Savage Inequalities

In Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol argues that America's public school system has been victimized by ongoing segregation which locks school-age children into a static caste system; he uses Francis Keppel's term caste (63, 80, 199) denotatively to describe a social and economic structure whose restrictions it is impossible to supersede in spite of the popular (and flawed) notion that America is the land of opportunity. Kozol charges that funding is systematically withheld from poorer schools, and he uses this claim of fact as the basis for a cause-and effect argument: poor educative conditions result in inferior education, grave academic deficiency in students, and a reinforcing the stereotypes of both affluence and indigence.

Kozol's book is the result of his investigation of inner-city schools between 1988 and 1990. He documents the sharp impoverishment of under-funded schools--almost exclusively non-white--in St. Louis, Camden, New York, Chicago, Washington, Cincinnati, and San Antonio. Over the course of his private investigation, he reveals the squalid at best, and toxic at worst, conditions that poor children endure to attend dilapidated schools with insufficient supplies, teachers and counselors. As he travels from school to school and digs deeper into the problem, he discovers that monies are unfairly and even boldly diverted from the needy to the affluent, creating what he sees as "private schools within the public system." (107) This outcome is the result o

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reputable newspapers: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis Sun, Chicago Tribune, New York Times, New Jersey Courier Post, and San Antonio Express-News. (Notes, 238-254) In a study like Kozol's which is not theory-based, it is appropriate to cite sources that are both factual and contemporaneous like these. The aforementioned are merely outside sources, however. Kozol's inside sources are equally credible, since when he visits schools in both poor and affluent areas, he interviews not only principals and teachers (28-29, 32-34 150-152), but students as well (12-14, 30-32, 102-7, 188-190, 232). Part of Kozol's project is to argue that money and privilege have had a deleterious effect on upper-class students, and it makes sense to quote the privileged white students so that the reader can ascertain for him or herself the self-centeredness which characterizes these children. (See Kozol's discussion of the Winnetka school system, 65-74, but more importantly, his interviews with affluent white students in Rye, New York, 125-130.) Of course it is risky to form an inductive conclusion based on limited evidence--perhaps not all affluent children are this self-centered and mean-spirited--but the conclusion is tempting. To discuss th

Category: Psychology - S