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Concept of diversity in education
Concept of diversity in education
Diversity as it relates to education
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In Jonathan Kozol's "From Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid", Kozol communicates the issue of segregation within school system's and the media's arbitrator's choice to avoid the term "racial segregation" when describing said segregated schools.
After years spent and lives lost fighting to end segregation, today's society is bombarded with the knowledge that schools are considered "diverse" under false pretenses. The word diverse now carries with it an "eviscerated meaning...which is no longer a proper adjective but a euphemism for a plainer word that has now become unspeakable" (Kozol 408). When being interviewed by the media or those concerned, school officials sugar coat their true statistics of student populations. "In a school I visited in the fall of 2004 in Kansas City, Missouri, for example, a document distributed to visitors reports that the school's curriculum "addressed the needs of children from diverse backgrounds... and when I was later provided with precise statistics with the demographics of the school, I learned that 99.6 percent of the students there were African American"
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(Kozol 408). People wish to avoid the notion that segregation still exists, whether they need to lie or parade around the truth is not something easily controlled. Today, Arbitrators often avoid discussing matters of racial segregation as a means of turning their heads only to avoid the heat of outraged citizens displeased with the aforementioned topic.
It's considered highly convenient to tiptoe around reality and derail those who deeply wish to dissect segregation in the school systems and wave them off, forgetting they were ever present. "It's as if you have been put in a garage where, if they don't have room for something but aren't sure if they should throw it out, they put it there where they don't need to think of it again" (Kozol 408). People who wish to express their opinions are kept around but later ignored as a mean of acknowledging yet forgetting the issue at hand. I find myself agreeing with Kozol's position regarding "arbiters of culture" and their ways of describing racial
segregation. Those who are extremely crafty with the ways in which they phrase a sentence are useful when it comes to discussing matters such as racial segregation. "Linguistic sweeteners semantic somersaults and surrogate vocabularies are repeatedly employed" (Kozol 407). The reason for this being that it's an exaggeration technique used to make statistics appear perfect and appealing, all the while concealing the ugly truth at hand. Typically, those who receive wind of seemingly great statistics believe what they are being fed and rarely think to research the information, often misled by what they choose to believe is just. Whilst addressing the issue of racial segregation within schools, officials will report their school is diverse when in reality one or more ethnic group's outnumbers another. Sugar coating virtually every facet of information is a means of control. In conclusion, I am in complete agreement with Jonathan Kozol and his stance on racial segregation and how it is dealt with by our "arbiters of culture". When dealing with the issue in mind, it is an unfortunate norm to stretch articles of truth for another's own benefit, usually a schools. It is common for the media to avoid terms such as "racial discrimination" when discussing segregated schools.
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]
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
In Schooltalk: Rethinking What We Say About - and to - Students Every Day, Mica Pollock provides readers with fact-based information to “flip the script” of the misrepresentation of students in the education setting. Pollock demonstrates how race, gender, and ethnic labels can be detrimental to student achievement. She, then, dives in to 600 years of myths regarding social race labels and how they continue to affect humans today. By correcting race, gender, and ethnicity label myths in our minds, we can effectively advocate for these students. To conclude the book, Pollock focuses on how to devise a plan to correct our own misconceptions and foster a supportive environment for diverse students. Throughout
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 second is the concern over segregation and the effect it has on society. Mr. Kozol provides his own socially conscious and very informative view of the issues facing the children and educators in this poverty ravaged neighborhood. Those forces controlling public schools, Kozol points out, are the same ones perpetuating inequity and suffering elsewhere; pedagogic styles and shapes may change, but the basic parameters and purposes remain the same: desensitization, selective information, predetermined "options," indoctrination. In theory, the decision should have meant the end of school segregation, but in fact its legacy has proven far more muddled. While the principle of affirmative action under the trendy code word ''diversity'' has brought unparalleled integration into higher education, the military and corporate America, the sort of local school districts that Brown supposedly addressed have rarely become meaningfully integrated. In some respects, the black poor are more hopelessly concentrated in failing urban schools than ever, cut off not only from whites but from the flourishing black middle class. Kozol describes schools run almost like factories or prisons in grim detail. According to Kozol, US Schools are quite quickly becoming functionally segregated. Kozol lists the demographics of a slew of public schools in the states, named after prominent civil rights activists, whose classrooms are upwards of 97% black and Hispanic — in some cases despite being in neighborhoods that are predominantly white. It has been over 50 years since Brown vs. Board of Education. It is sad to read about the state of things today.
“One of the most disheartening experiences for those who grew up in the years when Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall were alive is to visit public schools today that bear their names, or names of other honored leaders of the integration struggles that produced the temporary progress that took place in three decades after Brown, and to find how many of these schools are bastions of contemporary segregation (Kozol 22).” As the book begins, Kozol examines the current state of segregation in urban school...
Before the decision of Brown v. Board of Education, many people accepted school segregation and, in most of the southern states, required segregation. Schools during this time were supposed to uphold the “separate but equal” standard set during the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson; however, most, if not all, of the “black” schools were not comparable to the “white” schools. The resources the “white” schools had available definitely exceed the resources given to “black” schools not only in quantity, but also in quality. Brown v. Board of Education was not the first case that assaulted the public school segregation in the south. The title of the case was shortened from Oliver Brown ET. Al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka Kansas. The official titled included reference to the other twelve cases that were started in the early 1950’s that came from South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and the District of Columbia. The case carried Oliver Brown’s name because he was the only male parent fighting for integration. The case of Brown v. Board o...
White privilege is not a figment of African American or colored people’s imagination, it is just as real as many problems in America and one privilege that wealthy and middle class white people have is the right to a decent education. Many people might not think a simple thing such as education is a privilege seeing that all students by law have to attend schools but it is, and we all know that all schools and their districts are not created equally. In Jonathan Kozol essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Education Apartheid,” he writes, “Of seeing clusters of white parents and their children each morning on the corner of a street close to school, waiting for a bus that took the children to a predominantly white school” (349) Kozol
The schools that had been made for black people were extremely poor, with very books throughout each school and classes ranged from 40 - 50 children per class. This was not the case with white people and their schools. The white peoples schools flourished with books, equipment and the classes were kept low with manageable sizes. Good teachers had been employed to teach each class, but on the other hand with black schools, teachers who did not have particularly good skills were taught, and all the teachers would also be black. One of the most famous cases of segregation that was brought to public attention was that of the Linda Brown case.
In Topeka, Kansas, the school for African-American children appeared to be equal to that of the white school. However, the school was overcr...
Bankston III, Carl and Stephen J. Caldas. "Majority African American schools and social injustice: the influence of de facto segregation on academic achievement." Social Forces, Dec. 1996, v75 n2 pp535-556.
Diversity, a word often heard growing up. In high school diversity was an issue that was pushed repeatedly. I attended a school that had a student body of over 2000 students, in which diversity was not really an issue. As time passed I found that diversity affected my life more and more. As college neared filling out applications became more of a ritual, and I found that by being born into a white middle class family would hinder my financial status rather than help it. Recently an article appeared in the Iowa State Daily, which addressed the issue of a white-only scholarship. In addition to the scholarships offered to members of the minority races, a scholarship should be offered to the members of the decreasing majority.
Published in American Educational Research Journal, this paper gives insight into how racial diversity stretches beyond educational engagement and social composition. The significant difference made by diversity-related efforts, such as hybridized racial interactions and policies is fully explored. The findings of the study presented can be generalized to the argument of institutional racism as this piece presents rationale against it. The limitations of paper is the insufficient detail regarding educational context needed to illustrate the steps institutions can take to apply diversity.
I spoke with Jamie from Cushing Public School system. She has been a teacher for 21 years. I spoke with her over the telephone on March 13, 2018. I started the conversation about diversity in the classroom, specifically about race. Jamie stated that she has some minorities in her class but she thinks that their socioeconomics background is more of an issue than their race. She went on to explain that due to the students socioeconomics background in regards to parenting or, their life style at home is affecting her student’s ability to learn.