Friday, February 5, 2010
Urban Studies
Today I realized that tall boys are often discriminated against in school. They are seen as a threat to teachers so they get sent to alternative school or they get disciplined for small infractions making them so discouraged that they end up dropping out of school. Actually the boy that was cutting my hair was 6'5" and he started talking to me about his experience in high school and how he acted out at the alternative school just so he could stay there because he was treated so much better at the alternative school then he was at high school. My own son is a large 16 year old kid and I have noticed that since he started growing his school discipline has gotten out of control. Little infractions are made into suspensions and teachers use comments like "he intimdates me". I have learned from this that kids are just kids, no matter how big they appear to be, and they all need to be treated fairly and we need to check our own insecurities at the door.
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What I have learned this week.
ReplyDeleteI learned that half of all uban students do not graduate high school. What is wrong with us as adults that we do not see the problem with that and change the system so that it is more succesful. I mean our goal is the educate students right? Or is it to give teachers a job? If it is to educate students and half of them are dropping out before they complete their "job" then I would say that the system is not working and it needs to be overhauled. If I had a termite treatment that only killed termites 50% of the time I wouldn't be selling to many termite treatments. If however the government took money from every homeowner and told them that they could either get my treatment for that money or they could pay extra (over the money they already pay) and get treatment from another company what do you think customers would do? How about low income customers? They would take their chances with the 50% and that is what many parents and students are faced with. They are being charged for a service which only has a 50% success rate and they have no choice but to pay for it. This is why I am an advocate for schools of choice or vouchers. I don't think that people should be required to settle for a 50% success rate.
I am volunteering at a high school tutoring math students. Math is not my strongest forte so it has been interesting. I think that it is amazing the things that they expect kids to know now adays. I know that I am not that old but it does seem that the stress level has gone up tremendously since I was in high school. The stress to get the best grade point average possible because of the bright futures is amazing. I remember when a 3.0 was pretty good, now these students are telling me that they have to have over a 4.0 to get into most colleges. I can't imagine the stress that these children feel knowing that one bad grade could ruin their future. Bright futures is a great thing, but I think that the standards that they are putting on these kids might be a little to much for them. It just seems to me that there were a lot of stressed out kids in that room that were on the verge of just giving up on it all because the pressure was just to much.
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