Kozol- America’s Educational Apartheid
From September 2005, Jonathan Kozol’s article Still Separate Still Unequal uncovers the realities in the disparities in education. Or does he really uncover it? Don’t we all know deep down that what he writes about is what is the reality for many children in our country? Some people don’t even get their own irony in terms of school funding, as Kozol describes:
Some people who ask these questions, although they live in wealthy districts where the schools are funded at high levels, don’t even send their children to these public schools but choose instead to send them to expensive private day schools. At some of the well-known private prep schools in the New York City area, tuition and associated costs are typically more than $20,000 a year. During their children’s teenage years, they sometimes send them off to very fine New England schools like Andover or Exeter or Groton, where tuition, boarding, and additional expenses rise to more than $30,000. Often a family has two teenage children in these schools at the same time, so they may be spending more than $60,000 on their children’s education every year. Yet here I am one night, a guest within their home, and dinner has been served and we are having coffee now; and this entirely likable, and generally sensible, and beautifully refined and thoughtful person looks me in the eyes and asks me whether you can really buy your way to better education for the children of the poor.
The picture at the head of the article is of Norman Rockwell’s famous painting depicting the aftermath of Brown v. the Board of Education. With Rosa Park’s recent passing, it feels like the end of an era. It’s telling when DL Hughley’s joke that a lot has changed since Rosa Parks would not give up her seat to a white man on a bus—white men used to ride the bus!—has a little bit too much truth. What has changed since the civil rights era is that those who have (money, education, resources, power, technology) have gotten better at keeping it to ourselves. We all, as a society, with the conveniences promised by technology have reverted back into ourselves and because our community—with our reliance on technologies (car, phone, internet) —has shifted away from our immediate geography as we quickly drive in and out of where we need to go and keep in touch with colleagues and friends across distance. This critique is only barely scratching the surface of some of the issues inherent in Kozol’s piece.
And as educators who integrate technology into education, it is an important reminder that to characterize all children of the millenial generation as having equal opportunities in access to resources such as technology in education–is to literally NOT SEE the kids Kozol is writing about. Recent reports have reiterated that despite governmental rhetoric (designed to cut funding to technology programs in schools), the digital divide (despite its problematic moniker) is alive and well: Congress Needs to Address the Digital Divide 2005 and Pew Internet Report 10/5/2005
(Both sources originally linked from: Digital Inequality is Alive and Well )
