Class Rules

Peter Cookson gives reasons why the “classroom as equalizer” idea is a myth. The middle class child goes to a good, spacious school. with good teachers and connections to good colleges. The inner city working class child, however, goes to a cramped, crowded, underfunded, and poorly managed school with no connections to good colleges. The college counselor only hands out applications, and there’s little guidance.

As a former high schools students from a suburban high school I could easily see the difference when I entered an urban school. The difference was in the deference; there was little respect for the teachers or the school, and absolutely no motivation. The middle class suburban youth has college and money on his mind, while the inner city youth doesn’t seem to want to go to school. Most of my classmates went to private colleges or the best public ones, and their parents could afford to pay. My students were accepted into a variety of colleges, some public, some private. But many of them flunked out in the first year because of low skills.

Despite the validity of Cookson’s arguments, I do not agree with all of his points. In New York City, the teachers come from a variety of backgrounds, including public and private colleges. Yet the teachers in the public schools are paid equally regardless of what college they attended, same thing with the police department, corrections, health & hospitals. Cookson’s proofs consist of the Highridge boarding school versus Patrick Henry High School, both in a working class town. The private school is a doorway to great futures, but the local high school has teen pregnancy, drug use, and general failure on all levels. But what is there to stop a poor kid from taking lots of science classes, joining the military, learning a specialty, leaving after a few years, going to college on the GI Bill?

Those of us who read The Other Wes Moore might be convinced that Wes Moore was “saved” by the Valley Forge Military Academy, but I’m not. He was, by his own admittance, a poor academic, and his C average would NOT have gotten him into West Point. Yet he was able to get and officer’s commission anyway just by having a four year college degree. Most parents can’t afford to send their kids to a great military school, but can they even afford to live in a neighborhood with no bad influences?

In the Highridge versus Patrick Henry comparison, the only difference I see is motivation. The townies seem to lack any ambition or initiative whatsoever. I can understand a kid not wanting to go to college, some kids are more physical. If a kid says that she wants to be a chef, mechanic, soldier, sailor, I say that’s wonderful. But the kids in the working class school don’t even seem to want that.

No matter what the author’s point here, I think that the real problem, according to his evidence, is a general suspicion towards academics. If the parents do not want to listen to the people that are trying to help their kids, then what do they expect to get? Why send your kid to high school if you don’t care what happens to them?