Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis
Our Kids: The American Dream In Crisis.
Robert D. Putnam.
Review by Duane Campbell
This new book is an insightful and well researched analysis of on the achievement gap, which Robert Putnam correctly calls an opportunity gap for the current generation of young people. I was drawn to the book by respect for his prior writing, Bowling Alone . This new work is of equal value in synthesizing social science research. Perhaps it is of more value since we have major institutions-schools- in positions , that could contribute to the rebirth of equal, democratic opportunity.
In Our Kids, Putnam describes major developments in our schools and our communities - the growing inequality of opportunity for the working class and the poor.
Educational writers have long chronicled several of the key concepts, the role of tracking, of concentrations of poverty and of race. This work excels because it is a very well informed outsiders sociological viewpoint of these issues. Putnam and research associate Jen Sliva bring together extensive social science data and research to support the many interpretive suggestions.
This is not the over simplification of many general and popular books, nor the ideological tracts of education’s many critics and neoliberal "reform" advocates. Putnam provides vivid and useful examples combined with a well informed data bases of social science research of the most important issues. He builds his arguments upon both individual interviews and the synthesis of an enormous amount of social science research thus combining big and important ideas with the research to support them.
In my own career, and in my writing, I have long sought to describe several of these issues in a manner that would guide school improvement. We begin by educating both the public and teachers on these vital issues of building a democratic school system that can contribute to improved equality of opportunity necessary for the survival and rebirth of our democracy. Building a democracy requires this active interaction between the public, teachers, and the school systems.
Robert Putnam extensively documents that we are traveling toward a more divided, more unequal system- the precise opposite of the goals of democratic reform . This serious and valuable work is not the cant of the neocons, nor of the neo liberals of higher standards and higher expectations, although both of these have their place in overall school improvement. But as Putnam meticulously records, it is the complex interactions of race, class, communities and the educational systems that creates the growing inequality.
Our Kids, describes the problems and issues with integrity and care. It does not offer many solutions for teachers working in schools. The task of developing daily, practical solutions can mostly come from people working in Choosing Democracy: Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis:
