Education Is Against The Law For Kids

In the article “Fremont high school”, Jonathan Kozol describes how the inability to provide the needed funding and address the necessities of minority children is preventing students from functioning properly at school. He talks to Meriya, a student who expresses her disgust on the unequal consideration given to urban and suburban schools. She and her classmates undergo physical and personal embarrassments. Kozol states that the average ninth grade student reads at fourth or fifth grade level while a third read at third grade level or below. Although academic problems are the main factor for low grades, students deal with other factors every day. For example, School bathrooms are unsanitary, air condition does not work, classrooms have limited

I copied the dictionary next page and the same experience came”(Learning to Read 162). As you can tell from his self education Malcolm X has grown fascinated with the new material he is learning and wanting to learn more about it. A point that John Gatto makes in his passage against school that I agree with that function in public schools puts on students. There are six functions that public school push onto students. As someone who has went to a public school I do feel as if they were pushing classes and courses upon me.

Throughout history, African American weren’t considered the smartest race on earth. With slavery and being for bided to ever touch or learn to read a book, African American became the race that envy having an education. Education became a prime factor in the African American culture. Having an education to an African is having the one-way ticket out of the terrible streets. They believe that if they don’t know nothing they won’t get nothing. In other word, if they aren’t educated their life would remain the same. Way back to slavery, African American would be beaten if they were to open a book and dare to read it instead of cleaning it.

In the essay Learning to Read, Malcolm X details the process in which he learned to read and the tremendous effects it had on his perspective of the race issues in America. During his stay in prison, Malcolm X was given the opportunity to spend timeless hours learning as much as he could about reading and the English language. Furthermore, Malcolm X was fortunate enough to stay at a prison that had an extensive library. As a result, Malcolm X was able to discover and learn more about his own culture. Malcolm X learned that the African American culture is unfortunately cast in the shadows of the white population and neglected in textbooks as well as history. Not only does he believe the white population suppresses African Americans, but he believes

Since the past, black people had been oppressed and excluded from a formal education, leading them to find ways to educate themselves. While they open their minds to new worlds and perspectives, they encounter themselves with a disastrous world that discriminates them and unjustly takes their rights away from them. In these essays, “Learning How to Read and Write” by Frederick Douglass and “Learning to Read” by Malcolm X, both authors tell their stories about how they found their way into the world of literacy even though they were banned to do it. Because they left ignorance back, they realize all the injustices that surround them. In my opinion, literacy is one of the most important tool humans possess to be aware of the issues of the world. Knowing about world problems makes people able to decide how to act towards situations and helps avoid being led by people that the only thing they want from others is power.

Although the statistics are more than 10 years out of date, the reality of America school segregation has not changed. The barely functional buildings, lack of up to date text books (or in many cases any text books), overcrowded classes, non-existent lab and computer equipment, and low paid teachers create a situation of despair that leads to a drop out rate of more than 50% in many districts. And even those who graduate are often barely literate. Kozol draws the clear link between these schools and the imprisonment of the oppressed nations who, after dropping out of a dead end education, end up locked behind bars.

Less than 4% of the total student population enrolled in America’s colleges and universities (one of the smallest subgroups based on race/ethnicity and gender.) According to the Schott Foundation, the graduation rate of Black males in CT is between 51%, whereas White males in CT have an 83% graduation rate—a 32% gap. Moreover, the achievement gap between Black women and Black men is the lowest male-to female ratio among all racial/ethnic subgroups. (Strayhorn 1). The disproportionate and devastating failure of Black males in the educational system has further ramifications in our social system as black males are over-represented in the criminal justice system: “African-American males represent approximately 8.6 percent of the nation’s K-12 public school enrollment but make up about 60 percent of all incarcerated youth” (Smith 2005). In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the academic crisis of adolescent black males, one must examine the research findings surrounding the Black-White achievement gap, black male standardized test scores, black male literacy achievement, and the socio-cultural achievement barriers that obscure black males’ self-perception of themselves as readers. “According to many standardized assessments, educators in the U.S.

There is a scene at the beginning of the movie where Malcolm meets with one of his teachers about his Harvard application essay in which the teacher is less than supportive. Malcolm’s teacher urged him to write about the stereotypical “single mom, bad neighborhood” story and told him to stop trying to be creative. As a country, our education system has been under fire for many years because of things like inadequate funding and lack of resources. Many argue that our school systems are trying to teach us how to conform and simply follow directions instead of being creative and finding our own unique talents. With more focus on athletics and standardized tests than music and art programs, our education systems leave out whole groups of people whose talents are more suited to the arts instead of math and science related

     Why do some groups not succeed in academic settings? One theory brought up in “Understanding inequality” suggests that the gap in the socioeconomic status drives the inequalities in the school system. The low and working class have less time and income to intervene with schooling. This means they have less time to meet with teachers, hire tutors, and provide continuous transportation. Therefore the lower class can’t possibly compete with the middle and upper classes. Angela Valenzuela gives the accounts of some Hispanic students’ experiences in school. These students feel that it is the inferior nature of the schools in the US that contribute to the low success

Education was not readily available for Southern blacks as it was for whites, and Du Bois took notice. In an effort to teach, he was taken aback by “how faithfully, how piteously, this people strove to learn.” (Du Bois, 12) While most African Americans devoted themselves to learning, the information was not presented in an understandable way, and most struggled to even make an advance in basic courses. Du Bois commented that education was a freedom denied to none, and the aggressive pursuit of a higher education was the way of crossing the threshold into equality. In a similar matter, Booker T. Washington praised the school house as a place with equal deliverance as heaven itself. His point of view came through the looking-glass of slavery, being raised a slave himself. As a child, when he carried his mistress’ books to her schoolhouse, he felt that “to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.”(Washington, 3) Washington,

A synthetic analysis of two works from African American literature reveals that there is no greater accomplishment than learning to read and write. Literacy is what allows us to gain knowledge through learning. This topic is important because based on a study conducted by the U.S Department of Education and the National Institution of Literacy, 32 million adults in the U.S are still unable to read and write and African Americans are expected to make up nearly half of that amount. In both Fredrick Douglass’ “Learning to Read” and Malcolm X’s “A Homemade Education,” common themes regarding literacy and freedom are identified and both reflect why literacy is so important. The two texts prove how crucial the processes of learning to read

In the excerpt “Learning to Read” from his 1965 Autobiography, Malcolm X argues that he had more opportunity to learn about the world and specifically black history in prison than he would have received in a formal education setting. He describes the process in which he essentially taught himself how to read and write, and how it lead to an awakening of his desire to learn everything he could through voracious reading. X illustrates to the reader the painful histories that he read about and the powerful knowledge which he gained to show that one needs little more than access to a book collection and the motivation to learn in order to become educated. This reading resonated with me as a learner whose love for independent learning often takes a backseat to the demands of academia and provides a key concept which I plan to instill in my students as a future teacher.

“Black students were expelled at three times the rate of white students.” (Steven Hsieh, 2014) Until now, we are still finding unequal treatment from school in American Society from different aspects, such as school discipline, early learning, college readiness and teacher equity. However, education is more than learning from books. Education enables individuals potential to utilize human mind and open doors of opportunities to obtain knowledge. But the US educational system doesn’t serve the majority of children properly and gaps remain between white and black students. What’s more, nowadays, a lot of schools only treat education as a curriculum and test scores; ignoring the stimulus of curiosity. Therefore, “Between the World and Me” is a book written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who weaves his own personal, historical, and intellectual development into his ruminations on how to live in a black body in America. In this book, Coates writes about education and pleasures of his own educational experience in Howard University. Although bad education hides the truth and restricts students’ ideas, education also contains pleasures, which broaden people’s mind, help people build their own thoughts, and prevent people from prison. As a result, there are more pleasures in American education that positively impact on black body than dangers.

Both W.E.B Dubois and Alain Locke have different views on the education that African American should receive in order to succeed. The issue rises due to the fact that African American were receiving poor education around the 1930’s. Dubois believed that segregated school was the first step into African Americans receiving adequate education, while Locke believe that segregated school was not to fix the educational crisis for African Americans. On the articled “Does the Negro Need separate schools”, W.E. B Dubois states that “Proper education of any people includes sympathetic touch between teachers and pupil” there is connection between the student and the teacher that share the same culture and background.

Ninety percent of jobs in the United States require a high school diploma. However, the U.S. public school system itself is inhumane. The very definition of being inhumane is; "without compassion for misery or suffering; cruel," according to Merriam Webster. It is through the dehumanizing treatment of students as; robots, numbers and creation of social hierarchy that the creates a work force that is used to being dehumanized.