★ 08/07/2023

Love (We Want to Do More Than Survive), professor of education at Columbia University, presents an in-depth history of the U.S. education system that highlights the anti-Black nature of school reform since the 1980s. In the decade after the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling against school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, anti-Black institutional backlash devastated the country’s robust community of Black educators, according to Love, who notes that 38,000 Black teachers and 90% of Black principals were forced out of their jobs. The institutional pushback against desegregation solidified during the Reagan administration, which manufactured a crisis of faith in the education system, notoriously claiming that if a foreign power had created the U.S. education system, it would amount to an act of war. This kicked off the successive waves of “reform” that characterized the next 40 years of education policy: the growth of opt-out institutions like charter schools, virtual schools, and vouchers; the encroachment of police into schools; an increased focus on testing; and other reforms that established a punitive and depersonalized educational environment for Black children. Love concludes with a chapter arguing that Black Americans are owed $56 billion for the harm done by the past 40 years of school reform, a bold assertion that will no doubt make waves in education advocacy circles. Detailed and persuasive, this is a must-read for educators. (Sept.)

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“Detailed and persuasive, this is a must-read for educators.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Lays out the racial injustices rampant in the public education system, from the era of school segregation to the massive resistance to Brown v. Board to the current era of so-called school choice. … an important—though enraging and heartbreaking—read.”
—Booklist

"A stark critique of 40 years of education policies that were deliberately crafted ‘to punish Black people for believing in and fighting for their right to quality public education.’ … An impassioned plea for educational justice.”
―Kirkus Reviews

“A landmark book.”
―Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to be an Antiracist

“Brilliant."
―Carol Anderson, bestselling author of White Rage

"Love is one of our fiercest advocates."
―Michael Eric Dyson, bestselling author

"An urgent call to action."
―Salamishah Tillet, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

"Blends brilliance, warmth, and a deep commitment to the pursuit of justice for all our nation’s children."
―Brittney Cooper, bestselling author of Eloquent Rage

"Accessible and deeply personal...Love's interviews with Black folks... add a tenderness and intimacy."
―Eve L. Ewing, author of Ghosts in the Schoolyard

"Love brilliantly exposes how the promise of education as a means to lift all boats and right historical wrongs is coopted by politics, strategies, euphemisms, and implicit biases that surveil and control children of color under the guise of teaching them. This is an urgent, often surprising, ultimately must-read book for anyone concerned with the pedagogy in and of our nation."
―Jonathan Metzl, author of Dying of Whiteness

★ 10/13/2023

Impactful educator Love (We Want To Do More Than Survive) asserts that educational policies punish children of color, especially Black ones, by denying them an equitable public education. Her research shows that by the l980s and l990s, a few powerful business owners and philanthropists in the United States initiated, emphasized, and repeated a false narrative that Black children were lawless, a waste of taxpayers' money, and a danger to society. The author says that instead of reform, the victory of desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education was unevenly applied and resulted in the job eliminations of more than 38,000 Black teachers and many Black principals. The No Child Left Behind Act, designed to improve math and reading test scores of Black and Brown students, resulted in teachers spending their time teaching tests, but scores didn't improve. Love says that unless society strongly and persistently demands a large and effective structural change to the educational system, students of color will remain undereducated for the foreseeable future. Yet her book serves as an exceptional roadmap to healing and transformation. VERDICT For general readers who want to learn about and possibly improve racial problems within the education system.—Claude Ury

2023-06-20
An uncompromising indictment of education reform.

Educator Love, co-founder of the Abolitionist Teaching Network, expands on her previous book, We Want To Do More Than Survive, to offer a stark critique of 40 years of education policies that were deliberately crafted “to punish Black people for believing in and fighting for their right to quality public education.” Why, she asks, “instead of learning,” are Black students “punished with low expectations, physical violence, surveillance, standardized testing, and frequent suspensions?” The author condemns education reform under Nixon, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton for enacting an agenda “that ushered in a new sort of Black bondage, a system in which Black Americans would be educationally neglected, economically starved, denied assistance, and incarcerated for selling drugs that the government itself allowed to be put out on the street.” Such policies, she asserts, are a form of white rage, “organized, well-funded, and cruel.” Policymakers with superficially progressive ideas—Bill and Melinda Gates, Mike Bloomberg, and Barack Obama, for example—nevertheless perpetrate harmful educational practices such as charter schools, virtual schools, and vouchers. “Many charter schools,” Love asserts, “are awash in corporate sponsors, philanthropic dollars, and the expectation that failure is an important part of the entrepreneurial process.” Love faults George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy, which emphasized standardized testing and graded schools on test scores. “I worked at an F school in Florida,” she writes, a depressing experience for both teachers and students. Love calls for supporting abolitionists in their fight for “healing justice, environmental justice, disability justice, health justice, immigrant justice, reproductive justice, economic justice, body justice, gender justice, and LGBTQI justice.” She advocates, as well, for reparations that would go beyond economic restitution to include funding “well-resourced state-of-the-art schools with curricula that honor different cultures and traditions with love and admiration.”

An impassioned plea for educational justice.