This is an interview that veteran teacher Anthony Cody did with Jonathan Kozol and posted on his Education Week Teacher blog, Living in Dialogue. Kozol is a famed advocate for civil rights in education. His 1991 book, “Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools,” detailed the vast differences between public schools for children living in poverty and kids who aren’t. Kozol will be among the speakers at the Save Our Schools March and Rally in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, July 30th. Cody asked him to explain his reasons for marching and here’s the interview:
Q) You published Savage Inequalities back in 1992. What has happened to the level of inequity in our schools in the two decades since then?
A) The inequalities are greater now than in '92. Some states have equalized per-pupil spending but they set the "equal level" very low, so that wealthy districts simply raise extra money privately. And, even within a single urban district, parents in rich neighborhoods cluster together at a single school, then hold fund-raisers for that school, using celebrities to pull out a wealthy crowd, and raise as much as half-a-million dollars in a single night. No one forces them to share this money with the schools for poor kids that might be just three blocks away. The system is more savage now than ever.
Q) Our se cretary of education, Arne Duncan, is fond of saying that "Education is the civil rights issue of our time." Is he right about that?
A) Arne Duncan is recycling exactly the same slogan George W. Bush invented. On its face, it sounds benign. But, in reality, Duncan's policies run directly counter to the purposes of civil rights. He doesn't lift a finger to address the glaring fact that public schools for black and Latino kids from coast to coast are now more wildly and shamefully segregated than in any year since 1968. I walk into high schools, with as many as 3,000 students, from Chicago to Los Angeles, from Dallas to Miami, from Denver to New York, and in an entire day I might see ten white students. It's like the bull in the China shop. Duncan pretends it isn't there. But, by his passivity, he's hammering the final nails into the coffin of Brown vs. Board of Education. Meanwhile, he's eagerly doing "Plessy v. Ferguson," pretending he knows how to make separate and unequal schools into bastions of success by relentless testing and humiliation of the teachers.
more . . .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/kozol-im-sick-of-begging-congress-to-do-the-right-thing/2011/07/19/gIQAGSr0NI_blog.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
