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Social Class Education

Decent Essays

The United States of America is based on freedom: freedom of beliefs (religious or otherwise), practice, speech, etc. Yet, not all people in the United States feel they are completely free. These people feel they are stranded in a certain social class without means of escape. By definition of Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language, class is “a group of people considered as a unit according to economic, occupational, or social status; especially a social rank or caste; as the working class, the middle class” (334). Educational opportunity in the United States is affected by social class. To begin with, social class affects educational opportunity in the U.S because of the educational institution. Most students go …show more content…

Depending on the type of school a student attends, the availability of books and materials varies from school to school. Tehachapi High School is a distinguished school. At Tehachapi High School all the students have access to the materials they need in order to succeed as a student at the school, this includes: books, reading materials, time with teachers, access to computers and access to the library. According to the SARC report for the 2014-2015 school year at Tehachapi High School, all the textbooks and instructional materials needed for the classes are the most recent adoptions of the materials supplied (SARC 5). Most recent adoptions meaning that the textbooks and materials are the newest versions available for the schools. Furthermore, the students do not just have the newest and latest versions of textbooks, all of the students have access to the materials that are required for their classes. In the SARC report for Tehachapi High School, it states that 0% of students lacked their own assigned copy (SARC 5). With that, we can see that a school with more available textbooks and required materials makes it easier for students to succeed. Tehachapi High School is a California Distinguished School; the California Distinguished Schools Program:”Honors some of California's most exemplary and inspiring public schools. Schools …show more content…

As mentioned above, Tehachapi High School is a California Distinguished School and as well has high testing scores. Jefferson High School is unlike Tehachapi High School. Jefferson is “an improving school that exemplifies all the challenges of urban education” (Landsberg 7). These challenges define the type of social class that the students are a part of and the challenges include: violence, unavailability of textbooks or materials, home violence, etc. Due to the challenges that the students in this community face, they have less educational opportunities. When plagued with the thought of your safety or doing well on a quiz, a person is more likely to put more thought into their safety. On the first day of class at Jefferson High School some people worried about their safety. “at 10:30 a.m., a man with an AK-47 was spotted firing shots a half-block from campus” (Landsberg 9). The students do not have the opportunity to solely focus on their education because events are happening around them that understandably make school and education seem not as important. In another school, La Canada High School, the situation is different. At La Canada High School, “violence is scarcely a concern” (Landsberg 9). The parents of the students at La Canada High School are more well off financially. For example, Kyle, a student at La Canada

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