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The Shame Of The Nation Summary

Decent Essays

Our culture in America puts a huge emphasis on the value of education. However, not all children in America receive the same benefits from school. Jonathan Kozol, author of The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, explores the feelings of those in lower-income districts and the inequality they feel. Kozol focuses on how younger children, elementary schoolers, look around and see richer schools while their own school is run-down and falling apart. People are very aware of the score gap between rich schools and poor schools. Despite our awareness, we miss the main point by trying to close the “word gap”. This gap will only grow larger as poor school districts are economically disenfranchised repeatedly, …show more content…

On the other hand, schools in bad shape continue to perform worse and receive less funding. Although I previously said that people are focused all too exclusively on closing the “word gap”, the gap in vocabulary is still an issue for low-income children. Writer of “The 32-Million Word Gap”, David Shenk, discusses the origin of the gap and its importance in learning. The “word gap” was discovered when Kansas psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley studied the number of words spoken to young children from three different socioeconomic levels (welfare homes, working-class homes, and professionals ' homes). The duo found that children in professionals ' homes were exposed to an average of more than fifteen hundred more spoken words per hour than children in welfare homes. Over one year, that amounted to a difference of nearly 8 million words. By the age four, this amounted to a total gap of 32 million words. This puts wealthier children at a distinct advantage before they begin kindergarten. Rich students can distance themselves even further by receiving specialized training for standardized tests like the SAT. Naturally, schools with these types of students will perform better overall. From an early age, poorer students are behind their wealthier counterparts. As the years pass, the discrepancy between the two groups continues to grow. The manner in which the poor are patronized begins to have a lasting mental effect. Poor start to feel the

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