Muses over difference and denial, spotting villains, and gritty inner-city and suburban teenage realities as reflected in several current books, as well as in some by Kurt Vonnegut. (SR)

Kozol's books examine how public schools perpetuate racial injustice, noting ethical abdication by the affluent in violation of children's innocence and capability by urban schools. Schools fail children by deforming the spirit of the poor and soothing the conscience of the rich. Kozol demands greater resources for poor students. (SM)

This report reviews six recently published books on the education of urban and minority youth, and the social and cultural environment in which they live. "The Homeless in Contemporary Society" (edited by R. D. Bingham, R. E. Green, and S. B. White), is a primer on homelessness in America. "Gender Influences in Classroom…

Reviews an ethnographic analysis of Teach for America, a 1990 educational reform program that illustrates how underlying assumptions about "marginal" urban and rural students and their "deficient" environments solidify existing power structures, acculturate students to middle-class norms, generate resistance to teachers, and…

Kozol's book, Savage Inequalities, examines inequality between urban and suburban education and encourages suburban residents to reflect on U.S. education since the 1970s and on the role of their communities in structuring the current savage inequalities. The book suggests affluent parents successfully transmit their ideology of inequality to…

This document reviews the following books on urban and minority education: (1) "Communicating Racism: Ethnic Prejudice in Thought and Talk" (Teun A. van Dijk), which discusses the ways that prejudice and negative stereotypes are conveyed in discourse and then socially reproduced in everyday thought, talk, and action; (2) "American Business and the…