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Still Separate Still Unequal Analysis

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Segregated schools ended in 1954. At least that’s what students were told to believe. So many working class students have been affected in almost every aspect of their life, such as academically, mentally and emotionally. There no longer have to be two completely different types of schools for whites and for blacks, in order to see that segregation is still a huge part of the school system today. Economic segregation in schools has impacted many working class students in a very negative way. These students don’t get equal opportunities as those students attending elite schools. Authors Toni Cade Bambara and Jonathon Kozol have written vivid examples on how working class students have been impacted by segregation in school. Working class schools …show more content…

The jobs they believe they’ll have are such as hair dressing, jobs in factories, or as a seamstress all because they believe to be ghetto. In the essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal,”, after a student said she wanted to take AP college classes, one student named Fortino, said, “Listen to me, the owners of the sewing factories need laborers” (216). Fortino was implying that his classmates don’t belong in colleges, he believes such thing because he repeatedly said that they were ghetto. Working class students believe that they aren’t good enough to actually earn a college degree. They believe such thing because of what they have been surrounded by, and the courses they take due to the lack of AP classes, or any sort of ROP classes. Working class schools don’t have enough space to have them choose and take electives that’ll meet up to college expectations. Instead, they are forced to take elective classes such as hairdressing in order to graduate. Some of the working class students have taken hairdressing classes twice. So many working class students believe that they should start to learn what they’ll be doing and what they see themselves doing in the future. Because of the segregation in their school these working class students believe they are ghetto, and are fit for such jobs. It is because of the classes they are forced to take, it is …show more content…

Working class students seem to get fed up, due to emotional stress and frustration, causing these students to act out and start fights with their classmates. For example in the essay “I Just Wanna be Average” it says, “One day Billy lost it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him strike out with his right arm and catch Dweetz across the neck” (153). Due to the lack of reading material and having been reading the same old text over and over again, working class students get frustrated. Therefore, they act out and hurt their classmates. Because they aren’t engaged in their everyday text, any little thing that is bothering them makes them become fed up leading them to act out towards another classmate. In addition, in the essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal,” a working class students believes that her race isn’t worth anything. Therefore damaging her emotionally because she believes that if everyone that is a part of her race were to disappear, nobody would care, they would simply be relieved that they are gone. They believe to be worthless. This is all due to the inequalities in the school system. If all schools whether they be elite or working class were treated the same and given the same exact opportunity to succeed, nobody would feel superior or

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"What do you know about the hardships and obstacles that the underclass faces?" The other students were staring at me. "You have a point," I said. " (Walls 257).

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3, “The liberal arts are particularly irrelevant for low-income and first-generation students” (228). Sanford J. Ungar, President of Goucher College, which is a small liberal arts school, believes the reasoning behind this statement is that they feel like students from low-income families should pursue a major that’s practical rather than attempting to pursue something that maybe is not as guaranteed to get you a good paying job, like literature or physics. He points out that this is prejudice, and that it’s making the insinuation that people in the lower class are merely bodies that carry out the ideas of the wealthier, upper class. Ungar says, “It is condescending to imply that those who have less cannot understand and appreciate the finer elements of knowledge” (228). He proceeds to let the audience know that in his experience, he has found that “people who are the newest to certain ideas and concepts, are usually the people who approach the job with a more open and creative mind”; we should respect what everyone has to offer.

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In the working class schools, the student’s attitudes reflected what the teachers felt about their job. The teachers lacked passion for their job and did not want to be there anymore than the students. The principal not knowing the history of the school plays a role on why the school was poorly maintained. The middle class school had more parents involved than working class school. This can be the result of the parents socioeconomic status since middle class parents have better paying jobs allowing them more participation in their child’s school.

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