What do politicians need to do about the poverty problem in education? Which is more important, the issue of the poor education or the poor standard of living? In the novel Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, the atrocities that plague the public school system. Kozol highlights the life of students in poverty-stricken areas that goes unnoticed by the majority of mainstream media and the general population. The conditions for these students do not only exist in their school but also in their daily lives. When Kozol had a conversation with a group of young children, they described the brutal rape and beating of one of the young boy’s eleven year old sister that had happened just “[l]ast week” (Kozol 13). The innocence of these children is being ripped from them at such a young age when most middle and upper class children would not even tolerate the death of a pet much less a sibling. These children are not only being emotionally scared but they are also being physically poisoned. The area in which they live is contaminated with lead at “’an astronomical 10,000 parts per million” as well as many other chemicals such as arsenic as well as raw sewage (11). Living conditions like this would not be tolerate for a stray animal much less a small child born into a world of poverty with little hope of working their way out of a broken system. Politicians in the area are content with looking at the numbers, statistics, and percentages that deal with money but the “politician, school board president, or business CEO would [never] dream of working” here much less send their young child (5). It is easy to criticize when one is not directly affected by what is judged. If their children were going to school in the wealthy town next door and were suddenly forced to go to the schools in East St. Louis, they would demand that the completely substandard conditions that plagued these students were to be changed immediately. When a child runs the risk of death because of the condition of the school they attend, not because of the people who attend it but the physical condition of the school, the percentages and statistics should not just be numbers with dollar signs in front of them but they should represent the human faces that they deal with. Word Count: 366
Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities strikes me as a revised and fleshed out version of the children's situation in Toni Cade Bambara's "The Lesson." One student in Kozol's novel states, "'I don't go to physics class, because my lab has no equipment...the typewriters in my typing class don't work. The women's toilets...' She makes a sour face" (Kozol 30). Similarly, the children in "The Lesson" tell Miss Moore, "'I don't even have a desk,' say Junebug. 'Do we?' 'No. And I don't get no homework neither,' says Big Butt" (Mercer Reader 401). The similarities in these children in their economic situations lends a hand in their similar reactions to questions regarding such supplies. Even the idea of ethnic separation is preserved in their minds. By this, I mean that segregation of ethnicities is a common idea among these individuals. For the children in "The Lesson," after exiting F.A.O. Schwartz, one mumbles, "white folks crazy" (404), which was mentioned when entering that part of town. Likewise Samantha in Savage Inequalities replies, when asked about what would occur if a predominately white school swapped campuses with them, "The buses going to Fairvew Heights would all be full. The buses coming to East St. Louis would be empty" (Kozol 32). It is not as though the children are incompetent in their ability to recognize the inequality in their situations either. Where Sylvia displaces her distaste in the obvious situation in anger toward something she is unable to isolate, Samantha responds in a defeated, quiet tone regarding her situation, stating "I don't know why" (32). However, the tone in the first section of Savage Inequalities differs to that of Bambara's work of literature. After the chemistry teacher speaks of the lack of textbooks, he claims to have had two students who graduate from MIT in the twenty three years of working at East St. Louis schools (28). Bambara's text ends with a more hopeful tone, where Sylvia is determined, stating, "She can run if she want to and even run faster. But ain't nobody gonna beat me at nuthin." (Bambara 405).
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What would be the best course of action be for rejuvenating East St. Louis? (real answers, please)
Are monetary differences a necessity in our world? Is something realistic just because it is ideal?
East St. Louis, in this novel, serves as a ghetto, deprived area, and “the problems of the streets in urban area… frequently spill over into public schools” (Kozol 23). The level of financial stability within the communities in this book determines the success of their students, which is contingent upon resources available to each school. The “30 to 50 years of outdated science labs” (27) at East St Louis High led to a decline in the science department’s ability to teach the students. One question to ask oneself is this: are monetary differences a necessity in our world? Schools like Fairview Heights with financial stability typically breed well-educated, successful adults, while students from East St. Louis typically work at “fast food places-Burger King, McDonald’s” (27). Any social system is contingent on some being successful and some not being successful. The world needs doctors, but the world also needs trash people. The only thing that is debatable is how those from lower income areas do not get to choose their social status and are inhibited from progressing, seeing as how “there is no exit for… the exit of East St. Louis” (39). If every school in the St. Louis area were given equal funding from the government, the school’s test scores would probably remain about the same. While each high school would have equal things, the children form the ghetto still would not have equal opportunity on the home front. A child tucked into bed at night by mommy and daddy has a great advantage over a kid kept awake all night by gunshots. A kid given every resource at home from well-to-do parents will be more successful than a kid from the ghetto who cannot afford notebooks and paper. There seems to be a sad necessity for some people to have more than others because if everyone had the same amount of things, no one would have anything, and no one would be successful.
In Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, the author explores the urban insufficiencies and inequalities between black and white communities separated by barriers of crime, poverty, and lack of education. The separation between the two groups, like in such cases as East St. Louis in southern Illinois, are constantly growing farther apart as the rich, white residents in St. Louis become wealthier as the less fortunate black communities in East St. Louis constantly lose money and funding. One of the greater causes for this is in the property itself. The streets are filled with raw sewage where playgrounds have “form[ed] an oozing lake of... tainted water” and many diseases such as cholera and typhoid fill the atmosphere due to the lack of sanitation in the area (Kozol 10). Yet at the same time, these neighborhoods in southern Illinois “[have] the highest property-tax rate in the state” (8). These economic scenarios in dire need of funds make sense in a middle class community but the governing body continues to keep the poor flooded in poverty where children play sewage infested playgrounds and mounds of trash in backyards cause many diseases in young children. The racial tensions between the two groups of impoverished blacks and wealthy whites split the two apart in resentment where governing officials sanction off blacks from white neighborhoods creating a form of modern-day segregation: “The police announced that they were shutting down the bridge. The reason they gave was that there had been some muggings in the past... Regardless of the reason, it was a decision that denied the folks in East St. Louis access to the fair” (19). When people are driven away by fear or resentment, the groups are blocked off from each other where people can not see the state of living in a run down nearly abandoned section of a city except for those that live there, and the opportunities denied by this separation create unfair inequalities to the poor, especially children with little to no future. word count: 335 1. Why are local governments allowed to place small forms of segregation on people without a checks and balance of the federal government? 2. Should whorehouses and strip clubs be allowed in poverty stricken urban areas or should they be removed or banned based on a community's standard of living?
How is this work interrelated to Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”?
The work “Savage Inequalities”, by Jonathan Kozol, outlines many of the racial and social injustices that occurred during the latter part of the 20th century in the United States. In his work, Kozol describes the terrible conditions in which black children were forced to learn in as a result of segregation throughout the country. Kozol mentions the stark differences that he observed between a white school in Boston and a segregated school in the same city. Kozol writes, “The shock of going from one of the poorest schools to one of the wealthiest schools cannot be overstated” (Kozol 2). Kozol’s words convey how black children were relegated to learn in poor conditions, while the white children supposedly had the privilege to be separated from the black children in an adequately conditioned school of their own. Kozol also describes how black people during this time were often concentrated into areas of chemical hazard or in areas that were easily flooded because their livelihood and prosperity were not viewed as important by most people. Kozol writes, “In the delta town of Tunica, Mississippi, people in the black community of Sugar Ditch live in shacks by open sewers that are commonly believed to be responsible for the high instance of liver tumors and abscesses found in children there” (Kozol 10). This quote reveals how people in the white community were not viewed as “expendable” by the government during this time, while people in the black community were. These two examples of segregation in the United States are similar to the situation described in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” because in the latter work a child is isolated from the rest of the community in order for the city to be able to experience prosperity. This is somewhat how people in the United States felt about black people during this time. Many white people during this time believed that they could only prosper if the black people were separated into their own schools and communities.
#19 Savage Inequalities pg. 1-39 Why isn’t something being done to fix this situation? How could this be changed? Jonathan Kozol in his novel Savage Inequalities outlines not only the injustice towards a certain race of people, but the injustice against an entire community in East St. Louis. Not only are the schools without proper funding for book, equipment, and teachers, this entire community has gone through major budget cuts with the mayor announcing at one point that they may have to “sell the city hall and all six fire stations to raise the needed cash” for their community (Savage Inequalities 8). This community in East St. Louis is “98 percent black, has no obstetric services, no regular trash collection, and few jobs” (7). In this town, not only does it have financial crises, it has major health concerns that cause the “children in the [buildings] [to] be poisoned” (11). The health concerns range from soil with “disturbing quantities of arsenic, mercury, and lead,” to “chemical plants in East St. Louis and adjacent towns have for decades been releasing toxins into the sewer system” (10, 9). Basically, in this town in East St. Louis you “assemble all the worst things in America—gambling, liquor, cigarettes and toxic fumes, sewage, waste disposal, prostitution—put it all together. Then you dump it on the black people” (16-17). Not only do the citizens of this community have to deal with the issue of racial injustice, they also have to deal with social class injustice on top of it. An African American student coming from poverty is less likely to succeed in life. They will be caught back in the vicious cycle of poverty and injustice. As the superintendent Dr. Parks said, “Gifted children are everywhere in East St. Louis, but their gifts are lost to poverty and turmoil and the damage done by knowing they are written off by their society” (34). These children have no hope, no dream of change. They all know that what society thinks of them and believes that no one out there cares about what happens to them, so why try? Word Count: 353
What do politicians need to do about the poverty problem in education?
ReplyDeleteWhich is more important, the issue of the poor education or the poor standard of living?
In the novel Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, the atrocities that plague the public school system. Kozol highlights the life of students in poverty-stricken areas that goes unnoticed by the majority of mainstream media and the general population. The conditions for these students do not only exist in their school but also in their daily lives. When Kozol had a conversation with a group of young children, they described the brutal rape and beating of one of the young boy’s eleven year old sister that had happened just “[l]ast week” (Kozol 13). The innocence of these children is being ripped from them at such a young age when most middle and upper class children would not even tolerate the death of a pet much less a sibling. These children are not only being emotionally scared but they are also being physically poisoned. The area in which they live is contaminated with lead at “’an astronomical 10,000 parts per million” as well as many other chemicals such as arsenic as well as raw sewage (11). Living conditions like this would not be tolerate for a stray animal much less a small child born into a world of poverty with little hope of working their way out of a broken system. Politicians in the area are content with looking at the numbers, statistics, and percentages that deal with money but the “politician, school board president, or business CEO would [never] dream of working” here much less send their young child (5). It is easy to criticize when one is not directly affected by what is judged. If their children were going to school in the wealthy town next door and were suddenly forced to go to the schools in East St. Louis, they would demand that the completely substandard conditions that plagued these students were to be changed immediately. When a child runs the risk of death because of the condition of the school they attend, not because of the people who attend it but the physical condition of the school, the percentages and statistics should not just be numbers with dollar signs in front of them but they should represent the human faces that they deal with.
Word Count: 366
Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities strikes me as a revised and fleshed out version of the children's situation in Toni Cade Bambara's "The Lesson." One student in Kozol's novel states, "'I don't go to physics class, because my lab has no equipment...the typewriters in my typing class don't work. The women's toilets...' She makes a sour face" (Kozol 30). Similarly, the children in "The Lesson" tell Miss Moore, "'I don't even have a desk,' say Junebug. 'Do we?' 'No. And I don't get no homework neither,' says Big Butt" (Mercer Reader 401). The similarities in these children in their economic situations lends a hand in their similar reactions to questions regarding such supplies. Even the idea of ethnic separation is preserved in their minds. By this, I mean that segregation of ethnicities is a common idea among these individuals. For the children in "The Lesson," after exiting F.A.O. Schwartz, one mumbles, "white folks crazy" (404), which was mentioned when entering that part of town. Likewise Samantha in Savage Inequalities replies, when asked about what would occur if a predominately white school swapped campuses with them, "The buses going to Fairvew Heights would all be full. The buses coming to East St. Louis would be empty" (Kozol 32). It is not as though the children are incompetent in their ability to recognize the inequality in their situations either. Where Sylvia displaces her distaste in the obvious situation in anger toward something she is unable to isolate, Samantha responds in a defeated, quiet tone regarding her situation, stating "I don't know why" (32). However, the tone in the first section of Savage Inequalities differs to that of Bambara's work of literature. After the chemistry teacher speaks of the lack of textbooks, he claims to have had two students who graduate from MIT in the twenty three years of working at East St. Louis schools (28). Bambara's text ends with a more hopeful tone, where Sylvia is determined, stating, "She can run if she want to and even run faster. But ain't nobody gonna beat me at nuthin." (Bambara 405).
ReplyDelete{346}
What would be the best course of action be for rejuvenating East St. Louis? (real answers, please)
Doesn't this remind you of Love Canal?
Are monetary differences a necessity in our world?
ReplyDeleteIs something realistic just because it is ideal?
East St. Louis, in this novel, serves as a ghetto, deprived area, and “the problems of the streets in urban area… frequently spill over into public schools” (Kozol 23). The level of financial stability within the communities in this book determines the success of their students, which is contingent upon resources available to each school. The “30 to 50 years of outdated science labs” (27) at East St Louis High led to a decline in the science department’s ability to teach the students. One question to ask oneself is this: are monetary differences a necessity in our world? Schools like Fairview Heights with financial stability typically breed well-educated, successful adults, while students from East St. Louis typically work at “fast food places-Burger King, McDonald’s” (27). Any social system is contingent on some being successful and some not being successful. The world needs doctors, but the world also needs trash people. The only thing that is debatable is how those from lower income areas do not get to choose their social status and are inhibited from progressing, seeing as how “there is no exit for… the exit of East St. Louis” (39).
If every school in the St. Louis area were given equal funding from the government, the school’s test scores would probably remain about the same. While each high school would have equal things, the children form the ghetto still would not have equal opportunity on the home front. A child tucked into bed at night by mommy and daddy has a great advantage over a kid kept awake all night by gunshots. A kid given every resource at home from well-to-do parents will be more successful than a kid from the ghetto who cannot afford notebooks and paper. There seems to be a sad necessity for some people to have more than others because if everyone had the same amount of things, no one would have anything, and no one would be successful.
Word Count: 324
In Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, the author explores the urban insufficiencies and inequalities between black and white communities separated by barriers of crime, poverty, and lack of education. The separation between the two groups, like in such cases as East St. Louis in southern Illinois, are constantly growing farther apart as the rich, white residents in St. Louis become wealthier as the less fortunate black communities in East St. Louis constantly lose money and funding. One of the greater causes for this is in the property itself. The streets are filled with raw sewage where playgrounds have “form[ed] an oozing lake of... tainted water” and many diseases such as cholera and typhoid fill the atmosphere due to the lack of sanitation in the area (Kozol 10). Yet at the same time, these neighborhoods in southern Illinois “[have] the highest property-tax rate in the state” (8). These economic scenarios in dire need of funds make sense in a middle class community but the governing body continues to keep the poor flooded in poverty where children play sewage infested playgrounds and mounds of trash in backyards cause many diseases in young children. The racial tensions between the two groups of impoverished blacks and wealthy whites split the two apart in resentment where governing officials sanction off blacks from white neighborhoods creating a form of modern-day segregation: “The police announced that they were shutting down the bridge. The reason they gave was that there had been some muggings in the past... Regardless of the reason, it was a decision that denied the folks in East St. Louis access to the fair” (19). When people are driven away by fear or resentment, the groups are blocked off from each other where people can not see the state of living in a run down nearly abandoned section of a city except for those that live there, and the opportunities denied by this separation create unfair inequalities to the poor, especially children with little to no future. word count: 335
ReplyDelete1. Why are local governments allowed to place small forms of segregation on people without a checks and balance of the federal government?
2. Should whorehouses and strip clubs be allowed in poverty stricken urban areas or should they be removed or banned based on a community's standard of living?
How is this work interrelated to Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”?
ReplyDeleteThe work “Savage Inequalities”, by Jonathan Kozol, outlines many of the racial and social injustices that occurred during the latter part of the 20th century in the United States. In his work, Kozol describes the terrible conditions in which black children were forced to learn in as a result of segregation throughout the country. Kozol mentions the stark differences that he observed between a white school in Boston and a segregated school in the same city. Kozol writes, “The shock of going from one of the poorest schools to one of the wealthiest schools cannot be overstated” (Kozol 2). Kozol’s words convey how black children were relegated to learn in poor conditions, while the white children supposedly had the privilege to be separated from the black children in an adequately conditioned school of their own. Kozol also describes how black people during this time were often concentrated into areas of chemical hazard or in areas that were easily flooded because their livelihood and prosperity were not viewed as important by most people. Kozol writes, “In the delta town of Tunica, Mississippi, people in the black community of Sugar Ditch live in shacks by open sewers that are commonly believed to be responsible for the high instance of liver tumors and abscesses found in children there” (Kozol 10). This quote reveals how people in the white community were not viewed as “expendable” by the government during this time, while people in the black community were. These two examples of segregation in the United States are similar to the situation described in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” because in the latter work a child is isolated from the rest of the community in order for the city to be able to experience prosperity. This is somewhat how people in the United States felt about black people during this time. Many white people during this time believed that they could only prosper if the black people were separated into their own schools and communities.
Word Count: 333
#19 Savage Inequalities pg. 1-39
ReplyDeleteWhy isn’t something being done to fix this situation?
How could this be changed?
Jonathan Kozol in his novel Savage Inequalities outlines not only the injustice towards a certain race of people, but the injustice against an entire community in East St. Louis. Not only are the schools without proper funding for book, equipment, and teachers, this entire community has gone through major budget cuts with the mayor announcing at one point that they may have to “sell the city hall and all six fire stations to raise the needed cash” for their community (Savage Inequalities 8). This community in East St. Louis is “98 percent black, has no obstetric services, no regular trash collection, and few jobs” (7). In this town, not only does it have financial crises, it has major health concerns that cause the “children in the [buildings] [to] be poisoned” (11). The health concerns range from soil with “disturbing quantities of arsenic, mercury, and lead,” to “chemical plants in East St. Louis and adjacent towns have for decades been releasing toxins into the sewer system” (10, 9). Basically, in this town in East St. Louis you “assemble all the worst things in America—gambling, liquor, cigarettes and toxic fumes, sewage, waste disposal, prostitution—put it all together. Then you dump it on the black people” (16-17). Not only do the citizens of this community have to deal with the issue of racial injustice, they also have to deal with social class injustice on top of it. An African American student coming from poverty is less likely to succeed in life. They will be caught back in the vicious cycle of poverty and injustice. As the superintendent Dr. Parks said, “Gifted children are everywhere in East St. Louis, but their gifts are lost to poverty and turmoil and the damage done by knowing they are written off by their society” (34). These children have no hope, no dream of change. They all know that what society thinks of them and believes that no one out there cares about what happens to them, so why try?
Word Count: 353
Is this still relevant now? Has anything changed since the 80's? Yes. No.
ReplyDelete