Children Sometimes Understand Things That Most Grown-ups

False Hope Is Worse Than Despair.

Young Children Give Us Glimpses Of Some Things That Are Eternal.

I Wrote The First Book, And I Thought People Would Say: 'separate And Unequal Schools In The City Of Boston? I Didn't Know That. Let's Go Out And Fix It.'

Let's Concede That We Have Decided To Let Our Children Grow Up In Two Separate Nations, And Lead Two Separate Kinds Of Lives. If, On The Other Hand, We Have The Courage To Rise To This Challenge To Name What's Happening Within Our Inner-city Schools, Then We Also Need The Courage To Be Activist And Go Out And Fight Like Hell To Change It.

But What Is Now Encompassed By The One Word (“school”) Are Two Very Different Kinds Of Institutions That, In Function, Finance And Intention, Serve Entirely Different Roles. Both Are Needed For Our Nation’s Governance. But Children In One Set Of Schools Are Educated To Be Governors; Children In The Other Set Of Schools Are Trained For Being Governed. The Former Are Given The Imaginative Range To Mobilize Ideas For Economic Growth; The Latter Are Provided With The Discipline To Do The Narrow Tasks The First Group Will Prescribe.