Jeanelle Cruz

Sociology 1

Professor Lookholder

Savage Inequalities Reading & Reflection

1 Irl Solomons history class

Solomon is one of the few teachers from East St. Louis high school. He graduated from

Brandeis University and was accepted to law school. However, his concerns about civil rights

was what encouraged him to draw out of the program. He challenged himself to find one of the

toughest places to teach in, which was East St. Lois high school located in a poor community. He

ended up teaching at urban schools for almost 30 years. Solomon described having four teenage

girls in his senior home room who were pregnant or had just had babies. When he asked why did

they chose to have a baby, several of them answered why not? There was nothing more in their

education. If they graduated the diploma they were going to receive was not going to get them to

any school. These girls had no motivation to further their education.

2 Jennifer's views on schools in poor area (Bronx & East St. Louis)

Jennifers view of poor individuals in poor areas is that they should make the efforts to try

and leave that area, just like her parents did. She is aware that schools in other neighborhoods are

not equal. Yet, she believes she doesnt need to help others because it is not fair for people like

her family to move out of those bad neighborhoods and still have to provide back to where they

left. She believes that everyone has the privileged to leave their homes and move to better

neighborhoods just like her family once did. She agrees that everyone should get the chance to

have an equal education. However, she thinks that it is not her responsibility to give extra taxes

to schools from poor neighborhoods because at the end it will not benefit her or her family.
 3 Contrast East St Louis with the school in Rye, New York

Both East St Louis and Rye High schools were made to provide worthy education to students

no matter what their backgrounds. However, the school from East St Louis was located in a poor

black neighborhood whose 75% community members live off welfare. Due to the neighborhood

having no money, East St Louis high school has no type of funds for better textbooks,

construction, or to even fix the sewage. The exposure of raw sewage which is not only affected

in the school but outside school can cause students and their families to develop different types

of sicknesses. Due to these sewage flooding the school had to also laid off almost 300 teachers,

which left the classes to be crowded with above 30 students. This situation leaves the youth to be

discourage from attending school and getting an education. In contrast to East St Louis high

school, Rye New York high school has it way better. Their rooms and halls are sparkly clean. The

students parents are able to contribute with money to give their kids a better education and better

place to learn. The school is populated with only privilege Whites, Asians, some Hispanics, and a

couple Black students. They have better classes to offer like foreign languages compared to East

St. Louis, in which their only language teacher was laid off and the school had no more language

courses to offer.

4 Perspective/Opinion

I believe that in the past 20 years not much change has happened with how schools are

funded. The schools located in rich neighborhoods are the schools with the most funded

programs that are able to offer students better facilities, textbooks, and courses. Segregation

between races has been abolish since the 1960s, however we still often see segregation through

neighborhoods and schools. Wealthier schools with better funding are mainly occupied by White

and Asian individuals, and Black and Hispanic communities are mainly the ones with lower
funding in their schools and neighborhoods. These low-income areas dont have the same

advantage the wealthier have. Their classrooms are overcrowded, they dont have a variety of

different courses available to them, and their schools dont offer as many programs to individual

help students out. I used to attend a high school in a Los Angeles, CA and from my experience

inequality between schools does exits. Due to low funding in my high school we had to read

books that were torn apart, we had to sit in classes with no AC during the summer, and our

classes were overcrowded.