Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Feb 28, 2008

Terry rated it:

There seems to be a tiny bit of backlash against Kozol swimming out there, including a really snotty article from someone I really admire usually (Sandra Tsing Loh). So I have to put my two cents in. I have seen with my own eyes the conditions he describes, so to anyone who "poo poohs" these deplorable physical conditions is living in lala land. Secondly, Tsing Loh actually disproves her own point. It's very nice that she has the tiiiiime, energy, education, internet connections, media More...

2 comments like (11 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Deborah rated it:

Given the amount of Kozol's work that I have read, I'm going to just write 1 review (for now). His works on poverty, homelessness, and adult illiteracy are also worth reading, but I am most impressed by his books on the absolutely atrocious state of American education. If you are going to choose just one of his books, I would suggest this one (his most recent indictment of racism and classism in our public schools) or Savage Inequalities (a scathing report on public school systems across the c More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 28, 2010

Sarah rated it:

I am a huge fan of Kozol's work, though his works are always something I approach with a bit of trepidation due to the effect they have on me, the reader. I had had this particular book on my "to-read" list for quite a while but thought it appropriate to read in the spring of 2010 as my hometown an the place where I have always called home, Raleigh, NC, is currently making headlines because of their school busing policy. I grew up in Wake County and was blessed to go to a wonderful mag More...

0 comments like

Oct 08, 2009

MCOH rated it:

Kozol is an excellent writer - he's passionate about his subject matter, and conveys a sense of real urgency and moral indignation at the inequities in our nation's schools. I loved his book Savage Inequalities in college, which was similar. He describes the differences in schools that serve student bodies that are poor and almost exclusively African-American and Hispanic and those that serve predominantly wealthy, white students. He weaves in statistics, interviews, anecdotes from classroom More...

1 comment like

Oct 25, 2007

Lori rated it:

This book had been on my list forever. While I think Kozol is an amazing story teller (very graphic, visual and detailed), I found I couldn't even finish this book. The points he was making about our completely dysfunctional educational system rang very true but I found myself getting so depressed. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for him to get to some discussion of solutions. After more than 200 pages of just more of the same, I just gave up : (

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Nov 23, 2008

David rated it:

This is definitely a life-changing book. I saw Kozol talk at our college when i was a freshman, but I guess his talk didn't do justice to the years of research he put into this anecdotal, yet poignant book. He really talks a lot about the apartheid we have in our public schools that impedes people's ability to get a quality education based on where they live.

I got very mad about the formulaic teaching method that many schools have been enforcing. It makes me want to puke. We need to More...

0 comments like

Jan 29, 2010

Matt rated it:

I don't know how to tackle my feelings about Kozol and this book. He's a brilliant writer and a great advocate for children, and this book is certainly stirring. And a lot of it is just great -- I especially love how frank and compelling he is about race in education, and I agree with the ways in which he shines the spotlight on the (shameful) continued segregation in this country.
But he also holds a lot of beliefs about education that don't really comport with mine and that I think overs More...

0 comments like

Jul 07, 2010

Lara rated it:

I delayed starting this book for school because I presumed it would lose my interest (as happens for me with a lot of nonfiction books that I begin with grand intentions). Wow, was I wrong.

The Shame of the Nation is eye-opening, to say the least. It's difficult for someone who grows up far from anything resembling an urban area to grasp what Kozol means by "apartheid schooling" until one reads this book, but after doing so, my perspective on public schools and the lack More...

0 comments like

Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

Kozol has been one of the most relentless critics of educational and social inequalities in the United States. After 40 years, neither his energy nor his outrage appears to be exhausted. In turning his gaze to school segregation, he discovers what should be obvious to anyone who has spent time in public schools__they are more segregated than ever. Kozol's research and reporting is so extensive that no one can challenge his conclusions: Separate is indeed unequal, and as a society we are robbing

More...

0 comments like

Aug 11, 2010

Manderson rated it:

While I don't agree necessarily with some of Kozol's perspectives on education, such as his obvious horror of standardized testing and other accountability measures, I do think that his ultimate unveiling of the United States educational system as one based on apartheid as devastatingly accurate. Any educational reform, whether a Race For The Top or a No Child Left Behind—anything, essentially, short of equitable integration—will continually fail to bridge the “achievement gap.” There will be on More...

0 comments like

Mar 29, 2009

Caroline rated it:

He brings to light an extremely important issue for our time but I couldn't help feeling that his comparisons are out of step due to his lack of knowledge of the state of public education in general. Shocking assertion, I know, but as a teacher in a public school there were many ideas he took issue with that exist in most public schools, not just urban schools. Granted, the repercussions of these conditions and attitudes are more destructive in impoverished areas but he needs to make that point More...

0 comments like

Nov 02, 2011

Mark rated it:

If Jonathan Kozol's book doesn't make you angry, then you aren't paying attention. In "The Shame of the Nation," Kozol outlines how schools have been re-segregated since the Reagan administration, and how these urban, highly minority schools have been underfunded and undercut by federal, state, and local governments. Comparing funding, curriculum, and access of those in poor urban areas to those in middle-class and wealthy suburban areas, Kozol highlights the injustices done to stude More...

0 comments like

Nov 02, 2010

Chelsea rated it:

This was a very painful book but I'm so glad I read it. It is difficult for me to respond to with any sort of conclusive conviction. I found his description and diagnosis of problems to be insightful and eye-opening. I was deeply moved and challenged by his description of the state of education for poor/black children in our country... however I often found myself stumbling over his conclusions of root cause or of intent behind decisions. I found that there were times when there was ill- intent More...

3 comments like

Feb 06, 2008

Rebekah rated it:

Amazing! This is seriously a must-read for everyone. It is staggering to see what is really happening in our urban school systems.

6 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 27, 2009

Katie rated it:

A book that describes in great detail the class and race divide that has a stranglehold on education. The book can be a bit bogged down in statistics, but they help to put a solid foundation under the individual stories about students and schools and teachers and principals that Kozol deftly expresses. The effect is that you care about each kid Kozol meets, and then realize that this isn't the case of one or two (or one or two thousand) kids. It's the case of an entire system. Every teacher More...

0 comments like

Jan 17, 2011

John rated it:

Another book I had to read for class. Examines the "re-segregation" of the public schools - How white parents don't send their children to schools with blacks kids....blah blah blah. Kind of interesting, but Kozol doesn't really offer any solutions to the problem. He also seemed to talk a lot about when he taught in the hood and he seems self-congratulatory in that respect.. He talks about how deep down white people are prejudice for not sending their kids to these shitty schools, More...

0 comments like

Aug 03, 2009

Joe rated it:

This book went a long way towards convincing me that there is not racially integrated education in urban America. Many people think the battle was won after Brown v. Board of Education, but evidence shows that we're still working from Plessy v. Ferguson. This illustrates my chief complaint about the book. The first 2/3 or so of the book read to me like a laundry list of ways urban public schools suffer. After a bit I wanted to read something about history or efforts to change this state. Th More...

0 comments like

Dec 17, 2010

Shaun rated it:

Jonathon Kozol, National Book Award winning author of Savage Inequalities, once again visits the topic of inequity in America’s public schools. Focusing this time on totalitarian teaching methods in urban districts and near apartheid levels of segregation, Kozol examines the growing divide between the haves and have-nots of our public schools and the waning hopes that the levels of desegregation and opportunity once envisioned in former times will one day be achieved.

A shameful and tra More...

0 comments like

Nov 16, 2011

Kevin J. rated it:

Educator, writer and activist Jonathan Kozol won the National Book Award in 1968 for Death at an Early Age, his memoir detailing his experiences as a teacher in the Boston Public School system. Since then he has published a series of books both describing the inequalities and inequities of public education in America and advocating specific strategies for change. In all of his work there is an undertone of dismay. But in Shame of the Nation, his scathing indictment of the resegregation of our pu More...

1 comment like

Feb 10, 2009

Laura (booksnob) rated it:

An excellent book about the restoration of segregation in America'schools. WE have taken a backwards step in resegregating our minorities in schools and neighborhoods. It is a proven fact that schools with higher minorities receive less federal and state funding per pupil than school's that contain the dominant culture group. Schools are inherently unequal, and I and others need to demand that the government do something about it. "All Children can learn" We hear that every day fr More...

0 comments like

Oct 30, 2008

Angel rated it:

I usually like Kozol's works, but this one I had to drop after a while and scan. Kozol as always brings to life the situation of neglected schools and children in this country. And as he is also good at conveying a sense of outrage at how this nation simply chooses to abandon a large group of their own children. However, this particular book is extremely depressing. As an educator, I just found myself wondering if there was any hope at all. I mean, we can document the atrocity of separating chil More...

0 comments like

Apr 20, 2008

Drick rated it:

In overwhelming and painful detail Jonathan Kozol shows how we have returned to segregated education in the United States. Whereas Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education was designed to eradicate segregated schools, through residential segregation, creative school district lining, and inequitable school funding policies, we have a more segregated system today than before the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decisison. He interviews children, teachers, administrators, and scholars & visits schools across More...

1 comment like

Mar 09, 2008

Jesus rated it:

This book provides a strong description of the disparity between wealthy suburbs and impoverished inner-city (read: black) schooling practices. While Kozol explains the conditions existing within schools he has visited on either end of this spectrum he glosses over the gray areas, oases of uplifting education that might be found within the wonderful mix of cultures of metropolises.

Goodreads is wonderful! The rhetoric in this book is so powerful that it may encourage one to thin More...

0 comments like

Sep 11, 2009

William rated it:

This book makes me, and hopefully you, very angry...He shows us how we make sure that Black and the double whammy of Black and poor, live in a society no different then the worst of apartheid S.A. If we admit that early education is critical to later success than how can we let generations of poor children have a system that spends less in some cases than a tenth of what is spent on rich children by our supposedly classless government?? Our country is the only industrialized one that funds educa More...

1 comment like

Mar 26, 2008

J-Lynn rated it:

Kozol is a powerhouse when it comes to advocating for equity in public education. I remember, while a junior in college, reading Savage Inequalities, his searing indictment of the condition of schools and education in impoverished communities, and feeling reaffirmed in my desire to teach in underprivileged neighborhoods.

Now, as I enter my 8th year of teaching, I find The Shame of the Nation just as powerful. Kozol’s frank writing style that combines statistics and hard facts with o More...

0 comments like

Sep 04, 2007

HM rated it:

More of a "school" type book...but Jonathan Kozol is one of my favorite authors and he's not "officially" a sociologist", more like a journalist. He writes well, directly, and he has a way of capturing his interaction with school age children (elementary to high school) in a way that makes your heart hurt. (at least mine did).

Kozol was originally a teacher in downtown Boston right after the Brown v. Board of education decision was rendered ending legalized s More...

0 comments like

Oct 25, 2011

Laura rated it:

I read this book for class, and enjoyed it reasonably well. I agree with Kozol's points generally, but I was irritated with some of his seemingly reflexive opposition to charter schools and evidence-based education without much justification. Just because white children are being taught a certain way does not mean it's the best way--they could be doing better in school too. Also, I think there is value in anecdotal books like this, but I would generally prefer less gentle storytelling and more h More...

0 comments like

Sep 10, 2009

Brea rated it:

I didn't quite finish this one. I get the drift, I already knew everything he continued to emphasize. I guess I was looking for something a little more solution-based (although this may not have been a realistic expectation) and more anecdote-based, which is what Kozol initially claimed. Maybe the last 50 pages or so would have made up for it, but I just couldn't pick it back up. If you don't know anything about the state of public education in America, or know very little about it, this book wi More...

0 comments like

Apr 18, 2009

Mr. Brammer rated it:

Kozol's righteous outrage is infectious, and I agree with his belief that real desegregation never happened after Brown vs. Board of Education. He has some interesting theories about why this is so: mainly, that the country was tired of thinking about race and wanted to move on. These issues still predominate many urban and suburban school systems, but the political obstacles to real change are formidable. Regardless, equality of access to educational opportunity must be on the top of the li More...

0 comments like

Aug 30, 2007

Mary rated it:

If we lived in any kind of a sane, just world, George W. Bush would have been pelted with hardback copies of this thing as he swaggered into the Martin Luther King Charter School in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans on the second anniversary of Katrina yesterday, where he talked a bunch of crap about how much he cares and whatever and then "took the opportunity to extol his belief in competition and choice in public school." http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Bu...

I r More...

0 comments like

reviews