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.