Argumentative Synthesis
This argumentative synthesis consists of four different articles that are all based on social class and inequality. The first article is “Born Poor and Smart” by Angela Locke. The second articles I will be using is “ Culture of Success” by Brink Lindsey. The third article I will be using is “The War Against the Poor Instead of Programs to End Poverty” by Herbert J. Gans. The final article that I will be using is “ A Great Time to Be Alive?” by Matt Yglesias.
Born Poor and Smart
Angela Locke is a writer for the feminist news journal off our backs. In this article, Locke is explaining how her life was growing up and becoming an adult while being poor. She also explains how her mother was born poor and smart and how
…show more content…
“ A lack of money is the most common explanation for why lower-income children do not go to college” ( Lindsey 341). In this quote, the author shows how hard it is for some lower-income kids to go to college when they are out of high school.
This article has a few strengths and weaknesses of it. I believe that the article does a good job at providing evidence and good sources of information. “But University of Chicago sociologist Susan E. Mayer has found otherwise. In her book What Money Can’t Buy, she examined the connection between parental incomes and child outcomes” ( Lindsey 342). A weakness that the paper has is the fact that I do not feel the author ended the article in a strong enough way to be effective to readers.
The article is very well writing and seems to be very well researched in many areas throughout the entire article. What I am not impressed with is the way that the author executed some of the beginnings and endings of topics. There were some instances where it did not make any sense to me.
The War Against the Poor Instead of Programs to End Poverty
Herbert J. Gans is a professor of sociology at Columbia University. He has written numerous articles and books on the subject of poverty including The Urban Villagers, The Levittowners, People and Plans, Popular Culture and High Culture, Deciding What’s News, The War Against the Poor, and Making Sense of America.
In this article, Gans is trying to explain things the
The first determinant of one’s fate is their family’s background. Almost none of the children from low-income families made it through college. With the expenses of college today, I’m actually not surprised by that statistic. Of the children from low-income families, only 4 percent had a college degree at age 28, compared to 45 percent of the children from higher-income backgrounds. "That 's a shocking tenfold
What is your opinion about the info Contained in the article? What did you find interesting or challenging? What did you agree/disagree with?
“Who Gets to Graduate’ by Paul Tough, publish May, 2015 in the New York Times discusses. The story of a young girl’s mindset on college. It begins with her starting in college and first failure on a test. It highlighted the doubts she had in her abilities. This opening introduces the article’s man discussion, which involves low income students who want to earn a four year degree but experience “troubles” along the way. It then discusses statistics that show dropout rates are highest with low-income students. The author included ability versus economics status.
In the article, “Low-Income Students Seeking the Education They Need to Move Up,” Emily Yount writes about the way that poverty affects people entering higher education. In her story, a girl named Chelsea is a single mom trying to get her education, and the path is difficult for her. In this paper, I will discuss both my mother and Chelsea and show the ways that it is mainly the single moms that struggle the most in this society. Regardless if you’re rich or poor, your economic status always is important. A student’s economic status has a great impact and can affect her depending on the decisions she makes.
The article was well written and organized thought. However it did had a bit of deficiencies. Although the usage of personal experience and opinions are existing but she also used a lot of rhetorical strategies. This overreliance made the argument and the tone sound little bit emotional. The introduction of
“Kids who are the first in their families to brave the world of higher education come on campus with little academic know-how and are much more likely than their peers to drop out before graduation” (1). Many people believe that school isn’t for everyone, and whoever goes is privileged for doing so. Countless people in the world today do not attend college, and this is mainly due to an influence of those in their family. Perhaps they are unsupportive of higher education, their parents and family members may view their entry into college as a break in the family system rather than a continuation of their schooling and higher learning. Most of the first-generation students decide to apply to colleges, because they aspire to jobs which require degrees. However, unlike some students whose parents have earned a degree, they often seek out college to bring honor to their families, and to ensure they make a decent amount of money for their future.
Now, being poor is a thing to be sought after, a hero's challenge to keep the earth afloat. “In effect, individualization is a double-edged sword” (Edsall, 2015, para. 10). To fight for or against oneself is to say at least one is fighting, and will fighting bring about a better world? What is to be the “formal rationality, a context in which people’s pursuit of goals is increasingly shaped by rules, regulations, and larger social structures” (Chambliss & Eglitis, 2016, p. 14). One wants a better world for themselves, and they want it for others too. Throughout this attempt to understand Why Don’t the Poor Rise Up, it is notable to say that there is more to it than the surface question. What poor might be one thought when they compare themselves
Throughout today’s society, media contributes to almost everyone’s daily life. From informative news channels to comical television shows, media proves to be effective in advertisement, releasing messages and informing the audience. Although media proves to be wildly effective in advertising, releasing messages and informing the audience, periodically destructive and misleading messages are provided to the audience and directly influencing women. Cultural critics widely agree that media tends to negatively influence women and all the critics point to research which supports the belief that women are portrayed as subordinate to men, having no
Some graduates don’t want to go to college because they already make enough money at their current job or they’re not sure what they want to do with their lives just yet. However, there are several graduates who want to go to college but simply can’t afford it.
I liked bell hook’s essay “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”. Bell assesses the light in which higher class people view the poor or lower class. Bell hooks, also known as Gloria Watkins grew up in a small Kentucky town where her father worked as a janitor for the local post office. As one of seven children she was taught that money and material possessions did not make her a better person but hard-work honesty and selflessness determined character. Her hard work landed her acceptance into Stanford University. Although she received various scholarships and loans, her parents worried that she would not have enough for books and supplies or emergency funds. Regardless of this, belle went on to earn a Ph.D. Her experiences and education earned her a very good reputation and even an authority writing critiques on popular culture and diversity (hooks 431-432). She uses ideas in her essay “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”, that stem from her own personal experiences with poverty to add credibility to her writing, as well as examples from pop culture and mass media to demonstrate how these representations portray the lower class in ways that radiate negative stereotypes. She wrote the essay because she saw how the poor had many assumptions made about them. It wasn’t until college thought that she made that discovery. She discovered how unjustly they were represented due to the
Students from all over the United States are told all through their life that they need to attend college if they ever want to be successful, however, this is far from the truth. Often schools are culprits for driving students to attend money driven colleges, in other cases it is family. While schools all too often make the push on students to continue their schooling, parents can cause the same situation, as they may not have a degree and be working a low-paying factory job. Now kids already don’t want to be like their parents when they get older, so seeing them suffer in poverty or barely above the poverty line can cause some dissatisfaction, further seeking a degree to live a life that they never got. What many
Families are now aiming low when it comes to college- or are simply not going at all. Money could play a huge part in this decision- after all, the cost of college has skyrocketed over the years, and so has the amount of student loan debt. This is something even Leonhardt admits, stating that, because of this, only about 33 percent of young adults get a four-year college degree today, while another 10 percent receive a two-year degree (Leonhardt). And even though many colleges offer financial aid packages, that money may soon be cut and the cost of college will continue to grow. It is true that, in my personal experience, just because a student is awarded financial aid does not mean they have a golden ticket to University. This leaves many desperate students the only option of taking out as many loans as they think they can handle- often more than they should. Debt is not a new issue for America, but it is still a problem. Although David Autor, an M.I.T. economist, laments: “not sending [young adults] to college would be a disaster”, no one can ignore the rising rates of loan defaults, and some think it
As an advocate for social change, I chose to focus on the Social Justice issue of poverty. I realize that the issue of poverty is a critical and very sensitive area because so many residents of low-income status are faced with reality of living in an unfortunate and rather disadvantaged financial situation. Those whom struggle with being effected by poverty are also faced with having limited availability to resources as well as power and a sense of security because of deprivation of privilege. From my current research I see that there is statistical data providing a quantitative Approach to understand just how concerning the continued growth of poverty is and how that has transformed America as a whole. There are also supportive theories to aid in the realization of how this social issue pulls out examples of oppression through the targeted populations that face poverty the greatest and hoe those groups are segregated from the more privileged groups within society. These are drivers, which perpetuate social injustice because they allow for transparency of a system that lacks structure and that promotes nonequivalence between each individual.
Synthesis Essay “It’s me, myself and I.”Some people say being in a relationship is healthy, while others say “being single is the best!” This dilemma of being single or in a relationship is a basic conception. I say being single is greatest nevertheless there are many limits that a relationship has, but not one’s own life. The benefits of a one’s own life are; the amount of money they have, the health status and the possibilities are endless.
For individuals supporting their family and making ends meet, they simply cannot afford to attend college without working full-time. Without financial aid, it is nearly impossible for disadvantaged students to attend college, none the less pay for their heaping student loans. Government spending for community colleges alone has dropped by from $10 billion to about $2 billion in recent times according to “The Economist.” The people who come from families with a higher rating of wealth or economic status, are far more likely to be able to get their education and attain wealth.