48 pages • 1 hour read
Jonathan KozolSavage Inequalities
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: "The Dream Deferred, Again, in San Antonio"
The sixth and final chapter of Savage Inequalities spends less attention on the material causes and aspects of inequality in education, and more energy discussing the legal battles surrounding it. This is in line with a theme developed in the previous two chapters, but with two new arguments added thereto. First, the resistance to equity in public schools can be decisively pinpointed in recent history, and, second, that state and federal governments are as much responsible for these inequalities as local municipalities and school districts. To argue these points, Kozol focuses on a series of court cases in Texas, from the mid-20th century on.
Previously, Kozol described the controversy in school equity as a battle between the conservatives who favor "liberty" (that is, local control and "school choice") and the liberals who have "equity" (that is, federal government intervention and assistance). However, Kozol believes that this dichotomy is deceptive, and that local control is frequently subverted on the state level. In Kozol's view, "[s]tates' rights" are often regarded as a synonym for "local control," but this characterization is inaccurate. Indeed, Kozol finds that local school districts control relatively little: their textbooks, teacher certification and college examination schedule are decided by the state. Nevertheless, local districts control how a school is heated and cleaned, and whether its students have appropriate numbers of textbooks and materials—material discrepancies Kozol has pointed to throughout his book. However, Kozol argues that whatever ability these local school boards have to decide is undercut by a structural lack of resources, and continual, additional emergency concerns. Thus, their real control over their own circumstances is actually quite limited. This lack of real "local control," Kozol argues, stems from a series of court cases that helped to create and preserve the unequal system that exists today.
Kozol cites the decisive moment as March 21, 1973, where a high court in Texas overturned a district court's ruling that its schools' funding structure was unconstitutional. The case began in 1968, when a San Antonio man named Demetrio Rodriguez claimed that the state had failed to provide enough funds for equal education, in line with the guarantee of equal protection provided in the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Although Rodriguez won his suit in 1971, this decision would be reversed in 1973, with Justice Powell citing that equal education was not a right in itself, nor was it necessary in order to practice other rights.
In effect, Justice Powell decided that whatever discriminatory effect resulted from a funding system was not the obligation of the court to correct. This would have dire implications for the equalization of education throughout the United States. Despite this, however, Kozol outlines other forms of resistance. In California, in 1974, the courts found the state's education funding structure to be in violation of both the state and federal constitutions. A tax revolt was staged in the form of Proposition 13, which dramatically limited funding throughout the state—stripping public schools while at the same time boosting the private education industry. In addition to this, residents of wealthy communities have tax-exempt ways of funneling money into their own school districts, thereby bypassing the public-school system entirely. The value of "excellence" trumpeted by these people, Kozol writes, is meant for one's own children, not others. Even with the recent vindication of the Rodriguez case in 1989, Kozol's optimism is tempered by his experiences in Texas, California, and Ohio. These experiences drive home the realization that these inequalities will persist—in some form—as long as others believe it is right to put themselves before others.
Chapter 6 Analysis
The final chapter of Savage Inequalities focuses on the efforts to challenge the status quo in the courts. In doing so, Kozol articulates what is the dual strategy of those who protect the status quo. Protection of the status quo, Kozol writes, is submitted under the idea of "leveling"—the effort to create inequality at the cost of "excellence." Such excellence, the proponents of the status quo believe, is the expression of "freedom." As Kozol wrote in previous chapters, the dilemma presented by the conservative defenders of the tiered education system argues that excellence comes at the cost of inequality, as "freedom" for wealthier parents means the freedom to exit a failing system. Kozol argues that this outlook has dire implications for the country as a whole. However, the mixed outcomes of the legal battles surrounding education inequality show the extent to which the rhetoric of freedom works to its own betrayal.
Kozol uses the Rodriguez case to illustrate the unsteady commitment towards equal opportunity in the United States education system. The argument made by the plaintiffs is that in underserved, poor communities, the public-school system is denying them their rights of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. In this argument, education is deemed necessary not only to secure economic opportunities, but also to participate in government; thus, when education is curtailed, these other rights suffer as well. This claim is broad in its scope, and significant in that it does not specify racial bias or deliberate segregation as its claim. Instead, it seeks to prove that the arrangement of the school system (with specific respect to funding) underserves poor communities. Kozol argues that the failure and success of this approach has specific implications for the future of education in the United States.
Rodriguez’s suit is first denied, then wins on appeal, owing to the "glaring disparities" of the system. These disparities reflect an effort to restrict the capacity of communities as much as they attempt to better their circumstances. Kozol points to the "tax revolts" in places such as California that follow these educational rulings, as the evidence of the deep anxiety that characterizes support of the status quo. Massive cuts to education that followed equalizing rulings fostered a pull-back from the public-school system, into private school and non-tax school funding schemes. Although court cases such as Rodriguez’s case provide hope for the formal recognition of the inequalities built into the system, the lingering problem testifies to the reality: that these issues are not simply the effect of indifference or neglect, but reflect a concerted, deliberate effort to create systemic inequality. Switching his narrative from predominantly Black schools in Chicago, to predominantly Latino schools in San Antonio, and, finally, to mostly white schools in outer Cincinnati, Kozol makes that the argument that the segregation in American schools goes deeper than race. These patterns of isolation and inequality speak to a pathological component of the American competitive psyche—one which is committed to regard even the barest human potential of "other people's children" as a threat to one's own.
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