Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America

Kozol, Jonathan, (2005). The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. New York: Crown Publishers. In Jonathan Kozol's book, The Shame of the Nation, the author writes that "it is harder to convince young people that they 'can learn' when they are cordoned off by a society that isn't really sure they can" (37). The book examines what Kozol terms "the resegregation of public schools" in America. To conduct his research, Kozol visited 60 public schools in 11 different states over a five year period (2000-2005). He found the worst segregation rates since Brown v. Board of Education: nationwide, nearly three quarters of black and Latino students attend schools where their fellow classmates are predominantly minority students, more than two million black students attend schools that are 99-100% non-white, and in numerous citiesChicago, Washington D.C., and Detroit, for instance-minorities constitute between 90 and 95% of all public school students ( 19, 8). Because racially isolated schools tend to appear in pockets of concentrated poverty, the students this book focuses on also fall far below federal poverty guidelines. This is an issue with clear implications for developmental educators. As Kozol points out, the achievement gap between minority and white students, which had narrowed in the decades following Brown v. Board of Education, has become a chasm over the past fifteen years. Kozol points to figures from the nonprofit group Education Trust indicating that the math and reading skills of black and Hispanic twelfth-graders fall below the level of proficiency achieved by seventh grade white children (281). This has coincided with a sharp decline in the enrollment of minority students in post-secondary education; of those students who do persevere and gain admittance to colleges and universities, a significant percentage will be in need of developmental coursework. While none of this comes as a surprise to developmental educators, Kozol's book is useful for its unique and comprehensive overview of the scholastic backgrounds of many of the students we serve, delineating the causes and consequences of segregated education in the 21st century. Although The Shame of the Nation is data-rich with nearly 50 pages of annotations, it does not rely on statistics alone to make its case; one of the most compelling features of the book is its incorporation of student narratives. Of his decision to include the voices of children in the book, Kozol states that unlike the "adult experts who develop policies that shape their destinies...children have no ideologies to reinforce, no superstructure of political opinion to promote, no civic equanimity or image to defend, no personal reputation to secure" (12). In other words, they are "pure witnesses." It is a testament to Kozol's talent as a writer and scholar that this technique comes across as neither saccharine nor sensationalistic; rather, the result reads like a more complete accounting of the situation, offering vivid specifics where there are usually abstractions. Over the course of 12 chapters, Kozol weaves scholarly research and personal narrative to create an accessible, thorough, and original treatment of the subject. The first two chapters serve to familiarize the reader with the major themes of the book: chapter one, "Dishonoring the Dead," provides a statistical overview of separate and unequal education in the United States, presenting case studies of apartheid schools ironically named after civil rights pioneers. Chapter two, "Hitting them Hardest When They're Small," outlines some of the most obvious difficulties facing children who attend racially segregated schools, including overcrowding, decrepit facilities, and high teacher turnover. Chapters six and seven delve more deeply into the causes and effects of segregated schools as they manifest on a physical level. "A Hardening of Lines" examines the exodus of white students from public schools located in racially mixed neighborhoods. …