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Imagining Justice Term Paper

¶ … Justice Reading Jonathan Kozol's The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society serves as an eye opener to the devastating consequences of illiteracy for both the individual and society as a whole. Kozol paints such a vivid picture of the distressing impact of illiteracy on an individual's self-identity, self-sufficiency, material and physical well being, that he succeeds in arousing a sense of awareness that it is an area of social concern, which must be addressed, especially when one is confronted with the staggering statistic of 60 million illiterate people in the world's leading democracy and super power.

Kozol uses true-to-life examples to describe the different areas of life that illiteracy affects. He describes individuals who are: deprived of the right to exercise an informed vote; filled with a sense of shame and inadequacy caused by an inability to guide their children through school; forced into settling for less than the best because they are unable to read a menu or product label; at risk of endangering their own and the lives of their family as they cannot read the statutory warnings on medicine...

Overriding or rather omnipresent in all these situations is a pervading sense of humiliation, helplessness and a terrifying sense of dependency on someone else's words, choice and judgment.
Kozol's narrative is so heartfelt, it is only too easy to picture each case and identify with it and the fact that for such people and the nation, life is on a "one-way street" (Kozol, 5) to farce and tragedy, unless steps are taken to correct the situation.

Mantsios's substantive argument that Americans are reluctant to talk about class is hard to refute. Nowhere does one hear the use of the term 'class' any more to describe any aspect of society. Indeed, in this day and age of sensitized 'politically' correct behavior and language, such terms…

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Works Cited

Kozol, Jonathan. "The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society," in Illiterate America.

Mantsios, Gregory. "Class in America: Myths and Realities (2000)."
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