Ain T No Makin It Analysis

People can be blind to the differences there are from one person to the next. We are so fixed in our habits that we forget to think about how every one of our actions is influential to other individuals and situations. As I have practiced thinking like a sociologist over the course of four months, I have practiced looking at the world in a bigger lens rather than my narrow-minded viewpoint. C. Wright Mills coined the term “the sociological imagination,” which is the importance of viewing the world as a whole and how everyone plays a part in it is important to understanding your role in it. We can not just rely on ourselves and our own experiences to know what the whole world is all about. Being the second youngest of eleven children certainly

Schools are a big structuring force in the world we live in today. Going to a private Catholic high school may have more advantages than going to a crowded public city school. For example, there is more student to teacher contact, as well as more resources to guide you in your next step of life. If parents have money to send their kids to a better school, those kids are going to get more opportunities like individual attention, getting more of their questions answered and getting connected to powerful people. The idea of some students getting more opportunities because of their class can be seen in the book “Ain’t No Makin It”. In Mcleod’s book, the view of schools as a sorting machine shows us how schools are not a place for equality. We put students into different tracts such as AP and IB, creating a hierarchy or stratifying system (Mcleod). Even though my parents aren’t very wealthy, a private school has put me higher in the stratifying system and pushed me to try hard and get good grades so I could get into a good college. This is another aspect of my life that has been socially constructed as normal. All throughout high school, I worked hard to get good grades, to get into college so I could get a good job. It seemed as if that was the one major goal for every student at the school. This goal was socially constructed, meaning it is a product that appears natural even though it is not (Conley). If I didn’t go to

The fact that the majority of Americans are white tells me I have an advantage and am considered normal in America. Just because America is mainly white doesn’t necessarily mean that has to be considered normal, but society as a whole has created this idea and everyone follows it. The fact that my family has around the average income of St. Cloud has led me to believe that I am around the average or normal income range, but I am not. I don’t take into account that my parents have to support a lot more kids than the average house, which decreases the value of their income. Society has still convinced me that I am normal with that income, even when I have ten other siblings. I have also grown up thinking the more education you get, the more successful you will become. Going to the school I went to and being surrounded by educated people made being educated a norm. All these things that I consider to be widely accepted are just constructed to be normal to me. Just because I believe these concepts are normal, however, does not mean that they are normal for