Jonathan Kozol: Amazing Grace - Quotes
The author Jonathan Kozol in "Amazing Grace", talks about how these poor communities are effected by many different factors and how hard it is to survive and get out of bad conditions.
There were a couple of quotes that caught my attention and it made me realize how lucky I am. The first quote by Kozol was, "Crack-cocaine addiction and the intravenous use of heroin, which children I have met here call "the needle drug," are woven into the texture of existence in Mott Haven." This quote caught my eye because it was surprising that these drugs were being exposed to these young children in these communities, specifically Mott Haven. Drugs can play a huge role in the communities and it can bring a community to becoming poor. People spend there money on these drugs and then they have no money for anything else. Sometimes people will use these drugs to cope with the depression that they have and they think it is the only way out. Needles and drugs can also cause AIDS or HIV which a lot of people die from.
Another quote that I thought was interesting was, "In humid weather, roaches crawl on virtually every surface of the houses in which many of the children live." These children are living in awful conditions and because of this, most of them will grow up to live in these bad conditions and it will be very hard to get out of it. This tells us how poorly houses are constructed and how the living conditions are not safe. Children can get sick and hospitalized because of this.
Jonathan Kozol also stated that, "Times refers to streets around St. Anne's as "the deadliest blocks" in "the deadliest precinct" of the city. The places where these families are living are not the safest areas. People get killed probably everyday and they can not do anything about it. How do you think the kids feel? They probably feel hopeless and they don't know any better. Most of them see this everyday and they do not know how to live a normal life without seeing violence or sickness or bad home conditions. Its sad and most of them will grow up in poverty or in a bad area. The author wanted to show us the poor conditions of these communities and wanted to show us how unfortunate they are.
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ReplyDeleteHi William, I really enjoyed your blog especially when you focused on the kids. These kids are growing up in the real world and there parents are unable to provide a protective bubble from the outside world.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the quotes you picked out for your blog. I feel bad for the children that have to deal with this as well. They should have much better lives, but not everyone is lucky, but someone hopefully will shine a little light there way to brighten up some things for them.
ReplyDeleteWe do not realize how fortunate we are until we view life from someone else's perspective. Hopefully we as future teachers can help create a safe environment for these children.
ReplyDeleteKids will blow your mind sometimes with what they know. Just yesterday a student surprised me with a comment in regards to the transgender community asking a very polite well worded question. It took me by surprise, this student is in 3rd grade I didn't know what transgender was when I was in third grade. one thing iv learned is always assume the kids know what you know, don't baby down a topic for them because more often then not they know what your talking about.
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