Savage Inequalities essays

Savage Inequalities essays 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 outstan dingly 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 theyll 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." O...