Book Review of “Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools
Kozol, J. (1992). Savage inequalities: children in America's schools. New York City: HarperCollins
Book Review
Over the past decades, educational reforms have emphasized academic excellence as indispensable and essential part of the reform. Even though each time the word equity is mentioned, more often than not with regard to balancing equity and excellence, unfortunately, issues pertaining to educational inequalities have not been addressed in the debate. Fortunately, Jonathan Kozol’s book provides an alternative to this trend and brings equity issues on educational agenda for public attention. However, despite its important message, the book is simplistic and lacks adequate research, which ignores several past research conducted on the same issue.
Kozol’s thesis is that significant inequalities in funding between affluent suburban and urban schools are both morally inexcusable and primarily responsible for the large gap in academic achievement by urban (largely minority and poor) and suburban (white and upper- and middle-class) children (Kozol, 1992). Despite pointing out that social forces would negatively influence equal performance if schools received equal funds, Kozol repeatedly dwells on the theme of unequal funding as if it were a single causal variable. He fails to refer to wealth of sociological knowledge that attempts to explain inequalities education or how interaction of institutional, societal, and school factors contribute to disadvantages faced by students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. He also fails to present the significant role of underfinanced schools, curriculum tracking, less experienced teachers, and urban politics in quality of education. However, by repeatedly returning to the same theme of unbalanced funding in the presence of a significant research that point out that equal funding of schools will do little in reducing unequal outcomes, and ignoring family-school connection and non-school factors, Kozol reduces a complicated problem to a morality play.
In 1988, Jonathan Kozol embarked on a two-year journey, visiting schools and collecting opinions from schoolchildren in thirty urban and sub-urban communities throughout the U.S. He shares with his readers what he saw and gathered in Savage Inequalities. The book is a descriptive, journalistic portrait of the horrors of urban education and the high level of inequality between urban and suburban school. The most puzzling of what Kozol reports is the degree of racial segregation he found almost in the places he visited, particularly the South and colossal discrepancies in curriculum, equipment, and staff he unearthed between schools in wealthy neighborhood and schools in poor ones. In most of the schools in urban areas that Kozol visited, 95 to 99 percent of the students were non-white, and in majority of these schools, schools did not have adequate books, chemistry labs (if they existed at all) lacked basic equipments such as Bunsen burners and beakers, and playgrounds lacked equipment (Kozol, 1992). By contrast, Kozol describes such schools found in the suburban as New Trier High School outside Chicago, which is equipped with Olympic-size swimming pool, seven gyms, and a television studio that has at least one faculty advisor for every twenty-four students.
The second major cause of polarity in school system is the economic inequality, which goes hand in hand with racial segregation. Kozol attributes this inequality to what he calls “the arcane machinery by which we finance public education,” the property tax (Kozol, 1992, p. 47). Normally, poor communities place high priority on education by taxing themselves higher than affluent community does. However, due to their poor tax base, poor community is likely to raise far less money for each child in school. However, Kozol fails to integrate other sociological and demographic factors that affect quality of education. Kozol challenges the readers to devise a more expansive view on alternatives available to solve the problem. Kozol argues that all American children should have a chance to enjoy the wealth of the nation, but fails to propose a way forward for the problem.
Kozol tries without success to debunk many currently fashionable reforms aimed at redressing these inequities and bringing urban schools to the level of suburban schools. He argues that reforms to the current system could increase input from poor parents, they ultimately accept “the fact of ghetto education as a permanent American reality” (Kozol, 1992, p. 98). There is a significantly wide gap between the poor and the rich, such that Kozol maintains that there is dire need for authorities to equalize spending in schools than interfere with the organizational arrangement of schools. Kozol fails to discuss directly the reasons for difficulties in addressing these inequities. Part of his explanation is that the white middle-class have not been willing to support plans aimed at redistributing school resources. Apparently, the problem is bigger than the laxity of the middle-class communities to support sharing their resources in order to ensure equal education opportunity. Kozol also discusses how social changes after World War II have compromised the capacity of public education to equalize opportunity for inner-urban children.
As muckraking, journalistic portrait with the intention of drawing the attention of Americans at a time characterized with depressingly low concern for the poor, the book succeeds in exposing the immoral, shameful educational and life chances inequalities in the 1990s. Concerning the analysis of the problem, the book fails to at different levels. First, the research is hazy and partial. Kozol takes majority of his sources from newspaper accounts of the schools he visited. Although he appropriately cites the journalists, it is unclear when he deviates from their accounts and brings in his observation. Secondly, Kozol only spent a couple of days in the schools he visited and this limited time cannot guarantee valid generalization about urban education. The third weakness is the use of polar comparison by taking the poorest urban schools and the most affluent suburban, which does best to demonstrate the degree of inequality but fails to consider the diversity of schools children in America attend. Furthermore, attempt by the author to support his thesis selectively to ensure moral indignation, the book fails to bring out some of the success stories in urban education. The book rarely mentions schools such as Debra Meier’s Central Park East in New York City, nor does it recognize complexities of urban schooling as presented by Samuel Freedman in Small Victories (Kozol, 1992). Finally, his failure to use any sociological research renders the book deficient of the wealth of information on the issue and only provide a simplistic explanation of educational inequality than the evidence suggest. Regrettably, social research is involving, and perhaps using complicated theories would render Kozol’s simplistic ideas problematic. In concluding remark, I congratulate Kozol for drawing attention to these issues, but regret he failed to do it better.
Reference:
Kozol, J. (1992). Savage inequalities: children in America's schools. New York City: HarperCollins
