Abstract:

The United States is an enormous country with great ethnic and cultural diversity, which despite the democratic system and the care for its citizens, has one of the worst primary and secondary educational systems in the world. The United States is full of excellent private schools and American universities are considered to be amongst the best in the world. However as far as primary and secondary education is concerned, the students are pretty much left on their own. Yes, if a student in an American public school wants to get ahead she or he can do so, but needs to put in a lot of personal effort. Furthermore, when having in mind that most children that attend public schools start with many disadvantages and are discriminated by society, it is obvious that they will have a hard time getting ahead. Nevertheless there are people that are trying hard to make their life easier in many ways, including the development of systems that could help those children educate themselves and have a prosperous future.

Self-Segregation and medieval conditions in “Apartheid Schools:”

One of the greatest problems that the United States has faced and is still facing today, is that of racial segregation. Despite almost 200 years of struggle for integration, it seems as if the Americans of all races simply do not like ”hanging out” with one another. There are no laws that promote racial segregation of any kind, but society seems to be as racist and segregationist as it was 60 years ago. However one must keep in mind that this is no longer an issue of “white racism” but it is rather something that can be called “voluntary social segregation.” At the beginning of the twenty-first century, according to Professor Gary Orfield and his colleagues at the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, “American public schools are now 12 years into the process of continuous re-segregation.” (Kozol, 2005, p.18)

This can also bee seen from an interview with a “Latino 5th grade girl in a school district in a rural county in northern New Mexico where 77% of the population identifies as Hispanic (US Census Bureau, 2010). Her response reflects the fact that she was born and raised in a minority-majority community; a community in which her ethnic identity is a visible, celebrated part of community life.” (Hill, Mance et al, 2012, p. 1)

Interviewer: “What makes being Hispanic different from being African-American or Anglo or any of those other groups to you?”

Participant: “I’m not sure but I think it’s because everybody, mostly everybody I know, they’re Hispanic. Like all my family and all my friends and everything.”

Interviewer: “What makes being Hispanic different from being another race and culture?”

Participant: “I think you fit in more.”(Hill, Mance et al, 2012, p. 1)

The problem is not racism as hate orientated towards another race but it is rather a question of xenophobia. Americans of all races simply prefer to stick to their own community, and despite the fact that the melting pot is becoming bigger and bigger, the Caucasian, African and Latin communities simply do not like hanging out with people of different racial origin. Of course, this will reflect itself on the education system.

According to Kozol, “more than two million, including more than a quarter of black students in the Northeast and Midwest, “attend schools which we call apartheid schools” in which 99 to 100 percent of students are non white.” (Kozol, p. 2005, p. 18) It is obvious that as the population of minorities increase in public schools that the white parents will opt for private and/or other schools where most of the children are white. On the other hand African and Latino students feel and are often discriminated by white students, so parents prefer that they go to schools where at least they will be with “their own.”

This of course leads to the fact that those “apartheid schools are over- populated, meaning that the quality of education is on the decrease and that many students face serious social problems not only on the streets but also in schools. In an elementary school, which had been built to hold 1,000 children but was packed to bursting with some 1,500 boys and girls, the principal poured out his feelings to me in a room in which a plastic garbage bag had been attached somehow to cover part of the collapsing ceiling. “(Kozol, 2005, p. 41) Such conditions brand minority children since the beginning and it is obvious that they will do anything to get away from schools that can be compared with medieval conditions. (Kozol, 2005, p. 63, 99, 135) Unfortunately many of them choose a life of crime.

Emotional Climate in schools and the effect on minority students:

It is very important to notice that the poor conditions and racial segregation have  a negative effect on the emotional state of the students, which in turn puts them under great strain and causes a lot of stress. Therefore it is obvious that so much stress creates a negative, emotional climate in those schools. Negative, emotional climate has negative, academic achievement as a consequence, meaning that those children are stuck in a vicious circle out of which there are very few ways to escape. Those children are simply left on their own and they have almost no one to turn to. The faculty in those “apartheid schools” do not care much about anything except the end of the working day and the paychecks, most of them have left their ideals at home after teaching in those schools for a year or two. However in order to have academic success the students should have: “(a) teachers who are sensitive to students’ needs; (b) teacher–student relationships that are warm, caring, nurturing, and congenial; (c) teachers who take their students’ perspectives into account; and (d) teachers who refrain from using sarcasm and harsh disciplinary practices.” (Reyes, Bracket, et al, 2012, p.701) This unfortunately is not the case, and the minority schools will never have such teachers.

There is actually only one thing the community can do and that is to try and at least reduce some of the stress factors that contribute to many problems in minority schools.