Essay about 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.

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.

America’s school system and student population remains segregated, by race and class. The inequalities that exist in schools today result from more than just poorly managed schools; they reflect the racial and socioeconomic inequities of society as a whole. Most of the problems of schools boil down to either racism in and outside the school or financial disparity between wealthy and poor school districts. Because schools receive funding through local property taxes, low-income communities start at an economic disadvantage. Less funding means fewer resources, lower quality instruction and curricula, and little to no community involvement. Even when low-income schools manage to find adequate funding, the money doesn’t solve all the school’s

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

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

The educational system of the united states is not capitalizing on the full potential of its people. Jonathan Kozol in his article “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid”, discusses the drastic difference in the quality of education based on a family’s income. Kozol discusses how economic disparities usually coincide with race, but focuses on the economic gap of education. Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast “Carlos doesn’t remember”, gives a story and a personal touch, to the issues low income students face. Kozol writing and Gladwell’s podcast, both show that the quality of a child’s education is pure chance. A lottery of being born into a high or low income family dictates the outcome and capitalization of a child’s future.

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

He includes interviews from children from these schools that are supposed to be equal to other schools in the country. He tells us about a child named Alliyah who writes him saying “we do not have the things you have. You have Clean things. We do not” (206).” He includes many things that children from these underprivileged schools said to him which tugs at your heart strings. Not only young children, but also children from the high schools who speak up saying that they are forced to take classes that limit their future (pg 216). Kozol also talks about the structure of the education which seems more “drill based” than anything else (213). I think the thing that touched me the most was the quality of the schools being miserale with “no aircontioning…rats found…and hamburger buns being eaten of the delivery rack.

I have had the good fortune to have read an excerpt from Savage Inequalities within the last few years, though I cannot quite place when or why. Being a rather emotional elephant, it draws me in quickly, picturing the innocent faces in the filth of East St. Louis, imagining what they have to face every day when they go to school. A place that should be a haven for them, nearly sanctuary in the poverty, sludge and smog they live in; rather it is another reminder of how little their community has to offer them. Growing up in a fairly rural setting with clean air and decent schools filled with plenty of teachers, I feel rather spoiled. I find it hard to connect in my head how we as a country could turn away from our future, no matter where they live or how bad their circumstances. Safir Ahmed, the journalist Kozol rode through East St. Louis with, spoke of how people refer to getting off the highway in East St. Louis as a nightmare, but “the nightmare to me is that they never leave the highway so they never know what life is like for all the children here. They ought to get off that highway.

If there is one thing Kozol wants us to take from his book, it is that schools are segregated and unequal. Kozol was given a heart for these inner-city schools after working at these schools in his early career. This is when he bared witness to the pure inequality in comparison to other, not coincidentally, whiter schools. Kozol mentions how he finds it ironic that the schools named after civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. are nearly only black or hispanic. That is quite the opposite of the future that these activists fought for years ago. How did we get here? Did we legalize segregation? Unfortunately, the media likes to make Trump supporters and conservatives into this racist army ready to lynch and harass all minorities in a heartbeat but it is simply not true. Racist tendencies are at their lowest ever. Racism is on a downward slope lessening every year. It surely still exists but not to the extent the fear-mongering media tells us. I believe the theories that we are dealing with the consequences of past racism and things like white flight from the 50s and 60s. The past caused these conditions but yes we are responsible for the extremely poor effort to right these wrongs. As we debate children slip through the cracks into terrible futures everyday. Should we begin integration efforts to even the racial ratios out? I do not think Kozol is saying this but he is adamant that the answer for these children is not “blacks remaining walled off from the rest of