An Overview of Los Angeles City - Coursework Example

LOS ANGELES Los Angeles is the that packages dreams and creates illusions that are then broadcast over the entire world in glorious 3D Technicolor. Hollywood spells glamour and wealth to viewers across the world, but strip away the illusion and the ugly underbelly of reality lies exposed – poverty and crime. As Dimendberg (2008) puts it, “the glamour of the movies and the excesses of the star system stand in stark contrast to the daily lives and experiences of most residents.” Contrary to its portrayal as the city of dreams, Los Angeles in reality may be more akin to a city of nightmares, nightmares created by poverty and crime and its deplorable public educational system that fails miserably in educating many of those who pass through the portals of the Los Angeles United School District to even basic standards. I have always been torn by feelings of ambivalence while thinking about Los Angeles. There is such a stark contrast between the Westside and downtown East Los Angeles; ostentatious spending in the former and gang shootings in the latter. As I walk down Rodeo drive, I cannot help but contrast it with the crowds and squalor of the east side. There is an aura of hypocrisy, shallowness and superficiality that exists in the Westside, which contrasts sharply with the despair, resignation and gang mentality prevailing within East Los Angeles. Outwardly, the city appears to be a model of racial assimilation, a motley mix of cultures and races, an ethnic melting pot that boasts of component elements from over the globe, including sizeable Hispanic and Asian populations. The illusion that is Los Angeles, as encapsulated on celluloid, is a city where people of different races accept each other. But this is deceptive and superficial, the reality is rather different because the racial segregation begins right in schools, setting young children on a path to destruction that is difficult to overcome and turn away from. Los Angeles is a city of contrasts; it contains the dregs of humanity trapped in its crime ridden, predominantly minority neighborhoods of the East and the elite of society, predominantly white, living in their palatial mansions in the Westside. Education in the LA context has always been a subject of endless fascination for me, because it appears to be the only bridge that can help the Los Angeles child trapped in the poverty and crime ridden “East” to cross over into the educated, elite “West”. Geographically, those living in the East and those living in the West are all Los Angelians, but there exists between them a chasm of education, race and wealth so vast that they might well be living on different planets. Education is the only potential equalizer that enables individuals to bridge the chasms of race and class so that they can live better lives. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is the second largest in the United States, serving over 600,000 students. It has its own police department to handle criminal activity in the schools, it has introduced computer aided learning and its budget is higher than that of the city of Los Angeles. In the 1990s, measures were also taken to improve educational outcomes through the LEARN (The Los Angeles Education Alliance for restructuring Now) and LAAMP (The Los Angeles Annenberg Metropolitan Project) reform initiatives in which many principals, teachers and parents joined. But as Kerchener (2005) has pointed out, even this did not achieve the desired goal of improving educational outcomes. Moreover, LA schools are also centers of violence, with gun toting students. Why have all attempts to address poor educational outcomes in Los Angeles failed, especially among racial minority communities? Factors attributed to be the cause of high drop out rates among black students in Los Angeles include (a) increasing enrolment of Latino immigrants who are most likely to drop out (b) raising of academic standards and (c) insufficient funding.(Landsberg and Blume, 2008). Where Hispanic students are concerned, high drop out rates are attributed to their difficulties in understanding the language and bilingual education has been advocated to address this problem. I believe education is vital for America in a global economy that is fuelled by knowledge, but American educational outcomes are falling miserably behind world standards. Considering that the Los Angeles School District educates a hefty section of American students, the failure of the educational system in Los Angeles will have a detrimental impact on American workers in the future. I decided to try to find out what people in Los Angeles think about the LAUSD and what reasons they attribute for the poor educational outcomes. ---------------------- Education in Los Angeles I advocate Discipline JERRY WEISENBERG, Continuation Teacher at Unified Central High School/Tri C (A tall, thin man, he exudes vitality and purpose. He wears a black skull cap as he enters his living room to meet me, but takes it off and lays it on the table, revealing receding mousy brown hair and bright blue eyes. His wife enters from the kitchen to offer us both some fresh bagels and a cup of coffee. He sips his coffee and eats, as he starts talking in response to my question about LAUSD). Yes, I’ve been a Continuation teacher for ten years now and let me tell you this, nothing you hear about the lack of security at LA schools is true. Yeah, our cars are locked up during school hours, ok? so they don’t get stolen, see? And we never stay late, too damn dangerous. Shameful, but that’s downtown LA for you. Why don’t they put out better grades? Well, I’ve always felt that discipline is the problem, what we need to do is suspend students until they’re ready to behave. Doesn’t happen though, because the school wants as many students as possible to attend, their financing depends on it, right? But listen to this – Last year, a school in Compton achieved 861 AP1 scores! Yes 861! ( he taps the table for emphasis) As good as Beverly Hills or San Merino huh? Not half bad for a school with black and Hispanic students. And do you know why it happened? I’ll tell you why – the principal wasn’t afraid to suspend 100 students out of 467, don’t get back into class he told them, not until you’re good and ready to behave. That’s what we need to do, it’s amazing how quickly parents will get their kids to behave when they know they can’t dump them on the schools anymore. Yeah, I get some bad eggs in my class, they just disrupt the learning process and spoil things for the other kids who really want to learn. I haul them off to the principal’s office, but it doesn’t do much good, they’re back in class the next day, disrupting lessons as usual (sighs) I don’t know how to control my son MARIA GONZALEZ: Mother of Ramiro Gonzalez, a student at Berendo Middle School (She is a short, plump woman wearing a scarf around her hair and a loose dress. Her one pretty face is creased by a worried frown as she speaks to me at the bus stop on Pico Boulevard, darting glances down the road once in a while as she waits for her bus to arrive.) I do not know much about how good the education is Here in America, It must be good, this is LA! Anything is possible – Jay Leno and Jennifer Lopez are on TV…. (shakes her head) But what to do about my Ramiro, I don’t know. I come here to the United States, to give my child a better life, so he does not have to work like a burro. I work so hard, I make so many sacrifices, I did not go to school in Mexico, Senor but I have longed so much For my Ramiro to get an education But he does not do his homework! (Gesticulates vigorously) All the time, he is out on the streets With those good-for-nothing friends of his Sometimes long into the night, and then he is tired when he comes home And he does not want to study I don’t know what to do! (Wrings her hands) I also tell him it is not safe to play with his friends so late Everyday I worry (sees her bus coming and smiles apologetically) Excusez, por favor , that is my bus and I must go now. Their poverty is the problem JEFF GREEN, Teacher at Berendo Middle School (A handsome young man, dressed immaculately in a suit with manicured fingernails. He sits at a table in the teachers’ room, and has been working his way through the grading of essays during a free period.) I went to UCLA and when I started off a teacher last year, I had dreams, I had ideals, I wanted to change the world, I wanted to help my students, contribute to preparing America to face the knowledge economy Just like Jamie Escalante in “Stand and Deliver” – did you see that movie? (smiles as I nod) A truly awesome teacher, but in practice there are a host of other problems. It’s depressing, working here as a teacher The problems seem so insurmountable (sighs) Did you know Escalante left Garfield in 1991, because of problems with the school union and administration? After all that he contributed to Math too – what a shame! (shakes his head) I think the problem lies in the kind of environment we have here in East LA.(leans forward) Remember, most of these kids come from homes where their parents don’t have an education themselves They’re working as janitors and maids, cleaners and parking lot attendants The kids don’t have a place where they can do their homework, not to mention that there are no books around the house Learning just seems too hard We push the students up from grade to grade Whether they’ve learnt the basics for that grade or not So it only gets more difficult for them as they move up and they lose interest in studying Now, from what I’ve seen so far, Asian children appear more interested in education Their parents push them so they try harder While the black and Hispanic kids are just not interested, These kids feel like they get more power from joining gangs you know? That’s what happens in LA, there’s hardly any middle class left downtown They’ve all moved out to the West side or the suburbs And there are simply too many poor minority kids lumped into one class Perpetuating the ignorance and the gangs….. (sighs) The world realizes we can do shit, man! JOHN BROWNLOW: A high school student at Los Angeles Unified School District (John is a tall, strapping handsome lad. He is with a group of four boys, they all wear Eminem style caps on their heads, sleeveless T shirts and low slung jeans. John has a tattoo of a scorpion on his right arm and leans indolently against the bonnet of a car as his friends keep up a steady flow of hoots in response to his talk) What do I think about LA and school? I think they both suck, man. ***k school (flips his finger and his friends hoot approvingly) I ain’t gonna waste mah time with the readin’ ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic Never did me one ounce of good so’s I can see (his friends laugh and one of them chimes in about how John scored an A in a Math assignment and his teacher put it up on the wall, John looks embarrassed and tries to change the subject) Aw that Miss Hutchinson, see I think she had a crush on me, So she put up my work to git my attention, see? (His friends roar approvingly and burst into laughter) Jeez! Why don’t I go to school if I’m smart? Think I wanna be one of them nerds? (winks at his friends) I love my hornies man, but the rest of the world can kiss my ass! (his friends hoot some more, with approval) I tell you man, it’s too ****ing tough, Why the hell should I work so hard When there are easier ways to make money faster? (His friends laugh again) We don’t fake it, we just take it! (leans forward suddenly and speaks fiercely) I wanna be rich, like Eminem, man! Filthy rich! (The boys start singing Eminem’s “without me” ) Administrative decisions are flawed MARGARET STEWART, Retired Teacher at Los Angeles Unified School District (Mrs Henderson sits in her garden on an easy chair, sipping a cup of tea with me. Her hair is snowy white and she rocks the chair from time to time as she talks, apparently forgetting I am there) Yes, dear I’ve been a teacher for so many years now and I’ve seen it getting worse Yes, I know there seem to be more gangs here in LA than anywhere else in the country, other than New York perhaps? I don’t blame the children, they’re too young to understand the gravity of what they’re doing I blame the ones who put them up to it, train them - like Fagins – (grimaces) into a deplorable life of crime But we also need to be doing more to make school interesting Students need individual attention and the La School District has 43 students assigned per teacher, hardly a favorable ratio, is it now? And we need to help the kids tackle their home problems, they come from crime ridden neighborhoods Unless we break that cycle of poverty in LA, we’re not going to get far with improving our educational system. You know, maybe part of the problem is also that the demographic composition of LA has changed, we have more immigrants now and we need to find ways to work with that, like making bilingual education more widespread. We need to discipline the kids better, teach them that there will be consequences for bad behavior in school. I think too many decisions are being made by the administrators only on the basis of finances, rather than looking into how the educational needs of the children can be met as best as possible within those limited finances.. ------------- END OF INTERVIEWS--------------- It has been acknowledged that education in LA’s inner city schools is in a deplorable state. The subjects of the interviews were two teachers, one retired teacher, one parent and one student. Each of the teachers has a different focus in terms of what they believe to be most important in arriving at a solution to the educational problems in LA. Jerry Weisenberg believes that it is the lack of discipline and the reluctance by school administrators to suspend students, so that they can retain higher levels of State and federal financing, which is the source of the problem. Jeff Green focuses upon poverty, which seriously interferes with educational outcomes. Retired Ms. Stewart has pointed out several problems (a) criminal elements who lure young people (b) student-teacher ratios of 43:1 and (c) the need for administrators to re-orient their decision making process. It is interesting to note that she also agrees with both the other teachers and has also cited disciplinary issues and poverty as contributing to the problems in LA. Most importantly, she raises the issue of the rising immigrant population in LA and their difficulties with English, which in turn affects their performances. Bilingual education may be very relevant, especially in a place like LA, where the Hispanic population is rising day by day. Based upon these interviews, it appears that the racial component appears to be a subtle underlying feature that is influencing not only the state of education but also the attitude towards it. For example, Maria Gonzalez displays the typical attitude of the immigrant who is working hard in America and wants a better future for her children, viewing education as the portal through which such an achievement is possible. As opposed to this, John Brownlow, an African American high school student, does not want it known or advertised that he is smart, because it would ruin his reputation among his friends. He is trying to make a statement and experience some sense of power by being shocking and using bad language, the way he sees his media idols doing. It is interesting to note however, that his media idol is a person of a different race, while in the case of Maria Gonzalez, who belongs to an older generation, her media idols Jay Leno and Jennifer Lopez are also of Hispanic origin. Is the character of LA changing due to its changing hue of racial mixes? Education offers the one bridge to cross racial and class chasms, but it appears that racial differences are the biggest barrier in effective education. The character of LA reflects the face of its film elite and white population in the Westside and the suburbs, while the minority races are increasingly locked into poverty ridden areas from which even education cannot release them. The character of LA in those areas is changing to a more violent nature, characterized by gun toting young people and increasing levels of crime. Bibliography * Dimendberg, Edward. Cinema and the making of Los Angeles, http://www.tagesspiegel.de/zeitung/Sonderthemen;art893,2613412; Accessed September 15, 2008 * Kerchener, Charles T. Professor, Claremont Graduate University. Presentation to the LAUSD, 2005. http://www.lacity.org/council/Commission/lausd/presentations/lausdpresentations245031970_08312005.pdf, * Landsburg, Mitchell and Blume, Howard, 2008. “I in 4 California high school students drop out, state says”, Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2008. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-dropout17-2008jul17,0,1269326.story, Read More