Amazing Grace Throughout the United

Amazing Grace

Throughout the United States, poverty and racial segregation remain daily problems among those unfortunately enough to be afflicted by both a lack of funding and the "wrong" skin color. This, necessarily, leads to a lack of adequate education and, ultimately, the cycle of poverty is perpetuated by a lack of good job opportunities. At the same time, the government at both the state and federal level appear focused only on benefiting the rich and powerful to ensure their reelection to power. Tax cuts, for example, benefit those with high incomes, but disadvantage those living in poverty, since the public services and goods they rely on as vital to their lives are drastically reduced because of a lack of public funding. These are just some of the issues Jonathan Kozol raises in his book Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation. The points he makes about the plight of children in the South Bronx, for example, are designed, and rightly so, to move the reader emotionally, and hopefully towards taking action. The information in the book is also highly applicable in the counseling and education fields.

Kozol structures his comments around interviews with mainly the inhabitants of the Souh Bronx area. By interviewing this population, Kozol is able to obtain first-hand accounts of the many social, economic, and health problems in the area. Particularly, children and their plight are the focus of his writing. Many children do no only suffer, but also die as a result of the poor safety services provided to the area. The most horrifying examples of these are the young boy who fell to his death into an elevator shaft when he leaned against poorly maintained doors, another whose bedroom ceiling collapsed into the room, and a third who burned to death in his home. These accounts, all provided by local residents, provide a horrifying first-hand view of the plight suffered by most of the Bronx residents. The government and others in power appear unwilling to change this situation. Instead, their focus is on "powering the palace" and soothing their conscience by claiming that cruelty is a requirement of the energy expended to acquire the luxury experienced by New York's affluent population.

In addition to poor housing conditions and extreme poverty, the Bronx residents also suffer from health hazards such as rats, AIDS, and poorly equipped hospitals. Other problems, which cling to the area like a disease of their own, include poor education in overcrowded schools and extreme segregation, fueled by rampant racism. Such racism is perpetuated by media systems such as newspaper and radio reporting, in which journalists and broadcasters barely make an attempt to conceal their contempt for the Bronx residents. In once case Kozol reports that one even compared these residents to maggots. The area is therefore a fertile field for counseling efforts.

Counselors would do well to start by addressing the many social problems experienced in the Bronx, among which is the drug addiction problem among young people and even children. Kozol mentions that tax cuts would mean fewer rehabilitation centers, for which the waiting lists already extend as much as six months. Counselors can help speed up the process of healing by working with those in rehabilitation as well as those waiting to enter. Since drug addiction is both a physical and psychological problem, counselors can work with those on the waiting list and help to determine if any of these persons can be helped outside the walls of the clinic. The waiting process can also be sped up by determining the severity of each addiction case and prioritizing the more severe ones.

One example of Kozol's work can help in his regard is by providing an indication of how many addiction cases there are in each area of the Bronx. This can then help counselors focus their attention on the areas that are most severely afflicted. It can also be useful for counseling managers to determine where to focus the attention of counselors specializing in specific types or severity levels of addiction.

Bronx citizens also suffer from severe depression, especially among secondary school children. Counselors can then work together with public schools in the area to address the depression problem in various ways. Indeed, strategies that include teachers can go a long way towards lifting the grim atmosphere that Kozol describes in many of the schools. Since it appears that many of the children experience depression as a result of how teachers and the school system treat them, it is vital to make partners of these professionals and help them to develop skills that would uplift the children and thus give them access to better future opportunities.

In this regard, Kozol's work helps by identifying specific schools in which the most problems are experienced. Counselors and managing counselors can then focus their specific attention on this. Kozol also helps to identify problems within these schools, including overcrowding and the relationships among students and teachers. Because the author highlighted problems in this way, counselors can provide services that target specific challenges. Managers can also select the correct counselors for each specific challenge being faced.

In terms of education, schooling is perhaps the most vital part of a child's growing years. It is in this context that children learn to socialize and interact with others while also developing skills in terms of learning and critical thinking. However, the severe segregation Kozol describes for the schools in the Bronx area appears to do more harm than good for the education of these children. Indeed, being segregated and pushed into overcrowded school like they are teach these children that they are somehow less deserving of good education opportunities than their counterparts in higher-level public schools and private schools. In fact, the message appears to be that money and a white skin makes a person more deserving of the good things in life. At the same time, the poverty in the Bronx area is perpetuated by the design of the school system. In this way, it is impossible, or close to impossible, for the generally poorly educated children in segregated Bronx schools to rise above their conditions, since these conditions perpetuate themselves.

At the same time, the attitudes of "good schools" towards these students is a model of the general social attitude towards the Bronx in general; one of extreme racism and segregation. As Kozol points out, the children in the area are being robbed not only of their day-to-day material needs, but also of any future opportunity they might have to create a better future for themselves. This translates to global education as well. Those with more privileged lives tend to have access to better educational resources and more tools to improve their lives, while those who are not so privileged are left to fend for themselves in a world made dark and bitter by their lack.