Finn and Oaks, Argument

After reading the articles on Finn and Oaks I have seen that both authors argue that "tracking" in today's schools is not an efficient way to place students into classes. Having said this, before I read these articles I had no idea what tracking was. After reading these articles, however, it makes since and is definitely not the right way to place children in classes around the country. Pretty much tracking is all about where and what you come from. The more privileged and knowledgeable children are going to be put into the higher end classes and be taught at a high level. The not so privileged and less gifted children in education are almost going to be forgotten. They are going to be put into classrooms that do not teach the way the higher classes do. They are not going to have the same opportunities as the other kids are. For example, Oaks states about higher end classes, "Classroom tasks are often better organized, and students are given a greater variety of things to do. These differences in learning opportunities point to fundamental and ironic school inequities. Students who need more time to learn appear to get less; those who have the most difficulty learning seem to have fewer of the best teachers."  By giving these kids all the resources that they need and leaving the less fortunate kids to fend for themselves and in a way leave them out to dry, it creates an attitude that will make the less fortunate kids have negative thoughts and they will be more likely to give up and drop out.

I completely agree with both authors in the sense that we need to change the way tracking is used is our schools. If we could integrate the classes and give the less fortunate kids a way to feel equal and like they belong, I believe we would see a difference in how they perform in schools and how much more serious they would take it.

This is a video from the movie Freedom Writers. It shows a different style of teaching that gets the students involved and changes up the usual teaching style of lower end classes. I believe if there was more mixture of teaching methods in classrooms, it would make students want to learn and pay attention more.

In class I think we should talk about how our schools can get away from tracking and placing all of our time and effort to make sure higher end students have everything they need.