Thanks for your responses. This has always been something that has concerned me. When I got my teaching degree, I wanted to be in an area that really needed a good teacher. I felt that the suburban areas generally have a lot of support. This is why I chose to teach in the inner-city. Mixed, I’m touched that my entry made your daughter want to do the same thing. However, she needs to realize that it is depressing and the burn-out rate is about 5 years or less. I don’t do my job to get pats on the back or to be put on a cross as a martyr. I do it in the hopes that I can make a difference in a child’s life. However, what I am finding is that sometimes that isn’t enough. The daily struggle of fighting against the anti-education values is tough without aid from positive, black role models. The fact that the racial comment ambulance chasers were out this week just brought up all the frustration that I feel.
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Originally Posted by mixedmedia
But to start out I'd just like to point out, for the time being, that there are a lot of decent, hardworking people who both:
1. live in the ghettos
and
2. listen to rap music
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You make very honest observations. For people to place everyone who lives in these areas and listens to rap in the ‘ghetto fabulous’ living category is where the word prejudice gets its negative connotation. However, when having a discussion, it’s easier to lump people together based on the majority of what one sees. I do have some students who want to succeed, as I said in the OP about 10. They want to be lawyers, doctors, or teachers. They are over-achievers strive for A’s and are the gems of my day in the rather bleak times. However, the value system for the majority is that education is unvalued. Whether that is coming from rap, the ghetto, race, or socio-economic status I can’t say for sure. I know that they hear it on the radio and on television and that they don’t have many positive role models to rebut those thoughts. Yet, I know from my research that the different socio-economic classes have completely different value systems. We all have the same needs, but they are ranked differently based on your background.
My friend and I had a debate last night about how white people are the majority of the audience at hip-hop/rap concerts. I completely agree with this. The fact is that they can afford to go to these concerts, where the ghetto kids cannot. I was a white teenager who wanted to the fabulous ghetto lifestyle. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Fresh Prince, and Bill Bellamy were part of my inspiration and I wanted to be black to experience what they were singing or talking about. I had no idea what I was wishing for back then because I was so far removed from any of the reality of what the ghetto really is. The reason I wasn’t able to fully emulate that lifestyle was because A) I wasn’t black and living in the ghetto and B) I had a supportive, middle-class family to kick my butt back in gear and tell me that school is the most important thing.
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Originally Posted by mixedmedia
Now imagine if this apartment complex were the ghetto and the dog owners and their dog shit were drug dealers (that you feared) and liquor bottles and crack pipes and used condoms and the apartment management were an overworked, poorly staffed and funded municipal government. And imagine if you were living in these conditions and working two jobs just to get by and trying to keep your kids out of trouble. You might feel helpless and powerless to effect change in your community and unable to move somewhere else because you can barely afford the rent or the house payment in your ghetto home. I think we misplace a lot of frustration we feel over the situation in our ghettos and inner cities. We put the burden for solving it onto the shoulders of those who are the most powerless to do anything about it.
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I see people that are in these situations. As mentioned earlier, not everyone wants to live like this and they are trying to get out. However, this is where the victim syndrome kicks in. My problem with this is that the parents are in these situations wanting to get out, but are not instilling in their children the positive ways of escaping. Instead of aiding their future generations to succeed, they are keeping them down and continuing the cycle. I’m not sure if this is because the parents are afraid they’ll be abandoned when their children graduate or if they really don’t understand that the free education their child is supposed to be getting is the key to a better lifestyle.
The problem that remains though is that these families can’t make it out of their situation as it stands. This is where the people that can help don’t because as was mentioned in a previous post, it’s easier to jump up and down and scream instead of getting your hands dirty fixing the real problems.
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Originally Posted by dc_dux
The disparities in education funding (shesus - compare your school to a school in a wealthy or middle class suburb - the basic infrastruture, the teaching tools, etc. that make for a far less inviting learning environment).
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This is very true. I have taught in rural, middle-class, and now a low-income area schools. The funding and materials supplied to each school is not equal. However, what we do have in the schools is not taken care of. The students don’t appreciate what they are given either because of the lack of value placed on education or that they were never taught how to take care of things. It’s to the point where I hate to buy things for my students such as paper, pencils, markers, glue, etc. This is because the pencils will be lost during the day, the paper will be balled up to practice shooting hoops or to be tossed at each other, the caps are left of the markers and the supplies are scattered on the floor. When asked to pick the materials up, the typical response is “Man, that’s not mine, I didn’t do that.” I explain that I realize it’s not theirs per se but it belongs to the classroom and it is next to their desk so the responsible thing to do is to just take the 10 seconds pick it up and put it away. They still refuse and then they whine when the markers are dried up, they have nothing to write with or on, and the calculators are busted. There are only 15 working calculators even though we started with 30. I teach the students how to care for materials and how to clean up, but the students do what they want to do generally. I stop buying so many things and I start locking up the supplies to attempt to save the ones that are left. Therefore, I don’t blame the district for wanting the money to go to areas where the students will actually care for and use the materials instead of destroying them.
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Originally Posted by dc_dux
And as to rap, doesnt some country music (at least before it became more mainstream) promote alcholism, adultery, "taking that job and shoving it" ?
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Yes, it does. This is where I’m not so sure that it is so much a racial problem as a socio-economic one. Every race has a section of it that doesn’t value education and chooses poor role models. However, white people aren’t screaming and jumping up and down about people calling them white trash, trailer trash, and inappropriate lyrics in songs. When that happens, then it will be the same situation.
I found this article, When Does a Black Join Middle Class? By Ralph Ellison, and thought this snippet of it was appropriate here:
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The responsibility of black leadership is to impress upon their constituencies the urgency of taking full advantage of these cultural tools. That is the only way they can develop a middle-class appreciation for literature, learning and the arts—which, in turn, is the only way out of the poverty and degradation of urban ghettoes and into modern American society.
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The whole article can be read here if you are interested:
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/l...p?document=693
I find it depressing that this article was written in 1975 and is still relevant today. It makes me wonder if these issues will ever clear up or if the wheels will just keep spinning as the cycle goes on and on.