Ghetto Nation Blog Post

Hey guys…I am catching up on the ghetto nation blogs before I get to come one people. 

Chapter 7 “school me” of the book is one of the longest chapters in the book but it addresses many issues. The author goes into great detail about the schooling systems in different communities and how it affects the students. She starts off at a local high school called the Boys and Girls High School. It is the end of the year and the students are overly concerned with asking classmates “didyapass?” The author shows that these kids don’t care about their grades as long as they pass and they don’t have to attend summer school or stay back. She shows the flaws in the school system because these kids are not motivated to achieve any thing higher than the lowest standards set for students. 

“Everyone thinks I’m gonna drop out, my grandmother and ma tell me all the time”(148). The author goes onto show that these kids are not even given motivation from their families. How is a child supposed to want to achieve when everyone around them is putting them down? It is unrealistic to think that a person is going to be motivated with negative energy around them. If someone is trying to succeed they are not going to want try when everyone is telling them they can’t to it because they are going to start to believe that they can’t do it.

“When it comes to education…there is a general consensus that something isn’t working. It’s something worse than a money-deprived school system, overcrowded classrooms, and declining test scores; it’s something in the mood…” The author is trying to show that you can’t always blame the school on the poor performance of students. The first source or the problem is most likely the students attending the school. When a student does not want to perform it doesn’t matter what school a child attends and how good the school is you have to break the mentality of the student for anything to get anywhere. The author goes onto show that a good school called Shaker Heights was still having a problem with black students performing well. The author went on to show that is wasn’t that these students were less smart than the white students it was that they didn’t try as hard. This was because their parents did not push them like other parents did. It was referred to as “low-effort syndrome” there parents did not stress the importance of homework and did not communicate with teachers. Also the teachers were to blame because of their low expectations they let the black students slip through the cracks with no punishments. It goes to show that we have no one else to blame but ourselves when it comes to a lack of education. It’s not the condition or the location of the school. It is the attitude of the students, the parents, and the teachers that work within the walls of the school. If expectations and standards were set higher then students would perform to a better potential then they do now. 

Although education is what is considered most important to young adults many live with other priorities first. “What am I most proud of? Being alive.” Accomplishments in some neighborhoods are not how well someone did in school, but how long they can survive literally in the neighborhood that they live. When eight of your friends are killed in shootings is school really your first priority? But at the same time do these kids have a choice to hang on the corner or to be in school and make friends with people who wont get into situations where they are going to be gunned down on the corner. It comes down to the people pushing these kids. If no one is going to push a kid to attend school then why not take the easy way out. If there is no one telling you that you have to go to school and punishing you when you don’t are you really going to challenge yourself. Especially when everyone is telling you that you aren’t going to make it anyway. 

I think that the author is trying to show that the environment that we live in effects the education that children get. It’s not always about how good the school is and how much money the school has in funding, it’s about the attitude of a student and if they have encouragement to achieve.

Blog Work

I found the passage on page 31 pretty interesting. Cora Daniels quotes one of Missy Elliot’s songs, which I have heard before myself. It says, “ Wake-up”: “I got the Martin Luther King fever/ Ima feed yah what yah teacher need to preach yah/ It’s time to get serious” then goes on to say, “If you don’t got a gun (it’s alright)/ If yah makin’ legal money, (it’s alright…)…” Cora Daniels then goes on to tell readers that this was never released as a single. Meaning that this song was never played on the radio and if it happened to slip through the airways it wasn’t during peak hours of listening time it was most likely on a late night DJ mix. So if the public wanted to hear the message that this CD had to bring they were going to have to purchase the album to find out. But what does this say about our society? To me it says a lot. That little passage represents a lot more than that little part out of a song can ever represent. It shows that good messages in the media are not showcased. That song could have been played throughout television commercials or the radio sending a powerful message to young adults across our country. Instead we have commercials like JCPenney having “eight-year old all-American white kids break-dancing to ‘Baby Got Back’ to sell backpacks” (8) So we are only influencing our society with bad messages, should we expect any different results then the ones we have? I doubt that that one song would have made any difference to anything. But it’s the point that once again we are settling for what sells over what is right or good for the community. Would it hurt for the media to send a positive message through music or television once in awhile instead of showcasing the bad. I think the author is showing that it is our own faults for what our country is turning into. And you can only put so much blame on the children because the adults who are the big CEOs and mangers of these companies are the ones supporting the songs like “Baby Got Back” so that they can make money. They don’t care is their next television show promotes things like sex, drugs, and crime or their star appearance selling Vitamin water promotes that he has been shot nine times (don’t remember the exact page she references 50 cent but it is in there). As long as they are driving home in that 90,000-dollar car to the multi-million dollar house it is no pain inflicting them. This just goes to show that the media has just as much to do with how “ghetto” people act as the ghetto it self does.