Savage Inequalities

I don’t think there could have been a better name for this book. Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol really points out how different schools are depending on the population. The schools in the more affluent neighborhoods receive more funding and generally have better performing students for several reasons. The best teachers usually want to teach in the best neighborhoods, so that helps the students to succeed more. I believe in the section on New York the principal from the school in the southern part of the Bronx district 10 said that his school usually received the 10th best teacher. The ratio of students to teacher usually is alarming at these schools and the schools who perform better tend to have smaller student teacher ratios. I think there should be greater emphasis placed in helping the students in the poorer communities because the “richer” ones do not seem to have a hard time succeeding. It is extremely difficult to level the playing field because I feel like the poor students are way behind. The conditions that some of the students in the poorer districts have to put up with are tremendous. The quality of the facilities, the teachers and the books has a profound affect on the ability for the children to learn. Of course it starts from the home because if the parents were able to live in a better neighborhood, then they would not have to worry about their child being at a disadvantage, one of the difficulties of this book is that it really does not offer any real solutions to the problem. Is this problem even really something that can be solved? There will always be one person better off than another one the problem is how does society fix that?