Chapter Two Reflection

Throughout chapter two of our readings, two main points stuck out to me the most.  Funnily enough, they were two points also brought up in our class' documentary, "Waiting for Superman."  The first discusses the amount of money the government spends per student, comparing that and the country's overall lack of financial support to other countries.  This is not the first time I have heard of such statistics, but this is definitely the first time I've seen the numbers.  It's amazing to me that our government can spend so much on our prisoners (nearly twice the amount, if I recall correctly from the documentary) when our children continue to suffer from lack of resources.  Term after term we hear of politicians appealing to the public for their money and support, promising to better our children's education, but what do any of us have to show for it?  Our prisoners are still getting better meals, better facilities, better recreational activities than our students have.  Working at one of the oldest high schools on Guam, it's very easy for me to see how poorly the money is being allocated within the government.  Simon A. Sanchez continues to stand as a school of mostly a solitary building of three floors (though only two are accessible) with no windows and a labyrinth of classrooms packed into small spaces with multiple exists and not enough staff to fully cover them all.  The rest of the campus stretches out into classrooms made of butler tin and wood with a cafeteria that is shared with the middle school right next door.  Every day is a struggle against the elements - if it rains heavily, I can expect my ceiling to leak (if not completely cave in from the water that somehow accumulates on the ceiling of the second floor when the building has three); if the airconditioning breaks down we have no source of air since there are no windows; and if a class gets too rowdy or loud next door, my class has no choice but to suffer through it because the walls are so thin.

Overall, it's the system that seems to be bringing us down.  It's the system, too, that is partly (perhaps mostly) responsible for the second point I'd like to bring up - the lack of student access to quality teachers.  Part of this is due to the fact that too many of the older, unqualified teachers remain in their spots, taking up space.  The system keeps them there and protects them, making it difficult to get rid of them.  While watching the documentary and reading this section in the chapter, I already easily listed five teachers that I knew of that fit into this category.  It's a shame how some people's stubbornness comes with the price of the future generations' learning.