Kozol's books are, essentially, a radical's indictment of the inequities inherent in American society. Not only are those inequities made manifest in every aspect of public school life, says Kozol, but the public school education is designed to serve the domestic and foreign policies of the profit-making system….

Furthermore, says Kozol, that is all that takes place in the schools. The great realities of life—love, pain, fear, death; poverty, hunger, oppression; the vast miseries of ghetto life, the insatiable greed of capitalist enterprise; the health of outrage; the uncompromising respect for truth; the passionate concern for justice—all these are kept at a distance from the children through the "balanced" language of teachers, parents and administrators who, before all else, serve the system and are themselves afraid to take strong, clear action against the desperate lack of passion with which we live out our morally sluggish American...