To be in favor of redistribution of resources and of racial integration would require a great deal of courage—and a soaring sense of vision—in a president or any other politician. We have 1,550. She’s wearing jeans, a long black coat, a black turtleneck, a black hat with a bright red band. Pay college kids to tutor inner-city children. There were 26 computers for 1,300 children who are 90 percent black and Hispanic and 10 percent Asian, White, or Middle Eastern. If 100 of these children startled us by showing up at school, moreover, there would be no room for them in P.S. Even fewer will compete for more exclusive Ivy League admissions. “They make a face. I have to bus some 60 kindergarten children elsewhere, since I have no space for them. At a high school in Crown Heights, a neighborhood of Brooklyn, “bathrooms, gymnasiums, hallways and closets” have been converted into classrooms, says the New York Times. Stark as the inequities in District 10 appear, educators say that they are “mild” in comparison to other situations in the city. The speaker’s voice is strong and filled with longing. You think of the difference. “Those who get it do appreciably better. It is in conformity with the theory of equality … to give as near as possible to every youth an equal state in life.” Americans, he said, “are unwilling that any should be deprived in childhood of the means of competition.”. “The bird destroys himself because he can’t escape the cage.”, “He sings out of the longing to be free.”, At the end of class the teacher tells me, “Forty, maybe 45 percent out of this group will graduate.”. Sister Julia and Kozel leave the neighborhood before dark because St. Louis taxies refuse to come to East St. Louis after dark. I am glad they have this class. “I think there is a good argument to be made that their effectiveness is maximized by concentration. Classrooms were overcrowded. We need to learn not simply to be logical in our own thinking but to show respect for someone else’s logic even when an answer may be technically incorrect.”, When I ask him to explain this, he goes on, “A person who gives an answer that is not ‘correct’ may nonetheless have done some interesting thinking that we should examine. If society’s resources would be wasted on their destinies, perhaps their own determination would be wasted too. Read Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol 2313 Words | 10 Pages. In English, he is told he’ll have to know the parts of speech. “I hated the school.… I never knew who my counselor was,” a former New York City student says. Which of the kids before me will survive? Whether in the New York suburbs, Mississippi, or the South Bronx, they salute the same flag. “Keep them where they are but make it equal,” says a girl in the front row. A 15-year-old girl with curly long red hair and many freckles reads the lines. 24, a capable and energetic man named David Rothstein, still regards it as excessive for an elementary school. If the New York City schools were funded, for example, at the level of the highest-spending suburbs of Long Island, a fourth grade class of 36 children such as those I visited in District 10 would have had $200,000 more invested in their education during 1987. The existence of the school is virtually concealed within this crowded city block. Although a portion of this extra money would have gone into administrative costs, the remainder would have been enough to hire two extraordinary teachers at enticing salaries of $50,000 each, divide the class into two classes of some 18 children each, provide them with computers, carpets, air conditioning, new texts and reference books and learning games—indeed, with everything available today in the most affluent school districts—and also pay the costs of extra counseling to help those children cope with the dilemmas that they face at home. Female students tell me that they shower after school to wash the plaster from their hair. The excellence of P.S. Money is one of the biggest issues of “The building and teachers are part of it, of course. To polarize these points, however, and to argue, as the White House has been claiming for a decade, that administrative changes are a “better” answer to the problem than equality of funding and real efforts at desegregation is dishonest and simplistic. The parents of these children want the same things for their children that the parents in the suburbs want. Her caseload holds the names of nearly 80 children. Savage Inequalities study guide by AllyDoerman includes 6 questions covering vocabulary, terms and more. ó � K S o c n ² ª É ˆ ‰ ã ã ã Ê Ê Ê Ê Ê Ê ª � � � � � � Æ) Ğ p@à°€P ğ! What listeners say about Savage Inequalities. “I’d like it if we had black students in this school,” the girl beside him says. People who want to know if public schools in areas where they are planning to buy homes are actually as good as it is claimed in real-estate brochures, according to Newsday, now can use the “Statistical Profiles” as a more authoritative source. Who is likely to return the most to our society? 8 î The poorer public schools have inadequate equipment, supplies, textbooks, counselors, and libraries. I don’t think that that’s the question. There is the sense that they were skating over ice and that the issues we addressed were safely frozen underneath. The children have an in-class research area that holds some up-to-date resources. “We work under difficult circumstances,” says the principal, James Carter, who is black. “A child’s chances of surviving to age five,” notes New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, “are better in Bangladesh than in East Harlem.” In the South Bronx, says the author of a recent study by the nonprofit United Hospital Fund of New York City, 531 infants out of 1,000 require neonatal hospitalization—a remarkable statistic that portends high rates of retardation and brain damage. A 16-year-old student in the South Bronx tells me that he went to English class for two months in the fall of 1989 before the school supplied him with a textbook. “They know what suburban schools are like. You wouldn’t know it from their academic work. Overutilization is a fact of life in modern medicine—and it raises costs for all prospective patients over the long run—but one feels a troubling uneasiness about the way in which this argument is introduced. He’s a full-grown young man, tall and quiet and strong-looking; but out on the street, when it is time to say good-bye, his eyes fill up with tears. We need smaller classes but, to do this, we would need more space. “It seems rather odd,” says David when the hour is up, “that we were sitting in an AP class discussing whether poor kids in the Bronx deserve to get an AP class. 1$ $ Æ) Ğ p@à°€P ğ! The pianist is the same young man who read the words of Martin Luther King. The principal is unsparing in her honesty. “See,” he says, “the parents of rich children have the money to get into better schools. Few of the children in the schools of Roosevelt or Mount Vernon will, as a result, be likely to compete effectively with kids in Great Neck and Manhasset for admissions to the better local colleges and universities of New York state. Thanks for exploring this SuperSummary Study Guide of “Savage Inequalities” by Jonathan Kozol. ú On the second floor I visit four classes taking place within another undivided space. A city which is home to some of the most clever and aggressive and ingenious men and women in the world surely could devise more orderly and less humiliating ways to meet the needs of these poor children. The usual indices of school investment and performance—class size, teacher salaries and test results—are at best imperfect tools of measurement; but infant survival rates are absolute. If they didn’t count on it, perhaps it wouldn’t happen. Some experts, I observe, believe that class size isn’t a real issue. Riverdale, after all, is not a redneck neighborhood. So it would happen a lot more.”, An eleventh grader shakes her head at this. Funding for schools in Illinois range “from $2,100 on a child in the poorest district to above $10,000 in the richest”. The room resembles an Elizabethan theater. The plaster is gone, exposing rusted metal bars embedded in the outside wall. (Kozol from back flap of dust cover) Reading Reaction: Savage Inequalities Jonathan Kozol takes the reader on a journey to six poor urban American communities between 1988 and 1990 to examine the inequalities in their school’s facilities, resources, and teachers. Savage Inequalities is a savage indictment. She brought the child back to school. P.S. In the highest spending suburbs of New York (Great Neck or Manhasset, for example, on Long Island) funding levels rose above $11,000, with the highest districts in the state at $15,000. In the fall of the year, he phones me at my home. Two thirds of the stained-glass panes are missing and replaced by Plexiglas. Some years ago, District 10 received an allocation for computers. These children who needed more from the educational system in order to catch up academically with the rich schools received less. There are no shades. When they are contemptuous of poor black people, their contempt is unadorned. Two want to be lawyers. Her long brown hair falls almost to her waist. Like kindness, cleanliness and promptness of provision, it is not secured by gravity of need but by the cash, skin color and class status of the applicant. Some 2,300 pairs were purchased for a system that contains almost 1,000 schools: an average of two pairs of handcuffs for each school. A teacher and assistant who have worked at the school for a number of years have had serious cancer surgery. A parent organization also raises independent funds to buy materials, including books, and will soon be running a fund-raiser to enhance the library’s collection. Teacher’s salaries and the quality of curriculum were lower in the poor districts. We sit and talk within the nurse’s room. There is also, he says, "a sameness among children in the sense of [a] substantial uncertainty about their potential role as adults." Among black children in East Harlem, it is even higher: 42 per thousand, which would be considered high in many Third World nations. The children are lucid and their language is well chosen and their arguments well made, but there is a sense that they are dealing with an issue that does not feel very vivid, and that nothing that we say about it to each other really matters since it’s “just a theoretical discussion.” To a certain degree, the skillfulness and cleverness that they display seem to derive precisely from this sense of unreality. Savage Inequalities; Page 3; CHAPTER 1 Life on the Mississippi: East St. Louis, Illinois “East of anywhere,” writes a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “often evokes the other side of the tracks. Residents are exposed to raw sewage, toxic waste, and the dangers of lead poisoning. . The class is writing a new “Bill of Rights.” The children already know the U.S. Bill of Rights and they explain its first four items to me with precision. Handcuffs, however, may be better preparation than we realize for the lives that many of these adolescent kids will lead. “The public hospital we use for an emergency is called North Central. This means that 59 children and four grown-ups—63 in all—must share a room that, in a suburban school, would hold no more than 20 children and one teacher. Sitting in his kitchen, I attempt to help him with his math and English. Ethical challenges seem to threaten their effectiveness. “I found wild mushrooms growing in that corner.”. Chapter 3: “The Savage Inequalities of Public Education in New York” In the third chapter, the author discusses how competition is unequal in New York City. The Times, for instance, notes in another article that, while the “official” dropout rate “has fallen from 45 percent to 29.2 percent,” watchdog groups say that the alleged “improvement” stems from “changes in the way the number has been calculated.” School boards, moreover, have a vested interest in low-balling dropout figures since the federal and state aid that they receive is pegged to actual attendance. The session ends with a terrific fast jazz concert by a band composed of students dressed in black ties, crimson jackets and white shirts. That’s my dream: to see him stand and graduate beneath this arch, his parents out there under the stained glass.”, From my notes: “Morris High could be a wonderful place, a centerpiece of education, theater, music, every kind of richness for poor children. By eleven o’clock, the lunchroom is already packed with appetite and life. Despite the evidence, the CSS report leans over backwards not to fuel the flames of racial indignation. The sun appears to blind the teacher. Fax machines, computers, automated telephones and even messengers on bikes convey a million bits of data through Manhattan every day to guarantee that Wall Street brokers get their orders placed, confirmed, delivered, at the moment they demand. Drugs are not the cause of this. I thought that she was ill. Listening to children who drop out of school, we often hear an awful note of anonymity. The Journal of the American Medical Association, for example, seeking to explain the differences in care provided to the white and nonwhite, speculates that “cultural differences” in patients’ attitudes toward modern care may be involved. School desks were “split” and textbooks were “rotting,” said Time. These racial breakdowns prove to be predictive of the schoolwide pattern. Camden schools have fewer computers, books, supplies, and books than the district’s suburban schools. It’s ugly. Walking next into a special class, I see twelve children. Those very few children, on the other hand, who are identified as showing the most promise are assigned, beginning in the third grade, to a program that receives a full-year regimen. In an ethical society, where money was apportioned in accord with need, these scalings would run almost in precise reverse. Why should I go to war and fight for opportunities I can’t enjoy—for things rich people value, for their freedom, but I do not have that freedom and I can’t go to their schools?”, “You tell your friends, ‘I go to Morris High,’ ” Carissa says. The school board goes to great extremes to understate these numbers, and now and then the press explains why numbers coming from the central office are not necessarily to be believed. This information strikes one as astonishing. The majority of the students are white. The carpets are patched and sometimes taped together to conceal an open space. In the summer it was up to 90. Some mornings, fallen chips of paint cover classrooms like snow.… Teachers and students have come to see humor in the waterfall that courses down six flights of stairs after a heavy rain.”. Don’t miss it!”. Praise for Savage Inequalities “I was unprepared for the horror and shame I felt. They fill out certain transfer forms and ask the counselor some questions. Children identified as “gifted” are admitted to this program in first grade and, in most cases, will remain there for six years. Savage Inequalities By Gene Lyons Updated October 18, 1991 at 04:00 AM EDT Questions of unfairness feel more like a geometric problem than a matter of humanity or conscience. Sister Julia of the Sisters of Mercy goes with Kozol on his interviews with several East St. Louis children. In a sixth grade social studies class the walls are bare of words or decorations. Even in the suburbs, nonetheless, it has been noted that a differential system still exists, and it may not be surprising to discover that the differences are once again determined by the social class, parental wealth, and sometimes race, of the schoolchildren. This, at least, is what they tell me.”, Spurred perhaps by David’s words, another student says, “The biggest tax that people pay is to the federal government. . If his father’s in the streets, his mother’s using crack … how is money going to make a difference?”, David dismisses this and tells me, “Here’s what we should do. I can’t overestimate its impact but, as I have said, we have no space.”, The school tracks children by ability, he says. It seems that we do not want them to die. The mural above the proscenium arch could be restored. He will graduate, I hope, this June. After reading the first chapter of Savage inequalities what stood out to me the most was East St. Louis was “the most distressed small city in America.” I saw this at the end of the first paragraph on page 7. Denial of “the means of competition” is perhaps the single most consistent outcome of the education offered to poor children in the schools of our large cities; and nowhere is this pattern of denial more explicit or more absolute than in the public schools of New York City. $ Ò Ï ¶ * : P P P P P P N P P P P P P $ … ¥ ® t ¾ P P P P P t ô ¾ ¾ P P ‰ ô ô ô P " ¾ P ¾ P N ô P N ô Z ô N ¾ ¾ N P €K�œûÄÒ ä ¶ What is the danger that the people in a town like Rye would face if they resolved to make this statement true? Some of the most stunning inequality, according to a report by the Community Service Society, derives from allocations granted by state legislators to school districts where they have political allies. ‘Wrong’ answers may be more useful to examine than correct ones.”. Textbooks are scarce and children have to share their social studies books. “Give it another two hundred years,” says Alexander. And few of the graduates or dropouts of those poorer systems, as a consequence, are likely ever to earn enough to buy a home in Great Neck or Manhasset. One is white. And, in comment on the Board of Education’s final statement—“the inequity is clear”—the CSS observes, “New York City’s poorest … districts could adopt that eloquent statement with few changes.”. A metal awning frame without an awning supports a flagpole, but there is no flag. Unlike many of the other students who have spoken, he is somewhat hesitant and seems to choke up on his words. Public School 261, an elementary school in North Bronx, is housed in a former skating rink. The least qualified teachers were often employed in the schools. Having obtained what they desired, they secede, to a degree, from the political arena. The father’s earnestness, his faith in the importance of these details, and the child’s almost painful shyness stay in my mind later. They are enrolled in private school, she says. In the minds of those who have their eyes on an effective triage process—selective betterment of the most fortunate—this may be exactly the right way to shake the juice. It’s unfair to measure us against the suburbs. There were shortages of teachers, supplies, and books. In the case of New York City and particularly Riverdale, however, it takes on a special poignance. I had 45 children in my fifth grade class. A class of third grade children at the school has four different teachers in a five-month span in 1989. Chunks of wall and sections of the arches and supporting pillars have been blasted out by rot. Someone from the public school attendance office might try to contact the parents and might be successful, or he might not. At Cooper Middle School 96 percent of the children qualify for subsidized lunches. 2. The ceiling is crossed by wooden ribs; there are stained-glass windows in the back. It’s an easy way to raise the average scores. Martin Luther King Junior High, according to the Post-Dispatch had to be evacuated for the second time in the spring of 1989 because of sewage fumes, backed-up toilets, and sewage in the bathrooms, kitchen, and basement. The political effectiveness of those who have been left behind is thus depleted. 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.4 out of 5.0 5 Stars 94 4 Stars 35 3 Stars 12 2 Stars 5 1 Stars 4 Performance. Chapter 3. Throughout the discussion, whatever the views the children voice, there is a degree of unreality about the whole exchange. “See, that’s where the trouble starts. 1$a$ ‰ Š ” Ì S L ß ” ¥" É# Ó# ÿ# É% Ó% ı% K' ê( õ( , , ì. Children are surrounded by “death, decay, and destruction.” (Kozol p.187) Kozol found overcrowded schools in need of serious repairs. Statistics tell us, says the Times, that the South Bronx is “the poorest congressional district in the United States.” But statistics cannot tell us “what it means to a child to leave his often hellish home and go to a school—his hope for a transcendent future—that is literally falling apart.”, The head of school facilities for the Board of Education speaks of classrooms unrepaired years after having been destroyed by fire.
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