Competitive Skills Are Desperately Needed By Poor

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.

Even If You Never Do Anything About This, You've Benefited From An Unjust System. You're Already The Winner In A Game That Was Rigged To Your Advantage From The Start.

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 Wrote The First Book, And I Thought People Would Say: 'separate And Unequal Schools In The City Of Boston? I Didn't Know That. Let's Go Out And Fix It.'

In The Book, I Write About Children In First Grade Who Were Taught To Read By Reading Want Ads. They Learned To Write By Writing Job Applications. Imagine What Would Happen If Anyone Tried To Do That To Children In A Predominantly White Suburban School.