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How the media influence opinion
The role of mass media in shaping public opinion
The role of mass media in shaping public opinion
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La-La Land American Ignorance
So tell me. Who is the prime minister of Britain? What did Koizumi just do to his cabinet? Do you even know what country he’s from? What was the reelected chancellor of Germany’s stance in his recent political campaign? What resolution did the U.N. Security Council pass in late September? Which country stopped the shipment of five million dollars of uranium 155 miles from Iraqi borders? Can you even point out the location of Baghdad on a world map? Where is Arafat’s headquarters located? Do you even know who Arafat is? What 39-year old Asian businessman took control of North Korea’s recently opened “special economic zone?” Why is Milosevic being tried at The Hague? Do you know what these things, these people, and these events, have to do with the United States? More specifically, do you know how they might affect you?
It is no surprise that many Americans cannot answer these questions. In general, most of us aren’t interested in what happens in countries on the other side of the globe. We feel apathetic even to domestic events occurring in states other than our own. But that is the problem – the American public does not recognize the most basic knowledge about the current events of the world due to lack of interest. The average adult perhaps only realizes that bin Laden and al Qaeda are hiding somewhere inside or outside Afghanistan and that Saddam Hussein may have a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction hidden somewhere in Iraq. But this is about as far as their familiarity with foreign affairs extends – they may not even be able to point out Baghdad on a map or what territory Desert Storm covered. They probably cannot even identify the events that occurred at Tora Bora...
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...lling our gigantic walk-in closets with more dresses from Gucci than there are days in a year than we are with North Korea’s militarization of its economy. We want to watch action movies all day long, eat Ben and Jerry’s ice cream right out of the half-gallon bucket, drive fancy BMW sports cars, booze up on Smirnoff Ice, shoot up more heroin, pay thousands for prostitutes, gamble fortunes away at the MGM Grand in Vegas, and enjoy all the pleasures of life. We care more for that than anything else in the world.
And our government responds to that.
The media bows to our wishes.
And we grow ever more apathetic, ignoring the world around us.
Sources cited:
Epstein, Edward J. News From Nowhere: Television and the News, Vintage, New York NY. 1973, pp. 16; Pearson, David. “The Media and Government Deception.” Propaganda Review. Spring 1989, pp. 6-11.
From 1865 to 1900, the federal government of the United States moderately adopted the laissez faire system. At first, the government did practice laissez faire for it did little except its necessary duties. However, by the 1870's it was violating laissez faire little by little with the small restrictions on railroads and companies. As time progressed, the federal government abandoned laissez faire, for it passed the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act.
During this era, businesses supplied large amounts of employment for citizens which created power for these businesses. They had the power to provide bad working conditions, lower wages, and fire their employees without any justification (Doc 1). George E. McNeill, a labor leader, states how “whim is law” and one can not object to it. The government took a laissez-faire approach and refused to regulate economic factors. This allowed robber barons and business tycoons to gain more authority of each industry through the means of horizontal and vertical integration. It wasn’t until later in the time period that the government passed a few acts to regulate these companies, such as the ICC and the Sherman Antitrust Act. One of the main successful industries was
...he government to the ordinary people as explained in July 5, 1892 by the Omaha Morning World –Herald (Doc F). Lastly, the laws for the regulation of businesses was enforces until President Theodore Roosevelt had also contributed by suing companies that violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
In the essay, “The Boredom Effect,1952, writer Ellen Ruppel Shell acknowledges the child’s mind and how creative their mind are. The purpose of this essay is to persuade the readers that a child should never be bored and that they should always have something to do with their spare time. She felt that children should taste their freedom by exploring the world. Also, she said guardians should not try to create activities or put them in sports to keep them occupied. Ellen writes “Back then, parents pretty much stayed out of children’s business.” In her thesis, she mentions that parents should let children be bored. I agree with Ellen, parents should let their children be children and let them be creative. However, parents shouldn’t control their
Government intervention was and is still necessary to remedy the inequities that evolved from economic liberalism. Antitrust laws were deemed to prevent undermining competition of monopolies and cartels, labor laws to protect rights of workers; public utility regulations to prevent consumer exploitation, food drug laws were designed to protect health of the people, antipollution measures to preserve our environment, safety regulations enforced to protect workers from injury and socioeconomic legislation to promote the common good.
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) created a national curriculum that would be taught in every school in America. The No Child Left Behind Act plays an enormous role in the education system. It touches on a broad variety of issues relating to public education, including the dispersal of federal funds and parental choice in the case of failing schools and for the learning disabled.
For as long as any American can remember, education has been a top priority of the majority of the population. The more schooling a child receives, the brighter their future becomes. Everyone wants their child to be successful in and out of the classroom, and the government has been working to make sure of this in schools nationwide. Over the years, a series of programs have been implemented to better the education of elementary and secondary students, including the No Child Left Behind Act, establishing guidelines and requirements that public schools are expected to follow and accomplish in order to provide a quality education to all of their students. But are these plans, policies, and promises working? Are the goals and objections being reached by each school as expected? Although some may argue that the No Child Left Behind Act has some positive aspects, overall, it is not working because some teachers have studied the outline of standardized tests, reworking their curriculums to teach students what they need to know in order to reach the required standards and students’ learning abilities, socioeconomic status’, and native languages are generalized into a single curriculum.
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is currently the educational policy in the United States. Prior to NCLB the educational policies in effect were “A Nation at Risk, in 1987 America 2000, and a few years later with Goals 2000” (Eisner, 2001, p.21). No Child Left Behind is a test based accountability system used in schools to measure their performance holding the districts, administrators and teachers liable and accountable for the outcomes. Supovitz (2009) States that No Child Left Behind was a major reform initiative intended to bring about widespread improvements in student performance and reduce inequities between ethnic groups and other traditionally under-served populations like economically disadvantaged students, students from major racial
At a time of wide public concern about the state of education, the legislation sets in place requirements that reach into virtually every public school in America. The law emphasizes accountability, teacher quality, parent choice, improved teaching methods, and flexibility. (Correa) Strict requirements and deadlines have been set for states to expand the scope and frequency of student testing, revamp their accountability system and guarantee that every classroom is staffed by a ?highly qualified? teacher in his or her own subject area. (I ed) The plan also mandates annual student testing in reading and math by 2005, and requires all school districts to allow students in consistently low-performing schools to transfer to higher performing schools, at the districts expense. (Hull) From year to year, states are required to improve the quality of their schools. No Child Left Behind has expanded the federal ...
The No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001. It was not written by teachers, educators, or parents, but by legislators who did not have experience in education. The act was written because the government felt that students were not proficient enough in basic skills, such as reading level, fundamental math skills, as well as other subjects. The writers believed that every person should have the same education, which would produce the same outcome in each child. NCLB changed school curriculums to focus on their standardized tests, which would ultimately evaluate how well the teachers, school districts, and students are performing. Arne Duncan, an American education administrator, believes that “…NCLB holds all students to the same, challenging standards…” is the best way to explain the program in an unbiased perspective. To put it more harshly, “No Child Left Behind is a test-and-punish scheme that fails to deal with real problems in schools,” says Michelle Rhee, a chancellor in Washington, D.C. “[It] ends up dumbing down educational quality.”
Millions of Americans and people worldwide are overweight or obese. Obesity develops when “calories consumed exceeds calories expended” (“Obesity and Genetics”). “Obesity rates have more than doubled in adults and children since the 1970’s,” and in the present day it is estimated that “two – thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese” (Ogden). Being overweight or obese highly increases the risk of deadly health problems, therefore this statistic states that the majority of the United States population is at risk of obtaining life–threatening diseases. Around forty years ago obesity would not effect this abundant number of people; however today’s society consumes more fast food in addition to spending most of their hours doing sedentary activities (Green). There are now many causes of obesity such as environment, genetics, bad habits, culture and economic level. Obesity has many negative impacts on the human body. It can very likely cause diabetes, joint pain, sleeping problems, depression, and many hazardous diseases (“Explore Overweight”). In contrast to this, there are some possible solutions to obesity such as physical activity, dieting, and surgery. Obesity is a widespread epidemic that unfavorably affects the body, but with exercise fused with dieting the disease could be kept to a minimum.
Anna Quindlen is the author of the excerpt “Doing Nothing is Something.” The author, formally a New York Times journalist, remains a best-selling author of children’s books. In the excerpt “Doing Nothing is Something,” Quindlen hypothesizes that children these days are over scheduled by the amount of organized activities planned by the children’s parents. Such erroneous philosophies have been disputed in defense of structured, extracurricular activities. The following examination of these contrasting opinions will indeed show that children are not being over scheduled just because they participate in one or two structured activities, and in fact, children thrive when their lives are structured.
Considering our students, the education system has left myself as well as many other students battling with weaknesses due to the constant worry to compete rather than teach. The requirements and the motives of No Child Left Behind has made a negative impact on myself, due to teachers teaching the test in order to keep their funding. The Common Core and No Child Left Behind are both numbers driven. While teachers focus on keeping their funding, the government is focused on ranking and less about the minds of our future, our students.
One way in which government achieves this objective, is by its ability to misuse the media’s ability to set the agenda. Contrary to popular belief, media is in fact an enormous hegemony. In fact, separate independent news organizations do not exist. Rather than creating an independent structured agenda of their own, generally lesser smaller news organizations adapt to a prepared agenda, previously constructed by a higher medium. Based upon this information alone, it is quite apparent that media functions in adherence to the characteristics of a hierarchy.
Conclusively, “No Child Left Behind” has done very little at closing the achievement gap, and did a better job at broadcasting it. It gave very little criteria for teachers to work with when attempting to educate students. And many teachers can agree that the practice test, and testing style of curriculum does not provide a meaningful education to children. Also, the rigorous strategy of teaching has been proven to be unproductive at closing the education gap. NCLB causes students to suffer mentally and emotionally, which could lead to long term affects such as dropping out of school. The law also isolates students by their race regardless of academic performance or upbringing. “No Child Left Behind” was a good attempt by the Bush Administration to improve education in American but did not turnout the way it was planned to.