Savage Inequalities by Kozol: Book Review & Analysis

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.

East St. Louis and Chicago: Chapters 1 and 2

The first chapter visits East St. Louis, Illinois — a predominantly Black city with high unemployment and widespread reliance on public assistance. It is a dismal, deteriorating city so deeply in debt that it cannot afford basic supplies like toilet paper for public buildings. As Kozol chronicles the problems there, it seems as though he could be describing a developing nation rather than the United States. Raw sewage in the streets, factories that spill toxins into the environment, and lead contamination in the soil all seem as though they belong somewhere else — yet that is what the children of East St. Louis must cope with, alongside violence, murder, and an absence of hope for anything better.

Their schools are flooded with sewage, a quarter of the school district's teachers are laid off due to lack of funding, and no one steps in to help. The children are the ones who suffer, and many do not receive a real education or any meaningful preparation for adult life — a condition that leads directly to more poverty and hopelessness in the community. A large majority drop out with no education, no skills, and no prospects for a better life, while those in a position to act do nothing. It is difficult to believe this exists in America, and a reporter quoted in this chapter expresses that same disbelief.

In Chapter 2, Kozol visits two Black suburbs of Chicago where conditions in the schools are somewhat better than in East St. Louis, but the outcomes are not. Observing a kindergarten class, he reflects that most of these children will not finish high school, only one may graduate from college, and a quarter of the boys will be incarcerated by the time they turn eighteen. These are sobering statistics that offer little hope for anything beyond a life of hardship.

Americans, Kozol argues, are looking away when it comes to educating the poor, without recognizing what that neglect is doing to the overall health of society. Better schools produce better-prepared students who are more capable of navigating adult life and pursuing higher education. But children cannot achieve this when poverty compounds educational disadvantage — a truth that becomes clearer with each chapter. There are bright spots, such as a committed teacher who uses innovative methods and spends her own money on classroom supplies, but they are outnumbered by unmotivated educators who only add to the problem.

An important issue raised in this chapter is how schools are funded. Because most districts rely on local property taxes, schools in wealthier neighborhoods receive far more money than those in poor ones, and that disparity is self-perpetuating. Studies show that reading rates, graduation rates, and standardized test scores are all lower in underfunded schools. The children who manage to escape — by gaining access to magnet schools or other selective programs — are usually the only ones who receive a genuinely adequate education. Kozol contrasts conditions in Chicago's poorest schools with those in its wealthiest, and the differences are staggering, yet they persist year after year.

New York and New Jersey: Chapters 3 and 4

Chapter 3 focuses on the savage inequalities of education in New York, again tracing the spectrum from the poorest schools to the wealthiest. Kozol examines how school districts — consciously or not — perpetuate inequality by consistently assigning the least experienced or least effective teachers to the schools that most need the best. Buildings are old and overcrowded, many lack windows, and classes share rooms without dividers. Crucially, the children are not unaware of this. They know they are being cheated, and they understand that race is a determining factor. Throughout the book, Kozol speaks with children who are surprisingly clear-eyed about their situation — beginning school innocent and trusting, but leaving it with a deep awareness that they deserved better and were denied it, a realization that shapes their outlook for life.

Kozol also examines what keeps schools apart: geography and funding, yes, but also race and wealth. Wealthy schools effectively exclude Black and other non-white children, ensuring that the poorest students have no path to a decent education, and almost no one beyond their own families and a handful of dedicated educators seems to care. He also notes that very few poor schools offer programs for gifted students, while wealthy schools invariably do. Perhaps the most striking statistic in this chapter is how many children simply "disappear" from school — dropping out or otherwise vanishing — while the city and state let it happen. Kozol argues that these systems do not value the children within them, and so they do little to genuinely help them. He draws a comparison between Northern and Southern schools: while some Southern poor schools share many of the same deficiencies, Black and white children do at least attend the same schools in the South, whereas in the North they typically do not.

Chapter 4 turns to Camden, New Jersey, one of the poorest communities in the country, where school conditions are similarly dire: overcrowding, a shortage of materials and supplies, and students who struggle to read or perform basic arithmetic. Without computers, children cannot develop the technical skills they will need, and instruction defaults to rote learning — a method that discourages independent thinking and questioning. These children are victims of circumstances entirely outside their control, with no means to change them.

Teachers in these schools teach to standardized tests, and students who cannot pass them drop out, unprepared for virtually anything. Educators who have worked in wealthier districts understand exactly what their students are missing, but when they attempt to bring that message to affluent suburban communities, they are ignored. Kozol visits additional poor schools across New Jersey and finds the same litany everywhere: awful physical conditions, frustrated principals, and indifferent school districts. Even the courts uphold the inequality, ruling that poor children could not "benefit" from the higher educational standards at wealthier schools — leaving impoverished children with almost no legal recourse.

Reference

Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991.