Lisa Jacuzzi

M. Williams

English 1A

8 October 2013

Materials in class matter because they set the environment for learning. When a class doesn’t have enough materials the students don’t have the same opportunities to learn. Most of the time the materials a school doesn’t have enough of, are textbooks. Sometimes class only has enough for maybe half of the class. Other times they get the wrong books. In his book Savage Inequalities Jonathan kozol talks about when “a school received the standard reading textbooks out if sequence: The second workbook in the reading program came to the school before the first. The principal was told by school officials it was ‘All right to work backwards…’” (Kozol 65). The officials don’t care enough about these kids to try to get them the right books. The officials just want the schools to make do with what they got.

With missing materials students are being left behind. The rest of the class could be learning something and some of the students would not be able follow along. Each student would be at a different level and all be stuck in one class together where they can’t learn. For some students going to the library would help them in school, sadly most the poorer schools either don’t have a library at all or if they do it is very small. One poorly funded school in New York says their “library is a tiny, windowless and claustrophobic room. (Kozol) counted approximately 700 books” (Kozol 105). A richer school in the same district “has a spacious library that holds almost 8,000 books… The principal says that it’s inadequate” (Kozol 114). Two very different schools with very different libraries. If the poor school had half of the books the rich school does the students could be doing better.

The reason these schools are so poor is because they get no funding from the city.  With no funding the schools don’t get the latest technology.  With no technology helping the students they leave the school not prepared for the world. Some schools are so overpopulated that “bathrooms, gymnasiums, hallways and closets have been converted into classrooms” (Kozol 138). One principal talks about how his school is so overpopulated that he has no room for a computer lab because every available space has a class in it.