In regards to readers’ curiosity concerning Jonathan Kozol’s book Shame of The Nation, the researcher will take this time to discuss about his main theories. The book makes the point how Jonathan Kozol has this notion that apartheid schooling was not doing well at all and in fact was its worst time since 1969. Kozol utilizes this book with the agenda of opening the eyes of his readers to the certainty of what is going on in most of the urban public schools of today. Kozol makes the point that segregation is not caused by any kind of force, nevertheless by factors working together to keep Hispanics and blacks stuck in the inner city while middle class, mostly whites, are moving away from the city.
Kozol discusses how the condition of inner city schools has weakened expressively. Most of the schools are in bad condition. Kozol describes how horrible physical conditions are and that the students have very limited resources. He mentions how low prospects for the future of its students, prison-like behavior management, and strict overpopulation are all normally observed in schools that are in the inner city. These schools are severely kept apart on purpose. According to Kozol there is often “less than 15 percent of children in the school that are white”. In Chicago and even worse with only “5 percent” in places such as Washington, D.C. (Kozol 8). “One of the most intimidating involvements for those who grew up in the years when Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King were alive is to stopover at public schools nowadays that have their names, and names of other honored [civil rights] leaders,” for the reason that these are the most segregated of schools even when they are built in racially mixed zones they still symbolize severely segregated demographics (Kozol 22). Kozol argues how poor facilities and overcrowding for this is nothing that is not unusual in urban schools. Kozol mentions a particular school that was “built so that it could maintain something like 1,500 kids, the school held 3,250 (Kozol). He makes the point that poor physical conditions are not abnormal at all in urban schools.
The book talks about, Kozol who gave his fourth grade students an assignment to write about what they saw in front of them each day at school for the period of one of his years of teaching in Boston. Kozol got papers from students including replies concerning “papers on the floordirty boards” windows that were broken, “cracks in the walls old books that had dirty spots all over them,” “wild birds flying everywhere,” and “turnover rate of teachers everyday” (p. 164). The book makes the point of how in some schools,” computer classes where, as said by one pupil ‘we sit there and just talk about what we would could be doing if there were some better computers” (p. 172).
He makes the point that most do not want to recognize that there is a problem with this lack of essential resource in a school. He also brings up the point in the book that we have allowed this to fly up under the radar and have accepted this as being okay. Kozol talks about how there not enough help is being done. He explains that students are not able to learn if they do not have the proper resources. The book talks about how white schools are giving a better chance while the inner city schools are having to suffer and raises the question of how can people expect these students to work learn, and live on an equal playing field when these students do not even have books, while students in other places have every resource that they could ever want in a school.
Kozol even brings up a point where George W. Bush’s speaking to the National Urban League where he mentioned that “just raising federal assistance to the public schools, yet, had not been successful,” (p. 59). A Chicago inner city principle expressed it well when he alleged “I will believe that money is not an issue when the rich stop spending so much money on their own children, it is quite obvious that money does matter a lot. It is clear that it has to matter because without it none of the resources can be bought. Money is what buys the computers, books, the chemicals for chemistry lab, the janitors to assist in cleaning up the school, getting new desk and other things that the students will need down the road.
In the book The Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol, False promise is the eighth chapter in which the author addresses the matter of re-segregation in American schools. Kozol emphases on the execution of the programs like Operation Counterpoise and Higher Horizons. During the 1960s Kozol had a job as a school teacher in New York when he had the time to witness the application of these programs. The purpose of the program was to improve the student outcome in segregated schools with raised spending that is combined with training for the teachers.
Kozol points out that Higher Horizons was a program that had some degree of success for quite a few reasons as well as their abandonment just about seven years after the investigation started as the funds were concentrated. The program claimed to make math and reading skills better among students, nurture better associations with parents and depose the rates of suspension, but then again on the whole they turned out to be promises that would not go anywhere. In other words, they were false. Kozol seems to be aware of what is going on. He understands that "the promises" which were made "to guarantee of finding new and better ways of having some kind of successful outcomes" that will in the end turn into "disappointment, if not sarcasm" (Kozol 2005:193).
The chapter of False promise discusses how a nation was duped in believing that they were going to get the help needed in order to solve the problems in inner city schools. It also talks about what the nation was led to believe nevertheless the little that was actually done. The expectations and high hopes in the program were produced by media attention. New York City school leaders Joseph Fernandez and Rudy Crew also New Jersey Principal Joe Clark were all extremely hopeful of the achievement of the program. Nevertheless, circumstances and events in the long run show nothing significant actually came off the service. It turned out to be a huge disappointment. Will a faith "in miracles embodied in distinctive and dynamic individuals" (Kozol, p.200) get us quicker to the answer? Kozol contemplates dynamic individuals are not able to alter the deep rooted system.
Kozol proposes undeniable statistics to mention what he says. There is no refuting the point that discrimination in excellence and subsidy meted out to poor schools where Hispanics and Blacks are more numerous is the root reason of evil that hazards us. Kozol mentions that it is impossible to improve reading or math or for that matter any other scholastic or academic standard of children that continue to be deprived. It is a key sin to write off disadvantaged children as educationally poor on ethnic or racial grounds. When it comes to the national level it will take a miracle to reverse the trend that we are seeing and miracles are not occurring overnight. Kozol makes the point that the doctrine of separate but equal is naturally misleading for the reason that separate cannot be equal. For that reason, the planners must put the emphases on (I) how to end segregation or separation, before putting in place those procedures (ii) that recompense underprivileged minority students (Kozol). "Allowing" minority children in schools where not all students are "brown and black" as stated by Kozol, would "decrease the harm done" to them (36). Despite the fact integration may not be the complete answer to poor academic presentation of the minority children as the socio-economic situation in school neighborhood likewise significantly impacts educational performance and attainment. Kozol appears is not able to offer a solution to this problem. However, he does bring up another area that needs to be addressed which is the obsessive emphasis on tests and the necessity to pass these tests so that their schools could get assets. On the other hand, these standardized tests are "beginning to regulate the teaching" as the principal of a school notes, with the outcome that they had to get rid of activities such as recess (Kozol 165) in an attempt to utilize the time effectively for the tests. Beyond a quarter of a year is misused in these tests and their training. School curriculum imitates nothing beyond what would be on these exams.
Another issue Kozol manages to talk about is how the issue of the curriculum that is frequently taught in numerous inner-city schools. The curriculum communicated repeatedly displays a lack of hope that is placed in these inner-city students. Kozol talks about the posters in Kindergarten classrooms upholding questions for example; “How will you do the manager’s job?” and “Do you want a manager’s job?” (98). There is a concentration on teaching children to grow up and become “the ruled over generation” and to learn only to give to the economic welfares of our society. “Is productivity of the future, from this point on, to be the most important drive of the education we are giving our children?” (Kozol 94). The book makes it clear that many feel as though it does not to be. Yes, it is significant to comprehend the financial needs of a society nonetheless it is significant to communicate to inner-city children that they are skilled of attaining anything they want to become and we need to deliver them with the curriculum that helps them develop in a lot of ways.
On top of that, there is a lot of focus on high-stakes examinations in inner-city schools for that matter. A lot of the test does not even measure what the student can do and therefore are considered to be bias. Furthermore, a lot of children of minorities such as the Hispanics and Blacks are the ones that are being held back a grade if they do not to pass these high-stakes assessments. “Every time the schools start keeping the students back a grade, we are considerably decreasing the odds of that child going forward anytime in the near future” (Kozol 120). Kozol suggests that the education system need to start bringing back lessons of rich history, geography, literature, culture, and sciences that have been thrown on the side for one test. Kozol goes on to say that “We cannot trust such tests to regulate a person’s competence or the success of any particular school, school district, or state” (Kozol 117). These tests may yield a public victory, nevertheless we are losing the real reward of permitting a child to obtain an education that excellent and also beneficial for the students.
In conclusion, Kozol was able to address some of the deep rooted concerns unfavorably having an impact on the American education system. One such matter is the poor performance of schools with greater minority students. It is clear that the root reason of their poor presentation is to be found in their segregation and state indifference which Kozol points out very well in the book. The book was an easy read because Kozol clearly brings most of the issues about funding to the light. Some of the ideas taken to speak to these issues appeared promising in the establishment but these programs eventually just died a natural death with funds being tapered off. Kozol further makes this point by mentioning that even the present programs such as “no child left behind" could be a huge downer on resources with their compulsive concentration on tests to the exclusion of a broad and complete curriculum. Despite the fact Kozol favors integration he does not really show how integration can be a long-lasting explanation or how to go about applying a better program.
Works Cited
Kozol, Jonathan. The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. New York: Crown Publishers, 2005.
