What are the major influences that shape schools, those in urban centers in particular?

The assignment readings were an “eye opener” or call to reality for me. Being a relative novice in terms of US History and especially as it pertains to education, coupled with my ignorance of the particulars of Brown vs. the Board of Ed, I was forced to do some additional research on the supreme court ruling, the circumstances that led to it and the aftermath of the ruling – which Fruchter very aptly dissected in his first chapter. I must say, growing up outside the USA, I had one perception of what life in the USA was supposed to be. However, now that I’m living within the USA and reading and learning more about the country’s history, I am becoming more and more convinced that sometimes outsiders get a very perverted picture of the situation, irrespective of subject area.

In Chapters 1 and 2 of Norm Fruchter’s Urban Schools Public Will, the failure to effectively implement the mandate of the Brown vs the Board ruling is assessed, the factors contributing to the failure to integrate urban schools are investigated, the measures that can be taken to improve education of students of colour are explored and finally, changing the culture of schooling is proposed as a means to bridge the achievement gap that currently exists between races in urban neighborhoods. In the excerpt from the book by Steinberg and Kincheloe, the troubles associated with classification of urban versus rural versus suburban were raised and the innate problems of the individual classes or subgroups were investigated, highlighting some statistical data used to explain the differences between the classes. The myths associated with the different societal subgroups we also discussed with such delicate precision. The ability to manipulate statistical data to “tell” one’s story of preference is an ethical issue dealt with across varying fields of academia, and pedagogy is no exception. One point emanating from both readings is that policy makers tend to use/manipulate data and race in varying ways in order to promote their personal ideologies – a phenomenon which can sometimes have devastating effects on a society at large.

Based on the aforementioned and additional readings, I am of the notion that some of the major influences that shape schools include;
- Population densities and area demographics
- Policy formulation and the preference of legislators (Including adequate funding for education related projects in urban centres)
- The mindset of teachers (trained or untrained)
- The political will to do what is right (e.g. implement the dictates of the courts re improving the atmosphere to facilitate learning.
- Racism and Classism