Book Description
Over the last 15 years, the state of inner-city public schools has been in a steep and continuing decline. Since the federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, segregation of black children has reverted to its highest level since 1968. In many inner-city schools, a stick-and-carrot method of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons is now used with students. Meanwhile, as high-stakes testing takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education 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, principals, and teachers, and some of the most revered leaders in the black community, The Shame of the Nation 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.
Customer Reviews:
Gross inequality in today's public schools.......2007-10-07
I knew inequality existed in our public schools before I read Kozol's book. I am in a teacher education program and I have done my own research on this subject. I have read Kozol's "Ordinary Resurrections"; I have been aware of his work for a few years.
It is time for the way public schools are funded to change. It will continue to be impossible to provide the same quality of education to all of the students availing themselves of public education in the United States. If someone is unsure of the validity of this statement, read "The Shame of the Nation." Kozol brings the reality of the disparity of our school system into stark relief. His experience puts real faces on the picture of disparity he has witnessed. The public school system isn't working for everyone, it's not set up to work for everyone, and it's time to get the word out.
Re-Segregation.......2007-09-26
You must read this book if you are a teacher in the urban American public school machine. This book is especially helpful for those who have not been exposed to cultural groups other than the white-dominant-privileged middle/upper class. You will not believe that these social injustices occur in our so called "democracy."
Not Kozol's Best.......2007-05-30
I wasn't as moved by this book as his others. The book worked hard to make its major point- schooling in America is becoming more and more segregated. It also pushed funding as the answer, almost ignoring others. Worth the time, but not a classic as Savage Inequalities was.
A compelling story, but no solutions.......2007-04-24
In The Shame Of The Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling In America, Jonathan Kozol writes a convincing argument of the resegregation of children's schools in America. Although his argument is compelling, he leaves the reader feeling helpless because of his lack of solutions to the problem.
Kozol used experiences and stories from his own teaching at schools and from his visits to poor minority schools as evidence for his argument. His work at segregated schools and his experience of resegregation in schools, showed that he has been around for a long time, which proves his wisdom and knowledge. He has brought credibility into his data. He also does not attempt to slander anyone in particular or point at someone to blame for the entire problem. His use of narratives and vignettes of different characters made his story interesting and easy to read. He seemed very honest and reliable because he talked to kids and teachers who gave him their opinions from which he based his evidence upon.
Kozol's accounts and experiences were very eye-opening for me considering I grew up in a middle class area. His research made me look back and examine my own public school experiences, where I had not realized that segregation still existed. Kozol is very successful in convincing the reader that America still faces segregation to this day.
However, as the book came to an end he had yet to provide any solutions for ending segregation in America's public schools. He easily criticized government funded programs and attempts towards reform, but neglected to say what the government could specifically do in order to solve the problem. His negative outlook on their attempts made me feel hopeless that anything could be done. Kozol believed that educational reformers were headed in the wrong direction, but then what is the right direction? This is where Kozol lacks in explanation. If America is taking the wrong turn, then where do the students, teachers, principals, and parents go from here.
segregation.......2007-03-19
This has been a eye opening book for me. Before I read this novel, I had no knowledge there was such a wide gap between schools attended by more minorties versus schools in more middle or upper middle areas. Kozol has established a convincing argument that there needs to be an end to segregation in our school system and a change in the way schools are administered. After reading this book you cannot help but feel sorry for the millions of children who are being left behind despite other efforts.
I recommend reading this book to everyone who lives in the United States; to discover what is happening in our country because many of us have little understanding of what is occuring, even in the same school district. It is an insightful look at our educational system and I look forward to reading more from Jonathan Kozol.
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- Collective Responsibility of Shame
- Timely and Provocative
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Saving Face: America and the Politics of Shame
Stuart Schneiderman
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0679409696
Release Date: 1996-01-30 |
Book Description
Schneiderman explores the differing effects of shame and guilt on such institutions as government, the military, war, and work, and in people's personal lives--on sexuality, marriage, and family. His fresh insights help readers solve mysteries about themselves, their relationships with others, with society, and with other nations.
Customer Reviews:
Collective Responsibility of Shame.......2004-04-10
Every culture should have to face its own shame. Unfortunately, shame is a variable concept according to the times, and the ability of the culture to properly identify what is shameful, who can be shameful, and the events that constitute a shameful event. Prior to the 1960's and 1970's nearly everything was "shameful," in that women without gloves, and men without hats were considered shameful. Characterized much as the course of civil rights and the recognition of individual rights for humans, shame has always been a public evaluation, and measured by group politics so that propriety became the urge to resist, if not to rebel against. In a shameful culture, inhumane things were possible - lynchings, torture, animal sacrifices, etc. - even while upon the surface, propriety was worn like a badge of honor. The hypocrisy revealed in years hence, is that shame did not exist where it was private or unrevealed, adding to a culture where transparency became the idol rather than to embrace the boundaries of what constituted shame. Fortunately, America has moved beyond the narrowminded principles that so bound one to another that behavior and conduct, as well as dress, has been allowed a degree of freedom that embraces the ideas of difference so people need not examine each and every action, including speech, that brands them improper. While there are a few, generally job related, environments where rigid and shame-oriented cultures prevail, the concept of freedom has taken on greater significance recently as a privilege, if not a right, provided no laws are broken. This healthier environment that honors the individual works for all persons previously discriminated against, and offers breathing room for those who were not quite attuned to the proprieties of life who were interested in watching their every movement to be evaluated by the group or community. Neither healthy relationships nor flexibility in thinking were aided by former designs of acceptance, and many were condemned by society for that reason, many of whom were simply responding to their own unique social environment, or ethnic environment. While guilt still survives as an effort to restrain, it is fortunately much less likely to be the "blackball" it was years earlier, allowing everyone to breathe much easier. Coming through that period of gender bias, racial bias, ethnic bias, and even religious bias is not totally behind us, but great progress has been made to minimize the importance of those effects. We now are making inroads and efforts at behavior or conduct bias by everyone to overcome the tendency to typecast persons by superfluous events that are not considered within the mainstream but still cognizant of safety, and dignity in the things we do as humans, to each other, and the things we do to animals, or the environment, offering the new design of social freedom with responsibility but without social restraint, definite progress in the eyes of most people.
Timely and Provocative.......1996-10-15
Saving Face is a look at American culture and identity through its early roots in shame (when you do not do something you are supposed to do) as opposed to the post-Vietnam guilt culture (when you do something that you are not supposed to do) that we have become.
Schneiderman spends most of the book basing America's modern problems on the results of the War in Vietnam; not a rehash of an old subject, but a fresh insight into the modern American psyche. He hypothesizes that the country's loss of face in Vietnam was a clear result of a lack of leadership willing to face the shame and debacle of Vietnam. The vacuum of leadership willing to take responsibility for the results left the nation as scattered individuals, looking for a way to bury the past and restore self pride.
Surprisingly, Schneiderman doesn't play politics and lays equal blame both on political leaders for failing to guide the country and on Americans for making poor choices in leadership. Only through self-evaluation and the bearing of shame and personal responsibility can the country as a whole preserve a national culture and move forward.
This book is comparable to Philip Howard's Death of Common Sense in that both authors look for a return to personal responsibility, a culture built on respect for others, and decisionmakers who take responsibility for their decisions . Scheiderman prods the reader to "end our romance with telegenic candidates who lack the qualifications for office. We should seek leaders of unimpeachable character who command respect, not quasi-celebrities who lack a sense of shame.....Identifying the qualities we seek in those who would guide us places us in a far better position to know which qualities we should use to guide ourselves." Well put as we choose between leaders to guide the nation to the next millenium
Customer Reviews:
Another Gouldian Marxist view of eugenics........2000-04-07
Most of the books on eugenics from the radical environmental fringe, such as this one, recount the same earlier mistakes made in eugenics, and then the books trail off into some abstract Gouldian/Boas dissertation on the evils of biological determinism. This book follows the same worn out formula, but has a few interesting new twists on the story. But first, any discounting of eugenics because of errors made at the very beginning, would apply to virtually any scientific niche, including medicine. Do any of these authors try to convince people that we should give up modern medicine because at one time it was practiced only by witch doctors? I think not, but that is the general theme of all these books. But of course, no matter how recent they are published, they usually suspend scientific facts at about 1975 so they do not have to discuss the dazzling progress made in genetics over the last twenty five years.
This book, unlike others, spends a great deal of time discussing the eugenic movements success in penetrating education, by presenting its value to school children in the curriculum. Selden laments this, but of course the flip side is that now the radical egalitarians are demanding that racial equality in intelligence be taught in schools, along with other Marxist ideologies, but ignores the fact that like eugenics it is unfounded and pseudoscientific. In all fairness, during the earlier part of the last century, eugenics was largely pseudoscience. But now, the Gould/Boas school of egalitarianism now carries that mantle by denying what modern science has found. Genes matter far more than the environment on important human traits such as intelligence, athleticism, conscientiousness, and even religiosity. These are all solid facts now discussed openly at the academic level, but kept from the general public by the new doctrines of political correctness. Published in 1999, it even has the gall to ignore books and reports by the American Psychological Association showing that there is a real concern with regards to dysgenic trends and that blacks are in fact less intelligent on average than whites. (The Rising Curve / Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns.) These are stated policy positions of this very liberal organization, but ignored by Selden, putting him in the Marxist camp along with Gould, Kamin, Lewontin and Rose. He even discusses Gould's rejection of the correlation between brain size and intelligence, even though there have been numerous recent studies showing a correlation using MRI of about 0.4. (Gould has never apologized for omitting this latest evidence from his republication of "The Mismeasure of Man" to the chagrin of other scientists who have pointed it out to him.)
Selden hammers home again and again how biological determinism is a theory of limits, ignoring the fact that modern eugenicists believe that improving genetic capital means building for the future. Would we cut down the "rain forests" if it gave us additional money for Head Start programs? I wouldn't think so. But that is the logic used throughout the book to condemn all studies in human nature.
One rebuttal that I haven't seen so far, apparently because the Gouldian school is getting desperate in light of all the recent data in behavior genetics, is that twin and adoption studies are not reliable because the separated subjects, placed in different families, may in fact be in families that are so similar as to be almost like they are the same family. Did you get that? For years, sociologists have been looking for subtle differences between family environments to explain differences. But now, even after they haven't been successful at finding what Jensen says is the missing Factor X explaining racial differences in intelligence (which these debates are really all about), they claim that twin studies are invalid because, well, families are really just all alike. I would think even Gould should admit that this is a "just so" story with little empirical evidence. Anyone familiar with behavior genetics can see the duplicity of such an inane argument. But to the unaware reader it may appear to be valid. So much for academic honesty.
Overall, if one is aware that this book is really about politics and not science, and Marxist politics at that, it is easy to read and does a very good job of showing the lucid reader how desperate the left has become in trying to stop studies in racial differences.
Selden is a genius........1999-03-27
I recently picked up Selden's book in the local mall. I planned to only skim through it. However, I was left stunned with the introduction and had no choice but to purchase the book. In fact, I read the entire book in one nights time. Selden's story of Eugenics in America is amazing. He is a true scholar and story teller, a gleeman of the modern age. Highly recommend this book to students of all majors.
Book Description
A new, updated edition of Jack Newfield's hard-hitting unauthorized biography of boxing kingpin Don King, source of the Emmy-winning film starring Ving Rhames. Working his way out of a life of street crime and numbers running - and jail time for manslaughter - King rose to become a powerhouse in the fight game, outnegotiated corporate giants, fleeced the treasuries of entire countries, and amassed a vast personal fortune while ruining the lives and careers of some of boxing's greatest champions. The dying words of the man King stomped to death on the streets of Cleveland in 1966 - "Don, I'll pay you the money!" - became the motif for Don King's ascendancy.
Customer Reviews:
Only in America.......2007-04-03
Only in America, it is possible to have a Don King dominating the boxing scene. Newfield describes all the tricks of the trade King is using to his advantage and delivers recommendations what should be done. There is hope that one of these days boxing will be a respectable sport.
More than a book about Don King.......2007-03-10
A superb, meticulously-researched book by an author who truly loves boxing. The career of Don King is well documented here and is as fascinating as you would have imagined. Yet it's more than a biography - an account of how the collective talents of what should have been boxing's Golden Age were squandered through corruption, er...fight engineering (shall we say) and a ratings system based on money not ability. Don King's rise is vividly described - he arrives at a Frazier-Foreman fight with Frazier, but as the fight progresses creeps closer to the Foreman camp and inevitably leaves with the victor. A pattern repeated again and again. The experiences of Tim Witherspoon, Larry Homes and Muhammad Ali make grim yet compelling reading. Finally, we see the Tyson years as yet another athletic talent wasted.
One of the best sports books I have ever read - and deserves a wider readership: So, Amazon, why isn't it available on your UK site?
Customer Reviews:
A scary way to lead the developing citizens..........2007-01-23
"No Child's Behind Left" or "No Child Left Behind" is decribed in this book as a system that is not working... in fact, this book gives an example of how NCLB was LIED about in Houston, just to get the broken system to be NATIONAL! This is a very interesting read for those who have children in public school. It tells us why some schools are granted great amounts of money and others are left alone, for the corporate wolves to pick the weak from the herd. White, black and hispanic alike should be concerned with what Mr. Kozol has to say.
Book Description
The Dutch, through the directors of the West India Company, purchased Manhattan Island in 1625. They had come to the New World as traders, not expecting to assume responsibility as the sovereign possessor of a conquered New Netherland. They did not intend to make war on the natives peoples around Manhattan Island but they did; they did not intend to help destroy native cultures but they did; they intended to be overseas the tolerant, pluralistic, and antimilitaristic people they thought themselves to be--and in so many respects were--at home, but they were not.
For the Dutch intruders, establishing a settled presence away from the homeland meant the destabilization of the adventurers' values and self-regard. They found that the initially peaceful encounters with the indigenous people soon took on the alarming overtones of an insurgency as the influx of the Dutch led to a complete upheaval and eventual disintegration of the social and political worlds of the natives.
How are the Dutch to be judged? Donna Merwick, in The Shame and the Sorrow, asks this question. She points to a betrayal both of their own values and of the native peoples. She also directs us to the self-delusion of hegemonic control. Her work belongs alongside the best of today's postcolonial studies in the description of cross-cultural violence and subtle questioning of the nature of writing its history.
Customer Reviews:
Examines the violence that took place between Dutch traders and Native Americans in the wake of Dutch purchase.......2006-09-20
The Shame And The Sorrow: Dutch-American Encounters In New Netherland examines the violence that took place between Dutch traders and Native Americans in the wake of Dutch purchase, through the directors of the West India Company, of Manhattan Island in 1625. Chapters examine the original intentions of the Dutch, which were to profit as fur traders and uphold tolerant, pluralistic, and "anti-militarian" values; yet somehow, these high intentions were crushed through an insurgency and a struggle that summarily crushed the social and political worlds of the native inhabitants. Why did the violence begin and escalate, and how are the Dutch to be judged? Expert researcher Donna Merwick (Senior Fellow, University of Melbourne) explores complicated issues of cultural entanglement, cross-colonizations, and human atrocity in this thoughtful history, sparsely illustrated with black-and-white maps and images.
Book Description
The story of the Atlantic slave trade has largely been filtered through the records of white Europeans, but in this watershed book, Anne C. Bailey focuses on memories of the trade from the African perspective. African chiefs and other elders in an area of southeastern Ghana once famously called "the Old Slave Coast" share stories that reveal that Africans were both traders and victims of the trade. Though Africans were not equal partners with Europeans, their involvement had devastating consequences on their history and sense of identity. Like trauma victims, many African societies experience a fragmented view of their past that partially explains the silence and shame around the slave trade. Capturing astonishing oral histories that were handed down through generations of storytellers, Bailey breaks this deafening silence and explores the delicate nature of historical memory in this rare, unprecedented book.
Customer Reviews:
Absolutely great book........2007-04-12
African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond the Silence and the Shame
Fascinating material, but flawed writing style........2006-02-09
This book is quite enlightening in the history of the African slave trade. Contrary to what one might expect from the title and reviews, the author does not solely rely on oral stories from African elders. The stories that the author quotes, though, are always interesting. Especially, the Africans involvement with the slavery.
Of course, a story is just that, a story. As with many long told stories, there will be many aspects of truth and nontruth. That is not to say that any of the legends told were lies. They will contain versions of events as told by people who were not witness to the event. It is like the child's party game of "telephone." You start with a story at one end of the line and watch how it changes by the time it reaches the last person. Changes are inevitable, although, the basic premise may be intact.
Still, the author provides a useful addition to the literature. So often, the African slave trade discussion is limited to what occurred in America. This book provides stories and facts of the rudimentary aspects of the slave trade such as the problems with shippers obtaining insurance, and the changes in ships designs.
The book informed me on other aspects of the slave trade that I had not known. For example, the international outlawing of the slave transportation did not result in a lessening, but a sharp increase in Atlantic transportation of slaves. Also, the profits arising from slave trading after abolishing were far above what I would have expected. The author too was clearly stunned. That said, the major flaw in this book is that it is so dryly written. Her method of presenting the material is as if one were listening to a dictation. An odd presentation for such an emotional and significant topic.
A hard-hitting alternative history.......2005-07-04
There has long been silence on the issue of slavery and the Atlantic Slave trade: author Anne Bailey experienced this silence growing up in Jamaica, and as an adult became determined to break this silence, first researching the topic, than interviewing chiefs and elders in Ghana. African Voices Of The Atlantic Slave Trade: Beyond The Silence And The Shame focuses on the Anlo Ewe community in Ghana to examine the impact of slavery and slave traders, showing how the trade became unpredictable and moved from the control of Africans to the control of outsiders. Oral narratives reveal why Africans began selling others into transatlantic slavery, providing a hard-hitting alternative history.
Average customer rating:
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Outside the Dream: Child Poverty in America
Stephen Shames
Manufacturer: Aperture Book
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Photo Essays
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Social Services & Welfare
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ASIN: 0893814687 |
Book Description
A contemporary of Columbus noted “those crazy Spaniards have more regard for a bit of honor than for a thousand lives.” This obsession flourished in the New World, where status, privilege, and rank became cornerstones of the colonial social order.
Honor had many faces. To a freed black woman in Brazil it proscribed spousal abuse and permitted her to petition the Church for permission to leave her husband. To a high church official charged with sodomy in Alto Peru, honor signified the privileges and legal exceptions available to those of his background and social position. These nine original essays assess the role and importance men and women of all races and social classes accorded honor throughout colonial Latin America.
“The best work on honor in Latin America and an invaluable and insightful volume. A must for both scholars and classroom use.”—Professor Susan M. Socolow, Emory University
Honor was everywhere in Colonial Latin America, and to understand the many ways it had an impact on peopleÂ's lives is to understand the organizing principles of a society.
Book Description
This book tells - frankly and without psycho-babble - how we have sold out our children's future, safety and sobriety to big business and society's current blind addictions. No other book will provide the perspective of hundreds of billions annually spent wasted on illegal drugs and alcohol and more than 120,000 lives lost each year to these toxic substances. This book delivers the facts regarding illegal drugs and alcohol that all those who greedily profit would prefer not written. This book exposes the societal fallacies which stated and restated are ingrained into American fabric. These fallacies of why we use alcohol and illegal drugs are recurring, unsubstantiated, and falsely comforting propaganda that promotes the notion that the deadly, profitable cycle is acceptable. Fit in, feel good, get high, relax, escape from your problems, are the lies that are used to sell illegal drugs and alcohol. Find the truth of why Americans use illegal drugs and alcohol, why your children are willing to be poisoned . Read America's Choice, America's Shame.
Books:
- This Time, This Place: My Life in War, the White House, and Hollywood
- 'Tis: A Memoir
- Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson
- Walking from East to West: God in the Shadows
- What to Expect When You're Expecting, Third Edition
- Wooden on Leadership
- Your Self-Confident Baby: How to Encourage Your Child's Natural Abilities from the Very Start
- 10 Days to a Less Defiant Child: The Breakthrough Program for Overcoming Your Child's Difficult Behavior
- A Breath Away
- A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive
Books Index
Books Home
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- Post Keynesian Price Theory
- Giants in Their Tall Black Hats: Essays on the Iron Brigade
- The MouseDriver Chronicles: The True-Life Adventures of Two First-Time Entrepreneurs
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- Beyond Competition: The Future of Telecommunications
- Divided Loyalties: Whistle-Blowing at BART
- Comercio Internacional I / International Commerce I: Mercadotecnia International Importacion-Exporta
- Shopping Made Easy #1, Prj in Bus Rcd Kep
- The U.S. Army and the Texas Frontier Economy, 1845-1900
- GUIDE TO THE MAMMALS OF SALTA PROVINCE, ARGENTINA
Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools
Many Children Left Behind: How the No Child Left Behind Act Is Damaging Our Children and Our Schools
"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity
Letters to a Young Teacher
Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and A New Social Movement (Critical Social Thought)
