Reflection 2

For this reflection, I will be looking back on my work for the assignment titled "Education and Inequality." For this assignment, we learned about two high schools in Chicago, Illinois, one in the suburbs, and the other located in a Chicago inner-city neighborhood. In addition to comparing and contrasting these two schools, we considered whether or not the statement "education is the great equalizer" held. We explored findings on the "teacher-expectancy effect," views of symbolic interactionists in education and consequences of tracking and credentialism. 
I enjoyed this assignment because it made me see inequalities in education that I had not previously realized existed. I had mistakenly believed that various funding programs that are designed to level the playing field in public school educations were doing their job. Because the topic was of great interest, the research and background investigation I performed was more extensive than it would have usually been. It is in this manner that this assignment helped to develop my research and analysis skills while also continuing to refine my sociological imagination allowing me to better see the challenges of these two schools through the lens of the functionalist perspective. 
Satisfied with the work that performed by me for this assignment, so while there is not much I would change, I will carry my success and sense of accomplishment on this assignment into different projects in the future. My research was done with plenty of time that afforded me the chance to look perform much more in-depth research. Ultimately, I think the project felt so successful primarily because of the large amount of time that I spent on the front side of the assignment, doing my research and developing a deep understanding of the material. My methods were highly successful, and I will continue in this manner. 
Sociologically this assignment inspired me to take a more active role in education funding. Since I completed this assignment, I signed up for a campaign committee that is working toward the passage of a school parcel tax measure during the March primary election. I see the hard work of the teachers and students but this exercise showed me that without proper funding, there is little movement to the achieved status of students in underprivileged school systems. 
I hate to imagine the reality of it, but this exercise made me think deeply about how a conflict paradigm theorist sees education and that schools serve as a filter to fill positions of unequal status. My learning process has improved because I took an interest in the topic. I read many different sources and took heavy notes. For the analysis, i made handwritten charts and found that the hands-on aspect kept me more focused and held my attention. This artifact is similar and connected to a Geography project I did that evaluated weather and economic effects on residents. What I see now is the sociological implications of that Geography assignment to which I was previously unaware. I have been enlightened and now see that we need to look deeply at everything, look under the hood and kick the tires, and then question everything. We can strive for more from our schools and we need to do better but mostly, we need to remember that most things are not exactly as they appear.