Essay on Challenges Facing America

Imagine waking up to an unfamiliar world. A world that only may seem familiar due to years spent breathing, but not living. In this unfamiliar world, one can only imagine the panic and frustrations illiterates face each day as they coexist. An expert on this issue, Jonathan Kozol, wrote a book that deals with his theories of illiterates in America. He mentions how democracy is sacrificed from lack of acknowledgement of this issue. While focusing on chapter four in his novel, Kozol highlights real life hardships for illiterates and defends that their freedoms are nonexistent. In Jonathan Kozol’s essay, “The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society”, he presents the major costs and dangers from illiterates that impact our society as a whole and that our nation fails to address.

Writer Jonathan Kozol, in the essay “The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society,” suggests that the alarming rates of illiteracy in the U.S. are corroding the fundamentals of democracy, reinforcing the structures of inequality that created the problem to begin with. His argument draws on a range of evidence and support from multiple sources such as philosophers and historical figures, anecdotes, and first-person accounts. Kozol’s purpose is to not simply illustrate the various personal tragedies that people with underdeveloped reading skills face, but to tell his audience that such tragedies when you add them up constitute a threat to the basic values that maintain the nation as a whole.

One way democracy is threatened by illiteracy is people forging a signature to vote because one is not aware of their rights. Not having the knowledge of what was signed could lead to choosing the wrong president to benefit the government. As quoted, “The number of illiterate adult exceeds 16 million the entire vote cast..more frequently, the vote for a face, a smile, or style, not for mind or character or body of beliefs”(Kozol 115). It is unbelieveable almost half of the world is not able to distinguish that

Terrorism has become a main threat to the peace and development in the U.S and the world as a whole. Past experiences of terrorism such as the September 11th attack in the United States has a created the need to have a functioning counters intelligence which will effectively deal with terrorism. However, for the counter intelligence to be effective, other basic functions have to be played out. The basic functions are collection and analysis. The other function is the execution of covert actions and the major role is the counterintelligence. The Intelligence agents combine all roles and place them under the umbrella of intelligence.

Kozol argues that, “The number of illiterate adults exceeds by 16 million the entire vote cast for the winner in the 1980 presidential contest. Even if one third of all illiterates could vote in their self-interest, Ronald Reagan would not likely have been chosen president”(Kozol 149). When illiterate people choose a political figure to represent their views they do not know they are affecting themselves, as well as everyone else in the united states. Their vote impacts the United States because it determines who will make the important decisions, and create new policies. To be represented in what goes on in the surrounding community is a crucial aspect in democracy for illiterate people.

Throughout this essay, I will be discussing what I believe to be the four most important problems facing the United States of America today. I will present these problems in order for most important, to least important. I will talk about how these problems came to be and discuss what my research stated. I will then give my reasoning for selecting each problem and discuss my ideas for correcting these problems.

     Many of Americans today do not take the time to realize that our nation is little by little falling apart. Our leaders are corrupt, our environment is being destroyed, and there are thousands of children being born each day. The three major social problems facing the American citizens in the 21st century are births to unmarried woman, being able to trust or government and or leaders, and lastly destroying the environment.

What are the largest problems that plague America? Most would argue that issues such as mass hunger, climate change and poverty are the most prominent difficulties that the United States faces. While these things are important, and do have a great impact on the country, there is another large and often forgotten issue that faces America: childhood obesity. This nationwide problem is also directly harmful to the strength and conditioning industry. Physical education classes are failing to involve kids in the necessary amount of daily physical activity. Parents are lacking proactivity to get kids exercising. Food marketing is aggressively drawing children to junk food, and restaurants are failing to provide healthy food options for kids. Children in America today are fatter than they’ve been at any point in the history of humans. Childhood obesity is the largest problem facing the strength and conditioning industry because it causes severe physical, psychological and social problems later on in life; therefore it is imperative that children be educated on nutrition so that they can be knowledgeable viewers of modern day food marketing.

It cannot be denied that terrorism remains a serious problem but there is a strong argument that the United States government oversold the actual and potential risk and that the power and authority granted to

In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attacks in American history, the September attacks of the world Trade Center in 2001, Americans are obligated to look at the mistakes that were made before and after the attacks, especially in recent lite of increased acts of terror globally. A critical mistake made before the attacks was the neglection of terrorism as a top priority in President George W. Bush’s administration. And after the attacks, inaction would also have been viewed negatively by the public, and so the government acted swiftly in retaliation to the attacks, resulting in the death of many brave American soldiers and a huge cost to the American taxpayer.

The essay “The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society” written by Jonathan Kozol and published in Readings for Writers in 2013, conveyed an extremely important message throughout. Illiterate American’s struggle with simple daily tasks which many of us take for granted. The amount of illiterate people in our society is much higher than it should be. According to the essay, there are millions of Americans who fail to excel in the ability to read and write. Such a large number of people have a problem with this that evidence has shown that if those people were able to read and write and could consciously make a decision to vote for the president of the United States, there would likely have been a different outcome to the 1980 presidential election.

In this article, ‘The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society’ by Jonathan Kozol. The author mentions that illiteracy in the United States has undermined its democracy. He explains the negative aspects that illiterate people have. He demands that since 60 million people in the U.S. are illiterate, about one third of the illiteracy could vote, and that is U.S. government is “the government is neither of, nor for, nor by, the people,” which is very basic meaning of democracy in the United States; whether government in U.S. they support this one third of illiterate when other two thirds of privilaged literate people advantage from all different kinds of chance informed from the ability to read the words. Then, he begins with various examples of problem

One of the biggest challenges facing America is poverty. At 14.5%, the poverty rate is a great obstacle over forty-five million Americas must overcome. Many of these people struggle to find jobs that can keep them above the poverty level. It not about creating the most jobs, but creating the jobs that have good pay and benefits. America has a pretty impressive un-employment rate hovering around 5%. But many of those workers struggle to make a living on the minimum wage. Minimum wage is set for first time workers. Many companies can get away with paying minimum wage because of the demand for jobs. It is nearly impossible to a family below the poverty line on one minimum wage income. In order to get those living beneath the poverty line we must

The whole world watched as the Twin Towers came crashing down. Over 85% of Americans feared another terrorist attack was imminent after that devastating day in September 2001(Gallup). Terrorism is now playing more and more of a role in our everyday lives, while it's a sad reality, as a country are we winning against terrorism? The “Yes” author, James Jay Carafano of the Heritage Foundation, seems to think we are. He claims that the U.S. has done a good job of keeping Americans safe and we are still a powerful prosperous country. While the “No” author, William C. Martell, Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, says the U.S. is not carrying out the most effective methods to tackle terrorism. William C. Martel presents the

In order for the United States of America and its allies to live a life free of terrorist threats, they need to counter violent extremism and terrorism with swift and deliberate prevention efforts world-wide.