Alexandra Miles is not you average high school senior at Spencer High School. Alexandra is an expert at manipulating her peers in order to take what she wants, and this year it’s to be crowned Homecoming Queen. Throughout her life she competed in beauty pageants, and has never lost one. Though this year she is struggling to keep her head above water because of her father’s death and her mother’s lack of attention. This doesn’t make Alexandra soft, if anything, it makes her stronger.
The American dream is a dream of a land in which one can prosper with ambition and hard work. This idea has created many illusions for some because in reality the American dream is proven to be something that is rarely achieved. No individual is guaranteed success or destined for failure, but it is apparent that women, people of color, and those born into poverty will face greater obstacles than others, despite being a greater part of the American population. An author that tackles the issue of class in the United States is Gregory Mantsios. In his essay, “Class in America-2009”, Mantsios aims to prove that class affects people’s lives in drastic ways.
In James W. Loewen’s “The Land of Opportunity,” he states that social class affects the way children are raised. He discusses the inequality in today’s society and how the textbooks in high school do not give any social class information. The students in today’s time are not taught everything they should be taught. He states that your family’s wealth is what makes up your future. Loewen discusses that people with more money can study for the SATs more productively and get a better score than someone who has less money.
Have you ever wanted to chase the American dream? It might be more impossible than people realize. Gregory Mantsios writes “Class in America-2012” about the growing and obvious class divide in America, yet no one wants to talk about the situation and the effects on the people. I will be analyzing the text and explaining the effects it has on the reader. Throughout the article Mantsios stays consistent with his opinion by providing multiple charts and graphs to back his point.
In the short story “The Catbird Seat,” the author James Thurber develops verbal, dramatic, and situational irony by his plot structure. In the beginning of the story Mrs. Barrows says phrases like “Are you tearing up the pea patch?” Right after that an employee explains to Mr. Martin what is means. He says, “‘Tearing up the pea patch’ meant going on a rampage.” That section of the story is verbal irony because Mrs. Burrows is saying phrases she doesn't really mean.
Shorris was researching for a book on poverty, and he was influenced into completing an experiment where he would teach the liberal arts to the impoverished. His central claim is that the liberal arts teaches the poor how to succeed in a political—as Thucydides defines it—society. Edmundson and Shorris both write essays on liberal education and contemporary culture; however, both authors come to different conclusions. While Edmundson decides that liberal education has become useless in today’s culture, Shorris documents how a liberal education has changed the lives of sixteen people. Shorris’ essay includes a younger generation that does have passion—this is opposed to Edmundson describing an entire generation as generally passionless.
While reading the texts by David Foster Wallace and Mark Greif, I began to realize how they both want people to know the standards are set by others and are never meant to fit everybody. Mark Greif discusses capitalism's effect on our health and standards. Wallace mentions the standards of education and its importance. Students' educations change their perspectives in life. The purpose of this paper is to inform people on how standards do not make up for yourself but it is about your morals and ideals that create your future.
America’s educational institutions continue to evolve in order to provide “the one best system” that will benefit students in their present and future educational endeavors. The One Best System written by David B. Tyack, interprets the challenges and criticisms of America’s beginning formal education institutions as well as discusses how the solutions were used to perpetuate existing power structures and social classes to shape education entirely. As the idea of educating America’s children began to spread, schools were viewed as a community due to the tightly knit groups that were formed among individuals. Community members believed that educational institutions were an opportunity for social amusement as they provided social contact with
The idea of classroom causing problems for America’s society is elaborated when President Johnson explains that many children in America don’t have enough money to afford school. “There your children’s lives will be shaped. Our society will not be great until every young mind is set free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination.” In order for a society to be great, education is the foundation; schools are where child learn about their world, and what it is they will do in the future to earn money to live a good life. And to better prove his idea Johnson states, “Each year more than 100,000 high school graduates, with proved ability, do not enter college because they cannot afford it,” then questions what will happen in years when time has become elapsed to conclude any efforts are needed to come into play for there to be a Great Society.
Both hypotheses share the belief that our cognitive abilities and knowledge are shaped by external factors, whether through personal
There is lower, middle, and upper class, but there are also subcategories that fill the gaps in between, like the impoverished and the top one percenters. “Class in America”, written by Gregory Mantsios, addresses the myths and realities about socioeconomic class in America and how they affect American lives. His article highlights the unequal divide that has persisted over the course of history and will continue to manifest in the future. To introduce the existence of this issue, Mantsios states that this country’s citizens “don’t like to talk about class...or class privileges, or class oppression, or the class nature of society” (Mantsios 378). This is the case in America today because people are neglecting to acknowledge the existence of these elusive
When taking a look into Jean Anyon’s “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”, readers are apprised of the hidden agendas many schools have. In this article, Anyon focuses on the curriculum and student-teacher interaction from five New Jersey elementary schools located in different communities with different levels of socioeconomic status. Anyon attempts to find evidence of the differences in student work in schools in wealthy communities versus those in poor communities, in an effort to bolster the argument that public schools in society provide different forms of knowledge. Through her researcher, she was able to determine that working class schools limited students; the students were given steps to follow and they were graded based on how well they followed directions—this level of education was preparing students for the labor force as blue collar workers. In addition, the affluent professional school and the middle-class school focused on attaining the correct answer, but allowed individuals to have a choice of appropriate method and material.
Some say that our educational system is great and it gives every opportunity to become better. This has become somewhat true over time, but not entirely. An insightful philosopher named Paulo Freire asserts his views about the problematic education system being used in the sixties known as the “banking” concept in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. This concept is described as an almost autonomous way of
Therefore, in a stratified society, the individual’s opportunities are always determined by his or her social class. In this essay, I will be arguing that even though mobility exists in the social class system, the opportunity to change status is relatively open for everyone but the distribution of opportunities among the members of a social class is not relatively equal to all. I will demonstrate this point by showing how participation of an individual in a specific social class will decide the opportunities in terms of attaining education and achieving a well-paid job. Education has a significant role in promoting social mobility; it enables people to acquire knowledge and certain skills in order to promote their social status. Nowadays, people believe that societies are based on meritocratic
There is a third reason which is the Most important reason, is to get a great picture of the cultural diversity of the United States of America. Knowledge of others, their cultures, their sciences and way of life, is useful for learning about a new culture. Some cultures have good qualities and bad recipes, or perhaps do not fit the nature of our lives. For example, my presence in America has made me learn a lot of American cultures that if I find them in my country and may be useful to me or in raising my children such as opening the door to the person walks behind me, honestly I like this behavior which I miss this in my country. In general, the idea of quoting the culture that suits our societies may help us to develop from the reality of our lives.
