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The Shame of the Nation

The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
“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
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    • AudioFile Magazine
      One of the best chroniclers of American education is at it again, and the message is not encouraging. Fifty years after the Brown decision, urban schools are still segregated, subjected to curricula that ignore teacher creativity, and tested in the same way that more affluent, mostly white suburban schools carry out assessment. Narrator Robertson Dean is magnificent as Kozol's voice. His rumbling baritone conveys the ominous tone inherent in the text, but he also injects a hopeful lightness to his reading when we hear about urban teachers who fight the bureaucracy and effectively teach children. Dean uses exceptional pacing, and he interprets the author's words with authority and passion. R.I.G. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • AudioFile Magazine
      Examining the tough and intricate challenges of education, Kozol asks disturbing questions about the quality and equality of schools that have become essentially re-segregated in the 50 years since Brown v. Board of Education. Despite the long, complicated sentences and engaging comments dispersed throughout the book, Harry Chase navigates the text with a relaxed and welcoming tone that encourages one to follow along. Chase's talent lies in his range of tone and energy. His delivery emphasizes Kozel's essential message, and he also provides a wonderful jovial voice when quoting children. Though listeners might identify where the audiobook has been abridged, the performance and essence of Kozol's work still leave a lasting, albeit haunting, impression. L.E. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 12, 2005
      Public school resegregation is a "national horror hidden in plain view," writes former educator turned public education activist Kozol (Savage Inequalities, Amazing Grace). Kozol visited 60 schools in 11 states over a five-year period and finds, despite the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, many schools serving black and Hispanic children are spiraling backward to the pre-Brown era. These schools lack the basics: clean classrooms, hallways and restrooms; up-to-date books in good condition; and appropriate laboratory supplies. Teachers and administrators eschew creative coursework for rote learning to meet testing and accountability mandates, thereby "embracing a pedagogy of direct command and absolute control" usually found in "penal institutions and drug rehabilitation programs." As always, Kozol presents sharp and poignant portraits of the indignities vulnerable individuals endure. "You have all the things and we do not have all the things," one eight-year-old Bronx boy wrote the author. In another revealing exchange, a cynical high school student tells his classmate, a young woman with college ambitions who was forced into hair braiding and sewing classes, "You're ghetto-so you sew." Kozol discovers widespread acceptance for the notion that "schools in ghettoized communities must settle for a different set of academic and career goals" than schools serving middle-and upper-class children. Kozol tempers this gloom with hopeful interactions between energetic teachers and receptive children in schools where all is not lost. But these "treasured places" don't hide the fact, Kozol argues, that school segregation is still the rule for poor minorities, or that Kozol, and the like-minded politicians, educators and advocates he seeks out, believe a new civil rights movement will be necessary to eradicate it.

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