We had a class discussion on class and i was wondering if any of you think class matters today? Because i mean if you live in a rich neighborhood then obviously your property taxes are larger and therefore there is more money to be spent on schools. If you go to a public school then you go to the school in your district. If your district is rich then you go to a pretty nice school. Therefore leading to a good education. If you a have a good education then you can probably get into a good college based on you level of education because today you need a college degree more than before. There are of course many special cases in which people do defy the odds. But really does class matter? Does it matter if you are rich VS poor? How important is class? Does it define your future? Does it matter in which class you were born? Does it matter? Is it more possible today than 30 years before to go from rag to riches? The school example is only one of many reasons why i believe class matters.

I think it could go both ways. If a kid goes to a public school, he doesnt have the access to the best education and teachers like private school kids do, but if the kid is raised by good parents, has a good work ethic, and is motivated, he/she can indeed become anything they want to be.
If one goes to a private school, they have a greater chance to become something in life just because of the awesome education. If the kid comes from a rich family with high status, there are connections. There fore the kid can become what he wants to be in life without as much work as say a poor kid without those connections. So the poor kid has to work twice as hard to get to the level of the rich kid.

It is probably easier now to rise from rags to riches as it was 30 years ago. Colleges such as Harvard and Yale are giving full tuition to kids who make it in with a family income of less then 45,000 a year. That is just one example. The internet also gives underprivledged kids more acess to homework help and just more knowledge in general to help them get somewhere in life.

yeah, i guess class matters.
but most rich kids go to private school. i used to go but i hated it soo badly. people are like really boring there...
the property tax here in Fresh Meadows is $4,500 for a single family house. i think townhouses are about $3,000. [and real estate prices are still rising...]
but still, in NY, our schools are jam packed with students from different towns. for example, Jamaica is one of the bad neighborhoods [lower class+high crime rate] in Queens and Fresh Meadows is one of the best [slightly higher class+one of the lowest crime rates in NY]. many people in Jamaica are zoned for my school in Fresh Meadows, so what happens is that the school is crappy. gum on all the text books and desks. and a shortage of textbooks.


i don't NY goes by that. it's like there's a budget for all of NYC and then you split up the money between the districts. district 26, the district my school belongs to has i think... 5 middle schools? yeah. and it's supposed to be the best of NYC. and i think that it's better than the ones in brooklyn and the bronx, but if you really want to get a good education, you'd have to live out on long island. they have their own separate school system. but the real estate prices compared to Fresh Meadows are much less. for example, a house in Fresh Meadows costs about $800,000 now. a house in Valley Stream, Nassau County costs $500,000. but the schools in Valley Stream are better. and obviously the higher real estate prices, the higher the taxes. and so that means that the taxes in Valley Stream are less than Fresh Meadows and by what you said, the schools where the property taxes are higher are supposed to be better? no. the schools in Valley Stream are wayy better.

a school comparable to my school would be Valley Stream Memorial JHS. they spend $57,803 per student [according to the NY Times]. AND IT'S STILL A PUBLIC SCHOOL. now, when i look up my school, JHS 216, it says 'n/a' for how much they spend per student. which i'm assuming to mean that it's something ridiculously low. and if you want to see for yourself,

http://realestate.nytimes.com/Community/Pr...lley-Stream.asp
http://realestate.nytimes.com/Community/Pr...dows-Utopia.asp

unfournately, class still has much too large a weight on society. often people are raised up if they are a member of the upper class, and are shunned if they are a member of the lower class.

i hate classism regarding schools. i don't think that a public school education is worse than a private school education, and i've attended both. the difference between private and public school is that often the students in a private school have more money, and more pressure on education put on them, so they are encouraged to try harder, and they are surrounded by like minded people. often times, kids in public schools, especially those in poorer school districts are less motivated to succeed in school. also, employers and universities will look at wether a student went to public or private schools, and use that as a partial basis on how to treat the person. also, lower class, poorer people can't always afford to go to the private schools, so they wouldn't have that chance.

you should look up "The Glass Ceiling" theory.... if you truley want ot understand this subject... unfortunatly, class does matter... im not going to explain the theory... it takes to long, but its incredible and true :)

I think that class is an important part of society. yeah, ours is a little screwed up, but still. It gives us something to strive for. If there was no class we would probably be communist. Think about it. It might not go to that extreme, but pretty close.