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    The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America
    Unavailable
    The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America
    Unavailable
    The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America

    Written by Jonathan Kozol

    Narrated by Robertson Dean

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "The nation needs to be confronted with the crime that we're committing and the promises we are betraying. This is a book about betrayal of the young, who have no power to defend themselves. It is not intended to make readers comfortable."

    Over the past several years, Jonathan Kozol has visited nearly 60 public schools. Virtually everywhere, he finds that conditions have grown worse for inner-city children in the 15 years since federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. First, a state of nearly absolute apartheid now prevails in thousands of our schools. The segregation of black children has reverted to a level that the nation has not seen since 1968. Few of the students in these schools know white children any longer. Second, a protomilitary form of discipline has now emerged, modeled on stick-and-carrot methods of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons but targeted exclusively at black and Hispanic children. And third, as high-stakes testing takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education in our inner-city schools has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction that would be rejected out of hand by schools that serve the mainstream of society.

    Filled with the passionate voices of children and their teachers and some of the most revered and trusted leaders in the black community, The Shame of the Nation is a triumph of firsthand reporting that pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, but directly challenges the chilling practices now being forced upon our urban systems by the Bush administration. In their place, Kozol offers a humane, dramatic challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some 50 years ago to all our youngest citizens.


    From The Shame of the Nation

    "I went to Washington to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations," the president said in his campaign for reelection in September 2004. "It's working. It's making a difference." It is one of those deadly lies, which, by sheer repetition, is at length accepted by large numbers of Americans as, perhaps, a rough approximation of the truth. But it is not the truth, and it is not an innocent misstatement of the facts. It is a devious appeasement of the heartache of the parents of the poor and, if it is not forcefully resisted and denounced, it is going to lead our nation even further in a perilous direction.


    Also available as a Random House AudioBook and an eBook


    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 27, 2005
    ISBN9781415928318
    Unavailable
    The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America
    Author

    Jonathan Kozol

    Jonathon Kozol has been awarded the National Book Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. His previous books include Amazing Grace and Savage Inequalities. He lives in Byfield, Massachusetts.

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    Reviews for The Shame of the Nation

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    • 4/5
      very interesting but absolutely no discussion about the crime and violence that is one reason that almost ALL parents don't want their kids educated in schools with poor kids.great reader.
    • 5/5
      I'm so angry! This book has been a real life changer for me, even though it was written several years ago. Suddenly, as an educator, I can't sit still. I can't let this passion pass without doing something! But what? How and where to start? Kozol believes that the only way we will be able to overcome the segregation that has settled back into our nation, including the "apartheid schools" of inner cities all over the country, is to begin a grass roots political movement that will force those in positions of leadership and legislative power to listen. I concur. Check out Education Action to learn how you can join in on the conversation.
    • 4/5
      This is an incredibly depressing book. It starts out with mind-numbing statistics that describe the facts that in many American cities and urban centers schools are effectively separate and unequal. In many urban centers the vast majority of students are comprised of minorities - generally ~90+% black and/or Hispanic. It describes the teaching, curriculum, and class control methods that are used in these schools. These methods are derived from corporate and/or trade school structures and do not instill either basic knowledge nor a love of learning. The book then describes how and why this has come to be and then takes a look at the prospects for this to change in the near future. Throughout, each is bleak.Two main things are not addressed with this book, namely real and/or perceived violence and drugs rampant in poor urban schools systems - though I will be very quick to admit that these are not limited or unique to poor urban school systems.Kozol makes an argument that integration is necessary and that where it has happened many of the problems that have been described are not as prevalent -- test scores increase, etc. Personally, I think this is one of only many things that need to happen, and further that why it works is more straightforward than he lets on.In any case, this is an incredibly enlightening book, and one that is quite readable ... once I could bring myself to face it again. But I had a hard time picking this book up each time and often could only read a few pages at a time.
    • 5/5
      A must read for anyone concerned about the effects of testing on the education of children. This is a sad reflection on the state of urban education systems, especially those serving poor children.Style: Absorbing, serious tone but dialogue and intensity that makes it fast pacedPacing: InvolvingFormat: Recreates situations, dialogs, scenes, classroom settings, and interviews with personal commentary and statistical data Characters: Real people, sometimes assembled from multiple peopleSetting: Primarily New York City, most specifically South BronxStory-line: driven by the intensity of his conviction, statistics, and stories of real people and situationsGenre: Current events, Education, Memoir, Social conditionsAuthenticity: Kozel is sometimes criticized for embellishing his experiences to make his point. His conviction and extreme concern for children, especially poor children, makes him very persuasive to the willing readerMood is one of immediate need for change as a generation is being lost
    • 4/5
      This is an AMAZING book regarding education in the US. Although written in 2005, I can't say that I have hope that all of the problems he shines light on has suddenly disappeared.

      This book challenges the notion that schools are integrated, even though Brown vs Board of Education was....over 60 years ago. In fact, as Kozol finds, if you go to a school named for one of the civil rights leaders that fought for integration and desegregation (Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr)...you'll likely find irony in that most of the students in that school are students of color, and most likely in a school that is on the short end of funding and resources. In effect: our schools are still very much separate, but not anywhere near equal.

      My TFA folks--think about the schools where you taught, is it true?
    • 4/5
      Although it isn’t that recent, this non-fiction book portrays the truth in about our replaced education system; from liberal education to culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction. Through the voices of teachers, children, and principals, this book acknowledges and applauds those teachers that are fighting against these new ways of education, but specifically attacks the practices that are forced upon the urban setting schools. Could be used in a senior or AP senior English class; book club/literature circles connecting to similar topics; text-to-self connections as a student/teacher; writing prompts etc.