The issue of whether selective schools justly divide students from their peers has been on debate since NSW Education Minister Rob Stoke recently mentioned he would like to open selective schools to local students. In response to the issue, Rachael Jacobs argues that selective schools segregate children unfairly in her online publication published January 13, 2018, “End the selective school obsession.” Accompanied by a photograph, Grace Leung contends that selective schools allow talented and disadvantaged students to reach their full potential in her alternative view published 10 days later, “We’d all miss out if selective schools were discontinued.”
Immediately establishing selective schools as “equitable” and “unethical,” Jacobs aggressively uses loaded language coupled with the question, “why is NSW obsessed with [selective
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Adding to this imagery, Leung sarcastically rejects Jacobs’ ideas of mixed-ability classrooms by using the question, “should we keep him with the others in hopes that keeping them together will make everyone else better?” Parents are urged to feel as if selective schooling better accommodates children for their own abilities rather than the abilities of others. Just as Jacobs finishes her article with inclusive language, so too does Leung by stating, “we all miss out if options and opportunities are taken away.” Leung suggests that parents, students, and teachers would “all” suffer from the abolishment of selective schools, as it encourages them to feel as if selective schools promote better education and individual
He argues children cannot have the expectation placed on them to rise to their full potential when the building they learn in has structural problems and leaks. Barber describes some inner-city schools as “...leaky, broken down habitats…” (Barber, 2016, p.216). People need to change the buildings and make them better. Children recognize the disregard that they face and will lose the will to care if they see that no one else cares about their education. If the leaders in the community do not care for the education of the adolescents then they cannot expect anything different from the adolescents themselves. The essay suggests that all schools should reach the same levels as the rich high school in the suburbs. “If we were serious, we would upgrade physical facilities so that every school met the minimum standards of our better suburban institutions.” (Barber, 2016, p.216) Although Barber’s argument remains illogical, the ide that all schools should meet the standards of the wealthiest schools, the fact remains that something must change. Barber does not provide a solution to create the necessary change, but he leaves that up to the reader, causing them to have to take action and think about what must be done. Again the phrase “If we were serious” comes as a call, yet people must become serious or nothing will change for the
Mr. Kozol provides his own socially conscious and very informative view of the issues facing the children and educators in this poverty ravaged neighborhood. Those forces controlling public schools, Kozol points out, are the same ones perpetuating inequity and suffering elsewhere; pedagogic styles and shapes may change, but the basic parameters and purposes remain the same: desensitization, selective information, predetermined "options," indoctrination. In theory, the decision should have meant the end of school segregation, but in fact its legacy has proven far more muddled. While the principle of affirmative action under the trendy code word ''diversity'' has brought unparalleled integration into higher education, the military and corporate America, the sort of local school districts that Brown supposedly addressed have rarely become meaningfully integrated. In some respects, the black poor are more hopelessly concentrated in failing urban schools than ever, cut off not only from whites but from the flourishing black middle class.
However, the students that are on the lower end of the achievement gap are caught between being members of a disadvantaged community and aspiring to be a part of the middle class. This causes them to have to adapt to the communities that they are a part of. This act of adapting to the difference in normative expectations is what Morton refers to as “straddling the gap” or “code switching”. These students not only have to navigate differences in language and dress codes but they have to switch dispositions to ones that are unfamiliar to them, which can come into conflict with those at home (Morton 276). There are benefits to the code-switching that these students do. For example, multicultural societies are characterized by the intermingling of cultural communities and the students who belong to different communities have the greatest position to help new relationships form between them (Morton 277). However, educational systems are being used to potentially alienate the students from their communities values and relationships in order to form them for a labor market. Morton believes that “whether educational institutions are justified in undertaking the task of rectifying this injustice by shaping a
First Kozol effectively argues to the reader the reality of segregation and inequalities that face our children in public schools by his brilliant use of pathos. He is able to stir a reader’s emotions, through his various testimonies from students, teachers, and facility and arousing imagery. He presents readers with many student testimonials that really paint a vivid portrait of what these children are seeing, feeling, and needing. For example, in one fifteen year old child’s testimony he conveys a sense of this heart wrenching pain, when she tries to explain her understanding of the racial segregation of her neighborhoods and schools. She states, “It’s as if you have been put in a garage where, if they don’t have room for something but aren’t sure if they should throw it out, they put it there where they don’t need to think of it again.” Kozol then solidifies his argument by including a question from the sixteen year old child next to the previous child that states that, “if people in New York woke up one day and learned that we were gone, that we had simply died or left for somewhere else, how would they feel” (205)? Then finally Kozol completes the finishing blow of emotions to the reader wit...
The issue of whether charter or public schools are more beneficial for students has been an ongoing debate. The question that arise is which type provides a better education. Having gone to a charter high school myself, I got to see and experience first-hand the benefits of going to a charter school as well as realizing the issues charter schools face here in Oklahoma. These problems need to address in order to guarantee that students are getting the best education that they can get. We are facing an epidemic today with our education system and charter schools could be the solution. There may be opponents to the idea of having charter schools, but they have been wildly successful lately and are quickly expanded throughout the states. This is due to the fact that charter schools can benefit people economically, educationally, and as well as socially.
America demands that all youth receive an education and that its educational system is free and open to all—regardless of class, race, ethnicity, age, and gender. However, the system is failing. There is still inequality in the educational system, and minorities’ experience with education is shaped by discrimination and limited access, while white people’s experience with education is shaped by privilege and access. The educational experience for minorities is still segregated and unequal. This is because the number of white children that are withdrawn from school by their parents is higher than the number of people of color enrolling. White parents are unconsciously practicing the idea of “blockbusting,” where minorities begin to fill up a school; whites transfer their children to a school that has a small or no minority population. They unconsciously feel like once their child is in a school full of minorities that school would not get the proper funding from the federal government. Bonilla-Silvia (2001) states that “[i]nner-city minority schools, in sharp contrast to white suburban schools, lack decent buildings, are over-crowded, [and] have outdated equipment…” (97). The “No Child Left Behind” Act, which holds schools accountable for the progress of their students, measures students’ performance on standardized tests. Most white children that are in suburban schools are given the opportunity to experience education in a beneficial way; they have more access to technology, better teachers, and a safe environment for learning. Hence, white students’ experience with the education system is a positive one that provides knowledge and a path to success. Also, if their standardized testing is low, the government would give the school...
In Henry Lewis Gates’ article, The Debate Has Been Miscast from the Start, he reveals the advantages to having multiculturalism in the curriculum of America’s schools. He would argue that in order to create true diversity and understanding of cultural differences, the nation must provide its students with a wide array of opportunities to understand other cultures besides their own. Peggy McIntosh takes on a similar situation when she takes into consideration how she was taught diversity in schools as a child. She claims that dominance of the white race is unconsciously supported. She also describes how she did not receive the right kind of education that would teach her how to be aware of racism and how to be aware of her privileges as a white person. McIntosh desires change in the way that students are taught racism and the best way to accomplish this is for schools to incorporate multiculturalism into curriculum. If this is accomplished, future generations have the ability to be aware of cultural differences and they would be less likely to be perpetrators of color blind racism.
“There is exactly one sentence about why schools should want to discriminate… It reads, ‘When the state’s most elite universities are less diverse, [a school official] said, it doesn’t provide our students with a level of diversity they need in order to learn about other cultures and other communities’…And that’s supposed to outweigh all these costs of discrimination; It is personally unfair, passes over better qualified students, and sets a disturbing legal, political, and moral precedent in allowing racial discrimination.”
Jonathan Kozol, an award winning writer, wrote the essay “Still separate, Still Equal” that focuses on primary and secondary school children from minority families that are living in poverty. There is a misconception in this modern age that historical events in the past have now almost abolished discrimination and segregation for the most part; however, “schools that were already deeply segregated
These students would be put into typical classroom settings. “All kids with the right support, the right technology, can learn the general curriculum”, said a teacher at the academy. This is showing how effective Habib is trying to show all students can try to be in typical classrooms and succeed with some effort and trying. The teachers have to put in a little more effort in making inclusion lesson plans and activities that accommodate each student. Habib shows that if the children learn the differences inside the classrooms, it could help them later in their
...economics and history. The unequal attitude is due to economics as well and how America has a faulty tax system to equalize our schools. It is also up to the students and parents themselves to acquire the knowledge needed to pursue a better life. Kozol has shown that America’s education system needs improvement to equalize the education received for each student. The article has expressed a spiraling out of control situation that needs to be halted and changed sooner than later to help America’s future. I find it disturbing that those that are the poorest have to suffer and have a low chance at changing their children’s lives without making major changes now. What will it take to create an educational system that works for all and in spirit of Kozol, what will it take to integrate those with a white complexion, African Americans, Hispanics, and other ethnicities?
America’s school system and student population remains segregated, by race and class. The inequalities that exist in schools today result from more than just poorly managed schools; they reflect the racial and socioeconomic inequities of society as a whole. Most of the problems with schools boil down to either racism in and outside the school system or financial disparity between wealthy and poor school districts. Because schools receive funding through local property taxes, low-income communities start at an economic disadvantage. Less funding means fewer resources, lower quality instruction and curricula, and little to no community involvement.
Though, the rule motivation to desegregate neighborhoods is very difficult by a growing ignorance of the nation’s racial history. It must be talked about improving the social and economic conditions that bring too many students to school unprepared to take advantage of what even the best schools have to offer. There is a strong feeling of racial inequality in today's school systems, which harmfully effects the quality of education that its students receive. A schools potential to give an appropriate education often depends on the viewpoint on racial backgrounds of its students. America's school systems seem to be returning to their past state of segregation. There is an unfortunately small number of minority children who are lucky enough to attend such quality schools but white children defiantly make up the majority of upper class high. “All of them, of course, were white, and desegregation was far from their minds” (Margolick
Slee (2001) argues that inclusive schooling demands schools to recognise all types of difference from disabilities, ethnicity, gender, class and sexuality. Furthermore, he challenges schools to accept difference, to encourage and promote flexibility thus benefiting not only the curriculum and pedagogy, but the community and students themselves (Slee, 2001).
By labelling the schools from decile 1 through to decile 10 as it is seen today, instils a belief that your child will not get as good of an education in a lower decile school then you would at a higher decile school. This way of prejudiced thinking has developed into something that is colloquially known as ‘white flight’ or ‘geographic fallacy’. White flight, or geographical fallacy, is where families with enough wealth intentionally move their child into a higher decile school mesh block. This consequently enhances one community at the cost of another community. Because of this manipulation of the communities due to misconceptions of the decile ratings, the wealth is becoming even more concentrated around higher decile schools. This leaves even less wealth for the lower decile schools (Education and Science Committee of the 46th Parliament, 2003). Additionally, Gordon (2015) makes the observation that lower decile schools have seen their roles getting smaller over the last decade, whereas the higher decile schools are becoming larger due to the exodus of wealthier families. This exodus only serves to obscure the lower decile schools’ mesh blocks. The fewer students that attend a particular school, the less funding