5) In the first six chapters of “The Shame of a Nation”, Kozol talks about the parody between schools that are privileged and do not have a strong percentage of minorities and schools that have minorities as the majority population. Kozol presents a disturbing statistic: in urban public schools in New York City, the city is spending an average of $8,000 per student, as opposed to suburban schools that spend an average of $18,000 per student. This means that the kids in the suburban schools are getting much more opportunities to learn and resources to work with. He also says that most of the inner city schools use a curriculum that is driven by state testing and thus the students are not given the same opportunities as students in other schools. He says that this is devastating to inner city kids especially, because they are given fewer resources to work with, and are destined to fail.
4) ‘In the new era of ‘separate but equal,’ segregation has somehow come to be viewed as a type of school reform’ (Kozol 20).
“As it turned out, the use of private subsidies to supplement the tax-supported budgets of some schools in affluent communities was a more commonly accepted practice than most people in the city’s poorest neighborhoods had known” (Kozol 47).
“Learning itself—the learning of a skill, or the enjoying of a book, and even having an idea—is now defined increasingly not as a process or preoccupation that holds satisfaction of its own but in proprietary terms, as if it were the acquisition of an object or stock-option or the purchase of a piece of land” (Kozol 96).
“Most Americans whose children aren’t in public school have little sense of the inordinate authority that now is granted to these standardized exams and, especially within the inner-city schools, the time the tests subtract from actual instruction” (Kozol 112).
3) Segregation- Kozol refers to the inner city schools as being highly populated by minorities and segregated.
Consequences- Kozol says that the kids in the inner city schools have to deal with the consequences of not having the same resources to work with and opportunities to learn.
Unequal- Kozol says that kids in suburban schools are given better opportunities to learn and tat it is unequal and unfair for the inner city kids who do not get those same chances.
2) I think the first six chapters of this book have made me really appreciate the quality schooling I’ve had my entire life. It just makes me wonder what would happen if everybody got the opportunity to have the same education that I have gotten to the chance to experience. Knowing that kids like Pineapple in the story aren’t getting a good quality education makes me sad, because every child has the right to a good education.
1) Why aren’t inner city kids given the same opportunities and resources to be able to learn and succeed?
