This Is a Book You Should Read: Noliwe Rooks’ “Cutting School”
I just finished reading Noliwe Rooks’ superb book, Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education (The New Press). Please buy a copy and read it. It is a powerful analysis of racism, segregation, poverty, the history of Black education (and miseducation), and their relationship to the current movement to privatize public education. She dissects the profitable business of segregation.
You will learn how cleverly the captains of finance and industry have managed to ignore the root causes of inequality of educational opportunity while profiting from the dire straits of poor children of color. In fact, as she shows, financiers and philanthropists have used and misused Black children throughout our history, for their own benefit and glory, not the children’s.
The book is both highly contemporary and at the same time, probably the best history of Black education that I have read. Rooks understands that the fight for equality runs through the schoolhouse door, and she documents how white elites have managed to block access, narrow access, or literally steal from Black families trying to gain access to high-quality education. She knows that charter schools and vouchers are a sorry substitute for real solutions. She understands that the rise of the profit-driven education industry has benefited the profiteers far more than the Black children they claim to be “saving.” “Saving poor kids from failing schools” turns out to be a lucrative business, though not for the kids.
Rooks invents a new term to describe the current “reform” movement: Segrenomics. In her telling, a sizable number of entrepreneurs and foundations, and organizations like Teach for America, have enriched themselves while advertising their passion for equity. Segregation and poverty have given them a purpose, multiple enterprises, career paths, and profit.
My copy of the book is covered with underlinings, stars, asterisks, and other notations, as is my way when I become enthusiastic while reading.
She bluntly states, “The road necessarily traveled to achieve freedom and equality in the United States leads directly through public education…Schools that educate the wealthy have generally had decent buildings, money for materials, a coherent curriculum, and well-trained teachers. Schools that educate poorer students and those of color too often have decrepit buildings, no funds for quality instructional materials, and little input in CONTINUE READING: This Is a Book You Should Read: Noliwe Rooks’ “Cutting School” | Diane Ravitch's blog
