Education and Educational Attainment
The first article for today was by Jonathan Kozol. Kozol's article discussed the inequalities in schools in nieghborhoods that were poor as opposed to richer areas. The second article, by Myra Sadker and David Sadker, told how primary school reinforces gender roles, and ignores girls more often than boys. Jay Macleod's article looked at two groups of boys from the same socioeconomic background and compared how their outlooks on life differed.
Kozol's article made it clear that inequalities in the school system favor the economically well off. It also mentioned how there is a 75% equality between the poorest districts and the average districts. This got me thinking, and it seems to me that the poorest districts should actually be granted 25% more than average not less. The part of the article about Anacostia talked about kids shoving chicken nuggets in their pockets on Friday so they would not go hungry over the weekend. In the wealthy district of Great Neck, a family complains that their daughter has a hard time at an expensive prestigeous college. This family that has enough to afford for their daughter to go to an expensive college, while the other families cannot afford enough food. It does not make since that the families with more money should be given a school with more money; the state should help out those who really need it.
Earlier discussions in this class focused on education being a system for reinforcing gender roles. Sadker and Sadker gave a whole new dimension to this. It is so often in the teacher's subconscious to enforce these roles. It seems like a lot of teenage girls' self-esteem issues could come from being subtly put down so often in the classroom. It almost makes sense that if enforcing these roles is so natural for teachers that they do it with out even trying, maybe that is part of why there is so much inequality in the work place. Employers could have some of these same ideals in the backs of their minds which would sway them to hire a male over a female with out looking at qualifications.
Jay Macleod kind of stamped out the idea of hard work being a means to raise oneself up socioeconomically. I was surprised to see that it was the mostly non-white group that had the more positive outlook on life. They were at a greater disadvantage, yet still were hopeful. I think if more studys like this were done people might realize that the poor are disadvantaged and actually do need some help from the government to get out of poverty. The job market is against them, and as Kozol's article pointed out, they are not getting as good of an education. They are being taught that there is no way out.
Discussion Questions
1) How do you feel about giving more money to districts in poorer areas, and having richer areas make up the difference through things like increased fees and lunch prices, since they can better afford it?
2) While it is true that things like having a girl's line/team/table and a boy's line/team/table is segregation, how much of a role does it play in generating inequalities? Do most of the inequalities come from the teachers' reactions to students, or does it actually come from the seperations?