Bronx citizens also suffer from severe depression, especially among secondary school children. Counselors can then work together with public schools in the area to address the depression problem in various ways. Indeed, strategies that include teachers can go a long way towards lifting the grim atmosphere that Kozol describes in many of the schools. Since it appears that many of the children experience depression as a result of how teachers and the school system treat them, it is vital to make partners of these professionals and help them to develop skills that would uplift the children and thus give them access to better future opportunities.
In this regard, Kozol's work helps by identifying specific schools in which the most problems are experienced. Counselors and managing counselors can then focus their specific attention on this. Kozol also helps to identify problems within these schools, including overcrowding and the relationships among students and teachers. Because the author highlighted problems in this way, counselors can provide services that target specific challenges. Managers can also select the correct counselors for each specific challenge being faced.
In terms of education, schooling is perhaps the most vital part of a child's growing years. It is in this context that children learn to socialize and interact with others while also developing skills in terms of learning and critical thinking. However, the severe segregation Kozol describes for the schools in the Bronx area appears to do more harm than good for the education of these children. Indeed, being segregated and pushed into overcrowded school like they are teach these children that they are somehow less deserving of good education opportunities than their counterparts in higher-level public schools and private schools. In fact, the message appears to be that money and a white skin makes a person more deserving of the good things in life. At the same time, the poverty in the Bronx area is perpetuated by the design of the school...
In this way, it is impossible, or close to impossible, for the generally poorly educated children in segregated Bronx schools to rise above their conditions, since these conditions perpetuate themselves.
At the same time, the attitudes of "good schools" towards these students is a model of the general social attitude towards the Bronx in general; one of extreme racism and segregation. As Kozol points out, the children in the area are being robbed not only of their day-to-day material needs, but also of any future opportunity they might have to create a better future for themselves. This translates to global education as well. Those with more privileged lives tend to have access to better educational resources and more tools to improve their lives, while those who are not so privileged are left to fend for themselves in a world made dark and bitter by their lack.
The one important thing to learn from Kozol's work in this regard is that there needs to be a better match between the stated social values of integration and equality and the realities that Kozol and others like him can clearly observe, not only in the Bronx, but across the world. Kozol indicts society for its lack of conscience when it comes to widescale suffering, especially among children. Politicians perpetuate only their own interests the interests of those who can secure their position of power. Promises made in terms of poverty, education, and equality are more often than not just that: Promises with no manifestation in reality.
Kozol's work is an important one, not only for the decade in which it was published, but for all time. Any society in which human beings, and especially children, are allowed to suffer like those in the Bronx should revisit its morality and its collective conscience. Conscience, rather than power, should dictate the amount and usage of taxes to impose.
Reference
Kozol, J. (1995). Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation. New York: Crown Publishers.
