Of Inequality and the American Dream
According to the “American Dream”, success will come to anyone in America –regardless of race, gender, or social status– as long as they work hard enough. Education plays a fundamental role to attain this goal, as it provides the required skills and knowledge to obtain higher returns for the work done. Although long ago, the United States adopted universal public education to provide people with an equal opportunity to realize this “dream”, this objective has not been reached. Even more, a preexistent class structure with further segregation and inequality has been sustained.
In his book, “Savage Inequalities”, Kozol notes that class structure in the United States has been perpetuated through differential access to educational opportunities. His view is reminiscent of Karl Marx conflict theory, in which the bourgeois, owning the means of production, hold the power and prestige in contrast to the proletariat, who must settle for the poorly remunerated jobs and have fewer economic and social rights. Additionally, the concept of an American Dream and the proclaim for universal access to education has much to do with the concept of symbolic capital introduced by Bourdieu, as a legitimate pretext to conceal the hidden interests that lie behind class divisions.
The first part of this paper discusses the main argument given by Kozol to explain class structure within the United States with respect to the theories of class division offered by Karl Marx and Pierre Bourdieu. First, Kozol’s arguments are exposed. Then, the Marxist perspective is explored in light of Kozol’s claims. Finally, Bourdieu’s ideas are analyzed correspondingly. In the second part, the effectiveness and appropriateness of several initiatives and policies, such as school choice, aimed to reduce current schooling inequality are discussed.
After gathering substantial evidence from visiting several public schools in extremely poor neighborhoods and interviewing their children and staff, Kozol argues that the most prevalent problem in the American public education system is the existence of blatant inequalities among school districts. Whereas children of middle and upper class neighborhoods are given the material and intellectual resources that will allow them to develop high academic competencies and achieve solid employment and wealth, many other children are denied this privilege because of their economic background and location. Kids that go to public schools in poor neighborhoods ought to deal with untrained, inefficient and unmotivated teachers, lack of textbook and other learning resources and unacceptable building conditions, in addition to the deprivations that they face at home and in their living environments. This stems to a great exent from the fact that there is not enough money being put into such institutions.
Kozol’s findings illustrate that education inequality and segregation in America are not separate anomalies but a deep-seated and generalized problem. He holds the system to finance public education in the United States responsible for perpetuating class structure and cleavages among different groups in societies. As public schools are funded through property taxes, those districts with more expensive housing will unambiguously collect more tax-based revenues than poorer districts. Even though allegedly it is a function of the state, public education funding has been largely delegated to school districts, encouraging further resource concentration on the richer districts. Additionally, parents from the richer districts usually incorporate additional money to their own schools widening the gap even more. However, society's attitude towards the low-income class is shaped by the prevalence of individual greed, which is enhanced by means of the competitive capitalist system. Thus, it can be foreseen that this inequitable fiscal structure is almost impossible to change. Racism, political power, and public indifference contribute, as well, to the overall unawareness of and the unresponsiveness to the inequality problem.
Kozol brings up evidence of how the education system acts as an intergenerational source of social predetermination. He shows how schools in the poorest areas prepare kids for low-income jobs as Burger King and Macdonald’s employees or at a near by gas station. By encouraging an implicit division of labor, the education system functions even more to sustain the social cleavages among classes. Those who graduate from bad public schools are conditioned to poorly remunerated job opportunities which will assure similar conditions for their future generations and so on. The connection between failure to provide poor children a good education and the number of young adults in prison is another shocking evidence of this educational trap and of the unwillingness to revert it. Kozol states that 90% of the male jail prisoners in New York City are former public school dropouts. He mentions that “incarceration of each inmate…costs the city nearly $60,000 every year” ; much more than it would cost to supply this kid with adequate education.
The economic divisions often include factors of race, since the people who constitute the low-income classes are predominantly minorities. Kozol is surprised of segregation. However, he is equally irritated by the growing inequality, in public education, between rich and poor. He finds that poor children, and especially poor children of color are being increasingly given up for loss and any attempts to educate them are being seen as destined to failure. These severe differentials in public education, in Kozol’s view, are instrumental for the privileged to sustain a class structure although, in theory, every American is granted an “equal” opportunity to achieve the equality “dream”.
According to Marx, labor and, hence, the modes of production determine condition of human nature. Our social realities, the productive forces, determine our ideas, and not vice-versa. One of the distinguishing characteristics of a person's place in society is its relation to the means of production. Thus, inequality is created by differences in access to the means and the modes of production: “…the individuals themselves are entirely subordinated to the division of labor itself and hence are brought into the most complete dependence on one another.” There is a structural conundrum in the modes of production that sustains an inequitable and unfair class structure within society. Those who possess the capital, the economic capital, have power advantages over the rest, the working class or proletariat. Thus, according to Marx, “a mass of individuals” has remained “ subservient to a single instrument of production” and only through a revolution from below, where the working classes can establish a drastic change in the modes of production and control of capital (“a mass of instruments of production must be made subject to each individual and property to all” ), there will be a possibility of more equal social structures.
Kozol’s arguments fit well into several of Marx claims. There are several examples that would resemble Marx idea of a structurally divided society among the owners of capital and of the modes of production and the working class within a constant struggle for material possessions. The contrasting inequality of two school districts in one same city, Chicago, is illustrative. While kids in the affluent suburb of Winnetka have access to one of the best schools of the state of Illinois and are surrounded by plenty of intellectual resources and future prospects of entering a top-level college and of finding a prestigious highly paid job, kids in the inner city area have to attend schools with extremely poor resources and where they do not receive the basic educational competencies. Resembling Marx’s conflict perspective, as these two districts compete over resources, there is an element of domination and coercion of the upper class that hold the lower-class people in poverty through legislation or individual decisions. Through both the atomized schooling funding system and personal greed, the privileged classes are able to sustain the social structure.
Another concern with which Marx would be in agreement is the aforementioned way in which the school system determines, to a great extent, the future job prospects of their students. The schooling system, thus, could be seen as designed to comply with the requirements of the modes production and a mechanism through which the privileged classes can decide upon the most efficient use of other members of society.
Whereas Marx defines class in strictly economic terms, for Bourdieu class is associated as well with the power struggle for other sources of capital: social, cultural and symbolic. In his work “Distinction”, he argues over the classifying power of taste. “Taste classifies and it classifies the classifier”. For Bourdieu the struggle is over values, definitions, classifications and taste, not only over material possessions. He makes reference to culture and cultural consumption as “predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function or legitimating social differences” . Under the allegory of “titles of nobility”, the amount of social, cultural and symbolic capital that any individual has for its struggle for power depends on two basic factors: “educational capital (measured by qualifications) and social origin (measured by father’s occupation)” . Additionally, Bourdieu believes that misrepresentation, the denial of economic and political interests under which social relations are perceived as disinterested, is one of the main sources of class power. He identifies symbolic capital as a concealed power through which the privileged can demand obedience in a legitimate way. Within this line of reasoning, he identifies the “best-hidden effect of the educational system” as its capacity to give out titles that can be either “ennobling” or “stigmatizing” .
Bourdieu, as Marx, would also be supportive of most of Kozol’s theories although in a broader, and maybe more direct sense. Several of Bourdieu’s theories are pictured in Kozol’s examples and case-based evidence. First, Bourdieu’s notion of a societal struggle for different kinds of capital (economic, social, cultural, symbolic) is central to understand the main problem of having such an unequal schooling system. Educational capital is required to obtain both cultural and social capital, which are elements of power that can be transformed into effective symbolic capital to have legitimate access to additional privileges. Children in East St. Lois or Camden (NJ) will always be subject to a very low level of educational capital both because the state do not provide adequate schools in these areas and because their families do not have economic capital to invest in their educational capital. Additionally, their social capital will also be constrained to the networks these children build with their, also very poor, neighbors. Accordingly, they will never be able to reach any higher level of cultural capital and maybe they won’t be able to attain any symbolic capital at all. In this case, the lack of economic capital faced by the kids’ families and the public schools in low-income districts become a hindrance for the development of any other form of capital for these groups. Hence, the lack of funding of public schools in poor neighborhoods not only sustains inequality but also perpetuates the lower standing of these groups within the prevalent class structures.
Additionally, in Bourdieu’s terms the whole notion of an American Dream, where people believe that access to equal opportunity is genuine (starting in universal public education), could be a clear manifestation of “misrepresentation” and an evidence of the use of symbolic capital by the advantaged classes. By means of this sanguine premise, privileged groups and public officials are equipped to blame the poor for their appalling performance as a matter of insufficient effort and lack of interest on their part. By generalizing this ideal and taking it for granted, the privileged groups are denying the legitimate cause for the poverty conditions of the disadvantaged groups. Moreover, they may be hiding their underlying economic and power interests; by claiming universal access to public education they are sustaining a school system that is, per se, perpetuating the social cleavages. Moreover, the apathy of the more privileged classes, continuously described by Kozol, and the myriads of excuses, including the idea that money and resources are not essential for educational quality, reveals how these well-off groups are prone to maintain the status quo.
All three authors, Marx, Bourdieu and Kozol, have a central question in common: why don’t people see this? Why aren’t they aware of these unequal conditions? To a certain extent, the answer might be embedded in Kozol’s ultimate concern: whether Americans can be induced to care about children other than their own. There is an important convergence of these authors regarding this question. Either under the idea of “hegemony”, as presented by Marx or of “misrepresentation” as stated by Bourdieu, both theories are well suited with Kozol’s claims of the existence of hidden a power element within the American school system that promotes stability of class structure under what are perceived to be legitimate ideals and structures. Moreover, as a function of domination of the privileged classes over the rest, there are no realistic incentives to change the system’s current standing and the American Dream is kept as a the American “truth”: a system of belief sourly blind to reality.
Part 2
Kozol criticizes some of the initiatives and policies that have been implemented by the federal authorities, which are based upon market principles and aimed to reduce unequal access to public education. The main initiatives are the parents’ public school choice and the voucher system. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, these initiatives are based upon an evaluation of each school’s performance regarding what the kids are learning. Schools that are performing at a very low level are set under a special arrangement called Title 1, under which the state has the responsibility to define an improvement program through resources and technical assistance. When these schools are in too harsh conditions or if, after a convened period of time, they do not improve, the state may decide to give parents the choice to move their kids to a public school of their choice . The voucher program is part of the choice given to parents when no other public schooling alternatives are available. Additionally there are the so-called magnet schools, created as an alternative for kids with extraordinary performance or a strong interest in a certain discipline.
On one hand, Kozol criticizes the parallel system selective schools as the magnet or charter schools. His criticism is based on several grounds. First, given the deprived background they come from, “kids would not have the preparation to compete effectively on the exams they would have to take in order to get in”. Moreover, even if kids from these underserved schools are chosen, Kozol believes that their departure may cause greater harm to those children left behind, as the best classmates that could enhance creativity are gone.
On the other hand, Kozol criticizes the policy of “schools of choice” that allows parents to chose among public schools. He states that people living under isolation and deprived conditions will not be able to make use of these “market mechanisms” that have been opened. To a great extent, Kozol believes that these people may not have enough audacity or even energy to take advantage of these opportunities. Moreover, that society has already conditioned and shaped their life expectations to such extent that their choices are constraint to what they have had access to.
Kozol’s evidence is compelling to show how existent disadvantages that poor people face may have unambiguously strong effects over public policies and may neutralize their impact or even create even more detrimental arrangements that can further widen the gap. His case-based studies of several public schools, and especially his interviews with children from these institutions are descriptive of the limitations that they have to access the parallel school system. Although they are aware of the magnet school existence, they are certain that they do not have enough chances of being selected into these schools. These kids have an intrinsic disadvantage in contrast to kids that have had access to a better family environment, nutrition, and superior preschool and schooling resources. Moreover, some schools will be reluctant to give access to kids from lower social backgrounds, and they would justify it on grounds of the student not having the adequate academic level or enough competencies. The school choice policy, although apparently designed to provide parents with greater flexibility regarding the selection of schools may well become a good excuse (symbolic capital) for not solving major structural problems related with the funding system and the lack of effective redistributive mechanisms.
The market-based policies that Kozol criticizes, especially nowadays under the NCLB initiative, are largely based upon measurement and evaluation. Children performance in the different set of basic skills is measured as an indication of the school’s overall performance. Bourdieu notes that “the more the competencies measured are recognized by the school system, the stronger is the relation between performance and educational qualifications” . Consequently, measurement of schools can become one more of the classifying mechanisms for poor kids to be constrained to any better opportunity. This reinforces Kozol’s critique of the policy initiatives as supporting the perpetuation of inequalities through a legitimate cause, which also fits well under Bourdieu’s theory of “misrepresentation”. The measurement system becomes a legitimate tool to monitor and enhance education quality that, at the same time, conceals the negative effects of such categorization.
Though Kozol’s examples are very compelling, there is a contradiction in his line of reasoning. In the first part of his book (page 56) Kozol argues that the state, by forcing families to send kids to their district public school, without dealing with equality, is perpetuating inequality. “Unless we have the wealth to pay for private education, we are compelled by law to go to public school – and to the public school in our district. Thus the state, by requiring attendance but refusing to require equity, effectively requires inequality. Compulsory inequity, perpetuated by state law, too frequently condemns our children to unequal lives.” Subsequently, he emphatically argues against the initiatives of the state to give parents the possibility of choosing among different public schools to reduce this institutionally imposed inequality.
That poor people have notorious disadvantages over the more affluent doesn’t mean that policies promoting school choice over locally restrictive education are always unfavorable for the poor. Choice policies can be positive to the poor if accompanied with broader programs to increase equity and school improvement, especially in the most at-risk areas. As an important feature of the No Child Left Behind initiative, the element of parents choice is present but it is tied to the overall school performance improvement, within an agreed upon period of time (around 5 years), this includes additional resources and technical assistance.
In addition to Kozol’s specific examples, it is important to consider a larger sample of the education system to be able to get to a more general conclusion. According to the 1993-1997 Trends in the Use of School Choice , the poorest population groups benefited the most from school choice policies. Within the total population that make use of public school choice, households with yearly incomes less than $10,000 increased its participation from 14% in 1993 to 22% in 1999. By 2003, around 30% of the households using this program are those with yearly incomes below $20,000. Moreover, the proportion of black, non-hispanic within this initiative increased from 19% in 1993 to 23% in 1999. In 2003, only 11% of the total beneficiaries are white. Although these figures do not show a tremendous pro-poor targeting, it shows that the more vulnerable groups are using these policies incrementally. However, it will take time for these policies to reveal their real impact on increasing equity. The downside to this is that this time is unrecoverable to the generations of poor people that have to cope with the existent schooling disadvantages.
The effects of school choice policies will undoubtedly be constrained by the extreme disadvantages faced by the lower-income populations. Additionally the inadequate design of the schooling funding system creates a structure of inequality that is exacerbated through the individual interests of the privileged population who sustain these rigidities in order to keep their own advantages available. Under these circumstances, policies oriented to address equity without dealing with a more evenhanded allocation of funding among public schools will only be marginally effective and in certain circumstances, as those described by Kozol, they may be even more exclusionary. In this sense, Kozol’s critique to market-based policies implemented to address inequality is important because by means of these policies, the authorities may well be avoiding to deal with the more structural problems, which are to difficult to deal with as they are to a great extent captured by the privileged classes.
In his book, “Savage Inequalities”, Kozol notes that class structure in the United States has been perpetuated through differential access to educational opportunities. His view is reminiscent of Karl Marx conflict theory, in which the bourgeois, owning the means of production, hold the power and prestige in contrast to the proletariat, who must settle for the poorly remunerated jobs and have fewer economic and social rights. Additionally, the concept of an American Dream and the proclaim for universal access to education has much to do with the concept of symbolic capital introduced by Bourdieu, as a legitimate pretext to conceal the hidden interests that lie behind class divisions.
The first part of this paper discusses the main argument given by Kozol to explain class structure within the United States with respect to the theories of class division offered by Karl Marx and Pierre Bourdieu. First, Kozol’s arguments are exposed. Then, the Marxist perspective is explored in light of Kozol’s claims. Finally, Bourdieu’s ideas are analyzed correspondingly. In the second part, the effectiveness and appropriateness of several initiatives and policies, such as school choice, aimed to reduce current schooling inequality are discussed.
After gathering substantial evidence from visiting several public schools in extremely poor neighborhoods and interviewing their children and staff, Kozol argues that the most prevalent problem in the American public education system is the existence of blatant inequalities among school districts. Whereas children of middle and upper class neighborhoods are given the material and intellectual resources that will allow them to develop high academic competencies and achieve solid employment and wealth, many other children are denied this privilege because of their economic background and location. Kids that go to public schools in poor neighborhoods ought to deal with untrained, inefficient and unmotivated teachers, lack of textbook and other learning resources and unacceptable building conditions, in addition to the deprivations that they face at home and in their living environments. This stems to a great exent from the fact that there is not enough money being put into such institutions.
Kozol’s findings illustrate that education inequality and segregation in America are not separate anomalies but a deep-seated and generalized problem. He holds the system to finance public education in the United States responsible for perpetuating class structure and cleavages among different groups in societies. As public schools are funded through property taxes, those districts with more expensive housing will unambiguously collect more tax-based revenues than poorer districts. Even though allegedly it is a function of the state, public education funding has been largely delegated to school districts, encouraging further resource concentration on the richer districts. Additionally, parents from the richer districts usually incorporate additional money to their own schools widening the gap even more. However, society's attitude towards the low-income class is shaped by the prevalence of individual greed, which is enhanced by means of the competitive capitalist system. Thus, it can be foreseen that this inequitable fiscal structure is almost impossible to change. Racism, political power, and public indifference contribute, as well, to the overall unawareness of and the unresponsiveness to the inequality problem.
Kozol brings up evidence of how the education system acts as an intergenerational source of social predetermination. He shows how schools in the poorest areas prepare kids for low-income jobs as Burger King and Macdonald’s employees or at a near by gas station. By encouraging an implicit division of labor, the education system functions even more to sustain the social cleavages among classes. Those who graduate from bad public schools are conditioned to poorly remunerated job opportunities which will assure similar conditions for their future generations and so on. The connection between failure to provide poor children a good education and the number of young adults in prison is another shocking evidence of this educational trap and of the unwillingness to revert it. Kozol states that 90% of the male jail prisoners in New York City are former public school dropouts. He mentions that “incarceration of each inmate…costs the city nearly $60,000 every year” ; much more than it would cost to supply this kid with adequate education.
The economic divisions often include factors of race, since the people who constitute the low-income classes are predominantly minorities. Kozol is surprised of segregation. However, he is equally irritated by the growing inequality, in public education, between rich and poor. He finds that poor children, and especially poor children of color are being increasingly given up for loss and any attempts to educate them are being seen as destined to failure. These severe differentials in public education, in Kozol’s view, are instrumental for the privileged to sustain a class structure although, in theory, every American is granted an “equal” opportunity to achieve the equality “dream”.
According to Marx, labor and, hence, the modes of production determine condition of human nature. Our social realities, the productive forces, determine our ideas, and not vice-versa. One of the distinguishing characteristics of a person's place in society is its relation to the means of production. Thus, inequality is created by differences in access to the means and the modes of production: “…the individuals themselves are entirely subordinated to the division of labor itself and hence are brought into the most complete dependence on one another.” There is a structural conundrum in the modes of production that sustains an inequitable and unfair class structure within society. Those who possess the capital, the economic capital, have power advantages over the rest, the working class or proletariat. Thus, according to Marx, “a mass of individuals” has remained “ subservient to a single instrument of production” and only through a revolution from below, where the working classes can establish a drastic change in the modes of production and control of capital (“a mass of instruments of production must be made subject to each individual and property to all” ), there will be a possibility of more equal social structures.
Kozol’s arguments fit well into several of Marx claims. There are several examples that would resemble Marx idea of a structurally divided society among the owners of capital and of the modes of production and the working class within a constant struggle for material possessions. The contrasting inequality of two school districts in one same city, Chicago, is illustrative. While kids in the affluent suburb of Winnetka have access to one of the best schools of the state of Illinois and are surrounded by plenty of intellectual resources and future prospects of entering a top-level college and of finding a prestigious highly paid job, kids in the inner city area have to attend schools with extremely poor resources and where they do not receive the basic educational competencies. Resembling Marx’s conflict perspective, as these two districts compete over resources, there is an element of domination and coercion of the upper class that hold the lower-class people in poverty through legislation or individual decisions. Through both the atomized schooling funding system and personal greed, the privileged classes are able to sustain the social structure.
Another concern with which Marx would be in agreement is the aforementioned way in which the school system determines, to a great extent, the future job prospects of their students. The schooling system, thus, could be seen as designed to comply with the requirements of the modes production and a mechanism through which the privileged classes can decide upon the most efficient use of other members of society.
Whereas Marx defines class in strictly economic terms, for Bourdieu class is associated as well with the power struggle for other sources of capital: social, cultural and symbolic. In his work “Distinction”, he argues over the classifying power of taste. “Taste classifies and it classifies the classifier”. For Bourdieu the struggle is over values, definitions, classifications and taste, not only over material possessions. He makes reference to culture and cultural consumption as “predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function or legitimating social differences” . Under the allegory of “titles of nobility”, the amount of social, cultural and symbolic capital that any individual has for its struggle for power depends on two basic factors: “educational capital (measured by qualifications) and social origin (measured by father’s occupation)” . Additionally, Bourdieu believes that misrepresentation, the denial of economic and political interests under which social relations are perceived as disinterested, is one of the main sources of class power. He identifies symbolic capital as a concealed power through which the privileged can demand obedience in a legitimate way. Within this line of reasoning, he identifies the “best-hidden effect of the educational system” as its capacity to give out titles that can be either “ennobling” or “stigmatizing” .
Bourdieu, as Marx, would also be supportive of most of Kozol’s theories although in a broader, and maybe more direct sense. Several of Bourdieu’s theories are pictured in Kozol’s examples and case-based evidence. First, Bourdieu’s notion of a societal struggle for different kinds of capital (economic, social, cultural, symbolic) is central to understand the main problem of having such an unequal schooling system. Educational capital is required to obtain both cultural and social capital, which are elements of power that can be transformed into effective symbolic capital to have legitimate access to additional privileges. Children in East St. Lois or Camden (NJ) will always be subject to a very low level of educational capital both because the state do not provide adequate schools in these areas and because their families do not have economic capital to invest in their educational capital. Additionally, their social capital will also be constrained to the networks these children build with their, also very poor, neighbors. Accordingly, they will never be able to reach any higher level of cultural capital and maybe they won’t be able to attain any symbolic capital at all. In this case, the lack of economic capital faced by the kids’ families and the public schools in low-income districts become a hindrance for the development of any other form of capital for these groups. Hence, the lack of funding of public schools in poor neighborhoods not only sustains inequality but also perpetuates the lower standing of these groups within the prevalent class structures.
Additionally, in Bourdieu’s terms the whole notion of an American Dream, where people believe that access to equal opportunity is genuine (starting in universal public education), could be a clear manifestation of “misrepresentation” and an evidence of the use of symbolic capital by the advantaged classes. By means of this sanguine premise, privileged groups and public officials are equipped to blame the poor for their appalling performance as a matter of insufficient effort and lack of interest on their part. By generalizing this ideal and taking it for granted, the privileged groups are denying the legitimate cause for the poverty conditions of the disadvantaged groups. Moreover, they may be hiding their underlying economic and power interests; by claiming universal access to public education they are sustaining a school system that is, per se, perpetuating the social cleavages. Moreover, the apathy of the more privileged classes, continuously described by Kozol, and the myriads of excuses, including the idea that money and resources are not essential for educational quality, reveals how these well-off groups are prone to maintain the status quo.
All three authors, Marx, Bourdieu and Kozol, have a central question in common: why don’t people see this? Why aren’t they aware of these unequal conditions? To a certain extent, the answer might be embedded in Kozol’s ultimate concern: whether Americans can be induced to care about children other than their own. There is an important convergence of these authors regarding this question. Either under the idea of “hegemony”, as presented by Marx or of “misrepresentation” as stated by Bourdieu, both theories are well suited with Kozol’s claims of the existence of hidden a power element within the American school system that promotes stability of class structure under what are perceived to be legitimate ideals and structures. Moreover, as a function of domination of the privileged classes over the rest, there are no realistic incentives to change the system’s current standing and the American Dream is kept as a the American “truth”: a system of belief sourly blind to reality.
Part 2
Kozol criticizes some of the initiatives and policies that have been implemented by the federal authorities, which are based upon market principles and aimed to reduce unequal access to public education. The main initiatives are the parents’ public school choice and the voucher system. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, these initiatives are based upon an evaluation of each school’s performance regarding what the kids are learning. Schools that are performing at a very low level are set under a special arrangement called Title 1, under which the state has the responsibility to define an improvement program through resources and technical assistance. When these schools are in too harsh conditions or if, after a convened period of time, they do not improve, the state may decide to give parents the choice to move their kids to a public school of their choice . The voucher program is part of the choice given to parents when no other public schooling alternatives are available. Additionally there are the so-called magnet schools, created as an alternative for kids with extraordinary performance or a strong interest in a certain discipline.
On one hand, Kozol criticizes the parallel system selective schools as the magnet or charter schools. His criticism is based on several grounds. First, given the deprived background they come from, “kids would not have the preparation to compete effectively on the exams they would have to take in order to get in”. Moreover, even if kids from these underserved schools are chosen, Kozol believes that their departure may cause greater harm to those children left behind, as the best classmates that could enhance creativity are gone.
On the other hand, Kozol criticizes the policy of “schools of choice” that allows parents to chose among public schools. He states that people living under isolation and deprived conditions will not be able to make use of these “market mechanisms” that have been opened. To a great extent, Kozol believes that these people may not have enough audacity or even energy to take advantage of these opportunities. Moreover, that society has already conditioned and shaped their life expectations to such extent that their choices are constraint to what they have had access to.
Kozol’s evidence is compelling to show how existent disadvantages that poor people face may have unambiguously strong effects over public policies and may neutralize their impact or even create even more detrimental arrangements that can further widen the gap. His case-based studies of several public schools, and especially his interviews with children from these institutions are descriptive of the limitations that they have to access the parallel school system. Although they are aware of the magnet school existence, they are certain that they do not have enough chances of being selected into these schools. These kids have an intrinsic disadvantage in contrast to kids that have had access to a better family environment, nutrition, and superior preschool and schooling resources. Moreover, some schools will be reluctant to give access to kids from lower social backgrounds, and they would justify it on grounds of the student not having the adequate academic level or enough competencies. The school choice policy, although apparently designed to provide parents with greater flexibility regarding the selection of schools may well become a good excuse (symbolic capital) for not solving major structural problems related with the funding system and the lack of effective redistributive mechanisms.
The market-based policies that Kozol criticizes, especially nowadays under the NCLB initiative, are largely based upon measurement and evaluation. Children performance in the different set of basic skills is measured as an indication of the school’s overall performance. Bourdieu notes that “the more the competencies measured are recognized by the school system, the stronger is the relation between performance and educational qualifications” . Consequently, measurement of schools can become one more of the classifying mechanisms for poor kids to be constrained to any better opportunity. This reinforces Kozol’s critique of the policy initiatives as supporting the perpetuation of inequalities through a legitimate cause, which also fits well under Bourdieu’s theory of “misrepresentation”. The measurement system becomes a legitimate tool to monitor and enhance education quality that, at the same time, conceals the negative effects of such categorization.
Though Kozol’s examples are very compelling, there is a contradiction in his line of reasoning. In the first part of his book (page 56) Kozol argues that the state, by forcing families to send kids to their district public school, without dealing with equality, is perpetuating inequality. “Unless we have the wealth to pay for private education, we are compelled by law to go to public school – and to the public school in our district. Thus the state, by requiring attendance but refusing to require equity, effectively requires inequality. Compulsory inequity, perpetuated by state law, too frequently condemns our children to unequal lives.” Subsequently, he emphatically argues against the initiatives of the state to give parents the possibility of choosing among different public schools to reduce this institutionally imposed inequality.
That poor people have notorious disadvantages over the more affluent doesn’t mean that policies promoting school choice over locally restrictive education are always unfavorable for the poor. Choice policies can be positive to the poor if accompanied with broader programs to increase equity and school improvement, especially in the most at-risk areas. As an important feature of the No Child Left Behind initiative, the element of parents choice is present but it is tied to the overall school performance improvement, within an agreed upon period of time (around 5 years), this includes additional resources and technical assistance.
In addition to Kozol’s specific examples, it is important to consider a larger sample of the education system to be able to get to a more general conclusion. According to the 1993-1997 Trends in the Use of School Choice , the poorest population groups benefited the most from school choice policies. Within the total population that make use of public school choice, households with yearly incomes less than $10,000 increased its participation from 14% in 1993 to 22% in 1999. By 2003, around 30% of the households using this program are those with yearly incomes below $20,000. Moreover, the proportion of black, non-hispanic within this initiative increased from 19% in 1993 to 23% in 1999. In 2003, only 11% of the total beneficiaries are white. Although these figures do not show a tremendous pro-poor targeting, it shows that the more vulnerable groups are using these policies incrementally. However, it will take time for these policies to reveal their real impact on increasing equity. The downside to this is that this time is unrecoverable to the generations of poor people that have to cope with the existent schooling disadvantages.
The effects of school choice policies will undoubtedly be constrained by the extreme disadvantages faced by the lower-income populations. Additionally the inadequate design of the schooling funding system creates a structure of inequality that is exacerbated through the individual interests of the privileged population who sustain these rigidities in order to keep their own advantages available. Under these circumstances, policies oriented to address equity without dealing with a more evenhanded allocation of funding among public schools will only be marginally effective and in certain circumstances, as those described by Kozol, they may be even more exclusionary. In this sense, Kozol’s critique to market-based policies implemented to address inequality is important because by means of these policies, the authorities may well be avoiding to deal with the more structural problems, which are to difficult to deal with as they are to a great extent captured by the privileged classes.
posted by Mycraze at 2:57 PM
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