Jonathan Kozol – The Shame of the Nation: Essay 1

Dear President Obama,  

            Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to serve as a teacher representative on the U.S. Commission for Improving the Quality of Education Opportunity for Marginalized Children in the United States. I am very excited to offer some input on issues in our American education, and I hope you will take what I say to heart and do your best to implement some changes. After reading Jonathon Kozol’s, The Shame of the Nation, I became even more aware and concerned of the issue of “Apartheid Schooling” in our U.S. and feel as though there are many factors that contribute to this issue.

One of the principal issues Kozol addresses is the fact that after all these years we still face the issue of segregation within our school systems. It is clear that many people are not aware of the issue because technically, laws have “fixed” problems of segregation. However, we see that according to Kozol’s statistics, encounters with students, and visits to many schools that this issue is undoubtedly not “fixed”. We are presented with the fact that the majority of public school children in larger metropolitan area are children of color. Some schools have up to 99 percent African-American students, and many of these schools are named after Civil Rights leaders. How ridiculous! Many of these students in the schools are suffering with poverty and “racial isolation and the concentrated poverty of children in a public school go hand in hand” (Kozol 20).  I see this as an issue that has gotten pushed aside because it is a sticky situation and may be uncomfortable to handle. However, if we do not deal with segregation in our schools immediately, it will only continue to get worse and worse.  

Since the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, white resistance to school integration has continued. This “white flight” has resulted because “there is a new emboldenment among the relatively privileged to isolate their children as completely as they can from more than token numbers of the children of minorities” (Kozol 135). Many white parents want their children to have the best education, technology, teachers, and therefore do whatever it takes to get this. They move to school districts that may be better funded to allow their children to have this better education. They may even be afraid to have their white child be the minority in the school system. However, doesn’t every parent want their child to have the best education possible? It’s just that many minority parents can’t afford to move to these so acclaimed schools. Doesn’t every child deserve to have an equal education? There seems to be a lack of desire to help inner city schools succeed with encouragement and the funding that they need in order to give each child a fair education. Kozol points out harsh conditions of inner-city schools such as overcrowding, physical conditions of the school, and lack of proper curriculum and materials. All of these conditions are due to the funding gap between inner-city schools and other privileged schools. This funding gap seems to be overlooked and many say that money is not the real issue here. “If it doesn’t matter.. then cancel it for everybody. Don’t give it to them, deny it to us, then ask us to believe it’s not significant” (Kozol 56). The government has to step in and try to balance this funding gap because money does play a huge part in improving U.S. schools.

Another issue Kozol portrays is the issue of the curriculum that is often taught in many inner-city schools. The curriculum taught often shows a lack of hope that is placed in these inner-city students. Kozol observes posters in Kindergarten classrooms stating questions such as;  “Do you want a manager’s job?” and “How will you do the managers job?” (90). There is a focus on teaching children to grow up to be “the governed” and to learn only to contribute to the economic interests of our society. “Is future productivity, from this point on, to be the primary purpose of the education we provide our children?” (Kozol 94). I feel as though it should not be. Yes, it is important to understand the economic needs of a society but it is important to express to inner-city children that they are capable of achieving anything they want to be and we need to provide them with the curriculum that helps them grow in many ways. On top of that, there is too much focus on high-stakes tests in inner-city schools for that matter. Teaching materials resemble manuals and the majority of the day is devoted to test-prep for this test. Also, many children of minorities are held back a grade if they fail to pass these high-stakes tests. “Every time we hold a child over, we are substantially reducing the odds of that child graduating anytime in the future” (Kozol 117). We need to bring back studies of rich history, culture, literature, geography, and sciences that have been pushed aside for one test. “We cannot trust such tests to determine an individual’s competence or the success of any particular school, school district, or state” (Kozol 117). These tests may produce a public victory, but we are losing the real prize of allowing a child to receive an excellent education.

Out of all of the topics that Kozol brings up, the most important aspect is understanding the worth of the individual student. We can by no means determine a students worth by his or her race, culture, or economic status. I feel as though the beauty of each student is the fact that they are different and all contribute different things to the classroom. It goes to say that every child is worthy of an equal and excellent education. The most important thing we can do in our goal to solve this problem is to put our hope in every individual and strive to create equal opportunities for every child. I hope that you will take into consideration what I have said about these issues in our school system and continue to strive to help in the efforts of equalizing education in America.

Sincerely,

Rachel Engle