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Overall Summary

Jonathan Kozol’s book, Savage Inequalities, is a look at the American education system and its failures. The main argument of the book is that there are huge differences in educational opportunities between rich and poor communities. These differences are intensified by ethnic and racial prejudice. Kozol claims that while segregation may be illegal in America, economic factors have created a tiered system of education that prepares affluent students for success while others struggle to get out of poverty.

The first chapter of Savage Inequalities takes place in East St. Louis, Illinois, a city that is predominantly black. The author describes it as “the most distressed small city in America.” Problems affecting this community include economic issues and crime. Kozol uses health problems to illustrate how similar communities are affected by these same issues; the sewage from all the industrial plants seeps into the ground beneath playgrounds and schools. He argues that American schools suffer because of their location in impoverished neighborhoods such as East St. Louis—crowded and polluted with no hope for improvement.

In his first formal study of different school systems, Kozol compares North Lawndale and Winnetka, neighborhoods in the greater Chicago area. In North Lawndale, he sees a bleak future for elementary students; it’s projected that more students will go to prison than graduate school. The deficiencies of these schools are made worse by the magnet program where parents can send their children to better-performing schools. This system allows privileged people to escape from poor schools rather than improving them.

In addition, there are two issues that affect poorer schools more than wealthier ones. The first issue is job training. Poorer schools tend to emphasize job skills over academic preparation for college because they believe that their students will benefit the most from those job skills. However, this belief assumes that these students are less capable than their peers and thus deserve fewer resources and attention than other students do. This mindset causes problems for black children especially because it bars them from economic advancement opportunities like college by making it harder for them to get into good colleges with a poor high school education background.

The next step in this investigation is to look at competition, a concept that’s important in American life and especially when it comes to education. Savage Inequalities shows how the educational system gives unfair advantages and privileges to certain groups based on their race or class. Kozol argues that the competition is unfair because of crumbling infrastructure and overcrowding in New York City schools as evidence of a larger pattern of unequal distribution of public resources. Kozol visits schools with 50% or more overcrowding, without librarians, computer labs, or operable gymnasia.

Schools that have a large number of students from minority groups are often underfunded and overcrowded. There is no evidence of racial prejudice, but the author believes this to be an informal reality, as minorities continue to suffer through segregation practices.

Although Kozol’s analysis is difficult to prove, it’s clear that segregation still exists in the modern day. For instance, cities like Camden and East St. Louis have a high poverty rate which limits their ability to raise funds for schools and lobbying efforts on behalf of children. In addition, poor economic conditions can discourage people from having children or encourage them to move away from these areas (Kozol). The author believes that competition has failed because resources are not distributed equally among students and schools. However, he states that this problem isn’t going away anytime soon since “the winners” will always be in one group while the “losers” will be in another group.