Inquiry Project - Random Questions

In my mind there are many questions on different topics about Inner City Education that interest me. Therefore it's been quite hard to pick just one topic, but after brainstorming random questions I noticed a few of them sort of belonged to one topic. The following are my still-somewhat-random questions:

• How can we narrow the culture gap?
• "White Model" - "Culture Capital" (Fruchter, Urban Schools Public Will pg. 28)
• What are those cultural differences that reflect problems in schools?
• Is discipline at Black and Latino homes more relaxed than in White and Asian families?
• Why is it that a great amount of Black and Latino parents are unable to help their kids with homework or at least encourage them to do well in school?
• Is the previous question related to the idea that they view themselves as too different from the "white model", or perhaps they have low expectations on their own children?
• Or is it related to the fact that they are too busy working (although white parents may be in the same situation)?
• Perhaps they stop helping their children as soon as they surpass their own level of education?
• Being myself from a Latin American country, I am interested in focusing on Latino students and their families. Would this be a positive focus or would I be encouraging segregation by doing so?

*K

"The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"

Society is strongly influenced by the media, and it would be hard for it not to be that way, especially these days when media is everywhere we look, even in our phones! Most of us have come to like it that way, since it is very easy to be connected to the world and not miss a thing. But this inevitably influence the way we see things which can be in either positive or negative ways.

When it comes to media focusing on education, it is important for us to believe only part of what is being put out there, because media is usually very biased, commonly based on personal experiences or even on imagination. Nevertheless, watching movies and TV shows, reading articles, or listening to songs and radio shows, can give us a general idea of what the similarities and differences are between urban, suburban, and rural education. If we take any media and compare it to our personal experience as teachers or students as well as to professional research, then as an end result we’ll have more accurate information that will lead us away from stereotypes.

After looking through the different kinds of media, I realized suburban, rural, and urban education is portrayed in such consistent ways that they can be amusingly categorized as the “good”, the “bad”, and the “ugly”, respectively.

“The Good”
As you probably guessed, suburban schools are labeled “the good”. This is for several reasons: the number of students who finish high school compared to the rural and urban numbers is much higher, there is a higher college enrollment, teachers have higher salaries, their schools higher budgets, and their students score higher test scores, to name a few reasons.

Most movies and TV shows about suburban schools are comedies or teenage dramas. In movies such as Mean Girls and Clueless, we see the main characters portrayed as young students whose primary concerns are related to their physical appearance and being liked by their peers more than their teachers or parent from whom they try to stay away as possible. TV shows such as Boy Meets World, Saved by the Bell, and Dawson’s Creek, also reflect similar problems as in the movies previously mentioned. These young students have relationship and family issues, but are able to find support in their friends, their friends’ families, and in some cases in their teachers. Their immediate families are up to date to what is happening in their lives but aren’t able to spend much time with them because of long work hours.

As this video shows, http://www.edutopia.org/handhelds, students from suburban schools are privileged in ways that urban or rural students could never even dream to be. These kind of opportunities brought to them are tools that will surely give them a tremendous self-confidence in the real world when they are of age to work. Although not every suburban school will give out palms to their students, it is a great example of the extent to which teachers can explode students’ capabilities, and therefore making suburban education the “good guy”.

“The Bad”
I will start by stating that rural education in reality is not bad. The main problems in rural schools rely on the fact that they receive very little attention and have very low budgets, in many cases even lower than inner city schools’ budgets. For these reasons, we could not expect rural students to have any privileges other than the basic education offered by their teachers who earn less than in urban and suburban schools.

There is a very low college enrollment, and the few people who go for higher education will end up living in urban areas “leaving rural communities with fewer people who can help young adults make the transition to college” (see http://blog.ruraledu.org/2007/09/ruralnot_so_muchin_the_middle.html#more)

Nevertheless, there are some positive aspects about rural schools. Teachers report fewer discipline problems and since there are fewer students in each classroom each student will surely have more individual attention and therefore rural schools have higher scores than most city schools. Still they won’t surpass their suburban peers.

In movies such as Songcatcher we can see that the people from rural communities are closer to nature, have close ties with their families, and try to focus in joyful things in life such as music, they live slower paced lives, and they have less pressure to succeed big time as in the suburbs or big cities.

“The Ugly”
The main reasons why I am classifying urban schools under “the ugly” are related to children doing drugs, having unprotected sex, and living in violent environments. This is what the media has bombarded us with, but sadly many of these movies, songs, TV shows, and articles are based on true stories.

It may be called “the ugly” but movies about urban schools such as Lean On Me, Dangerous Minds, and Thirteen are the most inspiring, most intense, and most passionate. Students still worry about relationships and about being judged by their peers, but unfortunately they have much more intense problems that they shouldn’t be facing at such a young age. Pregnancies, abortions, killings, drug abuse, sexual abuse, are the everyday surrounding problems in and these cause extreme apathy in school subjects creating frustration in underpaid teachers. It is a very vicious cycle.

Songs mainly by rap and hip-hop artists describe family problems that cause very deep emotional issues. Opposite from rural and suburban students’ song creations, these songs are filled with explicit content and sad stories that are based on or describe true stories. An interesting fact is songs from artists that attended suburban schools may also talk about drugs and going to rehab, but in a very different tone from urban songs. Because teenagers from the inner cities have much higher chances of getting killed if involved in drugs, while suburban teenagers have more support from families if they get involved in drugs. A song such as “Photograph” by Nickelback that describes the singer’s eyes getting red is in a funny feel-good context. While an artist like Eminem’s various songs are filled with regrets and descriptions of the problems caused by drugs.

What I learned from researching the media to find descriptions about schools, is that it is not so far from the reality. Directors, writers, and other artists have done a meticulous job to represent and show the world what American children and teenagers go through during their school years. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this post it is important to do professional research along with media research to have a more accurate take on any kind of school we are to teach in.

Frames of Reference: Urban Schools

As a student who grew up in one of the largest and busiest cities in the world, you would expect me to have attended the “typical” urban school. Nevertheless I did not; all my life my parents sent me to private schools because in Mexico City public schools are sadly a synonym of bad education. I believe failures in its Public School System can tell you a lot about a country. In this case Mexico undergoes a vicious cycle that starts off wrong in the schooling of its coming generations, it is as unfair as it gets: if you come from a wealthy family you go to a private school, if you have no money, what’s left is public education or no education at all.
Although a focus in American urban schools is what we are looking to understand today,
I want to use Mexico as an example, not only because it is the place where I grew up in, but also because just as the USA, it faces huge differences in education that are interesting to address.
Keep in mind while you read through my post, that I did not grow up in this country as I mentioned before, so please feel free to correct me if I am wrong. My knowledge about American Public School System is derived from the media, as well as from relatives and friends who grew up in this country and went to public schools. So the following are my very own personal beliefs about urban education in this country.

Let’s try this analogy that comes to my mind when I try to separate urban from suburban education. I will compare Mexico’s public schools system with USA’s urban education, and Mexico’s private schools with USA’s suburban schools. While this may make some people cringe, it is not so far from the reality. Suburbs are mostly resided by people with a higher economic status than most of the people who live in big cities. Higher economic status will bring more financial support and parents will feel comfortable sending their kids to their local public school. People in the big cities with a low economic status will have no other choice but to send their kids to urban public schools. In some cases suburban schools have such financial support that they could be compared to a private school, especially when studied next to low funding urban schools. In the end, it seems as if I am saying: Suburban schools = good, urban schools = bad education.

But I believe the above statement is not necessarily true in every case, and this positive and hopeful take has been influenced in me mostly by the media (think “Dangerous Minds”). For the most part it depends on the financial situation of the city; the more money, the better funded schools are. Schools with a larger budget are able to get all sorts of special programs, materials, tools, and “better” teachers. And I say “better” sort of meaning “happier” or truly more positive. Because it takes a lot of passion and dedication to want to work under difficult conditions and low salaries, as it is the case in urban education.

There are diverse social issues that affect most urban schools causing a lot of stress on students, teachers, and parents. Cities live a very fast paced life, in order to make more money some parents (or single parents!) may take more than one job or extra hours in their regular job, making it hard to spend time with their children. These children then grow up with less support and supervision and many end up with drug problems or in gangs. Having grown up in a different kind of environment, some teachers will feel alienated and uncomfortable and will therefore work there only temporarily, making it hard for the school to have a strong group of educators. Nevertheless, some teachers who may have grown up in big cities or even some suburban teachers may think of urban education as an interesting and challenging place where they can help to make a difference in urban students’ lives, they may have to work extra and make less money, put a lot of dedication and deal with student apathy. For these reasons, being an urban teacher is some times though of as superior from suburban education. I don’t agree with this because I believe that suburban education has its own challenges. But as long as teachers are happy in their own environment they will most likely end up becoming good teachers.

A very positive characteristic of inner city schools is diversity in students and teachers as well. Even though this may also create many social problems, it can be looked at from a positive point of view. Diversity is like traveling without having to get out of the country. It is something I didn’t grow up having and now that I am surrounded by people from different nationalities, my take on the world and its different issues has changed positively. If teachers help students interact between different ethnicities and they learn to respect each other and they exchange cultural information from each other, they will become more aware of what the world has to offer and there is a sense of self awareness as well by doing so.

When concentrating about all these different issues about urban vs. suburban education, it makes me think about myself as a teacher and what I want to achieve no matter where I decide to teach in the future. I have a passion for studying different cultures, which makes me think I would consider working in a big and diverse city.

I consider that growing up in a different county may bring some different ways of teaching in me. But I understand that adapting to the society that surrounds the school where you teach is crucial. I strongly believe that having a positive outlook facilitates any kind of issue and that you can truly make a difference in a student’s life!