A Tale Of Two Schools: How Poor Children Are Lost To The World

A Tale of Two Schools: How Poor Children Are Lost to the World

Jonathan Kozol wrote a book titled Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. A Tale of Two Schools: How Poor Children Are Lost to the World is an excerpt from the book. The excerpt tells the story of two high schools in the Chicago area.

The Chicago area has a variety of high schools. Du Sable High School in Chicago and New Trier High School in a Chicago suburb are at different ends of the spectrum when speaking of the overall quality of education. New Trier has seven gyms and an Olympic pool. Du Sable is crowded into one city block while New Trier takes up as much space as a small college.

The courses at New Trier are completely geared for college bound students. For example, there are seven foreign languages offered there. With that in mind, try to understand that while the seniors at New Trier study authors such as Freud and Nietzsche, the seniors at Du Sable are just now learning how to read four syllable words. Only about seventeen percent of Du Sables students are in a college preparation program. No wonder the graduation rate, Kozol states, is twenty five percent at Du Sable.

The outcome of the twenty five percent graduation rate is clear to all that live in the neighborhood. In his book, Kozol quotes a reporter asking a sixteen-year-old dropout about how much she would like to ...