Book Reviews

Jonathan Kozol Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools. New York- Crown, 1991. Pp. 262 with appendix, notes and index. $20 (cloth). New York Harper Perennial, 1992. $10 (paper).

Jonathan Kozol is a former school teacher who has written passionately about the plight of poor American children since his earlier best-seller, Death at an Early Age (1967). In Savage Inequalities Kozol draws stark, haunting contrasts between the lifestyles and schools of the poor and the prosperous. As expected, Kozol concludes that "all our children ought to be allowed a stake in the enormous richness of America . . . they are all quite wonderful when they are small."

His basic prescription is to spend more money on schools in the nation's poor neighborhoods, yet he left me unpersuaded that more dollars alone would transform the lives of poor children.

Although he takes a national perspective, Kozol focuses much of his attention on Illinois, setting off struggling public schools in East St. Louis and inner-city Chicago against celebrated New Trier High in the north shore suburb of Winnetka.

On a 27-acre campus, New Trier pupils have superior labs, studios for dance instruction, four years of Latin, and their own student-operated television station that reaches three counties. Twenty miles to the south, Goudy Elementary in Chicago has no science labs, no music or art, no playground and two foul bathrooms that lack toilet paper. Ninety-three percent of New Trier grads will go on to our best four-year colleges, while in Chicago's minority neighborhoods most of those enrolled won't make it through high school.

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Even more depressing — and, to me, more telling — is the social disarray that envelopes the school buildings in the poorest communities. For example, Kozol found East St. Louis awash in illicit drugs, open sewage and toxic waste. He talked with 9-year-olds who spoke matter-of-factly about the abuse, rape and murder of their friends and siblings.

Kozol sees money as the primary resource that government can commit to improve schooling for poor children. He details how a New York City fourth grade class could benefit from the same resources as the state's highest spending suburbs: divide each class of 36 in half; use high salaries to hire two extraordinary teachers; provide computers, learning games, air conditioning and more.

But would the system do that? And would this be enough to overpower the evil social forces that often swirl around the youngsters? I recall a student of mine at Knox College who came from a bad Chicago neighborhood. He said the big problem he had faced wasn't inside his school — it was the struggle to reach school each day through a gauntlet of gangs.

Kozol carries on a running debate with the Wall Street Journal over spending on schools and its results. They tilt at different windmills, however. The Journal says money won't make much difference, for the problem lies in values. Kozol acknowledges that cultural, economic and social factors affect schools but maintains that "government is not responsible, or at least not directly, for the inequalities of family background. It is responsible for inequalities in public education."

In the appendix, Kozol shows that spending for Chicago, New York City and other urban schools is much less than at suburban New Trier and Manhasset, N.Y. He fails to mention, however, that the urban schools spend more per pupil than their state averages.

Kozol's case studies are useful and powerful, yet not responsive to the debate about resources and results. The best Kozol can do is pose the question (one I remember using in my efforts two years ago to help launch the school funding lawsuit in Illinois): If money doesn't make a difference, then why spend so much in New Trier?

Later, however, he cites California, where school funding was nearly equalized years ago by that state's high court, in part by limiting spending in the wealthy neighborhoods. "In the affluent school districts, tax-exempt foundations have been formed to channel extra money into local schools. Afternoon 'Super Schools' have been created ... to provide local children with tutorials and private lessons." So, is it money in the first instance that counts, or is school spending one reflection of communities that value education highly?

If anything, Kozol confuses the debate. While he focuses on the school as an institution and the extent to which it is potentially the problem or the solution, he describes kids who come to school with rotting teeth, empty stomachs, blank stares, and high lead and blood-sugar levels. How much of the challenge facing the school lies outside the school building?

Yet the debate must be clarified in Illinois as well as nationally. In Illinois we go to the polls next month to face a proposed amendment to the state Constitution that appears to call for more state funding for poor schools, even at the price of a tax increase. What to do? Manifest fairness alone seems to call for more financial support for the education of poor children. But how can we reassure citizens that more tax dollars would make a significant difference?

Kentucky is tying social services to education inside the school building. Milwaukee schools are giving poor families vouchers to send their children to private schools. By fits and starts, Chicagoans are trying to wrest control of local schools away from an oppressive central bureaucracy.

Are these experiments of sufficient magnitude? Should we go further and use government, for example, to step between the cocaine-addicted mother and her child to ensure positive reinforcement during the critical early years? Do we know how? These are tough questions, but we are edging closer to facing them with each year of continuing failure in the schools of our most depleted ghettos.

In his final paragraph, Kozol laments: "Surely there is enough for everyone within this country. It is a tragedy that these good things are not more widely shared." Which good things? Money, love, supportive community, valued education, the commitment to improve performance?

With photographic clarity Jonathan Kozol describes the inequities that plague our affluent nation. For that reason his book is worth reading. Unfortunately, he doesn't inform the unsettling but fundamental debate over whether and how educational spending affects the individual or the society.

James D. Nowlan is president of the Taxpayers' Federation of Illinois. Formerly a faculty member at Knox College and the University of Illinois at Urbana, he taught courses at both institutions on the politics and policies of education.

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