Essay

In America, it is becoming more difficult to achieve the American Dream. The American Dream is based on the idea that people can move higher up on the social scale, as long as they work hard work to accomplish their goal. The American Dream is also based on the belief that the social class you’re born into, is not the social class you have to stay in. In other words, everyone can move up in their lifetime if they work hard. However this is not true today, and people are not moving positively up the social class ladder. It has become a chain reaction of people with a college education vs. people without a college education. People with a college degree, or who have parents that have received a college degree, are significantly more likely to be in the upper class in America today, giving them an unfair advantage.
Early childhood education is important since 90% of a child’s brain develops by the age of 3. Early childhood education can set young children on a good path. But there is an unfair advantage that makes receiving this education, simpler for higher income families. At a young age, lower income students are shown to have lower language skills than higher income students. They are also shown to not be as ready for school as kids from higher income families. Preschool or daycare can also help expose kids to numbers and words. Children from high class families are exposed to 45 million words by the age of 4. Children from low class families are only exposed to 13 million though. Good quality childcare is expensive and many families do not see the importance. Parents in the low social class may not have the money or time either. The unfair element is that children at such a young age are already leaps and bounds ahead of other...

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... a family can spend more than 50% of their annual income on college. There is always community college. 75% of students who enroll in community college hope to one day transfer to a four year college. Only 17% of those people actually do though. Some of those people have dropped out. Low income students drop out to take care of children or family, say the commute is too much, or are struggling to balance still having a job and school. And colleges that are shown to enroll more low income students, often have limited resources and only offer certain majors. There is a chain reaction of those who have gone to college and those who have not. College degrees represent higher income and a higher social class rank. However college is not easy and there are many more obstacles low income students face as compared to high income students.
The importance of a college degree