heatseeker wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/opinion/26nocera.html?scp=5&sq=school&st=cse
Quote:
Going back to the famous Coleman report in the 1960s, social scientists have contended — and unquestionably proved — that students’ socioeconomic backgrounds vastly outweigh what goes on in the school as factors in determining how much they learn. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute lists dozens of reasons why this is so, from the more frequent illness and stress poor students suffer, to the fact that they don’t hear the large vocabularies that middle-class children hear at home.
Yeah, showing that we spend a lot of money on schools doesn't really prove anything. The school system is fundamentally flawed no matter how much money we put into it...the majority poorer kids are simply fucked from the start when it comes to education. Not saying that I have a solution, but to deny the existence of the problem is kind of ridiculous...most people, like the guy above, speak of it like it's self-evident.
How does that equate to oppression? Nobody has ever said that certain groups have more of an uphill battle than others due to life's circumsatnces. What I want to know is, how does the spectre of an authority or system, through abuse of power, intentionally holding a particular group down through force or fear of imprisonment (hell, even through denial of assistance, when needed) come into play?
It could be that those students, at least some of them, come from families headed by losers. There are some people out there that are just that: losers. that may be one of the reasons they are in a lower income bracket. not saying that that is always the case, but in my experience, it quite often is.
I grew up in an unfavorable "socioeconomic background", and you know what I saw?
The ones that actually went to class, paid attention and had parents that gave a rat's ass did well.
The ones that cut school, got high before school, goofed off in class and came from households where the parents were general losers that didn't give a fuck didn't do well.
Life isn't a game of musical chairs where the chairs outnumber the players two to one and everyone's a winner, you know.
I am still waiting for tangible examples of systematic oppression.
Modern day examples, that is, and not ones from a hundred years ago.
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