“I ask the principal where her children go to school. They are enrolled in private school, she says (Kozol 86). I do not understand how you could run a school that you would not feel comfortable putting your own children in. There are some principals out there that run the school in a way where they would feel comfortable putting their own children in a classroom. I think it is not good for the school when the principal does not have enough faith in the teachers to trust them with her own children. Yes, this is Public School 261, that is a “former roller-skating rink,” but the principal should not be a part of a school that is trying to pick up its pieces if she cannot trust them with her own (85). “Two first grade classes share a single room without a window, divided only by a blackboard,” for many of these children this classroom is probably a lot like home (86). They do not have the same things that other children have, because they are at a school where they cannot afford it. Each classroom is not even able to have their own room, there is no way that a child could learn in a place where they do not get their own classroom with their class. There would be so many different things to distract them, especially if there were ever a time when the two teachers were teaching opposite things. In the only room that has windows, you find “a sixth grade of 30 children [sharing] a room with 29 bilingual second grade students” (87). There is no way that either of these classes could accomplish anything, not just because they are sharing a room with another class their size, but because the other class is four years older than them. “A well-dressed student with a healthy tan, however, says that using federal taxes for the poor ‘would be like giving charity,’ and ‘charitable things have never worked…Charity will not instill the poor with self-respect,” I beg to differ with this student (129). Taking the money that is given to the federal government for schools and giving it back to the schools would not be “like giving charity” (129). If anything these students would finally get what they have needed all along. I see where this student is coming from though, for many students that have never seen much government funding they may picture it that way because they would question why they were receiving it now. “First introduced during the 1920’s, the formula attempts to reconcile the right of local districts to support and govern their own schools with the obligation of the state to lessen the extremes of educational provision between districts,” if this has been around since the 1920’s why has the federal government decided to step in and mess with it (208). I think that the best idea would be to reallocate the funds to the schools, but that means that the government has to get off of their high horses and realize that there are people out there that need help with the school districts. I do not feel like the government should be allowed to say how much each district gets, I feel like they should set a standard amount that every state gets and then the state hands it out evenly to the districts.
What effect do unsafe environments have on education? Is America only beautiful for people who prey on the poor?
A school sits in an abandoned skating rink, crowded with children, invisible to the world. Everyday, children pile in and out, progress nowhere to be found, producing nothing but uneducated children and frustrated teachers. Overcrowded rooms filled with students too oblivious and starving to care why a2 + b2 =c2 or how people in India crow their crops teach the children nothing about what will, inevitably, be their future. Outside, “a metal awning frame without an awning supports a flagpole, but there is no flag” (Kozol 85). This serves to symbolize the children’s separation from the rest of the country, and one students writes, “America the beautiful, who are you beautiful for?” (112). Is America only beautiful for those who take advantage of the poor and become rich? For children from these slums, the only America they know is not only not beautiful but is nonexistent. Other than a welfare check, no one ever hears from Uncle Sam. Rich, mostly white people, look at the potential returns in their investments toward education and ask, “How much is it worth to invest in THIS child as opposed to THAT one?” (117). What happens is nothing but a continuation of the lifestyles of the parents to the offspring, solely based on opportunity available. Each rich parent is simply looking out for the well being of his or her child, while at the same time, killing any poor, black child’s dreams of financial stability. For example, a boy from a Times Square homeless shelter has to be transported and hour and a half to a school that will take him in, even though he lives minutes from a school. Since the boy is ethnically and financially different from the majority of the school, he is denied admission into the school closest to him.
1. How does being born in a desert influence the chance of acquiring irrigation skills? A teacher in the Public School 261, which can be noticed not because it looks like a school building, but because it is next to a funeral home, asks a sixth-grader, “How is it useful that these civilizations developed close to rivers?” (87). She is speaking about the first civilizations in the Middle East and Egypt. The child answers “in a good loud voice: ‘What kind of question is that?’” (87). The child does not comprehend, how close this question is to his own chances of development. Let’s imagine that a river was a way of development and assume that the capability for humans who did not live close to the great rivers and those who lived close to them was the same. However, those who lived far away had to spend days and days walking towards the rivers, they had to fight hot days and cold nights, some of them had to leave their old parents and gardens. Many of them died, few survived and reached the rivers. They settled down, and were among those who sustained the first civilization. Ones who became Egyptians and Mesopotamians either were in the river area from the beginning or they had traveled there. However, many did not know that the rivers exist, or they knew, but the rivers were too far away. They stayed in the desert or jungle and did not become a part of the great civilization. Can one blame the ones who stayed in the desert for not being the great civilization? Could they sail in a desert or irrigate a rice field? No, because it was a desert! A school counselor speaks about the students, saying that “there is a tremendous gulf between their skills and capabilities” (105). They are the able men staying in the desert, trying to plant crops in sand. In a school in the New York city, there “were five Haitian youngsters literally [having classes] in a urinal” (114). However, “it is unlikely that the parent or kids in Rye or Riverdale know much about realities like these” (132). The ones in the desert stay there and the civilized do not see them. If there ever was a desert population, it does not live in history books as the builders of temples or languages, because they were born in a desert, and they did not know how to irrigate a field, because there are no fields and rivers in desert. 2. “At a high school in Crown Heights, a neighborhood of Brooklyn, ‘bathrooms, gymnasiums, hallways and closets’ have been converted into classrooms, says The New York Times” (114). What is the role of observing and distributing information about the poor conditions in the schools? Does it make a difference? 470 words
Without money, what are the ways that the schools can be improved?
In Jonathan Kozol’s novel Savage Inequalities, the concept of the education and what students deserve is explored. In Morris High School in the Bronx, New York, a forward thinking teacher realized that students should still be offered new ways of learning no matter what their financial background is. Jack Forman, an English teacher at Morris High, was able to see the need among the students and provide a place for them to learn. He did not believe that the students should be trained in “only minimal skills” but that every student has the capability to understand material that is presented to them (101). Students in underfunded schools are still able to comprehend materials the same way that a student in any other school are. That is how you identify those who can be considered gifted, not by their neighborhood, but by their promise and work ethic. Children can “surprise us and surprise themselves” when they succeed outside of what people expect them to (101). People have a preset notion of what people from specific areas are supposed to do with their lives, but just because you are born in a certain neighborhood does not guarantee that you are fit for the stereotype of that area. This concept goes both ways. A student that is offered all the finest of a upper-middle class school can still have the work ethic of someone who flips burgers for a living, while someone in a poor neighborhood could have the drive of a rocket scientist. When students are given the opportunity to succeed and are pushed past what is expected of them, they will succeed. When teachers and administrators believe in their students’ abilities, it instills a confidence in them. Believing in students is the only way to make the situation better without money. This simple mind change can vastly improve the life of even just on child but if it does just that it would be worth it.
How does Kozol describe the conditions in some of the poorer New York public schools, and how do the teachers view these conditions?
In this particular section of the novel “Savage Inequalities”, Kozol examines some of the poorer school districts in New York City. Throughout the City, there was a great disparity of funds between that of the wealthier schools and the poorer ones. In 1987, the funds per pupil at the poorer schools were about $5,500, while the funds per pupil at the wealthier schools were above $11,000. Kozol was appalled at the sight he beheld when he visited Public School 261 in one of the poorer and racially divided areas of New York City. He describes how the students lacked sufficient supplies for school, and that they were also crammed into classrooms that were much too small for their large classes. Kozol writes, “The school, I am told, has 26 computers for its 1,300 children… On the top floor of the school, a sixth grade of 30 children shares a room with 29 bilingual second graders” (Kozol 87). This quote reveals the lack of amenities that the students have for learning, as well as how the environment that they “learn” in is unfit for learning or even living. While talking with a sixth grade teacher of the district 261 public school, Kozol comes to realize the standpoint of the teacher, and that the even he is appalled by the apparent racism. This is evident when the teacher states, “Will these children ever get what the white kids in the suburb take for granted” (Kozol 89)? The teacher’s words indicate that he too saw the racism that had taken over the public school district in New York during this time. The conditions that these students were forced to learn in were truly appalling, and the racism and segregation that was prevalent throughout New York during this time should have been dealt with in some manner. No one deserves to go to school in these types of conditions.
What is a magnet school, really? Is it a school designed to further students in a particular area, such as fine arts or humanities or science? Is it a school for the best and brightest to have more challenging coursework, to be pushed beyond the expectations of your average school? Perhaps, a magnet school is truly a facility that aids the privileged at the cost of the impoverished. According to write Nathan Glazer, a sociologist commenting on the New York school system cited in Jonathon Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, a magnet school is an educational institution that “provides [its students] with an advantageous label” (109). The question this raises in my mind is at what cost does a system provide this advantage, at the expense of another child’s potential success? Is it really better to serve one child at a higher level than to serve an underprivileged child of a minority ethnicity? The evidence that the only students at P.S. 24 who fall into the “educable mentally retarded” and the “trainable mentally retarded” (93) category are almost exclusively black or Hispanic seem to be to be as accurate as the works of Mendel or Galileo that the children in the “gifted” classes describe (97). A person’s potential is not decreased merely because they are black nor increase because they happened to be born white. If a more diverse selection of children were allowed into classes that focus on developing “a higher form of logic” (97), then perhaps the world would actually change or maybe the severe poverty in New York would actually come to a halt rather than perpetuated by “gerrymandered zoning” (108) and “unfairness on this scale” (108). The problems associated with racial and socioeconomic class oppression will never be resolved by the current leaders of the race or class in power. Unless the society as a whole begins to realize that the problem will eventually consume them all, there is little hope for drastic change anytime in the near future. [331] How can city health officials not bring the Board of Education to at least renovating the school buildings? What would happen if all of the District 10 students in New York were rezoned to meet equal race distribution?
What is the cause of the unequal treatment in the school systems? What are the disadvantages of allowing such a system of poverty ridden institutions to continue along their path?
According to Jonathan Kozol, “What is fair is determined…to be fair” (86). There is an unspoken silence of understanding amongstthe teachers and the students of the poor schools. They know what situation they’re in because “you see it in their eyes” (88). Kozol says, “Ideal class size for these kids [rich suburbs] would be 15 to 20. Will these children ever get what white kids in the suburbs take for granted? I don’t think so. If you ask me why, I’d have to speak of race and social class. I don’t think the powers that be in New York City understand, or want to understand, that if they do not give these children a sufficient education to lead healthy and productive lives, we will be their victims later on”(89). Somehow, the social standing of the poorer community does not sway the consciousness of the authorities. But why is that? It would be fair to provide the poorer schools with what they need, such as space and above adequate educators. These children need this education. And if not received there is a price to pay of which the communities will “pay the price someday—in violence, in economic costs” (89). When looking at these children and their circumstances a “feeling of despair” seeps in. The level of poverty is as far as a homeless shelter. Yet the parents of these children strive and take “and hour and a half” train ride to drop off their children at these institutions so they can receive the least bit of education they can afford. It seems that anything that involves poverty should expect injustice to creep around the corner, because it seems to be the main cause of all the pain. Word count 317
“I ask the principal where her children go to school. They are enrolled in private school, she says (Kozol 86). I do not understand how you could run a school that you would not feel comfortable putting your own children in. There are some principals out there that run the school in a way where they would feel comfortable putting their own children in a classroom. I think it is not good for the school when the principal does not have enough faith in the teachers to trust them with her own children. Yes, this is Public School 261, that is a “former roller-skating rink,” but the principal should not be a part of a school that is trying to pick up its pieces if she cannot trust them with her own (85). “Two first grade classes share a single room without a window, divided only by a blackboard,” for many of these children this classroom is probably a lot like home (86). They do not have the same things that other children have, because they are at a school where they cannot afford it. Each classroom is not even able to have their own room, there is no way that a child could learn in a place where they do not get their own classroom with their class. There would be so many different things to distract them, especially if there were ever a time when the two teachers were teaching opposite things. In the only room that has windows, you find “a sixth grade of 30 children [sharing] a room with 29 bilingual second grade students” (87). There is no way that either of these classes could accomplish anything, not just because they are sharing a room with another class their size, but because the other class is four years older than them. “A well-dressed student with a healthy tan, however, says that using federal taxes for the poor ‘would be like giving charity,’ and ‘charitable things have never worked…Charity will not instill the poor with self-respect,” I beg to differ with this student (129). Taking the money that is given to the federal government for schools and giving it back to the schools would not be “like giving charity” (129). If anything these students would finally get what they have needed all along. I see where this student is coming from though, for many students that have never seen much government funding they may picture it that way because they would question why they were receiving it now. “First introduced during the 1920’s, the formula attempts to reconcile the right of local districts to support and govern their own schools with the obligation of the state to lessen the extremes of educational provision between districts,” if this has been around since the 1920’s why has the federal government decided to step in and mess with it (208). I think that the best idea would be to reallocate the funds to the schools, but that means that the government has to get off of their high horses and realize that there are people out there that need help with the school districts. I do not feel like the government should be allowed to say how much each district gets, I feel like they should set a standard amount that every state gets and then the state hands it out evenly to the districts.
ReplyDeleteWord Count: 565
What effect do unsafe environments have on education?
ReplyDeleteIs America only beautiful for people who prey on the poor?
A school sits in an abandoned skating rink, crowded with children, invisible to the world. Everyday, children pile in and out, progress nowhere to be found, producing nothing but uneducated children and frustrated teachers. Overcrowded rooms filled with students too oblivious and starving to care why a2 + b2 =c2 or how people in India crow their crops teach the children nothing about what will, inevitably, be their future. Outside, “a metal awning frame without an awning supports a flagpole, but there is no flag” (Kozol 85). This serves to symbolize the children’s separation from the rest of the country, and one students writes, “America the beautiful, who are you beautiful for?” (112). Is America only beautiful for those who take advantage of the poor and become rich? For children from these slums, the only America they know is not only not beautiful but is nonexistent. Other than a welfare check, no one ever hears from Uncle Sam. Rich, mostly white people, look at the potential returns in their investments toward education and ask, “How much is it worth to invest in THIS child as opposed to THAT one?” (117). What happens is nothing but a continuation of the lifestyles of the parents to the offspring, solely based on opportunity available. Each rich parent is simply looking out for the well being of his or her child, while at the same time, killing any poor, black child’s dreams of financial stability. For example, a boy from a Times Square homeless shelter has to be transported and hour and a half to a school that will take him in, even though he lives minutes from a school. Since the boy is ethnically and financially different from the majority of the school, he is denied admission into the school closest to him.
Word Count: 300
1. How does being born in a desert influence the chance of acquiring irrigation skills?
ReplyDeleteA teacher in the Public School 261, which can be noticed not because it looks like a school building, but because it is next to a funeral home, asks a sixth-grader, “How is it useful that these civilizations developed close to rivers?” (87). She is speaking about the first civilizations in the Middle East and Egypt. The child answers “in a good loud voice: ‘What kind of question is that?’” (87). The child does not comprehend, how close this question is to his own chances of development.
Let’s imagine that a river was a way of development and assume that the capability for humans who did not live close to the great rivers and those who lived close to them was the same. However, those who lived far away had to spend days and days walking towards the rivers, they had to fight hot days and cold nights, some of them had to leave their old parents and gardens. Many of them died, few survived and reached the rivers. They settled down, and were among those who sustained the first civilization. Ones who became Egyptians and Mesopotamians either were in the river area from the beginning or they had traveled there.
However, many did not know that the rivers exist, or they knew, but the rivers were too far away. They stayed in the desert or jungle and did not become a part of the great civilization.
Can one blame the ones who stayed in the desert for not being the great civilization? Could they sail in a desert or irrigate a rice field? No, because it was a desert!
A school counselor speaks about the students, saying that “there is a tremendous gulf between their skills and capabilities” (105). They are the able men staying in the desert, trying to plant crops in sand.
In a school in the New York city, there “were five Haitian youngsters literally [having classes] in a urinal” (114). However, “it is unlikely that the parent or kids in Rye or Riverdale know much about realities like these” (132). The ones in the desert stay there and the civilized do not see them.
If there ever was a desert population, it does not live in history books as the builders of temples or languages, because they were born in a desert, and they did not know how to irrigate a field, because there are no fields and rivers in desert.
2. “At a high school in Crown Heights, a neighborhood of Brooklyn, ‘bathrooms, gymnasiums, hallways and closets’ have been converted into classrooms, says The New York Times” (114). What is the role of observing and distributing information about the poor conditions in the schools? Does it make a difference?
470 words
Great metaphor!
ReplyDelete"How does being born in a desert influence the chance of acquiring irrigation skills?"
Without money, what are the ways that the schools can be improved?
ReplyDeleteIn Jonathan Kozol’s novel Savage Inequalities, the concept of the education and what students deserve is explored. In Morris High School in the Bronx, New York, a forward thinking teacher realized that students should still be offered new ways of learning no matter what their financial background is. Jack Forman, an English teacher at Morris High, was able to see the need among the students and provide a place for them to learn. He did not believe that the students should be trained in “only minimal skills” but that every student has the capability to understand material that is presented to them (101). Students in underfunded schools are still able to comprehend materials the same way that a student in any other school are. That is how you identify those who can be considered gifted, not by their neighborhood, but by their promise and work ethic. Children can “surprise us and surprise themselves” when they succeed outside of what people expect them to (101). People have a preset notion of what people from specific areas are supposed to do with their lives, but just because you are born in a certain neighborhood does not guarantee that you are fit for the stereotype of that area. This concept goes both ways. A student that is offered all the finest of a upper-middle class school can still have the work ethic of someone who flips burgers for a living, while someone in a poor neighborhood could have the drive of a rocket scientist. When students are given the opportunity to succeed and are pushed past what is expected of them, they will succeed. When teachers and administrators believe in their students’ abilities, it instills a confidence in them. Believing in students is the only way to make the situation better without money. This simple mind change can vastly improve the life of even just on child but if it does just that it would be worth it.
Word Count: 325
How does Kozol describe the conditions in some of the poorer New York public schools, and how do the teachers view these conditions?
ReplyDeleteIn this particular section of the novel “Savage Inequalities”, Kozol examines some of the poorer school districts in New York City. Throughout the City, there was a great disparity of funds between that of the wealthier schools and the poorer ones. In 1987, the funds per pupil at the poorer schools were about $5,500, while the funds per pupil at the wealthier schools were above $11,000. Kozol was appalled at the sight he beheld when he visited Public School 261 in one of the poorer and racially divided areas of New York City. He describes how the students lacked sufficient supplies for school, and that they were also crammed into classrooms that were much too small for their large classes. Kozol writes, “The school, I am told, has 26 computers for its 1,300 children… On the top floor of the school, a sixth grade of 30 children shares a room with 29 bilingual second graders” (Kozol 87). This quote reveals the lack of amenities that the students have for learning, as well as how the environment that they “learn” in is unfit for learning or even living. While talking with a sixth grade teacher of the district 261 public school, Kozol comes to realize the standpoint of the teacher, and that the even he is appalled by the apparent racism. This is evident when the teacher states, “Will these children ever get what the white kids in the suburb take for granted” (Kozol 89)? The teacher’s words indicate that he too saw the racism that had taken over the public school district in New York during this time. The conditions that these students were forced to learn in were truly appalling, and the racism and segregation that was prevalent throughout New York during this time should have been dealt with in some manner. No one deserves to go to school in these types of conditions.
Word Count: 315
What is a magnet school, really? Is it a school designed to further students in a particular area, such as fine arts or humanities or science? Is it a school for the best and brightest to have more challenging coursework, to be pushed beyond the expectations of your average school? Perhaps, a magnet school is truly a facility that aids the privileged at the cost of the impoverished. According to write Nathan Glazer, a sociologist commenting on the New York school system cited in Jonathon Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, a magnet school is an educational institution that “provides [its students] with an advantageous label” (109). The question this raises in my mind is at what cost does a system provide this advantage, at the expense of another child’s potential success? Is it really better to serve one child at a higher level than to serve an underprivileged child of a minority ethnicity? The evidence that the only students at P.S. 24 who fall into the “educable mentally retarded” and the “trainable mentally retarded” (93) category are almost exclusively black or Hispanic seem to be to be as accurate as the works of Mendel or Galileo that the children in the “gifted” classes describe (97). A person’s potential is not decreased merely because they are black nor increase because they happened to be born white. If a more diverse selection of children were allowed into classes that focus on developing “a higher form of logic” (97), then perhaps the world would actually change or maybe the severe poverty in New York would actually come to a halt rather than perpetuated by “gerrymandered zoning” (108) and “unfairness on this scale” (108). The problems associated with racial and socioeconomic class oppression will never be resolved by the current leaders of the race or class in power. Unless the society as a whole begins to realize that the problem will eventually consume them all, there is little hope for drastic change anytime in the near future.
ReplyDelete[331]
How can city health officials not bring the Board of Education to at least renovating the school buildings?
What would happen if all of the District 10 students in New York were rezoned to meet equal race distribution?
What is the cause of the unequal treatment in the school systems?
ReplyDeleteWhat are the disadvantages of allowing such a system of poverty ridden institutions to continue along their path?
According to Jonathan Kozol, “What is fair is determined…to be fair” (86). There is an unspoken silence of understanding amongstthe teachers and the students of the poor schools. They know what situation they’re in because “you see it in their eyes” (88). Kozol says, “Ideal class size for these kids [rich suburbs] would be 15 to 20. Will these children ever get what white kids in the suburbs take for granted? I don’t think so. If you ask me why, I’d have to speak of race and social class. I don’t think the powers that be in New York City understand, or want to understand, that if they do not give these children a sufficient education to lead healthy and productive lives, we will be their victims later on”(89). Somehow, the social standing of the poorer community does not sway the consciousness of the authorities. But why is that? It would be fair to provide the poorer schools with what they need, such as space and above adequate educators. These children need this education. And if not received there is a price to pay of which the communities will “pay the price someday—in violence, in economic costs” (89). When looking at these children and their circumstances a “feeling of despair” seeps in. The level of poverty is as far as a homeless shelter. Yet the parents of these children strive and take “and hour and a half” train ride to drop off their children at these institutions so they can receive the least bit of education they can afford. It seems that anything that involves poverty should expect injustice to creep around the corner, because it seems to be the main cause of all the pain.
Word count 317