Blog Post #1

While I am only a short-way into The Shame Of The Nation by Jonathan Kozol, he already has my blood boiling about the unfairness of the American public school system to people of color. The thesis presented is that, despite the promise of Brown v. Board of Education that American schools must be desegregated, segregation, in fact, remains entrenched and schools serving minority students are substantially behind schools that serve primarily white students.

Kozol was effective in the first few chapters in drawing me into his argument by his rhetorical choices. He skillfully combines the use of emotion (pathos), facts and observations (logos), and his own personal experience (ethos) to move the reader to his point of view.

I particularly found his powerful but sparing use of stories about individual children as an outstanding use of pathos. Kozol began significant arguments in the book with stories about real children. These stories drew me emotionally into the argument that Kozol was about to make. 

For example, Kozol started the first chapter with the story of Pineapple. Pineapple was a young girl from the South Bronx who was highly affected by the lack of funding and consistency in her schooling. When Kozol first met Pineapple, she was a young kindergartener who he described as “plump and bright-eyed”. The next time they met was three years later when Pineapple was in the midst of her third-grade year. That year there was a massive turnover of teachers in Pineapple’s class and many of the students were suffering because of the lack of teacher consistency. He described the lack of learning that Pineapple and her classmates faced and the isolation that many of the kids felt. He ended the story about Pineapple with an anecdote about a conversation between the two. Kozol described the two of them sitting in a park and Pineapple asking about what it’s like where Kozol is from but does so in a way that makes it clear she means in “the white world” without saying it.  The story was told in such a way that I could feel Pineapple’s isolation and her desire for something more. 

After making this highly emotional connection with the story about Pineapple, Kozol contextualizes it with fact-based research about the segregation problems that persist in American schools.  Here, he cites statistics about the disproportionate racial divide in city schools, including many schools that are almost entirely minority, including schools that are 99% minority  He also discussed the decision of many governments to turn their back on the problem and quoted a study from Harvard University stating that the proportion of black students in majority-white schools is back to pre-1968 levels.  He also explained how professionals in these isolated schools even have stopped fighting for integration and instead are now work to just make the best of what they have.  By the end of the chapter, I not only felt bad for Pineapple, but I was also convinced that there was a bigger problem.  

Kozol used a similar strategy in the second chapter about the lack of resources in minority schools by starting with a story about a young girl named Alliyah.  She wrote him a letter that she wished she went to a “good” school-like “the other kings have,” which Kozol suggested meant (by the use of “kings”) what white kids have.  He then went into significant detail about the resource gap between white and minority schools.  He described the data about pay inequity among teachers in white versus non-white schools.  And, in a section I found truly shocking, he described how the richer parts of the city school district raise money privately to make the schools for their children better.  The minority schools, where the parents don’t have the money to make large contributions, fall further behind even though they are in the same district.  

In these chapters,  Kozol uses an effective rhetorical strategy by softening up the reader with emotional stories that make you feel empathy for the disadvantaged child before he hits you with the facts that prove the injustice that you already feel.  He does all of this after having explained in the opening of the book his own travel into inner-city schools and the decades that he has spent thinking and working on these problems. That introduction leaves you with the opening impression that he knows a lot about the topic. 

By the end of chapter 2, I am already convinced that Kozol has identified a problem that exists under the radar in our society that we need to recognize and address. I am, in some ways, scared to see where he takes us next. 

Kozol, Jonathan. The Shame of the Nation: the Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America. Three Rivers Press, 2005.