Still_Separate,_Still_Unequal

In Jonathan Kozol’s “Still Separate, Still Unequal,” Kozol addresses a lot of problems with education. He mainly focuses on how racial segregation of schools has defined the segregation of the levels of education different public schools around the U.S receive. He talks about the different schools and how different educations are based on race. He talks about how when parents are successful their children are pushed to be successful. One of the biggest problems is that most school funding goes to the rich predominately white schools, and they don’t focus as much on the minorities. Then the minorities setting up their kids to fail and become the lower wages jobs. They aren't getting a fair chance to be everything they can be Kozol goes on and on about the racial and ethnic problems schools encounter today. He includes numerous statistics with his statements. Brown vs. Board of Education and Plessy vs. Ferguson was more than a century ago, yet segregation between white and black people still exist within some schools. Kozol tells about how black schools in lower class communities don't have a lot of things that are provided in an 'average' middle class district. Kozol provides us with firsthand experiences as he visits schools in these communities, school with leaks in the roof, sinks and toilets that don't work, and many other problems. Social class and inequalities can deeply effect the way children learn, environment and adaptation has huge effects with learning styles. If a school looks and feels more prestigious, students might feel more motivated to work and learn. But if the school was a bad place to stay in the students will not have the ability to focus on what they learn. It's a start when the students can actually feel like they're attending a school rather than just a place. Kozol addresses that schools that were deeply segregated Twenty to thirty years ago are no less segregated now, while thousands of schools around the country that had been integrated either voluntarily or by the force of law have since been resegregating. This is truly a grueling and persist tent problem for it appears that the effort of integration in the past has proven to be failing. Kozol uses reasoning or logic to prove that the school systems today are separated and unequal for students based on the color of their skin or their race. An example of this is when the writer informs the reader of the exact percentages of students by race in schools across the country, “In Chicago 87% of public-school enrolment was black or Hispanic; less than 10% was white. In Washington D.C., 94% black or Hispanic; to less than 5% white. In New York City, nearly three quarters of the students were black or Hispanic.” (239-240). the use of pure facts instead of personal opinions makes this issue seem like a real problem instead of just one man’s opinion. Another way logic is used within this expert is when the writer shares a personal experience, “In a school I visited in the fall of 2004 in Kansas City, Missouri, for example, a document distributed to visitors reports that the school’s curriculum “addresses the needs of children from diverse backgrounds.”…I learned that 99.6 percent of students there were African American.” (242). in this use of logic, the writer uses facts to help the reader understand that there are areas of unequal and separated treatment within the school system of today. Many people believe that once schools are desegregated educational equality will result. This is far from the truth. It is much more likely that if schools were desegregated we would see better educational performance for students across racial groups, but an achievement gap would remain. Desegregating schools without touching housing segregation would be like adopting a workout regimen but maintaining an unhealthy diet. One may see some positive results, but maintaining those gains or reaching optimal health is unlikely. Freedom in the United States is interpreted as the “right to choose,” people with greater economic means choose not to live near those with fewer economic resources or in areas with high concentrations of people of color. Additionally, people of color and those with fewer economic resources are often denied equal access to quality housing. The sad reality is that our “individual choices” on housing are not just our own. The last rhetorical devices the writer uses are repetition, tone, and imagery. Repetition is used in this expert with sayings such as, “You’re ghetto…so we send you to the factory” and “You’re ghetto so you sew!” (253), in order to show how the school curriculum teaches students to underachieve. Tone is used within this expert to convey sorrow of these students’ situations. For example, when the writer speaks of a letter written by a girl named Elizabeth, “It is not fair that other kids have a garden and new things. But we don’t have that.” (243). the sadness used in this statement makes a reader feel bad for the child and want to resolve the problem of inequality. Imagery is used to describe how poorly school buildings are kept when the author describes a South Bronx school, “…a stream of water flowed down one of the main stairwells…green fungus molds were growing in the office.” (244). In the same way, Jonathan Kozol’s expert shows how school systems of today still treat people differently according to the color of their skin or their race even though all men are the same regardless of these two differences. In 2013, the racial divides that plagued previous generations persist, but we have become less equipped to talk earnestly about them and less equipped with responses that reach to their core. The first step in producing quality schooling for all is to have candid discussions that link the inequalities of the past and the conditions of the present. Until we do that, we will continue to spin our wheels wondering why over fifty-five years after Brown v. Board of Education our schools are still separate and unequal.