Cindy Eisenberger
Research Paper
SOC 111
Due: Nov. 29, 2012
Dangerous Minds and Savage Inequalities
Dangerous Minds (1995) is the account of a white teacher LouAnne Johnson who takes a job teaching a class of low-income black and Hispanic students in an inner city high school, and encounters a variety of social issues such as poverty, racism, drugs, gang violence and segregated schools and neighborhoods as well as trying to acclimate herself to whole different culture. Most of the teachers and the school authorities care nothing about these students and their problems, and are simply passing them along without teaching them anything. Miss Johnson does come to care about them regardless of their race and ethnicities. Miss Johnson ends up using highly unconventional teaching methods as well as showing great concern about their personal lives.
Although she had wanted to quit and give up on the first day, in the end she becomes so involved in trying to teach these students who have been marginalized and thrown away by society that they plead with her to stay. In absolutely every case, the quality of education available to poor and minority students is demonstrably poorer by any measure than that of their white peers in the suburbs, as researchers like Jonathan Kozol have pointed out many times. This is not caused by genetic or cultural deprivation but by the fact that the U.S. has always been and remains a highly segregated and unequal society based on race and social class.
In Savage Inequalities, Jonathan Kozol offered an absolutely horrendous description of public schools and the social structure in inner city "ghettos" that at times reduced him to tears and rage. Chicago, Detroit, East St. Louis, Camden, Jew Jersey all have crumbling public school systems serving mostly black and Hispanic students funded at levels far below those of white