Response to Blog Question #1: Women and Enrollment

Learning to Break the Cycle
“…children growing up with unequal chances will become the next generation of parents without the resources to give their own children a good chance - and this "chicken and egg" cycle will continue."- BBC News

It is always difficult to interrupt an ongoing circle without causing any disturbances. A rotary for example, if you wait for all the cars to stop zooming by, you could be there at the yield sign for eternity. However, if you cut right through or attempt turning in the other direction, a car accident is bound to happen. In life, without the vehicle, we face these cycles everyday – some of us are affected by them more than others. The quote from above is relating to the inequalities of education resulting from poverty. This cycle of children not being able to afford a proper education, and growing up to wear their parent’s shoes, and provide the same for their own children, is difficult to over come, due to education institutes’ desire to meet numbers. Numbers seem to be taking over, due to the use of standardized tests, on very unstandardized children, each with their own potential, learning styles and capabilities. As each school tries to meet certain standards, they urge kids along to transform themselv
es into a statistic. However, certain kids are able to attend tutors, or extra class that takes timely, and is also very costly. Unfortunately, not all kids can afford these helpful classes, and therefore can not perform to their best ability on these pressured tests that, at times, solely determine your future. This is just another step to take in order to swing around the cycle. Coming from a poor family is a different inequality of education from other cycles, though, since it can not be handled in the same ways.
After reading the articles about issues being recognized in education, it is clear to see how Paulo Freire focuses his work on the impoverished, even though there are others who have been oppressed in “the Banking Concept of Education”. In the past women have been forced away from education, and have taken the least amount of teachings that they could to a certain point. Although as times change, women’s role in school has too, and they have become more, as said in, Women and Enrollment, females are dominating colleges. Also, race, another cycle that is still in the process of unraveling from the cycle, used to be a complete block to education, and now is equalizing in opportunities for all races. However, poverty still seems to be holding many individuals back from their potential, and it seems as though this issue isn’t as well recognized as the other two just mentioned due to its unknown circumstances. As this issue does become more recognized, it will be more beneficial to focus on giving everyone an e
qual chance to education, then expecting everyone to meet a certain standard, when hardly anyone can really be defined by just a number.