Social Issues in Education

Last meeting, some thoughts were procured in my head about the situation in American Schools. What seems to keep coming up, especially in the video that was shown at the beginning of class, is that the achievement gap of minorities is directly related to all the other gaps they face in their life. But I can’t seem to figure out which one is the cause. Maybe they are both effects of each other, but thinking that way makes it very difficult to fix either problem. Thus far, we have been focusing on the achievement gap as the cause of the other problems and have been trying to close that gap to fix the others. Some may argue that using that approach hasn’t worked and we need a new approach. But maybe it’s not the cause we got wrong, maybe it’s the way we try to close the achievement gap. We know that all students aren’t treated the same. It’s like Dr. T said, what worth do we attribute to our students? Some schools do have predetermined worths attributed to all their students, whether they truly earned it or not. I catch myself thinking all the time how I believe every student CAN do the work; they just need some guidance and help getting there and believing in themselves. However, in many of my experiences in the school system, I find that teachers get in the rut of doing the “same thing we’ve always done” instead of reevaluating the things that don’t work- like endless worksheets. I feel like teachers have given up in a sense and figure if the child isn’t getting it it’s the child’s fault, not theirs. Now, this isn’t the case everywhere, but even if this happened in 1% of the schools in the United States it would be happening too much. The job of a teacher is to inspire their students to greatness, and that isn’t going to happen with a worksheet on the causes of World War I. We need to make everything relevant to the students. This is especially important with students who don’t have parents who hound them on the importance of schooling because their parents never finished themselves. How did all the teachers in those inspirational teacher true story movies ever reach their kids? Well, in Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers, they first took a step into their students’ world and pulled some rap music out of it to make them realized that English is everywhere. In Mr. Holland’s Opus, he showed the students the influences of classical music on his students’ favorite Rock songs. In Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams showed his students that poetry is an individual expression that must be felt inside and out, and there are no right and wrong answers in poetry. What did all these teachers have in common? They all reached out into their students’ worlds and made school relevant to their life. I think that is the key to closing the achievement gap. Tests and teaching to the test isn’t going to help students achieve more in school, but making school important to them will.