Kozol's Argument: Pages 64-134

Kozol’s argument is expressed from the very beginning of his book: the title.

While the exterior of the book is basic and unattractive in my opinion, it gets the message across. The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America attempts to inform the reader that schools are resegregated and thus persuade them that non-white students are being discriminated against. Kozol takes a critical lens to look at this reality, which he claims is inherently wrong (or shameful to the image of America).

Kozol’s argument is simple but elaborated upon in many ways. Schools are resegregating so they do not offer equal education. In my most recent reading (Chapters 3, 4, and 5), Kozol supported this argument with a description of the adoption of military-like teaching strategies in inner-city schools and the unpersonalized teaching of standardized testing material.


In my previous blog, I outlined the rhetorical strategies that Kozol uses to achieve his purpose. Now, I feel that I should expand upon these ideas with my own opinions on his argument and its effectiveness.

Because I was previously unaware of the extent of segregation based issues in schools, on most accounts I do not find myself agreeing with Kozol but learning from him. However, I did come into the book with a similar understanding of the basic principles that he applies to his ideas. I fundamentally agree with the ideas from Brown v Board of Education that Kozol’s argument revolves around: separate but equal is not actually equal.

In fact, I want to see more direct analysis on his behalf about the failure of Brown v Board. Kozol’s argument is extremely focused on the late 90s and early 2000s. I’d like to see a more expansive discussion of its deconstruction over time. I feel that this would add to Kozol’s argument by showing “the decline” that the back of his book suggests he will discuss.



One thing that I find makes Kozol’s argument well established is his focus on the reality of the situation rather than what kind of institutions cause it. His choice not to call out the administrations that he finds racist early in the book is a good one.

In the process of examining the intent of racist policies, I think that Kozol’s argument would become overly political. If he chose to talk about this, his allegations would detract from the undeniable nature of his argument. Kozol does not leave much room to deny his claims about apartheid because, for the most part, they are objective.

Later in the book, I predict that he will elaborate more on the causes of his observations. Since he has established the grounds of his argument, I think that it would no longer be unwise to bring in politics. Unlike the back of the book promises, The Shame of the Nation has yet to address the role of the Bush Administration in the reappearance of segregation. I’m looking forward to the chapters in which he will mention this.




There are times when I find Kozol extremely effective and there are times when I want to put down his book due to redundancy. Frankly, there have also been times where I am no longer sure of the connection that Kozol is trying to draw.

In the chapters on standardized testing, I think Kozol strayed too far away from his argument about segregated schools. He became overly focused on the downfalls that modern schools see due to standardized testing and thus was distracted from the relationship between standardized testing and inner-city (predominately non-white) schools.

While he does clarify that standardized testing hits an inner-city education the hardest, with no proper individualized teacher instruction, he also mentions these tests are sometimes mandated by the state.

“In Alabama, for example, in which kindergarten children are required to take standardized exams three times a year…” (Kozol 115).

While this part of his argument applies specifically to one inner-city district, I think Kozol's argument that standardized testing causes educational issues in only schools with minorities may be too specific. If states have district wide mandated testing, I gather that regardless of racial demographics, schools are teaching their students to prepare for these tests.

To make his argument more effective, Kozol should have also talked about the lack of difficulty faced by suburban kids in light of these test taking policies. Because he didn’t, I think some of his examples lack the context they need to support his argument.

On the other hand, I also find Kozol’s lack of discussion about what white schools have effective. Although this completely goes against my wish for more context, it does promote an important idea. To me, it emphasizes the idea that white privilege is not necessarily something that a person has, but rather a group of negative experiences that a white person will never have. The lack of discussion on white students establishes the idea that their educational experience completely lacks institutionalized discrimination and therefore is not even comparable.




On page 98, while Kozol is contrasting his own, white, experience with the experience teaching minorities, he really drives home his idea that white and non-white educational experiences are different.

He says, “These ways of speaking about children and perceiving children are specific to schools that serve minorities. Shorn of unattractive language about “robots” who will be producing taxes and not burglarizing homes, the general idea that schools in ghettoized communities must settle for a different set of goals… has been accepted widely” (Kozol 98).

This was a part of Kozol’s argument that spoke to me. Beyond the simple comparisons between things like school resources, I found that this encompassed his entire idea that because our experiences in school are different, our outlook on the future will be permanently changed.



Kozol addresses the sentiment felt by his audience (as it relates to his purpose) in a quote from Lucy Calkins, a literacy specialist at Teachers College, New York. She says, “It would be of great concern to me and most of the people I know… if we had an educational apartheid system with one method of instruction for poor kids and another for middle-class kids” (Kozol 87).

As, according to Kozol, this is the exact system we have in place, I can strongly relate to this feeling of concern. Kozol wants his audience to feel distressed about the differences between schools, like the woman in this quote. His overall goal, from what I can observe, is to contrast white and non-white education in order to make his (scholarly) audience feel worried and thus do something about it.