Wonderful Teachers Should Never Let Themselves Be

I Do Get Scared About The Physical Danger From Drug Dealers. But It's Not In The Same League As The Danger I Feel Eating An $80 Lunch With My Privileged Friends To Discuss Hunger And Poverty. That's When My Soul Feels Imperiled.

A Culture In Which Guilt Is Automatically Assumed To Be Neurotic And Unhealthy Has Devised A Remarkably Clever Way Of Protecting Its Self-interest.

I Have Been Criticized Throughout The Course Of My Career For Placing Too Much Faith In The Reliability Of Children's Narratives; But I Have Almost Always Found That Children Are A Great Deal More Reliable In Telling Us What Actually Goes On In Public School Than Many Of The Adult Experts Who Develop Policies That Shape Their Destinies.

There Is Something Deeply Hypocritical In A Society That Holds An Inner-city Child Only Eight Years Old "accountable" For Her Performance On A High-stakes Standardized Exam But Does Not Hold The High Officials Of Our Government Accountable For Robbing Her Of What They Gave Their Own Kids Six Or Seven Years Before.

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.