Word: ghetto
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...only to the school system but to society at large. The battle to prevent those losses has never been more difficult. Old-style pedagogy simply does not work when the climate both inside and outside the schoolhouse is one of paralyzing despair. Inner-city educators speak of a "ghetto mentality," in which very little is expected of students -- by parents, teachers and others. Students quickly learn to match those expectations. "Schools knew how to succeed with kids who wanted to succeed," observes President Timpane of Teachers College. "It's only in the past generation that we've had the challenge...
...doubt years of daily hoops and playground stratagems could produce "natural" stars in the whitest suburbs too. The aspirations of ghetto youngsters, though, are distorted by another potent myth -- one that ironically will be strengthened by the success of Cunningham, Moon and Williams -- that professional sports can be a way out of poverty for a significant number of young black men. Only one of every 1,000 high school football players ever makes it to the pros -- hardly good odds, as the Greek might put it. Those searching for a better life would be well advised to pour the energy...
Consider, as Green must, the realities of the other nine months. Dropout rates approach 90% in some ghetto schools and -- depending on who is counting -- 30% to 55% citywide. A surfeit of aging buildings crumble in disrepair. Desks occasionally spill out of overcrowded classrooms into hallways prowled by student hoodlums who "have been bringing weapons to school for years," says one principal. An overpowerful custodian's union, whose president was killed last year in what police described as a gangland-style rubout, dictates the hours schools will be open. Tenured high school principals cannot be fired without interminable hearings. Under...
...whose own lives frequently depended on the ferocity they displayed toward their fellow prisoners. Throughout the Reich, the Nazi system spawned flunkies of almost opera-bouffe dimensions. The megalomaniacal Chaim Rumkowski, a failed Jewish industrialist who, probably with Nazi support, set himself up as the president of the Lodz ghetto, had the power to print his own currency and stamps bearing his portrait. In the end Rumkowski came to believe he was the savior of his people, who nevertheless were shipped to the camps when the Germans liquidated the ghetto in 1944. According to one version of + Rumkowski's fate...
...bore witness most passionately in The Fire Next Time (1963), in which he declared that he was determined "never to make my peace with the ghetto but to die and go to Hell before I would let any white man spit on me, before I would accept my 'place' in this republic." He also proclaimed there his skepticism about the value of being "integrated into a burning house." And that, as Detroit and Newark soon showed, was what was coming next time. "White people in this country," he wrote, "will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept...