A Person Growing Up Illiterate With No Education Degree Essay

With proper education, it can help shape an individual's future; education is the foundation of the way of life today, it is needed and required everywhere in the world. Those who strive to be employed, make money, or do something great in the future has to rely on education to get them there. Education is mandatory to become an engineer, doctor, teacher, astronaut etc.; the skill required to be able to do any type of work is gained from learning the basics and having a clear understanding of it. An individual's success depends mainly on their talent and hardwork. Although we rely on education, we as well rely on that individual's strength, determination, and perseverance. Every individual are each a diamond in the rough and should be well taken care

Writer Gregory Mantsios in his article “Class in America”, talks about these things, and how wide the gap is between the rich and the poor and also discusses how the rich continue to get richer, while the poor continue to get poorer. Mantsios gives his readers the profiles and backgrounds of three hard-working Americans, two of them are white males, whose family background as well as education played a role in their success, while the other person is a black woman who is just above the poverty line despite her work as a nurse’s aide. Through these profiles, Mantsios article shows exactly how sex, race and shows how your parental and educational background of a person can play a role in the things that you achieve. Mantsios also talks about one’s performance in school and the level of school completed can suggest whether or not class that person may belong in.

Recently there has been a lot of debate about the importance of college education. Students are asking if it’s worth the debt to attend a four year university or community college. Some are thinking what are the benefits of a degree is in the workforce. With college tuition increasing and state fundings lowering, low income students are struggling to attain a higher education. College institutions should have a role to provide students higher education and equal opportunity to students to increase social mobility yet intergenerational reproduction of privilege has produced inequality in education.

The education system in the United States has expanded over the years to prepare individuals for the demanding labor market that constitutes our society. It has shifted from the development of mere intellectual scholars to the development of intellectual scholars competitive enough for a work force that now requires a degree for entrance. As this system of education has expanded throughout the country, so has the reproduction of inequality. To explain the manner in which this system has been structured to achieve a gap of inequity among society’s affluent and disadvantaged members, conflict theorist Karl Marx claims that, “School institutions are intentionally designed to integrate individuals into an unjust society” (Brand lecture, January

Is it true that social class in the United States is still a major problem? Some individuals would like to believe that we are a nation that no longer has social classes, and that everyone is much better off than they were many years ago. William Sumner and Jane Addams were two talented writers, who had different outlooks on social class. William Graham Sumner wrote “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other” in 1883. Sumner essential question that he asking is, “What do social classes owe to each other?” he is ultimately saying that they owe each other nothing. In the book he asks vital important questions, which makes you ponder. Sumner was a sociologist at Yale University and a great individual of classical laissez-faire. In this book Sumner is tackling the attempt to adjust economy and improve social problems. On the other hand, Jane Addams is known as a peace activist. She published “Democracy and Social Ethics” in 1902. This book indicates the issues that delay the capability of all individuals of society to establish their own comfort. Addams came from a privileged family and dedicated her life to other women. She advocated for women’s rights, and labor rights, and she was among the first generation of college-educated women in the United States. This essay will analyze the important aspects of comparing and contrasting social inequality, poverty, and education.

For middle and lower class citizens educations seems like the primary way to succeed in life. Personally believe that my last statement is true. Richard Rodriguez also believed that and wrote about his experience with education. In his essay “The Achievement of Desire” he discusses things such as;How his parents are Mexican immigrants, barely speak English, and had little to no education. His essay hit home for me because I have experienced similar things in my life but not exactly the same. He also talks about how he felt that the only way of leaving behind the image of being uneducated and at the bottom of the ladder is to educate himself. So that’s what he did. Unfortunately during his educational years he forgot where he came from and abandoned his family and culture. He also discusses Hoggart’s essay “the use of Literacy” and his educational figure who is snobby know as the “scholarship boy”. Even though Rodriguez agreed and seen himself as this “scholarship boy” he knew that he wasn’t a perfect example of it. “The scholarship boy’s parents are poor and are uneducated as are my own”(341) he says but there is a difference him and the perfect scholarship boy. He noticed that he had pushed away his family but the scholarship boy is too blind to see that and only wants to succeed in life. You see myself in Rodriguez but I hope to stop the dissociation from my family and culture before it’s too late.

Bowles and Gintis argue that education is the reason that this does not happen, as it legitimising class inequality by producing ideologies that justify why this inequality is fair and inevitable. Bowles and Gintis describe education ‘as a giant myth-making machine’ like the myth of meritocracy, which means that it is untrue that everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve, that rewards are based on effort and so on. A reason for achieving high income is argued to be determined more from your family and class background rather than ability or educational achievement. This serves the higher classes as it makes it appear that they gained their roles in the workforce by an equal opportunity but in reality, that is not the case, they use this to trick working class pupils to accept inequality. This means that the education system exists not only to allocate and train young people for their future work roles but also to accept the roles they are given and for the bourgeoisie to keep their power.

In the article “Class in America,” Gregory Mantsios identifies the social classes in America as well as the growing gaps between them. He explains how people who are born in already wealthy families are well educated and take advantage of opportunities. He claims that people in the lower class are not given a chance to succeed and it is even more difficult for the minorities. Mantsios’ article relates well to Anyon’s “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.” Anyon attempts to find evidence of the differences of schoolwork in lower class schools. Relating well along with these two articles is “Still Separate, Still Unequal” by Kozol. He discusses how minority and lower class schools are practically ignored therefore, setting them up for failure. Mantsios’, Anyon’s, and Kozol’s articles correlate seamlessly in discussing the issues of the effect that social class has on education.

People are told that getting an education will make them successful in life. That is not the case. Jean Anyon conducted a study on the four different schools in different social-class. In the article “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” Jean Anyon states, “In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The teacher rarely explains why the work is being assigned and how it might connect to other assignments” (2). Students are not taught to think for themselves. They are taught to follow their parent’s footsteps into the work force as very low skilled workers. Compared to the students in the capitalist class where they are taught to use their own knowledge and reason to solve problems. The students in the executive elite schools are given a better chance in succeeding in life.

All of the protagonists’ experiences are based on living in a lower socioeconomic status. Researchers named Selina Mcoy and Emer Smyth found that “The middle-classes have more to lose by not staying on in education since they risk social demotion, whereas young people from working-class backgrounds may see less benefit to staying on at school”,3 thus revealing that living in poverty or having a lower socioeconomic status is, therefore, difficult to have a good quality education. Researchers whose names are Heather Wyatt- Nichol, Samuel Brown and Warren Haynes discovered, “The widening gap between the rich and the poor contributes to economic segregation among neighborhoods, perpetuating the problem of inequality in the education and criminal justice system” (190)2, thus explaining the hardship the protagonists faced in their personal experiences. It is evident their lower socioeconomic status affected their education, and it is a crucial theme

As Peter Edelman writes in “The State of Poverty in America,” in the United States, 20.5 million individuals of the population are in poverty, including 6 million with no income (1). Numerous poor individuals are in desperate need of essential opportunities. In contrast, the rich in the United States are moving up and becoming successful in their livelihood. The differences in the opportunities given to the rich and taken from the poor are ongoing. Opportunities include difficulties in achieving proper education, medicine, and/or jobs.

In the article, “The Death of Horatio Alger,” Paul Krugman explains that upward mobility in the United States is becoming a more difficult of a challenge. As the wealthy class continues to put a disruption on the minority group of untalented and untaught children, the U.S. economy is suffering the injustice of the education system not being able to bring forth the full potential of these unprivileged. But there was a time where upward mobility was a genuine experience. Statistics show that in 1978, adult men of fathers who were in the bottom 25 percent category managed to break through into the top 25 percent. Now in modern economy, previous generations of upward mobility is being highly affected and is dramatically faltering. Krugman states,

In January 2013 a prominent national US newspaper quoted former Secretary of State, Condolezza Rice, “It doesn’t matter where you come from, but where you are going.” However, In “The Land of Opportunity,” James Loewen discusses how significant inequality is in America. The social class that you are born into will influence your outlook on social class and will also be the social class you stay in (Loewen, 1995. 322). Your social class will determine the opportunities available for you including health, fitness, nutrition, education, SAT scores, medical resources and more (Loewen, 1995. 321-322). Loewen also proposes that the education system in America does not incorporate a proper analysis of our social class (Loewen, 1995. 323). It is

Life without education is when someone was not able to or decided to not get an education. Education is a major key to being successful in life, but there are many times when people cannot afford to get an education and have to risk working much more than if they were educated. People then regret not getting an education because without it they are not getting enough money to pay bills and necessities which makes them get a second job. When looking

In Samuel Bowel’s and Herbert Gintis’ Education and Inequality, Bowels and Gintis investigate how education in the United States is unequal, especially to those indivduals who are financially unstable. In today’s extremely judgmental society, many are at a disadvantage based solely on their class, race, sex, etc. The quality of one’s education is compromised for a number of unfair reasons having to do with artificial inequalities.