Destined to Fail :: Free Essays Online

Destined to Fail Imagine having to wake up every morning and going to a broken down old building for seven hours a day. In the building you are forced to complete tasks which are easier in other buildings five minutes away, but since yours is poor you can not, if at all, complete these tasks. The outlook is so bleak that it almost seems as if you are destined to fail. For children in Camden, New Jersey this is school. Students in Camden are faced with an obvious, apalling educational disadvantage when viewed against the suburban Cherry Hill schools which are five minutes away. The crux of the problem with the Camden public schools is the impovershed state in which it attempts to educate its children. The main cause for the destitution in the Camden public schools is the serious lack of funds for educational materials including those for school facilities. The schools are in such dire straits that most do not have the necessary materials with which to teach. Students at times do not even have their own textbooks and science labs lack the necessary equipment to teach lessons properly. If a student is lucky enough to receive a textbook it is either outdated or falling apart. School facilities are also in a state of trouble, many are falling apart or have serious problems which inhibit learning. In Savage Inequalities, by Jonathan Kozol, the malfunctioning heating system not only makes the building extremely hot all year round, but also melted approximately forty of the fifty computers in a lab. Is this the proper environment for education? Would you want to go to a school like this? Disadvantages such as these cause greater problems as students progress in their education. The lack of proper educational materials prevents students from learning. Since it prevents students from passing state mandated tests, they have to spend approximately eight months of the year school year, usually in high school, preparing for these exams. In the long run students only learn how to take the test and spend only two months on material which may spark some intellectual interest. Students do not gain any kind of critical thinking or conceptual framework; they are simply robots which know how to pass a certain test. When viewed against students with whom they will be competiting for scholarships, college acceptance, and future employment, Camden public school students have obviously no chance.