Savage Inequalities Essay Research Paper Savage InequalitiesJonathan

Savage Inequalities Essay, Research Paper

Savage Inequalities

Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities is a haunting, disturbing look at the condition of some of America’s schools. Throughout the book, he describes the conditions in several cities: crumbling school buildings, teachers who do not care about the students, astronomical dropout rates, abysmal environments, and much more. Savage Inequalities posits that the leading problem in the school system is the condition of these neglected schools, and that this constitutes a social problem. Kozol views this social problem, and its causes, from a conflict theorist perspective.

The definition of a social problem, is as follows: “conditions, processes, or events that are identified as negative by analysts or by significant numbers of other people and that affect large numbers of people, stem from social causes, and/or can be solved through social action”. The first clause in this definition of a social problem is its negativity, and whether or not it is recognized as a problem. It is difficult to argue that the conditions of these schools, and the areas in which they are located, can be anything but negative. These schools have administrative problems (Kozol 124), decaying buildings (Kozol 23-24, among dozens of other examples), and poor-quality teachers and guidance counselors (Kozol 113, others). They are overcrowded (Kozol 158-160), and it is assumed that the way to alleviate this problem is for half of the student body to drop out of school at some point (Kozol 112-113). Among these problems, the conditions of some of the school buildings are outstandingly appalling; for example, at Morris High School, in the South Bronx,

Blackboards . . . are “so badly cracked that teachers are afraid to let students write on them for fear they ll cut themselves. Some mornings, fallen chips of paint cover classrooms like snow. Teachers and students have come to see humor in the waterfall that courses down six flights of stairs after a heavy rain.” One classroom, we are told, has been sealed off “because of a gaping hole in the floor.” In the band room, “chairs are positioned where acoustic tiles don t fall quite so often.” In many places, “plaster and ceramic tile have peeled off” the walls, leaving the external brick wall of the school exposed. I am somewhat stunned to see a huge hole in the ceiling of the stairwell on the school’s fourth floor. The plaster is gone; exposing rusted metal bars embedded in the outside wall. It will cost as much as $50 million to restore the school to an acceptable condition . . . (Kozol 99-101)

The environments surrounding these schools are even worse. In East St. Louis, for example, among other problems with violence and pollution, lead levels in the soil can reach 10,000 parts per million (Kozol 11). All of the schools examined in East St. Louis, Chicago, New York City, Camden, Washington DC, and San Antonio are located in dangerous areas. Even taxi drivers refuse to go to these areas (Kozol 14). The problems in these schools and the surrounding locales have been recognized as negative by other people, another qualification for the definition of a social problem. To use another example from East St. Louis: The problems have been identified by, along with many others, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (Kozol 7), the University of Southern Illinois (Kozol 8), the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, including the reporter Safir Ahmed (Kozol 7-8, 10, 15-20, 22-23), local health officials (Kozol 10-11), lead-poison experts (Kozol 11), the Daughters of Charity (Kozol 11-12, 14), Green peace (Kozol 17), and the Illinois branch of the Environmental Protection Agency (Kozol 17). Kozol himself fits into this category.

With the problem identified, the second criteria for meeting the definition of a social problem is that it must affect large numbers of people. Even when viewing the problem as only affecting the area in which it is taking place, the fact remains that the cities cited in Savage Inequalities specifically, East St. Louis, Chicago, New York City, Camden, Washington DC, and San Antonio are among the largest cities in the country. In 1994, San Antonio was the ninth-largest city in the United States, Chicago was in third-place, and New York City was not only the largest city in the country, but also the second-largest city in the world. Therefore, even if one believes that just these cities are involved with the problems, there are still a huge number of people being affected. One can also take a much broader viewpoint; namely, that the problems in these cities are problems for all of American society. Some people believe that when society fails one group of people, it fails everyone. A more pessimistic approach to this train of thought would be that when the children from New Trier the wealthy high school graduate from the prestigious universities they were planning on attending, their tax dollars will be used for the food stamps that the Chicago children who dropped out of school will need.

Next, in order to be classifiable as a social problem, the problem must stem from social causes. This is the criterion where Kozol s thesis comes into play. It is Kozol s thesis that the problems stem from racial inequality:

What startled me most although it puzzles me that I was not prepared for this was the remarkable degree of racial segregation that