How The Other Half Lives: Inequality in Schools

Jonathan Kozol's article, Savage Inequalities shows the horrifying reality behind schools in poverty stricken areas. One of the most horrific things about this article was all of the violence that these students were exposed to at such a young age. Some of these occurred within their own families or feet away from the school. Kozol describes these children as being "thin", but not in a flattering way. That means these students are not getting their proper nutrients. Not only is life outside of school hard enough, but the inside is not much better. There is sewage seeping throughout the school. There are even science classes with no science equipment. With these awful conditions, how can we expect our students to learn anything or to even attend school in the first place? It is almost as if no one living outside of this community is East St. Louis even cares about what is happening to these students.

Issac Saul's article directly calls out the problem with teacher salaries. Personally, I am a little bias towards this article, who would not want their salary increased? From personal experience, I hear of a lot of people down playing the profession or all together turning away from teaching because they know they will not make a lot of money in their lifetime. This turns a lot of great people away from the profession. While some may see teaching as easy because we get our "summers off", we are some of the hardest working people in the world. For most teachers, our summer consists of either teaching summer school, going to professional development events, and planning for the upcoming school year. After our 7 or 8 hour day at school, we come home with stacks of papers to grade and lessons to plan for the next day. How many grown adults do you know who will spend a few hours on a Sunday night preparing for work the next day? Besides our long hours of devotion, we buy our own classroom supplies. At the beginning of the school year, I may have spent about $300 on supplies for my classroom. A stipend on our salary to cover the costs of school supplies would make a world of a difference. After all, without teachers, there would be no other professions in the world.

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