The book we are starting with this trimester for reading pages is A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind. Cedric Jennings, a junior at Ballou High School in the southeast side of Washington D.C, is an outcast. His perfect grades a far cry from others, where a 2.0 GPA is rarely attained, and only for sport elligibility. Cedric has been working all of his life in order to escape this life, where shootings during a lunch period are not unusual, gangs run the cliques, drugs are being sold at every street corner, most students have at least one relative in prison, and the best thing you can do to survive is to not stand out in any way and blend into the background while trying to live your life. Cedric's grades are an example of his failure to blend in, and he is targeted by the other kids. Therefore, he has become a loner and puts all of his efforts into studying and praying that he gets accepted into a prestigious minority summer program at M.I.T., although he knows the other applicants will have had far better learning opportunities than he has had.
"At Ballou "High School, bright students like Cedric[protagonist] learn the lesson that "...distinctiveness can be dangerous, so it's best to develop an aptitude for not being noticed." How do you think Cedric's experiences would compare and constrast with the educational experience here at Kennedy?"
Cedric's experiences have been that it is much better not to stand out, because you become an easy target for all the people that you are different from.
Like any school, even Kennedy, if you don't fit into a group, you may become a target for other kids. I have always belonged to a group, and although it wasn't ever the popular group, I was still safe within numbers. Playing this social survivor isn't a choice in high school; you are still playing whether you want to or not. Cedric's strategy in playing this game is mostly flying under the radar as much as he can with his exceptional grades.
High grades are more of a mark of pride here at Kennedy than it is at Ballou High. Unlike Ballou, in most circles at Kennedy, it is a credit to have good grades. Kennedy has programs of a similar nature to Ballou's when it comes to rewarding high grades, however these awards are more willingly received at Kennedy than they are at Ballou. This has more to do with the positive atmosphere that Kennedy's faculty and staff provide and support from our parents to do the best in school. In Cedric's neighborhood, we are probably the "whities" that well-performing students are compared to and mocked as being like.
Although both schools have the best interests of their students in mind, Kennedy has better equipment, funding and a demographic that has higher graduation, GPA, and college- acceptance rates than Ballou High does in the book. Cedric has done well with what education he has received, however he will still probably be quite behind his peers academically when he begins college, especially in an Ivy League school because of his level of education at Ballou.
