This weekend I read two incredibly influential books.

The Freedom Writers Diary: How A Group Of Teens Used The Power Of The Pen To Wage A War Against Intolerance

My roomie Erin was blessed enough to actually meet some of the Freedom Writers and their teacher Erin Grunwell, her copy of the book is autographed. This true story is so amazing and inspiring. (I am tearing up just thinking about it.) By the time I got to the diary entries where the Freedom Writers went to Washington D.C. and held hands together around the Washington Monument, I was crying like a baby.(Totally tearing up now…) The story reaffirmed with every ounce of my being that one person, with a vision and the passion CAN make a difference. Erin Grunwell is a hero.

Ok. Now that I have stopped my silly tears 🙂 the other book I read was by Jonathan Kozel, Savage Inequalities. This book has been on my *to read* list for some time. No better time than the present. (I have for the trip to NYC tomorrow another one of his books, “Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope.“)

“Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools”

A must read. I seriously think every single policy maker in Washington and in every state in our union should read this book. I am no stranger to the bleak statistics regarding education in the inner city. My college thesis was based on school choice programs, and I did a lot of research about our education system and explored options to make a change. (I am a strong advocate for choice programs, I also did my seminar paper in law school on voucher programs.) However, this book…attached almost surreal and horrid pictures on to the*numbers* we read about…

“In a country where there is no distinction of class” Lord Acton wrote of the Unites States 130 years ago,”a child is not born to the station of its parents, but with an indefinite claim to all the prizes that can be won by thought and labor. It is in conformity with the theory of equality…to give as near as possible to every youth and equal state in life.” Americans, he said, “are unwilling that any should be deprived in childhood of the means of competition.”

It is hard to read these words today without a sense of irony and sadness. Denial of “the means of competition” is perhaps the single most consistent outcome of the education offered to poor children in the schools of our large cites; and nowhere is this pattern of denial more explicit or more absolute than in the public schools of New York City.”