The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America

For those that are not aware, America’s education system is experiencing a dilemma that is going unnoticed. Schools today are not just being inadequately funded, or overcrowded, but something more interesting. Jonathan Kozol explains the issue at hand in his book, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. Jonathan Kozol started out as a fourth grade teacher and holds an English degree from Harvard University. He has written a number of other books highlighting topics of our education system. He has published Rachel and her Children, Savage Inequalities, Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation, and others. The content of his books include life in the South Bronx, where it is very poor, and narratives of children. If you were to compare Kozol’s writing to something more popularly known, you can compare it to the movie, “Freedom Writers”. The school conditions presented in this movie are somewhat similar to what Kozol is describing in The Shame of the Nation. Schools in poorer cities aren’t being funded enough, thus depriving students of a quality education and opportunity, and are separating by race.
For The Shame of the Nation, Kozol constructed 5 years worth of preliminary research upon writing his book. He visited 60 schools in 30 different districts, and 11 various states. What he found proves to be disappointing. Schools today are in worse conditions than they were in the desegregation era. Schools where there are predominantly blacks and Hispanics are not properly funded and overcrowded. Standardized tests are set for students to fail, due to lack of resources in these schools.
He also points out how schools in this country are made up of mostly the minority, and undergoing “resegregation”. For example, he quotes a colleague who says, “American public schools are now 12 years into the process of continuous resegregation. . . During the 1990s, the proportion of black students in majority white schools has decreased . . . to a level lower than in any year since 1968” (Shame of a Nation, 2013). Schools named after noble leaders such as Thurgood Marshall (Elementary), and Rosa Parks have a minority rate above 80%.
Kozol interestingly points out how there are the children of the privileged and the children of the minority, where the privileged have parents who can read, write and are “savvy” know what they need to do to have their child succeed in school. Minority parents do not have the ability to do this, since they are more than likely illiterate or non-English speaking. This is an ongoing cycle in the school system. Minority parents, as Krozol explains, aren’t aware or prepared for the “cutthroat” competition.
Of course, even in the poor conditions throughout schools, there are still those educators who go above and beyond for students, and defeat the odds. It is unfortunate that the children of our future have to go through this, because they can’t do much about being put in an unfortunate situation. America knows how important it is for our children to have a quality education, but we fail as a nation in providing that for them. Other areas of society effect the poor funding of schools, where some things are having money put towards them and end up lacking for other areas that need it. Unemployment benefits and the building of prisons are heavily funded compared to education. It will be hard to shift the budget around to favoring education, and it will take many years for it to be fixed. Basically, what this situation says about society is that you can only succeed if you are rich and white.
When society functions the way it does, where you have more opportunities if you have money, makes it hard to move up from one social class up to the next. This can be true in the education system, as mentioned above, with the children of the privileged and the children of the minorities. It also creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, meaning, you will end up where you think you will. If a young black boy sees poverty, a low quality education and dead-end job in his family, he might think, “I can’t create a successful life, my life is already as worse as it could be”. He will end up living the stereotype.
Kozol makes a fascinating discussion about our school systems today. It is sad to know that children aren’t getting the best education that they could. Children really are the future, and if they cannot acquire the knowledge and potential at the highest that they can, then they cannot be positive contributors to society. It is important to realize how the insufficient funding of schools effects all parts of our society and its well-being.