Can Separate Be Equal?

Kozol wrote that many Americans have no idea of the problems in urban public schools. He writes about the many big cities in the United States in which racial segregation is continuing in and how this is isolating the children in the poorest and most segregated neighborhoods. The author lists the statistics for many urban settings where the student population is overwhelmingly black or Hispanic. Many teachers in these schools can actually count the number of white children in their schools. Even in neighborhoods where there was a significant white population, white parents are sending their children to private schools. As in Johnson’s article, there seems to be a reluctance to put a name to this racial divide, namely racial segregation. Schools are classified as diverse when there is, in reality, little diversity as most of the students are black or Hispanic.
The argument he feels most educators in large cities subscribe to is one of accepting less than full equality, and striving toward a very different goal of achieving “strong, empowered, and well funded schools in segregated neighborhoods”. He feels that these educators were willing to put aside the 1954 Brown Supreme Court decision and instead settle for the 1896 Supreme Court ruling that advocated a dual society in the United States that was “separate but equal”. For additional information that addresses this issue go to http://www.rethinkingschools.org and read the article titled The Strange History of School Desegregation by Robert Lowe. The problem of achieving desegregation with the current racial populations of our big cities is now difficult and this article explores this problem along with other interesting facts about the history of school desegregation.
Kozol’s article includes several stories from children that tell of the deplorable conditions of the schools they attend. One child wrote, “It is not fair that other kids have a garden and new things. But we don’t have that. I wish that this school was the most beautiful school in the whole why world.” Kozol went on to ponder that innocent misspelling of why instead of wide and that thought resonates with me. Many other students from Fremont high in L.A. talked to Mr. Kozol about the terrible physical conditions in their schools and how the students were further humiliated by having to speak of these horrible conditions and how it never seemed to change, no matter who knew about it. He went on to talk to students about the course work that was available to them and found that many students were being denied the kind of courses that they needed to be successful, being offered vocational courses like sewing and hair styling instead of AP classes while Beverly Hills High School offered so many more relevant academic courses to meet the same “applied Technology” requirement. The students at Fremont school were well aware of the inequities in the schools and were cynical about the status quo changing anytime soon.
The article went on to describe a curriculum called Success For All, a much scripted way to teach students. Kozol writes that many urban school communities have adopted this “pedagogy of direct command and absolute control” with the purpose of “faultless communication” between the teachers and the students. As the description of this curriculum continued it became obvious that this was a very explicit and rote way of instruction. Was this the explicitness that Delpit advocated for students of color? This particular curriculum was described in the article as extremely rigid, not only when examining teaching methodology but extended to every aspect of the student’s day in school with no room for individual expression. The author goes on to quote the New York Times article, Fearing a Class System in the Classroom; A Strict Curriculum, but Only for Failing Schools, Mostly in Poor Areas of New York., where it says that white children made up only one percent of students who were taught using this curriculum, and that this kind of teaching method can only hamper a student’s chance for becoming a critical thinker. He concludes the article by encouraging whatever actions are necessary to change what he refers to as the resegregation of schools and the inequities children of color endure in the United States.