Chapter 6 and 7 Summaries

Chapter 6- A Hardening of Lines

This chapter focuses on how the parents belonging to a more privileged lifestyle are doing everything they can to isolate their children from “token numbers of the children of minorities” (135). There are certain schools within cities like New York that are attended by primarily white and highly privileged children, children who are only able to attend these schools because their “savvy” parents knew exactly how to finagle them in. These parents have been known to get close to members on the school board, prep their kids for IQ tests, fake an address, enroll their kids in expensive pre-test programs, and even pay for counseling services that will advise them on how to get their children into these schools. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that low-income parents—many of whom have a limited education—don’t have the time and/or resources to finagle their children into these schools. This is why the lines become “hardened.”

Chapter 7- Excluding Beauty

This chapter goes into detail about the hardships faced by students in these segregated inner-city schools including physical disrepair, overcrowding, instability of staffing, rodent infestation, portable classrooms, and unsanitary conditions, just to name a few. Kozol does a nice job in this chapter of forcing the reader to see these conditions through the eyes of the children. He includes letters that students wrote to him discussing their feelings regarding their education. He also includes plaintiffs from children whose school was infested with rats. One child writes, "Ashley got sick because of dead rats" (172). Kozol gains credibility through his use of words taken directly from the children who are effected by these conditions.

more to come... :)