Marie Barraza

Dr. T. S. Alvarado
Soc 1
July 15, 2016
Savage Inequalities Reading & Reflection
There is a lot to look at in Irl Solomons history class, to start off
with there is Irl Solomon, the teacher. Irl Solomon seems to be both
experienced and passionate about teaching, it seems that those
traits alone make him standout in the school described by the
Kozol. We learn Mr. Solomon decides to pursue teaching in favor of
law, having dropped out of law school. There is not a lot of
background provided but one can ascertain that Mr. Solomon was
not pleased with judicial system in association with civil rights. We
do know that Solomon has taught for over 30 years and seemed to
have purposefully sought out the gravest teaching conditions,
targeting poverty ridden inner city schools. In one example of the
challenges faced by Solomon he tells Kozol of the pregnancy rate in
one of his classrooms where four as many as four his students are
pregnant, that is just in one class. Solomon tells Kozol that he tried
to determine why the pregnancy rate was so high he asked the
girls why they decided to get pregnant. The response given to Mr.
Solomon from the girls was simply that they had nothing to deter
them from getting pregnant to begin with, for them this was just

the next part of their lives, they didnt even see continuing their
education into college as a possibility.
Jennifers opinion on bussing kids in from schools in poor areas
like the ones in East St. Louis and the Bronx to more prominent and
high resource areas like her school is that that is not a realistic or
promising solution. Jennifer goes on to argue that taxpayer money
from her community should only go to the kids who live within her
school district. Admittedly Jennifer tells Kozol that her family was
from the Bronx and one of the primary reasons they decided to
move away was because of the declining quality of the schools.
Jennifer then insists the problems with the schools have more to do
with parents resources than society. In Jennifers mind if parents
were truly concerned about their childrens education, like her
parents are for hers, they would just work harder to move into
areas with better schools. She believes that providing kids from
poor schools with the same resources as those that she receives is
really only a waste because these kids do not have the same
resources at home from their parents.
Kozols depictions of the schools in Rye and East St. Louis could
not paint more drastic polar opposites. The differences between
the two schools range in everything from their settings to the
personnel and staff. The school in Rye, New York evokes images of
the best private institutions in the county and is described as

having walls of grey stone and sitting on a lush green landscape. In

a bewildering contrast, the account of the school in East St. Louis
included numerous incidents of sewage flooding. The most
disparaging depiction between Rye and East St. Louis is the finding
of a dead body between two school campuses in that East St. Louis
neighborhood, as it turns out the girl had been raped. Back in Rye,
New York the school principal brags about the features at his school
that include, a wood paneled library, a carpeted student lounge
designed for student comfort, and a newly restored auditorium.
East St. Louis High School finds its self on the opposing pole to all
of Ryes excess where metal pipes in the ground stand in for goal
posts on the football field.
It is really hard for me to image an educational setting
grimmer than that described by Kozol in East St. Louis. The harsh
reality in all this is that there are of course worst settings with
even more impoverished resources in our own country that
claims to serve as the model for all social and economic systems.
It is also difficult to process that this article is not about
conditions faced fifty or seventy-five years ago in the Deep
South, this was only twenty years ago. I attribute these
educational disparities to the sort of institutionalized racism we
see across this country with our judicial system. While I do
believe that a lot has improved in the last twenty years since

Savage Inequalities was first published like access to improved

technology and resources in the classroom. I also believe that
there should be more parity between school district budgets
across the country.
In my case I attended some pretty tough schools in inner
city Los Angeles, one of them in the Pico-Union area, I remember
I got lice three times in one school year. I also remember not
having much to eat at home and really depending on the food
provided to me at school. In some ways I feel that schools in lowincome areas have more latent burdens placed on them the
schools in high-income areas. Kids who attend impoverished
schools come in needing so much more than just intellectual
knowledge and academia, they also need basic nutrition, access
to healthcare, and basic necessities like clothing and hygiene
products before they can even learn. I do believe it is important
to provide schools in low-income school districts with additional
funding. I think we live in a time where the tension created by
the disparities between race and social classes is palpable and I
have to think that all this energy can be channeled into leveling
the playing field without resorting to violence.