Well, I haven't quite finished setting up this page.
Stay tuned for more at a later date!
I also have many, many, MANY papers that I had to write for my
B.A. in Literature at UCSD, so I may be putting these up, too.
I'm a little afraid of people plagiarizing them, though (Hey!
Don't laugh! I DID graduate with honors, you know!).
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*Because school funding is based on property tax, urban schools
are given fewer tax dollars for education than are suburban
schools.
*Urban schools are generally predominantly Black or Latino.
Suburban schools are generally Anglo.
*The unequal distribution of tax dollars leads to a two-tiered
schooling system-- the privileged few are trained to go to college
and become employers, and the underprivileged are trained in
"vocational skills" and become employees.
*This unequal distribution creates a vicious cycle in which rich
or middle-class Anglos perpetuate their higher social standing,
while Blacks and Latinos are trapped in their lower one.
*Suburban taxpayers and many politicians claim that money "doesn't necessarily achieve better education", yet they are unwilling to let go of the money that they have in order to give it to poorer districts. Therefore, they are proving that money DOES make a difference in education.
*Urban students are well aware of these inequalities, because they visit other, wealthier schools and see them portrayed in the media. They internalize the feeling of being unequal.
*Many urban students simply give up on education altogether.
The dropout rate statistics vary (depending on who is doing the
calculating). However, if the kids didn't drop out, the urban
schools often wouldn't have the classrooms or the money for
teachers to teach the students, anyway.
*The recommended solution to the unequal distribution of tax money is to redistribute it so that each district is funded equally, instead of depending upon the property tax base of the individual district.
* This idea of equal funding is being done in California. However,what has happened is that middle-class taxpayers were so angry that ALL districts were to be equally funded that they put a cap on funding of every district in the state, thereby assuring that NO district would be well-funded. This was known as Proposition 13, passed in 1977. California schools became 46th in the nation in terms of dollars spent on education. Its class sizes are the highest in the nation.
OPINION OF CONCEPTS PRESENTED:
This book haunts me. The examples included within its 233 pages
contain the cries of hundreds of thousands. I ask myself the
same question that was posed in the book, "How could this happen
in the United States?" There is no doubt that we, as a nation,
have horribly crippled entire generations of children, through our own ignorance, racism, and greed.
The description in Chapter One of East St. Louis, Illinois is the one that I will never forget. At Landsdowne Junior High School, the St. Louis Sun reports, "there are scores of window frames without glass, like sockets without eyes. Hallways in many schools are dark, with light bulbs missing or burnt out." One walks into a school, a member of the city's board of education notes "and you can smell the urinals a hundred feet away...."
At times it was difficult to believe that there could be places
like this. Would we allow white children to attend a school such
as this one? Other times, I could believe it but felt overwhelmed.
There seem to be so many problems in the schools described here.
Where in the world would one start when trying to fix them?
Jonathan Kozol's answer is simple.....MONEY. While this seems a
bit too pat, I would tend to agree that money is an excellent
beginning.
However, once the money was made available, what would one do with it? How could it be guaranteed to go where it was needed? Based on Kozol's descriptions, it is my opinion that some of these areas that children and families are living in would be better off razed and rebuilt. The nearby sewage and chemical plants would have to be shut down in order to stop poisoning the neighborhood. The children would need dental and health care so that they wouldn't be in excruciating pain when they came to school. How can money solve the problem of racism?
Money put into the coffers of education wouldn't begin to address these "peripheral" concerns. There would have to be an enormous undertaking of civic cooperation and massive amounts of money spent in order to raise the schools to the level of suburbia.
Somehow, I don't see that happening.
However, I do agree that systemic change should take place. Over and over again, Kozol's book demonstrates what a difference money makes in terms of educational opportunities for kids. Success begets success. If ALL students could achieve success, then perhaps some kind of societal quorum of successful attitudes could be reached and the tide would turn in favor of educating all children equally. No one would ever let children go to school in the kind of squalor that is written about in Savage Inequalities. Society would no longer allow itself to denigrate its young people, Black, Latino, or Anglo in such a way.
IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION:
The ideas presented in Savage Inequalities present a major
implication for education. If unequal funding for public schools continues on its present course, we can expect a nightmarish future for our school system.
Already, we are seeing what the future holds. Kozol describes
schools with holes in the roofs, sewage overflowing into the
school cafeteria, 15 books for a class of 30 students, the most
qualified and sought-after teachers going to the wealthier
districts, leaving the urban areas for a heftier paycheck.
We, as a society, are allowing this to happen to our schools. It is a very short-sighted attitude. Unless, as Kozol suggests,
schools are funded more equally, the situation will continue to
worsen. The urban school dropout rate will increase, and children will graduate with nothing but vocational skills that afford them little employment opportunities other than in the service industries.
Is this what we want our educational system to achieve?
Whatever happened to the words we say in the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in our public schools? What about "liberty and justice for all"? How can an educational system hobbled by lack of funding and racial segregation even pretend that it is living up to those words? There is no freedom, no liberty, no justice when a school system has been designed to provide those things only to a few and deny them to the many.
Kozol favors the idea that, to really provide justice and liberty to our urban schoolchildren, that they be given even MORE than "equal" funding. The wrongs perpetuated on the urban school districts have gone on so long that, for a while, they will need extra time and money to right themselves.
The kids deserve that. The schools deserve it. There is enough for ALL.
