Analysis Of Fremont High School By Jonathan Kozol

Amber Renslow 10/03/17

English 101

In “Fremont High School”, Jonathan Kozol discusses the many issues facing students and staff at Fremont High. He discusses the school’s failure to provide the students with what they need to succeed academically. Kozol is able to create a powerful essay by using first hand accounts and court records to expose the problems that affect students at Fremont High School.

Kozol’s use of quotes aids in creating a strong piece by showcasing the problems that students and staff find most important to them. One issue facing students at Fremont High is the lack of time to use the restroom throughout their eight hour days. The lack of personal time for students is embarrassing and frustrating. One

Another issue that deeply affects students is the lack of time to eat. All three thousand students are fed at once, but the lunch period only lasts for thirty minutes. By the time students are actually able to sit down with their food, most of the period has already flown by. As one teacher points out: “The line for kids to get their food is very long...They get 10 minutes probably to eat their meals” (Kozol 717). A full day at Fremont High lasts 8 hours, and hunger makes it hard for students to work. By showing how students are denied basic liberties, such as time to use the restroom or eat, Kozol is able to describe how Fremont High feels more like a prison than a place for learning. Also, students are often forced to take courses that have little to no academic importance in order to graduate: “Mireya...began to cry. ‘I did not need sewing...I don’t need to sew to go to college.” (Kozol 720-721). Students are placed in these filler courses because the school has no other electives to put them in. This can be frustrating because many of students want to go to college, but the school is failing to provide the academic challenges that a student

For example, Kozol states that rats and rat droppings have been found “...in eleven . . . classrooms,’...in the bins and drawers’ of the high school’s kitchen”. (Kozol 719). Along with the rats that infest and soil the school, Fremont also fails to fulfill the basic requirement for the number of bathrooms that a school must have. The school has “15 fewer bath- rooms than the law requires” (Kozol 718). Students are forced to hold their bladders for hours at a time, which makes it difficult to focus in class. The few functioning bathrooms that the school has often lack supplies, such as toilet paper. The many failures of Fremont High have created a stressful, unhealthy environment for the thousands of people who attend school and work