Where Have All the Strong Poets Gone?

Abstract

The approaches that are being touted as ways to improve our poorest schools are themselves impoverished, Mr. Jones finds. He urges educators to take stand against the current policies and to muster the imagination to devise true solutions. ********** JONATHAN Kozol's latest book, The Shame of the Nation, documents the landscapes of the two education systems in America. One system is located in the suburbs, where mostly white students sit in classrooms with teachers who possess the content knowledge to construct engaging lessons that accurately reflect the content and structure of the discipline that they teach. The breadth and depth of the curriculum in these suburban schools provide students with the knowledge and skills to do well in postsecondary settings. In addition, these suburban schools have sprawling campuses that possess all the accoutrements of Ivy League universities--a high-quality library, computer labs with the latest technology, state-of-the-art science labs, and rich variety of support services that will enhance the social and emotional development of young people. At the same time that white suburban students are being prepared to become the future bosses in our country, African American and Hispanic students sit in classrooms with young, inexperienced teachers whose minimal training in their content areas leaves them with little ability to construct lessons that will adequately prepare students for postsecondary schooling. Instead of being offered engaging lessons that reflect state-of-the-art approaches to curriculum and instruction, students in our urban and rural areas are subjected to an instructional program that Kozol calls a test-preparation camp. Inductees in this camp are expected to listen to scripted lessons, complete practice test-preparation exercises, and take an endless stream of tests. The facilities in these boot camps are as deplorable as the instructional program. Students sit in classrooms without windows, go to bathrooms that do not function, and work in labs without chemicals or specimens. Why has the resegregation of our nation's schools into two systems--one poor and urban and one well-off and suburban--remained unnoticed by the public and our policy makers? The parents of poor urban students do not possess the political or economic capital to generate outrage at, or sometimes even awareness of, the dilapidated buildings and dead-end curriculum that their children are subjected to every day. Suburban parents, who do possess the political and economic power to call attention to the deplorable conditions in our urban schools, remain silent simply because they have the schools they want. White suburban schools, especially the elite white suburban schools, have it all--why talk of funding formulas and social policies that would require wealthier parents to share the resources that are currently being lavished on their children? As for state and national policy makers, they have diverted attention away from the deep political, social, and economic forces that have conspired to segregate our schools, our neighborhoods, and the futures of our children by using the high-sounding rhetoric of equal educational opportunities for all children--all children can learn and no child left behind--and the vocabulary of business accountability measures--test, inspect, and reconstitute. The relentless use of vocabulary of equality married to whole host of school accountability measures has proven to be potent strategy for dodging the thorny policy issues that might actually develop the conditions that no child left behind was meant to achieve--equal-funding formulas, scattered site housing, universal health care, and high-quality child-care system. The cruelty of this policy shell game is to punish the schools that serve the poor and voiceless in our society and to reward the schools that serve the wealthiest and most powerful. …