Injustice in Schools - Discursive Essay

(You will need to change the ending and make a conclusion. I got an A/A- for this essay because it was not finished.)

Is this a phrase that you often hear? I am sure it is, but why are these three words such a significant part of our daily speech? Is it because we are living in a barbaric, unjust society? Or is it because we are living with our own ideas of what and how things should be done and when someone else comes with their philosophy on life behavior we accuse them of bringing a serious injustice against us? Another common phrase used within our society is "There are always two sides to a story." This essay explores both sources of this statement.

The day has started bad you woke up late and your mother says you have to walk to school because you are making her late for work. Your parents have left and your little brother, whom you have to take to school with you, has just spilled milk down his uniform. When you finally leave the house after washing and drying his uniform, halfway to school it starts to rain and hail.

When you finally get to school you discover that you left you mathematics homework on your desk at home, where you fell asleep last night at 1 o'clock frantically trying to finish it. Now how could this day get any worse? I'll tell you! As soon as your teacher asks for your homework your head master steps in to observe your class! You get into trouble and get a detention. What's the first thing that comes to mind? "That's not fair!"

But whose fault is it really? Is it the student's fault?

I suppose you could say that because they should have planned their time carefully the day before so that there wasn't this tired rush in the morning to get to school. It is all a chain of events starting from doing homework late at night. If she didn't fall asleep late that night in the study then she would have had time to pack his work in her school bag before he went to sleep. She also would have been able to hear her alarm and would have woken up in time to get a ride with his mother to school which means her brother wouldn't have had the time to spill the milk and she wouldn't have been caught in the rain. So after that long list of events we can rest the blame on our student, can't we?

Well of course we can't, we don't know what they were going through yesterday. They could have been at tutorials until 5:00pm, and then had to get dinner at 5:30pm. Next they could have had to go to piano practice and they probably wouldn't get home until 8:00pm when they have to help put the siblings to bed etc. until they finally get a chance to start doing their homework at 8:30pm. Because each subject is supposed to give you 30 minutes each of homework but most teachers go over that so they give you about 45 minutes and there are 4 subjects to complete. Mathematics was probably the last one to complete and they don't understand it but Dad usually helps with it and has already gone to bed because he has to get up at 5:00am. So poor 'Sally' has to fight with it by herself.

This is what you could call a "lose, lose situation." This seems to occur a lot in a school environment. Another example of this could be something simple that usually escalates to a big problem. This could be talking in class.

From a students point of view it could just be one quick remark that unfortunately cause an outcry of laughter throughout the class, which could irritate the teacher enough for the student to be thrown out of the class, resulting in the student missing out on an important lesson and the teacher wasting valuable lesson time.

These are small issues that unfortunately will not be resolved anytime in the near future because of an immense conflict of opinions. In every school there are underlying issues of neglect and stereotypical behavior. One example of neglect in most schools is of Physical Education. Most schools treat Games or even GCSE P.E lessons as free periods or secondary subjects. Most people still view subjects from a 19th century point of view, being that the core subjects are English, Mathematics and Science. This view is not relevant to today's subjects because 2 hours of Physical education per week is now on the National Curriculum. But so often we see in schools that this is not taken seriously. In my own school I can say that during GCSE's if you are taking Triple Science instead of P.E you only get 1 hour of games which is Half of the National Curriculum. Worse still, in the lower years you only get 1 period of games a week plus, depending on the term, an hour of projects. This is closer to the N.C. than the GCSE group but still does not give an adequate introduction to fitness and healthy living.

"It is not fair" that we as students are deprived of a real say in our education because most schools do not provide adequate facilities for students to voice their opinions and be taken seriously. Too often we are given chances to speak but not too often are we taken seriously about what we say. It is an injustice for students not to have any input into the way in which schools social activities or even curriculum are based. Students should be part of the process of running successful schools because they are the ones being affected by the changes or things that need to be changed. This process could be help by Student Government being a requirement for all secondary schools. By doing this there is always a way for students to voice their opinions and to be seriously taken into consideration. By doing this relevant authorities can be advised on methods or suggestion that might not have occurred to them because of ignorance on the subject or because of the age differences their trains of thought are different. Because of the inequality between students and teachers or other authority figures there is not an equal sharing of opinions and action between them.

Unfortunately it would be quite difficult to give students the authority to make important decisions regarding education. You have to remember that they do not have any expertise in running schools or choosing sufficient subjects and relevant topics to discuss in a school environment. Students are in school to learn and be educated by people who have already done this. You cannot have pupils running schools without themselves having an education. Yes, of course there are certain things that have to be changed in schools but this is why students are educated so that they are able to get qualified so that they can be the ones running schools and can then make the changes which can undergo sufficient scrutiny to say whether or not they will be making a good change or not.