What is the main conflict in Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools by Jonathan Kozol?

In 1964, the author, Jonathan Kozol, is a young man who works as a teacher. Like many others at the time, the grade school where he teaches is of inferior quality, segregated (teaching only non-white students), understaffed, and in poor physical condition. Kozol loses his first job as a teacher because he introduces children to some African American poetry that subtly questions the conditions of blacks in America. Years later, after holding many other socially conscious jobs, Kozol misses working with children. He decides to visit schools across America to see what has changed since those early days of reform. What he learns is saddening: many schools have student bodies that are still separate and unequal. The remainder of the book details his observations over that year and suggests causes for this shocking state of affairs. Savage Inequalities is published in 1991, and the author warns that the situation may have changed since his investigation.