individual learning. one will almost always be left out. I also couldn't agree more on how situations like that could easily lead to safety issues weather it pertains to our field of Technology Education or any other field in education. To have that many children in one area all the time will ultimately lead to an unsafe situation.
ReplyDeleteIn Technology Education, I think over packed classrooms, are terrible. I realize that we shouldn't turn students away, but it could become a hazard not only to his/herself but also everyone in the class. Like Nick said, one student could dominate if students have to be paired up; this is not fair to either student. Though most schools say they don’t have enough money to pay for additional teachers, they need find it.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, it is important for students to enroll in these types of classes, but there needs to be a limit somewhere.