Dallas Buyers Club is a film based on the real life of Ron Woodroof (played by Matthew McConaughey), a straight male that was diagnosed with AIDS while living in Texas in the mid-1980s. This news thrusted Ron into a culture that he had not previously wanted anything to do with, but his views would slowly shift towards a greater understanding with time. Many of the fellow AIDS patients were gay, something that Ron was not comfortable with up to this point in his life. He clearly previously aligned with the notion that straight people were the “one”, while everyone else was an “other”. He did have a respect for this “other”, as this ideology had been ingrained in his mind for the entirety of his life thus far. He continued to deny that he was gay himself as he received accusations from his old friends; this form of mistreatment is eventually what would push him towards an empathetic view on his fellow AIDS patients. One thing that he and his old friends did not have an understanding for was the fact that not all AIDS patients had the same story. There was one idea of what this title meant in the eyes of many, and it took being a part of that group for Ron to see the other side. Striving for a possible method of treatment for this horrific illness, Ron would eventually be pushed towards alternative therapies and he actually ended up smuggling unapproved drugs into the United States. This leads him towards the unimaginable friendship between himself and Rayon, a transgender AIDS patient who was also seeking some form of treatment. This unlikely connection is the bond that drives the messaging of this film. Once a common ground was reached between these two an extremely close friendship developed. Their first meeting showed clear disgust in the eyes of Ron, but he would later on defend her in front of his old friends (a true turning point for Ron’s character development). They eventually founded the Dallas Buyers Club together, which focused on providing the treatments he was using for a monthly fee. The early goal of Ron’s actions seemed to be of the financial sense, but as time passed you could see his care for his patients. The furthering of Ron’s ability to understand and care throughout this film is intriguing and encouraging to watch. This is a fantastic representation of what exposing yourself to different types of people from yourself can do, even though Ron was forced into this situation himself. This is a crucial story to hear, and it does a lot to display the shortcoming of anyone who has a problem with someone else’s gender/sexual identity.
(included link to mp3 on google drive because embedded mp3 was not working correctly)
I’m Colby Kramer, and today I’m going to be talking on a new podcast of mine, which is the “Yo… is this educational inequality?” Podcast. Today, we are clearly living in a time of great distress. The Covid-19 pandemic has changed lives all around the world. One instance of change that I would like to address is the multiplying negative effects that this coronavirus pandemic has had on inner-city schooling. I’d like to start out with a story of one student who is named Shamar, who is from an inner-city. Shamar, like many of the students his is peers with has had a rough home situation in his past. The mom, who battles a drug addiction, and he also has to bounce from home to home to his grandmother to his mom to his siblings which often leads him to experience absences from school due to a lack in transportation. And… these absences have been multiplied by the recent coronavirus pandemic. Once everything was sent to be remote, he at first did not even have a laptop, but was eventually provided with one… actually by church funding. And even with this, he doesn’t always have internet access. He struggles to find a good place to do his class and is often up late with his mom watching television or something of the sort. Essentially, he’s just struggled. And he is not finding that escape that he used to find at school from his home life. He’s not alone in this being his escape. Many of these students that live in these areas need school to get out of these rough home lives. It’s just… something that is essential to their life and their well-being. And… one just tragic part of this is that it’s often hard to see these stories especially in these current times because they are occurring being closed doors: they are private. People are not moving around as much with the pandemic so you can’t… they aren’t in these schools; you can’t see them struggling as well as you might want to. They are often times not even showing up to class so you can’t see them at all; as a teacher or as an educator you can’t help them. One teacher, Ryan Hooper, who is a social studies teacher from Cleveland who teaches in Massachusetts actually reported that only about 1 or 2 of his students were showing up regularly for a class of 10. This is clearly an alarmingly low rate. And… it doesn’t make these teachers feel too good; it’s not what they are trying to do… they are trying to make a difference in these kids lives, and it’s nearly impossible if they are not there. And… he actually attempted to alert child protective services for the students who were not showing up, but Baltimore essentially did not take any action against this, largely due to the fact that students were not being penalized for not doing their work at this time. This was… right after the pandemic began, and these students were seen to be as going through a rough time and they thought that they couldn’t penalize them for not participating. The thing is… these students needed this. Like I previously mentioned… it’s their escape. They… need school, and if they are not getting school, they’re falling behind in metal aspects, with their home life, as well as the learning aspect of it because they are just falling further and further behind without getting any teaching. This is clearly a problem, and one previous occurrence that kind of shows the future impacts that this could possibly have on these students was actually Hurricane Katrina which showed that about 6 months after the Katrina incident, only 20% of students from New Orleans were not enrolled or missed 10 plus days of school in a month. This is kind of similar in a way to what we are seeing today. Students aren’t showing up. This has been going on and it will continue until we are able to get fully back into school with the vaccines and such, but currently this is what is going on and one almost terrifying fact from this is that a 7-year-old from New Orleans during Katrina was found more likely to be unemployed than all but 2 cities in the US from kids that were the same age. Which… clearly displays a direct correlation to negative effects of kids not being at school and them seeing this in their future. 10 years ahead of this… there is a clear impact, and it is the same thing that is happening in inner cities all across the United States right now. Our entire educational system is being set back and there needs to be action taken. This setback is a setback to a system that was previously already not performing. Another study that I looked at from Education Week, which was titled “Study Lays Out Grim Statistics on Urban Education”, actually displayed… I mean these negative effects were already there. Less than 15% of these students took the ACT/SAT from 30 out of the 50 cities that were studied and in addition to that only… well 1 out of 4 students from the 9th grade in the beginning of the study graduated in 4 years when it was looked back upon in 2015. And… this is… just a clear fault in the system. This is not the statistics you would see; they are better in suburban and rural areas, but these cities are being neglected and the funding… it’s not enough right now. It’s just clearly not enough. These students… they are not receiving the funding that they need. And… as a direct result of this, they are not going to succeed in their futures. And going back to current times, just one story that I would like to address… it was a Cleveland news story from wkyc which is just a local news network there. I’m just going to play a quick clip for you guys here…
This investigation looking just at the data for the start of this fall semester suggests that problems still persist in Cuyahoga County, as suburban schools scored higher than inner city schools in one key area: attendance. “It’s good… it’s an adjustment, but it’s working out.” In suburban Parma, where Abby Maloro goes to school, the district has seen near perfect attendance. 97% logging in at her school Normandy high and 98% at Parma high school. 3 news found similar results at Shaker Heights High School and Beechwood High School. “I say fair… it’s going fair.” But Cleveland Metro Schools, where 37,000 students have been in virtual classes since March… 3 news found roughly 5600 students not regularly logging on. “Sometimes a Chromebook goes out, and we’ve been up here twice to get new Chromebooks because this one will go dead.” While Cleveland Metro schools has given students Chromebooks and hotspots, Brenda Cook Weems says her son Thomas often has problems logging on. “How many times has that happened?… twice, this is the second time.” And perhaps even more troubling is Cleveland’s High School attendance. The most recent data available shows only 63% of students logging on at Thomas’ school, Glenville High. On par with the 64% average at John F. Kennedy and 66% at Collinwood High School. “Yes I am… very disappointed… 63% is not good.”
So, this attendance aspect of things which we are seeing with the coronavirus pandemic… it’s… highlighted, it’s clearly much worse, but it’s a problem that already occurring as I mentioned earlier with stories like Shamar who have rough home lives and struggle to find the transportation they need in order to get to school. Beyond that, the previously mentioned funding… there’s actually… for urban students in these districts, they receive about $2,100 less per student in funding compared to suburban areas and ultimately $4,000 per student less than rural areas. This is largely due to local control and self-funding in these districts, which often lead there to be a higher per student funding for smaller districts and… another aspect that has caused these deeply rooted issues in the education system has been racial segregation and redlining, which have led to concentrated low-income communities of color in these urban areas which is displayed by the fact that about… per student kids of color receive about $1,321 less than their white counter parts even in these cities. So, it’s not just a problem from cities to suburban areas, it’s actually within these cities you are seeing separation/segregation, and this essentially leads to a perpetuation of poor education and it leads many of these students to drop out, possibly go to crime and that does not set them of for the future of success that we are looking for. There is clearly, a problem with the funding formula that exists in these cities and everywhere… there is just not an equal balance of this education system. It’s not providing students from different areas with the same equal opportunities that could possibly lead them to maybe go to college, and possibly beyond that there are systems of scholarships and such set up so that some of these students can have that opportunity, but the education system in the root needs to give these students an education that will provide them with future success. And essentially to go towards that, the stories of these inner-city students just need to be heard. Stories like Shamar, he’s not alone. All of these students’ stories need to be heard, and once they are heard, there can be an uproar and people will see that the inequalities seen in the education system are completely alarming… and they are also absolutely unacceptable. They need to be addressed to the highest degree, and we need to see change in the policies that exist in our current climate.
With the current global pandemic shifting the education focus to online, a lot of inner-city schools with a lack of funding have been left in the dust. The resources that are necessary for an effective online learning environment are not held by the education system in many cities around the world, which only adds to the gap that already separated the factor that funding plays into the quality of education for students around the United States. There was already an abundance of problems that could be found within the education system that led to high drop-out rates and a lack of preparation for students that came out of poor school districts. This has perpetuated a cycle that is extremely difficult for many kids to escape, as it often leaves them searching to find low level work or even relying on crime as a result of the education system’s failures. The following infographic addresses the United States’ struggle with high dropout rates and the difficulties that follow for high-school dropouts.
Flexible solutions similar to the one suggested above are a great option for many students, as it allows them to work around possible obligations that may have lead them to drop-out. Only once there are drastic measures taken to improve the funding of these schools and improve the quality of education system as a whole will there be steps towards eliminating these issues. One example of a possible focus for change could be in the area of early childhood schooling, in which you can see a clear disparity of participation between income classes. The infographic below displays this gap, in addition to the possible benefits of placing more low-income children into early childhood education systems.
It is clear that their is an abundance of advantages to getting these kids into school as soon as possible. Although this will not completely solve the gap in education that continues throughout higher grades, this is a start and there is no better place to start than the start of the problem. This pandemic needs to be a wake-up call because kids all around the country are falling even further behind than before. A constantly unequal education system has developed a recurring cycle of kids struggling to come out of poor communities while others from well-off districts continue to find success and go to college. There are possible routes for students from inner-cities to make it through the system and rise above it, but it is unquestionably more difficult for them compared to their peers whom they have to compete with to get into certain colleges.
Works Cited
“Early Childhood Inequality (Infographic).” Impact NW, 10 Aug. 2017, impactnw.org/news/early-childhood-inequality-infographic/.
Penn Foster Education Inc. Follow. “Combating the High School Dropout Crisis [Infographic].” SlideShare, 27 June 2014, www.slideshare.net/pennfosteradmin/combating-the-high-school-dropout-crisis.
The caste system is something that many believe was completely derived from Hindu culture in India; not many realize that British colonialism was actually one of the main driving forces in the development of this system. Not only was the system a result of British interpretations of texts that previously did not hold utmost importance, but the entire Hindu religion did not effectively come into existence until these interpretations were established. The chancellor at the University of California, Nicholas Dirks, has done extensive research on British colonialism’s negative impacts on Indian society. He said that ‘[u]nder colonialism, caste was thus made out to be far more – far more pervasive, far more totalizing, and far more uniform – than it had ever been before, at the same time that it was defined as a fundamentally religious social order’ (Simha). In essence, the British were able to use this system as a form of control that limited the power/respect held by the majority of citizens in India. This was a system placed everyone in a certain inescapable label or group that would decide what they could do with their lives. The explanation that the caste system came completely as a result of ancient Indian culture does not hold up, as before colonial times in India there was evidence that “social identities were constantly malleable” (Chakravorty). There was instances of people rising up from humble beginnings to become important figures of society, something that became nearly impossible with the system that would later be imposed by the British.
Gayatri Spivak would eventually come to address the impact that Western colonial interpretations and rule had on “third world” countries and their people. Dividing people up within their own countries made it difficult for them to stand up and develop a unified voice. Division was used as a tool in many cases of colonialism in order to gain control, as it is the most effective in inhibiting the ability for a group to develop a fight against another when they are busy fighting themselves. The effects that the colonial form of the caste system had on India are still seen today because of that strong division that it created, even with some of the modern day efforts to push towards a change in the structure.
Chakravorty, Sanjoy. “Viewpoint: How the British Reshaped India’s Caste System.” BBC News, BBC, 19 June 2019, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48619734,
Simha, Rakesh. “The Caste System Is a Colonial Idea.” IndiaFacts, 2 July 2015, indiafacts.org/caste-system-colonial-idea/.
