Scary. This was the first word that popped into my head while reading this chapter. What scares me the most is the fact that this book was written in 1991, with facts and statistics from the 80’s, yet nothing has changed. If anything some of the children now have less than the children did in 1988. Yes, being an education major can make these numbers hit home and be even more frightening, but to think that poverty and race still keep children from a sufficient education is the true fear factor. “These are Americans. Why do we reduce them to this beggary-and why particularly in education” (Kozol 41). This simple question should only require a simple answer. Many people when asked would probably say race, or economic standings. That may be the answer on the surface, but why are we really putting children in a position that they cannot overcome. We are taught in our education classes that if a child is in a position of poverty, a lot of the time they are going to try and fight harder to get out of that position than they will to stay in it. So why do we put children in a school where they cannot work to get out of that position? Yet this happens because we do not know what else to do with them. “The teacher is not particularly gentle” (44). This person was asked to teach in a school of mostly black students, she does not change her material in a way that would change with the times of her classroom. She still reads the books where “Mary is white. Old Mother Hubbard is white. … Only Mother Hubbard’s dog is black” (45). And books where the “master is white and the sheep are black” (45). This has the students learn about superior whites, and basically puts them in the same position, as their families are already in. These young children will not be able to break out of this world, if their teachers do not try and change with the times. “Students begin Bethune in kindergarten and remain here through eighth grade. Eighth grade graduation…is regarded as a time for celebration, much as twelfth grade graduation would be celebrated in the suburbs” (47). This puts these children in a place where succeeding is going to be a challenge. They do not have the chance to go past eighth grade in their district and many of them will not travel a further distance just to go to school. Years ago many people had to stop school in eighth grade because they had to go to work for their families, but now a days children are expected to go through high school. It is looked down upon when they dropout so why is it okay for a school system to not have the resources available for these children to go past eighth grade. I think it is because they have low expectations for these children and do not think that they can overcome adversary. “They see the poorer children as a tide of mediocrity that threatens to engulf them” (61). When the parents of these children’s classmates see them as a problem, their classmates are going to have the same thought. A child learns by what they see their parents do, and for a child in poverty a parent can be hard to come-by. I know of many children that do not live with their parents, yet they seem to be some of the smartest in their classes. To the other adults and even some teachers, they do not think that these children will succeed because without a parent you are “destined to fail.”
Does Kozol make enough connections to other types of poverty in his novel? Is rural poverty lesser than city poverty?
In the novel Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, the subtitle of the novel is “Children in America’s Schools,” however this does not seem to be a fair representation of schools found throughout the majority of the United States. The first mention of schools outside of the urban, city atmosphere comes seventy-four pages into the work. It also was only given half a page of recognition. Kozol clearly states that “the focus in this book is on the inner-city schools” however the inner city does not completely encompass “America’s Schools” (74). It is easy to say that race is the defining factor that divides poverty and therefore the funding for public schools but he even states that there are areas in other regions of the country where the impoverished exist in situations of equal poverty where people are “desperately poor and very isolated” (74). Kozol attempts to explain how there is added insult to the fact that the children in the city are “often just adjacent to the nation’s richest districts” and that this adds insult to their situation, but something worth noting is that these kids can witness the possibilities. Kozol would disagree with this being a motivating factor because the kids are broken before that passion can be lit within them. What he does not see is that rural poverty is so isolated that many of them do not even know there are alternatives to how they live. The kids in the inner city are not given the same opportunities that the rich are, that is quite true, but to discredit the rest of poverty stricken areas as completely different situations and therefore not part of “America’s Schools” is in its own way discriminatory. Kozol should be careful in making generalizations about poverty and the American public school system when he fails to address all the situations that exist in poverty in relation to schooling. Word Count: 316
I have never been more angry or upset about a novel until now. This was a true eye opener to what happens in some schools in America. Kozol shows us the world of many inner city children in Chicago that live in poverty and are required to attend such dilapidated buildings that can be scarcely called a school. It was interesting to see that funding alone is not the only problem plaguing these schools. Since better funding schools can pay higher salaries, they attract the younger better teachers. These poor inner city schools such as Mary McLeod Bethune are left with what’s left. The principal describes one of the teachers saying, “He’s not used to children of his age and can’t control them” (Kozol 47). Many of the teachers that are left truly have lost all inspiration as a teacher and are their just to receive a pay check. One of the counselors when asked about the literacy of his students responds, “We’re a general high school. We have second and third grade readers . . . . We hope to do better, but we won’t die if we don’t” (53). This seems to be one of the greatest obstacles facing the students within these schools. Many teachers have already given up on the students before giving them a try. How can one expect a student to care about their education if their teacher does not? As if to compound this problem, the local government has also given up on these students. Governor Thompson said, “We can’t keep throwing money into a black hole” (53). What type of governor would call a child’s education a “black hole”? This is a sad situation. It’s as if they have given up all responsibility for these children. They no longer feel guilty and could care less about their future. This is oddly reminiscent of the people in the town of Omelas who have given up any trace of responsibility for the abused child hid within the basement. What can be done to remedy these horrid situations? Is there a way for a child who was born into a poverty-stricken family to ever have a chance?
When reading Jonathon Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, among the overwhelming number of problems found in the public education system, this chapter focuses primarily on those in South Chicago, it raises the question of what do students in underachieving schools, what some consider “daytime warehouses for inferior students…a bottomless pit” (Kozol 72), actually learning? The best answer anyone can provide, apparently, is not much. Being under staffed, over filled, and poorly provided for are the tools of inequality that Kozol argues is designed to perpetuate racism and suppress the “potential in all children” (67). Although it paled in comparison to the schools Kozol visits in many respects, the school I attended was considered a “failing school” to the point that the administration of the school was soon turned over into the hands of the federal government and a significant number of teachers either fired or those with tenure were filtered into one of the twenty-seven elementary schools or the other two high schools being seized. When you walked our halls, you saw teachers who taught classes without outdated or no equipment and “vocational” courses like the ones Kozol in place to “put emphasis on filling entry level jobs” that hoped to be “ pragmatic and do with them what [they could]” (75). The results were a fifty-eight percent graduation rate where maybe eighty of our one hundred fifty graduates could read at a high school competency level. Fifty of us took the SAT. Thirty or so went to college, most of us white or on the “gifted” track. Twenty others had children before graduation. I agree with Kozol that a system that tries to find an acceptable place for students in society rather than try to help them achieve something in the world merely enacts a caste system based on prejudice and injustice. Kozol says “certain realities – race and class and caste – are there and they remain” (81). Instead of a system that breeds corruption and neglect like those embracing theses “realities” as unavoidable, and even advantageous to their own interests, what places like South Chicago and my alma mater need are the resources to provide a valuable education, but more importantly, someone to invest an interest in justice and to care about the possible heights every single student could achieve if given a truly equal opportunity to succeed. [387] If a child is capable of grasping the concept of injustice, how can an adult be so blind to it? If this kind of inequality permeates throughout the educational system, what does that mean to the potential of the country as a whole?
Savage Inequalities Chapter two of Savage Inequalities talks about the children and education system in Chicago. Although these schools are also underfunded, the situation in Chicago is slightly different than that of East St. Louis. In Chicago the health hazards are not as big of a problem. Instead, gangs and the drop out rate are the more pressing issues. It seems that the issue always goes back to money but it was said that money is not the only problem. Education Secretary William Bennett is quoted as advocating, “Money is not primarily ‘what works’ in education” (78). But money is a factor in the cycle that keeps the poor children of urban Chicago from staying in school and going to college and being successful. These kids are forced to learn in buildings that are not fit to be used. One of the schools has to ration toilet paper, a basic amenity that should never be withheld from any child. But since money is the driving force behind everything, and nothing can be done without it, 6 year olds are forced to go without it. To live in a society that does not see a need to provide such basic things takes a toll on a child. Kozol mentioned children knowing and realizing things that adults do not. Children know that the conditions that they are subjected to are substandard. They know that the quality of their materials, and even their teachers would be completely unacceptable in a richer neighborhood. They start to feel like they do not matter, that their lives and well-being is not important to anyone. Just the feeling one would get from knowing that nobody cares enough to provide you with adequate, up to date books, or even toilet paper, breeds low self-esteem and an almost non-existent sense of self-worth. That’s why these children turn to gangs, and get pregnant early. For corporate CEO’s to write them off before they even get a chance to dream, and say they are only going to be good enough to do menial jobs, is condescending and almost dehumanizing. These children are treated as less than human, merely future workers, or felons. [361]
I do believe that Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities proves Thomas Hobbes' claim in "On the State of Nature." Hobbes believes that humans naturally act based on three principles: competition, diffidence, and glory (Mercer Reader 475). Yet, Hobbes claims that "during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in the condition which is called war....Where there is no common power, there is no law: where there is now law, no justice" (475, 477). Kozol's argument in the second chapter of her novel is based on the fact that the government compels one to attend a public school, or, if one has the capital, a private school. The public schools, which are funded by the district's taxpayers lead to inequalities in funding. Schools, per year, spend "in Illinois from #2,100 on a child in the poorest district to above $10,000 in the richest" (Kozol 57). It is the skew of funding that leads to the unequal opportunities of children in states. Kozol claims that "the state, by requiring attendance but refusing to require equity, effectively require inequality" (56). This is where the loss of a common power occurs. By forcing a disproportion of currency toward public schools, each human is no longer on common ground. It is when this unequal footing occurs that injustice occurs. Aristotle claims that when harm is brought upon a community through an individual (or group), from choice, "the person is unjust and vicious" (Nichomachean Ethics, 1135B, 26). Those who are part of the legislature who vote to continue this state of living choose to continue their path resort to a state of spiritedness and desire, where they force all of their passions and presuppositions toward the idea of defending his/her family and friends. As Aristotle flatly states, "the worst person is the one who makes use of vice in relation to himself and toward his friends, while the best person is not the one who makes use of virtue in relation to himself, but the one who does so toward someone else, for this is a difficult task" (1130a, 7-9).
{352}
How would one reach a balance in this matter of unequal justice?
Is justice measured in net worth when it comes to the decisions made by a government?
Why do we always point the finger at someone else? To remove any guilt and responsibility?
How can we fix it, since the idea of “choice” obviously does not?
The whole chapter showed one individual shifting responsibility from one person or department to another. Nobody was willing to step up and accept the responsibility and challenge at fixing the numerous problems plaguing the poverty-stricken black public schools with extremely scarce resources for teachers, supplies, books, and fixing the “existing gulf between the richest and the poorest schools” (Kozol 55). Even the students pick up on it and, while ripping up a dictionary given to him, says that for the next student, “that’s their problem” that it will be ripped up because of him (65). They say that the huge dividing social canyon between the rich white class and the poor black class “makes no difference,” for the black students with crippled reading levels “aren’t going anywhere” (52). Every aspect of the school system (for the poor) in the Chicago area is accomplishing only one goal: “to work backwards” (53). I have to say, if I were in there situation, I would be a dropout statistic, because the quality of and efforts put into their education are so dismal and lacking that I would think staying in school was a waste of time—there are “two or three ‘study halls’ a day…[where] ‘not much studying goes on’” (53). I would think it a waste of time and only delay my getting into the “real” world and acquiring skills that could help me get a job later—Kozol says the odds of learning job-skills on the street is more likely than or the same as if a kid completes school (59). I am reminded of King’s statement about how “‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never’” and “justice too long delayed is justice denied” (King 379). In the case of East St. Louis, it seems the justice denied was a result of “wait” and “fix your own problem”; but it shocks me how stark and obvious the segregation and racism rule the system in Chicago. In their case, their justice was blatantly denied—there was no “wait”, it was simply “no, never”. This is the time when some one or some group needs to rise up and heal the wounds of injustice.
Scary. This was the first word that popped into my head while reading this chapter. What scares me the most is the fact that this book was written in 1991, with facts and statistics from the 80’s, yet nothing has changed. If anything some of the children now have less than the children did in 1988. Yes, being an education major can make these numbers hit home and be even more frightening, but to think that poverty and race still keep children from a sufficient education is the true fear factor. “These are Americans. Why do we reduce them to this beggary-and why particularly in education” (Kozol 41). This simple question should only require a simple answer. Many people when asked would probably say race, or economic standings. That may be the answer on the surface, but why are we really putting children in a position that they cannot overcome. We are taught in our education classes that if a child is in a position of poverty, a lot of the time they are going to try and fight harder to get out of that position than they will to stay in it. So why do we put children in a school where they cannot work to get out of that position? Yet this happens because we do not know what else to do with them. “The teacher is not particularly gentle” (44). This person was asked to teach in a school of mostly black students, she does not change her material in a way that would change with the times of her classroom. She still reads the books where “Mary is white. Old Mother Hubbard is white. … Only Mother Hubbard’s dog is black” (45). And books where the “master is white and the sheep are black” (45). This has the students learn about superior whites, and basically puts them in the same position, as their families are already in. These young children will not be able to break out of this world, if their teachers do not try and change with the times. “Students begin Bethune in kindergarten and remain here through eighth grade. Eighth grade graduation…is regarded as a time for celebration, much as twelfth grade graduation would be celebrated in the suburbs” (47). This puts these children in a place where succeeding is going to be a challenge. They do not have the chance to go past eighth grade in their district and many of them will not travel a further distance just to go to school. Years ago many people had to stop school in eighth grade because they had to go to work for their families, but now a days children are expected to go through high school. It is looked down upon when they dropout so why is it okay for a school system to not have the resources available for these children to go past eighth grade. I think it is because they have low expectations for these children and do not think that they can overcome adversary. “They see the poorer children as a tide of mediocrity that threatens to engulf them” (61). When the parents of these children’s classmates see them as a problem, their classmates are going to have the same thought. A child learns by what they see their parents do, and for a child in poverty a parent can be hard to come-by. I know of many children that do not live with their parents, yet they seem to be some of the smartest in their classes. To the other adults and even some teachers, they do not think that these children will succeed because without a parent you are “destined to fail.”
ReplyDeleteWord Count: 616
Does Kozol make enough connections to other types of poverty in his novel?
ReplyDeleteIs rural poverty lesser than city poverty?
In the novel Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, the subtitle of the novel is “Children in America’s Schools,” however this does not seem to be a fair representation of schools found throughout the majority of the United States. The first mention of schools outside of the urban, city atmosphere comes seventy-four pages into the work. It also was only given half a page of recognition. Kozol clearly states that “the focus in this book is on the inner-city schools” however the inner city does not completely encompass “America’s Schools” (74). It is easy to say that race is the defining factor that divides poverty and therefore the funding for public schools but he even states that there are areas in other regions of the country where the impoverished exist in situations of equal poverty where people are “desperately poor and very isolated” (74). Kozol attempts to explain how there is added insult to the fact that the children in the city are “often just adjacent to the nation’s richest districts” and that this adds insult to their situation, but something worth noting is that these kids can witness the possibilities. Kozol would disagree with this being a motivating factor because the kids are broken before that passion can be lit within them. What he does not see is that rural poverty is so isolated that many of them do not even know there are alternatives to how they live. The kids in the inner city are not given the same opportunities that the rich are, that is quite true, but to discredit the rest of poverty stricken areas as completely different situations and therefore not part of “America’s Schools” is in its own way discriminatory. Kozol should be careful in making generalizations about poverty and the American public school system when he fails to address all the situations that exist in poverty in relation to schooling.
Word Count: 316
I have never been more angry or upset about a novel until now. This was a true eye opener to what happens in some schools in America. Kozol shows us the world of many inner city children in Chicago that live in poverty and are required to attend such dilapidated buildings that can be scarcely called a school. It was interesting to see that funding alone is not the only problem plaguing these schools. Since better funding schools can pay higher salaries, they attract the younger better teachers. These poor inner city schools such as Mary McLeod Bethune are left with what’s left. The principal describes one of the teachers saying, “He’s not used to children of his age and can’t control them” (Kozol 47). Many of the teachers that are left truly have lost all inspiration as a teacher and are their just to receive a pay check. One of the counselors when asked about the literacy of his students responds, “We’re a general high school. We have second and third grade readers . . . . We hope to do better, but we won’t die if we don’t” (53). This seems to be one of the greatest obstacles facing the students within these schools. Many teachers have already given up on the students before giving them a try. How can one expect a student to care about their education if their teacher does not? As if to compound this problem, the local government has also given up on these students. Governor Thompson said, “We can’t keep throwing money into a black hole” (53). What type of governor would call a child’s education a “black hole”? This is a sad situation. It’s as if they have given up all responsibility for these children. They no longer feel guilty and could care less about their future. This is oddly reminiscent of the people in the town of Omelas who have given up any trace of responsibility for the abused child hid within the basement. What can be done to remedy these horrid situations? Is there a way for a child who was born into a poverty-stricken family to ever have a chance?
ReplyDeleteWord Count: 362
When reading Jonathon Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, among the overwhelming number of problems found in the public education system, this chapter focuses primarily on those in South Chicago, it raises the question of what do students in underachieving schools, what some consider “daytime warehouses for inferior students…a bottomless pit” (Kozol 72), actually learning? The best answer anyone can provide, apparently, is not much. Being under staffed, over filled, and poorly provided for are the tools of inequality that Kozol argues is designed to perpetuate racism and suppress the “potential in all children” (67). Although it paled in comparison to the schools Kozol visits in many respects, the school I attended was considered a “failing school” to the point that the administration of the school was soon turned over into the hands of the federal government and a significant number of teachers either fired or those with tenure were filtered into one of the twenty-seven elementary schools or the other two high schools being seized. When you walked our halls, you saw teachers who taught classes without outdated or no equipment and “vocational” courses like the ones Kozol in place to “put emphasis on filling entry level jobs” that hoped to be “ pragmatic and do with them what [they could]” (75). The results were a fifty-eight percent graduation rate where maybe eighty of our one hundred fifty graduates could read at a high school competency level. Fifty of us took the SAT. Thirty or so went to college, most of us white or on the “gifted” track. Twenty others had children before graduation. I agree with Kozol that a system that tries to find an acceptable place for students in society rather than try to help them achieve something in the world merely enacts a caste system based on prejudice and injustice. Kozol says “certain realities – race and class and caste – are there and they remain” (81). Instead of a system that breeds corruption and neglect like those embracing theses “realities” as unavoidable, and even advantageous to their own interests, what places like South Chicago and my alma mater need are the resources to provide a valuable education, but more importantly, someone to invest an interest in justice and to care about the possible heights every single student could achieve if given a truly equal opportunity to succeed.
ReplyDelete[387]
If a child is capable of grasping the concept of injustice, how can an adult be so blind to it?
If this kind of inequality permeates throughout the educational system, what does that mean to the potential of the country as a whole?
Savage Inequalities
ReplyDeleteChapter two of Savage Inequalities talks about the children and education system in Chicago. Although these schools are also underfunded, the situation in Chicago is slightly different than that of East St. Louis. In Chicago the health hazards are not as big of a problem. Instead, gangs and the drop out rate are the more pressing issues. It seems that the issue always goes back to money but it was said that money is not the only problem. Education Secretary William Bennett is quoted as advocating, “Money is not primarily ‘what works’ in education” (78). But money is a factor in the cycle that keeps the poor children of urban Chicago from staying in school and going to college and being successful. These kids are forced to learn in buildings that are not fit to be used. One of the schools has to ration toilet paper, a basic amenity that should never be withheld from any child. But since money is the driving force behind everything, and nothing can be done without it, 6 year olds are forced to go without it. To live in a society that does not see a need to provide such basic things takes a toll on a child. Kozol mentioned children knowing and realizing things that adults do not. Children know that the conditions that they are subjected to are substandard. They know that the quality of their materials, and even their teachers would be completely unacceptable in a richer neighborhood. They start to feel like they do not matter, that their lives and well-being is not important to anyone. Just the feeling one would get from knowing that nobody cares enough to provide you with adequate, up to date books, or even toilet paper, breeds low self-esteem and an almost non-existent sense of self-worth. That’s why these children turn to gangs, and get pregnant early. For corporate CEO’s to write them off before they even get a chance to dream, and say they are only going to be good enough to do menial jobs, is condescending and almost dehumanizing. These children are treated as less than human, merely future workers, or felons.
[361]
I do believe that Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities proves Thomas Hobbes' claim in "On the State of Nature." Hobbes believes that humans naturally act based on three principles: competition, diffidence, and glory (Mercer Reader 475). Yet, Hobbes claims that "during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in the condition which is called war....Where there is no common power, there is no law: where there is now law, no justice" (475, 477). Kozol's argument in the second chapter of her novel is based on the fact that the government compels one to attend a public school, or, if one has the capital, a private school. The public schools, which are funded by the district's taxpayers lead to inequalities in funding. Schools, per year, spend "in Illinois from #2,100 on a child in the poorest district to above $10,000 in the richest" (Kozol 57). It is the skew of funding that leads to the unequal opportunities of children in states. Kozol claims that "the state, by requiring attendance but refusing to require equity, effectively require inequality" (56). This is where the loss of a common power occurs. By forcing a disproportion of currency toward public schools, each human is no longer on common ground. It is when this unequal footing occurs that injustice occurs. Aristotle claims that when harm is brought upon a community through an individual (or group), from choice, "the person is unjust and vicious" (Nichomachean Ethics, 1135B, 26). Those who are part of the legislature who vote to continue this state of living choose to continue their path resort to a state of spiritedness and desire, where they force all of their passions and presuppositions toward the idea of defending his/her family and friends. As Aristotle flatly states, "the worst person is the one who makes use of vice in relation to himself and toward his friends, while the best person is not the one who makes use of virtue in relation to himself, but the one who does so toward someone else, for this is a difficult task" (1130a, 7-9).
ReplyDelete{352}
How would one reach a balance in this matter of unequal justice?
Is justice measured in net worth when it comes to the decisions made by a government?
Why do we always point the finger at someone else? To remove any guilt and responsibility?
ReplyDeleteHow can we fix it, since the idea of “choice” obviously does not?
The whole chapter showed one individual shifting responsibility from one person or department to another. Nobody was willing to step up and accept the responsibility and challenge at fixing the numerous problems plaguing the poverty-stricken black public schools with extremely scarce resources for teachers, supplies, books, and fixing the “existing gulf between the richest and the poorest schools” (Kozol 55). Even the students pick up on it and, while ripping up a dictionary given to him, says that for the next student, “that’s their problem” that it will be ripped up because of him (65). They say that the huge dividing social canyon between the rich white class and the poor black class “makes no difference,” for the black students with crippled reading levels “aren’t going anywhere” (52). Every aspect of the school system (for the poor) in the Chicago area is accomplishing only one goal: “to work backwards” (53). I have to say, if I were in there situation, I would be a dropout statistic, because the quality of and efforts put into their education are so dismal and lacking that I would think staying in school was a waste of time—there are “two or three ‘study halls’ a day…[where] ‘not much studying goes on’” (53). I would think it a waste of time and only delay my getting into the “real” world and acquiring skills that could help me get a job later—Kozol says the odds of learning job-skills on the street is more likely than or the same as if a kid completes school (59).
I am reminded of King’s statement about how “‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never’” and “justice too long delayed is justice denied” (King 379). In the case of East St. Louis, it seems the justice denied was a result of “wait” and “fix your own problem”; but it shocks me how stark and obvious the segregation and racism rule the system in Chicago. In their case, their justice was blatantly denied—there was no “wait”, it was simply “no, never”. This is the time when some one or some group needs to rise up and heal the wounds of injustice.
Word Count: 360
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete