Kozol's Savage Inequalites

I am reading Kozol's Savage Inequalites.  This book clearly explains to us why is there savage inequlites between the races.  Even though some people said that it is not only becasue of money differences, I thought it really related to the money.  Different school buildings and teachers came from how much money your parents made.  As Kozol states several examples of financial support per student in each different demographical area this clearly tells us that money is a really important fact for receiving better education.

The different amounts of money that is raised helps to raise students up differently based on what society desires for the future.  As Kozol insists in his book, "Where will we see the best return?, Who is likely to return the most to our society?"(Kozol, 1991, p117) are the questions that the society desires for the students who received education.

However, I also do not think that it is absolutely true that money is the answer to this problem.  I think about what the prinicipal of an elementary school in Riverdale said in the book, "The building and teachers are part of it, of course. But it isn't just the building and the teachers. Our kids come from good families and the nighborhood is good. ...Our typical sixth grader reads at an 8th grade level" (Kozol,1991, p98), is very good insight.

Honestly, I thought about Korea which was the one of the poorest countries after the Korean war in the 1950s.  There were different classes between people and these people produced poverty again since there was no way to receive a better education.  However, these people who lived under the worst conditions than the African American students that are described in this book.  Those people also began to sacrifice themselves in order to provide better education to their children.  Of course, the school and education that their children received were not that great, but the difference was the passion of their parents and children for the education and success.  In the end, there were many people who could overcome poverty and inequqlities in education. I mean these kind of things  happen in even American schools  that hardly find Asians students who have a hard time to succeed in their education.  It is not because their parents had everything and were in same position as white people.  However, I heard so many stories of Asian parents who worked hard and sacrificed so much for their children to be better in school.

Of course, I am not saying that the parents of African American parents and other races do not sacrifice and have no passion for their childern's education.  However, I think family culture is also very important for students to be sucessful in their education. So, the point is that we should help the parents of African American students and other races so they can really have a more passionate and suportive family culture.

This is SuYeon :)