Affirmative Action

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I see both factors as highly undesirable. I oppose legacy admissions as strongly as I oppose race-based affirmative action. After all, I said that I supported a merit-based system, not a money-based system.

I support a system that is strongly merit-based, but which takes other factors into account as well. The Texas system that is being challenged is a good example. You say that discriminates against the highest achievers. But that system does not do so. It assures that everyone in the top ten percent (a pretty broad definition of "the highest achievers") are automatically accepted. No other factor can effect that. It is only beyond that that other factors can be considered. Nor does it apply any kind of rigid, race (or gender) based quota to be applied. It simply allows that factor to be considered as part of the person's background and experience.

To me a rigidly merit-based system in which the only thing that is considered is the person's GPA and test scores is the most undesirable option of all. To ignore the fact that different people have different backgrounds and experiences is to lose something critical to an educational system.

In my humble opinion, of course.

[vison]

But the playing field has not been levelled, it has be changed to favour one style of learning at the expense of another. But I see that, as it favours well your preferred gender group (at long last), there is not much point in our continuing this side discussion -- not least of which because I no longer give a flying bleep as I indicated at the outset.

SirDennis, why don't you explain how the playing field has been changed to favour girls over boys? You have made this assertion several times, but it is, so far, only an assertion.

Girls generally did/do better in elementary school than boys. Since girls were allowed to go to schools at all, that is. Little girls often do better because, as we have seen in our own experience, little girls are usually able to sit still longer, to pay attention more closely, to follow rules more enthusiastically. Generally speaking.

Elementary schools in my childhood were most definitely not designed to favour girls, yet girls "did better". Schools were designed to turn out little obedient citizens, and by the end of high school the troublesome boys had quit and the other boys moved on to "careers", not jobs at the mill.

I've had 4 boys go through elementary school since 1971. I paid very close attention to those school years. I saw many, many changes from my own elementary school years but I can state categorically that those changes were NOT changes made to favour girls over boys.

My youngest grandson is now in grade 9, he was a student at our local elementary school until the end of grade 7, so this is not ancient history.

The changes I saw, in fact, seemed to me to "favour" boys' behavior over girls' behavior. Children are allowed to move more freely, to talk out in class - neither of which activity was allowed when I was in elementary school. Emphasis on neatness seems to have been abandoned, it doesn't matter if you colour outside the lines! Regimentation, such as lining up for certain activities, is a thing of the past.

My four boys did well at some things and not so well at others. Some schools are better than others, some teachers are better than others, some school districts are better than others. But I have not seen, in either elementary, middle, or high schools, any changes that would appear to "favour" girls over boys.

[vison]

I think that the education system should aim to eliminate the poor performances that might be caused by poverty, ethnic background, etc.

So that by the time students were applying for college, they would be competing fairly equally.

I don't see how affirmative action at the end of a process rather than the beginning is going to do much good.

On the other hand, I saw a documentary showing that Head Start was a dismal failure.

So who knows?

[nerdanel]

You say that discriminates against the highest achievers. But that system does not do so. It assures that everyone in the top ten percent (a pretty broad definition of "the highest achievers") are automatically accepted.

I am surprised to see you make this argument; I find it extremely unpersuasive. I think it is fairly uncontroversial that schools are not created equally in terms of the difficulty of finishing in their top 10 percent. This is true for several reasons. Some schools attract more capable student bodies, meaning that the competition to secure a high class rank is much more intense. Some schools teach courses at a higher level than others, or offer more advanced courses altogether - both of which factors make it difficult for students to score as highly. Finishing in the top 30 percent at school A may require one to score highly in many advanced placement courses and develop fluency in a second language, while one need only complete first-level courses in chemistry and English to finish in the top 10 percent at school B.

I saw this very clearly as an undergraduate, when I attended two different schools. My first school was a former community college that had recently become a four-year institution; it had very low admissions standards. This affected everything about the educational curriculum - courses were taught at a lower level, the tests given were easier, the grading was less intense. Maintaining a 4.0 was effortless. When I transferred to William & Mary, everything intensified - courses were taught at a harder level, the competition between students for top grades was more intense, the grading was more demanding, and maintaining a 4.0 was a difficult, rare task (many of us who were very hardworking couldn't quite make it, including me). In turn, as a top-ranked chemistry major at W&M who had taken four semesters of organic chemistry, I was chagrined when I visited Harvard my senior year as part of a choir tour and stayed with sophomore chemistry students - and realized that their first-semester organic class had material of such advanced difficulty that we hadn't covered it in four semesters' worth of organic material at W&M, some of which W&M viewed as graduate coursework.

Based on my experiences, to insist that admitting the top 10 percent of each class across the state is admitting "the highest achievers" is simply inaccurate. It is, instead, a very thinly disguised manner of admitting people who would not otherwise be able to compete for admission because they are not, in fact, the highest achievers. It requires rejecting people who are, say, in the top 15-20 percent of high schools where they have taken harder classes and more intense tests to secure their class rank than some of the people who are admitted. This is not a merit-based system, and I do not support it.

To the extent that the above paragraph highlights that students are not offered the same opportunities to take advanced classes in high school, or are not given the opportunity to work hard and take advanced preparatory courses in elementary and middle school that will prepare them for a full complement of AP/IB courses in high school, then it is this disparity that society needs to address in lieu of affirmative action - which is a different way of stating what vison says in her first sentence.

Nor does it apply any kind of rigid, race (or gender) based quota to be applied. It simply allows that factor to be considered as part of the person's background and experience.

Considering race as a factor in admissions "simply" allows for rejection of people who would otherwise not have been rejected, on the grounds that they have the wrong skin color - regardless of how diverse their experiences have been (see, e.g., the Indian immigrant whose story I described yesterday). By making a couple of racial and ethnic backgrounds a proxy for "different backgrounds and experiences," we indeed lose something critical to an educational system: the opportunity to consider each person's backgrounds, disadvantages, and experiences, in the manner that I advocated yesterday that law schools seem to have started to use via "diversity statements."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

We're going to have to just agree to disagree about this. The gulf of how we are looking at this is just too wide to even attempt to bridge.

[vison]

It's a subject fraught with difficulty, for sure.

It's more of an issue in the US, for a variety of reasons, but it is not entirely NOT an issue in Canada.

We don't have the large "underclass" population you have - again, for a variety of reasons.

But we do have the First Nations. And every single thing that can be said about poverty, ethnic heritage, geographic location - all of it that can be said in the US can be said in spades about that here. The same is true in Australia, with the aborigines.

It's a horrible situation and I do not have the least clue what can be done. Native children do badly in schools and then they leave. Schools designed for them do not turn out students who are going to "compete" at the level most public school students can. This is a nasty truth that no one wants to admit.

But on the other hand. OK. So what is the purpose of education? We've talked about this before, a little. Is the education system solely about producing lawyers and doctors and scientists? Should every student have college as a fixed goal?

I dislike the word "compete" intensely, in this context. I think of that as an American idea, and yet I know it's Canadian too.

[Holbytla]

My feelings on affirmative action aside, I fail to understand the merits of the Grutter v. Bollinger case that preceded the University of Texas case.

The ruling states that

public colleges and universities could not use a point system to increase minority enrollment but could take race into account in vaguer ways to ensure academic diversity.

Forgive me if I m wrong, but it seems to me that you couldn't swing a dead cat and not come up with enough students to qualify for a particular school's admissions standards. There are loads of kids with 4.0 gpa's and stupidly high sat's. How do those schools differentiate between who gets admitted and who doesn't? Letters of recommendation, clever essays, legacies, extra-curricular activity? What sets anyone apart? There are millions of ways to get around admission based on pretty much anything, and it seems to me that it wouldn't be too difficult to be able to mold a school's admissions in whatever way the school would like.

IMO the original ruling was fairly toothless and unnecessary. Many states still forbid admitting students on the basis of race, and if a school wants to be racially diverse, there is nothing stopping them from doing just that.

Based on what was written in the original ruling, I fail to see how this will have a large impact whether it gets shot down or not. If schools aren't clever enough to work around no quotas and still be racially diverse without a ruling from the Supreme Court, then we are all in a lot of trouble.

[Hachimitsu]

I am just skimming this, but I noticed how Vison mentioned how girls were taken aside and discouraged from doing math. When I was in high school a female teacher took all the visible minorities in her class aside and told them to do general or basic courses and only consider community college. I am close with 2 of those people and they both got honours degrees from top universities in Canada. The teacher even told children who were immigrants that they were not Canadian.

So that kind of crap still happens. (Same with that pregnancy anecdote, my friend who is a district manager for insurance was complaining to me about that.)

There is a long long long way to go.

[River]

I wonder what would happen if admissions committees first quit asking about gender and race and then, because names can be EXTREMELY telling, assigned all applicants numbers or an alphanumeric identifier before the application progressed through the system. What effect would that have on the idiotic, often sub-conscious judgments people make?

Secondary education is another issue entirely. It used to be that right about the time some boys settle down, some girls seem to lose interest. I'm open to suggestions as to why that happens.

Social pressure. And not necessarily from the family, either.

[narya]

Nel, when I first mentioned a school full of male WASPs, from established families and higher socio-economic class. I was showing my age - when I was in school, the elite schools were full of well-to-do male WASPs. All the executive positions over me were male WASPs. They were part of a tight-knit old-boys network that admitted no one that wasn't born into their circle. And when we discussed affirmative action, back then, at the time a new fangled topic, we were trying to figure out how to rectify the barred gates that did not let in anyone of color, females, non-Protestants, immigrants or children of immigrants, poor people, or any other "un-connected" people.

I see now that affirmative action has evolved into something quite different.

That said, I firmly believe that people can more easily envision themselves in a variety of roles (as you mentioned, Nel) if they can actually see others there with whom they can identify, and if they don't always have to be the vanguard or the iconoclast. (That gets very discouraging, let me tell you). I didn't see a woman in engineering management until I had been in the field for 20 years. Sure I knew I could be a manager, intellectually, but it took a combination of "physical proof" and a work environment that accepted female engineering managers, for me to become one myself, the following year.

Vison, I had the "what about the bathrooms?" argument used on me, too. Sigh.

I still say that merit-based admission is a good thing, but that the definition of "merit" may have to be broadened from what they used to be. Perhaps they are, now. And I still say that diversity is healthier than monoculture, and it is up to TPTB to figure out how to stop promoting monoculture, where it blatantly exists.

[SirDennis]

I just find it a bit hard to accept that while on the one hand we seem to agree that asking disadvantaged people about their experiences is a necessary step towards a solution, on the other we are not willing to do so if they also happen to be a white male.

Instead we say things like, oh well it just feels like a disadvantage because you no longer are privileged. Or so what if a generation or two are sacrificed for [dubious] change? These are not the sorts of things a feminist would say, except maybe the type that thinks it's all good if their team finally gets to be on top -- which to me is not a feminist but a bigot, or at best someone who lacks perspective on this issue... and you can't go around fighting what you perceive to be bromides with platitudes you just happen to agree with of your own.

You know what, I never was privileged. That ship had sailed long before it got to be my turn at the old boys trough. With a convict (who lacked the foresight to engage in a lucrative crime) for a father and a mother who cleaned houses to make ends meet, my life had all the trappings of the stereotypical ethnic family, apart from the colour of our skin. If you guessed that the father in jail lead to myself and my two sisters growing up in a "broken home" at a time when it was anathema to be such creatures, you would be correct. I was also an eighth Aboriginal but that didn't even register (nor do I believe it should have). I worked several jobs from age twelve through university, not for additional pocket money, but out of necessity. Yet somehow I managed top marks (except for a brief period where I was more disillusioned than I am now). Imagine my consternation when I graduated into a job market that essentially told me I was a bad person because I was white and male, that my achievements in spite of adversity were meaningless, and that this was the way to bring equality to society. Really?

This didn't stop me from becoming a strident feminist. It was from that perspective that I learned that lack of economic means is the root, not merely a symptom, of inequality. Therefore I am not just some guy who feels he was disadvantaged because of employment equity. And you all can go on believing that racism and gender inequality are the cause of _all_ our problems. They are problems and I hate them with every fibre of my being. But they are not the root of all of our problems.

As for the school system, my comments do centre around the current trend to expect students, even from an early age, to sit still and work quietly for long stretches at a time. In Ontario (not sure about BC) Mathematics and Language Arts take up 90 minutes each a day. All other subjects are fit around that block if they cannot be integrated into them. The arts, and especially physical learning are relegated to extra curricular activities (which poses a challenge for many economically disadvantaged youth, as well as youth who lack home support). Boys in particular do not flourish under such a regimen.

Do I think this change was designed to oppress boys? No. Do I think it favours girls? Yes. Would I like to see something that favours neither at the expense of the other? Yes. Would I like to see funding to address the needs of economically disadvantaged youth? Yes.

Do I see much hope that things will move in this direction? Well as technology in now a necessity both in the classroom and at home; and as school supplies are now solely the responsibility of parents; and as even extra curriculars come at increased cost, where they exist at all; and as parents are expected to take on a greater role in teaching their children what teachers do not have time to (assumes parents and a stable home environment and/or that parents are even available and capable to help their children with their homework); and as we always seem to be looking at the surface when trying to "right wrongs"; therefore, no.

Anyway, thanks for bringing to my attention that I did in fact habour some resentment over the direction society has taken on some (well most) points. Obviously, saying I don't give a flying bleep was proof. This allowed me to finally lay all that BS at the foot of my Lord... now I have one less burden to carry. Thank you.

[axordil]

Little girls often do better because, as we have seen in our own experience, little girls are usually able to sit still longer, to pay attention more closely, to follow rules more enthusiastically. Generally speaking.

Elementary schools in my childhood were most definitely not designed to favour girls, yet girls "did better".

If you design a program that favors a particular type of behavior, and one group is better at that type of behavior, it only follows that group will do better in the program. I don't believe that was necessarily the intent, but that's the result.

it doesn't matter if you colour outside the lines!

About damn time. Lines are for the weak.

Ideally elementary programs should have the flexibility to help kids, regardless of gender and learning style, to thrive as they are capable. But that's harder than regimentation.

We should definitely design classes that instead reward kids who run around and are distracted

If that what it takes to reach a chunk of the six-year-olds out there, absolutely. Much preferable to filling their brains with amphetamines, which is what too often happens to boys (and some girls, but mostly boys) who aren't naturally docile.

[Primula Baggins]

Lots of classrooms in the United States are seriously overcrowded. The arts and music and physical education are gone (expensive "frills") or are "taught" maybe one hour a week by the same exhausted teacher who's handling everything else. This is a factory, and it favors those students who are docile, either naturally or through medication, and don't cause trouble. It's not the result of any deliberate decision except the decision that public education is not worth funding adequately.

[Hachimitsu]

I think what Primula says is more of the case with boys in school not having stuff that encourages some of them.

I will say I do not think math is designed to help girls either, I think some of it is up to the creativity of the teacher, and also willingness to get extra help from students. (Although the extra help would entail sitting still.)
I will say some of the support could come from teachers as I knew at least white male teachers who were smart but they were poor or lower middle class and 2 of them had behaviour problems. (The one without behaviour problems I know did land on his feet, although it was very difficult.) I noticed teachers usually will not seek out a talented child with behaviour problems and offer help. That takes a rare teacher.

I think the reason I did well in part was because I had education support from both of my parents. Many parents don't think they are a component in their child's education. (" Why do I have to sit with my child and help them read? That is why I send them to school." ) When no one is willing to give any child educational support I think that is the problem. (Also some parents favour boys education over girls education. Still.)

I do think when teachers have to teach to a test, rather then teaching understanding in overcrowded classrooms and parents can't or refuse to provide educational support who is going to support the child? An exhausted overworked teacher or a bigoted teacher is not going to help a child with behavior problems.

So if parents won't help and a teacher won't help, what is the child supposed to do? I will say, disenfranchised male youth has been a huge problem for centuries, so I do not know how society will solve that issue now.

I fully agree with you SirDenis about funding programs for disadvantaged youth, and after some thinking I do find that people more easily give up on poor males more then any other group regardless of colour, so I think you are getting at something. (Especially if they have a parent with a criminal background. Emphasis on poor males though, if the male has money or parents who care, things are drastically different.) There seems to be a tacit assumption they are all going to be criminals regardless of effort society puts in so why bother.

(I will say here at Ontario University applications, there is no race or gender checkbox, at least back when I applied. Sorry, just a bit annoyed at people mentioning that. I did not get into univeristy because I was a black female, I got in because I was always on the honour roll.)

[axordil]

It's not the result of any deliberate decision except the decision that public education is not worth funding adequately.

Well, yes and no. They system isn't as egregiously dysfunctional when it's funded better. But the US had a choice as to how to organize its educational system, back in the day, and it went with the Prussian assembly line while mouthing Dewey.

I will say, disenfranchised male youth has been a huge problem for centuries, so I do not know how society will solve that issue now.

Disenfranchised female youth are a tragic waste and an injustice. Disenfranchised male youth are *tinder.*

[vison]

As for the school system, my comments do centre around the current trend to expect students, even from an early age, to sit still and work quietly for long stretches at a time. In Ontario (not sure about BC) Mathematics and Language Arts take up 90 minutes each a day. All other subjects are fit around that block if they cannot be integrated into them. The arts, and especially physical learning are relegated to extra curricular activities (which poses a challenge for many economically disadvantaged youth, as well as youth who lack home support). Boys in particular do not flourish under such a regimen.

You're describing the schools I went to. That's the way it was.

Extra-curricular activities? It is to laff. In my small high school there was a basketball team, one for girls, one for boys. That was it. There were no arts programs, no field trips. One of our English teachers arranged a trip to Vancouver to see a play. That was our "cultural" education and it was very unusual, the teacher took it upon herself to do it.

I'm sorry you had such a tough time, SirDennis, but the schools were not designed to make you suffer. The schools were designed with 19th century principles of education in mind and were intended to turn out obedient workers and a few doctors and lawyers, the sort of men who were needed to run the country.

When new notions were put into place, allowing "freedom" and when kids were praised no matter what the quality of their work, when someone decided that no one could fail - the schools might have been full of happy and cheerful children but by the time they left school, what had they learned? Discipline? No. Punctuality? No. The value of hard work? No. How to read and write in English? No. They had been taught that they were wonderful, special people of whom nothing was required but breathing.

Yes, I'm exaggerating. Of course I am. Kids should not be oppressed and miserable. But at some point kids have to learn to pay attention, to complete a task properly, to consider the rights and feelings of others.

I'm not a big employer like, say, GM, or Canfor, but nonetheless I see trains of young men who do not know how to read, who do not know how to calculate percentages, who do not know how to write a simple paragraph, who have the attention spans of gnats, who cannot be disconnected from the electronic world for 5 seconds, and on and on and on.

Girls? Well, girls are out there at the mall buying hooker clothes and sexting. It's what they're designed for. They don't go out and talk about calculus or stem cell research.

[SirDennis]

To Wilma but also to the discussion in general,

You are helping me unravel some of my deep seated resentment, which is good. It was never a case of being envious of anyone who may have benefited from equity initiatives. The need to do something to address blatantly sexist and racist hiring practices was (and remains) obvious. But as with everything designed to help people at the bottom (speaking of children growing to adulthood here) it always seems to come at the expense of another group, who are also in need. The effect is to set people who really should band together against each other while the people who have always enjoyed privilege continue on their merry way.

When someone then comes along and says, "well, it helped some people, too bad about the unintended consequences" it drives the stake of disillusionment deeper into my heart. That is not an acceptable attitude for anyone who believes in equality. (No I am not talking about everyone having a castle, but a standard of living that promotes optimism for the future, a future that is attainable for all through equal opportunity, suitably modified by merit and ability.)

What's worse, for me, is when you ask people who are perceived to have benefited under an equity scheme, almost without fail they will tell you that racism (and other forms of discrimination) have not gone away. In fact, as someone who is a job seeker myself can tell you, where equity schemes exist, you are quietly discouraged from tapping into them because they have created an even more easily identified subset of job applicants who are actually streamed away from certain fields (especially when it comes to the disabled and women). Though no one will admit it, it is as if equity groups form a well that is only drawn from as the need to quench an arbitrary quota arises.

Believing that what has resulted from affirmative action/employment equity has been generally positive is to suffer with delusion. It's like believing sending a care package to third world disaster relief fixes the problem. Not that we shouldn't if moved to. But the act in and of itself when combined with the belief that all is right in the world as we maintain the status quo in the west, is meaningless in the long run. It is paternalistic, in some ways elitist, and in others imperialistic.

Speaking strictly of AA/EE again, as Wilma said, there is still a long long way to go. The time to pat ourselves on the back is far from nigh. Brushing aside the concerns of anyone who feels they were overlooked (as most everyone born into economic hardship was) shows that some supporters of AA have little interest in real change for the better, or any idea what real equality should look like.

[vison]

Something I remember very clearly from my childhood: there was an attitude - quite strongly apparent in my family - that it was dangerous to "get above yourself". My Mum, especially, seemed to believe it and she still does. I could speculate that it's because of her own upbringing - a story that would beggar belief and maybe I'll write it one day - but it wasn't just Mum, it was all of "us people". The kind of people we were. Working class, and proud of it, but wary of leaving the safety and comfort of the familiar.

My folks were proud of how their kids did in school. We were encouraged to do well. But. There was no talk of college or university. I think an American family like ours would have had that difference: college!!! Aim for "a better life". Rise up. My sister did go to university, and it's one of the things I admired about her. She didn't get much encouragement, really.

My Dad was a clever man. He did not graduate from high school but he wound up in a management position with the city, just the same. While he liked the pay, and he liked some other aspects, he always felt uneasy about having been taken out of his proper sphere, and intensely disliked "managing" the men under him.

My Mum never wanted attention of any kind. Be good, but not too good. Don't think you're special, remember where you came from. Don't expose yourself - they'll take you down. Stay low, don't be a target.

It wasn't all like that. But this thread has brought up memories (as for SirDennis) of a way of life that just doesn't seem to exist any more. Or, if it does, it's not near me.

[JewelSong]

To everyone.

I have (much) more to say about education...I've been a teacher for 40 years and have taught in all kinds of schools - public, private, international, parochial.

I have much to say. But it can wait.

[SirDennis]

Something I remember very clearly from my childhood: there was an attitude - quite strongly apparent in my family - that it was dangerous to "get above yourself". My Mum, especially, seemed to believe it and she still does. I could speculate that it's because of her own upbringing - a story that would beggar belief and maybe I'll write it one day - but it wasn't just Mum, it was all of "us people". The kind of people we were. Working class, and proud of it, but wary of leaving the safety and comfort of the familiar.

My folks were proud of how their kids did in school. We were encouraged to do well. But. There was no talk of college or university. I think an American family like ours would have had that difference: college!!! Aim for "a better life". Rise up. My sister did go to university, and it's one of the things I admired about her. She didn't get much encouragement, really.

My Dad was a clever man. He did not graduate from high school but he wound up in a management position with the city, just the same. While he liked the pay, and he liked some other aspects, he always felt uneasy about having been taken out of his proper sphere, and intensely disliked "managing" the men under him.

My Mum never wanted attention of any kind. Be good, but not too good. Don't think you're special, remember where you came from. Don't expose yourself - they'll take you down. Stay low, don't be a target.

It wasn't all like that. But this thread has brought up memories (as for SirDennis) of a way of life that just doesn't seem to exist any more. Or, if it does, it's not near me.

I liked school Vison... it was my refuge. Plus there were always kids who did not eat their lunch so food was plentiful. (yeah this is touching a nerve. My mother did the best she could but mustard sandwiches could only go so far.) I'm not saying school should be all fun and games and I'm especially not saying it should be geared to how boys learn best. As ax pointed out (and is well known by educators) timing (stages of life) is as much an issue as classroom decorum.

Right now, the curriculum and practice favours girls in the younger grades, perhaps with the hope that a solid grounding in certain subjects (mainly math) will carry forward [and hopefully override] to that time when they seem, as if biologically, to lose interest in such things. Boys are known to be on the opposite schedule but for the time being are expected to just suck it up. The effect is, in general, they are not engaged in the right way at the right time, and this carries forward and undermines the time when (typically) they are ready for such subjects and instructional methods.

I understand that no longer preaching diminished expectations to girls and minorities is a positive change. But as Wilma attests, it still happens. In fact it happened to my step-daughter at the start of the current semester (grrr). Though, I'm not surprised, and I will tell you why: When doing my teaching practica in 2007-08 I was horrified to see how alive and well racism and sexism was in the schools I was in. Much could be blamed on certain teachers, but it was pervasive, throughout the entire school and as far as I could tell the entire ministry.

What's more is I was at a school whose mandate was to service children bussed in from low income neighbourhoods to the well off neighbourhood in which the school was built. Yet apart from a couple particularly enlightened teachers, most were very intolerant of and at times spiteful towards the low income students, especially the ones who could not sit still while their home lives were a wreck. Again I would have just chocked it up to a few bad teachers, but the entire school and administration turned a blind eye to this injustice. The effort actually reinforces for low income children that they are second class citizens and they might as well get used to it.

My own experience while in school was quite different. Thank you for your concern.