For the text review I chose to analyze the show Game of Thrones, which is also a series of books written by George R.R. Martin. It is a fictional show depicting a land comprised of 7 different kingdoms with one king who rules over all of them, and there is a constant battle of who is deserving. My main point takes events from earlier seasons of the show, but if I had to specify it would be focused on season 6. One of the main characters, Jon Snow, is a son of one of the kings but he does not have the same mother as the rest of his siblings and is considered a ‘bastard’. They are clearly portrayed in the series because instead of having the last names of their families they have an alternate one such as ‘Snow’. This show is a great example of a portrayal of the concepts we learned of ‘One’ and ‘the Other’. The ‘One’ are clearly the noble families, but Jon is considered the ‘Other’ because he is only a half sibling to his prince and princess siblings. Because of this distinguishment he is not able to have any powerful roles and chooses to join a thing known as the ‘Nights Watch’, which is a group of men at the edge of the land that protects a wall that separates the kingdoms from dangers in the north. The Nights Watch is similar to a halfway house, as prisoners and those who have been outcast are often sent there to help out. Jon becomes one of the favorite characters in the show and helps lead and become higher up in this kingdom. The show starts off with a large gap based on the heritage between the ‘One’ and ‘Other’ but as time goes on the people who were considered the ’Other’ end up being the ones that are the best suited for the important tasks and roles in the show.
Welcome my name is Noah Ball and I will be doing the Yo is this podcast assignment. I’m here with my roommate Alex Richani who also attended Walsh Jesuit High School and today we will talk about systemic racism in the educational system. How are you doing today Alex?
I’m doing well thank you for having me on the show. I’m excited to do this podcast with you. So to start we both attended Walsh Jesuit High School, it is a private Catholic High School in the Akron area of Ohio. Were going to jump right in here, so at our school we had about a thousand students and we only had about 10 people of color in our entire school and in our graduating class of 2016 we had 250 people in our class and we only had four people of color. After some quick math that’s about 1% of the student population being people of color. In surrounding public schools around the area people of color was around 30 to 50% of enrollment so this obviously raises questions whether something is wrong systemically with why the difference is so large. So Alex I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this do you think something’s going on there potentially?
I think systemically it’s a little interesting that those numbers are what they were I know that once I got to college it was definitely a big change and it was something that I was comfortable with but I didn’t even notice that there was that really big percentage difference compared to other schools in the area.
I agree I have some numbers I found online the US Department of Education gives some numbers on the percentages of race in private institutions they were 67% white 9% black 11% Hispanic and 6% Asian, The Washington Post also had an article with some data at private institutions compared to public there’s a 15% Higher White percentage of the population they also did a study on schools that were virtually all white which is being described as 90% of the population being white students or higher. they had 43% of private institutions were virtually all white compared to only 27% of public institutions. so the process of admission to Walsh Jesuit High School I went to a public elementary school first through eighth grade so I essentially had to get a transcript from my middle school which they were not very familiar with because most of the people that went to my middle school just want the public high school there’s only two people in my grade that went to a private high school so we start with that and then to follow that up you have to take an admission exam, it’s similar to an ACT type of exam but for 8th graders and then after that we had an interview with someone from the admissions department. so for me being at a public school I wasn’t really knowledgeable about private high schools as it was more my parents who wanted me to go to. No one ever visited my school or anything like that, my friend Alex here went to a private elementary school so I’m going to see if there’s any differences between going to a private elementary school compared to a public elementary school.
Yeah I mean hearing what you went through and hearing how it was so different from mine like just from that I know that from the minute we hit 6th grade I think it was we started getting prepped on private schools you want to go to there was probably 20% or maybe less that went to a public school from my private school and there was around 112 kids in my grade and it was interesting because it was just like assumed that you were going to another private school when you were there so we had 6th grade 7th grade 8th grade prep papers to get you ready for that ACT like exam we had practice exams that they gave in class we even have this much as recruiters come from these schools and admissions people who came in and actually sat down with us told us about the programs what time does school and how awesome it would be if we were a student at their school and give us some some swag and merchandise to try and really sell us on going to that school so it’s like Leaps and Bounds different than what you experienced switching to that private school.
That makes a lot of sense so it seems like the private high schools spend a lot of time for lack of a better word recruiting students from other private elementary schools based on that I want to ask in the private elementary schools was the percentage of white people a lot higher than public schools? I know at my public school in the other ones the proportion of people of color was about like 20 to 30% so I don’t know how yours compared to that?
Yeah being honest I don’t really remember the exact percentage but I would honestly venture to say it was below 5% in my entire Elementary School people of color.
That is very interesting that makes sense to me that these private high schools would go to these elementary schools to get those people because there’s no direct private high school for all those schools and I think the systemic problem is that they’re focusing on all these private schools.
Sure they’re like feeder systems but the proportion of people of color at those schools are also lower than public schools.
Exactly so I think a solution to that would maybe having more information at public schools for people going to the private schools but I think a big issue with that is the public schools would kind of fight back at having all these other high schools, sort of recruiting and taking away students being all people that aren’t of color and then you kind of just get through an endless cycle of recruiting from schools that are mainly white to go into private school that’s mainly white and then from there going to college but I mean another huge factor is the price the price of our high school was high like tuition I think was about $11,000 that’s a big difference between paying thousands of dollars every year for a high school when you can go to another high school for free. We did have scholarship funds for those who were financially unstable but even through that it’s not a huge discount you’re still paying out-of-pocket couple thousand dollars a year. Things that Walsh has done recently is that theres a diversity director and their only job is to help increase the diversity of the school. They also increased their scholarship funds to help more students be able to attend the school.
Yeah I really think that job is important and I think that they’re taking steps in the right direction I don’t want to say too little too late because there’s always room for growth and for improving and that standing but I think there’s got to be some other Solutions like what you thought.
I think for some other solutions to this kind of big problem one of the things I think they improved a lot is the college inclusion most Universities have an inclusion Department even on the application asks you your race and all that stuff so I feel like colleges are doing a lot better at making the University’s a lot more diverse I think if they’re able to trickle that down sort of feel like the high school level of public and private schools I think I would really help somehow I also think it’s not only about private schools there’s a lot of very good Public Schools as well but many public schools especially in areas where there’s maybe lower-income communities in the surrounding areas they usually have closed enrollment so if you’re not in that certain radius you can’t attend that public school you attend a different one. I think most schools should open up their enrollment giving students different options at different schools. I think that would be a big Improvement also make it a little more because if a school is losing a lot of students to a surrounding school they might be losing money so that would give him more incentive to improve their education for other students.
Yeah but I never really thought of it but if they really open the door to High School’s other high schools public elementary schools they’re going to lose all that kind of feeding from The Young Elementary School to the high school that’s all in the same district so I can see why they’re opposed to opening out there schools like that but at the same time we’re trying to get Nationwide better education for all these young kids and these people of color who need that kind of same Level Playing Field they’re not going to get that unless they possibly open their doors.
Yeah that’s a good point Alex. So the main question here I think there is systemic racism in the educational system but I also think a large part of that is money, private schools can’t just have a bunch of students come in because they’re privately funded so they need the people to pay and if the people can’t afford that’s a big problem for them. The solution to that is having alumni or other donors add some money for the tuition funds and also with private high schools they’re going to private elementary schools to get their students they should go to public schools but that has a problem with the public schools taking away their students so I think there is a lot of systemic problems but I think some of it boils down to money in these different areas rather than just systemic racism.
Yeah I totally agree with that I think that all really make sense and there’s really some stuff that need to be taken in the right direction to kind of saw this this systemic issue.
Yeah I agree I think that wraps it up for us thank you Alex for joining me on this podcast I appreciate it thanks for having me no problem that is all and thank you
For this week’s presentation I chose to focus on the cultural revolution that happened in China in the late 1960-70’s, when the author Lisa Ko was born and moved to the United States. China had a split system known as ”hukou”, where citizens where given certain residency based on if they lived in urban or rural areas, similar to plebian and patricians from ancient Roman times. People given rural hukou are in the lower class of society and cannot live in the city, which is why Polly was excited to get a permit to work in a factory because she was able to live in Fuzhou.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution began in 1966 when Mao Zedong called for mobilization of the youth in order to overtake the current party leaders due to their values and lack of spirit. The students ended up forming militias known as Red Guards and attempted to rid themselves of old customs, culture, habits and idea. The revolution ended in 1977, after about 1.5 million people had died and the economy had been sent into turmoil. Chinese Immigration to the United States was mostly from Hong Kong and Taiwan during the 1960’s-70’s. The People’s Republic of China had restrictions on emigration until 1977 when the revolution ended, and. Many college students and professionals came to the United States. In 1970 only 0.13% of the US population were of Chinese descent, and that number grew to 0.66% 15 years later after the restrictions were lifted.
Citations:
“Chinese Immigration to the United States.” Timeline, bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/chinese-immigration-to-the-united-states-1884-1944/timeline.html.
William Wei. “The Chinese-American Experience.” The Chinese-American Experience: An Introduction, immigrants.harpweek.com/ChineseAmericans/1Introduction/BillWeiIntro.htm.
Zhou, Xueguang, and Liren Hou. “Children of the Cultural Revolution: The State and the Life Course in the People’s Republic of China.” American Sociological Review, vol. 64, no. 1, 1999, pp. 12–36. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2657275. Accessed 20 Oct. 2020.
