Poorly Funded Public Schools

You cannot properly learn when you physically cannot see examples of what you are learning or cannot practice or write thoughts or ideas down. The most simple of all materials in school matters. Without pencil and paper you cannot write, without chalk a teacher cannot show examples of work for children to see, even having a teacher's assistant is a material that could be highly used in over crowded classrooms. "I have 30 children in a class and cannot supervise them safely. Chemical lab work is unsafe with more than 20 children to a teacher. If I had some lab assistants we could make use of the lab." If you have a run down campus that is unsafe for children you jeopardize their health resulting in children missing school and having health problems down the line. When you have a beautiful fully equipped campus you leave room for successful students that want to learn and attend school.

What makes a teacher bad is no motivation given to students, no passion in what teachers teach, and no patience for school children. A teacher only teaching for a pay check or teaching because they have to equals a bad teacher. A teacher that challenges a child and has the child learning something new on the daily, or at least thinking is a good teacher. Bad teachers exist in schools because they are not punished for the ways they teach and for the things they do not teach. Bad teachers are hired or teach because they have no options to where they teach and cannot be fired so they have to teach subjects they are unqualified for. They are mechanical and teach out of books because that is what school officials make them do most of the time. Good teachers are scarce due to the stress of: lack of materials in schools, children's attitudes and illiteracy, and lack of pay that the teachers receive. "In a somewhat mechanical way, the teacher lifts a picture book of Mother Goose and flips the pages as the children sit before her on the rug." With lack of passion you have students feeling like teachers do not care for them, and if the teachers do not care about their education than why should the children care about their own educations. 

By teaching rich children job skills in school that will benefit them in a cooperate setting prepares them for jobs they will most likely earn in the future. Not teaching the same skills to poor children keeps them at a disadvantage, and takes away all chances they may have at competing against a rich kid for the same type of job. "Competition is the lifeblood of New Trier. But there is one kind of competition that these children will not need to face... they will compete against each other and against the graduates of other schools attended by rich children. They will not compete against the poor." By not providing equal schooling opportunities to poor children you are keeping them in jobs that deal with fast food and hair. None of those jobs pay as well as a job in the cooperate world would. It keeps the rich wealthy and the poor stuck poor. By not rationalizing jobs to both the rich and poor you are not breaking cycles of discrimination and are not taking the steps to make the world a more even place to live in by everyone.