Savage Inequalities In Schools

Superior Essays
Both articles analyzed the effect of inequalities on high school students. More broadly, how inequalities existed in educational institutions. However, Kozol focused inequalities of education on students while Pascoe focused inequalities of discourses among students. In Kozol 's Savage Inequalities in America 's Schools, he analyzed inequality in two dimensions: class and education. Kozol mentioned two kinds of schools in his article, poor public schools and rich private schools. As we all know, people from upper class or above the average tend to send their children into expensive private schools while people from lower class have to send their children into public schools. These two kinds of schools give totally different levels of …show more content…
Pascoe talked about sexual inequality around the word “fag” or “faggot”, which intended to be a homophobic insult. Interestingly, this word seemed only applied to boys in high schools. “Girls at River High rarely deployed the word fag and when never called faggot. However, one third of the of the boy interviewed, said that they might liberally insult each other with the term” (Pascoe, 318-319.) In fact, faggot didn’t necessarily have a meaning of being homosexual among high school boys. Most boys took fag as a synonym of incompetence in terms of masculinity and they use the word fag to assert their masculinity. As a result, this kind of homophobic insult worked as a gendered disciplinary mechanism among boys. “Older boy repeatedly impressed upon younger ones through these types of homophobia rituals whatever they did, whatever they became, however they talk, they have to be avoid being a faggot” (Pascoe, 316). Another interesting aspect that Pascoe discovered was that this kind of homophobic insult was racialized. While white boys were doing everything to avoid this word, black kids rarely used this word and were rarely applied to this word. “In African American community, boys were much more likely to tease one another for being white than being a fag. Precisely, because African American men are so hypersexualized in United States.” It appears that the exemption from homophobic insult of African American was caused by cultures and

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