This is a brilliant book that could be subtitled so many other things:
1. Why black people need to look someplace other than the government for salvation: a very specific case study of blacks getting the short end of the stick interacting with the government.
2. Neither private nor public sector unions are friends to black people: The special case of damages wrought by one very large public sector union.(NEA)
3. Governments don't practice what they preach: The story of how Current New York Mayor with (half) black children (Bill deBlasio) picked teachers' unions over the interests of many other children that look just like his. ("If I had a son that I would send the public school, he would look just like yours!")
4. Integration is not the panacea that everybody assumes it is, and oftentimes it makes the situation worse. (There have been all black schools that have outperformed wealthier all white schools for a very long time. Even these days.)
5. Actions speak much louder than words: beware that left-wing white people who use a bunch of saccharine words to virtue-signal/ woo black voters actually do WAY more damage by their actions.
*******
This book is different (in some ways) to all of Thomas Sowell's other books that I have read (and I've read around 25 of his books, give or take).
Mostly, they have consisted of:
1. Repackaging established ideas in a way that Everyman can understand them. (Basic-Applied Economics/ Knowledge and Decisions, etc.)
2. History/Historical overviews ("Cultures" Trilogy; "Black Rédñeçks"....; "On Classical Economics")
3. Memoirs (A Man of Letters; A Personal Odyssey)
4. Social Policy (Affirmative Action; Inside American Education, etc.)
5. Epistemology (Conflict of Visions; The Vision of the Anointed)
There is significant overlap between this book and the others. (For instance, he cites Theodore Dalrymple--again-- as a witness to the pathologies that lower class white English have that are analagous to the ones that black in America have. And, it seems like significant sections of "Discrimination and Disparities" were recycled for this.)
There is also a lot recycled from "Black Education: Tragedies and Myths."
What does this book do that seems different?
He actually reanalyzes existing data in order to test a hypothesis. (Chapter 1 is devoted to presenting the experimental design.)
*******
The book has an interesting set up.
°°28 pages of notes (215-248)
°°72 pages of appendices (140-212)
°°132 pages of prose--of which 26 pages are tables that were dealt with in the text.
°°106 pages of actual prose.
The sample set of 5 schools networks were: KIPP Charter; Success Academy; Explorer Schools; Uncommon Schools; Achievement First.
And these networks were chosen by the principle that: they wanted the school networks that had classes in the largest number of buildings co-housed with traditional public schools. (This was done to make it so that the students who were being put in the charter schools were comparable to those in the public schools.)
*******
I have to say this since this book only takes a 3~4 hours to read, I would recommend it because that is such a small amount of time to use.
There are also lots of second-order questions that the reader comes up with as a result of this, and in that way the book is appropriately stimulating:
1. If the government has no consistent way to educate people the right way, isn't it better that maybe they just do less of it? 40% of students in the United Kingdom finish school at 16 years old.
2. There are many more black youngsters of school-age than there are public school timeservers (aka: teachers)--but look how a special interest group with professional lobbyists and intense focus can come out on top.
3. A lot of critics will argue that the students at the charter schools are self-selected. And that brings up the question as to why there could not be some type of selection in US schools? (I happen to know that at least a third of students in the People's republic of China do not move from middle school to high school. And so the students that are allowed to continue the high school are all at the same level.)
4. What are some of the most egregious problems with public sector unions? Is this the only one/the worst one? (I'm sure that it's not the only one, but I believe that it is undoubtedly the worst. Especially if you count up all the spillover effects.)
Just how ugly can union politics get?
5. In some ways, this is a public policy book. The question is how to get the incentives right to produce good students. (Of course, if every single public school in the United States closed tomorrow... We would still have the problem of what to do with the lesser students. Also, there would be no more self-selection for people who wanted a good education for their kids.)
In that way, high performing charter schools and low performing public schools are codependent.
6. What is a school?
The answer seems to depend very much on who is looking.
If you ask public school teachers, they might tell you that it is something like: a job creation engine for courtiers and timeservers/monopoly for educational bureaucracies/a captive audience for indoctrinators.
If you ask some parents, they might tell you that it is a tool for the education of children.
*******
As before: in some ways this book seems like a lot of rehash of themes that Sowell has developed/exposited before.
But to be honest, since these mistakes have been made over many decades repeatedly, what else can an author do except restate the obvious? And maybe hope that some of it will get through?
The focus on this book is charter schools, but parochial schools (i.e, Catholic/Muslim) could serve the same purpose and their position is not quite as fragile as that of Charter schools.
Verdict: This book I recommend at the new price for those who've only read a couple of Sowell's books. For people who have read dozens of his books (like the present writer) it's probably worth the second hand price.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.
Popular titles by this author
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Top reviews from other countries
briliantin
The book talks about the lobbying the public school system
Reviewed in Germany on August 3, 2020Patrick
Another factual, grounded and good read by Dr. Thomas Sowell
Reviewed in Canada on July 2, 2020
