Altering Existence

Even thought our nation is civilized and industrialized country, our communities still face discrimination and inequality throughout the educational existence. The 1995 film "Dangerous Minds" reflects real-life problems faced by the students in poverty-stricken urban areas. Some of the problems include prejudice, low self-esteem, and lack of opportunities. Crone in his documentary How Can We Solve the Problem of Racial/Ethnic Inequality? Says that, “As I matured, I began to see and realize what these things meant. I observed many instances of segregation, meaning that the minority population is separated from the majority population in many different ways by the informal norms, customs, and laws at the time” (Crone, 85). As mentioned on Crone’s expression, individual come across with discrimination and racism many times throughout their lifetimes, but not always respond to it. Even though the American drama film, Dangerous Minds, shows that everyone does not getting equal attention and equal right in school zones, it is should be every student’s responsibility to fight for and achieve their goals. Each achievement desires hard work. To be able to achieve personal goals, primarily a person needs to take an action, a person needs optimism and back up from their superior such as teachers, coaches and most important their role models/parents. The Dangerous Minds movie’s setting is a troubling representation of poverty happening in the nation. The city residents are mostly immigrants from disadvantaged family backgrounds and experiencing discrimination in society. Their surroundings and discrimination cause them to have low self-confidence, low self respect and depressing perspective of life and one of the biggest reasons for all these consequences is that those students had blocked opportunities by the school, which cause them to become violent and disappointed with their surroundings. The reason is that low-income and children with deprived background will need more personal attention in the classroom to make up for what they might not get from their family environment. As a result, in Dangerous Minds instructor, Louanne Johnson, uses different tactics to build relationship between schooling and students. These tactics might be against the school policies but it definitely works on students who are in need of more attention. Discrimination and inequality against colored people, is one of the major gap that our society cannot get rid of. According to the Opportunity at the Crossroads: Racial Inequality, School Segregation, and Higher Education in California article, it addresses the immovable and persistent underrepresentation of African American and Chicano-Latino in California higher education. By examining the academic resources, presentation, and postsecondary outcomes of students from public high schools with different racial compositions. As a result from this information it provides evidence for the degree to which social stratification in California public higher education is linked with racial isolation and unfairness in educational resources and postsecondary preparation during high school for African American and Latino students (Teranishi, Allen, and Solrzano, 18). As verified in Opportunity at the Crossroads article, it is very clear that discrimination and inequality for African-Americans and Latino students is still progressing in twenty first century, especially in bigger states such as California, where are majority number of community are immigrants. Landscape plays huge role in discrimination and inequality, referring to “Dangerous Minds” movie took place in Belmont, California. The movie 'Dangerous Minds' centers on the students of Carlmont High School who are mainly of Latinos and Black straight. These inner city kids grow up in an environment with poor socio-economic conditions, which lead to many problems. The problems which they face and the reason behind their actions were evidently illustrated throughout the movie, where these students were separated from the rest of the high school and putted in one classroom. Blocking minorities from the society leads to more crimes and corruptions in the nation. In his book How Can We Solve the Social Problems?, Crone says that “When people believe that they can upwardly mobile via legitimate means they are likely to believe that they need to resort to illegitimate means” (Crone, 123). This expressing means that if society blocks minorities with discrimination and inequality, then people are more likely to use illegitimate means such as selling illegal drugs, violence, and gang affiliation to earn position in life. Consequently education is the key for solving these problems. To be able to achieve and be more successful in educational scale, nation must end the racial gap in school zones. Kennth, Jost in his documentary “School Desegregation,” argues that African-American and Latino minors holdup significantly behind whites on every significant measure of academic achievement. The racial gap in learning is one of the main reasons for minorities’ isolation in school zones. In addition to this disagreement, the author also gives facts about the consequences and the author says that “Traditional Civil Rights advocates largely blame racial isolation for the lagging performance of blacks and Latinos” (Jost, 15). Overall if academics will give equal right and equal amount of attention to every student there is no reason to believe minorities are not intelligent enough to achieve their goals in life existence. Abigail Thernstrom says that “There is absolutely no reason to assume that because schools are heavily Hispanic or black that these children can't learn, that they have to sit next to whites or Asians in order to learn” (Abigail, 16). It is very wrong to say that schools are separate out or brought together, because cities are becoming more heavily minority, well there is nothing as an community can be done about that, only thing that school districts can do is to avoid the minority isolation and make sure every single student gets equal and enough education so they can accomplish their objectives. Nonetheless, even that every success desires solid effort and time period, which is up to students’ choice and decision. Works Cited: Abigail, Thernstrom. No Excuse: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning. May, 2003. CQ Researcher. Print. Crone, A. James. How Can We Solve Our Social Problems? How Can We Solve that Problem of racial/Ethnic Inequality? (2nd ed). Pine Forge: Washington, DC, 2011. Print. Dangerous Minds. Dir. John N. Smith. Perf. LouAnne Johnson, Raúl Sanchero, Emilio Ramírez, Carla Nichols, Alvina, and Stephanie. California, 1995. Film. Jost, Kenneth. School Desegregation: How Can the Promise of the Equal Education are Fulfilled? 23 April 2004. CQ Researcher. Web. 6 November 2011. Teranishi, Robert, Allen, Walter R., Solrzano, Daniel G. Opportunity at the Crossroads: Racial Inequality, School Segregation, and Higher Education in California. Journal Articles. Blackwell, Malden, MA. 2005. Print.