This Article Brought Me to Tears

[*](https://gnn.tv/headlines/5024/Apartheid_America) [Image via Salon.com](https://www.flickr.com/photos/69258677@N00/45683207/) Originally uploaded by [Insurgent](https://www.flickr.com/people/69258677@N00/). I just came across this Salon [article](https://gnn.tv/headlines/5024/Apartheid_America) on [GNN](https://gnn.tv/), and before I had finished reading it, tears were collecting in the corners of my eyes as I seethed in anger and frustration, feeling this wave of sadness wash over me. Throughout most of my life my mother has been an elementary school teacher in a predominately white but quite poor community in the rural community of [Phelan](https://aeve.com/digitaldesert/phelan/ph02.html) California. Like the segregated schools mentioned in the article, my mother has had to bare enormous pressures under Bush’s treacherous No Child Left Behind*, and it has been quite frustrating for her. Sarah Karnasiewicz’s article *Apartheid America*, revolves around an interview with [Jonathan Kozol](https://myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=jkozol), and his new book [The Shame of the Nation : The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America](https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400052440/qid=1127432247/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-5210380-7290553?v=glance&s=books&n=507846). The article breaks down exactly what it means for the government to initiate a program like *No Child Left Behind,* and if Kozol’s assessment is correct then it’s high time that all of us wake up to what’s really going on, that we all get off our asses and become part of the solution, and that we bring about real and tangible changes before it’s too late. What’s happened in many of these inner-city schools is that kids are no longer perceived as children but rather as economic units – like pint-size deficits or assets for the American economy. No one asks whether they are good or they are happy. The only question is will they be useful to our corporations in a global marketplace. It is not like this in the suburbs. There, children are still valued because they are children and childhood is still regarded not merely as a prelude to utilitarian adulthood but as a perishable piece of life itself. In the inner-city schools, even though most of the teachers I know would like to do the same, there is tremendous pressure on the principals to view these children as products, with “value-added” skills that they pump into them. And if you view children as products, it makes sense to have a lot of product testing.