The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America

Overview
Jonathan Kozol delivers a sustained moral and empirical indictment of the contemporary American public school system, arguing that racial and economic segregation has reconstituted a system of "apartheid schooling." Drawing on visits to dozens of urban schools and neighborhoods, the book contrasts richly resourced suburban and predominantly white institutions with inner-city schools that are racially isolated, severely underfunded, and chronically dysfunctional. Kozol frames these disparities as the product of policy choices, legal retrenchment, and social indifference rather than inevitable outcomes.
The tone is urgent and personal, mixing data with vivid classroom portraits and first-person observations. Rather than offering detached analysis, the narrative presses a civic and ethical case: the failure to maintain integrated, equitable schooling betrays constitutional principles and the nation's professed commitments to equality and opportunity.

Main arguments
Kozol contends that the progress achieved after Brown v. Board of Education has been largely reversed through a combination of demographic shifts, housing segregation, market-based education reforms, and judicial decisions that narrowed remedies for segregation. He argues that many public schools today are intensely segregated by race and concentrated poverty, producing vastly unequal educational conditions and life chances. The segregation he describes is not merely demographic but structural, linked to funding formulas, staffing practices, curriculum tracking, and differential access to experienced teachers and services.
Central to Kozol's argument is the claim that "separate" has again become synonymous with "unequal." He insists that the empirical differences in facilities, class sizes, extracurricular offerings, and material resources are stark and morally unacceptable. Policies that claim to expand choice, charter schools, vouchers, and market-driven reforms, are portrayed as often intensifying segregation and diverting attention from systemic investment and integration as remedies.

Evidence and storytelling
The book weaves reporting, statistics, and courtroom history with intimate portraits of students, teachers, and principals. Kozol takes readers into crowded classrooms, poorly maintained buildings, and neighborhoods where social services are scarce. These scenes are meant to humanize abstract inequality: the descriptions emphasize how everyday schooling conditions undermine learning and dignity.
Kozol also marshals demographic data and district-level comparisons to show patterns of resegregation across regions. He links classroom realities to broader institutional arrangements, local school funding tied to property taxes, selective admissions, and tracking systems that funnel disadvantaged children into lower expectations. The narrative strategy pairs moral outrage with concrete examples to make the case that policy choices sustain the problem.

Policy critique and prescriptions
Kozol rejects solutions that focus narrowly on test scores or market mechanisms, arguing instead for renewed commitment to integration and equitable resource allocation. He advocates for aggressive desegregation policies, federal leadership in enforcing civil rights protections, redistribution of funding to equalize opportunity, and investments in early childhood and social supports that address concentrated poverty. He stresses the need for diverse schools where children from different backgrounds learn together, both to equalize resources and to foster civic solidarity.
While not detailing a technocratic blueprint, the book insists on a moral-political approach: restore desegregation as a national priority, counteract policies that isolate poor children, and affirm public education as a collective responsibility rather than a commodity.

Impact and significance
The book intensified public debate about inequality, schooling, and the limits of market-based reform. Its forceful language and vivid reporting aimed to reframe educational injustice as a national crisis requiring systemic remedies. Whether one agrees with every claim, the work's chief contribution is to insist that education policy be judged not only by efficiency or test scores but by its capacity to create integrated, equitable opportunities for all children.