In this section, the author discusses the “road to rome” as it applies to education in these inner city schools. The ideas held by many school supervisors is that the goal is more important than the journey to the goal. As one woman states, “If the road does not lead to Rome, we don’t want it followed.” In education, standardized testing (Rome) is the goal and, essentially, nothing else really matters. Therefore, a problem arises for the students (i.e. they feel uncomfortable with Rome, Rome intimidates them, they don’t want to go to Rome) and they no longer enjoy the should-be journey that education is meant to be. Kozol documents the story of a boy named Anthony who enjoyed learning and reading literature (among other things) but choked when he had to take a standardized test. So the test results showed Anthony to be a “low-achiever” when, in reality, he was leaps and bounds above the other students his own age. Luckily, Anthony went on to attend boarding school, college, and graduate school where he studied to be a teacher, but this is often not the case. Children who usually score low on the standardized tests are condemned to an education of Level 1 or 2 classes and rarely make it out to success.
Competition within the New York City school system (and other schools systems) to attend well-respected elementary, middle, and high schools was hardly a competition. Most “good” schools were occupied by middle to upper class white children who had influential, sometimes lying parents who could get them enrolled wherever they pleased. Often, lower class parents were unaware of opportunities to enroll until it was too late. Kozol visited an overcrowded school in the Bronx at lunchtime and visited with some children who, surprisingly, expressed their fears and uncertainties concerning their future–something most white children in suburban schools never had to give thought to. This chapter seemed fairly redundant to me. It mostly repeated what had already been said in previous chapters and cited more examples. Not extremely insightful.
