In the Midst of Violence and Poverty: Silence

Benjamin Franklin Senior High is an image that emphasizes silence for me. As I sat by my computer looking through the photos I had taken this summer, I came across some of my old high school. I had taken these pictures on an evening out with my mother because I thought the campus looked so beautiful.  I neglected to see however, how much of the beauty I saw was due to the silence of no students walking around. When I was a student here I remember always feeling like the students' lack of interest in the school or in academia itself made way for trivial conversations and relationship that cluttered the halls of the school with noise- trivial noise. Now, as I think back on my thoughts, I realize how much of what I found so trivial was voice in the midst of silence. What I found to be so trivial, because it didn't revolve around academia, the poster board image for change and growth, was in fact a response (possibly a response they were unaware they were sending, but a response nonetheless) to media's constant protrayal of the school as an urban public school in need of assistance. Kids were acting out the very image they were being protrayed as: bad kids who are uninterested in education. Althougth I don't know whether this voice was a voice of choice or whether it was a voice that was imposed on the students, I wonder whether either voice is being heard, or whether it remains silent?