Blogging Social Difference in LA: Week 10

Education: A Landscape of Social Difference in Watts and a Floating Signifier

My blog post this week is a comment on my classmate Ellen's Week 8 post on Watts.
Read Ellen's original post and my comment on her blog here.

(My post this week fulfills requirements:
6. A post that uses simplymaps.com
7. A post that follows a "social difference" news story in the Los Angeles Times.  Read the news story "After generations of failure, a school and its students head for success" here.)

Hi Ellen,
I have also learned about the Watts Riots in a few of my classes and I wish that I had been able to finally go walk around Watts this quarter.  Reading your post though, gave me a feel for the area and a starting point for thinking about the people and life in Watts. 
I read a Los Angeles Times article online that directly addresses education at one high school in Watts.  The article I read, “After generations of failure, a school and its students head for success” is about Jordan High School in Watts.  L.A. Times writer Sandy Banks, skeptical when first hearing of the restructured and revived high school, sees a noticeable change in the students and their attitude towards education at Jordan High. 

The zip code 90002, which makes up part of Watts, is outlined by the dashed line.
Jordan High School is marked by the purple flag.

The high school received a physical makeover she has seen time and time again at schools trying to improve their appearances and overall experience: “We spent the morning visiting classrooms, talking with teachers, oohing and aahing over pristine hallways and perfectly manicured grounds.”  This reminded me of Majora Carter’s TED talk “Greening the Ghetto” in which she claims that “economic degradation begets environmental degradation begets social degradation”.  By improving the physical environment of the school, Jordan High hoped to improve its social aspects as well.  

After speaking with several students, however, Banks sees that there is a noticeable change in their attitudes and goals about high school and higher education.  The students are wearing college sweatshirts, talking about being the change and returning to their school as mentors later in life, explaining how their teachers spend extra time with them working on classwork and beyond.  Banks says she became a “teary-eyed believer” when one student: 

"I perceive that I can step into any university and succeed," he said. "Don't underestimate us." 

In the article, Banks included some of the issues and concepts that you mentioned in your post.  Banks said that she often sees the reputation of failure embedded in high schools in low-socioeconomic areas:  

“The school's problems, they'd say, are too deep and expensive to fix; too intertwined with a neighborhood that will always be warped by dysfunction and poverty.”

The L.A. Times articles you read discussed serious economic problems in the area as partially resulting from the poor education system.  You got from the Lopez article that:

“In the article, the interviewees made a point of the poor education system in South Los Angeles and the lack of community efforts to make up for this poor system. This is a blatant example of social difference in the city of Los Angeles. Watts is located in an economically downtrodden region with a less than standard education system that limits students' options after secondary schooling.”

I agree that education is a very important indicator of social difference, and I wish that we had elaborated on this more directly in our class. 

Education in general and a high school degree in particular is another floating signifier just as race, gender, and so many things other aspects of our lives change in significance and representation in different times, places, and communities.  Education serves as cultural capital, helping individuals navigate their surrounding environments and social networks.  Different levels of education mean different things to various social, economic, and racial groups across time and place though.  Different values and priorities are placed on having an education.  At least a high school degree is needed to get a job paying above minimum wage in most of the country, but the importance of education is not the same in all places and all communities.  Because the value placed on having an education and the necessity of having at least a high school degree (or higher degree) is not fixed, education is indeed a floating signifier.   

The changing attitude about education at Jordan High in Watts and the new seriousness with which the students and faculty are approaching obtaining this education show views and meanings of education the floating signifier changing. 

On my blog, I included some SimplyMap maps showing distributions of different education variables in the Watts region.  Perhaps as the significance of education, especially high school education, continues changing, SimplyMap maps in a few years will show higher percentages of the Watts population as having high school degrees.  And perhaps this will also change distributions of other axes of inequality and floating signifiers like income, class, family structure, and quality of life. 

Thank you for your blog post, Ellen! Good luck on finals :)
-Teresa Pilon

Maps of Education in Watts
Created on Simplymap.com

The yellow polygon outlines the zip code 90002, which makes up part of the neighborhood of Watts and contains Jordan High School.

Notice how proximity to the area's parks and green urban spaces relate to levels of education and consider Majora Carter's and David Harvey's arguments about environmental justice and the social benefits or environmental wellness and accessibility of spaces of urban nature.  These maps do not tell, however, if living near a park makes you more likely to pursue higher education and complete degrees, or if individuals and families with higher education choose to locate near green spaces.    

The following three maps show percentages of:

Enrolled youth who had completed at least kindergarten, but not high school and the school is supported by a local, county, State or the Federal Government.

Or youth or children who are not enrolled in kindergarten, nursery school, elementary or high school.

The next two maps show the percentage of the population that is currently enrolled in undergraduate college:

The following maps show the percentage of the population that has completed the degree represented by each variable as their highest level of education completed in terms of the highest degree or the highest level of schooling complete: