The Problems Of Inner-City Schooling

The Problems of Inner-City Schooling

"Half of all African-Americans, but only 20 percent of whites, in public school attend central-city schools" (Peterson & Grene). This is only the average of all the U.S. schools. In major cities such as; Chicago, Dallas, and Houston, as much as 85 percent of children attending inner-city schools are of a minority background. Before the case of Brown verses the Board of Education, African-Americans and whites were educated separately (Barnes, Bentrup, Elkman, and Brady). The basis of this case stated that the fourteenth amendment was being violated. The Supreme Court ordered that in fact, the fourteenth amendment was being violated, and that people of all color should be educated together and not separate (brownvboard.org and www.house.gov). With the desegregation of blacks into the white classrooms, came segregation. This prompted white families to move to the suburbs. This ruling was supposed to provide equal education for everyone, but statistics show that education is still unequal. The education among minorities is still inferior to that of the education among whites because of money, teachers, and resources.

The fourteenth amendment was put into effect on June 13, 1866. What section one of this amendment stated was,

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Segregation clearly goes against this amendment. People of color were deprived of "liberty" and "property," without lawfully being told (www.house.gov). When the hearing of Brown versus the Board of Education took place, there was no way the Supreme Court would be able to rule in favor of the Board of Education. There was no way they could rule in favor of the Board of Education because the blacks where deprived of liberty as citizens to go to whatever school they chose to. This brought on, like I said before, the movement of white families into suburbs, while the families of color stayed in the cities.

Before getting into why education among minorities is inferior today, some background is necessary. In 1940, the southern states spent an average of two to three times more on white schools then they did on black and minority schools. When a "state of the art" school (John Phillip Sousa Middle School) was set up for all whites in 1940 located in Washington D.C.; Spottswood Bolling Jr., who was African-American, walked in and asked to be enrolled. He was only eleven when he did this and they denied a young child with a bright future (he went on to become an astronaut) an education. Also during this time in Topeka Kansas, a seven year old girl by the name of Linda Brown was trying to enroll in an all white school. Both of these families sued. Linda Brown's case became the most well known as the case of, Brown verses the Board of Education of Topeka. In May 1954, the Supreme Court voted in favor of both these families, and put into effect the "separate but equal" doctrine (Barnes, Bentrup, Elkhorn, and Brady).

According to Barnes, Bentrup, Elkhorn, and Brady, this was "electric." When the minorities started enrolling into these schools that used to be all white, the white families moved into the suburbs. Today, instead of John Phillip Sousa Middle School being an all white school like it was fifty years ago, it is nearly all black. This is a huge surprise to me. I didn't live back when all this took place, so I can not account for the racism that would have been around me, but as of today I have minorities in my classes and I have no problem with it. To me, that shows how much of an impact this ruling had in the inner-city schools turning nearly all black. This school now ranks among the nations worst, and the 406 students that attend will not get the education they deserve. A lot of families of the children who attend this school blame the poor learning environment on the lack of funding. When in reality, according to Barnes, Bentrup, Elkhorn, and Brady, inner-city schools and suburban schools spend roughly the same amount. Many advocates of this say that because these inner-city schools have poverty problems, far more money is needed for the same education as of those schools in the suburbs. This can be due to the fact that they started out in lower income areas, so at the beginning money was not equal, which in turn means that the inner-city schools need more money now to be even with the suburban schools.

The low grades in these inner-city schools can be due to a number of different problems. One problem why inner-city schools have low grades deals with the fact that black heroes throughout history are not being portrayed at all or as well as the white heroes. A former student of an inner-city school in Philadelphia by the name of, Jerome Avery says that, "I don't recall seeing a single black person in any of my textbooks unless we were talking about slavery" (Dillon 22). At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, he and an estimated 3,500 students went to the Philadelphia administration building and demanded that African-Americans be better represented in their curriculum. With doing this, the school district converted an elective course into a mandatory African and African-American history course. I find this amazing. To organize thousands of people with the same dislike of the curriculum and then go to the administration building to tell them what they should be doing differently is a monumental undertaking. If you tried doing that today, you would probably be labeled as un-American or a terrorist. Because of Jerome Avery's heroic act, Philadelphia became the first district to single out an ethnic group, and make a one year course out of it.

Learning in a white tone or that of learning about almost all whites and not learning about the heroes of your ethnicity would be pretty rough. Avery says, "I thought everything that was good was done by white people...I thought white children were smarter than older black people." This is shocking to hear. When children are taught like this, they get an image in there mind that everybody is better than them. He also says that if you learn that your ethnicity did nothing heroic in history, you will begin to think if you will not be able to do anything in the future. Because if no one in all of history of the same