Journal #1

The Shame of the Nation -Journal 1 April 20, 2011
          We all had some different assumptions coming into this book. I (Amanda) have read Kozol’s book Ordinary Resurrection, which he published about five years before The Shame of The Nation. Because I’ve read him before, I knew that I was in for another shock and that I would once again be ashamed to learn about how little value our country places on children from these apartheid communities and schools. I (Matt) came into this book knowing that schools in the inner city weren’t as reputable as the schools in the suburbs of Milwaukee, but reading the shocking statistics from the first few chapters of The Shame of the Nation really put things into perspective. For instance, in Milwaukee there is a school where black children make up 99 percent of the enrollment despite that it bears the name of Dr. Luther King Jr. Which leads me to the question: Why did the man who wanted to end segregation in the first place, have one of the most segregated schools in Wisconsin named after him?  I (Caitlin) knew that inner-city schools were not the best. After reading just the introduction and the first three chapters I am extremely surprised to see that it is much worse than I expected. I find it shocking that some schools are 98% segregated or how the teachers will fix the art work to hang up. I also did not realize that these schools are so underfunded. I (Brittany) came into the book knowing some about segregated and lower income schools; I went to a school in Green Bay where the majority of the population was not white. Going to this school, I knew about the unfair treatment and assumptions of the public. However I was shocked to learn how segregated some schools were and how dangerous of conditions the kids were put in. I also was extremely shocked to learn that the adults that work as teachers are not certified in lower income schools. Finally I was very surprised by how drastic the amount of income to the schools differed from low income schools to middle and upper class schools.
          Jonathan Kozol is a graduate of English Literature from Harvard. He first began working with children in 1964, when he became a fourth grade teacher in Boston, Massachusetts. He explains in his letter “To the Reader” that he has visited approximately 60 schools in 30 districts, in 11 different states where he was able to observe and talk with countless different students, teachers, and school administrators, and it is from his interviews and discussions with these individuals that he is able to make his most effective arguments and conclusions. He isn’t drawing his conclusions from research done by others; he is doing the research on his own and really getting a feel for what these kids go through. He has seen what they have seen and walked where they have walked, so he is, in a sense, telling their story for them, and nobody can argue with what these kids reveal about their realities. An excerpt on the book’s back cover declares, “Jonathan Kozol is a National Book Award-winning author of Death at an Early Age, Rachel and Her Children, Savage Inequalities, and Amazing Grace. He has been working with children in inner-city schools for more than 40 years.” He is a previously published and successful author who has gained a lot of respect in the world of education.
          Before beginning to read this book, most of us didn’t know that the education we have received thus far isn’t something that every American kid gets to experience. In our Midwestern high schools, administrators didn’t have to worry about the percentages of graduates they would have every spring. Recess was something that that all of us looked forward to after lunch; we had experienced teachers who didn’t have to follow a strict curriculum in fear of losing their jobs; there was a chair for every student in our classrooms… classrooms that didn’t have bolted up windows or collapsing ceilings. The most important thing we have learned from this book so far is that our education isn’t something we should take for granted.