Chapter 15 response

I think the theme in chapter fifteen, is the children are not reaching their potential due to the school they attend.  Pineapple attends P.S 65 and is not as challenged as she should be. Jonathan finally keeps his promise and goes to visit the school and stops in her classroom. While there he observes that the learning material is not as hard as it should be for the children’s ages. He also sees that they spend a lot of the day wasting time waiting in lines. They wait to go to the lunchroom, wait to eat lunch, wait to go outside, and wait to get back into the classroom. Also, the staff and teachers are constantly coming and leaving. They send the most inexperienced teachers to P.S 65, which later quit or get fired. This takes a toll on what the children learn because it is hard to keep the lessons straight with different teachers teaching the lessons all the time. This theme followed throughout the chapter and struck me as the most important because, it shows how great the potential of the children and they are not getting a fair shake. How much better could the students at P.S 65 be if they had adequate learning materials and teachers that stay with them for longer than a few months?

The most important character in this chapter is Pineapple. She is one of the examples of the children at P.S 65 what are a victim of a bad school system. Also, since the chapter is names Pineapple takes control, which I think is about her leading Jonathon through the school. She wants to be his boss for the day in leading him around. She later wants to know why he didn’t come back to her classroom after lunch. He explains that he was visiting another classroom.

The chancellor of New York City’s Schools had taken over P.S 65 and had been trying to reconstitution it. Though he tried his best, it wasn’t enough for the school and would later be dismissed from P.S 65.  Jonathon says he doubts that any one will ever fix P.S 65 and that if the Board of Education wouldn’t send their own children there, then why does Pineapple have to go there. “An element of what appears to be regarded as acceptable unfairness is built into things, however, by the economic class that sets priorities and shapes public opinion in this city.” I choose this quote because it fits the theme of this chapter, that the children are being wrote off and being considered ok to have lower standards even if they want to learn more. If other parents wouldn’t send a child to the school, then why send any child to the school. It is unfair that students and a student like Pineapple would have to attend this school.