When discussing deviance and what most people classify as deviant, many won’t admit that they find people who are poor, and people who are ethically different as deviant. But when observing people’s actions, it is obvious that they do. We are all guilty of purposely avoiding walking near a homeless person, or avoiding eye contact with them at a stop light. These action and behaviors prove that we see these people as deviant. I agree with Goode, that poverty can take individuals and make them deviant or make them more deviant than they already were. “Shame is what the poverty-stricken individuals feel,” (Goode 85), which makes these individuals more likely to partake in illegal activities. They will partake in these activities as a sort of income, for example the using and selling drugs, or they will partake in these activities because they know they are already stigmatized, and there is no point in trying to prove otherwise. Which further proves that being poor may be deviant on its own but it also causes deviance. If middle and upper class Americans were more open and accepting to the poor, then I think they would be less likely to commit deviant acts. Poverty is a self-fulfilling prophecy because it is harder for these individuals to better themselves when they are already labeled as deviant. Another problem with American society is how hard it is for poor individuals to find success because “the rich are richer and the poor are poorer,” (Goode 88). The top 1% in America hold most of the money, leaving very little for those who are considered poor. This then becomes a never-ending cycle because middle and upper class kids attend very good schools and receive educations that will allow them to find success in life, and those kids who are in working and lower classes, go to over-crowded schools with very little resources. This makes it very difficult for these kids to take their educations further and go to college. I personally struggled with the transition from high school to college due to the education I received. I went to a Denver Public School which has a reputation of being “trashy” or “ghetto”. Luckily, as a whole Colorado has a good education system, but I know I wasn’t challenged enough in high
“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.
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
America’s education system is one of the most respectable, reputable and sought after commodities in our society, but it is also the most overcrowded, discriminatory, and controversial system ever established. Most people yearn for a higher education because it 's what 's expected in this society in order to get ahead. It means a better job, more money, power, prestige and a sense of entitlement. But this system has let down the children that are supposed to benefit from it. Education discriminates against minorities, and poorer class students are not expected nor encouraged to attain a higher education. The education system is set up to ensure that every child get a basic
Unfortunately, the school's lack of appropriate education results directly from poor government funding. So even with hard work, the lower-class student is still held down by his socio-economic status. Poverty-stricken parents are unable to offer their children the same attention and motivation as parents of a higher-class can, therefore never providing these children with the mindset that they are able to accomplish the American dream. According to Mantsios, 40 million Americans live in poverty, and the mental and physical affects the low standard of living has on them is undeniable (Mantsios 328). Citizens who live in poverty work long hours for little pay, yet return to a household that in no way symbolizes the hard work put forth. Within this environment, very few people have the positive outlook to mentor children successfully.
In America, the prospect of social mobility is near impossible if one does not graduate from college and secure a stable job coming out of college. In the previous generations, many American families could own a house, have a nice Chevy, and work at a nice paying job with a High School diploma. This would not be the case today, many who graduate out of High School will always be stuck at minimum wage careers. This partly due to racial issues, jobs becoming automated and competitive career fields.
I was raised in a environment of Generations after Generations of parents grandparents and family members that had a disadvantage of attending College because lack of finical funds and knowledge of the importance of college. My fathers parents lived the American dream by coming to america from Mexico to have a surpassing life. By hard work and little education they became property owners and raised three kids. My mothers parents had children right out of high school and were considerd poor but with hard and dedication
The Danger of Telling Poor Kids that College is the Key to Social Mobility While reading the text "The Danger of Telling Poor Kids that College is the Key to Social Mobility" it helps the reader to identify many issues on why students want to attend college. Andrew Simmons stated that “Higher education should be promoted to all students as an opportunity to experience an intellectual awakening, not just increase their earning power which I am in favor of. College promotion should be used to motivate students in a critical thinking way instead of a financial advantage. The author’s purpose was to identify the separation between how college can be an educational opportunity instead of a financial opportunity to grow from poverty. The main idea
There are scholarships and financial aid that you can apply for that can help you throughout college, so there is no excuse behind saying that if you come from a poor background that you can’t get a college education. Another interesting point that Leonhardt makes is that the “American Dream” is lost and the chances for economic mobility have diminished over the past the few decades, which I agree. I truly believe that the “American Dream” is still there; it’s just a lot tougher than it used to be to achieve your goals. My generation is very competitive when it comes to school and getting into college. It’s not as it once was back in the day when my parents were growing up. Those bound for school in those years planned on going to school nearby home and believed that a school in the radius of 300 miles away from home is too far for them. They believed that applying to one or two schools was enough, and also the acceptance rate was mostly very high. It used to be simple, but not anymore. Now we have students that are coming from all around the world to get an education in the United States with competitive grades and impressive high school transcripts. With the increase of applicants to
More people than ever are going to college, however, authors Andrea Venezia and Laura Jaeger argue that many high school students enter college without the basic knowledge, skills, or habits of mind to get through college. Venezia and Jaeger look at the college readiness of high school students, the programs in place to help with the transition, and the efforts to improve those transitions. One of the main social problems the authors’ mention is the disparity between students in poverty, and students that are more privileged. Another problem that the authors note is the peer influences and parental expectations for their child. Finally, they mention the differences between how high schools educate and what colleges expect.
Poverty within a family or even a school can drastically hinder the level of education that can be given. For example, the Oklahoma schools budget cuts. Due to the decline in money, some teachers won’t be rehired leading to bigger class sizes, meaning less one on one time between students and the teacher. AP programs can be potentially cut, causing advanced kids to then sit in classes with kids who don’t care, therefore they have to learn slower. But budget cuts isn’t the only example. An education disposed inside the walls of a prestigious private school is more equipped than one presented inside the walls of a governmenttally owned public school. In his article, “The Secret to Fixing Bad Schools”, David Kirp, professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, writes, “public schools in such communities have often operated as factories for failure”. While his is talking about neighborhoods labeled as the lower class, no one can truly say that schools located in poverty, remotely receive the same education as school that are considered middle class. The statistic that proclaims the “average student loan debt nears $27,000” is alarmingly grim. This very statistic could potentially turn countless students away from succeeding a high education, just because they don’t have stacks of money to waste. It’s discouraging that money can limit the success a student can obtain in their
They also provide incomes for doctors, lawyers, teachers, and others who are too old, poorly trained or incompetent to attract more affluent clients. In addition to economic functions, the poor perform a number of social functions: Fifth, the poor can be identified and punished as alleged or real deviants in order to uphold the legitimacy of conventional norms. To justify the desirability of hard work, thrift, honesty, and monogamy, for example, the defenders of these norms must be able to find people who can be accused of being lazy, spendthrift, dishonest, and promiscuous. Although there is some evidence that the poor are about as moral and law-abiding as anyone else, they are more likely than middleclass transgressors to be caught and punished when they participate in deviant acts. Moreover, they lack the political and cultural power to correct the stereotypes that other people hold of them and thus continue to be thought of as lazy, spendthrift, etc., by those who need living proof that moral deviance does not pay. Sixth, and conversely, the poor offer vicarious participation to the rest of the population in the uninhibited sexual, alcoholic, and narcotic behavior in which they are alleged to participate and which, being freed from the constraints of affluence, they are often thought to enjoy more than the middle classes. Thus many people, some social scientists included, believe that the poor not only are more given to uninhibited
Poverty for centuries has been a very severe issue that has troubled many nations while impeding economic developments and progress. Poverty stricken countries are majorly concentrated in the continents of Africa and Asia. Continents like the Americas and Europe have globally been recognized as been wealthier yet still many parts of these ostensible countries face massive cases of poverty. Most at times, countries with high populations owing to high birth rates face the most cases of poverty. The definition of poverty can be boundless in the sense that poverty entails so many subsections as it sometimes gets complicated to group everything under one umbrella. Society tends to focus more on the tangible aspects of poverty because many people associate poverty with lacking money and it makes sense because poverty in terms of lacking money is a major problem affecting almost every country in the world. Even though it is debatable that poverty can be physical, intellectual, spiritual and even emotional, it is best to talk about the lack of money and economic developments in this essay. With reference to the oxford English Dictionary, poverty is state of being extremely poor and the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount. Reflecting on this definition given, I deduced that malnutrition and hunger can define poverty. In the light of this, I think poverty is lacking a comfortable place of shelter, being ill and not having access to a better
Poverty traps are economic anomalies that continually reinforce poverty within a country’s, or multiple countries’, economies. There are many different types of poverty traps such as savings traps, “big push” models, nutritional traps, behavioral traps, geographic traps, etc. that all affect an economy in different ways. Not only can poverty be enforced through these traps, but also through the way an economy is run or the moralities of the government. According to Mark Koyama (2015), poverty traps are important due to more than 3 billion people, nearly half the world’s population, living on less than $2.50 per day, and about 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty on just $1.25 per day. Among these 3 billion some people living in poverty, one billion of them are children of which thousands are dying daily. It is necessary to study these different poverty traps in order to begin to decrease the distressingly high percentages of people living in poverty.
is a cause of deviant behavior such as crime, and also causes the poor to be marginalized from
This deludes the less powerful into conforming to a social order that works against their best interests, and results in the poor being driven to commit crime and thus be defined as deviant and criminal (O’Connor, 2006).