The inadequacies that California is providing to the low income public schools is pushing their youth to quit school and find another form of education and unity. Why would they feel value for education when it is obvious that they are not valued themselves? Many of the schools they attend are not functionable, don’t offer resources, and have poor teachers. Schools are suppose to provide a safe haven for kids, allowing for endless learning and inquiring. As well part of the safe haven should be the idea that the kids have someone they can turn to or at least someone who believes in them and wants them to pursue their highest potential. The sum of all of this should lead a child in the direction of wanting to excel and pursue what they want for themselves. It is part of our basic needs; we want someone to care for us and invest in us. Yet the opposite is happening in the inner city schools. So it is not a surprise when the students dropout and turn to other supports systems who provide the basic needs.
After reading chapter five I realized that joining a gang might be more enticing for inner city kids than getting an education. Not that I am putting value into gangs but they offer so much more to these kids than the schools are. To start they offer a means for earning money. With the education the public schools are providing the kids don’t stand a chance getting a job that will help support an efficient life. A gang provides access to an income, drug dealing for example. Gangs also provide a ‘family’ for kids. People to support and protect them. This may not be a functional family but it is supporting and looking out for the individuals. And the gangs also invest in the kids, they may not be leading them on a great path, but they are leading them down a path. This is more than some of the schools are doing.
If we want students in any inner city area to invest and care about their education then we must show them that we do as well, and more than other outside groups. For them to achieve the best we have to give them the best. And sadly right now they feel the best is not within the school system. Until that changes were are going to continue having high dropout rates in these areas and parts of society that are uneducated and not functioning members of our society.
I think you have some valid points in this posting. But I also think that gangs fill the void of a stable family structure that that is absent in many of the homes of at-risk children in the inner cities. While I realize that improving the schools, curriculum, physical structures, and teachers (administration too) will help to improve education for these areas, I do not think that will eliminate the problems of gangs in the inner cities. It may however, open the eyes of some students to the possibility that there is another option out there for them.
ReplyDeleteBreanna, I completely agree with your “quit school, join a gang” model. I really think if our education system/government doesn’t do something to show more compassion through the commitment to educating our students, then what kind of message is coming across? In our book, The Flat World and Education, p. 152, there was a comment from a student who answered the question, “What would your (ideal) school look like? This girl’s response was primarily about adequate supplies and a caring, respectful teacher. As I think of my own student population, I want to be the stable, caring person, they are possibly lacking in their home life. I know that states, such as California, have many wonderful teachers, who are that caring element, but the overall message being portrayed is really something other than that.
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