The Shame Of The Nation Summary

Barbara E Naranjo

Dr. Krystal Beamon

Sociology 4341

2 October 2014

The Shame of the Nation

The Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol is a book about the education system in our

country. In this book, I learned that there are schools that don’t have the essential resources to

provide each student with books or chairs. In his book, Kozol educates the reader as to the

health of our public school system. In our public schools, American children are not offered the

same opportunities to a good education; our schools are highly segregated between privileged

kids and minorities, and our public schools prioritize state tests as more important than the well

being of the child.

A good education has a price; the price is higher property tax and a great

job. A job that
would guarantee a good education for your kids, and when public schools do not meet standards,
they are able to afford a private school because of their high income. Most Americans cannot
afford a $400,000 house and they don’t have a well paying career.Typically, lower middle class
children would be stuck in public schools with low standards and they would not be offered the
same opportunities to a good education as kids who live in affluent suburban towns.
We can all imagine that the schools of an affluent neighbourhood are clean, have exceptional
teachers and well educated principals. We can also assume that a superintendent of an affluent
school district wouldn’t represent his students as robots. However, districts in ghettoized
neighbourhoods have exactly referenced their students as robots. Such as the case of the head of
a Chicago school district who made this statement: “Did you ever stop to think that these robots
will never burglarise your home” (Kozol, 97).

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The superintendent was referring to a method of teaching known as the Skinnerian Method.
The Skinnerian Method is a type of teaching that institutionalises the child by preventing them
from speaking or making noises. As you might guess the Skinnerian method is highly criticised.
In the article Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol the author gives us many stories of the
inequalities in our public system. One of the examples that Kozol gives us about inequalities is
when he mentions Maryland; a state that argued that 100 percent equality was too expensive.
“The goal, it said, was 75 percent equality meaning that the poorest districts should be granted
no less than three quarters of the funds at the disposal of the average district. “ (Savage
Inequalities). This statement clearly proves that American children are not provided with the
same opportunities equally. Another example in this article that truly stroked me is the statement
of a fifth grader from an elementary school in Anacostia. She told Kozol that if somebody would
giver her money for her school she would rebuild her school so she wouldn’t feel ashamed
anymore. “Fix the hole in the principal's office. Buy doors for the toilet stalls in the girls'
bathroom. Fix the ceiling in this room. It looks like somebody went up and peed over our heads.
Make it a beautiful clean building. Make it pretty. Way it is, I feel ashamed"(Savage
Inequalities).
I feel ashamed hearing these stories from American children, children that do not deserve the
inequality of education that they are receiving. I cannot comprehend that our nation would do
this to our children. It is even more devastating and disturbing knowing that many third world
countries have better education nationwide that our own country. Kozol mentions Cuba as a
reference and he says that 20 years ago Cuba resembled the Skinnerian approach; “but in the
Cuban schools the students were allowed to question me, and did so with much charm and
curiosity, and teachers broke the pace of lessons plans from time to time to comment on a child’s
question” (Kozol, 68). Cuba, being a third world country, used the totalitarian effectiveness but

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allowed their students to interact with other students and the teacher, unlike the schools of New
York where 8 year olds were not allowed to talk in their class rooms.

I was raised in Cuba with a similar system like the Skinnerian method, but like Kozol

mentioned Cuban kids were allowed to interact with the teachers. I knew that Cuba had the best

education in Latin America, but in my mind I had no doubt that the United States had the best

education in the world. My mentality soon changed. At the age of 11 I came to the United States

and that’s when I familiarize myself with the American teaching technique. On my first day of

school I noticed that the majority of the kids were behind in almost every subject. With the help

of my teachers I was able to understand and speak the English language within a year, but every

time the state test came they would put me in ESL classes for that week, because my teachers did

not wanted to risk their performance percentage. In these ESL classes I had the worst education

experience. Most of the kids where Mexicans a few Europeans, and two Panamanians, together

we spoke different languages and the teacher spent the whole week teaching us how to say, “I

need to go the bathroom”. In her class there was no need to teach reading, writing, history

or
geography, none of these subjects are important for kids who are in ESL.
In the article Savages Inequalities, Elizabeth a friend of Kozol said that all people know that
this nation is very wealthy. When kids see themselves in an unfair education system, our nation
sends a message to our minority children. A message that says that they are ugly, and that they
need to be crowed into ugly places, with ugly schools, and an ugly education.
The more minority people that move into an affluent area the more of the whites move out,
this is white flight. Upper middle class suburban or other privileged areas make it almost
impossible for minorities and whites to attend school together. Our schools are highly
segregated between these privileged kids and minorities. In The Shame of the Nation one of the
parents even told the principle that once she found out that her school was a minority school she

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decided to not put her children there. “I could not send my child to your school when I
discovered that it was minority, would you send your children to your school” (Kozol, 303).
Most parents of the upper middle class would not allow that their children attend certain
school in which the majority of students are the minority. Bush attempted to solve our school’s
educational issues but his attempt failed and his last attempt to fix our school system made it
worst. One of his plans to fix our school system was to allow children to be able to transfer
within school districts. It sounded like a great plan, but he forgot that most parents were not
willing to give a child from an unprivileged family their kids spot. Because of these reasons
schools in the affluent areas started to make the transfer very difficult by giving non mandatory
test, and interviews to the kids, after all that, it would be determined if they would accept the
child or not.

Consequence to this was that only 1% of the kids that qualified to transferred were

able to transfer to a better school.

Another example of segregation and inequality is the mini documentary trading schools

showed by Oprah; we see the huge disadvantages and advantages from two different high

schools from Chicago, which are only 30 miles away from each other. Harper the low-income

school was a complete disaster compared to the higher income school. Watching this video all I

could think about was “Why?” Why are we doing this? The inequalities from these two schools

are not only shocking but also extremely sad. Like Kozol said a segregated education in

America is unacceptable. “This nations needs to be a family, and a family sits down for its dinner

at a table, and we all deserve a place together at the table. And our children deserve to have a

place together in their schools and classrooms, and they need to have that opportunity while

they’re still children, while they’re in those years of innocence”(Kozol, 316). Because of those

reasons and many more we have the same segregation in our schools today as we did 30 years

ago.

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I remember going to Fulmore middle school in Austin TX, the first thing I noticed was

that
almost everyone was Hispanic and black. I was only 11 years old, but I realize that there was
something wrong. If I was truly in America where were the white kids? As a kid I had this
picture in my head of what America looked like and I didn’t really picture all Hispanic and
blacks. I imagined all whites, and shiny schools, with lots of time for recess. Just like in the
movies I used to watch back home. Little by little I started to realize what the problem was, I was
a minority.
It’s not enough that many of our American children are being cheated out of their education,
but they are also mentally drained from the amount of pressure teacher put these kids when state
test begin. Principals, teachers and superintendents all go insane when state test come around the
corner. They do everything in their power to score higher on these tests, not minding the mental
well being of the children nor the teachers. In some cities the standardized examinations start as
early as kindergarten. Kids that are only four years old some do not know how to hold a pencil
nor do they know the basis of test taking. “Other children in the district, said The Times, cried
and wet their pants out of frustration” (Kozol 114).
These kids are even deprived from recess, to make more time for cramping material for the
states test. Most of these kids do not have anywhere else to play expect the ladder from their
apartments, and having recess is the only time they have in which they can safely play with other
kids their age.
In some schools preparation for the tests control more than a quarter of the year, and on top
of all the preparation for state exams the students had to take an assessment test for literacy every
eight weeks. Meaning that with all the preparation and assessments, this schools do not have the
time to teach geography, history, and science simply because they are not tested on the stakes
examinations. This test mandated holdover policies that have a huge impact on the kids. “Every

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time we hold a child over, we are substantially reduction the odds of that child graduating
anytime in the future” (Kozol 117).
Even though of all the political garbage that schools have to deal with Kozol, clearly states
that there are schools out there that are happy within the poor neighbourhoods. Schools that are
label as not politically correct, but they are happy. In these schools you will find kids who do
have their recess, and carve pumpkins for Halloween, and teachers who teach because they love
to educate. “In these settings, teachers do not tend to let concerns about our nations competition
in the global marketplace intrude upon the more important needs of childhood, such as the right
to find some happiness in being children” (Kozol 286).
I strongly believe that our educational system can change if we can all think of a solution. I
do not have the solution for these problems, but maybe we can start by giving the same amount
of money to each school in that district. This way all schools will be founded equally regardless
of SES and property taxes. I really enjoyed reading this book, and I learned many interesting
facts about our education system, like the fact that lower income kids receive a lousy education.
I hope that one day our public education system would change for the better. Thanks to this book
I now know that American children are not offered the same opportunities to a good education;
our schools are highly segregated between privileged kids and minorities, and our public schools
prioritize state tests as more important than the well being of the child.