We won't be growing up in any ghettos any time soon after all. However, I attended a very poor high school. I have personally seen the poor black students, the ones who have no dreams of going on to college. I was never in Cedric's shoes, but I can see how hard it was for him to excel. There is no motivation for those students. If they get a D, it's ok. They are often overlooked, and most of the schools' resources were provided to the magnet students. Most of their parent's were not encouraging them to do well when they got home. Most of their parent's probably dropped out themselves. Teachers were constantly frustrated with how little the students knew. No one would take responsibility for teaching them to read. I think this novel does a great job at highlighting the flaw in our society. We need to spend more resources on the poor minority students when they are younger. We need to encourage them while they still have hope, so we can keep encouraging them when they feel like giving up. Cedric could have been just another graduate of Ballou High School, already quite an achievement, but he pushed himself to excel at Brown University. And along the way, he learned about himself, and taught us a little about his
We won't be growing up in any ghettos any time soon after all. However, I attended a very poor high school. I have personally seen the poor black students, the ones who have no dreams of going on to college. I was never in Cedric's shoes, but I can see how hard it was for him to excel. There is no motivation for those students. If they get a D, it's ok. They are often overlooked, and most of the schools' resources were provided to the magnet students. Most of their parent's were not encouraging them to do well when they got home. Most of their parent's probably dropped out themselves. Teachers were constantly frustrated with how little the students knew. No one would take responsibility for teaching them to read. I think this novel does a great job at highlighting the flaw in our society. We need to spend more resources on the poor minority students when they are younger. We need to encourage them while they still have hope, so we can keep encouraging them when they feel like giving up. Cedric could have been just another graduate of Ballou High School, already quite an achievement, but he pushed himself to excel at Brown University. And along the way, he learned about himself, and taught us a little about his