Problem Solvers for an Inner City Education

It 's hard to believe that in this current age, one of the wealthiest nations in the whole world lacks the ability to properly give all of its youth a worthwhile education. Although almost every child goes through the same grade levels, many children, especially those from run down urban areas, do not receive a quality education. America has the greatest amount of knowledge at its fingertips that it has ever seen due to technological advances, and still many children and adolescents are illiterate. Even though a child from a suburb school and one from a inner city school graduate from grade school, the child from the suburb might be up to two years ahead of the other in reading, writing, and mathematics (1). The problems with associated with inner city schools, which are usually full of minority children living in poverty, can only be solved with outside help. Poorer residential areas in America are more likely to be located in the inner cities across the nation. Since most of the funding for schools comes from property taxes, those living in poor areas of the nation must also attend schools that lack the money and government funding that would otherwise help urban children receive an equal education as those who attend rural and suburban schools. The lack of money at these schools causes shortages on books, offered classes, extracurricular activities, and qualified teachers (2). The teachers may be new or lack the proper knowledge to teach. The teachers who are working in these school systems do not necessarily choose to work there, but may take what positions they can get because they have no other alternative. The problem with minorities in inner cities schools seems to be recycling itself. The parents of these children are products of the same system of education. They may not have seen any good come from their education when they were the same age. Therefore they are not showing great concern for their children to be educated in a system that

Cited: 1. Cotton, Kathleen. Educating Urban Minority Youth. http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/5/topsyn4.html. 2. 1998 PDK/Gallup Poll: Improving the Nation 's Inner-City Schools. Phi Delta Kappa International. http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kp9809-2b.htm. 3. Barkan, Steven E. Discovering Sociology Using MicroCase ExplorIt. Thomson Wadsworth. Second Edition. 2003. 4. Bainbridge, W., Lasley II, T., Sundre, S. Education and Urban Society. http://www.educationnews.org/education_and_urban_society.htm.