"The development of an underclass in American society can be linked not only to economic stratification due to capitalist relations of exploitation but also to racial stratification."(226)
This point relates to much of what we have been discussing in this course. While research has discovered the economic status is the greatest determinant towards how a student will perform on things like standardized tests, I think it is clear and unfortunate that race and ethnicity are linked to economic status in our country. Of course, everyone has anecdotal evidence of someone from economically disadvantaged families who has succeeded in school despite the odds. These stories are great, but they do nothing to help the fact that there is a larger problem in our society.
What makes it worse is that many schools are still largely segregated despite the fact that racial segregation in our schools has been illegal for more than 50 years. The segregation that occurs today is based on economics. School systems like Barrington, for example, which is predominantly middle to upper class, are also predominantly white. Poor families, many whom are non-white, simply can not afford to live in these neighborhoods. This segregation is not mandated, but it is real.
Even in a city like Providence in which the majority of students are poor and non-white there exists subtle forms of segregation. In a city where approximately 85% of public school children qualify for some form of free or reduced lunch, there is an elementary school on the East Side where more than half the children come from families affluent enough to not qualify for any form of reduced lunch (the reduced lunch program being the only way that the state of RI makes economic distinctions for its students). Its no surprise that a majority of the students at that school are white, as well. Strangely, only about 10% of the students at that school live within the one mile radius which classifies students as neighborhood kids. The rest come from other areas around the city. This is disturbing. It points to the idea that this particular school is reserved, as it were, for middle class families who want to send their kids to public schools, but are reticent about city schools that largely fit into a lower socio-economic status. This middle class school also happens to have the highest test scores among Providence Elementary schools.
This is just one example, which is close to home, that points to some form of unofficial school segregation. When the mayor of Providence announces that he is closing four schools around the city where the combined population of those schools is over 90% qualifying for free or reduced lunch, there is an equity problem. Basically, over 2,000 poor kids are getting displaced from schools, and herded around to wherever they can fit to save the city money.
No child left behind? really?
"Resistance, then, is a process in which the working-class student further solidifies his or her position in the lowest tier of the class system, helping to confirm the view established by critical theorists that a nation's educational system is subservient to its economic system."(228)
Resistance seems somewhat inevitable considering example like the one above on how school systems and other institutions systematically devise subtle way to perpetuate the systems which keeps the power structures in place. This relates to Delpit's rule that those with the most power are least aware of its existence, and those with the least power are most aware of its existence. Groups that have been marginalized are surely keenly aware of injustice. School children in these situations may not be aware of many of the ways that these power inequities are preserved and maintained, but they know that something is amiss. Considering this, some form of resistance seems inevitable in many cases. If something is inherently unfair, it seems to me only natural to resist it and rebel against it.
"Their 'failure' in school cannot be interpreted as resulting simply from individual deficiencise; it must be understood as part of a play of diffences between radically disparate cultural fields."(229)
While I think that "disparate cultural fields" does play into difference in school performance for children from different backgrounds, I believe that a pervasive system of inequity is a bigger factor. If we did not have systems of segregation in place where those in the schools from families with less resources receive less support than those of their more affluent counterparts, then I think we would start to see an educational system in our country where everybody was achieving at similar levels regardless of cultural backgrounds.
This was an interesting reading which provoked a lot of thought for me. A lot of my thoughts are also being provoked by the current process of school closings and displacement of poor children which is currently going on in my city. I am interested in how the ideas we are learning in this class are relating to real world events which have a profound impact on not only those who live and have children attending schools in Providence, but also on anyone who is planning to be a teacher here in RI, and really anyone who is concerned about issues of justice and equality.
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