Savage Inequalities

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An impassioned book, laced with anger and indignation, about how our public education system scorns so many of our children.”—The New York Times Book Review In 1988, Jonathan Kozol set off to spend time with children in the American public education system. For two years, he visited schools in neighborhoods across the country, from Illinois to Washington, D.C., and from New York to San Antonio. He spoke with teachers, principals, superintendents, and, most important, children. What he found was devastating. Not only were schools for rich and poor blatantly unequal, the gulf between the two extremes was widening—and it has widened since. The urban schools he visited were overcrowded and understaffed, and lacked the basic elements of learning—including books and, all too often, classrooms for the students. In Savage Inequalities, Kozol delivers a searing examination of the extremes of wealth and poverty and calls into question the reality of equal opportunity in our nation’s schools. Praise for Savage Inequalities “I was unprepared for the horror and shame I felt. . . . Savage Inequalities is a savage indictment. . . . Everyone should read this important book.”—Robert Wilson, USA Today “Kozol has written a book that must be read by anyone interested in education.”—Elizabeth Duff, Philadelphia Inquirer “The forces of equity have now been joined by a powerful voice. . . . Kozol has written a searing exposé of the extremes of wealth and poverty in America’s school system and the blighting effect on poor children, especially those in cities.”—Emily Mitchell, Time “Easily the most passionate, and certain to be the most passionately debated, book about American education in several years . . . A classic American muckraker with an eloquent prose style, Kozol offers . . . an old-fashioned brand of moral outrage that will affect every reader whose heart has not yet turned to stone.”—Entertainment Weekly

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An impassioned book, laced with anger and indignation, about how our public education system scorns so many of our children.”—The New York Times Book Review In 1988, Jonathan Kozol set off to spend time with children in the American public education system. For two years, he visited schools in neighborhoods across the country, from Illinois to Washington, D.C., and from New York to San Antonio. He spoke with teachers, principals, superintendents, and, most important, children. What he found was devastating. Not only were schools for rich and poor blatantly unequal, the gulf between the two extremes was widening—and it has widened since. The urban schools he visited were overcrowded and understaffed, and lacked the basic elements of learning—including books and, all too often, classrooms for the students. In Savage Inequalities, Kozol delivers a searing examination of the extremes of wealth and poverty and calls into question the reality of equal opportunity in our nation’s schools. Praise for Savage Inequalities “I was unprepared for the horror and shame I felt. . . . Savage Inequalities is a savage indictment. . . . Everyone should read this important book.”—Robert Wilson, USA Today “Kozol has written a book that must be read by anyone interested in education.”—Elizabeth Duff, Philadelphia Inquirer “The forces of equity have now been joined by a powerful voice. . . . Kozol has written a searing exposé of the extremes of wealth and poverty in America’s school system and the blighting effect on poor children, especially those in cities.”—Emily Mitchell, Time “Easily the most passionate, and certain to be the most passionately debated, book about American education in several years . . . A classic American muckraker with an eloquent prose style, Kozol offers . . . an old-fashioned brand of moral outrage that will affect every reader whose heart has not yet turned to stone.”—Entertainment Weekly

National Book Award-winning author Jonathan Kozol presents his shocking account of the American educational system in this stunning New York Times bestseller, which has sold more than 250,000 hardcover copies.

A pioneering book that takes us beyond economic debate to show how inequality is returning us to a past dominated by empires, dynastic elites, and ethnic divisions. The economic facts of inequality are clear. The rich have been pulling away from the rest of us for years, and the super-rich have been pulling away from the rich. More and more assets are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Mainstream economists say we need not worry; what matters is growth, not distribution. In The Return of Inequality, acclaimed sociologist Mike Savage pushes back, explaining inequality’s profound deleterious effects on the shape of societies. Savage shows how economic inequality aggravates cultural, social, and political conflicts, challenging the coherence of liberal democratic nation-states. Put simply, severe inequality returns us to the past. By fracturing social bonds and harnessing the democratic process to the strategies of a resurgent aristocracy of the wealthy, inequality revives political conditions we thought we had moved beyond: empires and dynastic elites, explosive ethnic division, and metropolitan dominance that consigns all but a few cities to irrelevance. Inequality, in short, threatens to return us to the very history we have been trying to escape since the Age of Revolution. Westerners have been slow to appreciate that inequality undermines the very foundations of liberal democracy: faith in progress and trust in the political community’s concern for all its members. Savage guides us through the ideas of leading theorists of inequality, including Marx, Bourdieu, and Piketty, revealing how inequality reimposes the burdens of the past. At once analytically rigorous and passionately argued, The Return of Inequality is a vital addition to one of our most important public debates.

Sharpen advising expertise by exploring critical issues affecting the field Beyond Foundations, a core resource for experienced academic advisors, gives practitioners insight into important issues affecting academic advising. In addition to gaining understanding of foundational concepts and pressing concerns, master advisors engage with case studies to clarify their roles as educators of students, as thought leaders in institutions, and as advocates for the profession. Pillar documents—the NACADA Core Values, NACADA Concept of Academic Advising, and CAS Standards—serve as sources of both information and inspiration for those seeking to improve advising. New strategies inform advisors helping a diverse student population delineate meaningful educational goals. Each chapter prompts productive discussions with fellow advisors interested in cultivating advising excellence. To promote advisor influence in higher education, experienced contributors explain new trends—including the impact of external forces and legal issues on postsecondary institutions—and the evolution of advising as a profession and a field of inquiry. Expert insight and practical focus contribute to the development of experienced advisors. Use existing resources in new ways to master advising roles and encourage student success Apply theory to advance advising practice Create and optimize professional development opportunities Establish recognition for the contributions of academic advisors to the institution and higher education Face challenges created by the changing higher education landscape Advisors must meet the expectations of students, parents, faculty members, administrators, and outside agencies, all while navigating an increasingly complex range of issues presented by a student population unlike any that has come before. Beyond Foundations provides the insight and clarity advisors need to help students achieve their educational goals and to advance the field.

Since the early 1980s, when the federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, segregation of black children has reverted to its highest level since 1968. In many inner-city schools, a stick-and-carrot method of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons is now used with students. Meanwhile, as high-stakes testing takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction that would be rejected out of hand by schools that serve the mainstream of society. Filled with the passionate voices of children, principals, and teachers, and some of the most revered leaders in the black community, The Shame of the Nation pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, but directly challenges the chilling practices now being forced upon our urban systems. In their place, Kozol offers a humane, dramatic challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some 50 years ago to all our youngest citizens.

Reauthoring Savage Inequalities brings together scholars, educators, practitioners, and students to counter dominant narratives of urban educational environments. Using a community cultural wealth lens, contributors center the strategies, actions, and ways of knowing communities of color use to resist systemic oppression. So often, discussions of urban schooling are filled with stories of what Jonathan Kozol famously referred to as "savage inequalities" in his 1991 book of the same title—with tales of deficiency and despair. The counternarratives in this volume grapple with the inequalities highlighted by Kozol. Yet, in foregrounding lived experiences of educating and being educated in schools and communities that were systemically isolated and disenfranchised then and continue to be thirty years later, Reauthoring Savage Inequalities brings nuance to depictions of teaching and learning in urban areas. In nineteen essays, as well as commentaries, a foreword, and an afterword, contributors engage readers in critical dialogue about the importance of community cultural wealth. They identify the sources of support that enable students, staff, parents, and community members to succeed and thrive despite the purposeful divestment in communities of color across this nation's cities.

Within the United States alone, almost fifteen percent of the population lives in poverty. Ethics in an Age of Savage Inequalities investigates what moral obligations the middle class might have to the poor. While there are no simple ethical prescriptions, the fact remains that many of us afford small luxuries while others in the world struggle to live on less than a dollar a day. James J. Winchester suggests that we can and should give not only charity, but restitution to the poor. Looking at extraction of minerals and the plight of service workers in the United States among many other things, this book demonstrates how the middle class benefits from the exploitation of the poor and harms the environment in ways that threaten people in poverty. Winchester argues that now is the time to take political action to reduce the savage inequalities in this world. Of interest to anyone involved in ethics, social justice, sociology, and even political science, Ethics in an Age of Savage Inequalities explores the idea that money is only a small part of what we owe to the poor.