Education in AmericaPublic schooling is offered to a diversity of cultures. People from all backgrounds are welcome to attend. But whether you get a good education really depends on what school you go to. There are basically two types of schools one can attend; the rich school or the poor school. Both are examples of schools that partake in the ever widening gap between rich and poor schools in Jonathan Kozal’s Essay: A Tale of Two Schools: How Poor Children are lost to the World. The effects of the financial standing of these schools greatly impact the rate of success of the students. The conditions of the school are essential to the impact of education on the students. The schools are all financed differently and depending on where the school is located, a school could either have a lot of money or barely any at all. New Trier is located in Chicago’s suburbs. It is one of the state’s best funded schools. It is located on twenty-seven acres of land, and has 7 gyms. One wing, the physical education wing, alone has three gyms, a dance studio, a wrestling room and a fencing room. The school also has an Olympic pool. It offers up-to-date technology labs. Never would Du Sable ever compare to the luxuries that New Tier offers. Du Sable has one full size track and field. It has no campus and schoolyard and it looks like a three story Tudor. It is located on a Chicago City block. Surprisingly enough, both schools are funded by the same organization: the U.S. Government. Little is done to improve the conditions of Du Sable, but New Trier is rising constantly in excellence and education.
The conditions of the schools discussed earlier greatly impact the success rate of the students. Du Sable’s students have a graduation rate of 25%. Only 350 of the 600 freshman apply for courses for the following school year. The students at Du Sable lack common educational skills. Students in their senior year can’t pronounce words, common words in fact, that are used on the SAT’s. Students also don’t know well known capitols like Moscow and Berlin and to what countries they are the capitols to. The bright students at Du Sable can’t partake in excellent programs like New Trier’s that offer special programs for bright students to enhance their intelligence. New Trier offers special courses in drama, art, music, and languages. The class sizes are small. Classes are made up of about 24 students for the more intelligent classes and around 15 students for the slower classes. The student’s in New Trier are more educated because of the environment they are in during their schooling. The public schooling offered at both these schools is very different. New Trier has almost no competition (well, at least none) from Du Sable. Kozal claims that Du Sable is “disjoined from the worlds view, even from the basic reference points, of the American experience.”(pg)(64) Du Sable is still falling farther and farther from the state’s standards for education. It has that risk of closing its doors forever. While the students struggle to go to college, to stay in school, we continue to lead our everyday lives and leave Du Sable to go unnoticed and unchanged. Because people fail to notice the conditions of the poor schools, they just keep getting worse. Once in a while, a mayor or governor will talk about improving the schools and set a goal to improve the educations of all students so that they are all on the same level. As hard as they try though, that doesn’t happen. There will always be the poor schools and there will always be the rich schools. The little things matter, and making the schools more diverse culturally could be one little thing that will help close this ever growing gap. Joining together both the schools that have a majority of white people and the schools that have a majority of black people offers a variety of new experiences for the students. When the students grow older, hopefully they will turn around and improve the schools like the ones they went to, or even, just to notice all those unnoticed schools and to do something about that. |