american education inequality paper
Thousands upon thousands of impoverished workers, mainly women, work long hours for days or weeks at a time without a full day off in various so-called sweat-shops in Asia, as well as in cities throughout the world. In a video viewed in Sociology 101, produced by the BBC, the documentary makers set out to show how the conditions for these workers were extremely poor, although the companies they produced goods for (Gap and Nike) consistently claimed that they did not subject their workers to sweatshop conditions.
While the problem of sweat shops and exporting work to foreign countries where labor is cheap and easy to replace is not one that should be avoided, it is also the case that within the borders of our own country exists a chronic system of privilege that plays out to effect a multitude of interconnected social institutions including work and class, as reflected in poverty and crime rates within various ethnic groups.
From a white middle to upper-class perspective, often non-white Americans, specifically Black and Latino Americans, are viewed as immoral, irresponsible and lazy. Be it a blazing generalization, it remains the unfortunate fact that generalizations are usually based on some form of truth, or at least, place blame where it is easiest placed, instead of looking deeper to discover the true error within the current system.
Black, Latino, Hispanic and other minority Americans have faced incredible discrimination within America and continue to face these prejudices today. At the root of the equation is the American public education system, one in which still struggles to solve its injustices, as President Bush prides himself on his (under-funded) No Child Left Behind plan, and many from all political affiliations admit that the education system needs revamping towards equality. Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro state in their article, Race, Wealth and Equality, Education, in particular, is the key attribute in whether blacks will achieve economic success relative to white
Americans.
If only it were that simple.
In America, every child under the age of 16 must attend school. The majority of children attend their local public school, funded by the tax dollars of the community. While wealthy, mostly white children and their parents often have the luxury to choose where they will attend school; other children are forced to be educated in their school district.
Each school district is funded more or less, dependant upon the area in which this school is located. Therefore, middle-class individuals who cannot afford or do not wish to send their children to private school can choose to move into a neighborhood where the school district is thought to be good, most likely because of its strong funding and support from the community.
Not everyone has this choice.
Johathan Kozol protests the Savage Inequalities in Americas Schools in his 1991 article. He cites a case in Maryland where the courts have looked at fiscal equalities between school districts, following an equity suit filed in 1978, [which] led the state to reexamine the school funding system. The findings of this examination were shocking. Five years following this suit, the governors task force found that 100 percent equality was too expensive. The goal, it said, was 75 percent equalitymeaning that the poorest districts should be granted no less than three quarters of the funds at the disposal of the average district. But, as the missing 25 percent translates into differences of input (teacher pay, provision of books, class size, etc), we discover it is just enough to demarcate the difference between services appropriate to different social classes, and to formalize that difference in their destinies.
Meanwhile, Peter W. Cookson Jr and Caroline Hodges Persell, in their article Preparing for Power: cultural Capital and Curricula in Americas Elite Boarding Schools, the other end of the financial spectrum of elementary education is detailed. As the students in the impoverish Maryland school districts received only 75 percent funding of the total that other public schools within the state were receiving, private schools across the country, in this case, elite boarding schools, received a great deal more money to spend per student than could ever be dreamed for any public school student. (Unfortunately, figures are unavailable at the current time.)
In this essay, I will assume that the highly-funded elite boarding schools education system is of the highest caliber for young intellectuals, as these private schools have produced many successful athletes, artists and even were the nurturing environment for future presidents. These schools, due to their strong funding, do not have to worry about whether they will be able to afford to pay their basic academic teachers for the school-year. Instead, they can focus on spreading their wealth to other areas of education, fostering motivated individuals who, for the most part, consider themselves elite as opposed to others who have received a public school education.
It is with this knowledge that I take on the assumption that the description of education provided at one of these prestigious boarding schools is of the highest quality possible, as if it wasnt, the wealthy parents who choose to send their children to these schools could continue to shop around for the best education for their child.
Cookson and Persell state, Culture, much like real estate or stocks, can be considered a form of capital. Thus curriculum is the nursery of culture and the classical curriculum is the cradle of high culture... The accumulation of cultural capital can be used to reinforce class differences. Cultural capital is socially created: What constitutes the best in western civilization is not arrived at by happenstance, nor was it decided upon by public election. The more deeply embedded the values, the more likely they will be perceived as value free and universal.
Following a meticulous description of the Groton School Curriculum at its goals for students at the school, the reason for continual segregation of the races within American and the many inequalities seen in our country is made clear. The contrast between the relatively lean curricula of many public schools and the abundant courses offered by boarding schools is apparent. Elective subjects in particular have intriguing titles such as Heingway: the Man and his Work, Varieties of the Poetic Experience, Effecting Political Change, and others of similar intellectual specificity.
In addition to a vast array of elective courses, Cookson and Persell go on and on to describe the plethora of opportunities available to boarding school students, from artistic extracurricular activities such as theatre and choir, to study abroad trips where students are required to immerse themselves in a foreign language and culture, the education received within the public school system cannot compare to this westernized idea of a culturally rich foundation for adulthood.
The problem American capitalist society is that we are founded upon a system to slavery, in which in order to have a top class, a larger bottom class forced into slavery, currently known as minimum wage jobs, must exist. If it were hypothetically possible for all students to receive equal education, how then would there be enough workers to support this system? As stated in the introductory passage to this essay, there are already many slaves working overseas to support our economy, yet it seems that within America there still needs to be this extreme separation of class in order for our society to work.
People at the top fear change, for why should they give up their privilege that they were not involved in creating? Kozol points to the common thought of the middle and upper class man that theres no real evidence that spending money makes much difference in the outcome of a childs education. We have it. So we spend it. But its probably a secondary matter. Other factorsfamily and backgroundseem to be a great deal more important. Thus, as Kozol argues, In these ways they fend off dangers of disturbing introspection; and this, in turn, enables them to give their children something far more precious than the simple gift of pedagogic privilege. They give them uncontaminated satisfaction in their victories. These children learn to shut from the mind the possibility that they are winners in an unfair race, and they seldom let themselves loose sleep about the losers.
It is true that while some students who have been privileged enough to attend any sort of private school have paused to consider themselves lucky to be able to have such an expensive education, few are particularly bothered about the inequalities. In their education, they are taught at a subconscious level to understand that while inequality exists, it must exist in some extend in order for them to lead profitable lives. Thus, it only makes sense that the Republican Party has painted the nation red in the recent election, as those educated at private schools are far more likely to vote in an election than those who have attended public school, particularly under-funded public schools, as these schools do not have courses in Effecting Political Change, as they are lucky to even have a class in history at all.
Here, I turn briefly to my own experience in the public school system in my middle-class typical suburban neighborhood of Old Bridge, NJ, I was one of the many who was swept along through until graduation, barely managing to pass my courses. Fortunately, my school had an arts program, not a well-funded one, but an arts program at that, and I was able to spend my high school years devoted to the visual and theatre arts, which ultimately earned me my spot at DePaul University.
At one point in his article, Kozol bitterly explains how the struggles of one Great Neck graduate encounters at a topflight private college due to utterly inept and uninspired high school teachers does not compare to the unfairness that students at under-funded schools face.
However, I must argue that this unfairness is relative. My 13 year old sister attends a private school for dyslexia, in which my parents spend an ungodly amount yearly for her education. The public school system was unable to give her the specific type of education she needs with her learning disability, thus, my parents, who are within the top 2% of the income bracket in America, chose to send her to private school. They are taking her out next year because between my ridiculously expensive education at DePaul (with no scholarship or student loans) and the additive cost of her yearly education at The Lewis School has become too much of a financial burden for my parents at this time.
I could, and have stated that I feel it is unfair that my sister has been able to attend a private school which has helped her learn how to learn, as I too have struggled with my education, and my parents never considered to send me to a private school. Instead, I was just looked at as lazy, as someone not working up to her potential. But then I must look to my privilege in attending the particular public school I attended, as other public schools within my home state and around the country would barely find means for competition in terms of quality education. Yet others might have provided me a nudge in the right direction that I never received, and thus I continue to struggle with the basics requirements of education, such as something as simple as writing a paper like the one you are reading at the moment.
A year ago, I participated in a spring break service trip to New Orleans where I volunteered in an elementary school in the projects for a week. The conditions were terrible, construction was making a racket outside, but the windows had to be open because the air conditioning had broken- again. The second graders I worked with were rambunctious and desperate for attention. In order to control the students, the teacher yelled at them constantly, although this only worked for a few seconds before they were jumping out of their seats again. Students with obvious learning disabilities were mixed in with the rest of the children. When I tried to help this one child with his reading, the teacher came over to me and said, Dont worry about him, hes just slow. You know what I mean?
Besides knowing that many of these children came from families of alcoholic and drug-addicted parents, which most likely contributed to some of their learning disabilities, it sickened me to see how this child was treated. Each of these children deserves the same education that I had, as my as my dyslexic sister deserves to be taught in ways she can understand. Something is so fundamentally wrong with the public school system, and I believe that the problem lies within this rampant fear of rearranging the class-system to a point where, at the extreme, capitalism no longer functions. In our country, those with money have power, and why would those with money wish to give up their power for the benefit of the whole? While a small percentage of the affluent would be willing to make sacrifices toward equality, the amount is too small to make a difference. And, the fact remains that the majority of people within this class bracket are not millionaires, but families which rake in $150+ per year, well above poverty levels, and yet, still not wealthy enough to the point where luxury can completely be taken for granted, and large sums of money can be donated to charities without any signs of loss on the spectrum of capitalistic power. Ironically, in terms of this article, Oprah, an African American woman, is a good example of an upper-class member of American society willing to give back to the community. Yet she owns many houses decorated to her liking, and does not wish to sell all her property and live in typical middle-class fashion in order to support the education system within this country.
In Sociology of Celebrity, we have discussed the issues that have come about in society since the death of god and the onset of capitalism. As the individual I took priority over the we, and the idea that if you work hard, you can achieve great success, fame, fortune and above all, adoration, our society has found it fair to justify the success of each individual in terms of their own prerogative. We teach that as Americans, anything a person wants to do as possible with hard work and dedication, and yet this isnt true at all. The confines of racial institutions within this country are so tightly woven that it is rare that someone is able to break free of such institutions to become a successful member of what can be termed as American white society.
Today in my anthropology course (colonialism to global society) we discussed the Dutch colonization of the south Indies, and how a great problem lie within how to educate all to become proper Europeans, and yet still make apparent who is ruled and who is ruler. Comparatively, Kozol states of the segregation of classes within the public school system, Children in one set of schools are educated to be governors; children in the other set of schools are trained for being governed.
It is almost impossible to explain to a sympathetic white person what a typical old Indian boarding school was like; how it affected the Indian child suddenly dumped into it like a small creature from another world, helpless, defenseless, bewildered trying desperately and instinctively to survive and sometimes not surviving at all, states Mary Crow Dog in her article Civilize Them with a Stick, co-authored by Richard Erdoes.
The article is a painful accounting of her time at the mission school at St. Francis she was forced to attend when she was young. White Christians were determined to convert all cultures to their own, as so they did. Even after the horrendous experiences faced at such a boarding school, Native American students were, for the most part, successfully altered to fit in with white society, except white society did not wish for them to fit in. The kids were taken away from their villages and pueblos, in their blankets and moccasins, kept completely isolated from their familiessometimes for as long as ten yearssuddenly coming back, their short hair slick with pomade, their necks raw from stiff, high collars, their thick jackets always short in the sleeves and pinching under the arms, their tight patent leather shoes giving them corns, the girls in starched white blouses and clumsy, high-buttoned boots- caricatures of white people. When they found out- and they found out quickly- that they were neither wanted by whites nor by Indians, they got good and drunk, many of them staying drunk for the rest of their lives.
In a service trip the winter following my time in New Orleans, I visited San Carlos Arizona and volunteered in the Catholic elementary school. My experience in this school system, although also impoverished in comparison to the New Orleans school, was entirely different. The students, at this point, were already whitened, attending church daily, just like other Catholic school students. Their culture, existent in limitation, as their Native religion could only be celebrated as tradition, and not truth. Around the corner from the catholic school, a school in which required the parents to pay small sums of money for the students to attend, was the public elementary school, and the difference in behavior of these children was a world apart. Unfortunately, for the children and parents living in San Carlos, Arizona, the only decent education available for their children is at the catholic school, but sending their children to the catholic school also means allowing the conversion to Christianity to continue, and for their culture to gradually be wiped out completely.
And many of the children, especially the ones attending the public school, have alcoholic parents, who receive payments from the government at the beginning of the month and immediately spend their money on liquor. Most of these students will never leave San Carlos, although a few of them will continue their education at relatively local community colleges, only to return home upon completion of this education. In elementary school, they receive no art lessons, and were very grateful when I went through the grades teaching the students how to draw an apple with pencil, but the talent seen within many of these students will go unnurtured. They will not dream of leaving to attend art school, for how could these students afford supplies in which to put together a portfolio, or the education needed to develop the portfolio to college application standards?
Meanwhile, children of a privileged class continue to be educated at private institutions throughout the country. In these schools, competition is fierce and success is expected. In the middle of the line are schools such as the one I attended, your basic suburban public school system with strong funding for athletics and minimal, yet at least existent funding for the arts, and your run-of-the-mill course selection with a few AP options thrown in for spice. Now I am completing my senior year of college, about to receive my BFA, and another 20 year old female who loves art and theatre is working at a factory, or working retail at Walmart because her parents were unable to financially support an education for her interests. My sister has learned to read, while another child with dyslexia is being told by his teacher that he is just slow, without any effort to help the child.
How is this fair? How can it be changed? All of my Soc 101 papers seem to end up with these open questions filled with anger, guilt, and helplessness. I cannot come to any specific conclusions other than the obvious: inequality is prevalent in our society because in order for capitalism to work, this inequality and class-segregation must exist. Those with power are those with money, and few with this power are willing to give up their money for equality. I got reprimanded in class for bringing up communism as an option to fix the inequality, and yet, in my limited knowledge, it seems to be the only way in which to bring justice to all members of a society, as the problem within education is so deeply rooted in the economy and the Christian religion, something drastic must be done in order to alter these injustices. I hope that someone will provide me with a better answer, for Im not pro-communism, nor am I willing to give up my privilege for the common good. And even if I did give up what I have, I would not be giving up much, for I own little, and must earn my living with a college degree that I probably do not deserve. What can I do?
Thousands upon thousands of impoverished workers, mainly women, work long hours for days or weeks at a time without a full day off in various so-called sweat-shops in Asia, as well as in cities throughout the world. In a video viewed in Sociology 101, produced by the BBC, the documentary makers set out to show how the conditions for these workers were extremely poor, although the companies they produced goods for (Gap and Nike) consistently claimed that they did not subject their workers to sweatshop conditions.
While the problem of sweat shops and exporting work to foreign countries where labor is cheap and easy to replace is not one that should be avoided, it is also the case that within the borders of our own country exists a chronic system of privilege that plays out to effect a multitude of interconnected social institutions including work and class, as reflected in poverty and crime rates within various ethnic groups.
From a white middle to upper-class perspective, often non-white Americans, specifically Black and Latino Americans, are viewed as immoral, irresponsible and lazy. Be it a blazing generalization, it remains the unfortunate fact that generalizations are usually based on some form of truth, or at least, place blame where it is easiest placed, instead of looking deeper to discover the true error within the current system.
Black, Latino, Hispanic and other minority Americans have faced incredible discrimination within America and continue to face these prejudices today. At the root of the equation is the American public education system, one in which still struggles to solve its injustices, as President Bush prides himself on his (under-funded) No Child Left Behind plan, and many from all political affiliations admit that the education system needs revamping towards equality. Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro state in their article, Race, Wealth and Equality, Education, in particular, is the key attribute in whether blacks will achieve economic success relative to white
Americans.
If only it were that simple.
In America, every child under the age of 16 must attend school. The majority of children attend their local public school, funded by the tax dollars of the community. While wealthy, mostly white children and their parents often have the luxury to choose where they will attend school; other children are forced to be educated in their school district.
Each school district is funded more or less, dependant upon the area in which this school is located. Therefore, middle-class individuals who cannot afford or do not wish to send their children to private school can choose to move into a neighborhood where the school district is thought to be good, most likely because of its strong funding and support from the community.
Not everyone has this choice.
Johathan Kozol protests the Savage Inequalities in Americas Schools in his 1991 article. He cites a case in Maryland where the courts have looked at fiscal equalities between school districts, following an equity suit filed in 1978, [which] led the state to reexamine the school funding system. The findings of this examination were shocking. Five years following this suit, the governors task force found that 100 percent equality was too expensive. The goal, it said, was 75 percent equalitymeaning that the poorest districts should be granted no less than three quarters of the funds at the disposal of the average district. But, as the missing 25 percent translates into differences of input (teacher pay, provision of books, class size, etc), we discover it is just enough to demarcate the difference between services appropriate to different social classes, and to formalize that difference in their destinies.
Meanwhile, Peter W. Cookson Jr and Caroline Hodges Persell, in their article Preparing for Power: cultural Capital and Curricula in Americas Elite Boarding Schools, the other end of the financial spectrum of elementary education is detailed. As the students in the impoverish Maryland school districts received only 75 percent funding of the total that other public schools within the state were receiving, private schools across the country, in this case, elite boarding schools, received a great deal more money to spend per student than could ever be dreamed for any public school student. (Unfortunately, figures are unavailable at the current time.)
In this essay, I will assume that the highly-funded elite boarding schools education system is of the highest caliber for young intellectuals, as these private schools have produced many successful athletes, artists and even were the nurturing environment for future presidents. These schools, due to their strong funding, do not have to worry about whether they will be able to afford to pay their basic academic teachers for the school-year. Instead, they can focus on spreading their wealth to other areas of education, fostering motivated individuals who, for the most part, consider themselves elite as opposed to others who have received a public school education.
It is with this knowledge that I take on the assumption that the description of education provided at one of these prestigious boarding schools is of the highest quality possible, as if it wasnt, the wealthy parents who choose to send their children to these schools could continue to shop around for the best education for their child.
Cookson and Persell state, Culture, much like real estate or stocks, can be considered a form of capital. Thus curriculum is the nursery of culture and the classical curriculum is the cradle of high culture... The accumulation of cultural capital can be used to reinforce class differences. Cultural capital is socially created: What constitutes the best in western civilization is not arrived at by happenstance, nor was it decided upon by public election. The more deeply embedded the values, the more likely they will be perceived as value free and universal.
Following a meticulous description of the Groton School Curriculum at its goals for students at the school, the reason for continual segregation of the races within American and the many inequalities seen in our country is made clear. The contrast between the relatively lean curricula of many public schools and the abundant courses offered by boarding schools is apparent. Elective subjects in particular have intriguing titles such as Heingway: the Man and his Work, Varieties of the Poetic Experience, Effecting Political Change, and others of similar intellectual specificity.
In addition to a vast array of elective courses, Cookson and Persell go on and on to describe the plethora of opportunities available to boarding school students, from artistic extracurricular activities such as theatre and choir, to study abroad trips where students are required to immerse themselves in a foreign language and culture, the education received within the public school system cannot compare to this westernized idea of a culturally rich foundation for adulthood.
The problem American capitalist society is that we are founded upon a system to slavery, in which in order to have a top class, a larger bottom class forced into slavery, currently known as minimum wage jobs, must exist. If it were hypothetically possible for all students to receive equal education, how then would there be enough workers to support this system? As stated in the introductory passage to this essay, there are already many slaves working overseas to support our economy, yet it seems that within America there still needs to be this extreme separation of class in order for our society to work.
People at the top fear change, for why should they give up their privilege that they were not involved in creating? Kozol points to the common thought of the middle and upper class man that theres no real evidence that spending money makes much difference in the outcome of a childs education. We have it. So we spend it. But its probably a secondary matter. Other factorsfamily and backgroundseem to be a great deal more important. Thus, as Kozol argues, In these ways they fend off dangers of disturbing introspection; and this, in turn, enables them to give their children something far more precious than the simple gift of pedagogic privilege. They give them uncontaminated satisfaction in their victories. These children learn to shut from the mind the possibility that they are winners in an unfair race, and they seldom let themselves loose sleep about the losers.
It is true that while some students who have been privileged enough to attend any sort of private school have paused to consider themselves lucky to be able to have such an expensive education, few are particularly bothered about the inequalities. In their education, they are taught at a subconscious level to understand that while inequality exists, it must exist in some extend in order for them to lead profitable lives. Thus, it only makes sense that the Republican Party has painted the nation red in the recent election, as those educated at private schools are far more likely to vote in an election than those who have attended public school, particularly under-funded public schools, as these schools do not have courses in Effecting Political Change, as they are lucky to even have a class in history at all.
Here, I turn briefly to my own experience in the public school system in my middle-class typical suburban neighborhood of Old Bridge, NJ, I was one of the many who was swept along through until graduation, barely managing to pass my courses. Fortunately, my school had an arts program, not a well-funded one, but an arts program at that, and I was able to spend my high school years devoted to the visual and theatre arts, which ultimately earned me my spot at DePaul University.
At one point in his article, Kozol bitterly explains how the struggles of one Great Neck graduate encounters at a topflight private college due to utterly inept and uninspired high school teachers does not compare to the unfairness that students at under-funded schools face.
However, I must argue that this unfairness is relative. My 13 year old sister attends a private school for dyslexia, in which my parents spend an ungodly amount yearly for her education. The public school system was unable to give her the specific type of education she needs with her learning disability, thus, my parents, who are within the top 2% of the income bracket in America, chose to send her to private school. They are taking her out next year because between my ridiculously expensive education at DePaul (with no scholarship or student loans) and the additive cost of her yearly education at The Lewis School has become too much of a financial burden for my parents at this time.
I could, and have stated that I feel it is unfair that my sister has been able to attend a private school which has helped her learn how to learn, as I too have struggled with my education, and my parents never considered to send me to a private school. Instead, I was just looked at as lazy, as someone not working up to her potential. But then I must look to my privilege in attending the particular public school I attended, as other public schools within my home state and around the country would barely find means for competition in terms of quality education. Yet others might have provided me a nudge in the right direction that I never received, and thus I continue to struggle with the basics requirements of education, such as something as simple as writing a paper like the one you are reading at the moment.
A year ago, I participated in a spring break service trip to New Orleans where I volunteered in an elementary school in the projects for a week. The conditions were terrible, construction was making a racket outside, but the windows had to be open because the air conditioning had broken- again. The second graders I worked with were rambunctious and desperate for attention. In order to control the students, the teacher yelled at them constantly, although this only worked for a few seconds before they were jumping out of their seats again. Students with obvious learning disabilities were mixed in with the rest of the children. When I tried to help this one child with his reading, the teacher came over to me and said, Dont worry about him, hes just slow. You know what I mean?
Besides knowing that many of these children came from families of alcoholic and drug-addicted parents, which most likely contributed to some of their learning disabilities, it sickened me to see how this child was treated. Each of these children deserves the same education that I had, as my as my dyslexic sister deserves to be taught in ways she can understand. Something is so fundamentally wrong with the public school system, and I believe that the problem lies within this rampant fear of rearranging the class-system to a point where, at the extreme, capitalism no longer functions. In our country, those with money have power, and why would those with money wish to give up their power for the benefit of the whole? While a small percentage of the affluent would be willing to make sacrifices toward equality, the amount is too small to make a difference. And, the fact remains that the majority of people within this class bracket are not millionaires, but families which rake in $150+ per year, well above poverty levels, and yet, still not wealthy enough to the point where luxury can completely be taken for granted, and large sums of money can be donated to charities without any signs of loss on the spectrum of capitalistic power. Ironically, in terms of this article, Oprah, an African American woman, is a good example of an upper-class member of American society willing to give back to the community. Yet she owns many houses decorated to her liking, and does not wish to sell all her property and live in typical middle-class fashion in order to support the education system within this country.
In Sociology of Celebrity, we have discussed the issues that have come about in society since the death of god and the onset of capitalism. As the individual I took priority over the we, and the idea that if you work hard, you can achieve great success, fame, fortune and above all, adoration, our society has found it fair to justify the success of each individual in terms of their own prerogative. We teach that as Americans, anything a person wants to do as possible with hard work and dedication, and yet this isnt true at all. The confines of racial institutions within this country are so tightly woven that it is rare that someone is able to break free of such institutions to become a successful member of what can be termed as American white society.
Today in my anthropology course (colonialism to global society) we discussed the Dutch colonization of the south Indies, and how a great problem lie within how to educate all to become proper Europeans, and yet still make apparent who is ruled and who is ruler. Comparatively, Kozol states of the segregation of classes within the public school system, Children in one set of schools are educated to be governors; children in the other set of schools are trained for being governed.
It is almost impossible to explain to a sympathetic white person what a typical old Indian boarding school was like; how it affected the Indian child suddenly dumped into it like a small creature from another world, helpless, defenseless, bewildered trying desperately and instinctively to survive and sometimes not surviving at all, states Mary Crow Dog in her article Civilize Them with a Stick, co-authored by Richard Erdoes.
The article is a painful accounting of her time at the mission school at St. Francis she was forced to attend when she was young. White Christians were determined to convert all cultures to their own, as so they did. Even after the horrendous experiences faced at such a boarding school, Native American students were, for the most part, successfully altered to fit in with white society, except white society did not wish for them to fit in. The kids were taken away from their villages and pueblos, in their blankets and moccasins, kept completely isolated from their familiessometimes for as long as ten yearssuddenly coming back, their short hair slick with pomade, their necks raw from stiff, high collars, their thick jackets always short in the sleeves and pinching under the arms, their tight patent leather shoes giving them corns, the girls in starched white blouses and clumsy, high-buttoned boots- caricatures of white people. When they found out- and they found out quickly- that they were neither wanted by whites nor by Indians, they got good and drunk, many of them staying drunk for the rest of their lives.
In a service trip the winter following my time in New Orleans, I visited San Carlos Arizona and volunteered in the Catholic elementary school. My experience in this school system, although also impoverished in comparison to the New Orleans school, was entirely different. The students, at this point, were already whitened, attending church daily, just like other Catholic school students. Their culture, existent in limitation, as their Native religion could only be celebrated as tradition, and not truth. Around the corner from the catholic school, a school in which required the parents to pay small sums of money for the students to attend, was the public elementary school, and the difference in behavior of these children was a world apart. Unfortunately, for the children and parents living in San Carlos, Arizona, the only decent education available for their children is at the catholic school, but sending their children to the catholic school also means allowing the conversion to Christianity to continue, and for their culture to gradually be wiped out completely.
And many of the children, especially the ones attending the public school, have alcoholic parents, who receive payments from the government at the beginning of the month and immediately spend their money on liquor. Most of these students will never leave San Carlos, although a few of them will continue their education at relatively local community colleges, only to return home upon completion of this education. In elementary school, they receive no art lessons, and were very grateful when I went through the grades teaching the students how to draw an apple with pencil, but the talent seen within many of these students will go unnurtured. They will not dream of leaving to attend art school, for how could these students afford supplies in which to put together a portfolio, or the education needed to develop the portfolio to college application standards?
Meanwhile, children of a privileged class continue to be educated at private institutions throughout the country. In these schools, competition is fierce and success is expected. In the middle of the line are schools such as the one I attended, your basic suburban public school system with strong funding for athletics and minimal, yet at least existent funding for the arts, and your run-of-the-mill course selection with a few AP options thrown in for spice. Now I am completing my senior year of college, about to receive my BFA, and another 20 year old female who loves art and theatre is working at a factory, or working retail at Walmart because her parents were unable to financially support an education for her interests. My sister has learned to read, while another child with dyslexia is being told by his teacher that he is just slow, without any effort to help the child.
How is this fair? How can it be changed? All of my Soc 101 papers seem to end up with these open questions filled with anger, guilt, and helplessness. I cannot come to any specific conclusions other than the obvious: inequality is prevalent in our society because in order for capitalism to work, this inequality and class-segregation must exist. Those with power are those with money, and few with this power are willing to give up their money for equality. I got reprimanded in class for bringing up communism as an option to fix the inequality, and yet, in my limited knowledge, it seems to be the only way in which to bring justice to all members of a society, as the problem within education is so deeply rooted in the economy and the Christian religion, something drastic must be done in order to alter these injustices. I hope that someone will provide me with a better answer, for Im not pro-communism, nor am I willing to give up my privilege for the common good. And even if I did give up what I have, I would not be giving up much, for I own little, and must earn my living with a college degree that I probably do not deserve. What can I do?
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
theinsomniac:
Thanks. I'll have it up this weekend. 
xanippi:
have you read Jonathan Kazol's Amazing Grace? You should. his work is so moving