The Shame of the Nation
The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America
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The Shame of the Nation
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Narrated by:
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Dean Robertson
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By:
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Jonathan Kozol
About this listen
“The nation needs to be confronted with the crime that we’re committing and the promises we are betraying. This is a book about betrayal of the young, who have no power to defend themselves. It is not intended to make [listeners] comfortable.”
Over the past several years, Jonathan Kozol has visited nearly 60 public schools. Virtually everywhere, he finds that conditions have grown worse for inner-city children in the 15 years since federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. First, a state of nearly absolute apartheid now prevails in thousands of our schools.
The segregation of Black children has reverted to a level that the nation has not seen since 1968. Few of the students in these schools know white children any longer. Second, a protomilitary form of discipline has now emerged, modeled on stick-and-carrot methods of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons but targeted exclusively at Black and Hispanic children. And third, as high-stakes testing takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education in our inner-city schools has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction that would be rejected out of hand by schools that serve the mainstream of society.
Filled with the passionate voices of children and their teachers and some of the most revered and trusted leaders in the Black community, The Shame of the Nation is a triumph of firsthand reporting that pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, but directly challenges the chilling practices now being forced upon our urban systems by the Bush administration. In their place, Kozol offers a humane, dramatic challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some 50 years ago to all our youngest citizens.
From The Shame of the Nation
“I went to Washington to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations,” the president said in his campaign for reelection in September 2004. “It’s working. It’s making a difference.” It is one of those deadly lies, which, by sheer repetition, is at length accepted by large numbers of Americans as, perhaps, a rough approximation of the truth. But it is not the truth, and it is not an innocent misstatement of the facts. It is a devious appeasement of the heartache of the parents of the poor and, if it is not forcefully resisted and denounced, it is going to lead our nation even further in a perilous direction."
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skip the book read the essay
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Critic reviews
"Respected author Kozol delivers a scathing indictment of public education and public policy....Compelling." (Booklist)
"Sharp and poignant." (Publishers Weekly)
What listeners say about The Shame of the Nation
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Robin Edwards
- 07-20-18
important and informative
Wow, what an important and informative read. I highly recommend this book, we need to be paying attention to this issue as a nation.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Beth S.
- 04-14-21
Should be mandatory reading!
Wow! Such a well presented and eye opening account of the struggles children of color face in trying to get a decent education!
You would think it was a story about the days “long ago” and the fact it isn’t is heartbreaking!
The book might be a challenge to get through in hard copy, but the narrator does such a FANTASTIC job, I was riveted to even the driest presentation of data.
The story is a perfect balance of children, teachers, parents and the system to really open your eyes if you, like me, grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood and through poor, attended an all white public school.
I STRONGLY recommend this for everyone, and especially those considering going into education, as he presents examples of teachers who, against strong odds, are still making a huge difference in the lives of children, BUT... we MUST make it better and easier for our educators to do so!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Sierra
- 01-27-11
Thank You
I found this book to be extremely inspiring. I live in a middle classtown in Minnesota,far from inner-city schools and totally unnaware tha issues such as these still managed to exist. Mr. Kozol does a wonderful job of illustrating the innocence and wonder of the children most affected by inequality and I would reccommend this book to anyone.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Juelz
- 08-21-19
Tears, tears, and more tears!
I was a student in, an educator of, and the parent of two students that has and will attend, a deeply segregated school in one of the United States most liberal cities-- the New York City public schools system. I was recently told by an admissions aide in a district 11 Family Welcome center, a NYCDOE center that allows parents to register their children to district 8 and 11 schools, that I could not enroll my son, who is a soon-to-be kindergarten student, in a school that was much closer to my home. This school reserved a waitlist that was highly selective to families of whom resided in the private homes of Morris Park, unlike myself who lives in Parkchester. Parkchester children are all dumped in P.S. 106. For me to get my child in PS/MS 498 the principal would have to meet me and sign off on it. But I'm Black, so I am a victim of New York City's apartheid school system!
This book is a sad reminder that NOTHING has changed! In fact, schools are more segregated now then ever before. I recommend this book for everyone. Whether you're an educator, a pastor, a racist, a saint, or a cynic, this book is for you!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Denise Robb
- 03-13-16
Changed my life.
This book changed my life. I teach its message to my college students. I will carry it with me until the shameful flame of injustice has been annihilated. My only criticism is the reader was very one note and it needed some variation.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Eleanor
- 08-24-12
Get the ABRIDGED version!
Kozol has some excellent points to make, but he repeats himself over and over in order to make them. This book did not need to be this long! It could have been one-third the length and the point would have been much better made!
My primary complaint is that Kozol's own narrative overshadows that of the students that he is advocating for. He spends far too much of the book berating the reader when he could be letting us hear what the students themselves have to say.
Again, the overall point is very important - the de facto segregation of our urban schools. But it is so poorly written, rambling along without clear chapter topics, and LOOOOONNNNNGGGGG, that I wouldn't recommend this to anyone in its complete form. If it's available in an abridged form, get that version!
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- saundralhh
- 08-20-19
very academic reading
I started out listening to this book for a class. However, I finished reading it because I found it very interesting an in-depth information about the national education system and how it works for and against certain people.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Small Mountain
- 10-08-20
Energetic, but Feels Dated and Hard to Believe at Face Value
Trying to write a concise review of this book is challenging. On one hand, the anecdotes within are well-written and interesting, and the problems faced by students in those anecdotes are stark. On the other hand, the assertions behind why those situations occur does not agree with personal anecdotes. This book is about segregation in schools, and how having schools that have a near-100% proportion of non-white students is leading to a cycle of a certain segment of the population being cut off from the mainstreams. Being family of teachers and students of integrated classes, though, makes me wonder how much a role the look of the student body really plays. Integration is fine, but I don’t think changing the look of the student body would reduce situations like the ones described in Kozol’s anecdotes, at least not much. It looks to me like the allocation of public resources needs to be improved as the top priority. Kids get stressed and stress reduces their ability to develop skills and relationship; a lack of basic physical and emotional needs is about the most stressful deficiency one can imagine for students, and the issues in Kozol’s anecdotes mostly seem to boil down to that issue, even past the issue of integration. That issue, as well as the emphasis on school geography, is why the book feels dated at this point as well. My children and many others are in a virtual schooling setting due to the pandemic, and the classrooms are largely integrated in our area; the integration, though, does not seem to solve a bunch of problems all on its own. The children themselves do not seem to care much or even notice the looks of the other children; they do care about physical and emotional stressors, though, like the pandemic, food security, parental attention, etc. Kozol’s book is interesting, but it just does not seem like his primary solution to the nation’s education disparity would actually fix the problems he implies it would.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
- Santiago
- 12-01-09
Enough bad mouthing our school systems
I think Jonathan Kozol should spend more time providing suggestions and recommendations instead of just ripping the educators who work so hard to get their students the best education possible.
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