Volume 9, Number 11 · December 21, 1967
Children in Prison
By John Holt
Village School Downtown
by Peter Schrag
Beacon, 208 pp., $5.95
Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools
by Jonathan Kozol
Houghton Mifflin, 240 pp., $4.95
One of the most striking and painful social events of our time has been what can only be called the downfall of our big city schools. It has helped drive out of the city millions of people whose wealth, training, talent, and interests might otherwise have helped to make or keep our cities civilized and satisfying places. At the same time, it has increasingly alienated from the city and its institutions and culture more and more of those people whom poverty and/or color oblige to remain there. The schools claim, with some reason, that they are among the victims rather than the causes of urban decay, but the fact is that, despite their always difficult problems and often good intentions, they are at least as much cause as victim.
Review, 5069 words
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