08/27/08 Jonathan Kozol

I stand in awe of teachers.  I really do.  Especially city teachers, or any teacher in a low-income neighborhood.  Especially any teacher in a low-income neighborhood that is teaching at a public school and thus has the spectre of No Child Left Behind hanging above her/his head all the time! 

I mean honestly, how do you deal with that?  Well, Jonathan Kozol has some advice.  He is of course the educational activist most famous for his book Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools.  That book looked at race and class based economic disparities in American schools.  His new book is quite a bit more personal.  It's a series of letters he wrote to a young teacher during her first year in a Boston Public School.  It's his advice to a young teacher about how to succeed not only winning the attention of the students--but also how to maintain a sense of whim and imagination in a world obsessed with test results.  It's called Letters to a Young Teacher.

What do you think?

Poll: Do you think No Child Left Behind has been good or bad for our schools?

Poll: What do you think of Kozol's advice that teachers subvert NCLB in any way possible?

Enjoy the hour. 

-Jessica