Letters to a Young Teacher

Kozol wishes that middle schools had never been created; instead, he advocates that middle school children should become the seniors of elementary schools, mentoring and even assisting teachers in lessons for younger students. This would maintain the innocence of the middle schoolers, who are often overwhelmed once they leave elementary school and come face to face with older teenagers.

Students in many public middle and high schools face unfortunate conditions, including the demoralizing atmosphere of cafeterias that turn children and teachers into animals. Kozol emphasizes the importance of good aesthetics for keeping things civil. He laments the ugly and ever-present “portable” classrooms that are constructed to address physical space issues in crammed schools.

Kozol criticizes the separate small or “mini” schools that sometimes exist in the same building as another school. Though not a bad idea in principle, this concept “has been exploited by affluent white parents to create small, upscale, mainly white academies in neighborhoods in which their children otherwise might have to go to integrated high schools” (180). Many parents, Kozol acknowledges, actually prefer larger facilities because they tend to have more resources, like AP classes and language courses.

The popular modern phenomenon of “flattering the victim,” in which “white-owned media” romanticize “the slightest signs of cultural or economic self-rejuvenation in the neighborhoods to which their racial outcasts are consigned” (183) does nothing to solve