Poorly Funded Public Schools

1. Q: Are there circumstances in which school resources do matter and times they do not?

       A: I do believe that school resources are necessary to have. Every student will be     using them and will need the equipment’s like: crayons, pencils, a pencil sharpener, library books, and etc. These resources are not just needed for the students but teachers will need them too. I am not saying that all these resources may be needed in every class because as students grow older and get into higher classes they will need to learn the responsibility of bringing their own equipment. Those small items like pencils and crayons may not be necessary for classes to have because students may already have them. There are times were these equipment’s are needed and at times they do not. For example, having library books or a book that is needed for a specific class is definitely needed because how else will the students learn if they do not have the book. In the novel Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol, the author discusses about children who do not have any of these resources in East St. Louis at their school or at home. So, yes for them having any type of school resources is necessary. As an example, in the book one students says, “ ‘ My mother offered to help me with my science, which was hard for me, he says but I would not bring home the book (p 134).’ ” This young boy is now being stopped from learning because of the lack of resources in his school and this is why we need these resources. From personal experience, I know how it feels like when you cannot bring a book home because it needs to stay in class. Our school library had shut down and that was probably the hardest thing for our school because it has 4,000 students who would like to read and do their homework.

2. Q: What affects do bad teachers have on a child?

           

            A: First, to define a bad teacher is when he/she is not engage with their students and is not giving the effort to teach. Personally, I think teachers that just lecture and pass out assignments are bad teachers because I have had a teacher who has done that. I never learned anything in my class because we never discussed about the assignment and we were never given the opportunity to speak up. For example in he novel it discusses about how these students were pronouncing these words in class but when Kozol asked a student if he knew the meaning of the words and found out that, “ The teacher never asks the children to define the words or use them (p 85).” As a teacher it is your job to educate your students and have them learns something new each day instead this teacher is not even teaching.

            The affects a bad teacher can have on a student is that they now will assume that every other teacher does not care and all they want to do is to get their job done. This is how some students feel about teachers. Also, this affects students by not speaking to teachers about any problems they have with the assignments in class or at home because they do not want to speak to a teacher whom they feel is bad and doesn’t care. Later, on this experience will affect their future with other teachers.

            A good teacher would be the one who has his/her students engaged in the classroom and is passionate about teaching. If a teacher is not passionate about their own job then how will they helping their students because then they would be a bad teacher. I am saying this from personal experience because you can tell when a teacher loves or hates their job right when they walk into the classroom. My ceramics teacher in high school loved what she did and you could see it with the way she acted in her classroom. She wanted us to learn about ceramics, not just how to make something out of clay but to know the meaning of what ceramics. With every different project we had learned about the background of who created or how to create our next project. It was not just a class where we made something with clay it was more than that.

3. Q: Who is mostly affected by this practice? How are they affected? (Protecting the wealthy by providing a lesser education to the poor.)

            A: It is the poor who are going to be mostly affected by this. They wealthy people will be giving their children a higher education but that should not be taken away from the other children because they do not have money. In this book it discusses how these children in East St. Louis have no education, even though there are schools there are lack of teachers, school supplies, or the buildings are wrecked. Every child should be getting their education and it should not be based on their wealth. All the students that are poor are being affected by this decision like the ones in East St. Louis. We live in America were people come from other countries to get a better education here in the United States, yet we cannot even give our own citizens a better education?

            By providing a lesser education for the poor they will have no hopes or dreams for themselves because they know that cannot have what the suburb children have. In the novel a fourth grade teacher says, “These kids are aware of their failures … Some of them act like the game’s already over (p. 70).” This is the affect that it has on the students that are and they are already giving up because they are aware of what stands in front of them.