Still Separate, Still Unequal (Quotes)

Jonathan Kozol- Quotes:

1)      “There is no misery index for the children of apartheid education.”

With this quote Kozol means that minority kids are being taught most of the time by white teachers with little or no experience dealing with children of inner-city. According to him, the only way to find out what “those kids” (this is, usually, how the minority kids are referred to) really need is to “breathe the air the children breathe in the school” to find out how their lives are, and what they need. Many teachers grew up in a completely different environment, and realistically, have no idea of the kind of life and the vision of life these kids have.

 Kozol illustrates a reality about the unequal attention given to urban and suburban schools. In the text, “Still Separate, Still Unequal”, he shows that public schools are still separate and offering an unequal education and opportunities for African Americans and Hispanics. Normally, suburban schools, primarily made up of white students, are given a far superior education than urban schools, which are primarily made up of Hispanics and black people. Kozol affirms that even though the law prohibits discrimination in public schools, many American public schools are still segregated and treated differently; therefore they are not integrated as the law pushed to achieve.

2)      In Kansas city, Missouri, the curriculum addresses the needs of children from diverse backgrounds”

Despite the fact that 99.6% of students were African American, this statement was still published. By point this discrepancy between facts and statements, Kozol wants to point out that certain communities are wrongfully denying the fact that their schools are not integrated. They are using the term “diversity” as a euphemism for racial segregation. Kozol brings out attention to the growing trend of racial segregation within America’s urban and suburban schools. He provides statistics to prove the existence of segregation, e.g.: the great majority of enrollment in most public schools are back or Hispanics, and poor: 79% in Chicago, 94% in Washington, D.C., 82% in Saint Louis and 84% in Los Angeles, just to name a few. He also strengthens this claim by describing astonishing differences in urban-suburban school conditions; discrepancies in teachers’ salary; disparity in funding from federal and state governments, all in wealthy-white people’s favor.

3)”If it takes people marching in the streets and other forms of adamant disruption of the governing civilities, if it takes more than litigation, more than legislation, and much more than resolutions introduced by members of Congress, these are prices we should be prepared to pay.”

With this quote, he means that we all, parents, educators, administrators, citizens need to act to stop and transform the apartheid education, in order to give all students a fair chance to succeed, otherwise it will lead us further in a very dangerous direction of inequity, inequality, and deeper resegregation.  Kozol doesn’t blame the parents; seemingly that they most likely had the same segregated education thirty or forty years ago, but he points his finger to the legislatures, and people in power that can do something to better fund the schools-and do nothing.