Kozol: Chapter 7

“You have to sit down in the little chairs in first and second grade, or on the reading rug with kindergarten kids, and listen to the things they actually say to one another and the dialogue between them and their teachers.” (Kozol P.163)

This paragraph talks about the students overall happiness in school, and how something like that can’t be gauged by achievement levels and scientific methods. I couldn’t agree more, we can’t look at statistics and determine if a student enjoys coming to school. Like Kozol says you need to inject yourself in their day to day and observe these things and I feel that it is more than necessary.  A second pair of eyes could make all the difference in some cases.

“The school received a private grant of $27,000 yearly from a petrochemical corporation know as Kerr-McGee, which amounted to approximately $36 yearly for each pupil. An official of the corporation served as chairman of the governing council of the school, a not uncommon arrangement in low-income schools” (Kozol P.164)

I think that if corporations want to help with school by giving grants and such then great, but I do not think that a member of the corporation should serve as a chairman on the governing school council. Just because someone gave money makes then a professional in education, I don’t think so. Also there is too much influence especially from a petrochemical company; it would be too easy to put nasty chemical factories in these areas, much like the medical waste burner. The problem with corporations is that they are only worried about the bottom dollar, but with that said we have people like Bill Gates out there.

“A psychologist at Harvard University emphasized the interrelationship of art and science with arithmetic and reading and other elements of school instruction” (Kozol P.168)

I’ve said this a few times now but with no real back up, we can’t strip away stuff from the school day and only teach to a test. The students need to experience an array of different things to find out where they stand in this world. I did chorus, played drums and the violin in elementary school, none of which I do today but the point is I had the chance to experience them all. What if I didn’t get to experience a wide array of activities and events in elementary school? I would have had false dreams and perceptions about who I am and what I like.

“I was very scared” wrote a child in the class named Ashley whose friends reported seeing one of the live rats climbing on her chair. “It was hard for me to breath, I asked the teachers to send me to the nurse. “Ashley got sick because” of dead rats wrote another child. (Kozol P.172)

Pretty much this tells me that our restaurants have higher requirements of operation then our schools. This is ridicules, rats really? If I had to deal with all the trials that these kids deal with in and out of school I think rats would be the last straw for me. Why would I want to come to a place dirtier then Chuckey Cheeses? Once again I feel that environment dictates the end result of the student. Put yourself in their shoes, if you had to sit on a book shelf while take being drilled for a standardized test and watching rats crawl into your friends backpacks would you continue to go?

“You can imagine what it does to students when they have no food to eat for an entire day. The school day here at Fremount is eight hours long” (Kozol P.176)

Overcrowded schools mean that classes are taught in storage areas, auditoriums, and trailers. Schools that are under the knife with testing take away recess and other “extras”. Yes these things are obstacles and big ones at that but to not be able to feed a student over the course of a day is absolutely not fair and unacceptable. What if the student wasn’t provided breakfast in the morning at home? Do we expect the kid to perform in the classroom, or to even care about what is being taught when they have no fuel. We didn’t forget that children need to eat right? We didn’t forget that food is a person’s source of fuel did we? Maybe next we should take away sleep, school 24 hours a day.

“I don’t want to take hairdressing. I did not need sewing either. I knew to sew. My mother is a seamstress in a factory. I’m trying to go to college. I don’t need to sew to go to college. My mother sews. I hoped for something else.”

This should sum up exactly why schools need reform, earlier in this chapter Kozol talked about how a principle asked to be demoted because she was physical getting sick from all the stress. Now the environment and track that students get on is clear, and the students see it as a dead end. This student had aspirations of college and the school squashed them. Overcrowded – in my opinion she was looked over and no one tool personal care in her life and her goals, nope just take sewing it’s a requirement.