Segregation In Urban Schools

In 1957, the Little Rock Nine entered the all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. These black students began the movement for integration in public schools, and, as a result, were exposed to acerbity and vulgarity that would remain ingrained in their minds for the rest of their lives. What at the time seemed to be a civil rights advancement has sadly proven ineffective. Because of anemic funding for urban schools, and the human inclination to surround oneself with others who are similar, segregation still prevails in U.S. education. Two possible solutions to segregated schools are the reinstatement of mandatory busing and the redirection of funding so that public schools in jeopardy are allotted more. By ignoring this problem, the United
Not surprisingly, students ignored her request. As the camera scanned the cafeteria, viewers could see clear divisions: black students sat together, white students sat together, and Hispanic students sat together, each in different sections.

Not only was the cafeteria segregated, but the classrooms were as well. Chuck West, the AP history teacher, spoke about the three black students in his class: “They're certainly a minority in a school in which they're not a minority.” The three female black AP students sat together, expressing their need to feel safe in an environment where they felt constantly criticized. The remainder of West's students, all white, corroborated the idea that advanced placement classes are “a racial boundary.”

A remedial black student said, “Everything is to make the black man look cold,” and the rest of the students – black as well as white – nodded their heads. One black girl complained that blacks had to work much harder to gain
The New York Times quoted Scott Wallsten, a Washington economist, who estimated that “the operation itself – the helicopters, the tanks, the fuel needed to run them, the combat pay for enlisted troops, the salaries of reservists and contractors, the rebuilding of Iraq – is costing more than three hundred million dollars a day.” This means that each month, the U. S. spends several billion dollars to support the war.

If the government redirected this toward educating its citizens, public schools could be completely reshaped. For example, experts predict that $40 billion could provide preschool for all three- and four-year-olds. This program would help millions of children and cost a fraction of the war expenses. Why not designate a portion of the military expenditures to reconstructing the South Bronx schools that Kozol claimed were mold-laden? First graders, who now occupy classrooms with four age groups, would be better able to concentrate on