Customer Rating:  
Summary: Well, he's good at something...
Comment: Kozol does something extraordinarily well in this book, and that is to point out all that is going wrong with our schools. There's a point, though, when we must stop agonizing over what is wrong with the system, and make some real proposals on how to make things better. Anyone is capable of doing what Kozol did in this book, which is to simply point out the many pitfalls of our schools. In order for this to be considered a good book, he needs to complete the circle and make some recommendations about how to fix it. Simply complaining will get us nowhere, even if we complain extraordinarily well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: great look too much
Comment: this book is new...fresh....new....really good looking...however the shipping and handling fee was freaken $17.99 for expedite shipping...i got the book overnite! GreAT on that but..the feee is definitely too much.
Customer Rating:
Summary: All analogies few statistics
Comment:
Sheesh....if Kozol is suppose to be some type of expert in public education, you think he would have marshaled a few facts to bolster his case. If, as other reviewers assert, the target audience for this book is the comfortable suburban parents and schools, then the book has failed. Suburbanites are sophisticated enough to require valid data to support an argument. Kozol offers nothing but anecdote and appeals to emotion. Not very convincing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Where Are You?
Comment: Kozol's got this rag doll in his mouth and won't let go. Who can blame him? The schools are in bad shape and, one supposes, someone is at fault. Why not blame everyone except the students? An alternative perspective might suggest the rise of a new phenomenon rarely mentioned by those advocating increased funding: Willful ignorance and the cult of pride. I work in the inner city. Many of my students refuse to do anything and are backed up by their parents. "You can't make me" is their slogan. No administrator will back up a teacher who assigns homework to kids who won't do it. The kids come to school three days a week and routinely take 6-weeks to visit their grandparents south of the border. The girls wear $100 nail jobs, $150 tennis shoes, and won't carry their books because they have bad backs. 25% of the kids stay home on rainy days. Charter schools make the rules the public schools refuse. The kids drop out because they won't accept discipline programs based on "consequences." After years in the local PS, they can't cope with being forced to take responsibility. No doubt, Kozol knows well that some schools have more lap tops than others. This may be a "savage inequality," but for the life of me I can't see how a lap top is going to make up for the lack curiosity in students devoted to gang culture.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Thought-Provoking but Uneven
Comment: Jonathan Kozol is very good at exposing the shameful conditions of inner city schools serving an overwhelmingly poor and minority student population. As after I read his earlier book "Savage Inequalities" a number of years ago, I came away shocked at just how bad things still are for so many of this nation's schoolchildren.
Kozol's solution to all the problems facing urban schools is simply to fund them at the same level as the wealthiest suburbs. There is no examination of whether that funding target is appropriate, which is a very important question. Perhaps the ritzy suburbs are spending too much and wasting money on frills such as lavish sports facilities and so on. It's one thing if the residents in that community are willing to pay for those frills but quite another to ask the overburdened taxpayer to provide the same to all schools.
Kozol takes the typical educrat position on all the hot button issues, from vouchers to standardized testing to phonics to gifted & talented programs (all of these are bad in his view) to universal government-run preschool (good in his view). He doesn't provide much in the way of convincing data to support his arguments, which suggests that they are based on ideology rather than sound research.
|
