Quotes from "The Shame of the Nation" by Jonathan Kozol Chapter 5, "American Education" by Joel Spring Chapter 5, and "Educational Foundations" by Alan S. Canestrari and Bruce A. Marlowe Chapters 5 and 6

 Kozol Page 112

“Most Americans whose children aren’t in public school have little sense of the inordinate authority that now is granted to these standardized exams and, especially within the inner-city schools, the time the tests subtract from actual instruction.”

At P.S. 65, Kozol tells us that 5^th grade teachers must put aside all lesson plans from 8:40 to 11:00 a.m. and from 1:45 to 3:00 every day for three months prior to the testing date for lessons on studying for the exams.  In addition to that, students must stay from 3:00 to 5:00 two afternoons a week and come in on Saturdays for three hours for the remaining four weeks before the test.  This test preparation is not only taking time away from school lessons, but it is taking time away from students’ down-time at home and time at home to do their homework, projects or do any outside learning. School is supposed to be a fun learning environment. Are the students learning abstract things, or are they only learning how to take a test.  School is supposed to help build our character and help to form us into the people we will later be when we enter into the adult world.  If these schools are teaching only to a test, are these children learning anything other than to be fearful, stressed and worried about a score they receive on a test?  To make matters worse, the children were told that passing these tests were the most important thing.  On top of the large amounts of time they spend studying for it in school, more stress flows through them putting pressure on them to be the best and score the best scores they can.  These students have a fear put in them by school teachers and administrators to pass this test or otherwise they won’t succeed.  This amount of stress can actually end up causing a student’s grades to be worse on a test instead of better because the more pressure someone has on them, the more nervous they are and the worse they tend to do (although this is not true for everyone, it is for many).  Why is it that teachers and administrators think that the students will actually do better when they have this much stress on them? Kozol states that administrators use these tests so that the teacher’s can get a better idea of where their students are, learning wise, throughout the year.  Why is it that teachers aren’t expected to assess daily classroom behaviors and work to get a better idea of where their students are in their learning process? Wouldn’t the daily interactions give more of an insight into who the children really are, without the stress and anxiety of having to take a bug test that they are told it is most important to pass?  Kozol’s citation of Deborah Meier on page 117 fits this perfectly, ““For a teacher who sees a kid day in and day out to admit that she won’t know how well he reads” until the day the test scores are delivered by an outside agency “is not good news.””

Kozol page 122

“Teachers also are awarded bonus pay in many districts if their students make impressive gains, a policy that has its parallel in sales incentives in the business world and has been in place at various times in recent years in parts of Texas, North Carolina, Colorado, California, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere.”

Stress is not only put on the students who are taking these tests, but it is also put on the principals and teachers administering them. When schools don’t reach the target scores that they are supposed to, they are put on probation after a few years of not reaching the target score, schools are shut down (among other things). This is a stress that is added to the everyday stress that is already on teachers and principals.  Our job as teachers is to help our students to learn everything they can to the best of their abilities in a safe and happy environment that best suits the child.  If our teachers and principals are so worried about reaching the target scores, how can they worry about each student like they should be?  I feel like putting this money incentive onto reaching the target scores may cause some principals to work harder, but it would be for the wrong reasons. At this point, it is no longer to help the children reach their maximum learning capacity, but it is to push students hard and fast, no matter what it does to them, just so they can have some money sitting in their pockets.  Our school system is looking more and more like a business with sales incentives to “get the higher score”.  In the long run, I wonder how this will affect our school systems. If our schools continue to be test-driven, wheat will our schools look like 10,20 or 50 years down the road.

 Spring page 127

“Multicultural education is considered important for all students”

Spring stresses the fact the teaching all students about many different cultures will help to students to better recognize and accept the differences between the people of different cultures. Giving this widespread teaching on different cultures may actually help to decrease the amount of racism that is in our society today. One of the most important things it teaches is that differences are ok and that just because someone/something is different, it doesn’t mean that it is bad or that they should think badly of it.  I feel like this lack of knowledge, this ignorance of other cultures, is the main reason for all of the racism today.  If the amount of racism is lessened, then the fact that segregation exists may actually be seen as true for more and more people. I wonder how our society would change if there was more awareness. Would things actually change towards integration, or would the stereotypes that are in today’s society still stick with people, leaving no room for change.

Spring page 129

“White students… often struggle with strong feelings of guilt when they become aware of the pervasiveness of racism…  These feelings are uncomfortable and can lead white students to resist learning about race and racism.”

When white students are taught about racism, they are taught that most of it is caused by the white race, and it is.  Many people, children especially, have a difficult time responding to that fact because it has a lot of weight-bearing truth to it.  It is hard to think that as a race, people can do so much harm to another race.  When learning about this, students may become overwhelmed by it.  Children don’t like knowing that they did something wrong because they feel bad.  When a child finds out that their race has caused things like segregation in the south, etc, they may feel just as bad about it despite the fact that they didn’t personally do it.  As teachers, our job is to try and teach our students about racism without pointing fingers at individual students.  If our students still take this topic personally, how are we supposed to teach them about it? Is there a way that we can teach them about it without making them feel guilty for what has happened?  If these children end up feeling guilty, they probably won’t want to learn about it at all.  Therefore, we must introduce the subject in a way so that the students understand what is happening in the world today and instead of them ending up turning off to it, helping them to want to change it.  What should we do as teachers if our students never want to hear about the issues of racism again because of their feelings of guilt, how do we respond to that? The minds of children are innocent and frail, and everything that they learn this young will have a major impact on who they are as they grow up.  It is our job to try and make sure that the impacts are good instead of bad. 

Marlowe page 35

“I will submit that one of the reasons (Ebonics) is a problem, if you will- a controversy- is that you cannot divorce language from its speakers.”

I like what Marlowe says about how you cannot be for or against Ebonics because it is not an item that can be debated over.  It is a language that is spoken by some African American people in the United States.  Trying to stop anyone from speaking Ebonics is stifling them from being who they are as a person, as a living part of their own culture.  It is wrong to stop someone from being themselves.  Marlowe also makes a good point when he says that students do need to learn standard English to get by successfully in today’s world because, unfortunately, they will not be able to get anywhere in the working world if they don’t at least know it.  This is not guaranteeing that they will succeed because they know it, but if they don’t know it they will fail.  However, just because they must know how to speak standard English does not mean they must speak it at all times.  They should still have their own culture and live their own culture because that is who they are.  As teachers, if we try and change the language of our students, we will end up turning our students against us, as Marlowe says. We must support and welcome different cultures into our classroom and allow our students to be who they are being raised to be based off of their own culture because that is how they will be the most comfortable in our classroom.  Trying to stop them may actually make the environment one in which the students may become hostile and angry and therefore not want to learn from the teacher.  Why is it that so many teachers don’t understand that Ebonics is a part of a way of life for people and is something that can’t be changed?  Why, as part of the Caucasian race, do we feel we have the right to change people and force them to be like us? 

Marlowe page 45

“Our society, among many others, categorizes people according to both visible and invisible traits, uses such classifications to deduce fixed behavioral and mental traits, and then applies policies and practices that jeopardize some and benefit others.”

Why do certain groups of people feel the need to be higher than others and try and dictate who others are or who they should be?  Stereotypes are not things that we are born with or automatically think, they are something that we hear and learn from our surrounding s as we grow up. These stereotypes only end up alienating cultures and causing larger gaps between races.  These stereotypes are formed because one race feels that they are better than another.  Living in America, the reason for most of today’s racism issues stems from “white supremacy.”  As a people, Caucasians are blessed with more privileges than any other race in our country.  These privileges lead to a feeling of superiority, which leads to the stereotypes and racism that exists in our country today. Is it an innate instinct within us that always look toward another person and throws judgments at them?  Do we naturally feel the need to be above someone else? Can we, as one large group of people, ever find a way to nit set stereotypes about other people, or are we “doomed” to this evil nature?   

Kozol Chapter 4 and Spring Chapter 4

Page 89 (Kozol)

“Starting in kindergarten, children in the school were being asked to think about the jobs they might choose when they grew up.”

Despite the fact that this school intended for its students to pick only managerial jobs, no child should ever have to “choose” what job they would like to do when they grew up.  As a child, we think of being people like astronauts, presidents, stunt guy, etc. not manager’s of a retail store.  Not only is this school asking them to think about this job that they might do when they grow up, but they are implementing aspects of this job into the students’ everyday curriculum.  The students are forced to look at something like being the leader of a line as a job that must be done correctly instead of something that is fun and exciting.  As part of this job, the student is expected to have control of his classmates in the hallway and takes the blame when someone else is misbehaving. Why is this kind of stress put on a child? What happened to the plain joy of being the line leader, or in charge of doing anything else in the classroom? I used to look forward to be the one to do something, but I feel like if I were to it in those schools, I would dread it. As teachers, our job is to help the child learn and grow in an environment where they are the most comfortable and can act like children. I don’t think that this atmosphere allows for this to happen.

Page 90 (Kozol)

“The tiny hint of choice afforded by the second question was eradicated by the third, which presupposed that all the kids had said yes to the first.”

This not only shows how one school was taking away the choice of the students to pick which job they wanted to do, but it symbolizes the loss of voice that the children now have in these schools Kozol is talking about. These children have no say in what is happening to them on a daily basis inside of these schools. In our education classes, we are taught that the best way for a child to learn is to have them feel comfortable in the setting in which they are in. The only way for us to know when and how the students are most comfortable is by having an open line of communication flowing constantly between the teacher and student.  If these students are not allowed to talk or give their opinions on something, then how are they comfortable in their environment (which would lead them to reaching their maximum learning potential?) Taking away a child’s choice to do anything is one of the worst things to do in a school.  The children should come first, which includes listening to their needs and desires, knowing how they work best, learning about them, etc.

Page 94 (Kozol)

“It (childhood) should have some claims upon our mercy, not for its future value to the economic interests of competitive societies but for its present value as a perishable piece of life itself.”

Reading that more and more children are being looked at and educated only to be a part of today’s productive and working world opened my eyes to the reality of today’s society. As years pass and economy’s all over the world grow, the United States has become more money and job-oriented to try and keep up with the rest of the world.  I wonder if being on top is the biggest priority to our government.  When I think of the work force and the economy, I think of myself and other adults working to make a living.  I have not, (before this point), ever thought of including a child in with that equation. “What if a child should grow ill and die before she’s old enough to make our contribution to the national economy?”  pg 94. Why are our government officials thinking this way of our children? It seems like our business world of America has grown to be much larger and more important than the world of education and growing up.  Our children are starting to forget what it is like to be a child.  They are not enjoying the freedom of creativity and adolescent innocence.  Where has this idea come from? Are we getting this idea from other countries, like China, who are very concentrated on their economy and market? If we have not gotten it from someone else, will this end up setting a very ugly trend among other countries because they would fight to measure up to our growing concentration on our work force and economy?

Page 97 (Kozol)

“”Did you ever stop to think that these robots will never burglarize your home?” he asked, and “will never snatch your pocket books… These robots are going to be producing taxes…””

When criticized for using such strict tactics for children while in school, a principal at a Chicago school responded with this quote.  The way that he sees it is that school should be a reform that controls children actions to mold them into something that the adults want, while ignoring the needs and desires of the children.  This principal thinks that the molding of children in the way that he is doing it will only help the children and keep them out of trouble as they grow older. However, on page 93, a principal at another school makes sure to tell students that “no matter what they’ve done”, they can still become managers (which is the goal of the school: to help the children become ready for a managerial job).  This statement “no matter what they’ve done” sounds to me like the principal believes that no matter what happens in the school, the children will still get into trouble, but if they have the type of education they are getting they can still get a great job.  So why is there a discrepancy between these two schools even though the same “marketplace teaching curriculum” is still in effect.  Why is it that one school believes that it will change the children into “good” children while another believes that it won’t do anything for children except help them realize that they can still have good jobs no matter what they do in their life.  Will this program really make an impact on these children if one school firmly believes it will stop it’s students from making bad life style choices while the other believes that they may still happen but the program can help them still become someone?  Are these different opinions hurting the credibility of the program?

Page 95 (Spring)

“Adding to the demands to place Japanese citizens in concentration camps were the conclusions of the U.S. government report on the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which called the Japanese an “enemy race” and claimed that despite many generations in the United States their “racial affinities [were] not severed by migration.”

Although this happened in the early 1940’s, our country is facing a problem closely related to this one.  In 2001, our World Trade Centers were hit by a terrorist group from Afghanistan.  Even though we have not set up concentration camps for all of the Afghan and Muslim people that are here in the U.S. today, we have become prejudiced toward the people that are living here just because they are from the same country as the terrorists.  One of the most obvious examples of this prejudice is that of the fight against a Mosque being built around the sight of the World Trade Centers.  The main argument against allowing this happen is that the people who terrorized the Towers were of the same religion as the people who are trying to build their place of religious worship.  If this kind of prejudice is happening in our country, what is happening to the Muslim and Afghan children that are in the American school system?   Children grow up to be who they are based off of the experiences they live growing up.  Most of these experiences and beliefs are instilled into them by their parents because they are the people that children usually look up to most.  If they see their parents acting in a racist way toward people of a certain background, the likelihood of them doing it is high.  Are children in our schools today being prejudiced against and singled-out because of their background just like they were back when Pearl Harbor was bombed?  Our country has a history of punishing the race that hurts us, despite the fact that only a few people may have been involved in the act, not everyone.   Haven’t we learned from the last time that this happened that we are unfairly reacting to a situation and hurting our own U.S. citizens just for having the same culture or beliefs as someone else?

Page 103 (Spring)

“”What’s happening now is that immigrants are showing up in many more communities all across the country than they have ever been in. So it’s easy for people to look around and not just see them, but feel the impact they’re having in their communities. And a lot of these are communities that are not accustomed to seeing immigrants in their schools, at the workplace, in their hospitals.”

According to Spring, the school-age population of non-Hispanic children will drop from 65% in 2000 to less than 50% in 2040 and between the year 2000 and 2020, the number Hispanic school-age children will rise over 60%.(pg 104)  To make the environment of our classroom feel comfortable to all of our students, we need to make sure that we are meeting all of our children’s needs.  These needs may include comfort, happiness, a feeling of belonging, a feeling of acceptance and accomplishment, etc.  As teachers, what can we do to fully integrate all of the immigrants that are coming into our classrooms? We can teach more about cultures and customs from other countries and integrate that into our curriculum by connecting it to another subject.  But how hard will it be when we have so many standards to meet as teacher’s in today’s society that are controlled by test scores and a government that wants us to teach what they want us to teach and how they want us to teach it.  How do we stay connected with the realities of today’s society yet do what is expected of us (and that is telling us to do the opposite of that).  Our goal is to educate children by helping them to grow emotionally and intellectually by making them feel comfortable in the atmosphere they are in.  The statistics are quickly changing in a society that is having a difficult time adapting to these changes.

Quotes from "The Shame of the Nation" by Jonathon Kozol Chapters 1-3

Page 28

““It’s like we’re being hidden,” said a fifteen-year-old girl named Isabel I met some years ago in Harlem, in attempting to explain to me the ways in which she and her classmates understood the segregation of their neighborhood and schools. “It’s as if you have been put in a garage where, if they don’t have room for something but aren’t sure if they should throw it out, they put it where they don’t need to think of it again.””

Reading this quote puts everything that Kozol is saying about segregation into a more personal perspective, because it is coming from a young girl who is living it every day. Instead of reading about the factual figures behind which schools are segregated and why, Kozol brings us into the mindset of the people who are living in it. I personally could never have imagined that any child, or person, could ever feel that way about themselves just because of the color of their skin. But I now see that the color of this girl’s skin is making her feel like she is inferior because she goes to a school that is falling apart and doesn’t have the same resources as the schools around her. If she feels this way now as a child in her school, will her feeling of inferiority remain with her and will it stop her from being the best that she can be all throughout the rest of her life? Will she ever get to know the other world that is outside of the closed in life she is living? Childhood is the most important time in a person’s life because it is the time when someone grows the most. As a child, our brains are like a sponge, soaking up everything around us which later forms the people we become. If all a child has to soak up is negativity and feelings of inferiority, they will not be able to grow into a well adjusted and confident person . On page 29, Kozol discusses the court (in 1954) saying that taking “black children away from white children” so that they would be in separate schools is demoralizing and would hurt the minds of the children in a way that it would never be able to be undone. The fifteen-year-old girl is a real-life example of the ruling of that court. If the court came to that conclusion in 1954, why is it that a young lady is feeling this way today, and if one person feels that way, how many others are hurting also? Have the people in America forgotten that they once believed that segregation would permanently hurt the people involved?

Page 20

““To give up on integration, while aware of its benefits,” write Orfield and his former Harvard colleague Susan Eaton, “requires us to consciously and deliberately accept segregation, while aware of its harms…””

People do this all the time, they ignore what is best for them (while knowing it is the best) and decide to do something that could be potentially harmful (the whole time knowing it is harmful). But when talking about segregation in the school systems, we are not talking about ourselves, we are talking about our children and grandchildren: our future. As Kozol states, our government has been stagnant towards the efforts to try and integrate our school systems for the last 25 years. During the time of Martin Luther King Jr. and for a short time afterwards, steps were taken in our government to form laws announcing the equality of people and helping for that truth to come into play in everyday life. However, things were never fully resolved everywhere when it came to people living in poverty, and as time wore on, things became worse. This is one of the biggest reasons for our segregated schools today: lack of government action. So not only is Orfield talking about the everyday people, but he is talking about the American government and its lack in action to help stop segregation. If we are aware of the harms that segregation can cause on a community, a school, a child, etc. then why are there still schools in the United States that are segregated? Kozol continues to state that having segregation in the school system cannot coexist with the healthy functioning of a multi-racial country. Could this be why there is still so much racism in today’s society? As a country, if we know that this is happening but do nothing about it, then how far have we truly come to prove that all peoples within our country are equal? 

Page 56

““Is the answer really to throw money into these dysfunctional and failing schools?” I’m often asked. “Don’t we have some better ways to make them work?””

Here, I am reminded of the quote “money is the root of all evil”. However, in this situation, it is not money itself that is evil, it is the situation involving the lack of money that is causing problems. Unfortunately, in today’s society, money really is one of the biggest things to help us get ahead. Not only in school systems, but in life. Without money, we really can’t do anything. When it comes to a school, the success of it relies largely on the materials and equipment that it has to help educate all of the students that attend. Also, the money that a school has pays for the teachers that teach the students attending. Without money in a school, there would not be enough teachers to teach the number of children that go there and the materials would either be outdated or there wouldn’t be enough for all of the students. So does a school that is failing and has a high turn-over rate of teachers really need a lot of money, or is there another way to help failing schools in their mission to better educate their students?

Page 60

“Those who search for signs of optimism often make the point that there are children who do not allow themselves to be demoralized by the conditions we have seen but do their work and keep their spirits high and often get good grades and seem, at least, to have a better chance than many of their peers to graduate from high school and go on to college-and, in any case, whether they do or not, refuse to let themselves be broken or embittered by the circumstances they may face.”

The biggest problem we may be facing when we think of this is: are we forcing children to grow up faster than they should? At a young age, more and more children are being forced to grow up with the stresses of poverty and racism surrounding them. It is absurd to think that a child can, or should be able to, handle such things. A child needs to be able to be a child: play, imagine, have fun, and worry about only what is due for homework the next day at school. To be able to calmly say that a few of the many students in a segregated school are able to rise above the situation around them is beyond the realm of being just. Does because a student can do it mean that they should do it? There is a quote by an author/comic strip writer, Lynda Barry, which fits the quote above; “We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay. I believe we have always done this, used images to stand and understand what otherwise would be intolerable." It brings up the reality of unhappy people making up a world that is happier than the one they are living in just so that they feel ok while they are living it. Is this what we are forcing the children in segregated schools to do? Are they being forced to look at their world in a light that is opposite from the truth just so that they can get through the school day? The ones who want to remain optimistic when talking about segregation may say that even if this is what is going on, it is ok because the children are able to succeed and continue to live happily by doing so. Are the children really happy though, or are they living in a fake world wondering what true happiness is really like.

Page 64

“”If you do what I tell you to do, how I tell you to do it, when I tell you to do it, you’ll get it right,” says a South Bronx principal observed by a reporter from The New York Times in laying out a memorizing rule for math to an assembly of her students. “If you don’t, you’ll get it wrong.””

This Skinnerian approach is led in the inner-city schools because the people in control believe that this level of total control in the classroom will help test scores rise and teachers to stay longer. This type of teaching does not allow any time for the student to act like a child. Mary Cowhey is a teacher in Massachusetts who teaches in a poverty stricken area and has taught her students using a transformative, hands-on approach with much success. In her book “Black Ants and Buddhists”, Cowhey gives us her stories of how she has helped her students grow into intelligent and bright young men and women using a teaching style that does not include her as a dictator, but rather as someone who is willing to get onto her students’ level and learn with them. At times, she even lets her students do the teaching. While reading her book, I have seen the success she has had in teaching her second grade students everything they need to know, and more. So will a dictator-like teaching style work with students? Can they learn when they are only allowed to speak or ask questions during the allotted time given to them by the teacher? Most importantly, can a system like that actually raise test scores and keep teachers longer if it is only causing a lot of anxiety amongst the teachers and students?

Page 65

“Silent lunches had been instituted in the cafeteria and, on days when children misbehaved, silent recess had been introduced as well. On those days, the students were obliged to stay indoors and sit in rows and maintain silence on the floor of a small room that had been designated “the gymnasium.””

This phenomenon is not only seen in segregated schools today, but is starting to be seen everywhere. With the focus being on higher test scores, teachers and school legislators are starting to cut back on the time that allows for students to take a break and have fun during the school day. NCLB, although having good intentions, has caused today’s education system to greatly stress good test scores so that each school can be deemed as a passing school. This has forced educators to buckle down on the amount of time a child spends learning, which usually means cutting out any free time in the day. However, how healthy is it really for students to spend all day working and studying with no real break. During lunch, students use the time to converse with their friends about things that can’t be brought up in class. Sometimes, children even use that time to vent about the stresses and struggles they are facing at home or in the classroom. So when a lunch period is forced to be silent, is that helping the students or hurting them? If a silent lunch can’t be used as punishment, are there other ways to help settle down students in a noisy lunchroom? Recess is also a time that students use to take a break from the stresses of school. Children need to be children. They need to be able to run around, yell, have fun, and move around after being in a classroom all day. When a child gets too stressed out, the ability for them to learn and retain information quickly diminishes. If the recess is there to help a child relax throughout a busy school day, isn’t it helping them to actually do better in school? Could recess be helping test scores to be as high as they are? What happens if recess is taken away and test scores actually drop, what will be done to change things then?