The Inequality In America's School System

The Inequality in America's School System One of the major problems in America today is the overwhelming incidences of inequality in the schools, particularly the differences between schools in the suburbs and the urban school system. This inequality is jumping off point, if left unresolved this problem will continue to contribute to the growing strain on the economy. It will lead to an increase in the numbers of teen pregnancies, the unemployment rate, the number poverty stricken individuals, and a trend of drug or alcohol abuse in these communities. One of the reasons inequality has become so prevalent in our school systems is due to fundamental attribution error, which pretty much says that only bad people do bad, mean, or evil things
and only good people do good things. When in actuality when placed in the right circumstances good people can do good things and vice versa. These generally good kids are put into situations everyday where they are required to just conform to what is expected of them. Unfortunately in urban schools where generally nothing is expected of them, that is what they do. Another key role in the destruction of the school system is the bystander effect. The bystander effect plays a role because everyone sees what is going on in our urban schools but because we know everyone else sees it we expect someone else to step up and fix the problem instead of taking the initiative to do something about it ourselves. For example, at least once every two weeks or so I hear in the news about the decline of the numbers of children graduating from high school in urban areas and an even greater decline in the number of children going on to college from these areas. However, as much as they talk about the problem, very seldom do I hear of someone actually stepping in to change the trend. People also tend to make the mistake of believing in the just world phenomenon. The just world phenomenon states that people get what they deserve in this life, so their logic reasons that the test grades are considerably lower in urban districts than they are in the suburbs because the kids in the urban areas just don't care and aren't willing to put in the work required to get a better education. The fail to consider that schools in the suburbs may have an entire curriculum devoted to advanced placement(AP) classes whereas you are likely to find at most one or two of the aforementioned classes in city schools. Stereotyping is another issue that I'm sure leads to this inequality.
Stereotyping is assuming that a group of people are all the same because they share race, religion, nationality and the like. Most urban neighborhoods house blacks, Hispanics, and other immigrants; since America tends to view these people as ignorant or stupid, why would they bother building a better educational curriculum to go to waste on these people who are not capable of learning anyway. This stereotyping can lead to another likely cause of inequality, the mirror image perception where people tend to see those outside of their own group as either all bad or all good. In this case those who can afford to live in the suburbs seem to assume that the individuals living in the slums don't care about education since they are uneducated themselves. Even though it is probably more likely that they live in these areas because they just don't make enough money to live elsewhere, the suburbanites don't seem to see it this way. Their reasoning allows them to not do anything to change the level of education in these schools because they can say well if they don't care why should
we? The problem of inequality in American schools can be fixed; it will just take some work from all citizens of this country. We can utilize the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. This basically works by getting someone to do something small which eventually can get them to do something big. We may be able to get someone to sign a petition to send to the state legislator calling for the equalization of all of our schools. Although it is just signing a petition it will open them up later on to actively lobbying this equalization in many other forms such as stopping districting of schools and allowing the money allotted for children's education to simply be attached to the child, which means the children can go to whatever school the parents want them to go to. We can also try to decide on superordinate goals. These are goals which can only be reached if both sides work together on them. In this situation the two sides would be parents and society. An example of a superordinate goal for these two sides would be lowering the unemployment rate. People also need to understand that a minority can sway a majority; we just need to give these people the tools they need to be that minority.
One way a minority can sway a majority by showing them ways that what they want done is good for them because people by nature are always interested in how something they do will help them. We can show them how the lack of education these students are getting are hurting their pockets again as I said in the beginning, lack of education can lead to an increase in the numbers of teen pregnancies, the unemployment rate, the number poverty stricken individuals, and a trend of drug or alcohol abuse in these communities. If these numbers increase the government will need to get the money to help them from somewhere and more likely than not it will come from the taxes the educated individuals
pay. Role-playing to affect attitudes could also help. If you sent the individuals who believe in the just world phenomenon to a run-down urban school for two months and expected them to pass a test on what was taught during those two months, it would help them to understand how someone could lose hope dealing with those situations everyday for their entire school career. This may be one factor which could also increase altruism which is someone doing something just because it's the right thing to do, and not expecting anything in return. After seeing what these children go through on a day-to-day basis, the people who participated will truly be able to put themselves in someone else's place.