Failing Grades: How Schools Breed Frustration, Anger, and Violence, and How to Prevent It

Rating:
Summary: Must Read For...well...Anybody In America
Review: If you want to know what's going on today in U.S. schools, as a direct reflection of the greater society, I might add; if you want to know what the students are really struggling with and what teachers really say behind closed doors, this is the book for you. As an educator myself and an expert on both race relations and working with juvenile delinquents, I am greatly encouraged to see Roy Kaplan's important work in a form so readily accessible to the average reader. Some of what he reports is unsettling or even downright scary, but pretending we're asleep is not the answer. In fact it only brings further problems, as we have been forced to face in recent years. Kaplan puts the truth right out there on front street and then gives us the direction we need to go to make the appropriate and much needed changes. How much better can it get than that? The only thing the book isn't quite straight-up about is how crucial Roy Kaplan and people like him are to the process of healing he describes. It takes a real artist with the heart of a lion to wade into the turbulent waters he describes and make it to the other side.