y) "separate but equal" schools would in fact be equal is: "First, they wouldn't be equal...So long as there are no white children in our school, we're going to be cheated. That's America. That's how it is" (Kozol, p. 155, 1991). The reality is that those in power accept different, unequal goals for urban and suburban, colored and White schools and populations. These dual standards are rigidly enforced by the powerful political force of wealthy Whites for whom the system is working. Overwhelmingly, the promotion of Whiteness "divides children in a system with an uneven distribution of learning experiences and access to resources" (Oakes in O'Neil, p. 18, 1992).The foremost problem in education is the inequitable distribution of resources that has resulted from the conflict between two clashing ideologies in education. Although educational practices exist that support both ideologies, the three above-mentioned forces are inconsistent from one ideology to the other, making it self-contradictory for the two ideologies to co-exist. Presently, the ideology that education should serve as a gatekeeper dominates our educational practices; the gatekeeper is winning the battle of which ideology will pervade. The major consequence of this conflict in ideologies is that children "experience a large portion of their school day and year very differently from one another", where the "difference" is in quality (Oakes in O'Neil, p. 19, 1992). Why is our current education system maintaining the many inequalities outside of the classroom as opposed to countering these realities? Our education system is only a part of, as opposed to distinct from, a federal and state government that maintains oppression institutionally; schools are simply another institution and tool exploited to perpetuate oppression through government neglect. Jonathan Kozol has termed this practice "compulsory inequity" since the state, "by requiring attendance but refusin...
