`` Still Separate Still Unequal `` By Jonathan Kozol

Epstein, K. K. (2006). A different view of urban schools: Civil rights, critical race theory,

In his essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid,” Jonathan Kozol brings our attention to the apparent growing trend of racial segregation within America’s urban and inner-city schools (309-310). Kozol provides several supporting factors to his claim stemming from his research and observations of different school environments, its teachers and students, and personal conversations with those teachers and students.

Most inner city schools are not challenging their students and not allowing them to be creative. Yet, challenging students is their normal practice in the better school. On the other hand, all inner city schools should give their students with the same amount of education as private schools in order to better their education. There are different methods of teaching between these schools, especially when it comes to economics and geography. “Scholars in political economy and the sociology of knowledge have recently argued that public schools in complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes” (Anyon, 1980). Even though years after Brown versus Board of Education, where the Supreme Court declared segregation to be unconstitutional, Caucasian, African and Hispanic Americans continue to learn in different worlds. As long as each race has low incomes, there will always be unequal education.

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.

“Still Separate, Still Unequal”, written by Jonathan Kozol, describes the reality of urban public schools and the isolation and segregation the students there face today. Jonathan Kozol illustrates the grim reality of the inequality that African American and Hispanic children face within todays public education system. In this essay, Kozol shows the reader, with alarming statistics and percentages, just how segregated Americas urban schools have become. He also brings light to the fact that suburban schools, with predominantly white students, are given far better funding and a much higher quality education, than the poverty stricken schools of the urban neighborhoods.

     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

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 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

How should society handle the perceived differences between races when it comes to education? The goal of both researchers is to narrow the academic gap between white and black students. Both authors attribute the gap between the academic scores of black and white students from opposite sides of racial identity. As Dr. Beverly Daniels Tatum, President of Spelman College and clinical psychologist has written an article entitled “Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” Her approach is from the perspective of the student and how they perceive their role and upper limits while maintaining their place in their peer group's expectations of their race. Dr. Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, has written an article entitled "The Facts about the Achievement Gap.” Her approach is from the perspective of how schools and society implicitly or explicitly cast students into achievement tracks based on their race. Both approach the same idea about racial identity, but they have different solutions, such as peer groups, the school board, and who is right about the solution.

In “Still Separate, Still Unequal”, Jonathan Kozol, a teacher, author, and educational activist and social reformer argued that “American schools today might be more segregated than at any time since 1954…[which] threatens an entire generation of Americans”(Rereading American book). “Still Separate, Still Unequal” was affected by the author’s life, works, and purpose in that his thoughts are biased based on his experiences as an inner-city elementary school teacher and work with poor children and their families and was persuasive for an audience of American citizens. The view Kozol had on this topic of the “resegregation” of schools in America is explained and written as a negative look on the American education system.

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.

For generations African Americans have been disadvantaged in America and effects of these injustices have made a lasting impression. Education is one of the leading problems in the black community. Though there have many reforms in education over the years, racial injustices still exist because no attention in placed on how legislature affects people of color. I was raised in a middle-class family of educators. My entire life I’ve been told to “stay in school, get an education, and work hard so that you can beat the system.” Recognizing the structural forces in my life has helped me understand my place in society. Being able to “understand everyday life, not through personal circumstances but through the broader historical forces that

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

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

The character of a nation can be discovered or disclosed in the way that it treats its indigenous population, I have chosen Japan and Australia for my comparison and will be giving a brief summary about the Japanese Ainu People and the Australian Aborigines, their histories as we know them and how they have been treated by the peoples that have taken over the lands to which they themselves had laid claim as their own thousands of years beforehand.