Word: kozol
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...Roger Kozol, as con-man Billy Crocker, has the potential and sometimes shows it. He sings well, hits some difficult notes, and, if anything, seems too comfortable during the numbers. With the dialogue, he is merely pedestrian, and consequently misses the big laughs. Ronni Lynn Unger, as Reno Sweeney, shares Kozol's virtues and his faults, except in one song, "I Get a Kick Out of You," which simply refuses to conform to her vocal talents. It's a great song; the result is unfortunate...
Boston is one of the few cities in the U.S. that allows teachers to use corporal punishment. Kozol charges that teachers sometimes employ bamboo rattans to whip the hands of their Negro charges with sadistic delight: "There are moments when the visible glint of gratification becomes undeniable in the white teacher's eyes...
...Kozol also contends that the students in these schools are often fed "a diet of banality and irrelevance which it is not worth the while of a child to learn or that of a teacher to teach." Of 32 different book series he had avail able in his classroom, the majority were more than ten years old. Creative children had to conform to the rigid thinking of teachers or face ridicule. He cites one gentle but emotionally disturbed boy who "drew lovely lyrical cows and pleasant horses lifting up their hooves to rub their noses" but only succeeded in throwing...
Crumbling Dictatorship. The whole emphasis of the Boston schools, Kozol charges, is on conformity and respect for authority, which has created an "atmosphere of a crumbling dictatorship in time of martial law." It is a serious charge, which Kozol supports with more rhetoric than hard facts. His own prose style is larded with prejudice (School Committee Member Lee "looked out over his half-moon glasses almost like a childish madman"). Some of his statements are pure bathos; when a blackboard falls on a girl's desk, Kozol asks: "Was she saying with those eyes which looked down so steadily...
...well-researched Village School Downtown, which was published last April. Harvard Graduate School of Education Dean Theodore Sizer contends that Ko zol's recital of the ills of the Boston schools could be duplicated in many other big U.S. school systems. By overstating and underdocumenting his blustery crusade, Kozol is pushing Boston's regressive school officials into an even more defensive stance rather than inspiring them to correct much that is undeniably wrong. Indeed, School Superintendent William Ohrenberger dismisses the entire work as Kozol's "latest piece of fiction," refuses to take even the book...