Sociological Inquiry Asignment 1 - Essay Example

Sociological Inquiry Assignment 1. Vitello, Paul. “Donors Demand a Bigger Voice in Catholic Schools.” February 6, The New York Times. Web. 5 February 2011. 2. a. The article is about Catholic schools sponsoring; school budgets, student scores and educators’ job evaluations depend on school sponsors. The issue discussed in the article is the misunderstandings between educators and main sponsors of archdiocesan schools. b. One of the major reasons why I have chosen this particular article, because it discusses current situation with church schools and education availability for poor children.

There are many details of the problem which are rather unknown to general public: donors or wealthy sponsors themselves decide important questions related to school budgeting, types of testing, number of school’s personnel, etc. 3. The author of the article is religion reporter for The New York Times newspaper. He works for this newspaper not for so long since 2008. Vitello covers predominantly religion news from local perspective, New York City. Earlier the reporter used to work for such newspapers as Long Island’s Newsday, Kansas City Star, Knickerbocker News and some others.

Paul Vitello has veteran experience as a reporter. He has written numerous articles on religious issues, for instance, “Clergy Urge Efforts to Lower the City’s Abortion Rate”, “Hepatitis Scare Hits Nassau Church after Wafers’ Exposure at Christmas Masses”, “N.Y. Parochial Schools Downcast After Archdiocesan Warning”, “Bitterness Follows End of a School” to name a few among many others. I believe that the author has enough experience and appropriate qualification to write about issues related to religion (church) and education like in the article under the analysis in this paper. 4. Vitello’s article presents a clear analysis of the issue.

However, the author covers only schools and churches of New York City and nearby area. He clearly emphases that often there is misunderstanding between donors and educators which often leads to irreversible outcomes such as closing of school or reduction of number of learners ready for enrollment in particular school. Most of the sponsors are businessmen and rich people from Wall Street. Most of these people not simply offer financial support to the schools. They are interested at constant betterment of education and educational benefits for children.

Donors require transparency and accountability of archdiocesan schools. One of the instances of incongruence between donor’s plans and those of principal was one school in Bronx. When a principal wanted to build a gym at his school at donor’s expense, the donor demanded to build a new library. The school got closed in the end, because of the sudden drop in enrollment. It is obvious that financial support of donors is essential part of normal functioning of any school. However, I think that the author of the article somewhat overestimates donor’s involvement and role in life of church schools and education in general.

I cannot agree that every donor is sincerely interested in state of affairs of school he/she is funding or destiny of its learners. Many rich people do it because of the other reasons, such as advertising or pre-elections campaign. 5. Student testing and teacher evaluation has been changed over the last years. The main reason of that was active involvement of donors who are funding schools. Sometimes it is difficult to find common ground and to understand each other for donors and educator. However, for the sake of future education and possibility to have good education for children, especially for those from poor families, main actors in the sphere of education and religion have to adjust, at least to some requirements of donors.

It is not surprising that many donors as well as students are neither Catholics nor religious. However, the main idea is that children have to have the right to normal education. Works Cited Vitello, Paul. “Donors Demand a Bigger Voice in Catholic Schools.” February 6, 2011. The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/nyregion/07parochial.html