Disucussion for September 13 session - click "Edit" to add your notes/questions, then "Save":

Todd's questions

Johnathan Kozol, The Shame of the Nation

• Why does Kozol characterize schooling in the U.S. as an "apartheid" system?

• Why has the big push to integrate schools in the U.S. apparently resulted in failure?

• Kozol refers (pp. 104-105) to The Bell Curve, but leaves out the name of the book's first author, the Harvard psychology professor Richard Herrnstein, who has since died. Murray has a Ph.D. from MIT but works at a conservative think tank - the American Enterprise Institute. The book was widely critized within and outside academia, but Kozol provides an argument that the book's prescriptions are being followed. Why did the book's many critics fail to discredit its policy implications?

• "I have yet to see the two words "labor unions". Is this an oversight? How is that possible? Teachers and principals themselves, who are almost always members of a union, seem to be so beaten down by this point that they rarely even question this omission." (p. 107) - Why are teachers, as union members, so reluctant to promote the idea of labor unions to their students?

• "I envy principals in schools where children are encouraged to think independently." (principal from a school in Columbus quoted on p. 107) - Assuming Kozol's characterization is correct, why are less privileged schoolchildren not being taught to think independently?

Nicole Yohalem, "Putting Knowledge to Work"

• How can we explain the divergence in these two quotes?
  • "Stakeholders were clear about needing readable information (in terms of language and length), with implications for policy and practice (when they exist) spelled out." (p. 28)
  • "They didn't do a good job on the front end...to really give you the five-page version, that kind of `at a glance' that allows you to get the top layers and themes." (stakeholder quoted, p. 28)

• "The research/policy community does not respond as well as it could or should to what the practice folks need." (stakeholder quoted, p. 29) - What are the barriers to this getting fixed?

Denise Clark Pope, "Juggling Academic Pressures"

• "It seems the risk of stepping off the treadmill is so great that four key constituencies - parents, students, high schools, and colleges - out to reform in unison." - Under what conditions could this happen?

• "Many schools list the colleges their grads will attend, and these students don't want to look "dumb"." - Is this practice helpful or harmful on balance?

Tom's Questions

Johnathan Kozol, The Shame of the Nation

• Kozol (p. 10) mentions (disparagingly) 'the idea, expressed sometimes by white conservatives as well, that arguments for racial integration of our schools insultingly imply that children of minorities will somehow "become smarter" if they're sitting with white children'. He then goes on (p. 11) to write, 'What saddens me the most during these times is simply that these children have no knowledge of the other world in which I've lived most of my life and that the children in that other world have not the slightest notion as to who these children are and will not likely ever know them later on". Isn't he suggesting just a symmetrical version of the view he disparages -- that is, that children of all races will "become smarter" if they're sitting with children of other races?

• Kozol asks (p. 94), 'Is future productivity...to be the primary purpose of the education we provide our children?' In context, the question is clearly rhetorical, demanding a negative answer. But why shouldn't the society measure the success of its public education system in terms of economic productivity?

• Kozol (p. 98) attacks the "idea that schools in ghettoized communities must settle for a different set of goals than schools that serve the children of the middle class and upper class". But why is this idea so repugnant to him? The children of poor immigrants -- even from the most upwardly mobile groups, such as Jews and Chinese -- have been pushed towards practical, secure professions. Pure intellectual or artistic pursuits have always been the preserve of the well-off (and those content to live at a subsistence level). Is the situation he is criticizing qualitatively different from this tradition?

Nicole Yohalem, "Putting Knowledge to Work"

• Yohalem keeps talking about 'stakeholders'. What does she mean by that?

• What is 'evidence-based information'? Isn't information that is not based on evidence simply opinion or speculation?

Denise Clark Pope, "Juggling Academic Pressures"

• If 'students can get an excellent education at more than 150 lesser-known, moderately selective schools and still over time make as much money -- if not more -- than Ivy League alumni', then why is there such a frenzy to get into the Ivies (and similar elite schools)?

• Americans work more hours per week and more weeks per year than people in any other industrialized country. Couldn't the pressures described in this article simply be good preparation for being a member of the American workforce?

Interesting Article (added by Lauren)

In case you're interested, this article ("How profits, research mix at Stanford") relates to a lot of the general conflict-of-interest material we've been reading but focuses specifically on Stanford: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/education/15000000.htm

It would be interesting to hear thoughts from Dean Pizzo of the med school.

• Thanks, Lauren, this is good - I'll post it under Additional Resources on the homepage. - Todd

Posted by Dave

Kozol writes in The Shame of the Nation, "Two tenths of one percentage point now marked the difference between legally enforced apartheid in the South of 1954 and socially and economically enforced apartheid in this New York City neighborhood." (9) There was something about the way Kozol worded this that didn't sit right with me. I think it might be that he seems to be implying that the mere presence of the majority with a minority implies integration. I would argue that the idea of integration ostensibly was to provide education equality, not just to have two races in the same room. Although racially-integrated classrooms are a step in the right direction, it falls short of addressing the underlying issue, disparity in the quality of education because of a lack of funding for inner-city schools (and even the deeper issues of gerrymandering and disenfranchisement). The presence of that white 0.2% of the student body spoke to me more of those children's shared poverty than whatever minimal sign of progress Kozol means it as. It's time we started thinking of educational integration not just in terms of race and ethnicity, but also by economic means, which he mentions. I guess what I'm trying to say is that he implies the 0.2% is better than the "apartheid in the South" (9) (0% integration). I think this is no better because they are still economically segregated. (White people can be poor, too!) Maybe it's just a semantics, maybe not. What do you think?

Posted by Ashley

In Denise Clark Pope’s article, she claims that Dean Marilee Jones “bravely” changed the MIT application so that students would have only a few spaces to list extracurricular activities.

My question is why does Pope use the phrase “brave” to describe Jones’s actions in this case? I recognize that it is “brave” for such a prestigious institution to go against the status quo, and maybe that's all she meant by it. If not, however, I guess I don't really see what was at stake for the university in making this decision. In light of the reading's discussion about overburdened and stressed-out K-12 students, it seems that making such a change in admissions policy is not only a positive measure that universities can take in response to this problem, but a course of action that appears pretty feasible with minimal risk of negative outcomes (either for the university's self-interest or other relevant players). What are some counterarguments to this point?