are inner city students unmotivated?

[pstokely]

or is the just lots of pressure for suburban students to excel?

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. Might be worth rephrasing the question

to be less judgmental, unless you really do think all inner-city kids are failures, and all suburban kids are achievers.

[markses]

2. I'm not sure the form of your question captures the situation

I went to an "inner city" high school (which is, of course, generally used as code for "heavy minority population") in New York City in the late-80's-early 90's. The conditions were abysmal, despite the great effort of skilled educators. Constant shortages of materials - and I mean basic materials like books (in some classes we shared, which made homework somewhat difficult), not the multimedia learning centers enjoyed by many RICHER suburban high schools. There was also the problem of gangs and violence, which didn't really bother me all that much, since it was part of the culture and something you rolled with, but clearly hurt other students.

It is not a question of "lack of motivation" on the one hand, or excess motivcation on the other. It is a question of broad social conditions, which include race and class, moneys and resources being contributed, and family involvment in education (which is itself often determined - though never fully - by racial and economic conditions). Just as a small example. One of the things that struck me immediately upon entering a friend's home for the first time was a lack of books. There was not a book to be found anywhere in the apartment. Now, my parents are great lovers of books, and we had bookcases all over our apartment filled with books. So, when I didn't see a book in my friend's apartment, I got a strange feeling of absence. If my friend and I had been switched at birth, I would have had a much different educational experience, as would he. My parents were lower end bourgeouisie - poor but too dumb to know it - striving after high culture with Kant, Hegel, Faulkner, Gertrude Stein. My buddy's parents were working class, and simply not concerned with such things.

The obvious retort: The social conditions are not absolutely determinative. Some people emerge from them, so why can't all? (Implicit: Must be their fault!) This Horatio Alger bullshit never made sense to me. Only in this social fantasy do we take the obvious exceptions to the norm and raise them to a level of moral lesson. Never in science has such an approach been taken! Never has such a counter-inductive method produced such vehement generalities! If a million people get sick from a disease, and all but ten die, do we point at the ten and say "A-HA! Why didn't the REST of you get better! Are you unmotivated, or do those of us who didn't get sick at all just have stronger immune systems?" An absurdity. Now, we might study how those ten survived, but only for the purpose of ending the million deaths - Not for the purpose of scolding the dying. Yet this is the procedure taken in American political discourse, the heady moralism of the blessed healthy.

[Snow]

11. Very nice metaphor - well-spoken!

[Deja Q]

3. How about pressure to survive, forget excel?

Crime being a rather significant problem, the stress caused by crime must be hard to tolerate. With shootings and such being top issue, I'd be more concerned about survival than exceling in what I perceived to be someone else's reality.

Yet alone the lack of budget to provide good materials, good teachers to motivate the students and put them in an environment that inspires learning - our school systems are more concerned with just teaching the material and getting out at 4PM, for only 9 months during the year while getting a 12 month salary. If I grew up in the suburbs and they preferred to let us just slide, the inner city schools must be worse off, or so the stigma goes.

How can they be motivated? I'd be despondent.

However, this is all arrogance on my party. I did not grow up in the inner city, I am only seeing what I see on the news and the condition of the buildings as I drive by them. What must the insides be like?

[DoNotRefill]

4. It's not a matter of motivation, it's a question of having...

the basics necessary to learn.

White kids from a rich suburban school district will ALWAYS do better than Black kids from a poor urban school district. It's not a matter of one group being smarter than the other, it's a matter of things like the quality of equipment (books, physical plant {it's hard to learn when your school doesn't have adequate heating or air conditioning or even desks for that matter}, number of classrooms per an equal number of students, etc), better teachers (want to guess which district pays more, retaining better teachers? How about which district has a lower pupil:teacher ratio?) and things like that. Other factors such as the age of the community and the poverty of the area play BIG roles (try to learn after living in an old home contaminated with lead-based paint which is common in older urban areas, or when your parents can't afford to feed you breakfast).

It's not a matter of motivation, there are economic and cultural factors at work. Take a kid born in the inner city and therefore generally doomed to failure if they remained in the urban area, relocate his or her family to the suburbs, give them the same standard of living as the rest of the suburb, and he or she will perform just as well as somebody born in the suburbs.

[noiretextatique]

5. do you think george bush was an unmotivated student?

the difference is: he's playing 'pResident,' while his inner city counterpart CANNOT. poverty actually affects a person's ability to acheive (see posts above that detail the problems), but privilege and money guarantees that people like bush and dan quayle will also have "their place" in society, regardless of how utterly bone-ignorant they are. many americans love to pretend everything is perfectly equal, and that even in the face of obstacles on one end, and more privielege that any one person could ever need on the other...somehow it's all "equal." what a self-serving delusion...for some.

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. Interesting you've not chimed back in, pstokely

Was your post just a turn in the punchbowl of the lounge to divert people's attention thinking there was to be a discussion? If you're going to post a potentially racist, and certainly classist, thread, you should stick around and offer yourself in the discussion.

Or did you lose your internet connection and haven't been able to respond (happened to me once! It was maddening - almost 24 hours before I could get back on the 'net)?

[Nevernose]

7. You're right on both counts, in many cases

It's been my experience (and research backs me up) that poor people (inner-city) generally have poor educations. As a result, they don't value education as much. Therefore, they don't pass along to their children the value of education. It's a terrible, terrible cycle. The opposite is more frequently true in wealthier, suburban schools, but is still dependant upon good teachers and a good administration.

And that's oversimplifying: The education aspect is just one small part of the problem with the devastating INERTIA associated with poverty. Poverty perpetuates itself, and is often a morass of poor education, poor healthcare, poor nutrition, abhorant working copnditions, violence, crime, substance abuse, lack of transportation, illiteracy, overwhelming hopelessness -- all that and I haven't even mentioned the obvious -- a lack of money.

By the way, do a google search for "Urban Education" for some quite remarkable success stories. The urban schools that do turn around and succeed have all gotten a strong, inspiring administration/teachers that work closely with the parents and community (whether the parents want to or not).

[Mikimouse]

8. What you are addressing is called 'the culture of poverty'

and, in the greater scheme of things, it is not applicable as a general explanation of the differences betweeen inner city schools and suburban schools. Before you jump, though, it is an interesting theoretical approach (Cloward and Olin???-brain fart, too early!). I would tend to go with the argument presented above, which examines the social and economic environment of the students. In Texas, we have done no favors to inner city students by upgrading their scholastic environment, because we have expected instant improvement in their TAKS and SAT scores. We then turn around and condemn them for not living up to our expectations. Horsefeathers! You can change the scholastic environment all you want, but if you do not change the social environment as well, yuowill accomplish nothing (other than another round of victim blaming). While suburban students generally enjoy some form of recreational activity after school, many, if not most of the inner city students have after school responsibilities related to the survival of the family. I, too, attended an inner city school (in the 60s and early 70s) and was one such (I was lucky enough to have a full time night job, and a mother who encouraged me)

[Nevernose]

9. But doesn't this support "culture of poverty" theory?

but if you do not change the social environment as well, yuowill accomplish nothing (other than another round of victim blaming). While suburban students generally enjoy some form of recreational activity after school, many, if not most of the inner city students have after school responsibilities related to the survival of the family.

Isn't "the social and economic environment of the students" another way of saying "culture of poverty?"

Also, I'm a little leary of using terms such as "culture of poverty." People like the Cato Institute have begun latching on to them. Also, is poverty a culture (which implies a conscious choice) or a curable disease? I refuse to believe that poverty and education are inherently linked, like one of those Celtic serpents that is forever swallowing its own tail.

[Mikimouse]

10. Not in the general application

I don't like the phrase either, and am not an adherent of the theory; in fact, I would go so far as to argue that it is the epitome of victim blaming. In that, we agree. The theory essentially states that after a time (not a short time), people who are impoverished come to recognize that, because of a lack of access to resources, they are not likely to be anything other than poor, and that this eventually manifests itself in the form of acceptance of poverty as a way of life. It is strictly Social Darwinistic, and is, at least to me, a thinly veiled way of categorizing groups in a derogatory manner. What I was arguing, on the other hand, is not the issue of 'the culture of poverty'. I was arguing that a change in the social environment is a necessity, if we are to improve access to education across the board. Simply throwing money at a school system is an exercise in futility, and is really counterproductive for the students. How effective is it to provide all kinds of in-school resources, without considering helping to change the after-school (and before-school) environment? Throwing money at a problem, and ignoring the social environment, is tantamount to treating the symptom and leaving the root cause of the disease untouched.

On edit: so many typos, so little time-Sorry about that!

[44g]

12. My students are motivated

They want to live comfortably in peace with lots of sex and bling bling. Who doesn't. The question is how to do it knowing they will have to work harder, longer, smarter and be luckier than a dork like me. When the bus ride home is like walk down a tier at Folsom and the sprint home from the bus stop seems like racing naked with your hair on fire, learning concepts and bits of information that do not connect with your vision of success breeds a different type of motivation.

[noiretextatique]

13. this reminds me of my 'runs' home from my jr. high school

dodging many things 'sububanites' never have to consider, let alone deal with intimately. except drugs, of course...and guns, actually. as i recall, the columbine murders/suicides, and others, were committed by suburban kids, in suburban schools.

[Loyal]

14. except drugs and guns?

Well, those ARE two big issues.

[noiretextatique]

15. of course, and suburanites are not immune

to those issues, are they? i used the columbine example to illustrate the gun issue, but i don't think i need to shed light on the drug issue.

[Iverson]

16. I went to Detroit Public Schools.

Now I'm a goddamned professor. Check your assumptions.