Savage Inequalities Summary

Jonathan Kozol's purpose in Savage Inequalities is to make people aware of the inequalities of the education system in different parts of the country. He accomplishes this purpose effectively through the use of appeals, such as ethos, pathos, and logos.

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.

In the United States, educational opportunity can be different when it depends on neighborhood of the social class. According to the SARC analysis of Arcadia High School’s accountability report card, graduation rate is 98.71% and percentage of taught by highly qualified teachers is 98.5%. The percentages of English and Math standardized test scores are 76.7% and 73.1%. Arcadia High School is one of the affluent professional schools and public schools which provides students with lots of advanced placement(AP) classes and extracurricular activities. For social class, there are not only upper and middle classes, but also working class. However, other schools in some areas which include working class, do not have high graduation rate and students in those schools are not taught by highly qualified teachers. Therefore, educational opportunity can depend on the neighborhood of people live in, but not the status of the social class.

Children who grow up in a poor area go to school where there are 50 kids in one class and individual attention is never given, and children of high class families will go to schools that have smaller class sizes and individual attention. Even when a poor child goes to a better schoolteachers will question if the work done is their own and also only expect hard work from the rich kids. “if you are a child of low income parents, the chances are good that you will receive limited and often careless attention from adults in your high school.” Theodore Sizer “Horace’s Compromise,” “If you are the child of upper-middle income parents, the chances are good that you will receive substantial and careful attention.” (203) These quotes from another author showcase that school in America is often times based on the social standing of the parents.

     In Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol documents the devastating inequalities in American schools, focusing on public education’s “savage inequalities” between affluent districts and poor districts. From 1988 till 1990, Kozol visited schools in over thirty neighborhoods, including East St. Louis, the Bronx, Chicago, Harlem, Jersey City, and San Antonio. Kozol describes horrifying conditions in these schools. He spends a chapter on each area, and provides a description of the city and a historical basis for the impoverished state of its school. These schools, usually in high crime areas, lack the most basic needs. Kozol creates a scene of rooms without heat, few supplies or text, labs with no

Social Class and Education”. It opens by discussing research conducted in the 1960’s in an effort to identify factors contributing to differences in the academic achievement of Whites and Blacks (Banks & Banks, 2013). Researchers hypothesized that the achievement gaps were mainly the result of disparities in school resources and characteristics, but found that there is a high correlation between achievement and socioeconomic status (SES) (Banks & Banks, 2013). Furthermore, attention is drawn to the class stratification which exists in our educational system and works to maintain inequality through exclusion strategies such as ability grouping and tracking (Banks & Banks, 2013). Evidence of the correlation between social class and

Social class is a large faction of people who have similar positions in an economic system. In an exemplary world, all students would have an equal shot at success, excellent schools, and educators that dedicate themselves and their time to achieving this goal. However, social class can significantly affect a student's success, highlighting the correlation between low socioeconomic statuses and academic problems. In all social groups, class plays a significant role in the attainment of children in education. Unfortunately, this has always been the case and the effects are just more evident today. Families from high social classes are more likely to obtain a greater level of education than those in low social classes. Members of upper social classes tend to be better educated and have higher incomes; therefore, they are better able to supply educational advantages to their children as well. Being in a financially disadvantaged can also affect a child’s performance during school.  It is important, therefore, to examine the way in which education is distributed through social class. Between societal pressures, expectations and parental negligence, children can be negatively impacted in their pursuit for future success through their education as exemplified through “College Pressures” and “The Sanctuary of 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

America’s education system is one of the most respectable, reputable and sought after commodities in our society, but it is also the most overcrowded, discriminatory, and controversial system ever established. Most people yearn for a higher education because it 's what 's expected in this society in order to get ahead. It means a better job, more money, power, prestige and a sense of entitlement. But this system has let down the children that are supposed to benefit from it. Education discriminates against minorities, and poorer class students are not expected nor encouraged to attain a higher education. The education system is set up to ensure that every child get a basic

For some students, race is a central part of their identity. The struggles they face with it determines the achievements that they can present to the admissions officers. Despite the current ban on the usage of race in college admissions in Michigan, admissions officers should not ignore any part of a student’s unique circumstances, which may be related to one’s socioeconomic status, race, or both. In the article, “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid,” Kozol argues that the ongoing racial segregation and the lack of funding in schools consisting primarily of blacks and Hispanics are putting the poor and minority children at an disadvantage by not providing them a chance to have good teachers, classrooms, and other resources. While universities use scores to assess the academic ability of a student, minorities who attend schools segregated based on race or socioeconomic status may excel at what they are given, have the

Kozol recalls how these people would have been vilified during the social movements of the 60s, but when he was writing this book, in the early 1990s, these attitudes seemed commonplace. Even the youth in the wealthier schools had lots of excuses to explain why they deserved better schools than kids sometimes living within a few miles.

Kozol doesn’t focus too much on the lifestyle or issues that take place in New York City because he claims that people have a general idea of what New York City consists of. Instead, he immediately discusses issues with the public school system in this city. Kozol visits a Public School 261, which is located next to a funeral home. This school is overpopulated, with the capacity being 900 students and their actual population of students being 1,300. The building itself has no windows, which Kozol claims makes the atmosphere uncomfortable and isolated. There are many issues with the building itself, such as the heating and cooling system. However, there are also issues with faculty being understaffed and students being over-populated. Kozol states that each student only gets 10 minutes a year with the one guidance counselor at this school. This limits student’s opportunities when it comes to furthering their education, finding a career, or even caring about their school. Students aren’t going to care about going to school if they know their school won’t notice if they are

Johnson, H. B. (2014). The American dream and the power of wealth: Choosing schools and inheriting inequality in the land of opportunity. Routledge.

American society likes to believe that race relations in our country are no longer strained. We do not want to hear about the need for affirmative action or about the growing numbers of white supremacist groups. In order to appease our collective conscious, we put aside the disturbing fact that racism is alive and well in the great U.S.A. It hides in the workplace, it subtly shows its ugly face in the media, and it affects the education of minority students nationwide. In the following excerpts from an interview with a middle class African American male, the reader will find strong evidence that race plays a major role in determining the type and quality of education a student receives.

The author makes a compelling argument of “academic apartheid” happening in an affluent suburb of Southern California’s school district that produces and reproduces inequality between schools. Drawing from extensive ethnographic data, the author argues that a high-prestige comprehensive high school uses a continuation school in the same school district as a “dumping ground” of underperforming students—who are disproportionately black and Latino and/or socioeconomically disadvantaged compared to the overall student profile of the school district—as a way to maintain their institutional prestige and “success frame.” Since the curricula offered at the two schools are also starkly different—one offering honors and advanced placement courses designed to help students enroll in (prestigious) 4-year universities upon graduation while the other does not offer any plausible paths to 4-year university enrollment for its students—the author argues that students at these two high schools experience separate and unequal—thus, apartheid-like—schooling.