Title: Fire in the Ashes, Jonathan Kozol, Broadway Books Introduction: As a well accomplished writer, activist, and educator, Jonathan Kozol has devoted his life to the challenge of providing equal education to every child in our public schools. Summary of the contents: Fire in the Ashes is an intuitive and exciting book that details social justice at its core. The poor are getting poorer, the rich richer. Yet, when these children are faced with obstacles placed by a society who cares more about money than education, they prove that everything is circumstantial. In Jonathan Kozol’s coming of age novel, he depicts the stories of young men and women who grow up in some of the most destitute communities in the United States. Rape, …show more content…
Many of the families in Kozol’s book live in central Manhattan in drug-infested buildings, falling apart from the brick in, whereas in earlier periods of New York’s history were fine hotels. One of such buildings is the Martinique Hotel, where Kozol afforded much of his time to the families that dwelled there, as referenced in his book. Those who inhabit the Martinique Hotel are symbolically affected by New York’s renown valor in their conscious, further placing them in the class as “less-fortunate” within a city that does not afford them many opportunities. Many homeless neighborhoods find themselves victim to substandard medical and education facilities. The families, as Kozol describes were shipped by the masses to communities that already suffer from the city’s highest rates of HIV, drug addiction, pediatric asthma and psychiatric illness (Kozol 11). There is the idea, as Kozol says, that the homes that these families find themselves in are “closed systems”, “where rules of normal law and normal governance did not apply” (Kozol 8), whereas the people are detached from the rest of society, confined to the community all in itself. The families he works with are sectioned off by society because they live in poor areas and confined within a capitalistic economy, have nowhere to go. In a way, Kozol describes these areas as the capital of homeless people, surrounded by a city built for the wealthy, by
In the essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal” by Jonathan Kozol, the situation of racial segregation is refurbished with the author’s beliefs that minorities (i.e. African Americans or Hispanics) are being placed in poor conditions while the Caucasian majority is obtaining mi32 the funding. Given this, the author speaks out on a personal viewpoint, coupled with self-gathered statistics, to present a heartfelt argument that statistics give credibility to. Jonathan Kozol is asking for a change in this harmful isolation of students, which would incorporate more funding towards these underdeveloped schools. This calling is directed towards his audience of individuals who are interested in the topic of public education (seeing that this
If anyone in the United States were asked, "What is the best part about living in this country?," most people would answer "equality". The United States is built on and known for the equality among its citizens and is often referred to as the 'melting pot'. After reading Jonathan Kozol's, The Shame of the Nation, equality is nonexistent within the schools he has gone to, and has been employed through. With his travels, expert testimony and personal stories gathered from the people within the community and schools, he shows the exact opposite of equality. Minority schools being his main focus, he discusses the inequalities these students endure and truly opens up your eyes to just how awful these minority schools have it. Jonathan Kozol is successful in his writing of The Shame of the Nation, and makes himself a voice for these minority schools that are denied of their voices.
The novel shows us the many difficulties that the homeless must go through during their daily lives. The novel teaches us how the homeless make sacrifices and struggle to survive, which many people don’t
A suburban life is a paradise full of shopping, colorful gardens, and well-groomed homes. Despite all these benefits, a suburban life is an isolated life. People living in suburbs are rarely exposed to miseries in society. One of these conflicts is homelessness. When living in an environment surrounded by homes, individuals often have difficulty imagining not being able to sleep in a warm bed, eat a proper meal or even receive necessary medical attention. This grim situation is depicted in the writings of Jeannette Walls. In the autobiography The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls accurately portrays homelessness by explaining its causes, its impact upon daily life, and its effect on victimized families.
Other distressing issues Kozol argues are those of magnet schools and the business approach to education, which he discusses in chapter two. In Kozol’s opinion, magnet schools do nothing but separate the children more. He says that the poorer children are not really given a chance to apply for these selective schools. Even if the information is given to the parents, many times they are not properly educated to do anything about fulfilling the necessary requirements to get their children into the special schools. He also disagrees with the business approach to education, stating that one cannot set limits on a child because the child will never strive to go beyond
The United States is a country based on equal opportunity; every citizen is to be given the same chance as another to succeed. This includes the government providing the opportunity of equal education to all children. All children are provided schools to attend. However, the quality of one school compared to another is undoubtedly unfair. Former teacher John Kozol, when being transferred to a new school, said, "The shock from going from one of the poorest schools to one of the wealthiest cannot be overstated (Kozol 2)." The education gap between higher and lower-income schools is obvious: therefore, the United States is making the effort to provide an equal education with questionable results.
Homelessness affects the whole family, as do other societal issues. If a parent has a low income job, then they cannot afford to live in the wealthier, or even middle class, areas. They are forced to live in lower class, struggling areas, which then causes their children to attend struggling schools. These schools are unable to provide the children with the proper level of education, often leading the children to drop out or, if they do graduate, not to attend college. This leaves the children in the same situation as their parents, continuing the vicious cycle. The method of solving homelessness discussed in Sources B and E can benefit the whole family. By giving them a safe, secure place to live that will not be taken away from them, giving the working-age members of the family jobs, and providing them with resources allows them to find their way out of the situation. Source G describes the decrepit areas in which the children and their families live and how these homes contribute to the problem. When describing East St. Louis, Kozol says, “Only three of the 13 buildings on Missouri Avenue, one of the city’s major thoroughfares, are occupied. A 13-story office building, tallest in the city, has been boarded up. Outside, on the sidewalk, a pile of garbage fills a ten-foot crater” (Source G, 7). Areas such as East St. Louis often do not have any career or job
One can only imagine what it is like to be homeless. Homelessness is depicted inaccurately in movies and television shows. As a result, people have negative perceptions of the homeless; they think that they are lazy, uneducated or mentally ill. The film “The Saint of Fort Washington” implicitly depicts homelessness, because it shows the realities of how the homeless survive both socially and economically. In this essay I will disuss how the homeless survice both economically and socially, and if the movie depicts homelessness realtiscly. Also I will analyze the extent to which Dordick’s article “More than a Refuge: The Social World of a Homeless Shelter,” compares to the depictions found in the movie.
The lack of dignity that these individuals feel is a direct effect of society’s disrespect for the lower class. The stereotypes of the homeless conceived by upper social classes, cause the lower class to lose any respectable role they may have in society. A homeless man in Oberlin, Ohio says, “Many of us historically invisible people, in our quest for visibility, have chosen to take the routes of organization and alliance building. Often we tend to find that our muted voices have more resonance, bass, and credibility within these snugly, institutionally sanctioned cubby holes” (Laymon). After failing to get sufficient help through
Kozol’s main argument is that public education should be free and equal to people of all economic classes. Kozol believes that children from poor families are cheated out of a future by unequipped, understaffed and under funded schools in the United State’s inner cities and less affluent suburbs. The majority of these children are non-white, and living amongst poverty and crime. Kozol argues about the unfair standards we expect these underprivileged children to rise to. Children in these poor areas are being compared to children in affluent areas where the quality of their education is much higher. Kozol asks how these children will succeed in today’s world if they are not given the same opportunities as affluent schools give their children. Kozol believes that by depriving our poorer children of their basic needs we are forcing them into lives of crime, poverty and a never-ending cycle of inequalities in education. Kozol stresses that these students must be taught that “savage inequalities” do not have to exist between them and students in more affluent schools, and that all children are entitled to an equal education.
In Slumming by Chad Heap the author describes the true reality of slumming, and how it was more wide spread than what it appear just in the surface. Heap defines slumming, as he concentrate on cities like Chicago and New York, that were provide with entertainment. This entertainment would come from immigrants, blacks, gays and bohemians during a period of large scale immigration in this cities. The author explains in detail the culture of slumming, as well as how it helps to produce the sex/gender/racial system. Heap also argues how the different participants in slumming affect one another. The impact between the different interactions among different races, classes and gender was as well discussed in detail by the author. Finally Heap
The meaning of homelessness has changed many times in the past years, we have forgotten that casual laborers, vagrants, and the wandering poor were not unseen in early years, whereby homelessness is an uneasy situation in society. According to Shlay & Rossie, (1992), homelessness is an individual without a home or a permanent place, but current perspectives indicate that intermittent homelessness falls into the definition. At the beginning vagrancy focused on skid row with the attention on single room hotels, boarding houses, and cheap places to eat, on the community that attracted transients, though they were not homerless, whereby they had had a place to sleep with an address.
Homelessness is a social problem that is prevalent around the world. Homelessness has existed for much of "civilized" human history. In the last two centuries, homelessness and changed and expanded. Sociologists who study and research homelessness have argued over its formal definition for decades, though for some, the definition of homelessness seems self explanatory and obvious. The paper will examine homelessness, particularly as a sociological issue, or a social issue seen from a sociological perspective. The paper will additionally reference sociological theory as a means of explanation for homelessness, such its causes, the demographics/populations, and other prominent known characteristics of homeless people. There are individuals and groups who choose to be, from a normative societal perspective, homeless, but for a great deal of the homeless population, it can be a treacherous and tragic lifestyle that is a result of a distinct set of social, societal, and individual factors.
Many inner city dwellers are often physically, socially, and economically trapped to the confines of their living situation. Lack of financial stability in the inner city prevents many residents from improving their situation, and in effect leaves an entire community socially and economically stagnant and living with “rats in the front room, roaches in the back/junkie’s in the alley with a baseball bat.” In the author’s case, one shared by countless other inner city residents, the ability to even catch a breather from the depressing sites and life of the inner city is not even feasible due to lack of transportation.
Envision feeling lost and not knowing what to do or where to go. You spend every night in the chilly weather on a seat, which you call your bed. As you wake up to the prattling clamors every morning you choose which open spot will permit you to tidy yourself up. When you get hungry, you ask individuals for change to eat or you seek the closest trash can. For whatever remains of the day, you sit in the city trusting individuals will see you and will want to assist. Realizing that you are not judged by who you are but rather what you will be, you understand that the majority of people in public don 't necessarily understand homelessness, and it would be a miracle if the circumstances in homelessness ever change. Often you find them huddled on a seat or in an entryway under unwashed covers or worn out coats. These individuals are called homeless, in spite of the fact that they are more than just simply individuals without homes. According to Arthur Gilliard, in Homelessness, he states, “A homeless person is someone who is unstable to secure and maintain a permanent, safe, and adequate dwelling. Homelessness is the condition of being homeless, and it represents a broad social category of people who are, for any number of reasons, left without a place to call their own.”(Gilliard 9) Homelessness could walk in our community and you would not even know it. According to Timothy Pina, a writer from the book called Hearts for Haiti: Book of Poetry &