Read Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol

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.

The book, Inequality in the Promised Land: Race, Resources, and Suburban Schooling, tells us about the problems that inner-city students face in schools across America. There is an apparent problem with discrimination towards black and poorer families within some suburban districts. The effect of this is a vicious cycle of limited/ scare resources of educational opportunities for students. Author, Lewis-McCoy examines a suburban area in which a “promised land” of educational opportunities and beneficial resources has failed to live up to it’s name. America’s suburbs are seeing an increase in diverse families, yet there is still a challenge of giving equal and high quality educational opportunities to them.

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.

These practices help maintain the status quo, helping low-income families remain poor. Moreover, it requires these low-income families to depend on government assistance, such as low-income housing and welfare. The reliance on assistance programs groups the poorest people in the same housing projects and communities, overwhelming schools with low-income students. Not only do these real estate practices concentrate the poorest in an area together, they also drive the often whiter, more affluent families out. The majority of poor feel they have no opportunity to transcend class restrictions, and the property taxes that fund our schools do not alleviate their stress. Further, homogeneous collections of poor means that school populations are rarely as diverse as we believe.

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.

Although the statistics are more than 10 years out of date, the reality of America school segregation has not changed. The barely functional buildings, lack of up to date text books (or in many cases any text books), overcrowded classes, non-existent lab and computer equipment, and low paid teachers create a situation of despair that leads to a drop out rate of more than 50% in many districts. And even those who graduate are often barely literate. Kozol draws the clear link between these schools and the imprisonment of the oppressed nations who, after dropping out of a dead end education, end up locked behind bars.

In the essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal” by Jonathan Kozol, the situation of racial segregation is refurbished with the author’s beliefs that minorities (i.e. African Americans or Hispanics) are being placed in poor conditions while the Caucasian majority is obtaining mi32 the funding. Given this, the author speaks out on a personal viewpoint, coupled with self-gathered statistics, to present a heartfelt argument that statistics give credibility to. Jonathan Kozol is asking for a change in this harmful isolation of students, which would incorporate more funding towards these underdeveloped schools. This calling is directed towards his audience of individuals who are interested in the topic of public education (seeing that this

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

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.

Kozol argues that there is a “deterioration of classroom conditions and teaching practices” and that there are lines drawn by race deciding who gets a better education. He establishes ethos by giving specific examples and numbers to prove that he has researched what he is talking about and has the knowledge to report on this topic. He gives statistics of the racial profile of schools, in which the poorer, dirty, ill-supplied, and lower teaching standards had the majority of blacks and hispanics in their school system compared to the nicer schools with their students being predominantly white. He states that there are no words to express how “deeply isolated children in the poorest and most segregated sections of these cities have become” (Rereading America

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

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.

Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol explains the inequalities of school systems in different poor neighborhoods. Kozol was originally a teacher in a public school in Boston. This school didn’t have very many resources and was unable to keep teachers for very long. After pursuing other interests, Kozol took the time from 1988-1990 to meet with children and teachers in several different neighborhoods to better understand issues relating to the inequality and segregation in the school systems. Kozol writes from his own perspective as he visits six different cities and the poorest schools in those cities. These cities consist of East St. Louis in Illinois, the South Side of Chicago in Illinois, New York City, Camden in New Jersey, Washington

Children from the white working families do not feature anywhere in class or in administration due process. School administration and teachers want nothing to do with them. It is also important to note that in most cases, the wealthy make policies of any govern sector including schools as Diane points out.

Magnet schools are free public elementary and secondary schools that have a focus theme such as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), Fine and Performing Arts, or Career and Technical Education (CTE). Magnet schools offer specialized programs that emphasize on a theme that would interest the student or the parents would like for student to be interested in. However, for those in lower classes, they will be disheartened to find that low-income, ESOL, and special education students are underrepresented. The admission criteria for magnet schools is so stringent that it rejects those with failing grades, records of bad behavior, or many absences from schools. Students who meet the criteria that is usually rejected are those from lower socio-economic classes due to needs not being met. With lack of representation and harsh criteria to meet, it is often very difficult for students in social classes to meet this criteria and achieve a spot in a magnet school. It becomes a common theme of minority parents asking for something better for their children, yet schools discount these parents because it becomes evident to see these are the kids that the public school system does not value (Kozol