This paper is a discussion of Jonathan Kozol's bleak analysis of the failure of the U. S. educational system to adequately serve children of poverty, Savage Inequalities. Kozol presents evidence from a variety of schools that serve students from lower socioeconomic classes and primarily black families, comparing them with observations of wealthier schools, primarily white, and showing the desperate inequalities of money (and the lack thereof). His principal thesis is that the economic systems that fund public education in America perpetuate these inequalities on a dramatic and pervasive level. He argues that even where schools share a common curriculum, the unspoken things that are taught within such a system are most responsible for maintaining an unfair and disastrous status quo, harming even the students who seem to benefit from the privilege of their birth.
Elliot W. Eisner (1994) observes that curriculum is based on ideologies, and that, in America, the most fundamental ideology is that education is supposed to prepare children to become productive members of their society. School, in contemporary America, teaches its young citizens to be punctual, to compete, and to achieve (p. 55). While curriculum should teach explicit facts and skills - giving all children the ability to read, perform at least basic math problems, and share common knowledge, such as an essential understanding of American history - Eisner (1994) argues that school should also teach students how to participate in the American way of life (pp. 135-149).
In Kozol's study (1991), money buys both this explicit and this implied curriculum - and the less money that a school has, the less likely its students are to learn much of anything useful. He argues that a funding system which is tied to property taxes in the community in which a school operates guarantees failure. He (1991) writes, "The property tax is the decisive force in shaping inequality" (p. ...