ty and flexibility in the classroom (Ballantine 3).
Analysis of American educational systems needs to operate on a minimum of two levels: first, what transpires in the classroom itself and second, what guides given school systems as an entity. School systems must try to balance the needs of individual students with their own distinctive strengths and weaknesses against a school district's regional ambitions and shortcomings. Evaluation of functionalist and conflict theorists should be judged against these two standards of individual and system needs. A system must be set-up to run smoothly, but it must provide sufficient flexibility to accommodate the varying needs of its changing students.
Functionalist theory operates most efficiently when it has carefully assessed the regionally distinctive needs of its administrative school district. When Durkheim proposed the need for vocational training in France, he was responding to the era's increasing industrialization and the need for schools to train students to meet that challenge. Yet functionalist theory weakens when it neglects non-traditional segments of its population or fails to foresee their special needs and how they would best be met. Unfortunately, this failure to identify and address specific needs of certain segments of a population can inadvertently contribute to the inequity between school systems.
In Savage Inequalities Jonathan Kozol traversed the US between 1988 and 1990 visiting schools in East St. Louis, North Lawndale and the South Side of Chicago, New York City, Camden, Washington, D.C. and San Antonio. Appalled by the poverty and racism, Kozol also served as a careful listener who recorded the triumphs and failures he observed. Kozol's book can be read as an inditement of the current elementary school systems across urban America. A "fine arts" magnet school was established in Dearborn Park, a new development in the Chicago area, built nearly b...