Excerpting Jonathan Kozol’s new book, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, a Harper’s Magazine September cover story (here via Mindfully.org) makes the case that segregation is thriving in American urban public schools, and not by accident.
Kozol also lays bare the economic disparity of money spent on kids and their teachers in suburban schools compared to those in inner cities. Explaining how she and her classmates understood the racial segregation of their neighborhood and schools, one Harlem teenager told the author, “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 there where they don’t need to think of it again.”
Kozol’s findings are all the more poignant in light of debates over where to school the 372,000 displaced children of Hurricane Katrina. Supported by the Bush administration, a number of states want to teach them in shelters, despite a landmark federal law banning the educational segregation of homeless children, reports theWall Street Journal.