Students, in particular, now find themselves in a world in which heightened expectations have been replaced by dashed hopes.

In some cities such as Washington, DC, that 75 percent of young black men can expect to serve time in prison.

The new illiteracy is about more than not knowing how to read the book or the word; it is about not knowing how to read the world.

It says anybody can make it, because we're all on a level playing field. But we're not on a level playing field. That 's precisely the point, and that's what the rich don't want to look at. They don't want to recognize that they're not producing wealth at all. They're hoarding wealth. That's different.

Increasingly, poor minority and white youth are being funneled directly from schools into prison.

With no adequate role to play as consumers, many youth are now considered disposable, forced to inhabit "zones of social abandonment" extending from homeless shelters and bad schools to bulging detention centers and prisons.

History remains an open horizon that cannot be dismissed through appeals to the end of history or end of ideology.