Carlos Doesn’t Remember

I found the topic of this podcast very interesting and important. The idea of students’ intelligence and accomplishments being ignored as a result of their social class is mind-boggling. The phenomenon of students with the proper credentials to get into universities because they are poor is an example of the failure of the educational system in the U.S. This failure comes from a lack of funding for public schools which is the primary form of education that impoverished children attend. The lack of funding keeps poor students away from the resources they need and colleges from noticing those students’ accomplishments. The only logical solution for fixing this problem is to increase funding into schools with students from low-income households. Lack of funding is what causes the problem and increased funding is what will fix the problem. The failure also comes from prestigious colleges that are not willing to really look of poor students who have to talent to get into their school. The podcast elaborates on the fact that the top universities in the country have put forth programs that will seek out to give low-income students full scholarships to attend their college yet do not find nearly as many students that are capable of attending the university. The podcast says that a university like Harvard or Princeton only bring in 15 students a year that will have their entire college paid for when there are an estimated 35,000 kids in every graduating class that qualify for the opportunity. Universities also fail to find these talented students before it is too late. In many cases, 8th grade boys that in elementary schools caught the eye of their teachers through their academic success become gang-affiliated. In other words, by 8th grade these boys keep themselves from being successful in school and getting a ticket out of the rough neighborhoods that they grew up in. The fact that poor students are disadvantaged so much more than middle or upper class students is sickening. A very interesting reason given in the podcast for this disadvantage is that middle and upper class kids get second chances if they drop out of school, get addicted to drugs, or get into a serious car accident but lower class students do not get these second chances. An example of this is when Carlos’s mother wouldn’t let him leave for boarding school, he ended up back where he started, a public school in a bad part of town. Going to a boarding school on the opposite side of the country was an opportunity for Carlos to leave the gang-infested area that he had lived all his life. When this opportunity was taken from him, he had nowhere else to go but back where he started. This problem shows how powerful people and companies are willing lobby for tax cuts or other spending bills at the expense of the education of low-income students.