Summary Of Shame Of The Nation By Jonathan Kozol

Apartheid Schools: A Serious Threat to American Values Threatening the very principles that built our great nation, the presence of apartheid schools in the American educational system presents a real and prevalent problem often overlooked by many citizens and political leaders. In Shame of the Nation, Jonathan Kozol details his astounding experiences in these schools, where black and Hispanic students represent a majority of the student population despite the Brown decision calling for the integration. In Chapter 2, Kozol recaps and reflects on his experiences in the South Bronx, highlighting the lack of integration and adequate resources in apartheid schools, and how they threaten American civic life and our democratic principles. Due to
He touches on the impact of these conditions on the children, how many of them “simmered with hostility” and read at levels two years below their grade, which eventually led political leaders to recognize the diminishing opportunities for these children (Kozol 3). Fortunately, it became a goal for both Kozol and other Boston educators to “unlock the chains that held these children within case-and-color sequestration and divorce them from the mainstream of American society” (6). For children in the South Bronx, however, these efforts were not present. Impoverished neighborhoods have poor school conditions, including overcrowding and the lack of basic
I thoroughly agree with Kozol’s overall argument that the lack of integration, which has led to apartheid schooling, not only disadvantages minority children but threatens our nation’s democratic virtues of equal opportunity for all. In particular, Kozol’s persuasive argument was strengthened by the firsthand accounts from the children he worked with – those who were directly affected by the lack of resources in apartheid schooling. As previously mentioned, these letters and pleas presented an emotional aspect that is impossible to refute and ignore. The statistics that showed funding and salary discrepancies, however, were a necessary addition to Kozol’s argument. While statistics and numbers lack an emotional aspect, they provide concrete evidence of the clear disparities between the schools in the South Bronx and those in affluent communities. When taking these two pieces of evidence into account, Kozol had convincing evidence for his argument, which I ultimately found incredibly persuasive and