Integrative Essay

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Recommended: Racism in public schools and how it effects education

Segregation in educational institutions taking place in the United States is not often talked about. People may consider apartheid schooling taking place presently to a nation that does not respect basic human rights. Thus, the injustices taking place in public schools are not easily classified because it is commonplace to many. It can be argued that apartheid schooling was never completely dismantled in the United States. Jonathan Kozol’s book The Shame of the Nation (2005) provides evidence and insight to apartheid within the educational system that children are currently experiencing. The structure in children’s curriculum, the way they are spoken to as well as the funding public schools are funded are examples to the inequalities that children face. Conceptually, structural violence is what keeps educational injustices to recur. The children and teachers Kozol interviews come from various urban cities in the nation – New York, Ohio and Massachusetts. Critical Race Theory came to mind throughout the reading because children facing injustices in the public school system are predominantly African-American and Latino. Although some of the schools presented in book claim diversity, school demographics show that there is very little diversity in those schools (Kozol, 2005, pp. 20-22). As such, the children from other ethnic backgrounds attending poorly funded schools are there because of their families’ low-incomes. There are various types of curricula that are implemented at one time or another in which the children are policed, treated like the military personnel they are not and structure the classrooms with protocols similar to that of the workplace. Moreover, working class children are not given the ability to challenge themse... ... middle of paper ... ...tions, if true diversity is not introduced in both worlds, one will never know of the other. Another way of breaking the barriers is persuading parents into seeing how diversity will enrich everyone’s lives. Works Cited Kozol, J. (2005). The shame of the nation. New York: Crown Publishers. Kusserow, A.S. (1999). De-homogenizing American individualism: Socializing hard and soft individualism in Manhattan and Queens. Ethos, 27(2), 210-234. Mickelson, R. A. & Smith, S.S. (2004). Can education eliminate race, class, and gender inequality? In M.L Andersen & P.H. Collins (Eds.), Race, class, and gender: An Anthology (pp. 407-415). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Orellana, M. F. (2009). Translating childhoods: Immigrant youth, language, and culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Parillo, V. N. (2008). Understanding race and ethnic relations. Boston, MA: Pearson.

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