Summary Of The Children In Room E4

Susan Eaton’s work, The Children in Room E4, shows the racial and economic segregation that is very prominent in Hartford, Connecticut. Stemming from the availability of jobs and the housing market, Hartford has turned into the segregated city it currently is today. Especially in Hartford’s urban schools, economic and racial segregation is the constant truth that lurks in every corner, over every teacher’s shoulder, in every student’s face. This ugly truth has resulted in an unequal educational system between schools that are only miles away. Though the state has been made aware of the unequal opportunities between urban and suburban schools, little change has been seen to benefit the children of Hartford.

Despite the large impact and

School districts are based on where people live, so the city schools are composed of racial minority students, while the suburban schools are composed of white students (79). Hartford’s schools have been racially divided since the 1970s, when school’s throughout the area were completely segregated on the first day. Over the next thirty years, the segregation would become even more prominent when 94 percent of children in the city would consist of racial minority groups (244). The racial segregation present in both the city and the suburbs makes the students in each type of school strongly aware of each other’s differences. On the way to a school in the suburbs, one of Miss Luddy’s students asked if the class is going to a white school (258). Even Miss Luddy had some hesitation knowing her students would sound different to the suburban students and vice versa (259). In addition to this, the suburban students already had a negative mind set towards the city, as seen during a class activity. When the teacher asked the students to describe the city, they replied with negative adjectives, such as terrible, scary, and dangerous (279). These examples show how segregation has created a barrier between the urban and suburban students. The students know they are different from each other and talk about it

It has been shown that “poor children in high-poverty schools…performed far worse than similar poor children who attended schools without a high poverty rate”, yet desegregation has not been pushed forcibly by the state (139). People that have brought cases against the state, such as John Brittain with Sheff vs. O’Neill, have been close to the economic and racial segregation in Hartford. Though John Brittian attended racially mixed schools in his childhood, he was aware of buses that would transport white children to better schools, that were mostly white, instead of to neighborhood schools with mixed races (72). However, the representatives that make up the state government are mainly economically well-off white people. I think that due to the practice of segregation in Hartford over the years, whites have become too comfortable because they are not impacted by economic and racial segregation to the same extent as racial minorities. Therefore, when presented with facts of the reality of segregation in court, state representatives are hesitant to invoke legal action since they are not personally affected. The mindset to keep citizens separated based on class and race that originally brought about segregation in the 1970s is still a strong mindset in current-day Hartford. However, this mindset will cause even