Inequality

Reading chapter 18 created a lot of emotions for me. None of which were good. The state of public schools in our society is atrocious and worsening every year. The whole concept behind our society is equality in treatment and in opportunity. So where is it? We have students coming from environments that are already dismal because most students going to public schools are coming from families that are struggling to make ends meet. And for the most part when we talk about communities that are impoverished we are referring to minority communities. Then on top of that, we add stress onto the students by treating them as though they are little more than criminals. Metal detectors, name tags, police supervision- and for what? Just because they are not from suburbia we treat them like this? The money being spent on all of these things should be being spent on resources for the schools. Furthermore, money needs to be given out equally to every school regardless of the demographic or economic status of its students.

I can say that growing up I had the opportunity to go to several different schools- public, private, charter. And everything mentioned in this chapter I saw first hand. In private schools, the students were treated with respect and were very pampered. They were able to get away with being late to classes, not turning homework in, etc. If a student didn’t turn in their homework they would get an extension. If they were late to class they would get a verbal warning, even if it kept happening. There was a nice gymnasium, a variety of lunch choices, immaculate buildings, great labs for science and computers, new text books, etc. Students were able to dress out of uniform, and classes were much smaller with a lot of space.

The exact opposite was true for public school. In public school, you have to get a pass if you are going to be late to a class and if you don’t have a pass you get a consequence like detention or ISS automatically. There is no verbal warning. The students are treated like they have been doing something wrong automatically with no reasoning behind it other than they are just problem kids. There are uniforms, no choice of what to wear. There are detentions for not getting homework assignments in, and the building themselves look like they are ready to fall at any point. The gym and space for classes was small, there weren’t enough text books, and the one’s that were used were old and falling apart. There was no computer lab, no science lab, and barely any variety in lunch much less having a lot of choices as to what to eat.

Is this equal opportunity in the educational system? Is this what we want for the future of this country? To create another generation of students who are ill-equipped due to the lack of resources they had in school. We have to stop playing favorites in this society if we are truly going to give everyone equal opportunity. That means equal funding and creating a positive atmosphere for all students. I hope that we will see change soon, because the future of our children and this country depends on it.