A “powerful analysis of racism, segregation, poverty” (Diane
Ravitch) and a timely indictment of the privatization—and
profitability—of separate and unequal schools
“An astounding
look at America’s segregated school system, weaving together
historical dynamics of race, class, and growing inequality into one
concise and commanding story. Cutting School puts our schools
at the center of the fight for a new commons.”
—Naomi Klein,
author of No Is Not Enough and This Changes Everything
In an era
characterized by levels of school segregation the country has not
seen since the mid-twentieth century, cultural critic and American
studies professor Noliwe Rooks provides a trenchant analysis of our
separate and unequal schools and argues that profiting from our
nation’s failure to provide a high-quality education to all
children has become a very big business.
Hailed as “a bold
and groundbreaking work” by Danny Glover, Cutting School
deftly traces the financing of segregated education in America, from
Reconstruction through Brown v. Board of Education up to the current
controversies around school choice, teacher quality, the
school-to-prison pipeline, and more. Rooks breaks down the fraught
landscape of “segrenomics,” transforming the “conversation
about privatization and public education just as The New Jim Crow has
done for the war on drugs and mass incarceration” (Khalil Gibran
Muhammad, author of The Condemnation of Blackness).
As our public
education infrastructure crumbles, Rooks’s book manages to find
hope in the inspired individuals and powerful movements fighting to
save our urban schools. Cutting School is a cri de coeur for
all of us to resist educational apartheid.
