"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.