Patrick Finn
The part of this article that struck me the most was the study on the comparison of five schools in New Jersey. Since in class we have been mostly focusing on inner city/poor schools, it was interesting to see the black and white comparison between those schools and the more funded schools. What struck me the most was that the differences in the schools do not just stop at the kind of students in the school, or the resources they are using; the main difference actually is the type of education that the students are receiving. In the two lowest schools in New Jersey, the students education consisted of learning to follow rules, performing what was basically just busy word, and learning the one correct way to do things and using to critical thinking or creativity skills. While reading about these two schools in the article, my mind was immediately drawn back to the movie from class, The Freedom Writers, when one of the school administrators told Ms. Gruwell that the students did not need textbooks to read, that it would be a big accomplishment if she could just get the kids to listen and follow directions. This is the exact type of education that the students in the lower-grade schools in New Jersey are receiving. An education in which there is no room for self thought or critical thinking is not an education that will challenge, motivate or teach a student anything useful for outside of a classroom. The work that the students were doing and the skills they were receiving would lead them into the same mechanical type jobs that require no actual thinking.
The working class students were a step above the lower class schools, but not by much. Their education too, followed the pattern that what they were learning in school and the skills they were receiving would basically implant them into jobs of equal status as their parents, because their quality of education would provide them no other alternative. The students were learning facts from textbooks and the skills of memorization. These facts were more meaningful and conceptual than in the lower class school, however students were still not taught to use critical thinking skills, to look for another possible answer or to offer other solutions to problems. Science classes and math classes were more lecture and presentation instead of the hands on type of learning for these subjects that was used in the upper class schools.
In the two upper class schools, the differences in the type of education received was large. In these schools where the students are mostly children of doctors, corporate executives, Wall Street Brokers and TV executives. Therefore, the education and skills that children in these schools are receiving is spring-boarding them into those types of higher paying jobs. The teachers in these schools realize that their student's parents are in the top 1% pay rate of the entire country, and therefore they feel they have a responsibility to teach these students better. The teachers feel that these students have more of a right to an education, so they can achieve a job and the same level of wealth as their parents. This is why these students receive an education heavy on critical thinking, problem solving, discussion, research, creativity, and humanitarianism. In the most affluent school, students were even required to plan their own lessons and teach the class themselves. This is a far cry from students in the lower class school who were listening to their teacher list facts whose relevance had not been explained and filling out worksheets that did not have a meaningful purpose.
I think it would be very interesting to reflect upon which types of education we received as a child. Based on the classes we took in high school, the districts that we come from and the level of income of our families, if we received similar or different educations than explained in this study. For me, the education I received was a mix of all three due to the fact that I went to middle school in a private Catholic school, attended high school in a poor inner city school, however most of my classes were honors/AP therefore usually followed along with the higher level schools types of education.
I found an article that further discusses this education gap between poor and rich schools. The schools compared in this article are from San Diego, California which shows that the education gap is bi-coastal, and is a problem across the whole country. http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2009/09/rich_schoolspoor_schools_the_g.html
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