Menlo Park Academy is a chaotic school with no order. The board is made of parents who only want the best for their child. Parents practically run the school and the only students who get the advanced classes are students of parents who fight the school for their child, even if other students are qualified. The school is run by parents, it 's completely chaotic. Menlo Park Academy simply takes the good, gifted from public schools, and hurts the public school system. Of course Menlo’s test scores are high, they have all gifted students. The teachers are a hit or miss, some are really great, and some not so much. Most teachers also play favorites, and make it obvious. There is a ‘dean of students’ (yes, a dean of students in a k-8 school), who play 's obvious favorites, allows his favorites to do anything, while the ones he doesn 't like get punished.
I found this article to be very interesting and extremely heartbreaking. Jonathan Kozol paints a vivid and grim picture of predominantly black or Hispanic schools in and around some the largest cities in America. Even in areas where the distribution of races is somewhat equal, Kozol tells us that most white families would rather send their kids by bus to a school where more than half of the students are white. Some schools, like Martin Luther King Jr. high school in New York City, are located purposefully in upper middle class white neighborhoods in hopes to draw in a more diverse selection of children, i.e. more white kids. It seems however, according to Kozol, that this plan not only did not work, but has made it a prime and obvious example of modern segregation in our schools. One teacher Kozol interviewed at a school where 95 percent of the students were either black, asian, hispanic or native american, told him “not with bitterness but wistfully--of seeing clusters of white parents and their children each morning on the corner of a street close to the school, waiting for a bus that took the children to a predominately white school”. (p.203)
In the article, “Savage Inequalities: Children in U.S. Schools”, by Jonathan Kozol, discusses the inequalities that exist in class differences. Money is spent more in wealthy areas than in the poor or low class areas. The schools located in the wealthy areas are funded more and receive more supplies and better teachers. The schools in the not-so-wealthy areas do not have the best teachers and they need better teachers than the students in the wealthy areas. Kozol displays how schools are still segregated as they were in the past. Not to the extent of the past, but segregation has not ended as revealed in Kozol’s article. In the schools located in the poor areas, there were more black and Hispanics attending there than in the
Many people think that most American schools are satisfactory. That is far from what is actually happening. The harsh reality is that schools that are unsatisfactory do exist. In Jonathan Kozol’s “Fremont High School”, he points out the flaws of a high school located somewhere in Los Angeles. This helps shine light on differences in the quality of education in various areas of the country. Kozol’s “Fremont High School” shows that the school system is corrupt and the school is lacking in funds to help students get the proper education for college and success in their future.
The essay by kozol shows the harsh reality about the uneven funds and attention given to the schools were many poor and minority students attend. During a visit to Fremont high school in 2003, Kozol claims that school that are in poverty stricken areas appear to worse than school that are in high class neighborhoods. Throughout the essay, kozol correlates between the south central Los Angeles high school and the wealthy high schools that are in the same district. When he learned the graduation requirement at Fremont and the classes the school had offer to accomplish this requirements, Kozol was amazed at how academically pointless the graduation requirements at Fremont and the classes to accomplish them were. Kazol compared this to AP classes
Anyon article discussed students of different social class background is exposed to different types of educational knowledge. Anyon used four distinctive schools; working class, middle class, affluent and executive, located in New Jersey. The education the students received reflected the social class level. In the working class school, the principle had did not know the history of the school building. The teachers did not motive or believe in their student’s success. The school knowledge was based on facts and simple skills. Students was just given information without explanation or failed to make their own choices. The common theme was active and passive behaviors amongst students. The middle class school, the ethnic background and school
In her narrative essay “The Sanctuary of School,” Lynda Barry recounts a story from her childhood that illustrates her relationships at school vs her relationships at home. She tells us how public school was her sanctuary from her unstable home life. It was a stable environment that she depended on. She tells us this when she says ,"[F]or the next six hours I was going to enjoy a thoroughly secure, warm and stable world." Unlike at home, her school was a place she was noticed and cared about.
In Jonathan Kozol’s “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid” he explains that the difference between the low class schools and the urban class schools inequality by the lack of importance, the low funds, and the segregation. Kozol admits that no effort is put into the minority public schools that are isolated and deeply segregated. “At a middle school named for Dr. King in Boston, black and Hispanic children make up 98 percent of the enrollment”(Kozol 349). The schools that are named after Civil Rights leaders shows no proof of what these people were trying to succeed. Kozol comments on the extremely low funds in these minority schools. In one school he illustrates how dirty and grimy the schools are. “I had made repeated
A dystopia is defined as a society in which the conditions of life include misery, oppression, poverty, etc. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag lives in a dystopia, where books are banned. Written in 1953, it is set in the future. We may not consider our world to be a dystopia, but the society envisioned by Bradbury strongly resembles our own. It is a world with violence among young adults, dwindling emphasis placed on education, and increasing threats of nuclear war.
“All systems of the society are meant to serve the mind, not the mind to serve the systems,” by Abhijit Naskar. The Rhetorical situation in the essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid” by Jonathan Kozol happens to be the differences in school systems by ethnicity rates. It is interpreted by the speaker that minority races are shown by the government they are not equally important because they have a lack of funding, old school buildings, and only are introduced to the races they see every day unlike the white schools who are introduced to various ethnic groups. The readers would refer to the speaker as passionate about the government making an effort to fix the school
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.
Americans, when they think of Civil Rights probably think of the Civil Rights Movement. During the civil rights era African Americans fought to be treated as equals by fighting segregated schools, for their voting rights, and for their basic right that every American has today. To say that education is our civil rights movement of today is inaccurate. Antonio Alvarez’s narrative “Out Of My Hands” focuses on a financially struggling family, but proving that they can succeed. David L. Kirp’s article “The Secret to Fixing Bad Schools” reinforces the idea that even though a community might be poor, that doesn’t have to reflect the quality of education students receive. Horace Mann, known as the godfather of American public education, expresses
As Kozol writes in Savage Inequalities. “The difference in spending between very wealthy suburbs and poor cities is not always as extreme as this in Illinois”(66). Throughout the years there has been an extreme problem with poverty in East St. Louis especially in the lower part where proximately african american people live. In East St.Louis there is a fine that separates the poor and the wealthy and each stay in there own lane. In north of East St Louis where predominately white people there no problem. Most people are living their happy lives and sending their kids to some of the state of the art private while a little bit across the bridge there is african american people struggling to find jobs because of the lack of resources. Most of
In Lynda Barry’s essay, The Sanctuary of School, she expresses her views on the economics of public education through her personal issues of being a neglected child. She describes her childhood involving neglectful parents and having only her brother to lean on. Barry’s personal testimony does deflect from her main point that budget cuts in public schools damage children of neglect even more. Her stance is not very effective since she does not elaborate on her main point with any statistics, facts, and data for support. Although, Barry has good diction and imagery, she deters from her main focus and did not support her central
Michie’s “Holler If You Hear Me” and Kozol’s “Still Separate Still Unequal” are quite alike, considering they both discuss south side Chicago schools. However, the differences between the two texts far outweigh the similarities. Although there are a few similarities, such as both authors discussing and calling out the issues of segregation in their texts, there are many differences, such as Michie’s work being a narrative while Kozol’s is not and only contains anecdotes. In addition, Michie focuses on the experiences and opinions of students, instead of also discussing the physical state of inner-city schools or the strategies of teachers.