Educacion

Republic Bolivarian of Venezuela

Ministry of the Popular Power for the Top Education

National Experimental University Simón Rodríguez
Modern Language
Section: L

Availability of Education

Members
Cl. 21.168.266 Yusmely Caldera
Cl. 19.185.573 Omar Covarrubia

Availability of Education: The School as a culture barrier

With some obvious and unfortunate exceptions, Americaneducation has beer a system that is open and available to all Availability of schooling is not denied anyone because of economic, political, or social reasons, and the United States enrolls more students today than it ever has. Equality of opportunity has been thought of in terms of access to schooling, and one of the great strengths of American education is that is easily accessible to all.Historically, the obstacles to access to a good education have been financial, geographical, and social. Financial deterrents to educational access were both private and public. However, education has traditionally gone to those who could afford pay for it. With the advent of public education at public expense, access to education depended less on the individual’s personal wealth but more on thetaxable wealth of the area in which he or she lived. Because much of the money for school support came from the tax moneys collected on local property, it was always that areas with highly valued property would have more money available for schools than areas in which property carried a low valued. Naturally, there is still a relationship between personal wealth and quality of education because personswith high income tend to live in areas with highly valued property. In order to mitigate these disparities, states instituted a policy of “equalizing” school support states-wide. By providing states financial aid to local school districts according to a formula that takes into account these property value differences between school districts. These efforts have assisted in making schoolingavailable; they have not been as successful in equalizing the quality of education that takes place within those.

Geographical obstacles to access to education have been virtually removed with the extensive use of school busing. Today children throught the land have, for all practical purposes a schoolhouse as close as the driveway to their home. Huge fleets of buses are operated by or arecontracted for by nearly all districts that enroll more than a couple of hundred students. Today only the most remote and inaccessible places in the country do not have educational facilities available to the children who live there.

The most difficult obstacle to educational access has its social roots in social relationships. Prior to the outlawing of the "separate but equal" principle, it was notunusual for black students in the south to have a shorter school year in the number of days attended than did white students. This meant, of course, that even though all students had access to education, not all of them had access to school in the same amount. Today anybody can be surprised by the presence of a strong racial problem which affects most of the black children in Pennsylvania States.There are separate schools for blacks and for whites, and if a black child lives in a white community and he needs to get to school but he must spend a lot of time getting there. His parents can ask for the authorities of the white school which may be very close to his home if he can attend the white school. In this case it is the white community who will make the decision and gives their consentto his parents. But generally, if they agree, the black child’s parents has to pay doble tuition or if they accept one black child, the community demands that any black school accepts 1 or 3 white children with the same problem for every black child attending the white school.

Although there have enormous steps taken in recent years to rectify inequity of access to education, this problem...