Jacquelyn Morran- Blog 7

This week's chapter discusses structural and social inequalities in education. This topic always makes me sad and makes me want to throw on my superhero cape and dash out and give everyone equal opportunity when it comes to education. I just think it is so tragic that, as stated in the text, "an achievement gap exists between children from low-income families and other families." (195) There are many reasons for this, but it is my belief that none of them should actually be an obstacle when it comes down to it. There should not be any reason why some children have advantages over others in regards to education- in an ideal world there would not be. I think the only thing that we can strive for is to reduce the inequality in our own classrooms and do the best we can for students who are disadvantaged in any form.
I also found the section on divorce interesting because my parents are divorced. I appreciated the clarification that though divorce can have an effect, "lower educational outcomes do not apply to all children of divorce." (199) It is true, though, that it can have profound effects on children. I took offence to some of the wording in this section, but this is just a side note- the text referred to families without divorce as "intact" families and called children whose parents are divorced "children of divorce." (199) I think this could be worded a lot better- I get really protective of my family and the insinuation that we are broken vs. intact or that our childhood was defined by my parents' divorce is rather hurtful. We are still just as much a family. However the text does point out many cases in which family structure contributes to inequalities in education. It is important to consider the backgrounds that students have when teaching them- for me school was always a safe and stable place even when home was not.
It drives me crazy that there are even such things as social inequalities in education, and I hope that when I become a teacher, my classroom will be a place that every child's potential is realized and all my students have equal opportunities to learn and thrive despite their different social situations.

Discussion question: How can we teach students from a variety of different family and social structures equally?