The final chapter of the Spring book really attempted to tie up all the loose ends of the book. The only fault I found with this is that American education is a bunch of loose ends. It’s a bunch of programs that were never fully enacted properly. Our students are still struggling to meet not to mention surpass other nations.
The chapter spoke about schools and prayer and how it is no longer there. Someone in our class discussion mentioned that when schools held a moment of silence it was really time for prayer and that everyone knew that. I completely disagree since a moment of silence is just that it is a moment for students of all denominations to say a Sanskrit mantra, to pray or for an atheist to just reflect on the moment.
The Nixon idea of busing is something that goes hand in hand with the reading we did by Kozol last week. Busing might be a way to fix the inequalities that he mentions. The idea of busing fixing things is also very utopian since parents of children who are in the better school would probably fight tooth and nail to bus their children to another school.
We have also spoken about consumer behavior taught at a young age. This is something that should be kept out of schools, in my opinion. Things like box tops for education put pressure on students to ask their parents for things that they may not be able to afford. Pressure is put on students by teachers as well since box tops add to school funding.
Something that the book never touched on but I thought would have been nice to see is the idea of uniforms in public schools and what effects that could have on students in a school?
I also feel like education keeps getting pushed to the back burner, even if you look at news coverage it was breaking news when Obama’s birth certificate was released but it is not breaking news, no one stops your broadcasting to tell you that our nation’s education is failing. Why is that?
