Kozol's Thoughts in Present Day: Pages 215-284
Racial issues have always been present in schools. 2020 is no exception. Whether it’s the differences in resources and financial support or it’s the difference in teaching style, it is evident to me that there has been almost no perceivable change since Kozol published The Shame of the Nation in 2005. In this blog post, I’m going to focus on the economic differences present in apartheid schooling.
Call it coincidence but as I read this book, I have noticed that the coronavirus seems to magnify the differences between school districts that Kozol writes about. The transition to online learning has been difficult for almost everyone. However, for schools largely composed of low-income racial minorities, the difficulties that Kozol has pointed out are being exacerbated.
As I read Shame of the Nation during my time social distancing, I have found myself considering what this remote experience has been like for other schools. After reading about lacking resources and appalling conditions, I decided to do some followup— contacting an elementary school teacher who works with low-income families. This teacher, Whitney Berke, teaches fourth-graders at Little Canada Elementary in the Roseville Area school district, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
While only around a fifth of the city’s overall population is African American, Little Canada Elementary is disproportionately black. Mrs. Berke reported to me that almost all of her students are below the poverty line. Although she teaches a class upwards of 20 fourth graders, Berke told me that she rarely has classes with more than a few white children. The school is almost entirely black and Hispanic, with some Pacific Islander families.
During our conversation, my main question was how Little Canada Elementary was communicating with and teaching its students during this time of enforced social distancing. Kozol’s notions of resource inequality were quickly confirmed. Over half of the students’ families had no access to the internet, rendering mass email an entirely inefficient method of reaching out to parents and students.
Unlike my own school, Little Canada required two full weeks of preparation to transition its systems to online learning. According to Berke, the systems in place are just not as efficient as they could be with internet access. She spent the past few weeks texting, calling, and leaving messages with parents individually to notify them of the situation.
Some people argue that you cannot put a price on a student’s education.
““ALL CHILDREN CAN LEARN!” the advocates for this agenda say hypnotically, as if the tireless reiteration of this slogan could deliver to low-income children the same clean and decent infrastructure and the amplitude of cultural provision by experienced instructors that we give the children of the privileged” (Kozol 266).
This idea from The Shame of the Nation about infrastructure and teaching quality is equally applicable to resources. Yes, all children can learn, but will they get the means to do so?
It is an undeniable detriment to these students’ education when they cannot take learning home with them. Not only has a lack of internet services clearly wasted time that they could have been learning recently, but it also has significantly cut back on their at-home learning (that I have always had access to) in the time leading up to social distancing.
Little Canada is far from the educational havens I have grown up in. When I asked, Berke talked in-depth about how a lot of her students lead very difficult lives. Some of these nine and ten year olds even act as translators for their non-bilingual parents. They not only rely on school for kind and familiar faces, but also lunches and daycare services.
Fortunately, many government aid systems have been created to help low-income families like these. In some cases, these have been carried out very well. However, there are still some children that fail to receive an education due to social distancing. The Roseville district offers free internet services to any in need family as long as they have not defaulted on a recent bill. The problem is, many families do have outstanding bills.
Is it right to deny these children an education?
Similarly, Little Canada services many students who have undocumented relatives. Although the school is trying to provide these students, who are typically born in the United States, with resources, the families can not take them without their names being recorded (and potentially being reported to ICE).
Again, is it right to deny these children an education?
While these students may not be the same as Pineapple, Alliyah, Elio, or Mireya, they share the same realities, only a decade later. As elementary and high schools continue to utilize advancing technology, even beyond COVID-19, I believe that the gap between poor inner-city schools and white suburbs will grow. Per pupil spending for privileged whites will go up while the spending for other students will stagnate.
It’s been about fifteen years since Kozol wrote Shame of the Nation; education methods have advanced. Yet, we have not answered the question he poses at the beginning of Chapter 9. “What do we need to do to alter these realities” (Kozol 215)?
Kozol explores this in-depth. The suggestion he appears to support most heavily, extensively discussing its benefits, encourages parents to send their children to more diverse schools (by integrating inner-city and suburban students). This is not a reality because white parents typically act in their own self-interest.
A secondary, less permanent solution that Kozol discusses is improving the quality of inner-city school’s infrastructure and resources. As stated on page 256, investments in low-income student’s education are enough to bring them from the “basement to the ground floor” (Kozol 256). This change only represented students being provided with a desk and textbook. There are still many floors to go.
Kozol eventually mentions that the necessary reforms take time and social action. These are not on our side. It took “a third of a century to win these [per pupil spending] victories for children in New Jersey” (Kozol 261). As a result, there must be a focus on current solutions.
One such current solution is affirmative action. The goal of affirmative action is to retroactively account for the past disadvantages due to membership in a minority. This is important considering the obstacles that minorities see in America (both in the present and the past). It is crucial to breaking the cycle of institutionalized white privilege.
As mentioned on page 283, changes in affirmative action policy drastically change the racial composition of top tier US colleges like Penn State, University of Minnesota, the University of Georgia, and “the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois, where black enrollment in the freshman class declined by 32%” as a result (Kozol 283).
This supports the idea that (without affirmative action) racial minorities do not receive the opportunities that are necessary to become the educated and wealthy parents of the next generation of better-off children.
While I concede that it is an imperfect system, it is necessary until other proactive solutions can be achieved.
Call it coincidence but as I read this book, I have noticed that the coronavirus seems to magnify the differences between school districts that Kozol writes about. The transition to online learning has been difficult for almost everyone. However, for schools largely composed of low-income racial minorities, the difficulties that Kozol has pointed out are being exacerbated.
As I read Shame of the Nation during my time social distancing, I have found myself considering what this remote experience has been like for other schools. After reading about lacking resources and appalling conditions, I decided to do some followup— contacting an elementary school teacher who works with low-income families. This teacher, Whitney Berke, teaches fourth-graders at Little Canada Elementary in the Roseville Area school district, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
While only around a fifth of the city’s overall population is African American, Little Canada Elementary is disproportionately black. Mrs. Berke reported to me that almost all of her students are below the poverty line. Although she teaches a class upwards of 20 fourth graders, Berke told me that she rarely has classes with more than a few white children. The school is almost entirely black and Hispanic, with some Pacific Islander families.
During our conversation, my main question was how Little Canada Elementary was communicating with and teaching its students during this time of enforced social distancing. Kozol’s notions of resource inequality were quickly confirmed. Over half of the students’ families had no access to the internet, rendering mass email an entirely inefficient method of reaching out to parents and students.
Unlike my own school, Little Canada required two full weeks of preparation to transition its systems to online learning. According to Berke, the systems in place are just not as efficient as they could be with internet access. She spent the past few weeks texting, calling, and leaving messages with parents individually to notify them of the situation.
Some people argue that you cannot put a price on a student’s education.
““ALL CHILDREN CAN LEARN!” the advocates for this agenda say hypnotically, as if the tireless reiteration of this slogan could deliver to low-income children the same clean and decent infrastructure and the amplitude of cultural provision by experienced instructors that we give the children of the privileged” (Kozol 266).
This idea from The Shame of the Nation about infrastructure and teaching quality is equally applicable to resources. Yes, all children can learn, but will they get the means to do so?
It is an undeniable detriment to these students’ education when they cannot take learning home with them. Not only has a lack of internet services clearly wasted time that they could have been learning recently, but it also has significantly cut back on their at-home learning (that I have always had access to) in the time leading up to social distancing.
Little Canada is far from the educational havens I have grown up in. When I asked, Berke talked in-depth about how a lot of her students lead very difficult lives. Some of these nine and ten year olds even act as translators for their non-bilingual parents. They not only rely on school for kind and familiar faces, but also lunches and daycare services.
Fortunately, many government aid systems have been created to help low-income families like these. In some cases, these have been carried out very well. However, there are still some children that fail to receive an education due to social distancing. The Roseville district offers free internet services to any in need family as long as they have not defaulted on a recent bill. The problem is, many families do have outstanding bills.
Is it right to deny these children an education?
Similarly, Little Canada services many students who have undocumented relatives. Although the school is trying to provide these students, who are typically born in the United States, with resources, the families can not take them without their names being recorded (and potentially being reported to ICE).
Again, is it right to deny these children an education?
While these students may not be the same as Pineapple, Alliyah, Elio, or Mireya, they share the same realities, only a decade later. As elementary and high schools continue to utilize advancing technology, even beyond COVID-19, I believe that the gap between poor inner-city schools and white suburbs will grow. Per pupil spending for privileged whites will go up while the spending for other students will stagnate.
It’s been about fifteen years since Kozol wrote Shame of the Nation; education methods have advanced. Yet, we have not answered the question he poses at the beginning of Chapter 9. “What do we need to do to alter these realities” (Kozol 215)?
Kozol explores this in-depth. The suggestion he appears to support most heavily, extensively discussing its benefits, encourages parents to send their children to more diverse schools (by integrating inner-city and suburban students). This is not a reality because white parents typically act in their own self-interest.
A secondary, less permanent solution that Kozol discusses is improving the quality of inner-city school’s infrastructure and resources. As stated on page 256, investments in low-income student’s education are enough to bring them from the “basement to the ground floor” (Kozol 256). This change only represented students being provided with a desk and textbook. There are still many floors to go.
Kozol eventually mentions that the necessary reforms take time and social action. These are not on our side. It took “a third of a century to win these [per pupil spending] victories for children in New Jersey” (Kozol 261). As a result, there must be a focus on current solutions.
One such current solution is affirmative action. The goal of affirmative action is to retroactively account for the past disadvantages due to membership in a minority. This is important considering the obstacles that minorities see in America (both in the present and the past). It is crucial to breaking the cycle of institutionalized white privilege.
As mentioned on page 283, changes in affirmative action policy drastically change the racial composition of top tier US colleges like Penn State, University of Minnesota, the University of Georgia, and “the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois, where black enrollment in the freshman class declined by 32%” as a result (Kozol 283).
This supports the idea that (without affirmative action) racial minorities do not receive the opportunities that are necessary to become the educated and wealthy parents of the next generation of better-off children.
While I concede that it is an imperfect system, it is necessary until other proactive solutions can be achieved.
This is a very thoughtful and well-written post, Cate. I appreciate that you reached out to another school for insights and information about what it going on there.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I enjoyed conducting research in a new way. It was an interesting experience and I felt like I got a lot of good information out of it.
ReplyDelete