And this is why good, honest-middle class or lower class students don't get ...
928384
And this is why good, honest-middle class or lower class students don't get a chance to reach full potential. Really good book by the way!
3086195
This book examines the cost of a college education, the need for a college education and the areas where colleges and students may save money in the future. And, while I agree with much of what the author discusses, I believe she left out a few important points about getting a reasonably priced education and there are some flaws in her future vision for higher education.

While the author states that she does not believe that college is for everyone, she then goes on to contradict her point of view by giving examples of the higher earnings potential for college graduates. I agree that college is not for everyone and that we should not be pushing the idea of college off onto every student, making them feel like a failure if they do not go to college. I also believe that targeted career education in high school would keep more students in school and have them prepared, if the chose not to go to college, to go into the work force or a 2 year school career school. I came to this conclusion based on work with a high school where I live that has an abysmal graduation rate. Many of the students have no interest in furthering their education beyond high school, see no reason to be learning what is being taught,  and so they drop out. Targeted career education would give students the ability to relate to the material and understand its value. Sadly, the college for all crowd has done serious damage to career education in high school.

I also disagree with the argument presented in the book that education is unaffordable to many. I have watched carefully the students my daughter graduated from high school with. The vast majority applied to in-state public colleges because they have been brainwashed by guidance counselors that these are the best bargain and that going out of state would be cost prohibitive. In my daughter's case, she applied to 8 colleges that ranged from Ivy League to in-state public colleges. She was accepted at all with the exception of the Ivy, which offered her guaranteed admission if she waited a year and applied using early decision. She chose not to wait, so that fell through. After being accepted to 7 colleges, it was a wait and see game based on aid amounts. Surprisingly, the colleges that had been most pursing her offered the lowest aid packages. Two schools actually offered only unsubsidized loans as the only option. Others came it a varying rates. The last school aid package to arrive was from a Seven Sisters school and they offered a near full ride (97% of all costs). In addition a prestigious public university in another state offered her a very attractive package. The in-state university offered about 50% off of tuition with no assistance for room and board, books and other costs. The point I am making is that very few students seem to shop for the best value. Had my daughter only applied to the public in state schools, she would be getting buried in debt, where as by shopping she should get out after 4 years with much less in loans than a new car costs.

Finally, the author makes a point of electronic education as a way to save money looking forward. While there is some validity to that, I know a number of college students that do not want to use electronic books or learn from a computer. The technology just isn't far enough along for them to be comfortable learning from the internet and other electronic learning aids. This may change, but currently it is not a realistic expectation for many students.

I actually enjoyed the book and the insights the author provided. I think it is of some value, particularly to high school educators, students and parents who have children trying to make a decision about their futures.
4889779
Arvin Vohra accurately identifies the causes of the higher education bubble and the failure of higher education institutions to actually give students anything practical other than a brand name. Schools are supposed to teach but the reality is that many lazily separate students by their existing skill level. And then they blame everyone but themselves for a student's poor academic skills.
Vohras writing clearly has an ideological bias but I think his conclusions are accurate. He also gives candid advice for college admissions that you wouldn't see anywhere else.
2372218
An incredibly ignorant and anti-education position! How else are we to know that minorities are not doing as well as they should, or if that deficiency is improving? Would you board a plane that hadn't been tested? Obviously teacher unions oppose testing - they're dead set against anything that would bring accountability.

The plain truth is that inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending has nearly tripled since the early 1970s - w/o any meaningful improvement in pupil achievement, and our pupils now lag those in most developed nations. Rather than address this problem, educators are now trying to kill the messenger.

As for lack of timely feedback - that can, and should be eliminated by test-taking on computers/tablets, with interpreted results available almost immediately - adjusted for prior pupil achievement, socio-economic status (per participation in free/discounted school lunch programs), ESL status, etc.

This movement is strangely similar to the anti-vaccination movement that is now endangering public health - eg. Disneyland, etc.
767269
Dividing classes reaises many questions regarding how the middle class views school advantage.  Through interviews and personal experiences, the author describes her positive and negative experiences with the educational system.  We found this book gives rise to many controversial issues some with which we agree as well as some issues we disagree with.  While the author does give concrete examples, we believe SES is not the only predictor for educational success.
2414638
Newark, NJ has a billion dollar budget for its school system, presumably enough to provide a wonderful, even lavish education for its children. However, all sides agree that the Newark schools are uniformly terrible, and that the kids are graduating with a sub-par education (and that's not counting the children who drop out, which is inexcusable these days!)  This story is a cautionary tale about what happens when competing groups, all presumably well-meaning, try to reform a huge public school system.

I was terribly saddened for the children of Newark, especially those kids that need a bit of extra help, but aren't the two standard deviations from normal, which is what is necessary to achieve an IEP. A child with an IEP is considered special needs, and by law, must have his/her education adjusted to allow the child to work at grade level. It also means that the school system in the child's community gets a larger piece of that billion dollar budget, but a child who simply needs extra help isn't entitled to extra money. Thus, those children are often ignored.

As I read the book I began to get the strong feeling that a good many of the employees of the Newark School System looked at what they do as a job with all its attendant headaches, rather than the mission of preparing our children for the future. If you go to your school with the point of view that this is merely a way to endure the next six hours, rather than the opportunity to change the future, you're far less likely to do a good job.

It was so sad, and just allowing reformers to make changes without examining all the consequences isn't the answer. I wish I knew what is, but finding that answer is imperative if these children are to succeed in an increasingly competitive world.
2003066
If some folks didn't enjoy this book, they probably have some kind of vendetta against public schools or the 60s.  Being an instructor at a community college, and having lived through much of what this story is about, I can identify with the characters and the story, itself.  A few reviews criticized the story for its lack of connectivity.  Well, if you're a 7th grader, your stories are not going to be too cohesive.  You're going to jump all around the subject.  Surely you remember how you were as a kid?  And as for the characters being hard to relate to?  Geez, these reviewers must have grown up in the exclusive part of town where they never knew any students in public schools.  The story rang true and honest to me.  As for the plot, well, this isn't a plot-driven story.  It's about the characters.  Not every story has to have a plot.  And just because you haven't lived through the 60s is no excuse not to read the book.  You might lean something.  Isn't that one of the reasons we read?
587736
I felt that this book was very interesting, mostly because the author goes  against the norms of education (get good grades, get a good job, you're set  type of mentality).  This book really makes you think about why you want to  work, and how to change your lifestyle over time so that the money works  for you, not the other way around.  The author has some good points on how  the rich find the loopholes in the system to stay rich, and gives logical  advice to help individuals become financially ahead of the game.  I  definitely do not recommend this book for those not willing to actually  change their mentalities and lives.  It is a very good guide to  understanding how the rich get rich and how they differ from the poor,  whether educated or not, people.
1666293
What this Mrs. Monroe fails to accept is that your students where chosen for ability and family involvement, and the troubled ones where left out of the educational loop of FDA and if they failed to live up to your parental requirement they where pushed out into the regular public school system. In addition the level of special students where again hand picked as where the educators, and then Monroe herself boasted of how she would dismiss teachers who she deemed unworthy regardless of personal issues that may have taken place in their life.  Monroe's whole story of school success is therefore a big sham, she didn't take one of the worst schools in a failing district, but created a private school population charter school in a failing district, come back after you take on an  unfiltered school in which you do not weed out your challenge students.  After all any school can achieve if your population is controlled, which is not the case in a normal public school and if you did try what Lorraine gloats about with your whole district population, you'll get succeeding schools all over and a nice chunk of children on the streets.  A district in Salinas was attempting to improve itself with the mentality of a tyrant can control a district only to find that the opposite happened.
4802663
Paul Fussell's Class is an enlightening, and mercilessly funny, if somewhat dated unmasking of the realities of class in America. Fussell is not a social scientist, but a professor of English with a sharp eye and a pen to match. He spares us the doubtful and boring apparatus of the social sciences, offering instead his own unfettered observations supported by a wide reading. He delineates nine classes: top out-of-sight, upper, upper middle, middle, high proletarian, mid-prole, low-prole, destitute, bottom out-of-sight, and a special category he calls "X people". Fussell then fleshes out this taxonomy in chapters dealing with appearance, housing, buying habits, recreation, drinking, reading, education, and language.
Fussell is so acute and dead-on (with some lapses) that I cannot imagine anyone with the slightest degree of self-knowledge reading this book and not experiencing the dawn of recognition, sometimes painfully. He is especially hard on the middle and prole classes. Here I fault him, not for inaccuracy but for a lack of sympathy that would have taken him to a deeper level of understanding and somewhat softened the blows. Fussell, it seems certain, includes himself in the X category, a group of people outside the normal class system. This explains the coldness with which he regards those still caught on the wheel. That being said, the degree of enlightenment Fussell offers is worth the price of his supercilious gaze. While he is not the final word, reading him will greatly help anyone to understand better the reality of class in America. And he is after all, correct: the middle class is the bastion of "psychic insecurity" and envy, and the prole class are fat, gullible and tastelessly dressed. For lack of vision the people perish.
1609778
This special lost me when two Deans at Stanford University both decried this behavior as counterproductive to these troubled youth.  Yeah right, as if a happy well-adjusted high school student with average test scores and a solid 'B' average would even get a sniff at admission into that university.
3959053
As an "inner city" teacher, I found this book relevant yet misleading.  Author Jonathan Kozol visited schools in impoverished U.S. communities, and shows the shameful way we fund public education via local property taxes.  Readers see how this unfair system short-changes our poor schools, leaving students in leaky classrooms short of books, computers, and lab materials.  Kozol correctly calls for equal funding of public schools, and even integration as needed.

But like too many reformers, Kozol avoids the vital behavioral/cultural issues disproportionate to impoverished minority schools - poor student discipline and motivation, gangs, fights, broken homes, truancy, pregnancies - perplexing challenges we teachers face daily.  By avoiding these realities, Kozol misleads readers into seeing the problem (and solution) as basically one of funding.  Not so.  After all, my home suburb of Evanston (Illinois) integrated its well-funded classrooms back in 1967, yet glaring gaps between white and (usually poorer) black students persist, narrowing only modestly.  In short, culture trumps funding, and Kozol barely mentions enhanced early childhood learning and pregnancy prevention - programs that help.

SAVAGE INEQUALITIES promotes equal school funding an overdue (but modest) reform backed by most of us teachers from poor schools.  But Kozol misleads readers - and earns scoffs from many experienced teachers - with his nave, unrealistic approach.
536867
This book does not help you apply for scholarships or where sources of money are to get scholarships. Rather, it's a 'What Great Students Know' type book. It gives helpful study advice, such as
(a) don't study to get a high A. Study to get a low A.
(b) If you have a high B, do a bit more work to get a low A. But don't do too much work to get a high A.

The author implies each student can study just enough to get a low A, not a high A.  I've never taken a class where i can pick out which things to study to get a low A versus a high A. This strategy only works on paper.

(c) Don't join clubs unless you're the president and can put the skill on the test.
(d) Being in National Honor Society isn't as useful as being the president of two or three high school clubs.

I didn't agree with most of the info. It says you'll stick out if you invent something and get a patent on it. Then, it includes 5 pages on applying for a patent, with a photocopy of a patent application.
It also advocates writing a book.

This isn't for high school kids, at least not for mine. My daughter with excellent grades is always busy. However, the author says she shouldn't be, that being too busy is a failure of planning.

This book feels gimmicky to me. Lots of ways to stand out to the application committee. But i'm assuming that the application committees know all the gimmicks that students use to get noticed.

If my opinion on this book hasn't dissuaded you from buying it, mine's for sale used. I need something that shows high school juniors and seniors where to apply for scholarships, and how to write application essays.  This doesn't have that information, but the title and back cover implies it does.
3465721
Hi

I am a middle class person - I read this book and found very much interesting.

The main point is - what middle class people and society talks about money like "rich people are bad- money give trouble". Mr. Stanley clearly explains how this thinking makes us poor even though we earn more. This books also tells practically how a kid get his mind set about money from his parents. This is 100% true - I have now changed my mind set breaking my old habits.

I suggest every one in middle class society should read this book to understand about money.
4357113
Why so many are angry and poor? The author shows that it is because now both parties worry only about the elites and the minorities and interest groups that may provide the votes needed in elections. What was the middle class is neglected and squeezed out.
3080658
The top 1% of America's population received 8.83% of national income in 1976 but were getting 21.93% by 2005.  On average, a Fortune 500 C.E.O. made 40 times a worker's pay in 1980 but that ratio is 364 to 1 today.

That erosion of America's middle class has led to what authors Katherine S. Newman and Victor Tan Chen use as the title of their book: THE MISSING CLASS.  Individuals living the in the missing class are one job loss, medical bill, or maxed-out credit card away from poverty.

While I quote statistics, THE MISSING CLASS reports on America's underpaid workforce in human terms.  The book's nine stories tell of people who live hoping they won't come home to an eviction notice.  Of course, first they have to hope the repo man does not take their cars before they can drive home from their low-paying jobs.

Those who saw the documentary film THE BIG ONE will recall the tragedy of the woman whose small son died because the Workfare program forced her to take employment so far from home she could not watch him.  Each of the nine THE MISSING CLASS narratives made me think of that family.  Yet America closes hospitals and cuts education spending while it builds more prisons.  Is that the plan?

Read THE MISSING CLASS.
4746714
Lubrano's book is based on the premise that class differences have not disappeared in the US, as much of the mainstream media would have you believe. Non-college educated Americans who work with their hands - and usually work much harder for much less money - have their own distinct culture and values in the US. They usually live in working class neighborhoods, speak their own distinct language and have very distinct attitudes towards family, child rearing, loyalty and personal integrity. My cluelessness in this regard made my high school, pre-med and medical school years extremely miserable. I had absolutely nothing in common with the upper middle class kids who were my peers - and they were constantly finding fault with the way I dressed, walked, talked and did my hair. No matter what I did, I could never fit in.

I was 32 before a friend from Appalachia explained that the main reason behind the inane thoughtlessness of my upper middle class friends was the direct result of their class background and the sense of privilege that goes with it. Another friend introduced me to Worlds of Pain by Lillian Breslow Rubin. Suddenly my life was more bearable because it made sense.

Limbo differs from Worlds of Pain in being more descriptive and less scientific (Rubin is a sociologist and Worlds of pain is based on scientific research). I prefer Limbo, which is based on both Lubrano's personal experience and 50 interviews with "straddlers," because it makes a deliberate effort to define the value system that characterizes working class culture. Lubrano lists some of the more important working class values at the beginning of his book: a powerful work ethic (not found in the middle class); a strong unambivalent respect for parents; a need for close contact with extended family; a forthrightness devoid of hidden agendas; intense loyalty; a belief in firm limit setting for children; reliance on common sense as opposed to book learning; and a willingness to openly display emotion.

Lubrano coins a new word - "straddler" - in Limbo. It describes a professional of working class origin who is never totally comfortable with either his/her working class family or his/her professional colleagues and friends.

By Dr Stuart Jeanne Bramhall, author of THE MOST REVOLUTIONARY ACT: MEMOIR OF AN AMERICAN REFUGEE