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Summary Of Shame Of The Nation By Jonathan Kozol

1131 Words5 Pages

When you look up “apartheid” in a Google search, you will find many websites that describe segregation in great detail, especially in regards to areas in South Africa. You will not find many articles that describe segregation in the United States of America. In Jonathan Kozol’s Shame of the Nation, it was his mission to make people understand that segregation is still alive in our country, with much focus on the educational system of our country. The author describes his astounding firsthand experience with segregation in our public school systems and how it can seriously impair a child’s educational experience. While many may believe that segregation has been resolved in our country, in his book, Kozol has provided statistics and personal …show more content…

Kozol pointed out that conditions such as deteriorating schools, lack of teaching materials and overcrowding of classrooms are all due to the lack of funding in less fortunate schools. Most of these less privileged schools are made up of African-American students. In The Shame of the Nation, Jonathan Kozol consistently considers the conflict theory, but one of the most powerful statements in relation to the conflict theory came in Chapter 2 of the text. Kozol describes an elementary school that was built to hold 1,000 students but was filled with 1,500 instead. In this same school, a plastic garbage bag was covering part of a collapsing ceiling. The principal of the elementary school told Kozol that this is the type of deterioration that is seen in ghetto schools across the country. He was also bold in stating that this would not happen in white schools across country and that minority students are not valued in the same sense as white students (KOZOL, 2005???). Conflict theorists will argue that schooling privileges some children and disadvantages others (TEXTBOOK, CITE). When the principal says that the wear and tear on the school would not be replicated in a school with white children, he was explaining that his students had severe disadvantages because they were minorities. The principal even goes out of his way to mention that he doesn’t believe that his minority students were not as valued as white students, another true example of the conflict

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