We Continue, However, To Write About Important

Many Of Us Regard Ourselves As Mildly Liberal Or Centrist Politically, Voice Fairly Pleasant Sentiments About Our Poor Children, Contribute Money To Send Poor Kids To Summer Camp, Feel Benevolent. We're Not Nazis; We're Nice People. We Read Sophisticated Books. We Go To Church. We Go To Synagogue. Meanwhile, We Put Other People's Children Into An Economic And Environmental Death Zone. We Make It Hard For Them To Get Out. We Strip The Place Bare Of Amenities. And We Sit Back And Say To Ourselves, "well, I Hope That They Don't Kill Each Other Off. But If They Do, It's Not My Fault.

I Went To Washington To Challenge The Soft Bigotry Of Low Expectations

I Once Made A Check Of All Books In My Fourth-grade Classroom. Of The Slightly More Than Six Hundred Books, Almost One Quarter Had Been Published Prior To The Bombing Of Hiroshima; 60 Percent Were Either Ten Years Old Or Older.

Good Teachers Don't Approach A Child Of This Age With Overzealousness Or With Destructive Conscientiousness. They're Not Drill-masters In The Military Or Floor Managers In A Production System. They Are Specialists In Opening Small Packages. They Give The String A Tug But Do It Carefully. They Don't Yet Know What's In The Box. They Don't Know If It's Breakable.

Apartheid Education, Rarely Mentioned In The Press Or Openly Confronted Even Among Once-progressive Educators, Is Alive And Well And Rapidly Increasing Now In The United States.