Society Can Effect Your Education

Living in a certain social class can determine what type of education a student will receive. Whether a student is raised in the lower class, the working class, the middle class or an upper class society or whether they come from different ethnical background, they all receive a different type of education. In the following essays by Johnathan Kozol, Jean Anyons, and Mike Rose, help determine that living in a certain type of community and being a certain type of race can decide the type of education a student receives. Social class has a massive effect on the education and creates inequality among students however there are ways to help improve the issue.

Living in a different community or being born from a different ethical background determines the type of environment and the education a student will receive. In "Still Separate, Still Unequal" by Kozol states how segregated Americas inner-city schools have become and that uptown schools, with mostly white students, are given a way better funding and a much higher quality of education, than the schools of the inner-city neighborhoods. A neighborhood in Seattle where Kozol has visited half of the families living there were Caucasian but those who were attending the elementary school were of different ethnicity. "An African-American teacher at the school told me-not with bitterness but wistfully-of seeing clusters of white parents and their children each morning on the corner of a street close to the school, waiting for a bus that took the children to a predominantly white school"(Kozol 203). That alone states that even though people live within minutes of a school in a mixed community, where half of the families are Caucasian that the white families prefer to send out their kids to a school where most of the kids there are also Caucasian. Kozol's also claims that segregation is still a major issue in the American education system. That issue can be fixed by having some type of border line and that border line alone decides what school that student has to attend.

Being born into a specific social class can also limit the type of education received. In "From Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work", Anyon observations showed the details of each school's curriculum and those details helped relate the schools educational system to the social economical class, meaning that the kind of education taught is worst for the working class schools and better for the executive elite schools. "In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice. The teachers rarely explain why the work is being assigned, how it might connect to other assignments, or what the idea is that lies behind the procedure or gives it coherence and perhaps meaning or significance" (Anyon 167). With that said it clearly shows that students in a working-class school are not taught how to think on their own, not to think critically and to follow the rules. Also that the teachers in a working-class school are more about getting the work done than explain why it has to be done or how it connects to the other assignments. Students in an Executive Elite school are better taught than those in a work-class school. "In the executive elite school, work is developing one's analytical intellectual powers. Children are continually asked to reason through a problem, to produce intellectual products that are both logically sound and of top academic quality... Schoolwork helps one to achieve, to excel, to prepare for life" (Anyon 175). Meaning that those in An Executive Elite School are taught to think critically and are taught to use those skills and how to apply them. Teachers have a higher expectation for their students and are taught differently than those in a lower class and therefore giving those in an Elite school more hope and a better skill to prepare them for a successful future. How much income ones family has defines the education a child will obtain. This situation can be fixed by hiring teachers with great experience and education and spread them evenly among all the schools. Also that the curriculum should be the same curriculum for every student in the state or city, they all will receive the same education as everyone else.

Not only does living in a working