To begin class today, I would like you to get into groups of three and discuss Kozol as a researcher, using the following questions:
Overall, how would you characterize the way he goes about conducting the research he does for this project? What kind of evidence does he make use of or have access to? More specifically, what roles do interviews and observations play in his research? What kind of knowledge does he gain about the issue of homelessness and poverty by using these methods? How does it help us understand this issue? In what ways do these methods limit our understanding?
As a group, identify three passages that somehow illustrate or relate to your responses to the questions above. When you’re done discussing these questions, post a brief summary of your discussion (one per group) here as a comment. Include the page numbers of the passages you want us to focus on, as well as the names of everyone in your group.
He conducts his research using the method ethnography. This term involves personal interviews in helping us understand the issue of homelessness. When reading these interviews, you gain a more personal, acute view that can still be applied to a larger population.
ReplyDeletePassage: Kozol talks about a family and how the children do not get to go to school. He then gives information about why this is the case, which applies to the larger population of homeless children. Pg. 109-"New York Board of Education"
Kozol gives you statistics, however he believes that these personal stories and one on one interactions are imperative to creating a connection between the reader and the subject regardless of knowledge of the subject.
Passage: Kozol weaves together statistics and personal stories that validate the statistics. pg. 145- Holly talks about if she had better medical care
However, purely emotional stories can sometimes inhibit our learning because we gain a personal bias. Some would argue that we only gain a narrow view from these stories.
Passage: Kozol offers statements that show both sides of the story, so that you cannot simply hate one side of the issue, or one entity involved. pg. 149- "hospital would never have released the baby had it known he had no proper shelter"
NERMINA, TYLER, KATHERINE
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ReplyDeleteKatrina Stewart, Maddie Spilman, Jessie GG
ReplyDeleteKozol’s Ways of Research:
-Access to shelters
-Conducting interviews, not using others
-Uses quotations and dialogue
-Invoke emotion-pathos
-Has specific subjects, has to track them down
-Puts faces to numbers- tell the stories that numbers cant tell
-Explains why people are the way they are
-Breaks the stereotypes
Limits to Kozol’s methods:
-Has a narrow view and geographic boundary
-Some peoples accounts and memories are not entirely true-people are illiterate or don’t understand the system, so they cant know exactly what happening. But their emotion is real.
Passages:
P. 146 “Some of her suppositions seem at first to be implausible. It does not make sense to me that Benjamin was not Medicaid and not on Holly’s budget…An HRA report later confirms her words: ‘Infant not on IM [welfare] buget or Medicaid…Social worker working on this.’”
P.116 “Kim because she’s educated and articulate…When she is asked why she is here, she says that its because her heating system doesn’t work.”
141-142 “Finding her in itself was a challenge. It required many phone calls and a long and complicated search…”
Kozol clearly is engaging in a qualitative--rather than directly quantitative--research in his book. This means that he employes seemingly raw personal stories, leaving a fair deal of information for the reader to dissect on their own. On page 81 he essentially puts forth a script of what transcribed in an interview with an Angie.This technique is very powerful in that rather than giving facts it brings life into an issue, a common marketing technique used to have the ideas really stick. It puts you, as a reader, there--both in his and Angie's place.
ReplyDeleteWe see again on page 126, how Kozol simply recites bare, qualitative, facts for the reader. He describes the living conditions of Laura, mentioning the overflowing sewage, broken radiator, etc. These observations allow for us to see right into the lives of his subjects which makes his data personal.
On page 153 we see again how Kozol relates to the individual lives of the people. In discussing Holly's case, the city claims that they gave the family "shelter, transportation, and food." However Kozol gives insight to the readers on the poor conditions the were provided to the family. While the city reports they family had a place to live, Kozol reports on the inadequate conditions the family was expected to live in.
Dan, George, Allie
Kozol conducts his research with personal, qualitative interviews with homeless families. He uses "real-life scenarios" as evidence, appealing to pathos with its great emotional appeal. He also references statistics and other quantitative research when necessary in order to build his argument. The interviews and observations are the meat and potatoes of his research and play an important role in his narrative. The use of the narrative as a way to present his research is very effective in captivating his audience. Using these methods, he gains firsthand, personal knowledge about homeless families. It helps us to understand this issue by tapping into the human side of the argument. These methods may limit our understanding somewhat by causing us, as the readers, to become too emotionally invested in the subject.
ReplyDeletePassages: pg. 61, 104, 154
Group members: Kelsey, Danni, Devon
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ReplyDeleteAspen, Siena, Alexis
ReplyDeleteBy interviewing many different people, Kozol sees the commonalities of their stories that drive his research. Basically, he asks a prompting question or just starts helping the family for example by holding a child while the parent(s) finish what they are doing. Jonathan Kozol intersperses statistics with the story he presents. The statistics always correlate with the story he is telling for those people. Kozol selects people such as Holly and explains how difficult it is to get in touch with her through many databases, shelters, and the city records. Kozol reports that “After the Holland, Holly’s wanderings become unclear. At various points in the subsequent year she lived in at least seven hotels and, for certain nights at least, she slept in EAUs” (Kozol 144). Additionally, Kozol foreshadows and repeats the facts such as when one of the screws is missing on the crib and ten pages later he reveals that the baby fell and cut her head on the frame of the bed (128, 138). Kozol conveys the knowledge that people are being described as less than human and incorporates the dirty stigma in his novel. He describes that “Laura and her children are now being churned” (129) and “Labeling a homeless woman as defective…” (166) are a few of the many dehumanizing comments that Kozol exposes.