Death At An Early Age

4 Pages 1081 Words

In the 1960’s Boston public schools were decaying, and were true, live, horror stories. Every story has a murderer and victims. This particular horror story is not about murder of bodies, but rather murder on the minds. In Jonathan Kozol’s book Death at an Early Age the victims are the students and the murderer is the government. The book is an account of the events that took place while he was working in the Boston public schools.
In 1964, Mr. Kozol began teaching 4th grade in one of Boston’s most overcrowded elementary schools. During that year he witnessed how they routinely beat unruly children, and referred to them as “niggers” and “animals”. Kozol noticed that some of the children felt so ignored and isolated that they sometimes invited the beatings, preferring the abuse to neglect.
The book shows how the Negro schools received less funding than the white schools (275 dollars per each child in the white schools vs. 213 dollars per child in the black schools). (pg.53) This presents a problem for Negro schools because they didn’t have the money for the necessary repairs that they needed to be done in the schools. Also, there wasn’t enough money for new supplies and books. Even though the school was close to 100% African American, they still used textbooks that were somewhat of a put down to the children.
The textbook that they were using has a section on Africa, and they describe the black children as children whose skin is so dark that it looks black, with large flat noses, thick lips, and hair that seems like wool. It also speaks about how they were afraid of the first white man who came to explore their land, and how they ran and hid. They called the savage and uncivilized. (pg.69)
Maybe this wouldn’t sound that bad id it weren’t in comparison to how they describe the Swiss children in the European section. It says that the Swiss children are handsome, with blue eyes, hair that is golden yellow, white ...