Impact of School Resources on Learning Essay

The primary reason for the existence of education centers and systems is to equip students with relevant knowledge, intelligence, and perception. An institution can only make these come true via its resources; infrastructural and human alike. In "Fremont high school" by Jonathan Kozol, this is a significant challenge as it ranges from its facilities to the instructors. The school has an enrollment of around 5,000 students and about 3,300 students in attendance on a daily basis (Kozol 242). Judging by the high numbers of first-year homerooms as compared to the seniors, this is indicative of a large number of dropouts alongside their journey to the top. The high numbers of dropouts are consequent to their inadequate tangible and intangible facilities.

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The school has poor and limited resources in ratio with their enrolments and the supposedly sustained student. The location of a majority of their classes is in portables with each having an average of thirty to forty students. With these crowded classes and limited teachers, a teacher has to see a mean of 200 students every day. This overload makes it logically impossible for the same teacher to deliver their lessons as required by the curriculum due to fatigue, monotony and even resistance from the learners.

Lunch sessions are also strenuous as students have to queue over long lines to get served food. The staggered system utilized in Walton high cannot be adopted here as the teacher narrates that it is impossible to serve 3,300 kids at a go. An assumption is, with the lunch break being just thirty minutes, a lot of their time on their queues leaving them an insufficient time to feed and be back to class for afternoon lessons. In some instances, this must have cost around ten to fifteen minutes of the afternoon classes, a time that can never get recovered from their tight schedules.

These facilities extensively amount to the insecurity of the students. Instances of studying in windowless and nasty convertible storage closets present a lot of danger to these learners as they are exposed. The classrooms lack air conditioners, and this is a problem especially during hot summer afternoons. The heat makes it uncomfortable for the learners to learn smoothly with their faces turning red (Kozol 243). Fremont school has fifteen fewer bathrooms than dictated by the law and majorities of the time, most girls' bathrooms remain locked. These bathrooms are often generally unclean and lack necessary supplies like tissue paper. Learners are only exempted to visit these bathrooms during their class breaks. They have to queue once again waiting to relieve themselves. With their eight hours in school and over pressured facilities, some may not even have the chance to relieve themselves. Usually, this presents discomfort and naturally minimize their concentration in class.

Race seems to be a factor that will always present itself in entirely every aspect of life. With the ever full classes, the elective lessons pause a very critical challenge to the learners. Kozol describes a tall black student who finds herself selected for sewing classes, yet her primary interest is in social works or medicine(to be a doctor).These elective classes are a requirement as one teacher explains, but the writer doesn't seem to link their relevance with the future of the learners. Compared to Beverly Hills High, "the technical arts requirements are fulfilled by taking subjects such as residential architecture, the designing of commercial structures... or an honors course in engineering research and design" (Kozol 244). Fremont deliberately makes these vocational courses an integral in their system.

Mireya, another affected student, has to take sewing classes previously and yet take hairdressing in the current year. These and some other students who are Hispanic end up with the wrong choices of skills and knowledge and it jeopardizes their future studies. They have to struggle and find it difficult in obtaining a relevant education. The students often get elective classes and are not able to get into the required courses to graduate hence making it difficult for the students of Fremont to have a quality education.

Similarly, in Douglas' "learning to write," race is a hindrance to education as he has to learn in secret after his mistress ceases teaching him, through her husband's directives. Douglas has to buy knowledge at the expense of his stomach's satisfaction. He even has to report his doing if he is to stay in a room for a long period (Douglas 228). Kozol quotes a student say, "you are ghetto...so we send you to the factory" (Kozol 245). It is almost definite that the elective courses they get forcefully given with the excuse of full classes are not a coincidence but are consequent of their races.

According to one of the Fremont teachers, about 25 slots of the required teachers are left vacant, and these have to taken by substitute teachers (Kozol 245). These subject the students to at least one substitute teacher in each class. With regards to the difference in personality and methodology that a teacher uses, the consistencies of instructions to learners get disrupted, and this has an immense impact on the learners' mastery of content. Accountability of these teachers is also not at its peak as they are only there for a specified temporary period. Some regular teachers at times take advantage of these substitute teachers and miss school. Continuous interchange of lessons instructors between regular and substitute teachers can even make the strict adherence to syllabus coverage a challenge. Learner performance, therefore, hardly elevates and they t be in a safe position to compete with other stable and well-established schools.

The general layout of Fremont school proves a challenge to the students. In the case of using the bathroom, Mireya, a student at Fremont laments of the long corridors that a student at one end of the school building will have to maneuver to get to the bathrooms. With time being a limiting factor, it is almost impossible for a leaner to rush to the bathroom and back during the breaks and still catch up with the next class before it commences.

Conclusion

In conclusion, all these negative factors within one school in one way or the other ponders on the dignity of the learners amidst their peers from schools like Beverly Hills. Their misery kills their motivation to compete with them as hard as they ought to. The poorly maintained classrooms, bathrooms and even the kitchen and poor sanitation is a hazard living and interacting with them. These conditions don't paint a good picture of their health and aren't an excellent gesture to their minds concentration. A well-equipped learning institution gives out excellent results as knowledge is not a single entity but relies on other sub factors.