Summary
The article “The Entrenched Segregation of New York City’s Public High Schools” written by Rachel Leah on Salon discusses how after many years of the decision of abolishing the separate but equal doctrine, there still is segregation within the New York City’s educational system. Rachel Leah commences to describe this issue through the exhibition of how specialized high schools in New York City are racially segregated. Black and hispanic students constitute about seventy percent of the public high schools’ student population in New York City. However, less than ten percent of the specialized high schools’ student population come from black and hispanic background. After describing how racially segregated the New York City’s educational system is, the author moves on to discuss how New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, offered multiple ways to fix this issue by completely eliminating the SHSAT, the test that determines acceptance into specialized high schools. Despite there being many opposing views, there are still many ways in which people can desegregate the public high school system in New York City.
The author of “Brown v. Board Sixty Years Later” presents the issue of schools being segregated sixty years after the decision of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). The author talks about how charter schools and private institutions are making it possible for racial segregation to exist as low income families, usually minorities, cannot afford them. The author mentions how in 1990, Milwaukee African American leaders joined democratic leaders, the Republican Governor and the Bradley Foundation to create the first voucher programs to help low-income families put their children in charter schools. However, as time passed the voucher failed to fulfill its original purpose, as it changed to be available to families regardless of their income. With this in mind, the author emphasized how even though racial segregation may seem to be abolished, there still exists income segregation in which race becomes a factor. Additionally, the author mentions how communities in certain states are rising against segregation in public schools.
Tatyana Kotzeva presents the idea that gender segregation is still present in vocational education on her review of the book “Gender Segregation in Vocational Segregation”. The author follows on to explain some of the reasons why gender segregation still exists. The author mentions that underrepresentation of women in particular professions and male dominated VET programs are some of the reasons why there is such gender segregation in vocational education.
Kamilla Sjödin, the author of “School Uniform Policies Are a Symptom of Segregation” argues that uniform policies in New York City’s public schools aid with the racial segregation of students. The author presents the information related how in District 30 located in Queens, a higher percentage of minority students are subjected to uniform policies. The author also argues that New York City’s public schools are centered around the “school to prison pipeline” where Black and Latino students are punished in crude manner than students from other races. The author concludes by stating that these uniform policies are unconstitutional and diminish self-expression of students.
Rhetorical Situation
The author of “The Entrenched Segregation of New York City’s Public High Schools” decided to write this article to point out how eye-opening it is for New York City to be one of the most diverse cities in the world and still have a segregated high school system. Even after the decision of the case Brown v. Board of Education in the 1950s which terminated the separate but equal doctrine, segregation still exists. This article was written to inform New Yorkers about this issue that still exists in this modern time.
In a similar way, the author of “Brown v. Board Sixty Years Later” emphasizes how after sixty years of the decision on the case Brown v. Board of Education of 1954 the United States of America still exhibits segregation within the school system. The author mentions how “more than 200 school desegregation cases remain open today” which emphasizes how some segregation is still present today. This serves as a reason for the author to inform others about this issue that has had such an impact throughout history.
The author of “Gender Segregation in Vocational Education” decided to write this review to inform people about the gender inequality and help develop a sense of the factors that contribute to this segregation. The author mentions how even though “all over the world, pronounced trends toward an increasing proportion of women and declining gender segregation in tertiary education have been observed” some vocational education programs keep preserving gender segregation. The author connects segregation towards an educational stance, however, it differs from the past sources presented above as it focuses on gender segregation rather than racial segregation.
The author of “School Uniform Policies Are a Symptom of Segregation” mentions how uniforms “do not celebrate diversity” but instead deprive many of “self-expression based on culture and/or identity”. With this in mind, this essay was made to reach others and indoctrinate the idea that uniforms segregate students based on their backgrounds. This piece of writing is different from the sources mentioned earlier, as the author speaks about uniform and not race as the medium for segregation.
Author and Audience
The target audience of the article “The Entrenched Segregation of New York City’s Public High Schools” is New York City students and their parents or guardians. The article refers to only public high schools in New York City, with the intention of informing students and parents about the clear segregation throughout New York’s public high schools. The author mentions how segregation has not been erased, as these new ways of separating people are the “new Jim Crow” (Leah 30).
The author, Rachel Leah, is a doctoral student at USC in the Department of American Studies & Ethnicity, studying mass incarceration and the disruption of motherhood, as well as the overlap between criminal justice and culture.
The author of “Brown v. Board Sixty Years Later” states that “the new threat to public education is not just segregation but an insidious movement to undermine public schools and abandon the children in them, especially the historically disadvantaged” (Conniff 6). Based on this statement it can be concluded that the main intended audience of the magazine article is minority students that attend public schools and their parents, as they are the ones that are negatively affected the most. The author mentions how in the United States “more than 200 school desegregation cases are still open today” (Conniff 5). The targeted audience in this source is similar to the intended audience in the source mentioned above as it is students and family members, however it elevates from the last source as the issue is seen as a national problem rather than just a New York State problem.
Ruth Conniff is the author of this second source. She has been a journalist for over twenty years and has developed some experienced on issues involving segregation and those similar to it.
The author of “Gender Segregation in Vocational Education” intends to write to people that follow the vocational education path, but more specifically to women.. The author mentions how in one chapter of the book she is reviewing, there is a study of gender differences on the transition from school to first job based on thirteen in-depth country cases of educational careers from the edu Life project. In this chapter the researchers conclude that even when women start their first jobs with better occupational positions, “the female advantage vanishes and probably even reverses when comparing men and women sharing similar characteristics” (Kotzeva 5). Additionally, the author mentions how a study using a European Social Survey data for twenty European countries demonstrates that “a high degree of vocational orientation of an upper secondary school system contributes to the gendering of education and occupational trajectories for men, but less so for women” (Kotzeva 5). This audience is similar to the previous sources as it refers to students, however, this source presents women, specifically those who are still in school and those transitioning to a job, as the main audience.
Tatyana Kotzeva is the author of this third source. She is the head of the Department of Sociology at Burgos Free University. As a sociologist she is able to work with similar situations as segregation, as sociologists study how the individual is affected by society.
The main audience for the fourth and last source, “School Uniform Policies Are a Symptom of Segregation” are New York City’s public school students and their parents. The author at the end of the essay calls for parents to abide for change against uniform policies in the New York City public education system, therefore making the families that have children in the public school system a target.
The author of this fourth source is Kamilla Sjödin, the managing director of legal services at GMHC, a leading HIV/AIDS advocacy center in New York City. She mentions that she is also a mother and therefore shows that she is biased on this essay.
Genre and Medium
The genre of “The Entrenched Segregation of New York City’s Public High Schools” is a newspaper article. This source is presented through the website Salon, the medium. Similarly, the genre “Brown v. Board Sixty Years Later” is a magazine article, however, it was posted through a different medium, the magazine The Progresive.
Contrary to the previous sources, the genre of the last two sources are not articles. The genre of “Gender Segregation in Vocational Education” is a book review, and its medium is the annually published journal Aspasia. The genre for the fourth source, “School Uniform Policies Are a Symptom of Segregation” is an argumentative essay, and it’s medium is a website: Gale’s online collection of opposing views,
Tone and Purpose
The first source presented in this essay, the article “The Entrenched Segregation of New York City’s Public High Schools”, was written with the intention to bring awareness to New York City residents about the racial segregation happening in the city’s public high schools. The author mentions how “not a single specialized school or private school anywhere else in the country admits students based exclusively on a state law that requires scores from one test” which can infer that the author also desires to inform the residents of New York City to take action to reform the testing that segregates students (Leah 11). This article is written in a serious tone as the author incorporates more facts than opinions towards the issue being presented.
Similarly, the second source, “Brown v. Board Sixty Years Later”, inform students about segregation happening through public schools’ educational systems. However, the purpose of this second source is to let families know and the voters of the“democratically elected school boards” that these “private institutions” are among the threats to the democratic institution of public education as they follow a “test-and-punish” form of education that ultimately segregates students (Conniff 7). Moreover, the tone of this source is very informative, as the author presents information regarding how charter schools and private institutions have a great influence on segregation in education.
The third source, “Gender Segregation in Vocational Education”, follows a very formal and informative tone as it demonstrates facts to support the main issue being presented, gender segregation. However, this source differs from the previous two sources mentioned as the purpose of this piece of writing is to inform people about gender segregation in vocational education. The author exhibits how “declining gender segregation in tertiary education have been observed” but “vocational education programs keep preserving gender segregation” (Kotzeva 1). The author also presents how Christian Imdorf, Kristinn Hegna, Verena Eberhard, and Pierre Doray, in their comparative study including Germany, Norway, and Canada proved that “vocational programs are more gender segregated compared to university programs” (Kotzeva 5). The author’s purpose is to make women aware of the main reasons why they are at such a disadvantage and how this segregation has been globalized.
The essay “School Uniform Policies Are a Symptom of Segregation” differentiates in tone, as the author follows an informal tone throughout her writing. This can be seen when she states the following:
“As a White mother raising bi-racial children, it is not my place to tell parents of color what to think about uniform policies generally or in New York City. However, I urge all parents to ask why parents of White children do not put White kids in uniforms at the same rate as parents raising children of color and to evaluate the effect of that” (Sjödin 5).
It can be seen that the author is presenting her opinion on school uniforms. Additionally, the author states that “these uniform policies are arguably unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution” without further explaining why they are unconstitutional which makes her statements biased (Sjödin 6).
The purpose of this paper was to convince New York City’s public school students and their families, that uniforms aid with the racial segregation amongst their educational system. The author mentions how school uniforms deprive many of “self-expression based on culture and/or identity” as they are European dominated standard of dress, a “White standard” (Sjödin 5). This purpose is similar to source one, as it informs New York City public schools’ students but differs on the reason why the educational system is segregated as the author states that
Stance and Language
The author of “The Entrenched Segregation of New York City’s Public High Schools”, provides evidence to support both sides of whether the segregation within the public high schools in New York City benefits students or not. Similarly, the author of “Brown v. Board Sixty Years Later”, provides factual information for both sides on the issue of whether or not there is segregation in the educational system of the United States of America. However, even though both of them present factual evidence for both viewpoints, in favor of and against racial segregation, only the first source remains neutral.
On the other hand, the author expresses how she stands against private institutions segregating students when she mentions how activists from Seattle to Newark, New Orleans to Milwaukee, and many other communities gathered in Austin, Texas, to “save their local schools from privatization, over-testing, and closure” (Conniff 15) and how some teachers in chicago have gone on strike “to fend off a new generation of robber barons” (Coniff 18). The author says, “This movement is for all of us–people of every race, town, and rural route” which clearly demonstrates she stands against this issue being presented (Conniff 21).
Tatyana Kotzeva, the author of the third source, the author stands against gender segregation in vocational segregation not being an important topic in the research she is reviewing: There is an enormous body of knowledge on horizontal and vertical labor market segregation, but the interrelation between vocational education segregation and gender inequalities in the labor market is still a neglected topic in the research (Kotzeva 2). As presented earlier, the author mentions how the authors of the book present contradictory trends related to gender segregation in vocational education and training (Kotzeva 8). However, Kotzeva reviews certain information given by the authors of the book and emphasizes how vocational education is a main issue and highlights its importance through the research presented in the book.
Kamilla Sjödin, the author of the fourth source urges parents “to ask why parents of White children do not put White kids in uniforms at the same rate as parents raising children of color and to evaluate the effect of that”. The author being a white mother raising bi-racial children, as stated above, wants other people to be in her shoes and see how school uniforms segregate children. By asking why White kids are not put in uniforms, she believes that there is discrimination towards children of color . Clearly, the author stands against school uniform policies because they seem to segregate children by race. Moreover, the author’s language throughout this essay is more informal as it presents statements that are not supported with facts. For example, the author claims that “uniform policies are arguably unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution”, however, the author does not present further evidence as to why these policies are unconstitutional. Unlike the previous sources, the author in this source provides certain statements that are not completely supported by factual information.
Literature Cited
Conniff, Ruth. “Brown v. Board sixty years later.” The Progressive, May 2014, p. 8+. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A372451693/OVIC?u=cuny_ccny&sid=OVIC&xid=87646886. Accessed 18 Sept. 2019.
Kotzeva, Tatyana. “Gender Segregation in Vocational Education.” Aspasia, vol. 12, 2018, p. 168+. Gale Academic Onefile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A557312986/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=3ab0144c. Accessed 18 Sept. 2019.
Leah, Rachel. “The Entrenched Segregation of New York City’s Public High Schools.” Salon, Salon.com, 25 Mar. 2019, https://www.salon.com/2019/03/23/the-entrenched-segregation-of-new-york-citys-public-high-schools.
Sjödin, Kamilla. “School Uniform Policies Are a Symptom of Segregation.” Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2019. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/IKWUYR839020595/OVIC?u=cuny_ccny&sid=OVIC&xid=5f124ca5. Accessed 18 Sept. 2019. Originally published as “NYC Public School Uniform Policies are a Symptom of Segregation,” CityLimits.org, 21 Aug. 2017.
