School Students example essay topic

Educational inequality makes up a huge part of our educational system. We have kids in poor, inner-city schools that don't have sufficient plumbing, books, classrooms and teachers. Many of these schools don't have the funding or facilities to even have these children in schools and yet nothing seems to be done to help these kids get out of the run down buildings that we have put them in. Their lives seem to be predetermined by what schools they attend, if they live in a rich district they will get the education they deserve and if they live in a poor district they will receive a education that you would expect to see in a third world country. These are the educational inequalities that we see all across America.

Educational inequalities are created through many institutionalized educational practices. One way educational inequalities are created is by the decentralization of school. Schools are organized at a local and state level and funding is locally derived. The result of this is that there is significant funding differences between school districts. Kozol noted that in East St. Louis, "nearly a third of its families live on less than $7,500 a year; 75 percent of its population lives on welfare of some form" (7). With such little income people are bringing in there is little room for school funding.

"The average daily food expenditure in East St. Louis is $2.40 for one child" (Kozol 21). These are the children that also are under immunized, don't have proper dental or healthcare and are apart of the highest fetal and infant death rate in America. While East St. Louis is on the low stratum funding in schools, New Trier's district is the upper stratum. This school district provides " $340,000 worth of taxable property for each child" (Kozol 66). These children are given the best and their parents pay high taxes to show it. These children have abundant supplies, computers, teachers and facilities to help them succeed in life.

These children are predetermined to be doctors and lawyers with "93 percent of seniors going on to four-year colleges -- many to schools like Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley, Brown and Yale" (Kozol 65). These are the children that in essence benefit from decentralization of school while the poor, inner-city children just become poorer and poorer and get dug deeper into the hole of inequality. Another institutionalized educational practice that educational inequality is created by is the curriculum that is taught and how it is taught. The curriculum is up to local districts and is locally derived. Kozol noted that in a school like Du Sable and other inner-city schools, essential courses would be "business math" and cosmetology. Theses courses would be preparation to the success of inner-city children because these are realistic roles they will fill as adults, according to Kozol.

In a school like New Trier these courses would be seen as an insult for future lawyers and doctors. But what is right for one school isn't always right for another simply because of economic differences. Boarding schools curriculum are designed to benefit the highly intellectual mind and are very rigorous classes. According to Cookson and Persell, "boarding school students are urged to read deeply and widely" (573). They are assigned to read from people like Erich Fromm, William Faulkner and Geoffrey Chaucer, authors that children from poor districts will probably never get to learn about.

Another part of boarding school curriculum is travel. "Travel is very much a part of the prep way of life and is continued right through the school year" (Cookson and Persell, 575). They take semesters or a year abroad usually to France or Spain. This would not even seem feasible in a school in East St. Louis or Du Sable, poor schools cannot offer the same curriculum as schools with the proper funding. Kozol stated that, "the evolution of two parallel curricula, one for urban and one for suburban schools, has also underlined the differences in what is felt to be appropriate to different kinds of children and to socially distinct communities" (75). The local districts decide what curriculum is right for their district and what will benefit the children the most.

Most students at New Trier or boarding schools will not be cosmetologists or bookkeepers while students at East St. Louis will probably not be lawyers or doctors. Another factor that creates educational inequality is the decisions about who attends which schools and how resources are distributed across a district's schools. These decisions are locally made within school districts and are the results of decentralized schools. One result is gerrymandering which is drawing school boundaries such that poor and minority students feed into specific schools. They do this to maintain racial and economic homogeneity of the school. When South Loop Elementary School was constructed for a newly arrived middle-income condominium development, the housing project children that lived next to it too were not allowed to attend.

Parent didn't want the children from the projects to attend because then the standards of the school will be lower. Kozol noted that", younger children from the project are obliged to go to class within a temporary branch school in a small, prefabricated metal building surrounded on three sides by junkyards" (61). The second result is magnet schools which are intended to draw-in kids with specific talents. Kozol noted that, "those the system chooses to save are the brightest youngsters, selected by race, income and achievement for magnet school where teachers are handpicked" (60). Dearborn Park has a special "fine arts" program that middle class children are drawn to from other sections in Chicago. But these schools cause non-magnet schools to drop in standards by decreasing the funding that non-magnet schools should receive.

Through anticipatory socialization, magnet schools prepare children for their anticipated future. Working class students are socialized to be good workers while the middle class students are socialized to become critical thinkers and artistic. The students become exposed to basic material before graduating but they are geared to classes that will be a part of their future lives. Tracking within schools is another institutionalized educational practice that created educational inequality. Tracking consists of testing a students ability and then creating a path for the appropriate course of study. Minority and poor students are tracked into low-track classes, which is one of the determining factors in track placement.

Kozol noted, "Early testing to assign each child to a 'realistic' course of study, the tracking of children by ability determined by the tests, and the expansion of a parallel system for the children who appear to show the greatest promise (gifted classes and selective schools) are also favored from this vantage point" (74). The consequences of tracking are some kids are placed at lower level groups and don't have to learn as much, they don't have the opportunities to move up later and they didn't have the chance to be able to learn what higher level children learned when they may be on the higher level track but put on a lower one based on class and race. Their lives are predetermined and they are self-fulfilling prophecies of the lives they told they will lead. Many of the children's perception of themselves drops along with their self-esteem because they may know they are capable of much more but will never be able to achieve it because of tracking. "No one expects these ghetto kids to go to college. Most of them are lucky if they " re even literate.

If we can teach some useful skills, get them to stay in school and graduate, and maybe into jobs, we " re giving them the most that they can hope for". (Kozol 76). This is the attitude many people have about inner-city children so they are likely to be placed on a slow track making them ready for fast food jobs. Theses students are exposed to different material in different tracks which is going to lead to academic gaps that grow larger with every grade. Tracking makes the inequalities between students greater and greater as the school years go on and makes it harder for the students in lower tracks to catch up on the material. They don't get to learn essential material as other children in their class when they are placed on certain tracks and they don't get a proper education because of a test that they had at a early age that may not be accurate to their current age.

With an era of re industrialization and growth in low-paid service sector employment there are many consequences of this education system. The future for low income students is they are going to put into low income sector jobs because of tracking and the fact that they are put into schools that don't get the proper funding so their curriculum is a failure for them. They are taught what they are expected to fulfill in life and are cheated out of a quality education that middle and upper class students get. Middle and upper class income students are the ones that are thought to benefit the most from the high quality education they receive.

Their parents pay high property taxes for their schooling and they don't want to share it with low class students that will pull their kids down. Their lives are predetermined to be lawyers and doctors and they get the education so they can achieve whatever dreams they want to. The female students futures are also at a disadvantage. The curriculum they were taught is very male dominated and they don't learn what females have accomplished and their inventions. They learn that this is a man's world and we will always be second best to a man. They will be paid significantly lower then males in the same position and will not receive the recognition that they deserve for their work.

"Each time a girl opens a book and reads a woman less history, she learns she is worth less" (Sadker and Sadker, 593). American society overall becomes more ignorant to the facts that lie right in front of their face. Every time another child is sent to school they receive some injustice in their education. "The system has the surface aspects of a meritocracy, but merit in this case is predetermined by conditions that are closely tied to class and race" (Kozol 60). As long as we have conflicts over class and race, the future of American society and their children will never be promising.