Alternative Schools and the Failure of Public Education, Part 1

from communication center the university of texas at austin this is university forum bad the form is a public interdisciplinary meeting place for the wide ranging world of ideas opinion and analysis the public schools are under attack from almost everyone these days but this week we present a viewpoint not heard too often in the current three r's controversy jonathan kozol as an activist for social change who believes that the public schools the person was their students and perpetuate and unequal social order he became famous in the late nineteen sixties for his book death at an early age and he's been active in the alternative school movement since jonathan kozol visited ut austin in march nineteen seventy six and we bring you now his remarks as recorded at that time we join the programme as jonathan kozol is introduced we get an early age was published in nineteen sixty eight it was hailed as the most revealing and disturbing expose a of the american school system

in the same year this introspective incisive analysis was awarded the national book award mr jonathan kozol the author of this book has been described as a man of insight and courage he isn't graduate of harvard a rhodes scholar and has worked for the boston school system until it was spied for his stand on civil rights this last fall he publish another book on public education united states the night is dark and i'm far from home is my pleasure to interviews jonathan kozol the point i was bounced out of boston public schools about eleven years ago and i know about a quarter of the people here from a wood saw my career and most of you

aren't so i have to do a little past fast i was i was almost at the end of the year the year concluded in gloriously his nineteen sixty five sprang by my being fired i taught almost a whole year i was first a sob and then i got promoted became a performance which is sort of that is public school version of tenure and anna and anne but now as burma as i would have liked because i was fired eight days before the school year is up and there is inspired me as their explicit because i had read two class of almost all black kids home a black poet one of the best known poets in america lived in his hand yes it was funny the way it did

in the search how to do it today to their women made it was cause he's black they wouldn't say it was custom homes radical angry and who might that really wasn't that all out ferocious but what they said was that it was oh all the bomb us a must says school committee chairman did says so about the press so comment that he but that langston hughes was communist take our had been wants to cry probably to an odd now one state for two days in nineteen thirty three and then but they would say that was the issue the issue was was it was strictly rose on i was teaching fourth grade lives through his was made not what was in ninth grade poet was that is on a list or ninth grade my tiptoes was very seriously as they do in muscular

systems that only waited five years now ken ham i check to say was truly worked long well i see is the ninth grade curriculum and while was on bumble bees that wasn't springtime but lois they had me out and just to show and prejudiced because you wouldn't want anyone to think that the boston school committee govern by louise de hicks could conceivably be motivated by racist attitudes they threw in a y poet also just shirley are even handed and to all people but through him robert frost now i thought was funny because you know this was i mean the frost was

a very sly and subversive and he kept his marxist leninist tenants is very well disguised between the lines bomb i chose serve new one has less inflammatory palms sure you know it's our view is stopping by woods on a snowy evening who was on black leader in boston said it brought a white whitest home ever written but the trouble is stopping by woods was a sixth grade palm is on the list for sixth grade and could not read it you're teaching fourth grade so i was out in the charge against me was correct deviation i was hired a week later by the riches suburban school system for curriculum development or

is it i don't want to cast aspersions on local school boards but i was reminded of that time mark langdon on the subject of school board some of you may know it he said in the beginning the beginning god created at its narrowest of practice any length of school boards look back on imperial arriving i did about it its estimate that my posture now of my colleagues coworkers john holt and nat hentoff and others who wrote popular books at the time who was romantic timid and naive

i tried very hard in my new book the night is dark and far from home to mature and to take takeover at the top for a more realistic look at what our schools are about at that time i really think that i'm naive and that's why ed schools love to assign a book that i wrote about that period death at an early head cause it's naive important and stupid and permits therefore it ideal reading for people are preparing to be teachers i'm sure you'll get it someday your certificate it a diplomat in many a film out of it now roy campanella sandy his body as many found and the scriptwriter said to me when he looks at me and i looked at all of us who were writing this concept no test books in the sixties says us as the season may be particularly bizarre as a little

boy as a look at and i was looking up at the principle in my school and you don't have to look up at her jews spam and so i was sent by poole trial about eleven years all together nicely no way it isn't producing martin luther king sang france's gandhi what your well producing dried up mean old desiccated things like you these big effects that forcibly more politically go to school board school committee chairman and i say this school committee chairman was a woman

chairperson center armed but again as sweetly mrs hicks school system isn't working and isn't producing all courageous liberated fascinating passionate risk taking women like st john jane fonda grit is saying you tasted effects of foreigners ever more political go to washington to the top of the bus to him we would say to him you do it is producing people like toaster

dickens russo tom jefferson frederick douglass or the sea air turning out cold efficient and the amended technocrats and murder is like you this could weave a grant from title three to fix that mm hmm student rushed into like church was a lecture at stay interested new york as you and why buffalo at the height of the cambodia protest and some of you are just entering college or not even there that you must remember that period in spring of seventy hats and rushed in to go over all lecture hall the

thousand kids that he had lectures there not been a professor of the platform and a thousand people in the palm of his hand as ts leader radical ferocious red armband on his sleeve blue work shirt not one of these use of the square time a blue work shirt that's your real radical sure it didn't get them a brooks brothers for sixteen fifty anaheim home and a narrow ferocious afro fiery afro is jewish and andy it to go over the bed the whole place the palm of his hand it went to bases completely at a panic thought that he might win in a market professor you said it scares me sir trying to take over the university of el monte like a drug too much or her job professor was an old member

of the ever ham lincoln battalion and fought against frank on the spanish civil war wasn't gonna take this from anyone his lectures gonna be interrupted better be done right they can back any through they get off the platform yeah i when tunneling downstairs the side of the stage the word after him he said it it at a little jack ill not the topic gap after dam teacher for permission and say this debate at nine ten so american liberal importance and bought listeners is built upon this ritual of darin to a deep feet asking again what was really is before knowing deep down it will be refused again sighing with the relief it telling ourselves we're brave follows the ritual of asking well

i think so i it's late in the day those of us who have been struggling with these issues to call a halt to this repetitive exercising self dc too the problem we face today and public school united states is not as many the romantic educators of the nineteen sixties wanted you to thank the problem is not that the screws do not work well the trouble is they do this the whole point they work well in their own turn is not yours perhaps not mine it is in an era when the public schools and rich suburban neighborhoods turnout command such as john mitchell richard nixon john dean william adage westmoreland these people did not appear from ostrich eggs that were the products of the problems of democracy

and civics one of three it isn't an hour either when the schools that serve the children of the poor whether wider chicano of black where they are turnout a powerless labor pool of unskilled men and women on the contrary it is the historic function of the public's good and the united states' well documented by the scholars in the field darin tea the children of rich people will grow up to inherit the economic power of their folks and the children of the poor will grow up to constitute not a generation of the poor as well seems to me it's time to be straightforward and explicitly each other on this issue in their long terms not yours not mine but there's public schools and by no means a hopeless failure that we like to think joe also woman can call the mindless if he likes

an article can call them crazy if you will this but they are not crazy and they are not mindless they know well what they do terms of basic function purposes and all the public's goes united states are doing a terrific job what is that job is to fine hundred and thirty years ago by horace mann we can summarize it once again today now i'm not gonna become leonard suddenly quoting important people we know where we speak in other countries what it is we had no hesitation about coming right out and saying the truth political indoctrination state indoctrination brainwashing people hammering them into obedient citizen has been no doubt in the

world is what they do in russia russia and doctrinaire it's china and doctrinaire its sly humor in doctrine and it's a united states we have a nicer word recall socializing function safer as a same process in a light sensitive sensitive benevolent elmo's glue that sticks us all together words a different function is the sand twelve years of mandatory self dehumanization self you notation loss of blood let's get into some as attack matters english literature you wouldn't think that teaching english and grandma could be political but it is everything is public school here is a clear

example you may not remember this but school just scared stiff of the first person pronoun singular even more the first person pronoun pork but you can't say wave you can't say i so the first person singular they go after you may not remember this but if you want a plank for a minute remember back when you were in school a time when a kid says something will mean to the teacher like now five or i was hung over just had my heart broken my mind true love or something kids i always get him a new raid cry take classic example and they use a woman here because it's usually a woman in the early grades john riggs enters it's a brand used mouthwash she doesn't know its common she says

it all you should wear the ditch to do and i've been through this i can tell a i mean that's they set the robot has ever read my cancer to the tang teaches a dozen says there's some it's melodious sound famed years ago rejected saying and strumming guitars and so it goes like this is that what is that anyway so anyway speak to made it to the professional you can get his right alleys i can't quite get it right and i'm out is they give it as the odious for exceeding song of the nea i am you know i am but she doesn't say made and that is the plot instead is what you hear is that anyway

tennis matches where is she acts as if you were not present and pulsating the classroom but locked up in the closet with a sharp and chalk erasers and in a moral sense the pain you said cheers you don't make fun of the teachers earning ten thousand dollars the third grade let's give it to the guys making thirty thousand dollars of the universe as we get higher up the academic world you connect and you know the license to adopt high levels of alienation where is the third leg is the third person university like harvard you can use a sit down to

get your phd you can use a conditional then at the harvard faculty club year while less and alienation and if you ever go to boston i'm a white warner we're going to do go to harvard faculty club lunch and i went there once was a money i knew to be there well i'm as a woman was my father and i'm as he teaches the ad and an and you listen to people who are expressing ideas of table next to us there was this guy got out his life's convictions on the dollar's friends together this table is going to belch it out to them than talent you're his beliefs and convictions it's very hard to come by a conviction at harvard because everyone there is so

skeptical so so hard to you know the conviction is a strong think everyone harvard has notions you know like john kenneth galbraith as many emotions i had this interesting notion last night at nine pm about the price wage spiral you know but you know i'm not no it's going to punch you in the nose for your notion the notion is this week then you don't say but all my heart i will stand and fight behind this notion is a hidden ocean is nice it's like fifth floor notions cosmetics lingerie you know you're the neiman marcus you'll find out fourth floor where society get this guy has transcended notions and he's arrived in a convection its second ten years to get there now it

once he gets there goes pitch dave that he's taken a long time and so you go out to his friends and to get up its current use gone down and the bar at a time and he's melted down all straight chariots and he's leaning over the table and he's pouring out as saul and this is what you hear one might well ask if it could be described it seems at least within the bounds of reason to propose that one might suggest could i think the idea by some fellows is as if you're in a whole roomful of third persons that there's no one there i asked my father and his doctor was why did i talk that way right now he said it's the food base or

maybe ron never desert the harvard faculty club and boston lime sherbet think that is the desert and alienation that we do and you're interested in convictions and not notions be where the green is it some are high school that i visited four years ago schenectady new york is clear instructions or term papers no details are important here lopez was innocent of the reason others who got into ten papers you were consulted lays the blame separate sources at books had periodical we are

take notes on four by six guides not three by five they prepare to present on demand bibliography will follow the m l a style sheet his bio is high most fascinating paper should are clearly indicated beginning mayo an end in iceland how you could've played it as you work for a texas newspaper i'd like to write a paper that never middle just to prove that they are now in the final sentence of the assignment do and this is of course the point of the whole thing do not use the word all i except in the conclusion of your paper essentially you're not allowed to admit you were there until you're about to leave the rome vast amount of our public education a huge amount of our sophisticated adult dialogue united

states balls the salmon validation of our own so not just the use of the third person but also the conditional but also the subjective subject of course is the verb form of offices strike as it you know jurors listened job possibilities third person as the brown out of self abdication together they constitute the ideal rhetoric the man or woman his hands are skilled at heart is dead conscience is in exile it is the perfect preparation with vietnam bomb a dear friend for the president who sent in there