Case Study Of Jamal's Life

In his essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid,” Jonathan Kozol brings our attention to the apparent growing trend of racial segregation within America’s urban and inner-city schools (309-310). Kozol provides several supporting factors to his claim stemming from his research and observations of different school environments, its teachers and students, and personal conversations with those teachers and students.

Jay Macleod’s ethnography, Ain’t No Makin It, sheds light on the institute of education in America and how the country’s capital economy both mirrors and produces inequality by creating hierarchies that make social mobility obsolete. He does this through the use of two groups of predominantly Caucasian and predominantly African American youth who reside in the same low income neighborhood and attend the same school. He soon learned that in contrast to the Hallway Hangers, the predominantly white group who for the majority believed that there was no escape from their socioeconomic background, the Brothers, the predominantly African American group do aspire to hold middle class jobs in the future that provided stable incomes and commit to long term relationships with significant others. However, in his pursuit to conclude his research on the two groups MacLeod found that with the exception of one or two, members from neither of the groups were able to climb up the social ladder and bring about change to their status. Although the two groups did share a common upbringing, they differed in race, beliefs, ideas, and attitudes and therefore their failure to achieve success cannot be seen as mutual.

Most inner city schools are not challenging their students and not allowing them to be creative. Yet, challenging students is their normal practice in the better school. On the other hand, all inner city schools should give their students with the same amount of education as private schools in order to better their education. There are different methods of teaching between these schools, especially when it comes to economics and geography. “Scholars in political economy and the sociology of knowledge have recently argued that public schools in complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes” (Anyon, 1980). Even though years after Brown versus Board of Education, where the Supreme Court declared segregation to be unconstitutional, Caucasian, African and Hispanic Americans continue to learn in different worlds. As long as each race has low incomes, there will always be unequal education.

In this paper, I will explore the aspects regarding racial inequality pertaining to education in the United States of America. It has come to my attention, based on my observations, that race is a definitive factor that plays a role in establishing socioeconomic status. In relation to socioeconomic status, variables correlating with race that I will be focusing on, is the educational and wealth aspects. An individual’s level of education is pivotal to establishing stable, consistent wealth and vice-versa; the access for quality education is inconsistent primarily among minority races/ethnicities. According to historical records ranging from the year 1980 to 2000, between Whites, Hispanics, African-Americans, and Native Americans, the educational attainment gap is widening (Kelly 2005). Education is seen to be a source of respect and key to gaining a higher income, which transfers over to greater wealth. Acknowledging the slow expansion of the educational attainment disparities, I argue that the society’s perceptions and actions addressing race perpetuates and produces social inequalities by limiting opportunities despite “equal” resources, privileges, and rights through social policies that have contributed towards the quality of America’s education system.

Children who grow up in a poor area go to school where there are 50 kids in one class and individual attention is never given, and children of high class families will go to schools that have smaller class sizes and individual attention. Even when a poor child goes to a better schoolteachers will question if the work done is their own and also only expect hard work from the rich kids. “if you are a child of low income parents, the chances are good that you will receive limited and often careless attention from adults in your high school.” Theodore Sizer “Horace’s Compromise,” “If you are the child of upper-middle income parents, the chances are good that you will receive substantial and careful attention.” (203) These quotes from another author showcase that school in America is often times based on the social standing of the parents.

Social Class and Education”. It opens by discussing research conducted in the 1960’s in an effort to identify factors contributing to differences in the academic achievement of Whites and Blacks (Banks & Banks, 2013). Researchers hypothesized that the achievement gaps were mainly the result of disparities in school resources and characteristics, but found that there is a high correlation between achievement and socioeconomic status (SES) (Banks & Banks, 2013). Furthermore, attention is drawn to the class stratification which exists in our educational system and works to maintain inequality through exclusion strategies such as ability grouping and tracking (Banks & Banks, 2013). Evidence of the correlation between social class and

Social class is a large faction of people who have similar positions in an economic system. In an exemplary world, all students would have an equal shot at success, excellent schools, and educators that dedicate themselves and their time to achieving this goal. However, social class can significantly affect a student's success, highlighting the correlation between low socioeconomic statuses and academic problems. In all social groups, class plays a significant role in the attainment of children in education. Unfortunately, this has always been the case and the effects are just more evident today. Families from high social classes are more likely to obtain a greater level of education than those in low social classes. Members of upper social classes tend to be better educated and have higher incomes; therefore, they are better able to supply educational advantages to their children as well. Being in a financially disadvantaged can also affect a child’s performance during school.  It is important, therefore, to examine the way in which education is distributed through social class. Between societal pressures, expectations and parental negligence, children can be negatively impacted in their pursuit for future success through their education as exemplified through “College Pressures” and “The Sanctuary of School”.

Throughout the text, the author includes various facts and pieces of information in order to further convey his argument. By doing this, Younge is able to increase the credibility of his ideas and gain the trust of readers. He writes, “In a 2012 report, UCLA’s Civil Rights Project noted: ‘Nationwide, the typical black student is now in a school where almost two out of every three classmates (64%) are low-income.’” By mentioning this statistic, he is able to back up his claim that schools are resegregating across America. Since the majority of black students attend low-income schools, they are given less resources to succeed; therefore, wealthy suburban families are able to continue creating private schools that many minorities cannot afford. The author also includes, “The discrepancy between black and white unemployment is the same as it was in 1963,” adding,

For my Argumentative Essay “Modern Day Re-Segregation in Today’s Schools”, I will be addressing Professor Kelly Bradford and my fellow students of Ivy Tech online English Composition 111-54H. As I chose Martin Luther King’s “Letter from A Birmingham Jail” as my core reading topic, I have gained an interest in not only the fight for civil rights that Mr. King lead in the 1950’s but have gotten interested in how there is still a large gap in equality in education due to the current situation of not only educational segregation but social and economic segregation. Through my research I have discovered that not only segregation in the schools is on the rise, but that socioeconomic segregation exists and is fueling the decrease in academic success by impoverished students. Through my writing I want to demonstrate that the socioeconomic isolation and segregation not only affects those that are directly bound by it, but that it affects every American in some form or other. I am submitting my writing as a formal academic manuscript.

This country’s education system was built on the back of meritocracy and was created to function as an objective measure of a child’s performance and their intelligence. It was the gateway to the American Dream, and provided everyone with an equal chance of success in America. It was a place of not only intellectual, but also personal growth. In her essay “From Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work,” Anyon argues that this is no longer the case. Anyon’s study concludes that from the fifth grade, students in poorer communities are groomed to succeed in low-class, blue collar jobs, while children in wealthy communities are prepared for more desirable careers. Anyon analyzes four different types of schools that all varied based on

In Jonathan Kozol “Still Separate Still Unequal” the author discusses how education for inner city school kids greatly differs from white school kids. “Schools that were already deeply segregated twenty-five or thirty years ago are no less segregated now” (Kozol 143). Although in 1954 the popular court case Brown vs Board of Education should have ended segregation in schools. The author shows how “the achievement gap between black and white children continues to widen or remain unchanged,” (Kozol 164) due to society’s grouping of privileges. Kozol relies heavily on logos to show how socio-economic privileges affects the education that inner city schools kids receive, those being blacks and Hispanics, compared to white schools kids.

In this exposition "From Still Separate, Still Unequal: America 's Educational Apartheid," the writer, Jonathan Kozol, constructs his paper in light of the meetings and perception that he had with a large number of the still racially isolated schools in America and his own thoughts about the circumstances. In the initial few areas of his article, Kozol focuses on the racial issue that he saw with a large portion of the public schools that he visited, for example, the government-funded schools in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and so on. More than ninety percent of the students being selected in those schools are African American, Hispanic, and students of another race. Different schools that are named after extraordinary individuals, for example, MLK and Thurgood Marshall, are racially isolated schools also.

Ever since the establishment of equal education in the United States, there has been a disparity in academic success between children of different races. The education of African American children has become a prime example of this. As discussed in the historical text, A Letter to My Nephew, which was written during the time of the civil rights movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s, African Americans were not given equal opportunities to succeed educationally and could do little to change their futures for the better. They had to work much harder than whites to receive even a portion of the recognition and success that whites achieved (Baldwin 1). Although many today believe America has overcome this problem, it still remains a pressing issue in many aspects of society, arguably the most important being education. The racial achievement gap, an important term to familiarize with when discussing this topic, refers to the disparity in educational performance between students of different races (National Education Association 1). As of now, although the education achievement gap has been narrowing, there still remains a large disparity between African Americans and their racial counterparts. According to a study by Roland G. Freyer and Steven D. Levitt, professors at Harvard University and W.E.B Du Bois Institute, respectively, African American students enter kindergarten already significantly behind children of other races, and their test scores continue to drop

It is easy to point the finger but harder to find a solution as to why the black male child is failing in school. There are several crucial factors that contribute to this epidemic including, parents are not communicating with the teachers, the socioeconomic status of the child 's family, and the father 's absence in the child 's life. Each of these topics intertwine with one another and is preventing a race of young men who will not be given the chance to excel in life.

In the primarily African American cities within the United States education in school systems is absolutely terrible. Not only that but also the children in the schools wouldn’t stay in them long enough to get a high school diploma. This mixed with the preconceptions southern white plantation owners had of African Americans circa 1860 led many people to believe that African Americans were not psychologically equal to people of other races and ethnicities. This series of transitive thinking made me wonder why are these school systems so bad? The answer was simple lack of