I feel like this color is suitable for today. The topic sentence that stood out to me most was "Students are meant to be kept ignorant of their circumstances so they don't acquire a victim mentality". This gets to the psychology of the students. Aside from outside factors such as lack of supplies, rotting teeth, terrible healthcare, no parental motivation or role models, sewage-filled communities, and the appeal of drugs and gangs, the children suffer emotionally and mentally. In Savage Inequalities, one principal claims that the students subjected to "special" classes are brain damaged saying, "Placement of these kids can usually be traced to neurological damage" (Kozol 95). Kozol disagrees with this diagnosis, carefully stressing the sensitive point that race has a factor in these classrooms. Of the "gifted" classes, all but one student are usually white. In the "special" classes only one white child resides in most of the decrepit rooms their delegated. It's so sad that they don't bother to teach critical thinking to the kids in poorer communities. The poor teenagers there get thrust into jobs to fill entry-level positions such as manicurists or receptionists. That goes for the ones that don't drop out by the end of their high school education. Growing up I was always sure I was going to college. It was never a question. My dad pushed Stanford and Berkeley at me since I started kindergarten. Neither of my parents attended college but they wanted better for me. So I say it's not the parents to blame because even uneducated parents want their kids to surpass them. It's the lack of faith in themselves that comes from their school and community failing them. Parents try to fight for integration and school supplies and equality. It seems every one of their cries for help is shot down from East St. Louis to the Bronx to Chicago. From disproportionate school funding due to property taxes to vetoed loan requests the government's monetary rationing is so unfairly weighted to give richer schools even more advantages than they already indulge in. The children in these schools are said to not complain or even mention the elephant in the room that is the degree to which they're disadvantaged. They fill their time with sports or the arts to keep busy and keep spirits high.

But moving from the government to the psychology of students, I feel like students should be aware of their circumstances. Ignorance can be bliss but when exactly is reality expected to come crashing down? To me it sounds like the worst epiphany of a lifetime. I've had a few sporadic realizations but they were usually about a decision that had to be made. These kids in the unprosperous neighborhoods and underprivileged schools don't have much of a choice but to accept their lifestyles and this often means finding comfort from within them. They may look for someone or some cause for guidance and this can mean joining gangs and doing drugs a lot of the time. Once these kids don't have their parents, job skills, money, an education, or an escape to turn to they settle into their lowly lives. The spirit you see in the children in this book and in America doesn't last. The adults are the ones who see the children as victims more than the children. The adults seem to to either be on two sides of a spectrum: the advocates of bettering education and the ones who have absolutely given up on themselves, the children, their communities, and their cause. The children need outside help to get them out of the rut they're being engulfed deeper and deeper in. Even the more wealthy people see it but like I said earlier, "ignorance is bliss".

This is a picture of East St. Louis. I read an article about a trip that a more privileged writer took to watch a basketball game there. He said it was "a struggling city school that represented all that was wrong with urban society".