Barbara Benjamin

28 October 1993

 

Book Review: Savage Inequalities

by J. Kozol

            The purpose of Kozol's book is never directly stated.  However, I believe his implied intent is to do three things.  First, to expose the inhumane and unjust circumstances of inner-city schools.  Second, to shock the reader and promote sympathy for the plight of impoverished children, presumably so that the reader will be stirred to take action.  Third, to give the children a chance to be heard; this purpose he does state at the beginning of the book.

            Kozol succeeds in exposing the horrid conditions of some ghetto schools.  However, it's a limited view of four cities.  He mentions that he's seen the same conditions in other cities, but he fails to adequately back this up.  I feel he should present some sort of concrete evidence in the form of statistics, charts, or graphs, which would include all major cities in the US.

            The only solid statistics Kozol presents are funding charts of only three cities.  But even these statistics are so limited that one would have to question why, and wonder how wide spread this situation really is.

            The statistics he does present (the funding charts), he doesn't explain well.  The reader is left to do some of the math and extrapolations.  I wanted to see data like expenditures, resources, special situations (i.e. vandalism, etc.), and a comparison between urban and suburban schools.  Thus, I wasn't wholly convinced by the evidence he presents.

            Kozol does adequately follow through in representing the voices of the children.  Their comments and testimonies are poignant and touching.  For example, a 14-year-old girl named Shalika explains her desire to get a good education in a suburban school:

I started school in Fairview Heights {a white suburban school}.  My mother  . . . wanted me to get a chance at better education . . . . I was in the fifth grade, and at that age you don't understand the ugliness in people's hearts.  They wouldn't play with me.  I couldn't understand it.  During recess I would stand there by myself beside the fence.  Then one day I got a note:  'Go  back to Africa.' . . . . It was not my mother's fault that I was not accepted by those people.

            Overall, Kozol's opening is an eye opener, containing a good deal of shock value.  However, he follows this good beginning with chapter after chapter of essentially the same horror stories.  It is redundant and overwhelming to the reader.  I felt it is overkill to the point of possibly losing the reader's interest. 

            In summary, Kozol gives children a voice; he presents stories that are shocking, (although he is far too redundant); and, he exposes inhumane and unjust conditions—but  only of a few inner-city schools.  He doesn't adequately summarize the problems, nor does he stress any particular remedy.  This should be an essential element—thus, its absence is a major shortcoming in his book.

            If I were doing a research paper on some aspect of education, Kozol's book would have limited value.  The descriptions of the shocking conditions could be useful, but I'd have to seek other sources for any hard evidence.