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Andrew Simmons

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In “The Dangers of Telling Poor Kids That College Is the Key to Social Mobility”, Andrew Simmons, a high school teacher who teaches in a poor area of Los Angeles, argues that students should be taught to go to college in order to have “an intellectual awakening”. The writer’s purpose is to persuade and inform his readers to accept his view on the flaws of the education system. According to Simmons, teachers promote higher education by focusing on the economic advantages it could bring instead of the actual education that is offered. Because teachers focus on the financial benefits of college, students in poor areas focus on their potential wealth instead of their future education while students in wealthier areas focus on their future careers …show more content…

He is biased and only focuses on how higher education’s image hurts poor students academically, but not all students in general. Simmons writes about how poor students are told by others that higher education was the only way to earn a good living and be successful, but does not show that wealthier students are also taught to look at college in that way. The only evidence Simmons has that shows what students in wealthier economic areas are being taught is the two years that he spent in a private school. He does not have a lot of experience or knowledge about how higher education is taught to wealthier students and is ignorant of the fact that they are taught to look at college in the same way that poor students are. All students are urged to succeed in life and were taught that college was the only way to do it. I was taught this idea, too. The idea that college is the key to earn a good living was ingrained into my brain. When I became a senior in high school, I had no idea what major to choose, but I knew that I was going to go to college. This idea of higher education made me focus on what came after graduating from college that I had not considered what I was going to do to get to that point. I agree that the different economic conditions would cause students from different backgrounds to focus on one benefit of higher education over another, but all students face the same pressures to attend college which can hurt them all

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The United States has become more and more of a capitalist society, meaning that they are more focused on money. They pressure students to go to college and look down on those who decide not to and make it appear that the only way to a higher social-economic status is to get into a good school. In the story Why College Isn’t (And Shouldn’t Have to Be) For Everyone, The author, Robert Reich uses comparison to support his claim that college isn’t for everyone, he relies on perspective to convince his audience that we should provide alternative ways to get good jobs. To support his claim that college isn’t for everyone he explains that not every student’s dream is to have 4 more years of education after high school, that they would prefer to do other things. He compares this to the pressures that are put on them to go to school anyways when he states,” They feel compelled to go to college because they’ve been told over and over that a college degree is necessary.”

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3, “The liberal arts are particularly irrelevant for low-income and first-generation students” (228). Sanford J. Ungar, President of Goucher College, which is a small liberal arts school, believes the reasoning behind this statement is that they feel like students from low-income families should pursue a major that’s practical rather than attempting to pursue something that maybe is not as guaranteed to get you a good paying job, like literature or physics. He points out that this is prejudice, and that it’s making the insinuation that people in the lower class are merely bodies that carry out the ideas of the wealthier, upper class. Ungar says, “It is condescending to imply that those who have less cannot understand and appreciate the finer elements of knowledge” (228). He proceeds to let the audience know that in his experience, he has found that “people who are the newest to certain ideas and concepts, are usually the people who approach the job with a more open and creative mind”; we should respect what everyone has to offer.

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The fact that not everyone needs to go to college is the main point that Stephanie Owen and Isabel Sawhill write about in great detail throughout their essay. Even though the authors do say that people that go to college usually earn more, they state that this is on “average,” and that the key focus of their essay is to focus on those that the benefits are not greater than the cost of going to college. (Page 211, Paragraph 1). They also include a graph right under the text that shows how “on average” people with a college degree earn more than those that are just high school graduates. (Page 211, Figure one).

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If a person’s parent or guardian drilled the idea of college into your head, or if they told you ‘do what you want’ or ‘I don 't care’, or ‘You’re not going’. While college is great, there are other means of education. The value of college is a low because there are people who do not qualify for a college education, and also because there are other ways of post-secondary education other than college. College is not valuable because many people will not make it into a 2 or 4-year college, much less graduate from one. To support this, in the article Why College Isn 't For Everyone, it says, “As a general rule, I would use graduates in the top quarter of their class at a high-quality high school should go on to a four-year degree program, while those in the bottom quarter of their classes at a high school with a mediocre educational reputation should not.”

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There is an ample amount of information that leads people to believe that college is a great choice. In Source F, it is shown that, “Adults who graduated from a four-year college believe that, on average, they are earning $20,000 more a year as a result of having gotten that degree. Adults who did not attend college believe that, on average they are earning $20,000 a year less as a result.” Also, provided in Source F, “...55% say it [college] was very useful in helping them prepare for a job or career.” While these statistics are true, the negatives still outweigh the positives.

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