Our Kids: The American Dream In Crisis

Charles B. Rangel, a U.S representative for New York, spoke confidently about the importance of the quality of an education can help, “fight a war on ignorance and poverty.” Rangel believed in education is important for all children to learn, and the quality of the education can affect how they are in the future to be successful adults. Just like Rangel’s impression on education, Robert D. Putnam would agree with Rangel that education is important. Robert D. Putnam wrote the book Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis stressing how important the current time we are living in the U.S and its future is in trouble due to unequal opportunities the future generation have and he provides solutions to fix these problems. There have been book reviews

Putnam introduced the stories of two Latino family in the same state with the parents having somewhat similar backgrounds, but teachers from a school were able to push one family into having a better life. Both families have their children going to similar schools in terms of students attending and school faculty, but both schools provides education to two different social classes with one family being more successful than the other. Isabel Sawhill, an author who critiqued Putnam’s book, agrees with Putnam’s statement on the widening opportunity gap due to the quality of Schooling. Just like Putnam, Sawhill looked into the socioeconomic background the child’s family can provide with differing incomes, and acknowledged a higher income family will have more benefits than a lower income family will have and how it correlates with the success of the family’s future. She also mentioned how schools may not be a factor that contributes to the growing disparities, but used Putnam’s book as in example on how it can be part of the bigger solution to fix the problems such as school reforms for financing poorer schools or moving poorer students to better schools. Sawhill did a splendid job using Putnam’s book as a source that outlines that problems Putnam mentioned and how it could be

However, this can be problematic since it only shows the extremes of both sides and not much in the middle. Nona Willis Aronowitz, and editor for The Guardian, agrees with Putnam on the expanding opportunity inequality, however, she criticized Putnam’s book and the issues he mentioned for why the opportunity gap is widening as “vaguely political”. Aronowitz indicated Putnam’s book is just “kvetching about the past” for a more pre-feminist, pre-civil rights era. School is mentioned how it is vaguely political due to a national daycare program was vetoed and was never mentioned again. As a result, Aronowitz condemned Putnam for not including exclusion, and she also attacked Putnam for being old and that these exclusions would certainly help the youth if mentioned. Aronowitz may have provided a fair point to disagreeing with Putnam, but she attacks Putnam for being a bit radical on how these issues are causing the problems and how it could be fixed. I personally disagree with Aronowitz and find that what Putnam mentioned in the text and his solution to help solve the opportunity gap American youths are facing today. Putnam’s solutions can be a helpful foundation for future youth to fix the problems that are happening right