“Until we solve poverty, we’ll never solve high school graduation rates.” (Harrington) Students are forced to drop out of high school and college to help support their families. Because they live in poverty they do not have the time or money to attend school. Poverty and education is a theme we see in the book The Other Wes Moore. We do not only see this through both of the Wes’ lives but also through their mothers, and even through their grandparents.…
If you travelled today to Duke University in Durham, North Carolina and asked Gochenour what is the most important thing she learned from Marian she would simply say, “As an individual I have more resiliency because of Marian.” Gochenour knows that if she would not have woken up an hour early every day of high school, she would not be the person she is today. She believes that because she made the sacrifice to go to Marian, she was able to easily push herself to be persistent in becoming a better student and also a better person. If Gochenour took the easy route and stayed in her small town of 1,500 people for school, she believes she would not be able to be the successful student athlete she is at today at Duke University without Marian’s guidance.…
In 1989, Principal Joe Clark takes over East Side High School; a school with low standardized test scores, and students who are far from eager to learn. Motivated to reform the school, Joe eliminates the students who have no desire to be there and helping the students who wish to succeed. Several weeks after his arrival, Joe expels students who are active in gangs, drugs, and who do not follow the guidelines of his school. Nevertheless, parents become angry and declare that the students be re enrolled in the school. Joe, eager to inform the parents of his plan to keep the school open, announces a meeting to discuss his reasoning for the expulsion of several students.…
Both Wes Moores grew up with life not necessary in their favor. Both men were faced with serious choices of right and wrong and one chose the path in his favor, while the other chose destruction. The author Wes moore decided to get an education to benefit his future, rather than dropping out of school. On the other hand, the other Wes Moore decided to drop out of school and continued to stay involved with drugs and crime. The opportunity to get an education is the driving factor in the difference between these two mens’ fate.…
Several times throughout the article, Murray uses emotionally-charged words and phrases that create a sympathetic image; he notes that “We will lure large numbers of people...to try to achieve the goal and then fail. We will then stigmatize everyone who fails” (253). The image he evokes of the challenges and loss of self-confidence of not being able to succeed in college effectively establishes his argument that college is not for everyone. His goal is to make the reader feel sympathy for students who lack the skill to succeed and consider the possibility that perhaps too many people are going to college. Adding to this idea are words and phrases such as, “less fun” (239), “dispassionately” (240), “masochism” (240), “brutal” (245), “unlikely to have a job” (249), and “fail to achieve” (253).…
In the discombobulation of day to day life, all types of people are going to try to knock you down. This hardship was experienced personally by Brenda Roza as she realized that “there may not be that person next to you that's going to speak up for you”. There is no reason for strangers being malicious, to try to knock other people down when they’re not even known to you. Regardless, it is imperative that you are able to defend yourself- just as Brenda Roza did. Having been told throughout her entire life that she couldn’t do certain things, Brenda thought that that being a successful person might be beyond reach to her - impossible.…
At Du Sable, the graduation rate is only 25%, while at New Trier, competition for good colleges is thriving. The students at Du Sable are unprepared for college, as only five seniors decided they wanted to go to college, but only one has applied. Even so, her course rigor is not on par with college-level work, making application to college even more difficult. Kozol expresses his concern for the students’ education by stating, “The children in the group seem not just lacking in important, useful information that would help them to achieve their dreams, but in a far more drastic sense, cut off and disconnected from the outside world.” Not only do poorer public high schools not prepare students for…
Katie Nolan A man named Jimmy Little once said, “Life's only what you make it.” An individual's life consists of all the choices they make. No matter the amount of wealth or the number of friends, happiness in one's life is up to them. Katie Nolan, in Betty Smith’s, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, meets challenges and overcomes obstacles involving her family's struggle with poverty.…
School is the beginning of our adventure through life. It not only teaches us the mandatory lessons needed but also ones that stick to us throughout life. Whether it was that one extraordinary teacher or the one everyone hated, students would still learn and use it to their advantage. Unfortunately, this was the mindset of teenagers/ young adult’s years ago; now the students of today aren’t understanding the value of their education and how far it can take them.…
The overall theme of the book, Our Kids, by Robert Putnam was how the access to upward mobility has changed for low income and many students in this generation. Putnam does this by using several examples starting with his childhood. I think he has a very valid point, although many have made it out of poverty into successful careers, there are many that have not and have no idea how to make a change. The world was very different back in the 1950 when Putnam grew up and we have since lost that overall sense of community that was so important very present in those days. Although there were major problems present for that generation, the student of the newer generations are dealing with a different world.…
Success Essay Many people ask what is success, or what does it mean to be successful? Success is defined in multiple ways but always have a key element. Success is having a chance to achieve to one's full ability, through challenging themselves, and using hard work, while respecting the ones who paved the path.…
How I Used Public-School While reading the essay “I Just Want to be Average,” by Mike Rose, I noticed how his schooling experience was opposite of mine, there were similarities that lied within our home life, as well as coming from poverty and then making it in the end. During my time in high school, I had my own battles to fight every day, I was homeless, had a hard time finding the courage to make it through class and was stealing the bare necessities to make it week to week. I overcame this with sports, finding my own courage and believing in a school official who didn’t let me down. Eventually, I found my place in high school, despite how unpromising it looked for me in the beginning.…
“Stand and Deliver “ is a movie about a teacher named Jaime Escalante who teaches in a low income neighborhood at the school James A. Garfield High School in Eastern Los Angeles. He taught students who came from working class families who did not have the highest educational opportunities. Escalante soon realized the potential of these students and set a goal to have everyone take and pass AP Calculus by their senior year. They wanted to prove society wrong, that they were better than they were expected to be.…
An abundance of individuals attended the institution, leaving their roots behind along with their families. One of the many individuals that had to experience this trauma was Zitkala-Sa. In Zitkala-Sa’s memoir, “The…
She wanted to go to school because it was a better place than her home. School was the one thing in her life that had actual structure. With her home life being chaotic and having no love in it, I can see why she loved going to school. Personally I have had the same view as her but at a much later point in my schooling. In my early years I despised going to school for a multitude of reasons.…