Kozol suggests that African-American children do not get proper medical care which makes them more likely to fail in school. Then the high dropout rates among blacks confirm the racist biases of legislators who argue that spending on black children is bad investment. When Kozol visits a wealthy suburban school and talks to children in advanced schools, he finds that the cultural biases of rich parents are passed to their children. Many of these children do not seem to be perturbed by the plight of poor nonwhite children in neighboring communities and they support the "separate but equal" treatment. There is, however, one child named David who says that the property tax system needs to be reworked so that public schools in all areas are supported equally.
After New York, Kozol visits Camden, New Jersey. He begins his chapter by citing a Wall Street Journal report which suggests that spending more on schools will not buy good performance. The Journal says that spending on public education has increased but the performance of children stays the same. The Journal also rejects the notion that increasing salaries for teachers or downsizing classes will help. Kozol, however, points out that public spending increased for rich schools only, and wonders why the Journal does not advocate cutting funds for wealthy schools or trimming the high salaries of teachers who work for these schools. The Journal does not address the fact that children of rich families study in smaller classes. The Journal seems to be bothered by the fact that some people advocate equal treatment of all public schools.
Camden is the fourth poorest city in the United States. The city once was a manufacturing center but is no longer so. Unemployment is high, as is the rate of children's diseases. He visits the Camden high school and finds out that the school does not even have a lunch facility. Everywhere around Kozol sees unclean buildings but he finally finds one clean and bright building: a new prison. At the Woodrow Wilson high school, the dropout rate is almost 60% and many children have to work extra hours after school to help their parents who are desperately poor. Few computers available in poor schools are often melted by the unbearable heat in the schools which are not air-conditioned, and many children use old typewriters. The poor children are overwhelmingly nonwhite: blacks, Hispanics, immigrants, and when the topic of disintegration is raised, many legislators and administrators understand it as putting different nonwhite groups together rather than mixing white and nonwhite children. When a Court in New Jersey rules that poor schools should receive the same amount of money usually allocated for rich schools, arguing that children in poor communities can benefit from better funding, many wealthy parents in suburban areas are outraged, while the Wall Street Journal finds their outrage justifiable.
Kozol then visits Washington D.C. where racism seems to be the norm but just not admitted as such. Rich white parents believe that they deserve their success and that they are better suited to decide the fate of poor nonwhite children, and this kind...
Kids are hungry, their parents are in jail, and the good schools are in the suburbs, where the Congress people live. Their schools are upscale and well funded, while the inner-city schools suffer all the same problems the schools in the other chapters faced. The administrators feel whites would do anything to keep blacks out of their schools, including move away if too many blacks came into the district.
The probability that a child will succeed is considered unimportant when compared to the possibility that a child might succeed. The racist implications of these educational problems are impossible to ignore. These deplorable conditions help reinforce white racial superiority by keeping minorities in a subservient position when compared to whites. The fact that many affluent suburban schools have minority students does not erase the fact that the single greatest predictor
Some newspapers, Kozol points out, muse in utilitarian terms. They argue that those children who are likely to produce more returns are likewise more deserving of financial support. But the most brutal irony of the way poor children are treated in New York is the fact that the legislators and the affluent public are more willing to spend money on incarceration than education of poor children. Most of the
Richard Dawkins' the Selfish Gene Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities: Children America's Schools. Plus, read websites: http://www.ou./cls/online/lstd5013/dawkins.shtml http://salmonriver. Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" Jonathan Kozol's "Savage Inequalities: Children America's Schools" There has recently been much controversy regarding genes, as technology has made it possible for people to make intriguing discoveries regarding the topic and a series of individuals have come up with interesting theories concerning genes. Individuals like Richard Dawkins have gone even
Education Reform A Paradigm Shift in Education Reform Basic ideas are not confined to one branch of science or one area of academic study; if it is a truly worthwhile idea it can be expanded to include many different area of science. The scientific method was at first thought to only be useful to those scientists who knew that they could find definitive answers such as mathematicians and physicists. The hard sciences
Allocation of funds for education as a model is a notion that is looked at in the academic construct. This work emphasizes this paradigm. The issues of this construct will be viewed as an exemplar. The issue of an equitable and justified funding incorporating the ideas herein will be developed. The paradigm concept and conceptual themes of meme and the paradigm will be concurrently explored to clarify the allocation of
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