him, as we see our own kids, as perhaps a future doctor, dancer, artist, poet, priest, psychologist, or teacher, or whatever else he might someday desire to be? Why not, for that matter, look at him and see the only thing he really is: a seven-year-old child?”
While Kozol is careful to point out that the children who attend PS 30, where there is a ferocious advocate in the form of their principal, Ms. Rosa, and St. Ann’s afterschool program, are luckier than many in this community, by having access to protective and caring adults, adequate food, books and art supplies, they do not escape the same problems that plague other inner-city children. Few have medical insurance, get eye exams, regular dental care—or any of the other basics that middle-class and upper-class children have to even think about.
Despite the innocence and goodness he witnesses among these children on a daily, spontaneous basis that touches Kozol, their predicament is clear. The author recognizes that “Most of these children here, no matter how hard they may work and how well they may do in elementary school, will have no chance, or almost none, to win admission to the city’s more selective high schools, which prepares these students for good universities and colleges.” Their parents, too, “when they look ahead into the middle schools and high schools of the area,...recognize the outer limits of the opportunities that this society is giving to their children.” And that’s a pity, and a shame, on the rest of us.#