Educational Injustices in Smallville, Ohio

This seemed to be the case with Kipland Kinkel, Kip didn't live up the standards his parents had set for him. They expected him to be like his sister, but having a learning disability made it nearly impossible to be everything his parents wanted him to be. (The Killer, video) His parents sought a variety of solutions. One of the many solutions was that his parents kept Kip back in first grade. Kip then stumbled through the third grade where he would study for spelling test, but not pass them.

For students who are not athletic, PE can be a time of being picked last for teams and being made fun of for not being very good at the activity of the day. According to the lead researcher at Brigham Young University, Chad D. Jensen, "children who have been criticized for their physical skills, chosen last and ridiculed seem to avoid physical activity, perhaps because from previous experience they figure it 's punishing and they 'll stay on the sidelines" (Collins 6). He also states that this teasing affected both the overweight and physically healthy children and that their overall health (physical plus mental and social) went down as well over the course of a year of teasing (Collins 9). The goal of PE is to improve a student 's health, and when they are constantly made fun of or bullied, they will not want to participate, which decreases their physical and social health, and all of the teasing can go to their head and give them worse mental health. For some students, PE can be a good way to injure themselves.

Playing football in Kansas already before he wanted to play for Wallburg Lions where he was the starting middle linebacker for them for three years. Playing football was a get away from school, and showed his strengths in what he knew would make people proud of him. No one ever teased him or called him stupid on the field. Once John got in third grade he had a teacher named Ms. Melvin. Since he was not the smartest he had trouble keeping up in class, which caused him to fall behind.

After failing all but one class at Pencey Prep, Holden was kicked out of school. Holden wasn’t worried that he got expelled, he was just worried to tell his parents. Being nervous to tell his parents about being expelled shows that Holden cared enough to make his parents proud. By definition, both Holden’s parents and his siblings were successful. Holden’s poor performance at school was most likely caused by the death of his brother Allie, who died of leukemia.

Even though Biff was a star football player, you need more than pure athleticism to get you places in life. Willy didn’t understand this and when Biff began to fail math he didn’t worry about it. Instead he had Biff keep practicing football. Willy assured his oldest son that his teacher would understand his need to play college ball and would pull up his grade a few points. This was not the case and Biff’s math teacher ended up failing him for the semester.

Standards are lowered as students are continually cheated of the material necessary to independently survive in the "real" world. The realization that I was cheated by social promotion finally came about my senior year of high school. As far back as I can remember I have had problems with math, but I passed every year up until I met Coach Taylor. He was a nonconformist in nearly every sense of the word. He definitely did not jump on the bandwagon of socially promoting students.

When I missed three weeks of school during my sophomore year due to the flu, I struggled to catch up with all my subjects and to raise my grades. I was not under disciplinary actions, but because I was removed from the academic scene, my academic achievements diminished and I struggled to catch up to my peers. If students who are under disciplinary actions are unable to class, then how will they learn? It is all too easy to remove a student causing a disturbance and forget about them, but that student also deserves an education. In that light, the current disciplinary actions in place are not at all beneficial.

I could have been a super senior or a drop out altogether. I could have been a father struggling with finances. I could have been a drug addict and not be writing this three page essay that ruins weekends, and for that I am thankful that my dad didn’t let things slide that weren’t right. I am kind of happy he threatened me with military school when I was in middle school, I was a handful, I would get kicked out of class constantly but I stayed in school, years later I would be walking down my high school football stadium class of 2016 for my graduation, both my parents stressed it that it was the utmost importance to graduate, both my mother and father pushed me to get good enough grades to graduate. My dad would try to teach me math, I hated math so much it was my least favorite subject, I was more of a history type of guy.

Student Relating to Ability When asked if he had liked math before forth grade, Evan responded with a yes. He said that his teacher didn’t like the fact that he wasn’t listening and stopped giving him directions. When it came to math he didn’t know what was going on. He said that the addition and subtraction was easy but the multiplication was difficult. He did not enjoy math any more because it had too much sitting work.

I was able to make friends but in the 7th grade I became depressed and I wouldn’t go to school as often as I should have. Only two friends showed concern for me and I told them what was happening. They helped me get better but after a while they stopped talking to me. A couple weeks before 8th grade I started to feel better, but none of my friends wanted to be friends with me anymore because they thought I was weird for being depressed for so long. This made it hard for me to make friends until high school.