9 Paragraphs

          A child who lives in an affluent community with sufficient amount of funding and greatly amounts of materials, text and resources in general, which is being supported through their schools, is generating a sense of greed and ignorance within the students. These are students who initially have superfluous amounts of school resources and are extremely flourished with great campuses. These rich children views their advantage of being provided with a great education and abundant resources as an inheritance, for their parents invested highly into their educations, whereas they begin to “get used to what they have, They think its theirs by rights because they had it from the start. So it leaves those children with a legacy of greed. I don’t think most people understand this” (Kozol 127). This demonstrates where children of affluent schools originate their sense of ignorance and greed within education, making it extremely impossible to fit in any changes or aiding poor urban schools due to the tremendous amount of pride they take within their own education, which gives these children the ultimate power of knowledge upon the unfortunate students of the urban public schools.

          These children from affluent schools, whom are greatly funded with great resources, views aiding the children of poor public schools is an utterly waste of effort and money. They believe that it would “probably make no major difference since poor children still would lack the motivation and would probably fail in any case because of other problems” (Kozol 153). This signifies their utmost belief upon why investing into the children of urban areas will not be effective at all when it comes to their education. They feel that these students lack motivation, determination and are prone to failure due to the environment they live in, so investing in their education is a waste of their time. These rich children are so easy to judge and carry a sense of power due to their flourishing education, making them the ones to indicate the fate and the future of the children who attends poor public schools. Most agree that helping the poor school’s funding would be “like giving charity and charitable things have never worked…Charity will not instill the poor with self-respect” (Kozol 157). The affluent children do not understand the unfairness of what the children of poorer areas are experiencing with their education, for they were never put in that particular position. They view any type of aid towards the poorer public schools is similar to a charity, which in their perspectives is nowhere near effectiveness.

          These children who inherited sufficient schools that provides them with great resources are dismissing the idea of desegregating the schools. They believe that it should be “separate but equal” (Kozol 154) basically meaning to “keep them where they are but make it equal” (Kozol 155). They do not realize the reality of what the children are experiencing with their public schools, lack of resources, due to their poor community; so in regards to the equality of education from the suburban areas to the urban areas, there is no possibilities of having equal educational opportunities without proper funding within both districts. Some also believe “that you cannot give an equal chance to every single person. If you did it, you’d be changing the whole economic system. If you equalize the money, someone’s got to be shortchanged” (Kozol 156). This implies that in order to keep the economic system in its proper manner, there cannot be equalization between the rich and the poor. There has to be some type of order of what the rich benefits from education and what the poor does. It should not be equalized.

          The types of citizens that are produced from a lack of materials in poorly funded public schools are citizens who lack a high school diploma which are forced to work entry-level jobs. Realistically, the students of the poor public schools are unable to provide students with proper education due to the lack of resources which leads to students either dropping out of high school or even gain a high school diploma, in reality is not worth much. “Inevitable this thinking must diminish the horizons and the aspirations of poor children, locking them at a very early age into the slots that are regarded as appropriate to their societal position. If we can teach some useful skills, get them to stay in school and graduate, and maybe into jobs, we’re giving them the most they can hope for” (Kozol 93). This realistically states that the poor children of urban areas are not sufficed to a successful future with education and basically their likeliness of making money in the future, would be through bottom-level jobs, due to their education levels. This factor truly regulates the economic order; poor students are not provided with efficient education and resources due to the poor funding and are forced into working entry-level jobs, restricting them from becoming anything else career-wise.

          Another type of citizen that may be created from the lack of resources from their poorly funded schools could be individuals that are disastrous to their community or ever our nation as a whole. Due to the shortage of being properly educated through the lack of school resources, a sense of bitterness could be created within these individuals, for they possibly are not successful, financially unstable and lacks basic knowledge to gain a job beyond entry-level. This could be devastating to our nation for this sense bitterness could result into violence within these poor communities, disregarding the utmost fact that our future nation is not being properly education could be extremely harmful towards our nation entirely. Kozol reports, “ if they [the state] do not give these children a sufficient education to lead healthy and productive lives, we will become their victims later on” (108).

          Due to the insufficient amount of materials and resources in the poorly funded schools, these individuals do not believe in the freedom and prosperity of being an American. For instance, they believe that “why should [they] go to war and fight for opportunities [they] can’t enjoy– for things rich people value, for their freedom, but I do not have that freedom and I can’t go to their schools?” (Kozol 127). This demonstrates the sense of questioning the value of freedom of being an American, and the irony of how the poor colored children are not able to attend the same schools as the rich children, so where exactly is the term freedom determined in that matter?
          Despite the major issue of poor public schools that are in great shortage of supplies and resources, the poor urban communities should stand up and make a change in their failing children’s future path by involvement. Community organizing through school reform should take place, if they desire a greater, positive impact in their children’s future with education. In the article, Transforming Schools Through Community Organizing by M. Elena Lopez, Lopez demonstrates that with the proper aid of residents from the community and parents as well, coming together to with a similar motive– creating a greater outcome from the student’s learning ability through tutoring, after-school activities and monitoring the children’s homework can generate a positive educational outcome from these poorly funded schools. This does not only necessarily display parent involvement, for they are not focused on their own child but all the children and the school as a whole. The community organizing for school reform’s main intentions is that “they work to change public schools to make them more equitable and effective for all students.” (Lopez). They believe that it is every parent’s responsibility to support their child’s learning, but it is truly the schools’ responsibility to provide the children with a quality education. But due to the lack of proper funding and the unhelpful aid from their state; organizations like the community organizing for school reforms should highly take place in poorer communities, especially when their children’s education is on the line.

          Another way to help out the public schools with poor funding would be to redirect the funds. Most would disagree, which mainly would be the rich, for they don’t believe in a change coming out of redirecting the funds to the poorer schools, for they believe that they worked hard to achieve their place in life and deserves their children to be attending superior schools, but what about the children who do not have the willing power to change their fate with attending poor public schools? The over-achieving students of affluent areas believe that “taxing the rich to help the poor––[would] be getting nothing out of it. [They] don’t understand how it would make a better educational experience for [them]” (Kozol 157) but do not understand that with the aid of taxing the rich to help the poor can actually help the public school’s funding drastically. The rich is too naïve and highly believe that the poor people’s issue with their education is not their burden to deal with in the first place. With all honesty, using federal taxes for the poor will highly benefit the public schools, putting them on a path of change, improvement and growth within all the students.

          An additional way to helping out poorly funded public schools would to be create organizations and fundraisers that would help donate money that could be used to purchase required texts and materials for the schools that has a great shortage of them. For instance, there was an organization that took place in 2011, which was combined by MSNBC’s Morning Joe and Starbucks. In the article, Starbucks and MSNBC Team Up and You Can Too by Nicole, demonstrated how the two organizations planned to highlight examples of innovation and initiatives across communities where education and support is critical and to provide proper aid to the public schools that are in great need. Starbucks and local grocery stores featured specially marked bags of Gold Coast Blend, Morning Joe edition that had a $5 donation to the school of their pick to aid. “Through this effort, we hope to inspire customers to take action and get involved in change for their neighborhood public school” (Nicole). This is a perfect example of how simple organizations like this could truly create a huge impact on the poor public schools. With the help of these organizations, people becomes more aware of what is going on around them nationwide within the public educational system, revealing the lack of proper funding and how much that effects the children’s education.

Sarah Javed

Ms. Williams

English 1A

3 October 2013

            Due to the lack of proper funding, public schools in urban areas like East St. Louis and South Side Chicago experience the deficiency of school materials, which creates the mindset in a child to question the significance of education. Attending a public school that has an extreme shortage of basic necessities, such as textbooks or even proper equipment in science classes, creates a viewpoint on whether it’s important to even attend class. For instance, in Savage of Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, Kozol reports that a student didn’t attend their physics class “because the lab has no equipment” and another student proclaimed that “the typewriters in [their] typing class don’t work” (37). This demonstrates the absence of understanding the importance of education or even the significance of simply attending class, despite the shortage of school supplies. Students also believe that there is no use to attending class when their classes lack supplies, resulting with students who does not take school seriously, for they may feel like the school doesn’t value the students’ education, because the state cannot even provide their public schools with basic school resources. This factor may even discourage a student, for there aren’t enough resources being given to them to learn efficiently. Students begin to believe that “there’s not much for [them] in public schools” (Kozol 36) and will carry that particular attitude throughout their school years, which may even result with numerous dropouts. This particular matter is highly harmful towards a student’s mindset, for they begin to realize that the public schools that are expected to properly educate America’s future nation with great amount of resources to create an efficient education, is not predominantly true and are being underprivileged.

            Students do not only loose the importance of education through the lack of resources, but also become aware of the fact that there is no reason to further their education and views themselves as failures. Due to the insufficiency of school resources, “reading levels are the lowest in the poorest schools” (71). This is representing how much not being provided with school supplies and materials, can truly affect a student’s learning ability. This also demonstrates how important it is to attend a public school that has all the proper materials and resources to aid students upon furthering their knowledge and helps them gain greater intelligence through it. And according to that fact, students begin to realize that they are being restricted to basic school necessities, lack intelligence and then begin to accept their unfortunate fate. “Children don’t understand at first that they are being cheated. They come to school with a degree of faith and optimism, and they often seem to thrive during the first few years. It is sometimes not until the third grade that their teachers start to see the warning signs of failure. By the fourth grade many children see it too” (Kozol 70). It is extremely unfortunate upon how the teachers themselves, know that the students of the urban public schools are heading down the path of failure all due to the shortage of adequate resources, which is out of the children’s control, are beginning to notice their own failures with education so early into their adolescent years. This later turns into a mindset of children accepting their failures, losing complete hope within themselves and begin forgetting their own self-worth. In addition to that, students begins to view themselves as “poor investments– and behave accordingly. If society’s resources would be wasted on their destinies, perhaps their own determination would be wasted too” (Kozol 120). Not only are the students of poor urban public schools are aware of this unlikeliness of furthering their education but are also losing complete determination and motivation towards their education, all do to the fact that their schools are not being properly funded. This creates a sense of a low degree example of being degraded through education. Students discovers that their future, which is dependent on education, is not being taken seriously by adults, so why should they take their education seriously as well.

            Not only are the students whom are constrained from proper school resources are facing self-loathing and losing faith in education, but are having difficulties with learning proficiently. A student in the South Bronx, which Kozol interviewed, displayed his complications with learning properly due to the lack of adequate materials. For example, his final exams were merely weeks away from him, and except for studying tremendously with proper texts, “the school required students to pass in their textbooks one week prior to the end of the semester, he is forced to study without math and English texts” (Kozol 134). This is coming from a young, motivated individual who has the utmost intentions of going to college, despite his unfortunateness of attending an urban public school, which creates a type of burden upon learning efficiently. That sense of being overwhelmed with learning and not having any type of control of it can set a child to feeling extremely under privileged, making it extremely difficult to even picture a path of success ahead of them. 

Comparison

`           Poor funding in public school systems in the U.S. is a reoccurring event that should not even take place to begin with. Public schools in the late 1980s in the urban areas of Chicago faced several issues that are occurring in the years between 2012-2013 in Reading, Pa. For instance, in Savage of Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, Kozol demonstrates how the poor, urban areas of south side Chicago’s children were facing extreme measures of the lack of resources and teachers all due to the deficiency of proper funding and due the large amount of property taxes that were being taxed to the poor, but non of those taxes were being benefited for the school’s funding system. This is relative to the poor in Reading, Pa., in the article School Funding Inequity Forces Poor Cities Like Reading, Pa., To Take Huge Cuts by Joy Resmovits explains how the poor taxpayers are being taxed largely and are only able to afford smaller school budgets, which is not extremely beneficial towards the public schools funding. Parents are struggling deeply with debt, to help their children have a better experience within their schools, but cannot do much due to poverty. This demonstrates that nothing has changed from the late 1980s to now, for the U.S. public schools are currently being poorly funded due to poverty and the lack of the state’s aid.

            Another reoccurring issue that happens with the students due to poor funding is, in south side Chicago where “those the system chooses to save, are the brightest youngsters, selected by race, income and achievement” (Kozol 73). This demonstrates how the children that are most in need of aid, in regards to their education, are not being chosen due to their race and financial stability, but the ones whom are richer that lives in the suburbs are chosen and aided very highly. That similar unfairness is still taking place, today in Reading, Pa. Resmovits explains how the local funding sources are favoring wealthier school districts over the needier areas and there is more money than necessary that is being spent. Rather than helping the public schools in the urban areas that are lacking efficient funding, are taken in consider of. Only the ones that are properly funded, public schools in the suburbs, are becoming more beneficial, rather than making all public schools equally beneficial.

            Due to improper funding, schools in the 1980s and even now in Reading, Pa., are experiencing similar situations with not being able to keep their teachers. According to Resmovits, in June 2009, more than 300,000 teachers lost their jobs–– August 2012, school cuts 7,000 educators from their payrolls creating an increase in the student-to-teacher ratio for the first time in the decade. And due to that, intermediate schools and high schools are flooded with extra kids with rehires that are teaching in unfamiliar subjects.  This was relative the schools in the 1980s where Kozol explains how the largely flooded classes that are not being properly taught due to the huge amount of students and one teacher. The issue of letting teachers go was also occurring in the late 80s due to the same factor: poor funding, and were required to keep elderly teachers for they were unable to keep young and energetic teachers with out proper funding.