Reflection on Power and Education in Schooling

So basically what we learned in class and from the video is that there are a lot of different types of schools. At first it was pretty much just public and private, but now there's public, private (secular and religious), charter, choice, and homeschooling. And there are some different reasons why parents choose (or don't choose) to send their children to a certain type of school. They might think their children will get a better education in a private school or feel that religion must play a part in their child's education. They can choose to send their children to a different school in a district if their child attends a failing school (one that does not make their AYP).


Some argue that school choice is really only a choice for the wealthy, people who can afford to make the decision to change the school that their child attends. I agree with this because people from low-income families often have no choice but to send their children to a school that has policies with which they don't agree, or is otherwise insufficient to them. Even if they are in a failing school, there is some cost attached with moving schools, and it is often a long-term cost like transportation to school every day. Plus, then the student often doesn't get to experience extracurricular activities like clubs and school sports because they occur before and after school and their transportation doesn't allow for this.

Charter schools are a good idea, in theory; I still don't really have a full understanding about them, though, because they're sort of new and evolving. The school that I'm doing my service learning at, Carmen High School, is a charter school with an emphasis on science and technology. I think they're still on the first 5-year charter. They have a slightly longer school day (8:20-4:10) and if they get lower than a C on any quiz, test, or overall class, they have to either retake the quiz or test or retake the class the next semester or in summer school. Also, if they fail a quiz or test, they have to stay from 4:10 to 6:00 the next week and study/get homework help/make corrections on the test in order to pass it the next time. It's pretty intense, and most of the kids I've talked to after school who had to come in don't hate it, because they knew the rules and knew that it would happen if they failed a test. I think that charter schools, then, are good because it's a public school that can try new things, and in this case, it seems to be helping the students. (This is just from what I've observed in Carmen).

I went to public school in Aurora, IL (Waubonsie Valley HS) and I really had nothing to complain about. We had new textbooks, good lunch, SmartBoards, etc., but I lived in the suburbs of Chicago. I know that most of the CPS high schools are in pretty bad shape. We did a school exchange with an inner city school, for example, where we spent a day there and they spent a day at Waubonsie. My partner from the other school, Elizabeth, told me about how cramped it was but I didn't really get it until I went. They had 20-30 students crammed in a tiny classroom that was about half the size of a normal classroom, and in all the classes I attended with Elizabeth, nothing really got done. The students talked the whole time, while the teacher sat at her desk looking tired. It seemed crazy to me, but I know that there are a lot of schools that are in trouble this way.

I think that if public schools were improved, we wouldn't need all these other options. However, right now it is just a fact of life that some areas are richer than other, and because of this, some schools are in much better shape than another. A distribution of wealth would be good, I guess, but that's a fine line between a healthy school system and socialism. Good in theory, but often bad in execution.

Blog #1

     So far, I'm 6 chapters into Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Patillo Beals. Up until now, what we know about Melba is that she has just started the attempt to integrate Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas. It was a horrible first day of school by anyone's standards. First of all, the nine black students who signed up to attend Central High were made to wait a year after the judge's ruling for integration. Since they didn't have to jump right into the battle after they signed up, it must have been even harder to force themselves to go to school that first morning because they didn't have the momentum from the instant adrenaline of signing up and arguing with their parents about it, etc. Nonetheless, nine of the original students showed up the first day.
     The main thing that bothers me about this first day endeavor is that the police and other figures of authority did nothing to protect the students and their families from the segregationists threatening and even attacking them. The force and manpower to hold off the hostile people was there, it just wasn't utilized. I understand that it was the norm back then to support segregation, especially if you were white, but it's still shocking to read about. I don't think I would have had the strength if I had been in Elizabeth Eckford's place that day, having obscenities screamed at me and being followed at the heels by hostile segregationists, to walk away and not give in to the fear and dread. (A sidenote: I felt really terrible for Elizabeth, who didn't know where to meet the other students because they'd had no way to get hold of her, and who was basically stranded amidst violent segregationists. However, her strength that day has immortalized her image as the embodiment of courage and influence. Go Elizabeth.)
     Another thing I noticed is how helpless the students' parents must have felt. They were letting their children put themselves in great, potentially fatal danger, and being told that from friends and neighbors. While they probably felt terrible and helpless about this fact, they must have seen in their children the strength and fight that was necessary to make a change in the world, and put that above their individual well-being. This is unfathomably difficult for a parent to do, but look what happened: the ends justified the means, in this case.
     Those are the main things I wanted to discuss about Warriors Don't Cry in chapters 5 and 6 that we hadn't discussed in class. I feel that they're important to the reader's understanding of both the difficulty and the reward of the students' battle, as well as understanding the psychology of the various characters.