Cascading Lives

Home / Digital Toolkit / Lesson 3 - Structures of Inequality

Lesson 3 - Structural Inequality

Lesson Plan

Everyone faces obstacles, but the type and severity of the challenges we face depends a lot on where we grow up. In this section, students will read two biographical stories and investigate how place matters in our lives with particular attention to the ways that unequal education systems can produce advantages and obstacles. This section introduces students to the ideas of structural inequality and intergenerational mobility and encourages them to see how blocked chances and additional burdens build up through the course of a life and over generations.

Expand All

Learning Objectives

Identify several systems of historical and structural inequality - especially those linked to education systems - and be able to recognize them in the context of an individual story
Apply a variety of tools to examine and compare particular school districts and think about how past inequalities shape lives today
Distinguish between systems and personal experience and consider how structural inequalities can feel like personal issues. Identify how people make choices (e.g. to continue going to school, to take a particular job, to get married or not) in the face of structural inequalities

Essential Questions

Materials

Concepts

Intergenerational mobility: The movement of a child into a different socioeconomic position from their parents. The American Dream is a story of upward intergenerational mobility. In the United States, parents' level of education is a strong predictor of their children's socioeconomic position. Many economic and social forces influence how this happens.
Structural inequalities: The historical and current systems that result in different life opportunities and pathways for people.

Activity 1: Living Through Structural Inequality

Looking back on the story of someone's life, the challenges that individuals face can feel to a reader like they are the result of bad decisions or bad luck. But we know that obstacles and challenges are more likely to be felt in some places than others. The durable way that systems treat people inequitably is called structural inequality. This happens in different ways in different places, from health care to housing markets. Education is one of the core systems that creates lopsided opportunities for people. In this section we will examine how experiences in education can narrow or expand one's options as they grow up.

Every school is different. Years of policies and decisions have led some places to have more money and more resources in their school districts than others. Money isn't everything, but it goes a long way towards enabling schools to educate students in effective ways. Other things can help students succeed too, like caring school officials, involved community members and creative teachers.

Have students read two biographical stories and pay attention to the systems that the people went through, particularly schools, as well as housing, work, and health. Discuss the obstacles and opportunities each person faced and the options that were available to them. What were the different ways that the person benefited or was held back by the systems that surrounded them? What could they control and what couldn't they?

Most people don't talk about their lives using terms like "structural inequality." What words do the people in the stories use to talk about the barriers they face? (e.g., Personal responsibility? Gaming the system? Self-actualization? Bootstrapping?)

Activity 2: Schools and Inequality

In order to understand how personal stories fit into larger structures of inequality, it is useful to think about the ways that obstacles and advantages are spread out unevenly. We can start by comparing places - towns, cities, schools - where there are more resources or fewer. Then, we can see how the lives of the people in those places look different as a result.

For this activity, split students into three groups and have them examine the ways that schools have historically and presently structured opportunities and obstacles in one state, Georgia.

One group will listen to an oral history interview with Flossie Jones, who was a teacher in 1924 at an African American high school in Atlanta. Start the clip at -45:30, when she describes the first day at Booker T. Washington School. What was her experience like?
A second group should open the Money, Race, and Success website. Have them familiarize themselves with the chart. Then, look up two school districts: Atlanta Public Schools, GA and Forsyth County, GA. What are the differences between the two school districts?
The third group should open the Opportunity Atlas, which is a website that we can use to understand how the place where a person grows up impacts their life further down the line. Look up two zip codes: 30314 and 30024. Spend some time comparing and contrasting the outcomes, particularly for education.

After each group has had time to discuss their assignment, bring the class back together for a discussion guided by these questions:

What did students learn about schooling?
What are some of the things that make schooling more or less unequal?
How might past obstacles to education still matter today?
What are some of the obstacles that are in the way of student learning?
What are the things that help students and schools overcome those obstacles?

Bonus Activity

What was school like for the adults in students' lives? Work with students to write a list of questions to ask adults, for example: What resources did their schools have? What size were the classes? What did most students do when they graduated? What happened to the most successful students? Once students have asked the adults, have students compare and contrast their answers to the same questions.