Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools

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Summary: Eye-opening
Review: Savage Ineqaultities is an extremely well written and researched look into the most underprivileged schools in America and how the crunbling public school systems effect the children. Kozol devots each chapter to a different city or area and fully describes the pitful condtions in which children are expected to suceed or in most cases just get by. I am a student at an affluent high school in St. Louis, right across the river from East St.Louis, and it was shocking to learn the conditions peers my age are living and educated in. This book is a must read for any one interested in social work or education. I also recommend this book to any students or teachers; this book will help them fully appreciate the tools and oppurtunities availible to them.

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Summary: Truth Exposed: The Conditions of Public Schools
Review: Jonathan Kozol Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools Crown Publishers, 1992 I extremely enjoyed reading Jonathan Kozol's book Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. To say that it is an invaluable tool to all educators, parents, and anyone concerned about the welfare of children, is vastly an understatement. This book provides the reader with graphic details about the gross realities of the public school system, and focuses not only on revealing the problem, but why the problem has occurred and what can be done about it. Chapter by chaper, Kozol brings to light the harsh realities of what children face everyday in different parts of the United States. His purpose for writing this book, I believe, was to inform the public these realities, because many people have no idea they even exist. The details he includes are almost unbelievable that our school system would allow these situations to exist. This book differs from the mainstream ideas that everyone receives a fair, quality education in the United States. I found it difficult to read, knowing that students faced these problems everyday. Problems such as not enough textbooks, no teacher, no classroom, or no supplies to start the year off with. Yet I could not put the book down. The truth hits the reader with such a force because the book is a gripping tale unlike anything heard before. This book reveals the tragedy of an inadequate school system, and contrasts the extreme differences between the wealthy and the poor. At first, reading through the book, I found it extremely offensive that a writer would expose these systems without feeling the pressure to do something about it. And then it hit me: he did do something. He wrote this book for everyone to read and understand and to see something not seen before. I support his ideas of how tax-based income is not fair because wealthier children receive a better education than poor children receive. Is not the whole system of education based upon the idea that everyone deserves a fair, quality education? I also support the idea that the people who are aware of these existing conditions have overlooked, and ignored the realities, hoping they would go away. That is simply absurd! These situations should not only be made aware to everyone, but some major changes should be implemented. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is concerned about the future of society. To those who want to point fingers at the parents, read this book. It will help you understand that these children die from the very gallows we hang them from. It also exposes these problems, and by that, makes the statement that this is no longer acceptable and something should be done. This book gives a good example of a diverse perspective on American education. It is important to have such a different perspective because sometimes it is hard to see beyond your own situation. Kozol takes you away from your familiar surroundings and puts you in the same situation these students face everyday. And if you don't like it, do something about it. Make the changes necessary. After reading this book, I was encouraged to go out and do the same.

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Summary: "We know things other kids don't because we're taught them"
Review: Jonathan Kozol started teaching at a segregated school in Boston in 1964. The students in his fourth grade class had to share a classroom with another class, a choir, and a drama group rehearsing for a play that was never performed. He was the 13th teacher they had in the year. After being fired for having his students read a poem that was not on a pre-approved list, he moved on to a wealthier school and found a much more accommodating system of education with smaller classes, better materials, and more innovation. In his study of underfunded schools in poor neighborhoods in East St. Louis, Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Washington D.C., and San Antonio, he found that little has changed.

This book is an eye opener as to the educational system in this country. Segregation is alive & well decades after Brown v. Board of Education. Most of the schools he visited are close to other wealthier (and predominately white) schools so he can really show the inequality between them. The poorer schools have limited to nonexistent materials and equipment. One school in New York (known simply as public school 261) conducts classes in an abandoned roller rink with no identification and not even a single encyclopedia set. One of the few exceptional teachers he found had to buy materials out of her pocket (pg. 47). The enormously high drop out rates at these schools are almost welcomed as they free up seats in the over-crowded classrooms (pp. 54 and 111). Most heartbreaking is that so many teachers and administrators he talked to seem to have given up on improving conditions and saving these kids. More than once, adults are quoted as dismissing the matter with "They're not going anywhere" (pp. 52 and 160). Kozol also looks at the neighborhoods outside of the schools as further proof that these children are at a disadvantage from the beginning. One neighborhood in the southside of Chicago has one bank, one market, 48 lottery stations, and 99 bars and liquor stores (pg. 41).

The author's solution is financial: more funding if not by diverting money from the more affluent schools than by state funding. As depressing as these stories are, sadly, I do not think this book will sway the opinions of those who feel added funding will be wasted on these schools. I sympathize with the author's goals but, even I begin to be exasperated by some of the attitudes of the teachers and school officials in these schools. One school has a barrel in the counselor's office because the roof leaks so bad (pg. 103). One of the counselors admits the students wish it would stop raining in the office (well, duh). I find myself wondering aloud why nobody fixes it, whether a custodian, male teacher, or someone in the community. Woodrow Wilson school in New Jersey has 50 computers. Sounds great, but 40 cannot be used because they've melted. Why? They're set up above the boiler room and they are still there! (pg. 149). Why aren't they moved? Someone points out the school's namesake, but Wilson stood for self-determination (i.e. the 14 points). I know these are easy questions to ask when one does not live and work in such conditions and there are probably good answers to them but that is what skeptical readers may think when they read this book. While the study is eye opening, unfortunately, I do not think it will sway the opinions of those who feel that funding such schools is sending good money after bad.

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Summary: The Sad Truth
Review: I loved reading Jonathan Kozol's book becasue he exposed the truths about the public school system. I have experinced public education in two drasticly different enviornments; one being white and rich, the other poor and made up of minorities. This is a good book for those who have only seen one side of the public school system, this book should open their eyes to many important isses. It amazes me how public education can be so different. Kozol is fair in reporting his information, which still holds true today. At times the book was very hard to read because the facts are so horendous. To think of the conditions that some children are forced to live, and learn in, is truely depressing. Kozol focus on a few schools on the east coast, and elaborates on them. I thought the book might be more interesting if he widened his search by including more schools from differnt areas of the U.S., so that I could compare them to eachother. At times the book seemed a bit repetitive hearing simular statistics throughout the book. But the intenstity of the issues he speaks about is what kept me interested. What I was reading made me so mad and worked up so many emotions in me, I wanted to keep reading. After reading the book I wanted to go out and help all of these poor children. After reading this book you will want to make a difference, you will want to try to make things fair for the underprivileged; anything that motovates you to make a difference is a good thing. The reading was fairly easy, the lanugae is simple and easy to follow. I would recommend this book to anyone. Education is an topic that everyone can relate to, so I think that many people will find it intersting.

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Summary: The New Controversy
Review: This book though written a few years ago strikes at the heart of today's controversies in America's school system. Is our system fair? According to Jonathon Kozol it's not even close! The schools described by him in different cities across America are heartbreaking in their bleaknness and terrifying in their hopelessness. Kozol paints a portrait of the new American landscape where people with wealth distance themselves from the problem and insulate their children from all poverty. One has to wonder what happened to all the civil rights activists. Did they all turn yuppie? This is the new cause in America. How do we get our schools more equal. Can money save them? Can more federal government control save our school system? This is a great book for people who care about our education system. Mark Cooley, 2nd year Education Major,Macon State College

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Summary: Exposing The Truth
Review: Savage Inequalities is great book and will open your eyes to the truth about the education system in America. Jonathan Kozol describes schools in poor and rich areas with great clarity. I hope that everyone would read this book so people would realize that schools are still unequal although few are willing to acknowledge it.

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Summary: Wake Up America
Review: Anyone believing that America is the land of opportunity for our young people should read this book. Anyone convinced that America is not the land of opportunity for our young people, but wants statistics to back this belief, should read this book too. In chapter after chapter Kozol dispels the myth that all children in this country are provided with an equal opportunity for education. The stark contrast he provides between neighboring schools in some of our countries major cities is haunting and unbelievable. The conditions that some of our children face day after day, and year after year would break the spirits of even the strongest adults. For example: The children of Martin Luther King Junior High in East St. Louis have experienced repeated school closing due to sewage back-ups. Students in DuSable High School's auto mechanics class have waited 16 weeks before learning something so basic as changing a tire because of no instruction. "On an average morning in Chicago, 5,700 children in 190 classrooms come to school to find they have no teacher."(p. 52) At Goudy Elementary, in Chicago, there are two working bathrooms for 700 children and toilet paper and paper towels are rationed. In New York City's Morris High the black boards are so badly cracked that teachers are afraid to let students write on them, there are holes in the floors of classrooms, plaster falls from the walls, and when it rains waterfalls make their way down six flights of stairs. In Public School 261 in District 10 in New York 1300 elementary students attend school in a converted roller skating rink. The school's capacity is 900 and there are no windows, which Kozol describes as creating feelings of asphyxiation. In Camden, New Jersey, at Pyne Point Junior High, students in typing class learn on old typewriters not computers. The science lab has no workstations and the ceiling is plagued with falling tiles. At Camden High only half the students in 12th grade English have textbooks. Kozol's book is filled with statistics of this nature. Repeatedly there are inadequate supplies, untrained personnel, dilapidated facilities, and impoverished conditions.

As alarming as these conditions are, so too are the attitudes of those who are on the other side. Kozol shared conversation wtih senior high students in suburban Rye, New York. When asked if they thought "it fair to pay more taxes so that this was possible" (i.e., opportunities for other children to have the same opportunities they had)(p.128) one student expressed the lack of personal benefit this would provide. An attitude like this wouldn't have surfaced even in the wealthiest schools in 1968, according to Kozol. Implying we have passed on the self-seeking attutitudes so prevalent among the upwardly mobile in this country. The Supreme Court cases that have addressed this notion of equal opportunity have consistently supported the system of separate but "unequal."

What Kozol demonstrates so profoundly is what little progress has been made toward providing equal educational opportunities for all children since Brown vs. the Board of Ed. This book is a must read for anyone in local, state or national politics, administrators of all schools, teachers, and teachers in training, education professors, and any citizen wanting to understand one of the profound causes of what's wrong with schooling in America. I don't know what it will take or when we will share the idea that "All our children ought to be allowed a stake in the enormous richness of America." (p.233)

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Summary: Broken Promise
Review: Jefferson once wrote, "This [bill] on education would [raise] the mass of the people to the high ground of moral respectability necessary to their own safety and to orderly government, and would [complete] the great object of qualifying them to secure the veritable aristoi for the trusts of government, to the exclusion of the pseudalists... I have great hope that some patriotic spirit will... call it up and make it the keystone of the arch of our government." He championed a public education system so that the people could have custody of their government. The great democracy would have a population where any single citizen would have the ability to take the reigns as they saw fit.

Kozol goes far to point out the disservice we are doing to Jefferson's idea and to the children of this country (U.S.A.). We are so wrapped up in "saving" money, that we are willing to sacrifice the children of the poor so that we can continue on in our own comfort. It has reached the point where some schools now teach "job skills" (typing, shop, etc.) to the children of the lower class. The only message this conveys is to tell them that this is all they're good for.

The book goes even further and examines every concievable excuse for this disparity. For those who believe that the current system of education in this country is fair and equitable, this book will show you that it is anything but.

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Summary: exposed!
Review: this book shows that there is reasons for riots, protests, marches etc. people say that there is no reason for any of it. read this book. education is everything and these children arent getting an education because of underfunding and biasness and racism. it is heartwreching and has inspired me to become a teacher. great book!

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Summary: Poignant Observations
Review: Education is often a political football, being tossed around from one administration to the next as a bargaining chip with very little constructive reform actually coming about. The trouble the chronology of the students' academic life doesn't change while presidential and congressional administrations do. Jonathan Kozol set out to chronicle and put into words the sights and persons he witnessed and observed in six major school districts. His observations are so shocking and heart wrenching that they must instill in every reader a sense of disgust and despair and evoke poignant and intense questions such as "Does that actually happen in America?;" "How did things get so bad;" or "What can we do to fix this." Kozol is the proper observer; he tries as often as he can not to directly interfere and change the outcome of his observations. Reading this book will make each reader wonder what kind of divine providence kept him from becoming more involved more often.
Every person who is contemplating a career somewhere in the field of education needs to read this book at least once. The most idealistic people who have the highest and loftiest ambitions and a true burning desire to help children in need will want to read this graphic account of poverty and its correlation to education. Once they wipe away the tears, those potential educators will have a strengthened resolve. Perhaps their actions will enable Kozol to write a new work someday in the future chronicling the uplifting of children and schools.