Civil Rights Heroes By Jonathan 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.

For my Argumentative Essay “Modern Day Re-Segregation in Today’s Schools”, I will be addressing Professor Kelly Bradford and my fellow students of Ivy Tech online English Composition 111-54H. As I chose Martin Luther King’s “Letter from A Birmingham Jail” as my core reading topic, I have gained an interest in not only the fight for civil rights that Mr. King lead in the 1950’s but have gotten interested in how there is still a large gap in equality in education due to the current situation of not only educational segregation but social and economic segregation. Through my research I have discovered that not only segregation in the schools is on the rise, but that socioeconomic segregation exists and is fueling the decrease in academic success by impoverished students. Through my writing I want to demonstrate that the socioeconomic isolation and segregation not only affects those that are directly bound by it, but that it affects every American in some form or other. I am submitting my writing as a formal academic manuscript.

The essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal”, by Jonathan Kozol, discusses the harsh truth of public school systems, and how they have become an isolation and segregation of inequality that students are subjected to; as a result, to receive an education. Throughout the essay, Kozol proves evidence of the inequality that African American and Hispanic children face in the current school systems across the country. Kozol supports his testimony by providing the reader with factual statistics and percentages, of how segregated the public school systems have become within many major cities. He exposes the details and statistic of how wealthier schools received better funding and opportunity than the low-income and poverty struck school systems throughout the major cities across the country.

Living in the 21st Century, it is difficult to imagine a time in the history of the United States that black students could not attend the same public schools that white students attended. In his famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” Dr. Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” Desegregation, in the southern states, especially Arkansas, did not come without a price to Dr. King as well as nine black students

In the article “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Education Apartheid” author Jonathan Kozol informs us about inequality and segregation in today’s school systems. Kozol talks about schools were minority’s makes up the student body. For example, Kozol refers to John F. Kennedy High School where the majority of the student body is made up by African Americans and Hispanic students, only a third of the students are white. Kozol states that schools like these are typically underprivileged schools that normally have structural issues and also lack behind in technology and resources for students. Kozol also brings up the predominately white schools where on average there is more money spent on students and funding is not a problem, these

Written by public lecturer, who specializes in social injustices within the United States, and award-winning writer Johnathan Kozol, “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid” hones in on the issue of inequality in today’s schools around the country. In the excerpt observed, Kozol states how children who attend schools where the white population is almost nonexistent are not receiving the same attention and equal opportunities as children who attend predominately white schools. He then goes on providing examples of dilapidated school conditions, along with statistics on the number of doctors within these “separate but equal”

This month, American people will be reminded that sixty-four years ago, the Brown v. Board of Education case desegregated public schools and transformed a piece of the history of education in the United States. The integration of black students into a white-dominated education system seemed idealistic in 1954 when the decision passed, yet it faced many conflicts when society showed their discontent with the verdict in various ways. During this time, many focused on the nine brave African American students from Little Rock, Arkansas, who enrolled at Central High School as the first students to be integrated. These students were called the Little Rock Nine, and they forced the acknowledgment of the issue of segregation by attempting to get an equal

Almost 70% of the school was white, and fitting into the culture was something I had trouble getting used to because of such an unwelcoming demeanor from the students. Joining extracurricular activities such as basketball helped me meet friends of different ethnic backgrounds who also had the same interests as me. In Kozels Article he begins to distinguish a correlation between schools in the 20th century to schools in the 19th century. “Schools that were already deeply segregated twenty-five or thirty years ago are no less segregated now” (Kozel 202). There has been no change at all in the public school system and this racism and unequal treatment in our society needs to be spoken up about. Segregating black and Hispanic children to less wealthier public schools who receive little or no funding is a major reason our nation’s crime rates has skyrocketed in the past twenty-five or thirty

Race relations in America’s public schools have come a long way. The U.S Supreme Court ruling of Brown v. Board of Education deemed segregation in public schools unconstitutional, and started the process of integrating public schools . Yet, Kathleen McGrory, an education reporter for The Miami Herald, writes that creating and maintaining diversity in public schools is still difficult, even 56 years after the monumental court case. McGrory’s article states though the nation is now more racially and ethnically diverse than at any point in its history, American public schools’ demographics do not exhibit this diversity. In fact, the pierce includes a quotation from a University of Miami professor who studies education and sociology that

This week’s reading comes from an NPR interview of Nikole Hannah-Jones entitled “How the Systemic Segregation of Schools is Maintained by ‘Individual Choices”, in which they talk about recent segregation about schools and why little is being done to change it. Hannah-Jones discusses life in a gentrified area and their decision to send their daughter to their neighborhood school even though it’s student population was minority driven and there were categorized as a low-performing school. The affluent white school farther away and the white kids were then forced to go to the minority school, which illustrated the use of institutional racism by individuals who were thought to be progressive. So not only does gentrification lead to violent racial

Discrimination in the school environment was a controversial issue in the 1960’s. Over this specific time period, the view of Black citizens in school was extremely different compared to that of the White citizens. The school institution, which being founded for an educational purpose, had prime examples of how there was a separation between the schools of Black’s and White’s. The differing views between Blacks and Whites in schools was a reoccurring theme through the 1960s and in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird. In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, there are apparent signs of White school systems still having a more segregated view on discrimination.

Jonathan Kozol, Author of “Confections of Apartheid Continue In Our Schools”, begins his in depth commentary on “Apartheid Schools” with a definitive statement that racial isolation in schools still exists today. In addition, he asserts that there has been very little progress in de-segregating schools in the last 25-30 years. According to Krol, this continued racial isolation results in an inequality in schools with segregated schools have limited finances and experience higher turnover rates of teachers and staff. Moreover, he asserts that the high turnover of teachers produces a teacher population that is increasingly inexperienced. As a result, Principals and Administrators faced with these challenges attempt to manage what they view as a long- term problem by deploying new and rigorous controls that Kozol states are unique to “Apartheid Schools”. The text of his lengthy article lays out his proof that these controls are counterproductive and negatively impact students and teachers.

​ When segregation in schools was abolished in the 1950’s, the African American community surely did not anticipate any outcome that wasn’t positive. This is not to say that American schools should remain segregated, however the sudden shift in the societal structure caused an imbalance in, what was intended to be, an equal opportunity classroom.

Furthermore, institutional discrimination is a major factor in the state of education in NYC public schools. Education isn’t a business, as such it must be treated as a service and be allowed to attain the great gains it can achieve if all the channels are properly put in place. This group have a responsibility as educators to stand up and ensure that they demand of the Department of Education the same respect that is given to their counterparts and more importantly, to address the ways of all forms of oppression that the students, their families, and the broader communities with which they work

The movie freedom writers support the idea that Amy Purdy puts forward. Purdy challenges us to use limitations and boundaries to help our imaginations take us to the places of our dreams. In Freedom writers, the teacher Erin, initially was met with an obstacle of getting her class to listen to her. After figuring her way through the first obstacle she is met with another, then another and another. Each step of the way the new obstacle was challenging but rewarding at every step. By the end of the film she had dodged and meandered through the challenges of her situation and was able to achieve her dreams and even more than that. With each obstacle there was an experience, these cumulative experiences make us all who we are and are a part of