Brown V Board Of Education Case Study

The general questions being considered in Brown v Board of Education is that of segregation in schools. All people should be offered the same opportunities to an education. There were cases in the state of Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia and Delaware in which minors of the Negro race were seeking admission to public schools in their communities that were attended by white children. They were denied admission to those schools under laws that permitted segregation according to race. The policies of these institutions were coming into question and were being considered in this case.

The Fourteenth Amendment is the constitutional amendment that affords black citizens “equal protection of the laws” and was set in place to protect the rights of all citizens. Plessy v Ferguson adopted the “separate but equal” doctrine which granted equal treatment in separate facilities. These cases found that all “tangible factors” are equal in respect to the buildings, curricula, and qualifications of teachers. Delaware adhered to the doctrine but ordered that plaintiffs be admitted to white schools because of they were superior to that of the Negro schools. Education is required for the most basic public responsibilities and therefore the most important function of state and local governments. It is the state and local governments job to provide an equal education to all students.
In the case of Brown, the Supreme Court believes that colored children are the most detrimentally affected by segregation causing them to feel inferior in their status in the community and that this sense of inferiority affected their motivation to learn.
They were not being given the same benefits as white children the same age. The “separate but equal” doctrine of the Plessy v Ferguson case simply did not make the separate education facilities equal just because it stated that they
were.

Today our education system is still not “equal” on all fronts. For instance, San Antonio has several different public school districts, those in the south and west sides of the city tend to have poorer school districts. Those with richer school districts can offer teachers better wages that that of the poorer districts. This is not to say that the poorer school districts have bad teachers but the students in the richer districts have more opportunities because there is more money in the district for more programs. The districts with more money from property taxes can offer more than that of the poorer schools. I think if the state took all of the property taxes and distributed them evenly across the board that all schools would be more equal.