Analysis Of Land Of Opportunity Loewen

Critique Essay

Land of Opportunity, is ironically about the actual lack of opportunity in history. James W. Loewen, who also holds a PhD in sociology, is a writer who questions, in an overly biased way, the many assumptions about history. Writing about how your race, wealth, and status can potentially determine your education and future, he aggressively, yet accurately insists that social class and inequality is an essential element for students to learn, understand and grow. “They have no understanding of the ways that opportunity is not equal, influencing the ideas they hold and the lives they fashion.” (Loewen 215) This particular quote in the first paragraph of his essay, strikes as a very generalizing tone as he speaks about the college

students he has interviewed. This does, indeed, set the tone for the whole entire essay.
Loewen essentially discusses how textbooks do not address certain issues, however he generalizes that every single textbook out there does not include these concerns.

“No book mentions the Hormel meat-packers' strike in the mid-1980s or the air traffic controllers strike broken by President Reagan. Nor do textbooks describe any continuing issues facing labor, such as the growth of multinational corporations and their exporting of jobs overseas.” This specific quote demonstrates that he does not provide evidence regarding how every single textbook does not address said disputes. There may or may not be textbooks out there that discloses such information, however, as an audience we would not truly know whether or not this is a factual due to his negligence to provide evidential confirmation. “Six of Che dozen high school American history textbooks I examined contain no index listing at all for "social class," "social stratification,11 "class structure," "income distribution," "inequality," or any conceivably related topic. Not one book lists "upper class," "working class," or "lower class." He speaks about, from what he has read and studied, there is a lack of social class discussion. He, however, provides us with in the next paragraph with some evidence stemming from what he has read. Nevertheless, this is not a compelling reason to generalize that every single text book in the world does not touch on said subjects. . The overall tone of Loewens essay is undesirable at some

points, especially his generalizations and lack of evidence in some points of the essay. A profound message, nonetheless, however may come off a bit too vigorous than it should.
“Even when poor children are fortunate enough to attend the same school as rich children, they encounter teachers who expect only children of affluent families to know the right answers. Social science research shows that teachers are often surprised and even distressed when poor children excel.” Loewen states here evidently that poor children do not have the same privileges that rich children have. This statement can be true, however is not true in all circumstances. This descends back to his generalizations and bias. The language that he uses makes his essay more undesirable. If he hadn’t had such a blunt broadened tone with every problem that he arises, this passage would have essentially been a better read.
Loewen has brought up some very astounding and eye-opening points in his essay, yet he articulates them in a way that arises these quarrels undesirably. His arguments were, for the most part, valid and were actually decent arguments, yet he was reluctant to provide substantial evidence from his claims. The language and generalizing tone he used when writing about race, wealth, status, and social class could have been different. Overall, this passage is definitely an eye-opener, it could have just been articulated and toned differently.