College Essay

Social Promotion is defined the practice promoting a child to the next grade level regardless of skill mastery in the belief that it will promote self-esteem. According the the Center for Development & Learning, it is estimated that as many as 15% of American students are held back each year, and 30% – 50% of students in the US are retained at least once before ninth grade. Social promotion advocates claim that holding students back and forcing them to repeat a grade causes them to have a “negative” education experience. I for one disagree with this theory.

As a high school senior, I spent all year searching for a compatible college that fits my requirements. I wanted a college that is affordable, so when I graduate I am not stuck with a massive debt. I wanted a campus that is has friendly people and feels like home. Finally, the college must provide me with the right skills to start my career. With those three standards in mind, I narrowed my choices to one perfect college.

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.

To many high school students, college seems like a far away land, a mysterious place where everyone wants to be yet not many know how to get there. As children, our parents tell us how much time we have to think about college, and that it is too far down the line to think about. The truth is it is never too early to think about your future. I, like many people, put little thought into my future career and now am lost in an unfortunate mix of indecision and anxiety. Not knowing where you want to be in the future is a hard burden to bear. Many of us tend to find out that we only know what we do not want, not what we actually do want. Do we want to be poor? Absolutely not. Do we want a boring job? Of course we don’t. We all want our

For example, my very intelligent child had been labeled as a “trouble maker” at a young age. He could not sit still in Kindergarten and focus on lessons. He had not yet developed these skills that were expected of him. Children are designed for movement and play. In a formal school setting, these natural impulses are stifled and pushed aside to obtain high test scores. The school system is designed to create a model student conformed to produce model citizens.

Verses the children of financially or knowledge bound families who argue that these children are just as good and deserve just as many opportunities. Though these are both valid discussions no one seems to be concerned enough to discover a better way to prevent these arguments. Yes, the government did attempt to create a system that would protect these students, yet, they failed to keep it from going dormant(https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/hq43ef.html . What, one may ask, are the repercussions of having students that are constantly in a state of competitiveness? One thing that has been a major problem is student attitude. As a student moves through elementary school and into middle it is not hard for them to realize the unneeded separation of classes. The lower class students develop an attitude that is based on “being like the other kids.” This attitude then turns from a simple jealous manner to a give up manner. Why would a student try their hardest to only have a teacher keep them at a C level because their clothes do not say polo or Nike? Students see this and their reaction is a direct result of the problems in the equal opportunity act. If students learn that their efforts are not worth anything, a whole generation learns that worthless feeling complex. That starts a new conversation beginning with how does the government support a generation that is not willing to work because their

In this case and in the past the people who fit that rank were that majority. Any minority group always was put in the schools that didn’t necessarily care about the wellbeing of students. And as time went on the proverbial “achievement gap” has greatly widened between the majority and minority. Nobody realizes or knows when exactly this gap began to surface or how it even did, but people do know that it is apparent. Whether it is putting the worst schools in the district where crime and violence is greater, or making all the students in one school have to use old materials. The government put the wrong people to run education in charge and everybody must cope with the fact that without a monumental change this will be the norm from now on. It is a known fact that if a student is surrounded by new material such as classrooms, textbooks, clean environment etc, they will want to do better for themselves. Later on in the article Gatto then goes on to explain his next lesson, emotional dependency. What he is saying is that without any internal motivation he feels students will never get the intrinsic gratification that they should be gaining. The certain teacher will always give sometime of incentive such as a good grade or a gift or something to the student and the student never gets the urge to work unless there is some sort of material gratification. With this in

Ever wonder what kind of education we obtained or what kind of education children are receiving? According to Jean Anyon, “...the ‘hidden curriculum’ of schoolwork is tacit preparation for relating to the process of production in a particular way. Differing curricular, pedagogical, and pupil evaluation practices emphasize different cognitive and behavioral skill in each social setting and thus contribute to the development in the children of certain potential relationships to physical and symbolic capital, to authority, and to the process of work” (151). Therefore, Anyon believes that schools are not focusing on giving children the proper education and instead they provide the education based on the community’s social-class. Based on “‘I Just Wanna Be Average’” by Mike Rose and my academic experience both stories give interesting points of views regarding the type of education that was given. In Rose’s story, Rose is a young man who lived in a working class community but attended a middle class high school. Rose received a working class education but soon a new teacher arrived and changed his academic experience. In my personal experience, I grew up in a middle class neighborhood and received a middle class and a few affluent professional schooling, but moved to a working class community and started to receive a working class education. Anyon’s claim would complicate based on Rose’s story and on the education I have received based on the areas where I have lived. Every

Melinda Gates once said, “kids are falling through the cracks and nobody notices it. That to me is what's wrong with the school system.” The American school system claims to want every child to thrive, but teachers give up on students they feel are not worthy of their time. In “I Just Wanna Be Average” by Mike Rose, Rose discusses how his school placed him on a certain path that eliminated his motivation and love for learning. The labels that brand every student make or break their educational careers. Mike Rose’s “I Just Wanna Be Average” depresses me as an alumna of a public school system. Having seen friends and classmates caught by the current of my school’s expectations, I know that students are put on tracks as soon as they step

Public schools, Robinson states, try to get the kids educated as fast as they can. They teach kids the bare minimum, and send them off with a note that says that they are educated. In “Fighting Grade Inflation”, Basinger states that students get higher grades than they deserve, as the current system of education cannot accurately measure grades. Schools try to cram the least amount of knowledge in each student comes their way, and then the schools state that those students are ‘educated’ before they send them off. That is why schools create grade inflation, to make it seem as if children are getting educated in schools, when they are

Difficulty understanding social status and how to improve needs to be resolved in this Country. “One-way societies can help people rise in social class is to initiate new enterprises, like improved educational opportunities or technological advancements. When this happens, the need for workers in higher-class jobs motivates and enables people to move up in social class, which can help them to escape poverty”(Science for All Americans, p. 90). In other words, give everyone education and motivate them to do the best they can. In general for education, too much money is being put into it for anyone to get one. Am article called Throw More Money at Education

In school children are taught within their age range. The thought of putting a group of kids in the same age group would be easier. Then there’s a thought of one student going ahead, and it throws off the balance where teachers feel obligated to stop them, because other students would feel dumbfounded. Schooling is about expanding one's knowledge, succeeding, and preparation for the future. There’s a higher authority over these student and they feel the need to restrict their curiosity and skill. Some teachers have the mindset of keeping a classroom in order and the idea that teaching students is systematic. Teachers has the thought that a student shouldn’t surpass, because they’ll learn it later in school. Why does it feel as if teachers are holding the students back? In what

By studying generations of students, sociologists have found that while education is typically thought of as a way for students to gain knowledge and transcend the socioeconomic class they came from, it often replicates existing inequalities. Education can reproduce inequalities by valuing certain social class habits and mannerisms more than others, and by valuing credentials that aren’t equally available to all students.

Bourdieu and Passeron’s concept was closely studied in this article to help the author demonstrate the affects testing policies have on class selection in US schools. The argument being conveyed is how we have seen academic outcomes increase previously because of test-based grade retention. The outcomes do not come from the support provided to benefit the students but by restricting educational opportunities for students who need the most support. The author provides alternate strategies for ending social promotion that do not observe class inequity nor grade retention.

Many studies are specifically related to school children and their achievements and this is what will be discussed here. Feinstein (2003a) looked at results collected from 2500 children in 1979. They showed attainment at various stages of the child’s development, crucially they also noted the social economic status of the parents. Feinstein’s study clearly shows that higher status equates to generally better attainment at the age of 10 regardless of the early years attainment. This would suggest that the school environment in some way favours those that come from a higher social background. Although this data is now over 30 years old the trend continues and resent surveys based on children who receive free school meals show very similar results, with those entitled to free school meals achieving less than their peers (making every child matter, 2005).