By: Shayna Butler
In a recent TED talk by Sugata Mitra, his research in poor countries shows that children, from all backgrounds can learn. He focused his research in poorer countries, gave them a computer with a topic and walked away. Came back two months later, and the children had learned something.
Anyone can learn! Given the right resources we all can learn and we all can succeed. A friend of mine grew up very rich, went to a private school, parents paid over 50k just for high school alone. She went on to college and dropped out, and ended up at the local diner as a server. She had every advantage to get her college degree at a great school and make good money. Just because you have the right resources doesn't mean you're going to do well. Now I have another friend who grew up in center city, went through the public school system and ended up going to med school. Why such a difference? My friend went to the public library every day and studied, read, and used the free computer to do her homework.
However, at the end of the day there is still a huge line between the two. One is rich and one is poor. The rich girl graduated high school with a nice g.p.a and went to an Ivy League University for a couple of years. The poor girl graduated high school with a 4.0 and a ton of extracurricular activities. She ended up at a state college and graduating there at the top of her class! But why didn't she ended up at a nice ivy league school? There is was no funding for her to go. (She worked while going to school, saved up money and just made it to med school!)
Here is a list of Economic Diversity in colleges on who receives Pell Grants:
Source:http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/poor-students-at-rich-colleges/
There is something seriously wrong with this picture. Just because you're white and I'm not or you're rich and I"m not. Does NOT mean you should be able to be chosen over me or it doesn't mean I can't learn as well as you. I can't help but feel, that if the Ivy League schools allow poor people into them, then they won't be "Ivy League" anymore. Who the hell cares? Harvard has 20,000 students and only 14% of them need financial assistants paying for a $38,400 tuition payment and that's not including extra costs, or living expenses.
Allowing someone ANYONE to attend ANY school and get a degree will allow people of all sorts to succeed in this country and make an impact! How can we change this?
Katiria Garcia
ReplyDeleteWow! This article is very impacting because of fewer opportunities for studying for poor students. For example, the poor students have a limited possibility to get education in any recognized Universities. Although many of these students have great potential, their low-income becomes a challenge for completing their careers. Commonly, they need to depend on Pell Grants, which sometimes are not approved. Also, these students have to work a lot, but they usually don't gain enough for covering the expenses of the institutions. That makes me think a lot about my future and expectations. Having a background of poverty in my family can be tough because I will have less opportunity for getting a better education. However, I think we all need to fight for getting more opportunities to study, so we can make the difference in this country. We can show that we have more barriers in our road, but we are strong enough for breaking them and success.
Kevin McTague
ReplyDeleteAll this just goes to show you don't need an Ivy League education to do great things. Those stats are really hard to digest. It shows me that all the Ivy Leaguers who CAN pay for there school end not beacuse of Pell grants! Yet at the same time people who CANT pay don't get the grants cause they all up in the Ivy League schools. Its appalling really...
Fred Dukes
ReplyDeleteThis Post is a eye opener and is very shocking. The fact that someone who has all the resources in the world available to them can just give up so easily compared to the one who had to work for education and still got the short end of the stick. But this is something that has been going on for a long time. Is it because the person with the most resources is automatically supposed to be successful?