The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid ... (ISBN 1400052459)

great look too much:
this book is new...fresh....new....really good looking...however the shipping and handling fee was freaken $17.99 for expedite shipping...i got the book overnite! GreAT on that but..the feee is definitely too much.

Well, he's good at something...:
Kozol does something extraordinarily well in this book, and that is to point out all that is going wrong with our schools. There's a point, though, when we must stop agonizing over what is wrong with the system, and make some real proposals on how to make things better. Anyone is capable of doing what Kozol did in this book, which is to simply point out the many pitfalls of our schools. In order for this to be considered a good book, he needs to complete the circle and make some recommendations about how to fix it. Simply complaining will get us nowhere, even if we complain extraordinarily well.

Very Informative:
Jonathan Kozol's book "Shame of the Nation" is a great book to learn about the apartheid that is happening in our school systems and to learn about the separation of funding for our schools. He feels that the school system in the United States needs to become more integrated because integration would give the students an equal opportunity in the world. Predominately "white" schools get more school funding, more often from private sources, thus creating segregation in our schools. He notes the irony of the schools that are named after great leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther Kind Jr. and Rosa Parks and he reveals that such schools are in the worst condition. Jonathan Kozol's solution to this problem is to give more funding to schools that need the funds, he wants the money to go to the students that need it. I agree with Jonathan Kozol, in the sense that the schools need more funding. Through personal experiences and with my own investigations, I've found that segregation is a common factor in society as a whole. I think that our schools need to have higher paid teachers, and teachers who are vastly more qualified than the teachers of today. The qualifications for becoming a teacher need to be more tough because these are the people who are teaching our youth, our future, and it's important that they receive the education that is necessary to have a promising future.

The Shame of the Nation Review:
The Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol, tells the story of how apartheid schooling has returned to America and is strongly rooted in inner-city areas. Kozol refers to an apartheid school as a school in the inner-city with a student body that is 98 to 100 percent black and or Hispanic. Kozol explores schools located throughout the country and exposes shocking teaching styles such as the "Skinnerian Approach," which was originally developed for use in prisons and rehabilitation programs. This approach uses strict rules and complete control to teach the children and it has led to many school's creating silent lunches and recesses, if the school has recess at all. Kozol also talks about unqualified teachers, high teacher turnover rates, poor building conditions, and unequal funding when inner-city schools are compared to suburban schools. Kozol is a retired school teacher from Boston who started teaching in the 1960's. He brings a unique perspective into the book because he has seen what schooling was like during the civil right movement and how it has evolved to its current state. Kozol also builds strong creditability and a sense of trustworthiness because he uses hands on research to build his arguments and as he states "You have to do what children do and breathe the air children breathe . I don't think that there is any other way to find out what the lives that children lead in school are really like"(Kozol, 163). Throughout this book Kozol does a great job of exposing segregated and unequal schools; however, his solutions to this problem are inadequate and they do not address the underlying causes. He proposes solutions that will only help a few select students in apartheid schools. His solutions if implemented would become very costly and would reduce the quality of education as a whole. For instance his solution for inter-district integration programs, which would send urban children to suburban schools and suburban children would be sent to urban schools. Does not seem like it would be very effective in the long term at improving inner-city schools. But, Kozol's solutions are the only weak part of his book and I would recommend anyone who has the time to read this book, to do it. You wont be disappointed and you will gain tremendous knowledge about the American school system.

Companion to SHAME OF THE NATION:
As a companion to THE SHAME OF A NATION, please also consider my new book, TEACHING LIFE: LETTERS FROM A LIFE IN LITERATURE (Iowa, 2008). In 1978 one of my college students died tragically in an automobile accident on her way to my office to talk over her career plans. It was the suddenness of her death, along with the utter loss of so much potential, which left me wondering whether anything I had said in class had made a difference in her too-short life or, for that matter, in the lives of any of my students. Her death was not only a great misfortune but also a defining moment for me. For the first time in my life as a teacher, and I had been at it for only five years, I realized in the weeks that followed that I wasn't in the classroom for myself. I was and remain there for the students, all of whom are giving me three hours a week of their most precious possession -- their time. What I say and do should make a difference in their lives. The worst thief is a bad teacher. The book is a series of l6 letters "to" that student as I imagine what I would have said to her had she completed her degree and gone on into the teaching profession as she dreamed of doing.