Monday, February 20, 2012

Inequalities in Education in Chicago and Motivation


For this blog, I am going to discuss the three videos that we had to watch and also about the students are going to be visiting Loyola next Friday. 


First off, the video about the Inequalities in Education in Chicago was very well done. I was impressed with the graphics and overall presentation of it because this is a subject that needs everyone’s attention, and the video certainty got mine. I was extremely surprised by the crazy statistics in the video! It gave us a lot of information in a very short amount of time. It is unbelievable that these things are happening right around us. However, this does remind of the conversation we had in our meeting regarding statistics. Statistics can easily be manipulated to purposely prove your point, and disprove another. While there were a lot of good statistics in the video, I wouldn’t put too much weight onto them until they are either proved true or further explained. The video did make a good point though about how the whole system is a cycle. There are not many people leaving the system just because of outside factors and living conditions and are stuck with the system in place. It is especially terrible for teachers. They have it a lot worse than people probably realize. For most of these children, they take on a much bigger role than just teacher. I think that that is completely wrong. It should not be the teacher’s responsibility to make sure all a student’s life is all in order outside of school. That’s a job for the parents/guardians. Also, you can’t expect a teacher to help fill in that role with all of his/her students. My only complaint of the video as a whole was that she did not offer a solution to the problem. She just sort of left it open and didn’t say how we can really help. It would have been much better if she provided a course of action that we could take, but overall, I thought it was a great video.


The “Louder Than a Bomb: High School Training Ground” video was very moving to me. I am very interested in lyric-based rap music and freestyles so to me, this video was amazingly done. First off, that boy had some very good verses. He made a lot of valid points and none I think were truer than when he said the public schools in Chicago are actually in fact succeeding at their real purpose which is, “Preparing young people for a future that mimics the problems and contradictions of society as a whole.” He is saying that things are the way they are because in order for one person to succeed in our capitalism-based system, one must fall. He is saying that they are the ones taking the fall and that is not fair at all.

The “Inspiration: How Bad Do You Want It?” video was amazing. It was very inspirational to me. It had the montage of a football player and I also played football in high school so I was able to relate as to how hard some players train and how much motivation you need. I would say that my source of motivation is my desire to succeed. I want to be successful at everything that I commit myself to. I know that if I succeed, then I will be happy with myself. As long as I have support from my friends and family, I know that I will do well.

On a closing note, I am very excited to meet the students from Amundsen High School this Friday. I am interested to see what expectations of the students have of us as college students. I hope that we get to do some one-on-one interactions with them even though we are only on a panel. Either way, I think that we can have a very good influence on them and hopefully help them with whatever it is that they might need.

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