Through our class discussions of education we came across this quote by Joseph Sobran, an American journalist and writer who spent a great amount of his career working for the National Review Magazine, "In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching Remedial English in college." When asked to critically think about the meaning of this quote I concluded that our educational standards have been lowered over the years and that students in America are not as intelligent as they once were in previous years. These two thoughts brought me to the questions, what does it mean to be educated or intelligent and who gets to decide. When reflecting emotionally on how this quote made me feel I realized it made me feel …show more content…
In Jonathan Kozol’s essay titled, “From Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid,” Kozol touches on how racial segregation has not disappeared in big cities’ urban public school systems. In this essay we can see how both types of judgements; racial and academic come together to form a stereotype about intellectual success in our current educational system. On the other hand, he brings to our attention that it is the American citizen’s common belief that racial segregation in public schools doesn’t exist anymore. In Kozol’s work he discusses various schools in major cities he has visited and offers the reader personal anecdotes from interviews with students. One quote from a student that I found remarkably interesting is “we do not have the things you have. You have clean things. We do not have. You have a clean bathroom. We do not have that. You have Parks and we do not have Parks. You have all the thing and we do not have all the thing. Can you help us?” (Kozol). This little girl is begging and reaching out to a white man because she thinks that he can help her. I am curious as to why she thinks that white schools have more than children at her school and if this is from first hand experience or from hearing from others. Does she think this way because her school demographics are composed mostly of one race? More importantly, I hope that someone did not teach her to think that …show more content…
For example, it has been said many times in multiple different ways that academic success is typically associated with certain races and not others. This is a very stereotypical comment and it is sad that these types of judgements are present in the educational system. In Beverly Daniel Tatum’s essay entitled, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” she discusses how self-segregation occurs in the education system today. Tatum touches on that the possible reasons that students tend to socialize with students of the same racial identity as themselves are cultural stereotypes. It is understandable that a student in order to avoid judgements would want to be around others who understand them and know what they are going through at school. A possible and very hurtful example of judgement that may cause students of color to flock together is that “doing well in school becomes identified as trying to be White,” (Tatum). A student in today’s education system undergoes enough stress as it is and they should not have to be worried with racial protocols. Why is being advanced and thriving in school only to be considered a White characteristic? I know plenty of White students who are struggling with passing classes and I also know several overly intelligent latinos, black and Asians. I am sure that I am not the only student to think that this unspoken rule that you
A famous quote by Martin Luther King states “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.” The two articles “Hidden Intellectualism” and “Blue Collar Brilliance” both emphasis the author's opinion on the qualifications and measurements of someone's intelligence. “Hidden Intellectualism” focuses on students or younger people who have trouble with academic work because, they are not interested in the topic. Today, in schools students are taught academic skills that are not very interesting, the author mentions this is why children are not motivated in schools. The main viewpoint of this article is that schools need to encourage students
Another school in the same district is located “in a former roller-skating rink” with a “lack of windows” an a scarcity of textbooks and counselors. The ratio of children to counselors is 930 to one. For 1,300 children, of which “90 percent [are] black and Hispanic” and “10 percent are Asian, white, or Middle Eastern”, the school only has 26 computers. Another school in the district, its principal relates, “‘was built to hold one thousand students’” but has “‘1,550.’” This school is also shockingly nonwhite where “’29 percent '” of students are “‘black [and] 70 percent [are]
“The Shame of The Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America,” is a book that tells the story of author, Jonathan Kozol’s, journey through the public school system. He looks deeper into inner-city, low-income schools and the re-segregation that has taken place. Kozol focuses on the struggles those children of poor and minorities face while trying to achieve equal education as those of the middle and upper class. This book gives a vivid description of what is happening in schools across the country and our failure as a nation to provide ALL students with the education that they deserve through the observations, interviews, and experiences of author Jonathan Kozol. Through this book he tries to shed light on what is really going on in schools across the nation and what most people are not aware of. “Many Americans I meet who live far from our major cities and who have no first-hand knowledge of realities in urban public schools seem to have a rather vague and general impression that the great extremes of racial isolation they recall as matters of grave national significance some 35 to 40 years ago have gradually, but steadily, diminished in more recent years (Kozol 18).”
The schools in Kozol 's essay dealt with lack of funding compared to other schools in New York. For example, Kozol states that the education of a third grade child, in nineteen ninety seven to nineteen ninety eight, in an inner city New York costs the New York Board of Education roughly eight thousand dollars per year. However, if you put that same third grader in a school in the white suburbs of New York, she would receive an education worth about twelve thousand dollars. Kozol adds to this by explaining that the prices on both sides have only risen (Kozol 208). A principal details the restraints on the school the lack of funding has brought, "the principal poured out his feelings to me in a room in which a plastic garbage bag had been attached somehow to cover part of the collapsing ceiling. 'This, ' he told me, pointing to the garbage bag, and then gesturing all around him at the other indications of decay and disrepair one sees in ghetto schools much like it elsewhere,
White privilege is not a figment of African American or colored people’s imagination, it is just as real as many problems in America and one privilege that wealthy and middle class white people have is the right to a decent education. Many people might not think a simple thing such as education is a privilege seeing that all students by law have to attend schools but it is, and we all know that all schools and their districts are not created equally. In Jonathan Kozol essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Education Apartheid,” he writes, “Of seeing clusters of white parents and their children each morning on the corner of a street close to school, waiting for a bus that took the children to a predominantly white school” (349) Kozol
Stereotypes are everywhere and can often create problems for people, however they become even more detrimental to teens, especially at schools. Writer and science correspondent for the NRA, Shankar Vedantam, in his article, “How a Self-Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down Performance,” explains that stereotypes can hurt the performance of the person that it is associated with. He supports his claim by first explaining that how well people do on tests are determined by who administers the questions, then he explains that studies show that when people take tests and they are reminded of negative stereotypes that associate with them, then they don’t do as well, and finally he states that the studies are being widely ignored by all the people who should take heed of the findings, such as test makers and college acceptance people. Vedantam’s purpose is to tell you about the research conducted by Huang in order to inform you that stereotypes can affect performance on tests. In my 9th grade class at Point Loma High School, we were given questions about stereotypes from our teacher to interview two students.
The words may be unspoken, but the message is loud and clear. Racial separatism is stronger now than ever before. According to Johnathan Kozals article "Still separate, still unequal"; segregation still exists in most schools across America. The main reason we know this to be true, is because it’s been recorded percentages of how many white students attending school with others of minority backgrounds, and the averages are extremely low. Even in areas, which are considered to be diverse communities, white parents believe their children’s level of education would decline if sending their kids to schools with others of different cultural characteristics. For instance, Kozal visited a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, and learned that over half of that community was Caucasian, and was in the same district of Thurgood Marshall elementary school. This elementary school was very diverse with many ethnicities, but instead these Parents bussed their children to schools that were predominantly white. One of the teachers stated to Kozal that she would see clusters of white parent’s, walking their kids to the bus stop, which was only about a block from the school.
In Topeka, Kansas, the school for African-American children appeared to be equal to that of the white school. However, the school was overcr...
The essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal”, by Jonathan Kozol, discusses the reality of inner-city public school systems, and the isolation and segregation of inequality that students are subjected to; as a result, to receive an education. Throughout the essay, Kozol proves evidence of the inequality that African American and Hispanic children face in the current school systems.
Jonathan Kozol, an award winning writer, wrote the essay “Still separate, Still Equal” that focuses on primary and secondary school children from minority families that are living in poverty. There is a misconception in this modern age that historical events in the past have now almost abolished discrimination and segregation for the most part; however, “schools that were already deeply segregated
They are overwhelmingly nonwhite and exceptionally poor, which stands out forcefully from the well off overwhelmingly white rural schools right alongside them (Kozol 74). He constrains his choices to poor inner city schools as opposed to incorporating examples of every single poor school in light of the fact that he feels that they best display racial isolation and social class divisions. He states that even though many schools can be “diverse” with different cultures and ethnicities, segregation occurs through different programs that are provided in
America’s school system and student population remains segregated, by race and class. The inequalities that exist in schools today result from more than just poorly managed schools; they reflect the racial and socioeconomic inequities of society as a whole. Most of the problems with schools boil down to either racism in and outside the school system or financial disparity between wealthy and poor school districts. Because schools receive funding through local property taxes, low-income communities start at an economic disadvantage. Less funding means fewer resources, lower quality instruction and curricula, and little to no community involvement.
“Stereotypes unreliable, exaggerated generalizations about all members of a group that do not take individual differences into account” (Schaefer 40). Stereotypes can be positive, but are usually associated with negative beliefs or actions such as racial profiling.
How do we get educated? To most, education is an arduous slog through school; starting with simple stories about naughty rabbits swapping bologna sandwiches. As we grow, we move on to more and more intellectual pursuits- onward to ancient kings being depressed. By the time we graduate we are ready for a life as a ‘productive member of society’. One may find themselves wondering where that shift is from ignorant to educated. Most people will tell you it comes when you graduate high school, some will argue that it will not happen until you become a parent, others will say it never happens. David Foster Wallace and Mike Rose believe that being educated is not a matter of how well you have been educated, but how you grow as a person. Mike Rose’s life experiences illustrate this perfectly.
Through the evolution of desegregating the public school system, the classification of students still exists among educators (Nieto, 2012). The biases that are present typically stereotype the students based upon the color of their skin such as Asians are intelligent, blacks are lazy, Jews are frugal, poor people are dependent and Indian’s are lucky (Nieto, 2012). Furthermore, this stereotype is not just limited to the color of a student, but those that play athletics, who are in the band, belong to the National Honor Society, or those who choose to be a bookworm. According to Nieto and Bode, 2012, this type of stereotyping can lead to each of those groups to start believing in what others may think they along with