Always Running Essay

Luis J. Rodriguez’s autobiographical novel tells the story of his turbulent and perilous youth while residing in a violent neighborhood on the outskirts of Loas Angeles.   The people that live in the incommodious neighborhood primarily consists of ethnic minorities, many of whom (if not all) rank in the low-income bracket; the area is unincorporated.   Thus, the area experiences severe poverty and property taxes cannot help supplement the state’s budget to area schools.   Rodriguez also vividly describes and aims for the reader to envisage other horrific events in his life including riots and the means one of his friends must revert to, in order to survive.   Via publishing his life experiences and that of his acquaintances, Rodriguez aims to inform the middle and upper class that bigotry is one of the major causes of the dire situation in Watts; this leads to poor education, and implores them to advocate for change in the American society.
To begin, Rodriguez emphasizes to the reader that the education system is biased towards to success of the middle class, Caucasian majority, and the failure of the lower class Hispanic and African American minorities.   He elucidates about the putrid state of schools, “students at Garvey had some of the worst academic scores in the state … Books were discards from other suburban schools … it had more than a 50-percent dropout rate among Mexicans,” (Rodriguez 43).   The author also tells the reader that during the time of segregated schools in California, that the notion that schools, “are created equal,” could not be more apocryphal and misleading.   First, as stated above, students are not given the necessary materials required to succeed in a class; pupils are not able to learn when the curriculum is out of date.   Furthermore, Rodriguez complains that many of the subpar teachers whom he has in primary school consist of “those that other schools didn’t want or for some reason couldn’t cut,” (Rodriguez 46).   A good teacher is perhaps...