Name: Rafaella Thakur Greene
Social Justice Group: 2018-2019, Education: Dropping Out
Date of Fieldwork: December 3, 2018
Name of Organization: Michelle Fine
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Michelle Fine, Distinguished Professor
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did:
We went to the CUNY Graduate Center to interview Michelle Fine. She is a phycology professor who has written a book about the crisis that is dropping out of high school. We talked about how dropping out continues the treacherous cycle of poverty and it sets up a harder future for generations ahead of them. She gave us many sources to help and lots of information.
What I learned:
We learned many things about our topic meeting with this expert. We learned about how the fact that within the public schools in NYC gets less money per child than other schools upstate. Schools in NYC have kids with more problems, and they need more funding. They aren’t getting enough money to help these kids. This is part of the reason that students drop out, they need to make money and school is not giving them enough support for them to think that it will be helpful to stay in school. We learned that class matters. A person who is upper 20% will still be likely to go to college even if they aren’t as good in school as a student who is in the lower 20%.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
We learned that part of the reason issues are not being solved is because of the NYC government. They are not taking the steps to help children the way that they should. They are taking unnecessary steps that are not helpful. Michelle Fine talked to us about how she lead a meeting with some people from the head of new york city schools where they asked to stop hand-cuffing kindergarteners in public schools and the people from NYC schools said no this is obviously not necessary but the NYC schools are not doing much to help the children they are more just trying to control them and this is making them not enjoy school and they don’t feel supported so they drop out and this leads to the generational cycle of poverty over and over.
