Education is often considered one of the main pillars of society – it’s unfortunate how some individuals have inherent disadvantages when it comes to obtaining a decent education, leaving them oppressed compared to affluent communities. Therefore, my largest concern and criticism of educational structures are the detrimental inconsistency among classes and race.
Despite social change, structural dynamics prove that even in this day and age, schools are still segregated and unequal. Typically, black students attend schools with mostly blacks while whites attend schools that are predominately white; since more blacks live in impoverished communities, their schools remain defunded. These demographics represent a much larger issue; along with the segregation of schools, the quality of schools are generally unequal following racial barriers.
When it comes to education, black communities do not have equal opportunities. To point out some of the main factors that contribute to this disparity: blacks tend to have less wealth, fewer resources, their parents have a lower education level, thus, leaving their children with lower expectations, blacks have outside forces that interfere with their education such as dealings with the justice system, and overall fewer resources to excel. Most blacks are placed in poor conditioned schools where the academic process is not taken seriously; the high school dropout rate for black youth is approximately 7.4%, disproportionately higher than the dropout rate of whites. In relation, a lack of assets allow black students to struggle finding the value of education as they are turned off from the white-biased and white-cultured material. Moreover, as a black student living in the suburbs, it wasn’t until I recently began to educate myself that I even understood the depth of this issue. Going to school with white kids, specifically going to good schools blinded me of the fact that blacks in inner cities have an entirely different starting line. Lower and middle-class black parents often have financial and survival obligations, therefore, can’t afford out-of-school learning opportunities for their kids and simply don’t have the time to be heavily involved in their child’s schooling. Meanwhile, 80% of teachers are white and 50% (and growing) of students are of color. Psychology states that white teachers enforce punitive action towards black students due to predispositions that blacks are troublesome. Teachers introduce black students to the notion that they need authoritative disciplinary action; this is verified as black students are suspended twice as often as white students.
Studies have confirmed that black students have a less positive attitude towards school because they have not been provided ethnic material, beneficial understandings of how they fit into society, nor the proper guidance that many black students need desperately. Generally speaking, school should help all students of all races become socially aware, encourage multicultural perspectives, and drift away from the one-sided prospect prominent in organized schooling.
Imagine a black student studying the founding fathers and as the textbook describes: these individuals wonderfully impacted American society, then, learning that they were all slave owners. Black students are demoralized as they are taught the white man’s version of history. The fixed material is not appealing and often times distasteful to learn, forcing them to reject the partial information that is shoved down their throat, consequently, keeping them from performing to their full potential. On the other hand, school teaches black youth that their ancestors were slaves, that their people were inferior and the victims of the most torturous caste system in history. School does not teach about Angela Davis or Lewis Latimer or W.E.B. Dubois or Paul Robeson or Charles Drew or any black creators, inventors, leaders, and contributors. School does not teach black excellence.
The federal system of education is fundamentally defective, it retains falsified curriculum, and the system of academic distribution was not designed to uplift students of color. Education is the process of receiving systematic instruction, thus, concrete subjects and marginalized principles within poor black communities destroy students willingness to think for themselves, set goes for themselves, and positively interpret themselves and their environment.
