Separate And Unequal Didn't Work 100 Years

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.

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.

On Mondays And Fridays In Early May, Nearly 18,000 Children-the Equivalent Of All The Elementary Students In Suburban Glencoe, Wilmette, Glenview, Kenilworth, Winnetka, Deerfield, Highland Park And Evanston-are Assigned To Classes With No Teacher.

There Has Been So Much Recent Talk Of Progress In The Areas Of Curriculum Innovation And Textbook Revision That Few People Outside The Field Of Teaching Understand How Bad Most Of Our Elementary School Materials Still Are.

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.