Month: March 2018

The second category, personal growth, stems from one of the founding principles of America—upward mobility. At the very core of nearly every citizen is an entrenched belief that through hard work and persistence, one ought to be able to improve their situation. This objective of schooling embodies the premise that people are able to improve themselves and their situation. Through schooling, children can learn how to critically think, generate ideas, and acquire new skills—these lessons allow students to expand beyond their current horizons and drive forward into a more promising future. It allows the lowest to be elevated.

In many ways the premise of education embodies the ability for individuals to rise up from their situation—improving themselves and their way of life. Therefore, educators and the education system as a whole is bestowed with the responsibility to make this dream of upward mobility a possibility. Inherently, this role of education is most prevalent for disparished individuals and communities; however, currently these very same communities suffer as they are left with poorly funded, often neglected, school districts. Today, we will discuss why it is most critical for impoverished communities to have strong schools, how this issue compounds, why there is currently a disparity, and how this can be addressed.

Although we reside in the richest country in the world and therefore reap benefits from such wealth, there exists communities that seem to have been left out. Often times in undesirable parts of large cities or small towns who primary employer relocated, these communities that suffer from rampant joblessness and widespread poverty also lack accessibility to quality public education.

Youth, eager to have an opportunity to go beyond their current situation, are left in classrooms with little equipment, chipping paint, and often unqualified teachers. Their escape from an undesirable life does little to empower or educate. Research indicates that it is not uncommon for the average reading level for poorly performing schools (which almost exclusively are located in poor neighborhoods) is several years below what is commonly seen in an average American School. Performance on other metrics of achievement such as the SAT’s and Military Entrance Exam are similarly below par.

Because these schools within impoverished schools underperform, students who are most desperate for upward mobility, are less able to achieve this feat. Poor schools lead to kids having a more difficult time leaving the community that they grew up in and become steadily and gainfully employed. This creates an unhindered cycle of poverty that perpetuates itself.

It is evident that there is a strong corelation between the amount of funding a school receives and the quality of education that they are able to provide. A fair question to ask is why is more money not going to inner city and empoverished rural school districts. The answer lies in how schools receive their money.

In most states including Pennsylvania, schools are funded primarily though state and local funding. The cause of the differentiation between highly funded and poorly funded schools is a result of local funding. Local finding comes most significanly from property taxes which comprise both private and corporate property. This means that when there are more expensive homes in an area, that district receives greater funding. When there are large companies nearby, the districts similarly receive higher funding.

This creates a situation where communities that are more well off and have less desperation for a quality school have the highest quality education. Empowering their children to future success. Inversely communities with inexpensive housing and little or no businesses have significantly lower school funding and thereby lower quality education. This has the opposite effect on the aforementioned children—the cycle of poverty is perpetuated.

One proposed solution to solving this issue is by centralizing education funding—essentially using taxes from wealthy areas to pay for schools in poorer ones. This Robinhood esc plan would even the opportunities for school age children in terms of education; however, it is not without controversy. Those in wealthier areas commonly insist that it is inappropriate and egregious to reallocate wealth to other communities. They natural desire for their kids to have the best education as possible (a completely relatable aspiration). The question to be answered is how to balance the desires or each community, the overall success of society, and our moral values.

 

 

I jump out of bed with a smile on my face as I was reminded that this Saturday would be an exciting one. Penn State Game-day? Close, today is deliberation day. Sharing in my excitement, a friend invites me to her deliberation that begins earlier in the day. Appreciating the irony of deliberating on the presence of Fraternities and Sororities on State Patty’s Day, I eagerly agreed and tagged along with her past parades of green clad day-drinkers. Arriving at Fraser Street Commons where we were met a group of deliberators and moderators standing in the rain waiting for the door to be unlocked.

Although this deliberation had a wet yet humorous delay, it began smoothly with the presentation of the general topic of the deliberation and laying out the ground rules. Expecting the event to run identically to what we had planned for ours in the previous class periods; however, there where some notable differences. First of which is the style in which the approaches were first presented. The moderators presented their respective approach and lead discussion while standing up in front of the group. Although their mini speeches were well prepared and presented well, by standing up, it felt too formal and as though they were giving us deliberators the answers rather than helping us jointly come to a consensus. This was compounded with introductions that may have been too encompassing—leaving too little left on the bone to deliberate about. For this reason, conversations were difficult to start and maintain; however, in many ways this was overcome.

The first approach was focused on the development of the national Greek Life system. As of now, Greek Life is broken up into several regions. Their proposal was to establish one overarching governing body that each Fraternity and Sorority would report to. This was creating consistency that would encourage higher standards. Through deliberation, it was determined that the general consensus was that this approach may be affective, only if this central governing body would have power to enforce punishments. Also, the concern over the feasibility of getting support from every university and individual fraternity.

The second approach focused on giving the university a stronger role in restricting and monitoring fraternities. The initial solution presented was to move fraternities on to campus like sororities are, this would allow unfettered access by the university to cut down of dangerous behaviors. With limited availability of facilities and land to build new facilities, this idea quickly shifted to universities purchasing existing fraternity properties so that they would have more control. Also deeming this unrealistic, the idea of trading loser controls on number of parties each frat could have for heightened monitoring from police and universities within frat houses was popular.

The final approach initiated a conversation on how to educate fraternities to promote safety. The initial solution was to mandate that fraternity executives would have taken the same class as RAs at Penn State have to take because the essentially have a similar role. Within this conversation it became more popular that fraternities should have many people trained in safety measures such as CPR so that safety wouldn’t be so dependent on a small number of individuals.

Sufficient conversation was encouraged which led to a somewhat widespread conscience that the third approach has the most direct effect and is substantially more feasible compared to the other two. Overall, it was a successful deliberation that ran smoothly and was evidence of a group of student’s hard work.