Part IV 1980 - Present: The Bottom Line

 

Part IV 1980 - Present: The Bottom Line 

Watching the documentary The Lottery, I agree and love how the movie portrays real life. The movie also explains how the lottery is equal to all, and anyone can be chosen to be able to attend the school, and it follows families as they pin all their hopes on a random drawing to get their kids into a good charter school. It made me realize that for so many people, a quality education isn't a sure thing; it's a prize you have to win. After discussing it in our group and working on our project about school funding, I saw how this problem isn't an accident. It's the result of a broken system that talks about fairness but often leaves kids behind. This shifted the purpose of education from helping students grow as citizens to preparing them to compete in the global economy.

The biggest thing I took from the film is something I think we all know deep down: your zip code, your city, your environment decides your future. The documentary shows that if you're born in a poor neighborhood, you're often stuck with a school that has less financial stability, fewer experienced teachers, and bigger challenges. Families shouldn't have to rely on pure luck to get their child into a safe, effective school. The fact that they do shows that the system is failing them. The people feel that education has the potential to solve many of our country's challenges and make society fairer. And, although I can agree that education is vital, I also believe it's easy to overlook how circumstances like housing, finances, and race influence children's futures.

This whole situation creates a cycle that's really tough to break. I can only imagine how stressful it must be for kids to feel that their chance at a good education comes down to a single moment. It also has to be incredibly hard for the teachers working in underfunded schools. They’re asked to perform miracles without the tools or support they need, which leads to burnout. It’s easy to blame these schools for "failing," but the truth is, they are often set up to struggle from the beginning. Instead of fixing the unequal funding and support that already existed, we focused on competition and efficiency, which ended up creating new inequalities.

So, it's not about creating more lotteries. The real goal should be to make lotteries unnecessary. We need to stop treating a good education like a limited resource that only some kids can have. Instead of hoping for a lucky ticket, we should be fighting for a system where every school has the funding, the great teachers, and the resources it needs to succeed. Every kid, no matter where they live, deserves a school that helps them reach their potential. We need to build a system where a child's future isn't left to chance, but is guaranteed. I aspire in hopes that stuff like this changes in the future. Step by step it definitely has gotten better, but not every school/community is equally loved, making it better and safer for kids to want to go to school. Hopefully, breaking down those walls, schools will get more love and education, and teachers will come around more and more. 

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