Jean Anyon (1941–2013)

The disaster of American urban education has a long history in racial segregation and oppression - Anyon presents the history of demographic change in Newark, NJ as a prime example of how shifting class and race populations in the inner city led to neglect and reallocation funds on the state level. What I found most interesting was how the level of corruption in city government led to the empty shell that blacks inherited as they gained political power. Big city governments have always been bastions of graft, but once the cities became ghettoized, power shifted to the white suburbs. None of Anyon's solutions for the problems of urban schooling are new, but they require a progressive, activist government involvement on all levels. Let's see how the Obama administration does.… (mer)

Anyon does a great job of providing the historical, social and economic background of Newark, New Jersey and how this history impacted the school climate and culture of the area. It's an impressive body of research which I'm sure took years to assemble. I enjoyed the political and economic policy discussion but it was a rather heavy and dry beginning to the book. I kept waiting for the....and what do we do about it moments. Unfortunately this came at the very end of the book; but even her ideas around rallying for social justice weren't detailed or applicable enough for those of us working around school reform efforts.

There were some glimmers of practical information when she spoke about the Marcy School. However, I am not sure that I believe in generational poverty and if that is true condition. Just by saying there is a culture of poverty in any area or population feels very judgmental and certainly not a strengths-based approach. The title of this book was also a bit off-putting. Ghetto=Urban: I think not.

This is more of an academic treatise versus a what-can-we-do guide.… (mer)