Reading: "Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's educational apartheid" (Jonathan Kozol, Harper's Magazine, September 2005)
Pages: 41-54
In part, this article is about how prescribed reading programs like Success for All creates students who have the jargon of worker bees built into them. These programs attempt to turn a subjective art into an objective science; reading and writing are not a qualifiable as subjects like math and science. It's unfortunate, but true. With reading and writing, there are shades of grey that are not added into the sciences until levels much higher than taught in high school (string theory and finite math certainly do introduce gradations to otherwise black-and-white logic). The article goes on to talk about how we have segregated education in this country. Students whose parents have money can send their kids to programs that get them prepared for preschool and kindergarten. Students whose parents do not have money are not allowed that option. The early years of development are paramount and if students miss out on educational opportunities at a young age, they feel those effects for the rest of their lives. Also, if those young children are bereft of time with parents who care about their education (due to cultural attitudes toward education, parents staying at work late to pay the bills, or any number of other things that take parents away from the home), those children are further behind other children who had those opportunities.
Yet again, Kozol makes me think that No Child Left Behind sounds like a great idea, but it's not bloody likely. If there was a level playing field, then we could work on making sure that all children come along in their educational development. Without that level playing field, however, how can we possibly have the same expectations for everyone? For some, those expectations will be incredibly unrealistic and beyond the level to which they can develop in 12 years of free public education. For others, those expectations will be insanely easy and accomplished in their 6th year of free public education. For still others, those expectations will be possible with hard work and dedication, characteristics they may not see much of at home and won't be inclined to demonstrate.
September 28, 2005
September 21, 2005
WW #1 - We Ignore Them
Reading: Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol
Pages: 3-34
This is a description of East St. Louis, where sewage and chemical spills are a regular occurance. Since folk don't have the means to dispose of their garbage, they often simply burn it on their front lawn, resulting in a terrible odor. Kozol not only does a good job in setting the scene in these passages, but he makes an interesting point throughtout: environment plays a large role in development. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act ("No Child Left Behind" [NCLB]) is a good *idea*, but a child born in a place like East St. Louis is already behind a child born in Beverly Hills or even San Jose. In this country, how do we treat cases of inequity in living conditions, income, or education? It seems to me we ignore them. So do we hold the students that are living in squalor, or in low-income housing, or in families that are poorly educated to the same standards as the students that are living in masions, or even in median housing, or with parents who are well educated? Sure, we want to have a bare minimum that students can achieve at and that sounds fair. But when for some kids that means an increase so high above their environment as to seem impossible, that puts them at a disadvantage compared to a kid for whom that increase is not very high above their surroundings. But, then, do we expect less of a student who is the product of poor environment, thereby condeming that student to likely live in that poor environment for the rest of his life? A student with poor education isn't likely to "get out" of that bad town or that poor lifestyle. So what do we do?
Pages: 3-34
This is a description of East St. Louis, where sewage and chemical spills are a regular occurance. Since folk don't have the means to dispose of their garbage, they often simply burn it on their front lawn, resulting in a terrible odor. Kozol not only does a good job in setting the scene in these passages, but he makes an interesting point throughtout: environment plays a large role in development. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act ("No Child Left Behind" [NCLB]) is a good *idea*, but a child born in a place like East St. Louis is already behind a child born in Beverly Hills or even San Jose. In this country, how do we treat cases of inequity in living conditions, income, or education? It seems to me we ignore them. So do we hold the students that are living in squalor, or in low-income housing, or in families that are poorly educated to the same standards as the students that are living in masions, or even in median housing, or with parents who are well educated? Sure, we want to have a bare minimum that students can achieve at and that sounds fair. But when for some kids that means an increase so high above their environment as to seem impossible, that puts them at a disadvantage compared to a kid for whom that increase is not very high above their surroundings. But, then, do we expect less of a student who is the product of poor environment, thereby condeming that student to likely live in that poor environment for the rest of his life? A student with poor education isn't likely to "get out" of that bad town or that poor lifestyle. So what do we do?
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