Good Evening World!!! Just left Statistics class and all is well. I’m pumped this week. The semester is coming to an end… Allow me to leave you with a brief thought on this evening. I want to discuss a part of education that I experienced.
I want to discuss the area of education known as tracking. As defined by conflict theorist, tracking is a sorting system that places students on “tracks” that perpetuates inequalities. In most cases, this system leads to the self-fulfilling prophecies of students performing up (or down) to teacher and societal expectations. This seems counterintuitive when it relates to education. One would think that education is the great equalizer, but sadly it is not. Even my experience was eye-opening. In high school we just knew that the “white” schools had the better resources and was a place that perpetuated segregation, but we experienced this in our own tracking system in my school district which was majority Black. People like myself and close friends, the middle class to upper middle class, were placed in optional schools, those were school with honors’/AP courses. Now, within those schools there was tracks. We had the Engineering and Medical tracks for the middle-upper middle class, then we had the vo-tech track for the less fortunate and lower class students. The distinctions were noticeable to everyone. Just to add, many of the ones on the vo-tech track are still living below middle-class lifestyles. But back in school the teachers treated us differently. When we did wrong in school, it was attributed to us just being mischievous. We were suspended at much lower rates. We were pushed harder by all of the educators. We had a sense of entitlement at that school. the students on the vo-tech path were basically babysat. The teachers treated them as if they were second class. I am almost certain that played on their psyche. According to my Facebook, they lived out those self-fulfilling prophecies.
In closing, I couldn’t get pass the early readings without my blood boiling. As I looked back over my life I saw how inequalities play out in school. This was happening even in majority Black schools. This was a shame. This is still happening now. We must change this system in which our kids are experiencing these inequalities… It hurts everyone in the long run. Who were we as kids to treat our fellow classmates that way? But hey, we got it from the adults in the room. The in lies the travesty. PEACE!!!
ofomarthethoughts 