Amazing Grace Kozol Chapter Summaries

Due to the forgoing facts brought to light by Kozol in his essay, it is apparent that there is a growing trend of racial segregation within America’s urban and inner-city schools. Educators and politicians seem to have abolished any semblance of respect for learning for its own sake and have made the school system a joyless experience for the majority of the children, which in turn seems to be related to the high drop-out rate in the inner-city schools. For America to remain great, just and competitive in today’s world, these educational anomalies must be timely addressed and corrected adequately.

It has become common today to dismiss the lack of education coming from our impoverished public schools. Jonathan Kozol an award winning social injustice writer, trying to bring to light how our school system talks to their students. In his essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal," Kozol visits many public high schools as well as public elementary schools across the country, realizing the outrageous truth about segregating in our public education system. Kozol, cross-examining children describing their feelings as being put away where no one desires your presence. Children feeling diminished for being a minority; attending a school that does not take into consideration at the least the child’s well being. Showing clear signs of segregation in the education system.

Kozol’s main argument is that public education should be free and equal to people of all economic classes. Kozol believes that children from poor families are cheated out of a future by unequipped, understaffed and under funded schools in the United State’s inner cities and less affluent suburbs. The majority of these children are non-white, and living amongst poverty and crime. Kozol argues about the unfair standards we expect these underprivileged children to rise to. Children in these poor areas are being compared to children in affluent areas where the quality of their education is much higher. Kozol asks how these children will succeed in today’s world if they are not given the same opportunities as affluent schools give their children. Kozol believes that by depriving our poorer children of their basic needs we are forcing them into lives of crime, poverty and a never-ending cycle of inequalities in education. Kozol stresses that these students must be taught that “savage inequalities” do not have to exist between them and students in more affluent schools, and that all children are entitled to an equal education.

In Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol describes the conditions of several of America's public schools. Kozol visited schools in neighborhoods and found that there was a wide disparity in the conditions between the schools in the poorest inner-city communities and schools in the wealthier suburban communities. How can there be such huge differences within the public school system of a country, which claims to provide equal opportunity for all? It becomes obvious to Kozol that many poor children begin their young lives with an education that is far inferior to that of the children who grow up in wealthier communities. Savage Inequalities provides strong evidence of the national

In Jonathan Kozol’s essay, “Savage Inequalities” Kozol explains what he has learned from visiting three different district ten schools in New York. Kozol ultimately argues that students from low economic classes are being pushed aside and not given an equal education like the kids from high economic class schools. Looking at Kozol’s essay through a postcolonial scope the low class students can easily be seen as the subaltern and the high class students can be seen as the fortunate who benefit from the hegemonic power. Kozol describes the lower class school situation as if it weren't even school. Public School 261 is at a roller rink not even a formal built school. Some rhetoric devices that Kozol employs in his essay are artistic along with

In 1964, the author, Jonathan Kozol, is a young man who works as a teacher. Like many others at the time, the grade school where he teaches is segregated (teaching only non-white students), understaffed, and in poor physical condition. Kozol

Jonathon Kozol’s, “ The Shame of the Nation”, mainly covers the the discoveries of Jonathon Kozol of the discrimination and segregation that is still implemented today throughout schools in the United States, since the Supreme Court had tried to eradicate ruling of Brown v. Board of Education. Kozol travels a wide plethora of schools, where he records his findings, many troubling and of the apparent discrimination still experienced by minority school children in places like the Bronx. Essentially, this book was an eye opener to the average american. One would have never thought that the experiences Kozol was told by some of the children had talked about would ever have happened in an average public school.

In this chapter we start seeing a flow threw the book Etta Mae is getting back from another one of her trips and is coming to her home which she shares with her good friend Mattie Michaels. As she arrives in a new car , with a new outfit and carrying records. This chapter the author , Gloria Naylor adds in song lyrics to give us the reader some additional information on the evens happing . “I love my man I’m a liar if I say I don’tI love my man I’m a liar if I say I don’t But I’ll quit my man I’m a liar if I say I won’t I’ve been your slave, baby Ever since I’ve been your babe I’ve been your slave Ever since I’ve been your babe But before I’ll be your dogI’ll see you in your grave My man wouldn’t give me no breakfast Wouldn’t give me no dinner Squawked about me supper then he put me outdoors Had the nerve to lay a matchbox on my clothes I didn’t have so many But I had a long, long way to go”

He randomly selected schools to observe and what he found the most surprising was the amount of segregation that still existed in these schools. He noted several passive inequalities that did not seem to be realized by the students themselves. Kozel highlighted these less-than-satisfactory conditions and brought them to the attention of the America in his book called Savage Inequalities (Kozol 1991). Kozol opens his first chapter by explaining the conditions of a school he visited in Illinois. At the time he was doing his research, much of the city was a black population with seventy five percent of its residents relying on welfare. The city was broken down and not a lot of money was in circulation, leading to issues of sanitation and sickness. Many of the children had not been immunized for different diseases, and social problems were consistently rising. He showed that the problems within the city did indeed have an effect on the daily routine of public schooling. He stated that many of the problems that everyday teachers dealt with in these

Chapters 2 and 3 continue with more depressing facts that chapter1 reveals. However, these are more detailed and more personal, and thereby more disturbing.Reading about these lives makes me think of people I see on the street everyday, of whom many are homeless. Being homeless used to seem like the worst existence imaginable, but after reading the first few chapters of Amazing Grace, living in Mott Haven sounds even worse to me. It is sad to think that a person without a home has more freedom than an entire community of people. Who decides that these people are expendable? Some may say that the politicians make that decision and that thereby our hands are clean. It is foolish to say that however, when we are the people who gave them that power. We do not want to admit that we often look away when we see someone in distress. Pretending nothing wrong is an easy way to go through life, regardless of how politically incorrect it may be. Ignoring the problems is simple if you are fortunate enough to be middle or upper class, but when you are poor there is nothing you can do to avoid them. People in need do not get to choose where they live. They live wherever they can afford to, or in some cases wherever they have been placed by government services. Many people in Mott Haven, the Washingtons for example, were indeed sent

Introduction: As a well accomplished writer, activist, and educator, Jonathan Kozol has devoted his life to the challenge of providing equal education to every child in our public schools.

If anyone in the United States were asked, "What is the best part about living in this country?," most people would answer "equality". The United States is built on and known for the equality among its citizens and is often referred to as the 'melting pot'. After reading Jonathan Kozol's, The Shame of the Nation, equality is nonexistent within the schools he has gone to, and has been employed through. With his travels, expert testimony and personal stories gathered from the people within the community and schools, he shows the exact opposite of equality. Minority schools being his main focus, he discusses the inequalities these students endure and truly opens up your eyes to just how awful these minority schools have it. Jonathan Kozol is successful in his writing of The Shame of the Nation, and makes himself a voice for these minority schools that are denied of their voices.

Mrs. Washington and her son life in the Mott Haven housing project. She is dying of AIDS and her teenage son must tend to her health care plus his schooling. The social services which processes and sends out her welfare money, is constantly under reconstruction. Her payments are often late and numerous times she has been evicted from her apartment. Not only is eviction a problem, but so is her health care. ther have been times she has had to wait two days on a cot in the hallway until a doctor could see her. These problems start to wear down her son. As a result his school work is declining and he hardly ever smiles anymore. He is afraid to sleep in case his mother might need him or she just dies in her sleep. The Washington family is just one case from a pile of hundreds just like it. Program cutbacks effects thousands of people just like the Washington's. Without the proper

The answer to the question posed by the title of Randal Rauser’s new book, What’s So Confusing About Grace? is “a whole lot,” especially if you grew up, as Rauser did, in the North American evangelical subculture of the 80s and 90s. Rauser’s spiritual memoir recounts his life-long struggle to understand both the foundational and the superficial issues of Christian faith (the two are easily confused, as is made amply evident throughout the book).

Craig Mullaney definitely made many challenges for himself and accepted challenges from others with no questions asked. Being the thriving Valedictorian of his high school class and earning other prestigious accolades he stood out from the other entire student. But at West Point, Mullaney would be intertwined with hundreds of other classmates with the same, if not more achievements, making it seemingly impossible to be any kind of a predominant student.