Category: Education

College not just for the upper and middle classes

The difficult, I’ll do right now

The impossible, will take a little while

-Billie Holiday

There was a comment on another blog that just
annoyed the crap out of me and continued to bug me. It insinuated that lower
income kids can’t go to college and that college only has middle and upper
middle class kids running around it. My own and the experiences of friends
proves that so wrong and I am so sick of that mindset. Also since this is
Inshaw, the quick tie in to this is a) it’s my blog and b) Shaw and other
gentrifying neighborhoods have lower income kids, who may wind up going to
college.

Let me start with my aunts and mom. They were girls,
in the late 60s. The family was black and sharecroppers in rural North Carolina.
My oldest aunt only had two dresses, everyone else got hand-me-downs. Not
exactly rolling in dough. My aunts went to small black colleges and became
teachers. They helped fund their education by working at colored resorts, one
in NY state. Mom didn’t go to college because grandpa, on his deathbed, asked
her to take care of grandma. Mom did however, many years later went to
community college and became a CNA.

I went to community college

Just a quick mention, in relation to something I thought about while responding to a comment. I wonder why there isn’t a stronger push for community colleges in the DC metro area?
A little info on me. I have about 12 or 20 (I have to look) credit hours from my hometown community college. At least 4 credit hours I took while still in high school. The county school system had this great program where we could get a head start with college by taking courses at the CC (comm. coll.) free of charge. Since a huge bunch of us were going to go to Univ of Florida, FSU, FAMU, or another state university it was a great way to knock out some required courses for free. Later, I went to CC during the summers so I could get Cs in classes I was going to do badly in anyway, so why not get a C for about $29 a credit hour, vs a D (these were weed out classes) at $45 a credit hour?
My mom got her Certified Nurse’s Assistant (CNA) certificate from the CC, and that is what she’s doing now in her semi-retirement. My sister is a CC drop-out, but she was aiming for something in the veterinary field. So I’ve experienced and seen how CCs are useful in a community in helping people get jobs by giving them specific training. When I hear about job training around here, it (and please forgive my ignorance) doesn’t sound like more than advice on doing a job interview and introduction to a computer. And this goes back to another problem I mentioned before of the community trying or asked to support programs it has no direct dealings with, difficulty judging the efficacy of those programs. Basic skills have value, but I wonder how far it gets you in an environment where more workers have that skill set, plus this, that, and something else.