Savage Inequalities: Children in America\'s

¶ … Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools" by Jonathan Kozol. Specifically it will contain a book review of the book. "Savage Inequalities" deals with one of the most troubling aspects of life today, and lack of quality education in America, especially in America's poorest schools, where a good education can make all the difference between a life filled with hope and a life filled with despair.

Looking Backward and Chapter 1

In "Looking Backward" the author describes his own background and what led him to embark on this research. He was a schoolteacher in Boston in 1964, and he taught in one of the poorest schools (where he was fired) and one of the wealthiest schools (where he was welcomed), and saw the inequities between the two. This eventually led him to the research that produced this book. He traveled around the country and interviewed hundreds of schoolchildren, parents, and educators, in 1988 through the writing of the book in 1991, and he discovered great racial inequities, which form the backbone of this book. An important point is that when he pointed out these inequities, they were largely ignored. Ghetto education, as the author calls it is accepted, and acceptable to most school districts, and little is done to change the situation.

The author begins to really listen to the children, because he realizes they are not blind, and they clearly recognize the situation and their surroundings. Some of the schools are so bad, just about anyone would refuse to set foot in them, and yet children are expected to attend classes there everyday, and learn something in the bargain. The first chapter visits East St. Louis, Illinois, a black city with high unemployment and welfare, and a dismal, rotting city that is so in debt it cannot even afford toilet paper for public buildings. As the author chronicles the problems in East St. Louis, it seems as if he could be talking about a third-world country rather than the U.S. Raw sewage in the streets, factories that spill toxins, and lead in the soil all sound as if they belong somewhere else, not here, but that is what the children there have to cope with, along with rape, murder, and worse, no hope for anything better. Their schools are flooded with sewage, 25% of school district teachers are let go due to lack of funding, and no one will step in to help. The children are the ones that suffer here, and many of them really do not receive a real education or preparation for the real world, which simply leads to more poverty and hopelessness in the community. A large majority of them drop out, with no education, no skills, and no hope for a better life and no one does anything about it. It is hard to believe this exists in America, and a reporter in this chapter expresses that same sentiment.

Chapter 2

In this chapter, the author visits two black suburbs of Chicago, where conditions in the schools are better than East St. Louis, but the results are not. Watching a kindergarten class, the author realizes most of these children will not even make it through high school, only one may graduate from college, and a quarter of the boys will end up in jail by the time they turn 18. These are sobering statistics that offer little hope for anything but a life of despair and criminality, and that is the ultimate foundation of this book. Americans are turning the other way when it comes to educating the poor in this society, and they cannot recognize what that is doing to the overall health of society. With better schools come better students, more prepared to cope with all the aspects of the adult world, and more prepared to further their education. However, they cannot do that when they suffer through education combined with poverty, and that is clear as the chapters unfold in this book. There are bright spots, like the committed teacher who uses innovative techniques and spends her own money on her classroom, but there are just as many unmotivated and negative teachers, who only add to the problem. An important point in this chapter is how schools are funded - through property taxes in most cases - and since property taxes are higher in upscale neighborhoods and lower in poor neighborhoods, the schools receive disportionate funding, and that disparity never stops. Studies show everything from reading rates to graduation rates and test scores are lower in these schools, and the kids who get out and attend magnet or other "private" schools are usually the only ones who manage to get a real education.

The author contrasts conditions in some of Chicago's poorest schools with some of Chicago's richest, the differences are staggering, and yet, they still exist.

Chapter 3

This chapter focuses on the savage inequalities of education in New York, again from some of the poorest schools to some of the wealthiest. This chapter talks about school districts, and how, consciously or unconsciously, they help perpetuate inequalities. They tend to send the worst teachers to the poor schools, and they are the ones that truly need the best teachers. The teachers are unmotivated, the buildings are old and too small for the current class sizes, there are no windows, and classes share rooms without dividers. Another important point is that the children are not stupid, they know they are being cheated, and they figure out it depends on race. Throughout the book, the author talks to children, and they are surprisingly mature about their views and their surroundings. They know what is going on, and they build resentment and hatred. The author shows them beginning school innocent and trusting, but by the time they leave, they know they deserved better and they did not get it, and it colors their lives and their outlook. The author also talks about what is keeping the schools apart. It is certainly location and funding, but it is race and wealth as well. The wealthy schools will not accept black or other non-white children, so the poorest children do not have a chance at a decent education, and no one other than themselves, their parents, and some of their educators seem to care. Another interesting side note is the fact that very few poor schools have "gifted" programs, but wealthy schools certainly do. Perhaps the most important statistic in this chapter is that so many children just "disappear" from school. They drop out, or who knows what happens to them, and the city and state just let them disappear. The author maintains that these systems simply do not value the children and believe they have no value, and so they do little to really help them. The author compares some of these schools to schools in the very poorest areas of the South, and they often have much in common, except black and white children do attend the same schools in the South, but they do not in the North.

Chapter 4

The next chapter examines Camden, New Jersey, one of the poorest communities in America, and again, the conditions are horrible in Camden schools. There is overcrowding, lack of materials and supplies, and kids who cannot add or barely read. They do not have computers, so they cannot learn skills that will help them, and they learn by "rote," meaning they do not learn how to think or question on their own. These children are all victims of who they are and where they were born, and they do not have any way to change that. The teachers teach to tests, and the kids who cannot pass them end up dropping out, unprepared for anything. Teachers who have worked in wealthy school districts know the difference, and know what their poor kids are missing, but when they try to take the message to the wealthy suburbs, they are ignored, and again, it is the children who suffer in the end. Kids know, and they speak out about it, too. Many of them are smart, and could really do well if they were in a different school, and they know it. Again, the author shows the kids are aware of what is going on around them, and they understand the inequities. The author visits other poor schools in New Jersey, and the litany is always the same. The conditions are awful, the principals are frustrated, and the school districts do not seem to care. The examples all sound alike, and the point is made that these poor schools are places most people would never set foot in, let alone send their children there. Even the courts uphold the inequality, and say the poor children could not "benefit" from the higher educational standards at wealthier schools, leaving little hope for poor children anywhere.

Chapter 5

This chapter covers Washington D.C. schools, and the system of unfairness that permeates education. This unfairness is accepted by the rich and poor alike, and education remains at an impasse. Kids are hungry, their parents are in jail, and the good schools are in the suburbs, where the Congress people live. Their schools are upscale and well funded, while the inner-city schools suffer all the same problems the schools in the other chapters faced. The administrators feel whites would do anything to keep blacks out of their schools, including move away if too many blacks came into the district. The author talks about housing projects, and how the children grow up fast, and see things in their community that children simply should not see. Again, he makes the point that society allows this to happen, and turns the other way. He maintains that society sees minorities as "less than human" and that is why they allow these conditions to continue. He is trying to show these are real people with very real problems and that they have the same concerns and hopes as anyone else, but they grow up bitter and cynical because they realize there are so many inequities, they can never overcome them all. He covers other communities in his assessments, from Boston to Detroit in this chapter, but the results are always the same. For some reason, the poor do not have the right to ask for the same treatment as the rich. That is what society is saying by accepting sub-standard education for the poor.

Chapter 6

This chapter covers the city of San Antonio, and continues talking about school district's and lawsuits that generally tend to keep segregated learning in place due to a variety of reasons. America's schools are discriminating at a time when that is not supposed to happen, and the author shows this is not a regional issue, but a national one that has many implications for the future. He also notes that financing plans developed to help equalize education have almost all been failures, and wealthy suburbs all cite "choice" and "liberty" in their decisions not to share revenues with poorer districts and areas. Justices uphold local control of funds rather than a more equal distribution, and this just keeps schools segregated and needy. He also cites attempts in California to equalize school spending and funding throughout the state that have not worked, and he talks about a decision in San Antonio that took 20 years to come about, while the children suffered that entire time. The last school, in Cincinnati, is a poor white school where conditions are much the same as most of the poor black schools in the book. He ends the book talking about the innocence of all children, and how it is soiled by this early experience and inequity in education. The book shows that the education system in America is not working, and that to make it better, test scores do not have to improve. Funding has to improve, society has to improve, and people have to actually start caring about kids and their education. That is the ultimate point this book is making.