Davies is considered a district in itself. Lincoln, the town surrounding Davies has a median home income of $52,455, while Pawtucket the city from which the majority of the students come from has a median home income of $31,775 for a two parent household. However, the median home income for a single parent household (female) in Pawtucket is $23,391, and that is the situation that the majority of these young people are coming from. Central Falls and Providence, the other major areas that send kids to this school both have median household incomes in the low to mid $20,000. So, imagine if you will, taking the bus from the post-industrial city of Pawtucket passed the Broad street area of Cumberland, through the Valley Falls area of Lincoln and arriving at school in the middle of Lincoln surrounded by the mansions of Butterfly Way, Twin River, and CCRI.I live right next to Slater Mill, my parents have worked in factories since the time that my memory serves me. The factory conditions of school were usually quite obvious to me. So I went to Davies to learn a trade, I would follow my father who is a machine extruder and was able to use his sway as a skilled worker to help fight for improvements for himself and his unskilled fellow workers. I took auto body as my shop choice, hearing about the new water based paints that were being applied to electric vehicles I though it was an excellent avenue. I wanted to have a job, be in a union, and raise a family. The problem was I was imitating a dream that was already decades dead. Throughout the school day, with every new rule, every useless curriculum change, the work horse phrase was that everything being done to us was in the hope of increasing employability. Davies touted this as its achievement, a high ratio of its graduates were employed in their fields of study. This to we hear no in the discussion of the emphasis on science and math in public education. We need to get ahead of the curve on the bio-tech field, we need to develop educated workers to fit today's tech driven economy. Its almost laughable if it wasn't so sickening. The bells, the age limitations, the compartmentalization, the factory system of public education has bent so little to the needs of educating the whole human being! But this was a low income school and therefore the goals were reached if any one of us were tossed a middle income job, the rest of us showed claw passed out peers for the scraps of what is left. Jean Anyon describes a working-class school work as "mechanical, involving root behavior and very little decision making or choice." Until we contrive an education system that sees even working class students as worthy of a whole education, of mind and body, based on critical thinking, we reproduce the concept that the life of the working class is less valuable than the enriched classes.
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