Savage Inequalities by Kozol: Book Review & Analysis
This paper presents a chapter-by-chapter review of Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools (1991), examining the author's firsthand research into racial and economic disparities in public education across cities including East St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Camden, Washington D.C., and San Antonio. The review highlights Kozol's central argument that property-tax-based school funding perpetuates deep inequities between wealthy and impoverished school districts, leaving poor and minority children without adequate resources, qualified teachers, or meaningful opportunity. The paper also considers the book's implications for criminal justice, arguing that underfunded schools contribute directly to cycles of poverty and crime.
- Introduction and Kozol's Background: Kozol's teaching past inspires nationwide inequality research
- East St. Louis and Chicago: Chapters 1 and 2: Poverty, sewage, and underfunded Midwestern urban schools
- New York and New Jersey: Chapters 3 and 4: Racial segregation and funding gaps in Northeastern districts
- Washington D.C. and Nationwide Patterns: Chapter 5: Inner-city neglect from D.C. to Boston and Detroit
- San Antonio and the National Picture: Chapter 6: Failed funding reforms and the national scope of inequality
- Implications for Criminal Justice and Society: Poor schooling drives poverty, crime, and social costs
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What makes this paper effective
- Follows the book's chapter structure closely, giving readers a clear and organized summary that mirrors Kozol's own progression across cities and school systems.
- Consistently connects empirical detail — sewage-flooded schools, teacher layoffs, absent textbooks — to the book's broader moral and policy argument, keeping analysis grounded.
- The closing section on criminal justice implications extends beyond summary to offer a practical policy argument, demonstrating independent analytical thinking.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective evaluative summarization: rather than merely retelling each chapter, the writer identifies the recurring structural argument (property-tax funding as the engine of inequality) and shows how each city Kozol visits reinforces it. This cumulative framing allows a book review to function as a coherent analytical essay rather than a simple plot summary.
Structure breakdown
The review opens with a brief introduction to the author's personal background and research methodology, then moves chapter by chapter through six geographic case studies. A final section pivots from literary review to policy analysis, arguing that educational underfunding is inseparable from criminal justice outcomes. The reference list cites the single primary source reviewed. Total structure: introduction → six chapter sections → criminal justice implications → conclusion → reference.
Introduction and Kozol's Background
Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools by Jonathan Kozol addresses one of the most troubling aspects of contemporary American life: the lack of quality education in the nation's poorest schools, where a good education can make all the difference between a life filled with hope and a life filled with despair.
In the book's opening section, "Looking Backward," Kozol describes his own background and what led him to undertake this research. He was a schoolteacher in Boston in 1964, and he taught in both one of the poorest schools — where he was eventually fired — and one of the wealthiest, where he was warmly welcomed. Witnessing the stark inequities between the two eventually drove him to conduct the research that produced this book. Traveling around the country from 1988 through the writing of the book in 1991, he interviewed hundreds of schoolchildren, parents, and educators, and discovered profound racial inequities that form the backbone of his argument. An important point is that when he raised these inequities publicly, they were largely ignored. What he calls "ghetto education" is accepted — and considered acceptable — by most school districts, and very little is done to change the situation.
Kozol begins by truly listening to the children, recognizing that they are not blind to their circumstances. Some of the schools he visits are so deteriorated that almost anyone would refuse to set foot in them, yet children are expected to attend classes there every day and learn something in the process.
Reference
Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991.
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