Prompt 2-My School in General

When looking for information about the elementary school I am tutoring at, I looked more at the demographics of the school. In this school 49% of the students were male and 51% are female, 31% are White, 17% are Black, 32% are Hispanic, 5% are Asian, and 15% put a more than one response of ethnicity. 60% of students receive free lunch, 22% get reduced, and 17% get neither, and looking at these I am shocked at some of these demographics. Then I looked more at the grade I was dealing with in terms of ethnicity, which was 6th grade. In this case, 32% are White, 19% are Black, 32% are Hispanic, 5% are Asian, and 11% are other. Now these were taken during the 2007-2008 school year. And looking at the class I am in right now, most of the students are either Hispanic or Black, and there are few Whites within the classroom. But looking at these numbers I am shocked with the demographics in the school. To me a least, it does not look like there are more Whites to Blacks or Hispanics, it looks more like the minority is the majority in this school, and technically I am right since the majority is the minority, but it seems like there should be less White students in the school then what I see. Next I looked at who gets reduced, free lunch, or neither. 60% of the school gets free lunch, to me that am a lot. I am quite surprised with this number that is given, 60%, and then 22% of the school gets reduced lunch, which is still big. That’s 82% of eth school who either gets Free or Reduced lunch. But this tells me that most of the students who partake in this school are poor. It might be because their parents have many jobs and do not have enough time to make them lunches, or it is simpler for them just to eat breakfast and lunch at school then having to buy tons of groceries for home, who knows. The fact is that their minorities in this school are the majority and most who attend the school are poor.


When I look at this, it reminds me of Lisa Delpit and the culture of power. Since most of the students in this school are the minority and poor, it concurs with what Delpit says about the culture of power. The Culture of Power is represented as the White, Male, heterosexual, Middle class person. This tells me that most of the students in this school are not associated with having the Culture of Power. Most of the school is a minority, and this is shown through the demographics. Another thing is that they are poor, and part of the lower class, not the middle as should be when relating it with the culture of power. But the great thing about this school is that there are many ethnicities, and it is a good thing, because why teach just one ethnicity when we can teach all. It is something that Delpit says is an opportunity we should not miss. We should be grateful in the opportunity to be in a school where all the ethnicities can be represented for.