Public Schools

The schools in the Bay Area which are being persistently low-achievers have several reasons why they are in that state. Just like the schools in Savage Inequalities, there are students which are not getting a proper and fair education. Some people will say it is environment, ethnicity, equality of teaching; it could be any of these things. These problems are part of the inevitable. We can’t change that. But what we can do is fix these problems. And we aren’t. These problems are not getting fixed and we are just watching our students suffer.  There is this big ignorance pattern which has been following us for many years. We saw it in the schools in the 80’s, and we see it today as well. Nothing has changed.

            Why do we take pride in our education, our equality, our freedom, our own self if we can’t even take care of those things? We say we have all these things when in reality, they are all cut short. And even if we did have all those amazing things, we wouldn’t use them to their full capacity. In the past thirty years, we have seen different presidents, different religions, new technology, the works. But why are the main fundamentals of our country still the same after 50 years? In one of the schools in Camden, New Jersey, they were still using type writers as a technological resource in the late 80’s. Computers were well and alive in those days. And even today, if you were to go into a low-achieving school, you would see 10 year old monitors running a system which is years older than the students using them. If we have to rely on outdated materials just to teach and make a point to our students then there truly is no hope.

            Low test scores, high dropout rates. The Bay Area has a large amount of schools in the whole area. With schools being about a couple miles away from each other, we don’t necessary have the issue of overcrowding classes. But we do have the issue of the students in the classes. Students haven’t been trying hard enough to make up their schools. Schools are receiving low grants and credibility due to the students test scores.  And since students aren’t doing well on their tests, they lose the hope to continue forward and dropout early. There are several ways to solve this problem. We need to show those students that there is help and that everyone cares. If we were to show someone who has lost hope in everything that we care, we could make a difference in that child’s life.