Segregated schools ended in 1954. At least that’s what students were told to believe. So many working class students have been affected in almost every aspect of their life, such as academically, mentally and emotionally. There no longer have to be two completely different types of schools for whites and for blacks, in order to see that segregation is still a huge part of the school system today. Economic segregation in schools has impacted many working class students in a very negative way. These students don’t get equal opportunities as those students attending elite schools. Authors Toni Cade Bambara and Jonathon Kozol have written vivid examples on how working class students have been impacted by segregation in school. Working class schools …show more content…
The jobs they believe they’ll have are such as hair dressing, jobs in factories, or as a seamstress all because they believe to be ghetto. In the essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal,”, after a student said she wanted to take AP college classes, one student named Fortino, said, “Listen to me, the owners of the sewing factories need laborers” (216). Fortino was implying that his classmates don’t belong in colleges, he believes such thing because he repeatedly said that they were ghetto. Working class students believe that they aren’t good enough to actually earn a college degree. They believe such thing because of what they have been surrounded by, and the courses they take due to the lack of AP classes, or any sort of ROP classes. Working class schools don’t have enough space to have them choose and take electives that’ll meet up to college expectations. Instead, they are forced to take elective classes such as hairdressing in order to graduate. Some of the working class students have taken hairdressing classes twice. So many working class students believe that they should start to learn what they’ll be doing and what they see themselves doing in the future. Because of the segregation in their school these working class students believe they are ghetto, and are fit for such jobs. It is because of the classes they are forced to take, it is …show more content…
Working class students seem to get fed up, due to emotional stress and frustration, causing these students to act out and start fights with their classmates. For example in the essay “I Just Wanna be Average” it says, “One day Billy lost it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him strike out with his right arm and catch Dweetz across the neck” (153). Due to the lack of reading material and having been reading the same old text over and over again, working class students get frustrated. Therefore, they act out and hurt their classmates. Because they aren’t engaged in their everyday text, any little thing that is bothering them makes them become fed up leading them to act out towards another classmate. In addition, in the essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal,” a working class students believes that her race isn’t worth anything. Therefore damaging her emotionally because she believes that if everyone that is a part of her race were to disappear, nobody would care, they would simply be relieved that they are gone. They believe to be worthless. This is all due to the inequalities in the school system. If all schools whether they be elite or working class were treated the same and given the same exact opportunity to succeed, nobody would feel superior or