As I have mentioned in other articles, I recently took a sociology class called American Society, in which I learned more about social institutions, such as education and family. I felt deeply affected by the education part of the class, which might be due to the fact that it was the most shocking to me. As someone whose parents were able to move into a reputable public school system, I have been sheltered from the pitfalls of our larger education system. I felt that going to public school made me more “aware” of what it takes to achieve in school, but in reality I was discounting the privilege that has been ever-present in my educational career.
A recent New York Times article highlights one school on the Lower East Side of New York, and while I was not surprised at the poverty that exists within the school, I was reminded of the lack of equal opportunity in schools that is often overlooked. How can students achieve when their homelessness prevents them from having basic necessities in life? The answer is they can’t. It’s not a lack of hard work that prevents them from coming to school every day, it’s the intersections of other institutions such as economy and family that creates barriers and cycles that are difficult to break.
P.S. 188 is named “The Island School,” which creates an image in my mind of people trying to survive in isolation and with diminishing resources. This school is a perfect example of why we can’t just hire better teachers to fix the education problem. Overcrowding in shelters and absences from class for various reasons prevent children from concentrating on and learning valuable material. The article says that families applying for a shelter have to have all families members present during the application, so how is a teacher going to argue that math class is more important that a make or break situation such as housing? When those kids miss class, they miss information that will help them pass the standardized tests, scores of which help schools get funding from the state.
Schools like P.S. 188 often end up providing more than just a building for learning. They try their best to give kids the necessary tools and care in order to help them succeed. Practices like providing toothbrushes and therapy are the right steps to helping kids stay in school. At the end of the day, though, it depends not on how much they want to be there, but how much other factors are preventing them from achieving. This is where the true inequality comes in because while some students get dropped off at school, picked up and taken home or to their extracurricular activity, homeless students often have to walk to school and they have other responsibilities that children from more affluent families are not expected to worry about.
When I read "Savage Inequalities" by Jonathan Kozol, I remember wanting to rip the book in half when I heard a student from a public school in a wealthy district say that other students just need to work hard and they can have success in school. This is a drastic generalization of the difficulty that it takes to get through the school system. We must not forget that privilege goes a long way and the problem with the education system does not just come from the institution of education. Schools like PS 188 are doing their best to ameliorate the situation, but I don’t believe they can fight this battle alone. I don’t know what will change, but I do know that for a society who appears to care about the youth we have a twisted way of reassuring them of their importance and equal worth.
