False Hope Is Worse Than Despair.

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.

More Money Is Put Into Prisons Than Into Schools. That, In Itself, Is The Description Of A Nation Bent On Suicide. I Mean, What Is More Precious To Us Than Our Own Children? We Are Going To Build A Lot More Prisons If We Do Not Deal With The Schools And Their Inequalities.

Instead Of Seeing These Children For The Blessings That They Are, We Are Measuring Them Only By The Standard Of Whether They Will Be Future Deficits Or Assets For Our Nation's Competitive Needs.

People Rarely Speak Of Children; You Hear Of 'cohort Groups' And 'standard Variations,' But You Don't Hear Much Of Boys Who Miss Their Cats Or 6-year-olds Who Have To Struggle With Potato Balls.

We Continue, However, To Write About Important People, Prize-winning People, Blacks Of Grandeur, Women Of Great Fire, Fame Or Wit. We Do Not Write About Ordinary People.