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Inequality in education
Socioeconomic status and academic achievement
Inequality in education
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Savage Inequalities written by Jonathan Kozol allows individuals to understand the conditions of several public schools in America. Kozol visited many school in approximately thirty neighborhoods between the years of 1988 and 1990. During his visits he found that there was a wide difference in the conditions between the schools in poor internal city communities and schools in the wealthier communities. It becomes clear that there is a huge contrast within the public school system of a country which claims to provide equal opportunity for all. Many children in wealthier communities begin their lives with an education that is far more advanced than children in poor communities. Therefore the lack in equal opportunity from the start is created. …show more content…
They are overwhelmingly nonwhite and exceptionally poor, which stands out forcefully from the well off overwhelmingly white rural schools right alongside them (Kozol 74). He constrains his choices to poor inner city schools as opposed to incorporating examples of every single poor school in light of the fact that he feels that they best display racial isolation and social class divisions. He states that even though many schools can be “diverse” with different cultures and ethnicities, segregation occurs through different programs that are provided in …show more content…
As previously stated, Kozol explains the physical conditions and the lack of funding. These two examples can useful to comparing the book with my school. Kozol states that physical appearance and health of students and staff can change the perception of students and what other people view the school and students as. Many enter Classical and see the ceiling falling and the outdated classrooms students use today. This can make an individual believe that this school is poor and not worth investing in. The physical appearance can create an illusion to any individual that only students in poor communities attend this school. In addition, it can also make them believe that they lack education compared to a well invested school in a wealthier community. However, Classical is the exact opposite of this. This school is a college preparatory school that is ranked number one in Rhode Island. Although the school may lack on its physical appearance it truly contradicts the stereotype that is said about school with similar physical appearances as Classical and create social and educational
Jonathan Kozol, an award winning writer, wrote the essay “Still separate, Still Equal” that focuses on primary and secondary school children from minority families that are living in poverty. There is a misconception in this modern age that historical events in the past have now almost abolished discrimination and segregation for the most part; however, “schools that were already deeply segregated
Another school in the same district is located “in a former roller-skating rink” with a “lack of windows” an a scarcity of textbooks and counselors. The ratio of children to counselors is 930 to one. For 1,300 children, of which “90 percent [are] black and Hispanic” and “10 percent are Asian, white, or Middle Eastern”, the school only has 26 computers. Another school in the district, its principal relates, “‘was built to hold one thousand students’” but has “‘1,550.’” This school is also shockingly nonwhite where “’29 percent '” of students are “‘black [and] 70 percent [are]
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 selection is from one of his many novels that focus on education) as well as an understanding of the “Brown v. Board of Education” (1954) case, which ties in to many aspects of the author’s essay. With the application of exemplum, statistics, and emotional appeals, Jonathan Kozol presents a well developed argument.
“Fremont High School” an essay written by Jonathan Kozol presents a high school in need of transformation and support with educational advancement. Kozol writes about the limited educational opportunities available to the students that attend this lower class institution. Kozol addresses the overcrowding of this institution and lack of consistent staffing. The purpose of Kozol 's essay is to illustrate that lack of opportunity based on social class is an active crisis in the United States educational system, whereas addressing this crisis in the essay, Kozol would hope to achieve equal opportunities available to all socioeconomic class institutions.
In Jonathan Kozol’s essay titled, “From Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid,” Kozol touches on how racial segregation has not disappeared in big cities’ urban public school systems. In this essay we can see how both types of judgements; racial and academic come together to form a stereotype about intellectual success in our current educational system. On the other hand, he brings to our attention that it is the American citizen’s common belief that racial segregation in public schools doesn’t exist anymore. In Kozol’s work he discusses various schools in major cities he has visited and offers the reader personal anecdotes from interviews with students. One quote from a student that I found remarkably interesting is “we do not have the things you have. You have clean things. We do not have. You have a clean bathroom. We do not have that. You have Parks and we do not have Parks. You have all the thing and we do not have all the thing. Can you help us?” (Kozol). This little girl is begging and reaching out to a white man because she thinks that he can help her. I am curious as to why she thinks that white schools have more than children at her school and if this is from first hand experience or from hearing from others. Does she think this way because her school demographics are composed mostly of one race? More importantly, I hope that someone did not teach her to think that
The schools in Kozol 's essay dealt with lack of funding compared to other schools in New York. For example, Kozol states that the education of a third grade child, in nineteen ninety seven to nineteen ninety eight, in an inner city New York costs the New York Board of Education roughly eight thousand dollars per year. However, if you put that same third grader in a school in the white suburbs of New York, she would receive an education worth about twelve thousand dollars. Kozol adds to this by explaining that the prices on both sides have only risen (Kozol 208). A principal details the restraints on the school the lack of funding has brought, "the principal poured out his feelings to me in a room in which a plastic garbage bag had been attached somehow to cover part of the collapsing ceiling. 'This, ' he told me, pointing to the garbage bag, and then gesturing all around him at the other indications of decay and disrepair one sees in ghetto schools much like it elsewhere,
The essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal”, by Jonathan Kozol, discusses the reality of inner-city public school systems, and the 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.
Savage Inequalities, written by Jonathan Kozol, shows his two-year investigation into the neighborhoods and schools of the privileged and disadvantaged. Kozol shows disparities in educational expenditures between suburban and urban schools. He also shows how this matter affects children that have few or no books at all and are located in bad neighborhoods. You can draw conclusions about the urban schools in comparison to the suburban ones and it would be completely correct. The differences between a quality education and different races are analyzed. Kozol even goes as far as suggesting that suburban schools have better use for their money because the children's futures are more secure in a suburban setting. He thinks that each child should receive as much as they need in order to be equal with everyone else. If children in Detroit have greater needs than a student in Ann Arbor, then the students in Detroit should receive a greater amount of money.
“The Shame of The Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America,” is a book that tells the story of author, Jonathan Kozol’s, journey through the public school system. He looks deeper into inner-city, low-income schools and the re-segregation that has taken place. Kozol focuses on the struggles those children of poor and minorities face while trying to achieve equal education as those of the middle and upper class. This book gives a vivid description of what is happening in schools across the country and our failure as a nation to provide ALL students with the education that they deserve through the observations, interviews, and experiences of author Jonathan Kozol. Through this book he tries to shed light on what is really going on in schools across the nation and what most people are not aware of. “Many Americans I meet who live far from our major cities and who have no first-hand knowledge of realities in urban public schools seem to have a rather vague and general impression that the great extremes of racial isolation they recall as matters of grave national significance some 35 to 40 years ago have gradually, but steadily, diminished in more recent years (Kozol 18).”
The greatest country in the world still has problems evenly distributing education to its youth. The articles I have read for this unit have a common theme regarding our education system. The authors illustrate to the reader about the struggles in America concerning how we obtain and education. Oppression, politics, racism, and socioeconomic status are a few examples of what is wrong with our country and its means of delivering a fair education to all Americans.
Jonathan Kozol wrote a book titled Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. A Tale of Two Schools: How Poor Children Are Lost to the World is an excerpt from the book. The excerpt tells the story of two high schools in the Chicago area.
Poorer schools with more diverse populations have poor educational programs. Teachers methodically drone out outdated curriculum on timetables set by standards set by the state. Students are not engaged or encouraged to be creative thinkers. They are often not even given handouts or physical elements of education to touch or feel or engage them into really connecting to the material being presented by the teacher in front of them. Time is not wasted exploring any of the subjects in a meaningful way. As much of the curriculum is gone through as the teacher can get through given the restriction of having a classroom of students that are not picking it up adequately enough according to standardized tests scores. So time is spent re-droning the material to them and re-testing before the cycle repeats in this classroom and other subject classrooms in these types of school. This education is free. As John Gatto writes about in his book, “Against School”, it seems as if the vast majority of students are being taught be blue collared, low paid but obedient citizens. As she makes her way up to less diverse, more likely private and expensive schools, the education becomes better. Students are engaged by teachers that seem to like to teach. Students are encouraged to be
After watching the Teach Us All documentary on Netflix, it opened my eyes to many of the issues regarding educational inequality. The study looked at schools in Little Rock, New York City, and Los Angeles to show us the current state of U.S. education and how far we have come since the school desegregation crisis. The thesis of this documentary is that since the efforts of the Little Rock Nine, our belief is that educational inequality has improved when in reality, it hasn’t improved and the actions of our country have had negative effects. Teach Us All emphasizes the need for unity and collective action to improve our education system for the kids in poor communities that are in the most need. Our country has devoted all the resources to the middle and upper class for education and are taking money away from where it needs to
Inequalities in Education Funding inequalities have been an issue from past to present, especially in the low-income communities. In fact, students in urban areas with less funding have low attendance, score lower on standardized testing, and a low graduation rate. Also subjected to outdated textbooks, old dilapidated buildings, students in the inner cities need to compete with their suburban and wealthy counterparts for this reason funding inequalities must end and more money should be directed to these communities from federal, state, and local governments. Frank Johnson, a writer for the National Center for Education Statistics, “Disparities in Public School Spending.”
Before talking about what goes on inside the schools, I'd like to mention the district itself. There will be no alternative school choices, bussing, or deliberate desegregation practices. Each school will be remarkably similar to the others in the district so that every child may receive a similar education regardless of the neighborhood they live in. When students are separated to different schools for any reason (academic talent, wealth, interests, race, gender) they fail to interact with different types of people that they will undoubtedly encounter in the "real" adult world. In addition, I feel that is very important for children from the same neighborhood to attend the same school in order to increase a sense of community. Finally, as the Case Study of Boulder Valley points out, school choice takes valuable resources away from teaching and places them in school competition (Howe 144).