A Tale of Two Schools

You see, I have two high schools I teach at. My base school is a fairly decent high school; the kids are well-behaved, most seem to be middle-class, and almost all are smart and/or fairly self-motivated.

The other school is honestly one of the worst schools in Okinawa, and I’ve actually gotten pity-laughs from cab drivers when they ask me where I work. (Fucking cab drivers pity me!) The students here are generally absolutely awful, and have seriously dim futures.

Yet they are my favorites. I so desperately want them to defy the odds, but I can’t help but be Cold Sociology Major and know that, by this point, their futures are effectively set. They’re my little runts of the litter; I want to kick the other fat puppies away from the food bowl and push them towards it. But they won’t go because they’ve been trained to believe that the food is only for the already-healthy dogs.

The high school definitely has a depressing air of resignation about it. And sometimes I’d seriously rather high-dive onto a bed of nails than teach class. Yet these same disruptive bastards who I want to throw out the nearest window during class end up trying to talk with me when they see me walking or waiting for the bus (and they’re always cheerful and adorably humble). Because they’ve been trained to know that doing well in front of others or liking class is only for losers, of course.

These two schools are seriously a SOCI 101 case study on the effects of class and children’s chances for success.

Anyway, the point was brought home hard today when I was grading tests (Look at me grading shit! Like a real adult/teacher!). Most of the students absolutely failed the shit out of this test, not because it was hard at all, but because they simply don’t care, and honestly, I can’t blame them, English has, and will have, no relevance to their lives.

But one student tries so hard, speaks relatively amazing English, and according to the other teachers is generally a really good student. He was seriously the one student who I had money on to beat back that bitch society and her totally arbitrary and cruel circumstances.

So I showed his homeroom teacher his test when I was finished and asked what his plans were after graduation. She said, ‘Well, he wanted to go to university (which is a huge deal for students at this school, where most simply want to find a permanent job after graduation), but you know…his family situation…his parents can’t afford to help with university.’ It was here that one of us began to get glassy-eyed, I’m not sure who it happened to first, but it definitely caused a chain reaction in the other person. So she continued ‘So, he is trying to find a job after graduation, hoping to save enough money, and then go to university.’

But let’s be honest, he’s not going. By the time he does save the money he will be too established in whatever he’s doing, and won’t want to sacrifice his income for the mere possibility of more money later on.

Where is the justice? This kid is just as smart as the kids at my academic high school, and I would say more motivated because of the environment he deals with on a daily basis, yet life and its social circumstances have completely fucked him.

In college I read countless articles and statistics on the effect of parent’s wealth, education, etc on children’s education, future wealth, etc. And while it sounds cliché, I really did forget that these surveys that provided the statistics are surveying real people, like this kid, who get fucked through absolutely no fault of their own. You forget that giant macro studies (and the giant, macro, misguided policies that attempt to solve the situation) end with real individuals.

And while you could certainly point to the few random people who have ‘overcome it all’ and made it big after coming from similar situations, those people are anomalies. People also like to say ‘Well, forget about social circumstances, if a person really wants to succeed, he will do anything to do it. People just use social circumstances as a crutch.’

Yeah? What about this kid?