I love you, Jonathan Kozol!

I've started to read Jonathan Kozol's latest: Shame of the Nation. I love it. Basically, Kozol is tracing the backward slide of American public education into segregation and inequity to a degree we haven't seen since the 1950's. Poor kids (especially black and latino kids) are being sequestered educationally and denied access to facilities, teachers, opportunities and especially money. Sounds like the good old days, doesn't it? I love the way he cuts through the political double-talk that we hear so often that claims that "throwing money at the problem" won't work for the education of poor, urban, minority students. If the rich really believe that, muses Kozol, how do they justify the insane amounts of money they gladly fork over for their own kids education? Their behavior certainly does seem to suggest that at some level they believe that a better education costs more money... or they're big suckers, easily parted from the money, an option which the fact of their wealth would seem to invalidate.

Anyway, reading this book is great... but there's a problem. So far it's just making me angry and frustrated, and I think that's valid. It should. But what good does that do anyone? Complaining loudly about how messed up things are has become something of a national pastime in post-modernist America, and being outraged at injustice has become an acceptable substitute for actually working for justice.

Not to say that it's our responsibility to fix the problems of the world, but here's a little game I like to play in my own mind: I call it "what if everyone made the same choices as I do?" I know that my owning a hybrid rather than a Hummer will not by itself save the world from global warming, or that whether I throw my soda can in the garbage or the recycling will determine whether or not my descendants will have to live in caves underground. But it is helpful to assume that on each issue, the world is full of two kinds of people: those who are making the problem worse and those who are making it better. At that point, I have to decide which group I want to belong to.

Making these choices more about the identity I want to reinforce for myself and the kind of person I want to continue becoming rather than about changing the world is very freeing. It's not my responsibility to change the world, but I can choose to be a part of the group that takes individual responsibility to the whole seriously.

So, back to the issue at hand: how should I respond to Kozol's damning indictment of American education? Here's some ideas I've been thinking of... please reply with more if you come up with any... and let me know how you're doing on following through!

• Vote for political candidates that favor more equity in public education (well, assuming the choice is given, check!)
• Write op-ed pieces, letters to the editor, my elected representatives at local, state, and national levels, and express my disappointment with the injustice going on and my hopes for their moral integrity as one of their constituents (check!)
• Try to let everyone I know in on what's "really" going on with public education, and deciphering the statistics and political jargon for what it really is: a concerted effort to make sure that any available resources are shifted toward those who already have more than they need at the expesne of those who really need it (If you're reading this... check!)

Now, the really tricky ones... the ones that trip up those avowed liberals in Hollywood or the left-wing politicians who talk the talk but send their own kids to the same elite schools as the rest of the rich people:

• Resist the pressure of society to seek out places to live with "good-schools" and assuming that my responsibility to my own children mandates sheltering them from "those people" and making sure that none of the "problems" of growing up as an urban minority have anything to do with me or my family.
• Work in an inner-city, minority school and teach those kids with everything I've got.
• Send my own kid to a public, urban school with a diverse population instead of the elitist schools that my race and socio-economic status hold out to me, and then invest heavily in that school community as a parent volunteer and advocate .

So that's the kind of response I want to have to a book like this. Please keep me accountable when you see my making choices that betray my convictions.

- "Have you met them? The poor?"