Chapter eight, “False Promises,” consists of a string of increasingly depressing programs, policies, and promises that have made claims that they can ‘fix’ the American education system only to meet with failure. As Kozol points out, at the heart of every one of these reforms is the assumption that there is something inherently wrong with our education system. I’m not entirely sure that I don’t agree – there are numerous problems that need addressed. One of these problems seems to be the way we go about addressing problems with the system. Reading about all the different strategies that have employed over the last 40 or 50 years, it seems to me that they all have just been variations on a theme – if we buckle down with tougher standards and throw more money at the problem, we can whip the system into shape. Kozol himself seems to fall into the trap of viewing money as a kind of cure-all. While I am not going to argue that equal funding and at least sanitary buildings would not be a step in the right direction, I don’t think money is the silver bullet everyone is looking for. Forgive me for saying it, but President George W. Bush might have been onto something with increasing qualification requirements for teachers. The idea for improving teachers that is implemented in NCLB is more damaging than helpful, but if there was a way to provide more training and education for teachers, it might go a long way. This has its own set of issues, however – how do you attract people to an already sparse profession where you get little support from the general public, little financial reward, and more work than I honestly care to think of at the moment, while requiring more education of them? In any case, I argue that the responsibility of fixing the situation falls squarely on our shoulders as teachers – it is our job to take what little we are given and still work wonders. This won’t be easy. And a lot of us will burn out. But that’s the job.
Chapter nine seems to promote the idea that a genuine social upheaval of the kind seen in the early days of the civil rights movement is necessary to bring an end to de facto segregation in school systems. I would agree that there need to be more people pushing for this reform – unless someone raises the issue powerfully and in full view of the national consciousness, this could fly under the radar for another 40 or 50 years. The observations made by Gary Orfield at the end of the chapter were wonderful, however. While we have these terrible examples of segregation that can be used to get the attention of society, there are also good examples out there that can be modeled.
