Poor Education

Ana Hernandez
University of Texas at El Paso
Professor drapes
RWS 1302
 Poor Education

The public education system has never really lived up to the name people give it, a

great equalizer. It has turned into a way that the upper class keeps the lower middle and lower

class poor. They have segregated schools again but without showing it too much, by using

private schools, you need to pay in order to attend, and being able to pay over 5 grands is

something many people cannot do. The head of education never really helped public

education, and instead turned into a way to keep the poor people poor, but mainly, brown, and

black families. They have reduced public schools to basically prisons, since, many of the kids

are given up on from the get go, theres a huge achievement gap, and mandatory testing, and

mandatory attendance.

Audience and purpose

The intended audience for the video is, a mixture of the rich and people with a

political job. She focuses on the rich, to tell their children's private school to, maybe adopt a

class from a sub-par school. Then she brings up the fact that even the people in politics do not

necessarily care about the public-school system. Mayors and all the way up to the head of the

education system, need to be asked to fund more of the public education system.

Aside from the intended recipients of the video, the video is made to inform and

persuade, but with a bigger emphasis on informing people of the public-school system.

Although at the end of her speech she encourages the audience to think about the kids who

dont have all the necessary resources, during her speech she brings up points of information,

from telling them about her childhood and the survivors remorse to her students getting

new books, and being skeptical about them. She wants to encourage them to become aware

that the public education system is broken and nobody wants to fix it.

Now in the article by Cevin Soling, it doesnt necessarily use the personal examples that

Kandice Sumner used. Instead he goes to the facts and shows you how its broken. He uses

the facts and studies to inform the reader of the broken system. He goes into the fact that,
even with math and English classes, many teens in high school do not have basic math skills,

and 85% of adults cant do complex and challenging literacy activities. He is giving the

audience the cold hard facts, and basically seeing what they will do with this information.

Rhetorical issues

The iconographic genre helps establish the information credibility by using personal

examples. The typographic genre helps establish the information credibility by using fact and

studies from different colleges. The iconographic genre help provoke to an emotional

response from the audience by making them feel sad and with empathy. The typographic

genre help provoke to an emotional response from the audience by making them feel

disappointment. The typed of evidence that are used to support the claims of the information

in both of the genres are reliable and credible.

Structure and Delivery

The information on the iconographic genre is being organized chronological. And on

the typographic there using deductive to convey its message. On the iconographic the author

use a graph on the historical events that helped her show her point of view. On the

typographic the author used studied from different universities testing peoples math and

English skills. Both iconographic and typographic didnt have limitations, they also had

freedom to express what is needs to because of the genres.

Children of color are usually attending a poor school because of the neighborhood,

with no books, no ACs, broken desks, poor facilities, and many more broken and useless

things. Public schools from inner cities get the worst reputation and the worst spending

money. Why? Because they are underfunded. They get the bare minimum, and do not have

enough money to get new recent books, more desks, or better facilities. They have gates over

the windows like prisons and people want them to prosper. The mayors and senators do

nothing for inner city schools, let alone the head of education.
The reason people say that, the public education system wants to keep people poor, is because

nobody has done anything to improve it in any way. Nobody with power has looked at the

education system and said something is wrong. We need to fix this. Instead, they look over

it, they leave in the hands of someone not capable of doing anything. Instead they look at

their kids that are in a private school, getting the best education possible, and thank

themselves for being able to afford it. Nobody should have to pay top dollar for an education

that everybody should be getting. The people, no, the color, getting that top dollar education

is white. Very rarely do you see a colored child go to a private school, and thats because

colored people never get the chance to prosper and move up on the social ladder. They have

been segregated again, except this time they arent doing it with signs and posters, theyre

doing it with money. Private schools charge a ridiculous amount of money, so the poor people

cant get in, and not only do people need to pay admission, they also need to pay for their

kids uniforms. Those cardigans, polos, button ups, slacks, and shoes are not cheap, now

imagine having to buy, 7 shirts and 7 slacks. It isnt cheap. They do this, to keep the rich in

and the poor out, and the majority of the poor is black and brown people.

Aside from the money, kids are forced into these places, and many of them know that their

school will not help them. Sure, maybe theres a teacher or a counselor who wants to help and

give everyone a chance but, do they have 1,000 chances or more? Cause most times thats

how many kids are in one high school. Think about it. Who wants to go to a place where the

teachers hate their jobs, most are involved in drugs and gangs, the faculty doesnt care, and

the kids get no respect? Nobody does, but that is public school. The faculty demands respect

because they went to a college and are in debt, and the kids are only after popularity and

recognition. Now ask a private school teacher and she might like her job because they get

comfy chairs, big classrooms, multiple resources, a fancy computer, free wifi, and all these

other benefits. Ask a private school student, and theyll talk about the spacious halls and
classrooms, about the gourmet food they eat, and the new books that arent covered in

graffiti. Thats because they have never gotten to feel like, their faculty despises them, and

because daddy has the money and connections.

Now lets move from the money aspect and to the end results these schools produce. The end

results being grades and test grades that infuriate people. Private schools, of course, have

better test grades than a lot of the public schools. This is because at public schools, the

teachers do not have the time to teach you all of the topics that will be on the test. They also

have almost 30 or more students per class, so individual help is not something they can do

very well. They also do not have access to all the books, because a lot of departments share

books. As in the set rotates every day, and can never be studied constantly, so kids dont have

the repetition they need to understand the subject completely. So how is a kid supposed to be

able to grasp math, science, reading, and writing, if they dont all have books to study with?

How can A teenager in high school grasp Chemistry if they dont have an up-to date book?

How does a middle schooler, study at home, when they cant take the textbook home because

its a class set, and it wont be in their class by the time they get to school. Private schools on

the other hand, have basically everything they need and they dont need to follow the

common core meaning, they can teach their kids what they want, or what they feel like

teaching. How do those two compare to each other? When one of them isn't given the tools to

succeed, and the other has too many of them.

Now stemming away from the fact that students do not get enough help, they also do not get

to help themselves in any way. Many schools, and school districts, dont necessarily care

about the grades, they care about attendance and compliance, and a lot of kids jeopardize

their mental states just to conform with those rules. They wake up at 4 in the morning to

shower, get ready, and get there on time, they dont even eat breakfast. Then the night of that

day they have to stay up late for homework, that isnt even needed, but is required.
Going away from all of this, we come into the modern age of teaching, meaning, most private

schools can provide students with boatloads of technology. From IPad to Mac computers and

to new technologies coming out every month. They get access to all these, cool little gadgets

and devices, and what do the public-school kids get? Whiteboards and projectors that they

should have gotten a long time ago. Or Laptops that they have to pay for every year in order

to use, and not even good laptops, but laptops that constantly break down, and have to be

given to I.T. to get fixed. Sure, they can keep the laptop after they graduate, but it isnt going

to last long, and will most likely need to be replaced, so whats the point in keeping it?

Now the reason, people focus on public school against private schools is because, private

schools were made so rich people can get top shelf education while the poor are kept in poor

areas, with high crime rates, high drug use, and a high chance of ending up in prison sooner

than later. Because most of these kids who dont get a proper education, cant read, cant get

good jobs, cant move up socially, and they cant get out of the ghettos. They put schools in

places where most of the people who live there use drugs, and have high crime rates, solely

for the purpose that they will soon, infiltrate the school and distribute drugs there, and steal

from the other kids.it may not sound right, but thats what they do. How does anyone know?

Because most schools have officers on campus, and they have random drug searches where

they bring in a dog to sniff out drugs in classrooms. They have security guards on the campus

at all times, they have cameras in every hall, and they have metal detectors and cops pat you

down before you can even enter the school. How does that not sound like a penitentiary?

How can someone look forward to going through that every morning. Thats why public

school kids ditch classes. They dont want to be treated like prisoners, at a place where they

should be learning. They do not want to be in a classroom where all the textbooks have

graffiti.
The way to keep a poor person poor, is to never give them the opportunity to move up

socially and academic wise. Why would anyone want smart students? Then it wouldnt be

easy to steal their money later in life, or make them do terrible jobs or not even offer them

good jobs because they didnt have the same resources. Why would all of America want to

ruin the youth by making a good education expensive? So, they can keep them at the bottom,

and they can use them to their advantage. So, the poverty threshold slowly gets higher and

higher, as to where anyone making less than 30k a year, isnt able to give their child a good

education, and can only get them into a school, that will not help them in life, but instead,

ruin them, and ruin their thirst for knowledge.

 CITATIONS

Soling, C. (2016, May 15). How public schools demand a failure and perpetuate poverty. .

Retrieved February 11, 2017, from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/15/how-

public-schools-demand-failure-and-perpetuate-poverty.html

Sumner, K. (2015, November). How America's public schools keep kids in poverty. Retrieved

February 11, 2017, from

https://www.ted.com/talks/kandice_sumner_how_america_s_public_schools_keep_kids_in_p

overty