Of course, fixing the quality of instruction should probably come first.
Following this thought, the importance of education(what life would be as compared to without) needs to be understood by that society, but the ones who need to listen probably wouldn't care to listen to preaching about education's merits.
I find the stereotypes here frankly appalling. Have you guys even lived in the ghetto, or even taught in one? Inner city students are just as motivated and understand the importance of education as any other kid living in middle suburbia. They've known that since it was ingrained in them as kindergartners. It's not a people problem. It's a systems problem.
The fact of the matter is that the majority of students did not care as much. There was that group of students who I basically knew from elementary school to high school, the core group of students who really put in an effort and tried harder.
Bad system and bad students are not mutually exclusive. There was definitely students who I know tried but did not do well because they required more help and couldn't get it.
I'd agree with the statement that most of the students there were not particularly motivated. But who knows, maybe kids become more motivated when you go from the bottom 25% to the bottom 10%.
You do realize you're talking out of your ass right? 99% of inner-city youths don't do drugs, aren't in gangs, and aren't involved in criminal behavior. Nice way to stereotype them though.
If true, this means inner city youth do drugs about 50x less than youth in general. (Not asserting any precision in the numbers, just throwing out orders of magnitude.)
And yet...the most annoying part of this experience was the attitude of the other students. I despised my high school mostly because absolutely nobody cared. I think it's hard for people from better areas grasp this. People really do tell the teacher to fuck off. People really do just talk amongst each other, listening to music, while the teacher tries to talk over them. And because no one puts in any level of effort whatsoever, you can get an A by simply just showing up.
I don't doubt we need better teachers. I don't doubt it at all. All I'm saying is we need better teachers at the youngest grade school levels to reach children while they are still, I guess reachable. And more importantly, we need a better way of educating parents to get their kids to care.
Then, we can really start holding teachers accountable.