My audience is going to be my classmates, who are, for the majority, future teachers like myself. My paper is going to blame public schools and their practices for the wide achievement gaps and the low success rate of minority children. I don't want it to be a boring paper to read, so I have to think of clever ways to get them to understand the points that I'm making. These points are facts and not my opinions, but some may think that schools have nothing to do with this gap and all to do with the child's background (family, culture, social class).
Minority students struggle the most in schooling, mostly public schooling, because they are set up for failure. From academic tracking to a self-fulfilling prophecy that, from day one, has a negative affect on children just stepping through those school doors. Teachers (everyone, actually) have innately negative views of people who are different from them just by witnessing one bad experience, or from hearing their families expressing their views for 20 years of their lives. What I will attempt to do is share many realities of public schooling and how the perception given is misleading, and even where that perception comes from.
To get my audience to understand the issue at hand, I'll have to give perspectives from both sides; the demographics of minorities who attend public schools, as well as what is happening within these public schools that continues to widen this gap. Not only do I want them to understand, I also hope to change the perspectives of these future teachers and hopefully convince them to be part of the solution, part of the change that will hopefully start to turn these schools around. I believe teachers can make all the difference in urban, public schools, they just have to know how. I have to get them to see how serious the issue is and make them want to be part of change.
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