66 pages • 2 hours read
Jonathan KozolThe Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 11-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Deadly Lies”
Kozol begins Chapter 11 by describing the “sustained attack” against teachers to oppose the policies of No Child Left Behind. Some have accused teachers who argue against school accountability practices of holding the racist belief that children of color can’t learn. Kozol claims it is “very much in fashion in our nation’s capital” to tell the “victim” that he must try harder to reach his potential. He argues that this “hortatory rhetoric costs nothing for society” while actually improving inner-city schools would be expensive for taxpayers (266). Meanwhile, schools must prioritize the requirements of No Child Left Behind, which sometimes means abandoning desegregation projects.
Kozol describes how so much time and energy has been devoted to developing standards-based education programs that there is great resistance to changing them. Because of the “teacher-proof” nature of these curricula, many urban principals and administrators defend them as a solution for the high turnover rates in their schools. However, Kozol points to another reason why “tough, no-nonsense” practices are chosen over more progressive ones. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, young, white, “well-intending but unconsciously quite patronizing intellectuals” came into Black neighborhoods (270), promoting more unstructured, self-led “open education.” Parents whose children were struggling to read, for example, found these ideas “preposterous and dangerous” (270). While the movement was small, it was highly publicized, and Kozol worries that it caused more conservative educational practices to take root among children of color. Even today, he notes many argue that strict “military practices” are “a necessary antidote for inner-city children” who are thought to live in urban chaos (271). Meanwhile, “middle class” or “white education” can be “essentially devoid of structure, lacking in substance, and bereft of serious intentionality” (271).
Kozol argues that the idea of these two extremes is “unconvincing” for most principals and teachers. However, many have no choice but to adopt these standardized curricula. As they become more “encoded as the proven methods of instruction” for children of color, it begins to cement the “differentness” of these children. If they cannot be taught with the same methods as white suburban children, perhaps it is “not only sensible but maybe even ethically acceptable to isolate them as completely as we can” (272). He warns that the longer children are separated by race and taught using different techniques, the more difficult it will be to reconcile this discrepancy. Perhaps, Kozol suggests, some people won’t see anything wrong with this. However, “something good will have been lost,” and society’s perception of these young people “may prove impervious to change for decades yet to come” (274).
As one sign of possible hope, Kozol mentions “the development of small and innovative public schools” (275). Some, like Mission Hill in Boston, are innovative and driven by “a sense of mission” (275). Others, however, often become nothing more than a smaller version of the “unsuccessful larger schools” that already exist. Some of these small schools for students of color are “explicitly indoctrinational academies” meant to funnel children into the military. Other small schools have been accused of false marketing, such as the Business and Law Academy in the South Bronx, which offered no law or business classes. Others that are progressive and academically rigorous, like the Center School in Seattle, attract a primarily-white student body while Black students attend the African American Academy across town, which uses a drill-based curriculum like Success For All.
Kozol writes that drill-based methods and rigorous standardized tests have existed for more than 10 years, so some results are by now apparent. The first result that Kozol details is the achievement gap between Black and white children. Until the 1980s, the gap shrank, but beginning in the 1990s, it began to widen again and either stagnated or continued to grow. Many of the apparent gains of standardized testing have not turned out to be “authentic education gains,” meaning that they do not carry over into the students’ subsequent years of education. Therefore, dropout rates in segregated schools remain high, up to 48% in some districts. Likewise, Black and Hispanic students’ enrollment in universities has decreased. Kozol argues that the current “policies and practices” will not fix these problems. Instead, they are
expand[ing] the vast divide between two separate worlds of future cognitive activity, political sagacity, social health and economic status, while they undermine the capability of children of color to thrive with confidence and satisfaction in the mainstream of American society (284).
The argument that these policies are working is “one of those deadly lies” that has been repeated so many times it has been accepted by the American public (284).
Chapter 12 Summary: “Treasured Places”
In this final chapter, Kozol describes the “courageous principals and teachers who […] resist the new severity that has been introduced to much of urban education in the past ten years” (285). Despite the pressures of raising test scores and meeting standards, many teachers in inner-city schools continue to prioritize “find[ing] some happiness in being children” (285). One such school is PS 30, in the South Bronx, where the principal, Miss Rosa, works long hours putting “her heart and soul into that school” (295). Teachers like Mr. Bedrock preside over “healthy feeling” classrooms, where children still find some joy in learning. As education becomes more driven by marketplace values, many forget that teachers are often motivated not by economic gains but by a genuine love for children. Kozol argues that no matter what standards or carefully designed curriculum a school follows, it “can’t survive without good teachers” (299). These “treasured places,” schools where children are allowed to live and learn, must “be defended from the unenlightened interventions of the overconfident” (300).
Epilogue Summary
In the Epilogue, Kozol describes changes that have taken place at some of the schools described in the text. Miss Rosa finally retired from PS 30, and after “a period of instability” (301), a capable new principal was appointed. Some of the most problematic schools that Kozol visited have been closed or divided into smaller “academies.” Other schools, like PS 65, have done away with strictly structured lesson plans and tried to foster a gentler environment for the children, letting go of “short-term” testing gains for “authentic learning.”
However, scripted curricula like Success For All continue to persist in thousands of elementary schools, and funding cuts have resulted in further reduction of educational resources, such as cutting full-day kindergarten in some districts. Meanwhile, Kozol notes that President Bush and other civic and religious leaders continue refusing to address racial segregation in public schools. Instead, they continue trying to “improve” these schools with “research-based instructional approaches and the like” (309).
Kozol closes the Epilogue by describing a conversation with Congressman John Lewis. The congressman notes the sense of inevitability among the principals of inner-city schools, who seem to have “resigned themselves to segregation as it stands” (312). He insists that “[w]hite teachers and black and Hispanic teachers need to teach together. White children and black and Hispanic children need to learn together” (313). Conservative Black leaders, Lewis notes, sometimes “mock” desegregation as “old-fashioned and out-of-date” (314), and Kozol remarks that he has encountered similar attitudes in Washington. Lewis argues that “a segregated America is unacceptable” (316); integration is still “the goal worth fighting for,” and the American people have no “choice but to reject this acquiescence, to reject defeat” (318).
Chapter 11-Epilogue Analysis
Chapter 11 unpacks the “deadly lies” that create misconceptions about the education of children of color. These often widespread misunderstandings deflect the blame for educational inequalities and hold individuals responsible for a systemic problem, thereby obscuring the reality of The Impact of Segregated Education on Children and Communities. One such deadly lie that Kozol addresses is the argument that children of color just need to work harder. For example, some teachers who oppose the accountability approach of No Child Left Behind are accused of “racist nonsense” for arguing that children of color need more resources to learn effectively. Kozol argues that “declamation takes the place of substantive delivery of educational necessities” (266), therefore absolving the “relatively affluent” of guilt and responsibility and avoiding the expense of improving urban schools. This is a common argument throughout Kozol’s book. He frequently underscores the ways that more affluent and privileged people explain away educational inequalities. This complicity and apathy at the individual level ultimately generates complicity and apathy at the systemic level, since affluent and privileged people tend to be the ones driving educational policy.
Another “deadly lie” is the belief that children of color require a different kind of educational approach. Kozol explains how a relatively small movement of ultra-progressive educational advocates tried to instill ideas of unstructured, self-led “open education” in Black communities. This created the false impression that “white education” is completely free and unstructured and led to the belief that inner-city children needed “schooling more in line with military practices” (271). Kozol points out the damaging nature of this idea that children of color need a fundamentally different kind of education. The more children are taught differently, he argues, the bigger the gap in public perception of these children becomes. White parents who see Black and Hispanic children educated with “a compendium of stick-and-carrot practices and strange salutes and silent signals and direct commands modeled upon military terminology” know that their own children don’t need to learn this way and feel more encouraged to keep schools segregated (272).
In the final chapter, Kozol turns his attention to the beauty that is still to be found in urban public schools, emphasizing The Moral and Ethical Dimensions of Equitable Education. Ultimately, there is much more to education and childhood than efficiency and productivity. For both teachers and students, school can and should be a place filled with joy and discovery. Even as education becomes more driven by marketplace values, many teachers remain motivated not by economic gains but by a genuine love for children. They resist the pressures of standardized testing and scripted curricula, preserving recess and refusing to let children’s test scores “define their worthiness” or “measure their identities” (287).
In an education system that often reduces children of color to “products,” there is something “political” or even “subversive” about these inner-city schools that insist on treating their students like children, prioritizing discovery and play. These teachers understand that all children have “the right to find some happiness in being children” and refuse to take that away due to race or economic class (286).
The Epilogue concludes with a conversation with Congressman John Lewis, who reiterates that desegregation is worth fighting for. Although the debate in recent years has returned to advocating for “separate but equal” forms of education, Kozol uses Lewis’s authority as one of the great figures of the Civil Rights Movement to remind the American public that there is no substitute for integration. Lewis argues that “[s]ome things are good and right unto themselves” (316), suggesting that people must not give up on integration and the progress it would mean for American society.
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