Women Without Class Reading Response

I was assigned to read the section High School Tracks and it discusses the life and stories of Mexican-American girls who were not able to obtain the status of working-class or a simple jobs due to educational paths they have taken during high school. The narrator visits this high school and interviews these girls about whether they are prepared for life after high school or not. Some girls said that they were pushed into a vocational track based on the notion that they were not ready for college prep classes. Others felt that they wanted to go the vocational route. But the majority of them just took any class they needed to get good grades and to graduate from high school. After talking about the reality of their near future, las chicas start to realize that just a high school education is not going to be sufficient enough for being financially stable in the economy, especially because they are girls.

I think the author argued their point well because they showed different viewpoints and different perspectives of the girls and showed both side of the issue. He talked to girls who wanted to take the vocational track and made them think about how this would affect them and what jobs would be an option for them. He says, "Sometimes girls dealt with their anxiety about their future with a certain denial of the facts, a refusal to believe that things would not work out for them, a tone of self-determination."(78-79) They think that the courses they are taking will prepare them for a working-class future and instead they realized that,"there is no middle-income, non-college-educated, working class location for her to occupy, which leaves her in a precarious situation."(79) The teachers in the school were discriminating against the Mexican-American females and the minorities; placing them in classes that they thought they were able to handle instead of courses they needed to be successful. This includes college prep courses. They also assume that just because you are enrolled in vocational or trade courses, you are considered a failure. In fact, the only difference is that college prep classes teach students "critical thinking, problem solving, drawing conclusions, evaluating or synthesizing knowledge" while vocational classes require students to learn simple memory tasks or comprehension". (79)

I agree with the fact that most people do consider those who follow the vocational track as failures or people who aren't capable or comprehending the other education.It is mostly minorities who follow these paths or those who are not really able to grasp the "other" education. I have experienced this in my high school where the technical academy students were not really recognized as much as the "regular" students were. They always said that what we did was not really essential to the college platform. We are actually learning a skill that no one can take from us. Even if we are not working for anyone, we can go into business for ourselves. What I don't agree with is the fact that success equates with college. Some of the most successful people didn't receive a college education and they are doing well financially. Society puts so much emphasis on going to college and getting good jobs but, "no one speaks on the fact of changing labor and declining wages that await this generation of students, a problem that neither schools, nor girls can solve." (82)

The golden line I chose was , "...it doesn't feel much different from high school; hence the expression that " junior college is high school with ashtrays"."(83) I chose this line because I believe that this statement is true. You are close to your home area so you may not be ready for independence. You are around the same people you went to high school with so it really is like high school. You are revisiting subjects that you learned in high school because most people go to JC to get general education credits out of the way then transfer to another school. There is really no difference in JC and high school, except that they can smoke (high school with ashtrays) and that you are older.