FINALIST, LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE
“I am an eighties baby who grew to hate school. I never fully understood why. Until now. Until Bettina Love unapologetically and painstakingly chronicled the last forty years of education ‘reform’ in this landmark book. I hated school because it warred on me. I hated school because I loved to dream.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times bestselling author of How to be an Antiracist
A New York Times bestseller, an unflinching reckoning with the impact of racist public-school policy on generations of Black lives.
In Punished for Dreaming, Dr. Bettina Love argues forcefully that Reagan’s presidency ushered in a War on Black Children, pathologizing and penalizing them in concert with the War on Drugs. New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of funding in the name of reform, as white savior, egalitarian efforts increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system. These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration. Today, there is little national conversation about a structural overhaul of American schools; cosmetic changes, rooted in anti-Blackness, are now passed off as justice.
In this prequel to Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, Dr. Love serves up a blistering account of four decades of educational reform through the lens of the people who lived it. Punished for Dreaming lays bare the devastating effect on Black Americans caught in the intersection of economic gain and racist ideology. Then with input from leading U.S. economists, Dr. Love offers a road map for repair, arguing for reparations with transformation for all children at its core.
FINALIST, LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE
“I am an eighties baby who grew to hate school. I never fully understood why. Until now. Until Bettina Love unapologetically and painstakingly chronicled the last forty years of education ‘reform’ in this landmark book. I hated school because it warred on me. I hated school because I loved to dream.”
—Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times bestselling author of How to be an Antiracist
A New York Times bestseller, an unflinching reckoning with the impact of racist public-school policy on generations of Black lives.
In Punished for Dreaming, Dr. Bettina Love argues forcefully that Reagan’s presidency ushered in a War on Black Children, pathologizing and penalizing them in concert with the War on Drugs. New policies punished schools with policing, closure, and loss of funding in the name of reform, as white savior, egalitarian efforts increasingly allowed private interests to infiltrate the system. These changes implicated children of color, and Black children in particular, as low performing, making it all too easy to turn a blind eye to their disproportionate conviction and incarceration. Today, there is little national conversation about a structural overhaul of American schools; cosmetic changes, rooted in anti-Blackness, are now passed off as justice.
In this prequel to Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, Dr. Love serves up a blistering account of four decades of educational reform through the lens of the people who lived it. Punished for Dreaming lays bare the devastating effect on Black Americans caught in the intersection of economic gain and racist ideology. Then with input from leading U.S. economists, Dr. Love offers a road map for repair, arguing for reparations with transformation for all children at its core.
![Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.11.4)
Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal
352![Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal](http://img.images-bn.com/static/redesign/srcs/images/grey-box.png?v11.11.4)
Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal
352Paperback
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781250383082 |
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Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 07/22/2025 |
Pages: | 352 |
Product dimensions: | 5.38(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.00(d) |