We have heard John Edwards, speak again and again about the two America’s, the haves and the have nots. His message resonates with me, because I witness it every week in my own life. I wanted to take the time in this diatribe to share my experiences of the disparity with you.
I experience one America for 4 days a week. I have been very blessed in my life and one of the blessings that I have received is the chance to attend Boston College. I am currently a sophomore majoring in history and minoring in environmental studies. There are opportunities every where you look at the University. Boston College has over a billion dollar endowment and the affluence you are surrounded by is astounding. The school is located in wealthy Newton/ Chestnut hill, encircled by million dollar homes. Gothic style buildings with beautiful architecture loom large on the campus. The academic and recreational facilities are for the most part, immaculate. Each student you meet, barring financial aid, is paying over forty five thousand dollars a year to attend the school. Ipods, laptops and designer clothes are everywhere you look. You have the opportunity to hear leaders in the private, public and academic worlds speak on a regular basis. A fleet of workers scours the campus maintaining the buildings and the grounds. When you finish your 4 years you will leave with a valued liberal arts education that prepares you to move out into the "real world." The tranquility creates an effect many of the students call the "BC bubble." This is the land of the haves.
But every Friday I step outside of the bubble, into the other America. BC has a program called 4Boston in which 300 students dedicate 4 hours of their time a week to service in solidarity with the greater Boston Community. I am a member of this program and each week on Friday I spend 4 hours at St. Catherine Drexel in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Roxbury is a poor, predominantly African American neighborhood in Boston. St. Catherine Drexel is an after school tutoring program with the expressed goal of helping inner city children pass the entrance exams into selective Boston private schools.
St. Catherine Drexel is a dilapidated building with 4 classrooms in it. Each classroom has over 30 kids in it to one teacher. There are students of every elementary school age group from 1st to 6th grade. You find when you are tutoring that many of the students are reading 2 or 3 grades behind their reading level. You constantly hear comments like "My teacher doesn’t care about spelling or punctuation." In math all that is assigned are mindless drill dittos, with simple problem after simple problem. They are busywork. The students are generally disrespectful of each other, the teachers and the tutors. They rarely want to do work, and constantly say they are not smart enough to do it. It is the tutor’s job to work through this and move towards some of the teacher’s goals. But its hard with only 4 hours a week. The most heart-breaking part is when their parents come thank you for your help, and beg you to do all you can to help their child to escape the public school system. As bad as these conditions are, many of these parents feel lucky to be able to afford the modest fee for the program.
This is the joke that inner city public education has become. The goal is no longer work hard; you’ll do well and get into college. It is now work hard, so you can get in and receive financial aid for a private school. Public school is seen as a dead end. Private middle school and high school are the door to the upper tier universities, such as the one I attend. They are the door into the land of the halves.
We all know that this is wrong. It should not require money to receive a quality education. That is increasingly becoming the case, and the top universities are becoming more and more like closed enclaves for the wealthiest in society.
This is just my personal experience. I feel that John Edwards two America’s message is so powerful because we witness it every single day. This isn’t really a diatribe supporting John Edwards. It is illustrative of the systematic problems in our country and it is my hope that all our candidates, not just Edwards, will accept that something must be done about the ever increasing divide.
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