A common Misconception....

The media has portrayed the urban youth environment as a hostile and unruly place to have your children attend. This classic image has been repeated and parodied in such movies as Dangerous Minds and High School High. It is only a matter of time that this fear will be instilled in our lives and become a hegemonic belief in our pedagological pursuit. It seems that the only refuge from these sexed drugged violent teenagers can be found in a suburbia sanctuary… after all the kids would never do such things as the urban youths.
A long study conducted by Jay P. Greene and Greg Foster called, “Sex, Drugs, and Delinquency in Urban and Suburban Public Schools” yield a result that contradicts the common belief that we have about suburban and urban schools. The following list of results show that urban schools and suburban are more or less identical to one another despite the belief that urban schools are portrayed and are believed to be the worst of the two.


This report finds that:
• Urban and suburban high schools are virtually identical in terms of widespread sexual activity. Two thirds of all suburban and urban 12th graders have had sex; 43% of suburban 12th graders and 39% of urban 12th graders have had sex with a person with whom they did not have a romantic relationship.
• Pregnancy rates are high in both suburban and urban schools, although they are higher in urban schools; 14% of suburban 12th grade girls and 20% of urban 12th grade girls have been pregnant.
• Over 60% of suburban 12th graders have tried cigarette smoking, compared to 54% of urban 12th graders; 37% of suburban 12th graders have smoked at least once a day for at least 30 days, compared to 30% of urban 12th graders.
• Alcohol use followed a similar pattern; 74% of suburban 12th graders and 71% of urban 12th graders have tried alcohol more than two or three times; 63% of suburban 12th graders and 57% of urban 12th graders drink without family members present; 22% of suburban 12th graders and 16% of urban 12th graders have driven while drunk.
• About four out of ten 12th graders in both urban and suburban schools have used illegal drugs; 20% of suburban 12th graders and 13% of urban 12th graders have driven while high on drugs.
• Urban and suburban students are about equally likely to engage in other delinquent behaviors such as fighting and stealing.
*Results taking from Jay P. Greene’s and Greg Foster’s 2004 study published in Education Working Paper*



The results given by this study shows that there is little if any difference from the urban and suburban school environment. I remember in my suburban high school, there were many students doing drugs, stole, and did other deviant behavior. I just don’t understand why, if the percentages are so closely linked to one another… then why is one environment preferred over the other? Has media influenced us to the point that we have accepted it as a cultural truth? The urban schools are bad and suburban schools are good? Still, one thing that is important to take into account is the test being conducted. I might be buying into this common belief… but there still might be some sort of reality to it. Imagine having complete strangers going into either school. The students will be hesitant to answer truthfully. This will have skewed the results completely. Regardless, on the surface we are all different. With a little digging… we can see that our differences matter similarly.