In this chapter the area that my caught my attention is the section on school and war on poverty. The federal government’s war on poverty during the 1960 was reminiscent of the beliefs of nineteenth –century common school reformers that education could reduce social class divisions and eliminate poverty. The government looked at education as a means of improving the social class of not the rich but the poor. I think that the government I a miss conception of how education was supposed to work in helping the poorer communities. I believe that education was a good way of helping to create social class and decreasing poverty among the poor but the education that was being received by the poor children was not the best.
In reading that section it seem as through education was the best thing for the poor to improve their social class but the question that arises is was the poor receive equal and poor education as the middle class and the rich in order to be better prepare for society. We discuss in class that today the education system failing and school in American compare with school in other countries like Japan, Finland and Canada which are doing well. We find that schools in poorer neighborhood are not performing a great as the school that are in neighborhood where the income for the household is higher about the poverty line. Education was supposed to be a positive outlook for the poor to move up in social class but people that lived in poorer neighborhood was receiving a poor education which didn’t allowed them to receive great employment opportunities, which cause a low standard of living which in return resulted in poor medical care, diet, housing and education for the next generation. Even though the government took it upon themselves to provide education for the poor they were not looking at the factors that was prevent the poor for received a poor proper education. For example poor health care, poor teaching in poor neighborhoods, parents lack of education themselves and so on.
In class before we were give an assignment to read. We looked at other countries and why their education system was improving and doing good compare to the American educational system. The country in which I look at was Finland. Finland had their problem of having a failing education system but the government startling looking at how they can improve on their failing system and one of the thing that the government tried to improve was the household of poorer student by helping their families to achieve better health care and providing help within the household, help the parents themselves to be more educated which in turn will help the student because the parent would also be getting help on improving themselves therefore making their household better off in the future and being able to help their child understand the meaning of a proper education and also help their children to do better in school by being of some assistance to them in helping them understand the material they covered in school.
Question: Do you believe that the reason why the education system is failing is because poverty is a factor in the matter? Do you think that parent in poorer communities should try to get the children to be accepted in a school in a better community to prevent their child from being a statistic of a poor education in a poor community? Do you think that the government should give more money to the failing school in poorer community rather that closing down the school that are doing poorly as they have recently been doing?
