Poorly Funded Schools in Bay Area vs Salvage Inequalities

While researching all the poorly funded public schools in the Bay Area, I was surprised by how many schools made it on the list. There are different types of so called “Tiers” to put schools in different categories by poorly they are doing. There is a long list of schools that need help according to the website. Comparing this to the book Salvage Inequalities, it is similar in how many schools need better funding’s. In the book, there are some schools that are poorly funded while there are other schools not too far away that have great funding. The better funded schools have the correct resources and teachers to make great students. While the poor schools had teachers who don’t show up to class or don’t teach the material correctly. Schools that don’t have the correct funding for their resources and teachers can result in teachers that aren’t ready to teach or no teachers at all. This relates to my focus on my paper because poorly funded public schools can have bad teachers where they will not be motivated to motivate children to study and work hard. The may fail and the graduation rate for the school will be lowered. If the school’s graduation rate is too low, they may not get funding from the county, state, or country.  This goes in a cycle where the schools will always be poorly funded. 

Educational Segregation

Educational segregation separates students from their race and financial situation than their performance. The world needs people from different backgrounds and points of views to get a good learning experience. So why would a school segregate lower, middle, and upper class from each other? The performance of a child does not depend on their race or financial situation. In the novel, Salvage Inequalities, by Jonathan Kozol, talks about an elementary school in Riverdale that is so strict on segregation that the school is practically two schools. Kozol states that, “one of [the school has] about 130 children, most of whom are poor, Hispanic, black, assigned to one of the 12 special class; the other [school] of some 700 mainstream students, almost all of whom are white or Asian” (113). This shows other people a racial and class discrimination. Children’s families who are in a lower class don’t deserve to be set apart from other students who are wealthier. Children would not even notice the difference if they are put together. Children just want to learn and play. They don’t care about how poor the other student is or what kind of skin color they are. They may have questions about a different colored student, but teachers should be able to conquer that question with no problem. Students should not have educational segregation because of their race and financial situation. 

Rule of Three: Part Three

While teachers are trying to get students eager to come to class to learn about the subject, the student might just have trouble learning the material in general. For some students, there might be more weak spots than others in class. For example, if someone is really good at doing sales and business, but isn’t good at math, that would be a huge problem because math plays a big role in business. The person may get the concept of how to work things out with customers but he/she may not necessarily be good at math. Another example could be that the person’s first language is not English. They may be really good at their job but their communication with others in the work place is poor because they aren’t good at English. This relate back to school because the student should have gotten proper education from teachers that support them and make sure they are doing well before going on the a higher level or where they should be going. Students then don’t participate with the classwork and they start to fall behind. Teachers should be able to help others to have them eager to learn even though they are not good at the subject.

            There are also different types of concepts to each subject. Math plays a big role in this. There have been experiences by many people that if the student understands the concept of math, the course will be naturally easier for them. If throughout the whole course the student doesn’t get the click in the math, it will be much easier for them to understand what is happening in the class and what the teacher is trying to teach. This should go for a lot more than just math. Subjects like science, econ, government, and perhaps English will work as well. Not being able to learn the concept can make the students motivation go down for being excited to go class. This restrains the student from learning and preparing them for their future job. Teachers are supposed to care more for the students if it is clear that they are failing. Universities and States will be hard for teachers, but community colleges classes are smaller and easier to have a one-on-one time with students. If the subject is too hard for the student, the teacher could recommend another class.

            Many times, students take classes that are just too complicated for their level of education. It is not easy for a student to jump straight into a Calculus 3 class when they just finished Calculus 1. Even if the students think they can handle it, they most likely missed a lot of information. Sometimes the students just didn’t get down the information in their previous prerequisite class. There have been many times when students try to graduate as soon as they can so they take all the required classes to graduate. Then they start to think that the subject is boring because they don’t understand the material. This happens to many students and teachers cannot help the student if they joined the class that’s too hard for them. 

"Single Functioning Device"

When Sir Ken Robinson brought up the topic of the watch being a single functioning device, it struck me a little harder than usual because it only does one thing. While connecting that to education, there are a few things that are "out of date". One of the things that still bother me is attendance strictness in class. Students often get to class late or skip class simply because they don't want to go. Many college students want to get into their class that they have been waiting for. Perhaps it's a class that they need in order to graduate or to get enough credits for to transfer to a 4 year college. While I attend every single one of my classes, I see students coming in late or not coming to class because they don't feel like it. I think teachers should be more like back then. When a student is late or not there on the first day of class, they will be dropped. Attendance has been out of date and I think it should be renewed. Schools should be more strict as well as teachers.

Empathy with the Rule of Three

My Rule of Three focuses on how teachers should be able to get their students excited to go to class every day. This means that the teacher and students need to be able to communicate to make sure everything is going well. In a way, the teacher needs to empathize with their students. In a scientific article “The Neural Correlates of Empathy”, it states that “The ability to experience empathy for the plight of our fellow human beings is one of most fundamental skills in the repertoire of human social behavior” (1). Basically, empathy is important to human’s lives in the social behavior world. If teachers don’t know how to be empathetic, how are they going to get the students excited for class? The teachers should be able to put themselves in the student’s shoes and feel what it’s like to learn the subject they are teaching and also know how fun or boring the activities they do in class are. In the same article, it states that “Incorporating the cognitive and emotional talents of humans, empathy requires both the ability to comprehend others thoughts and feelings as well as resonate affectively with their emotions” (1). As it is said inside the quotes “empathy requires both the ability to comprehend others thoughts and feelings as well as … their emotions”, teachers need to feel this way as well. They should be able to know how the students are feeling in the class by their attitude, body language, behavior, and etc.  For example, if the teacher did not have empathy and the students were not getting excited for the class, something like the Jeff Bliss video could happen. Students will give up on the teacher and their grades will only drop. They will find the subject useless and not meaningful in their life in the future. Empathy is something that everybody needs in their life no matter what they do in the future.

Works Cited

Rameson, Lian T., Sylvia A. Morelli, and Matthew D. Lieberman. "The Neural Correlates Of Empathy: Experience, Automaticity, And Prosocial Behavior." Journal Of Cognitive Neuroscience 23.11 (2011): 1-11. Academic Search Premier. Web. 2 Sept. 2013.