The Benefits of Attending an Inner-City School

1809 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Problems in inner city schools

The Advantages of Attending an Inner-City School

Imagine having a gun stare you straight in the face. What do you do? How do you react? Luckily most people do not have to face a situation like this in their lives. However, this happened to me once while walking to my high school which is located in the middle of a large city. Another young man who was walking past me decided to show off in front of his friends and show them how "manly" he really was. Without saying a word, he walked up to me and began punching me. Once I began fighting back, he pulled out a gun and pointed it straight at me. After seeing this, I ran as fast as I could towards my school, hearing the group of boys laughing hysterically behind me. While this occurrence by no means typifies St. Ignatius High School, going to school did prove to be dangerous at times. While most people hold the belief that inner-city schools can only hinder the learning process, I would argue that these schools provide experiences which enrich one's education simply because of their location in the city.

To clarify this point, I must first describe the ways in which Saint Ignatius High School is different from the typical inner-city school. Most people define inner-city schools as institutions which are in the city and have a comparatively inferior education system. This private, Catholic institution consists mostly of white students who come from wealthy families. Although Saint Ignatius is in the city, it also gives its students one of the best educations in the state. In fact, the surrounding city contrasts the school in almost every way. Robberies and fights occur almost daily in this poor area of the city. Mexicans make up the majority of the residents in the surrounding neighborhood. The minute I stepped off the campus of the school, I realized I had entered an entirely new world.

Society usually tends to focus on the negative side of inner-city schools. Many people like to stereotype these schools which, while these generalizations may be true in some cases, tend to be exaggerated most of the time. People think that the students of these schools receive inferior educations. My school is regarded as one of the best in the state. People also believe that violence occurs on a daily basis, both in the school itself and in the surrounding city.

Show More
Related

  • Critical Analysis Of Front High School By Jonathan Kozol

    710 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Fremont High School” an essay written by Jonathan Kozol presents a high school in need of transformation and support with educational advancement. Kozol writes about the limited educational opportunities available to the students that attend this lower class institution. Kozol addresses the overcrowding of this institution and lack of consistent staffing. The purpose of Kozol 's essay is to illustrate that lack of opportunity based on social class is an active crisis in the United States educational system, whereas addressing this crisis in the essay, Kozol would hope to achieve equal opportunities available to all socioeconomic class institutions.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Still Separate Still Unequal

    1199 Words  | 3 Pages

    The essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal”, by Jonathan Kozol, discusses the reality of inner-city public school systems, and the isolation and segregation of inequality that students are subjected to; as a result, to receive an education. Throughout the essay, Kozol proves evidence of the inequality that African American and Hispanic children face in the current school systems.

    Read More

  • Unequal Education in America: Urban vs Suburban Education

    2470 Words  | 5 Pages

    The gap between the nation’s best and worst public schools continues to grow. Our country is based on freedom and equality for all, yet in practice and in the spectrum of education this is rarely the case. We do not even have to step further than our own city and its public school system, which many media outlets have labeled “dysfunctional” and “in shambles.” At the same time, Montgomery County, located just northwest of the District in suburban Maryland, stands as one of the top school systems in the country. Within each of these systems, there are schools that excel and there are schools that consistently measure below average. Money alone can not erase this gap. While increased spending may help, the real problem is often rooted in the complex issues of social, cultural, and economic differences. When combined with factors involving the school itself and the institution that supports it, we arrive at what has been widely known as the divide between the suburban and urban schools. Can anything actually be done to reverse this apparent trend of inequality or are the outside factors too powerful to change?

    Read More

  • Special Admissions High Schools in New York City: Unequal Opportunites for Everyone

    1325 Words  | 3 Pages

    As a student at a special admissions public school I was very aware of the problems that existed at my school, but also took for granted the advantages my school had over "regular" public schools. Our ceiling was falling down, we had no windows or ventilation, and we had teachers that didn't teach, but we also had a computer network, beautiful grand pianos, small classes, a Jazz Chorus that took a trip to Europe, AP courses, and a ridiculous number of graduates attending Ivy League universities. Some of the "regular" public schools might have had windows, but that was really the only advantage, after that we had them beat by quite a lot.

    Read More

  • The Chicano Movement in the LA School System

    861 Words  | 2 Pages

    Imagine seeing 10,000 of your classmates walking out of your school because they wanted a better education - a better way of life. In the 1960s’ Chicano students were being “pushed out”(Esparza) of school or being pushed towards vocational programs. East L.A was home to schools were “one out of every four Chicano’s completed high school”(Esparza). Instructors and the school board alike did not have an interest in helping Chicanos finish school to become someone other than a laborer and was expected of them to keep being a laborer. In “Taking Back the Schools”, Sal Castro a high school counselor claims, “I think the bottom line is the lack of concern of the teachers towards the kids and whether the kids were really getting an education or not...the reality set in that the teachers weren’t really concern for the kids.”(Esparza).

    Read More

  • First Amendment Rights of Public School Students

    1088 Words  | 3 Pages

    How the judicial branch rules in cases relating to the 1st and how they relate that to all the rights of public school students. This includes anything from flag burning to not saluting the flag to practicing religion in school. The main point of this paper is to focus on the fact that schools have a greater ability to restrict speech than government.

    Read More

  • Institutionalism In Uprooting Racism, By Paul Kivel

    985 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first condition that has come to affect the teenagers at this school due to institutionalized racism is the extremely low budget the schools are give when contrasted with the west side schools. As Kivel notes “we can choose where we want to live and choose safer neighborhoods with better schools” (Kivel 31). Although this issue

    Read More

  • First Amendment In Public Schools

    911 Words  | 2 Pages

    Separation of church and state is an issue in the forefront of people’s minds as some fight for their religious freedoms while others fight for their right to not be subjected to the religious beliefs of anybody else. Because public schools are government agencies they must operate under the same guidelines as any other government entity when it comes to religious expression and support, meaning they cannot endorse any specific religion nor can they encourage or require any religious practice. This issue becomes complicated when students exercise their right to free speech by expressing their religious beliefs in a school setting. An examination of First Amendment legal issues that arise when a student submits an essay and drawing of a religious

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On School Shootings

    1212 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is a sad time in American history when one can easily recount recent school shootings in their own area. This ease stems from a sharp increase in the number of firearms brought into elementary and middle schools across the country, with an intense focus on the issue beginning after the shooting of 20 children from Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. Most school shooters are male, white, and often upper middle class. They are also more, often than not, under some type of mental stress that is causing them to create this type of violence in our communities. In fact, many school shooters are never suspected of doing any harm to their peers and teachers until it is much too late.

    Read More

  • Gun Control: American vs the NRA

    1489 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is a Friday afternoon in Charlesbay High School. Students are piling into the lunch lines awaiting hot pizza, fresh French fries and ice-cold sodas. As the students discuss what they are going to do after the football game and how their 1st hour test was, a gunshot is heard not far away. The students are ordered to stay low to the ground by school security guards. None of the students know what is happening outside the lunch lines. What is going on is a 17-year old frenetic boy who attends Charlesbay, got upset with a couple students. He was sick of hearing them call him “dumb” or “butterball” and pushing him around the hallways. Robby, we’ll call him, took matters into his own hands and decided to do something about his bullies. The way Robby obtained his gun was by a friend, an older friend. This lethal weapon caused the death of 3 students and 5 injuries. What was just explained seems to be a typical storyline heard on the news daily.

    Read More

  • Should Guns be Allowed on College Campuses?

    1260 Words  | 3 Pages

    School shootings have altered American history greatly over the past two decades. From 1997 to 2007, there have been more than 40 school shootings, resulting in over 70 deaths and many more injuries. School shoot-outs have been increasing in number dramatically in the past 20 years. There are no boundaries as to how old the child would be, or how many people they may kill or injure. At Mount Morris Township, Michigan, on February 29th, 2000, there was a 6 year old boy who shot and killed another 6 year old girl at the Buell Elementary School with a .32 caliber pistol. And although many shootings have occurred at High Schools or Middle Schools, having more guns on those campuses would not be a good environment for children to grow up in. However, on a college campus, the pupils attending are not children anymore; the age range is from 17 to mid 20’s. Therefore they understand the consequences associated to the use of weapons and have gained more maturity. In April 16th, 2007, at Blacksburg, Virginia, there was a shooting rampage enacted by Sung-Hui Cho (23 years, from Centreville, VA) who fired over 170 rounds, killing 32 victims, before taking his own life at the Virginia Tech campus. Colleges and Universities would be a much safer place, for student and teacher, if guns were permitted on campus for self-defense purposes.

    Read More

  • Problems in the Inner City Schools

    2038 Words  | 5 Pages

    Noguera, P. A. (2003). City Schools and the American Dream. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Retrieved June 5, 2010, Web.

    Read More

  • Essay On Controversy Over Religion In Schools

    1433 Words  | 3 Pages

    This plainly states that public school teachers, principals, and boards are required to be religiously neutral. They may not promote a particular religion as being superior to any other, and may not promote religion in general as superior to a secular approach to life. They also may not promote secularism in general as superior to a religious approach to life, be antagonistic to religion in general or a particular religious belief, be antagonistic to secularism, and they must neither advance nor inhibit religion (Religion in Public).

    Read More

  • The Practice of Religion in Public Schools

    749 Words  | 2 Pages

    The “establishment” or “religion” clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (Education Week, 2003, para. 2). It is from this clause that the idea of separation of church and state comes. It is also the basis for much of the debate regarding the practice of religion in public schools (Education Week, 2003). One of the big questions regarding the religion issue is where to draw the line between separation of church and state and religious freedom. The practice of religion in public schools can balance these two ends by allowing students to individually exercise their religious freedom, so long as they do not interfere with that of other students.

    Read More

  • Against the Prohibition of Posting the Ten Commandments in Public Schools

    983 Words  | 2 Pages

    Education Week talks about the freedom and practice of religion stated in the United States Constitution and how the government has altered that in their article, “Religion in Schools”. They touch base on how “under God” was taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance and elaborate how students can participate in religious clubs outside of school because of the placement of the federal Equal Access Act of 1984.

    Read More

More about The Benefits of Attending an Inner-City School

Open Document