Alexis Robles Cebrero Professor Whatford ENG 002-1287 3 March 2024 Want To Be Successful? Read “The Three Wise Guys”! Poverty is a very surreal crisis in our society. People are left struggling to pay bills, some would wish for the lives of the people in the middle-class economic scale. A lot of this is common with minority groups in the United States. Many of which are built on the idea of the American Dream. However, the reality of that is much more of a fantasy than it is a reality. So, the question lies, how can I escape this cycle? How can I escape the process of needing to live my life and feed my family on a check-by-check basis? Well, it’s quite simple, the answer is the pathway to being humble, and the road to knowledge! Sandra Cisneros, …show more content…
Catholics are included in the cost. The family all hoped for things that they could never afford, but the real gift that awaits them was something that could quite possibly help them towards their goal of being able to escape their current financial situation. First of all, what happens in Cisneros’s short story? Well, in “The Three Wise Guys” we follow the story of the Gonzales family, a Mexican-American family living in the state of Texas. The whole family is celebrating the holiday of the Three Kings. Keep that in mind as I will touch up on the significance of the holiday later in this argument. The Gonzales family receives a special box, the curiosity of the box intrigues the family to think of all sorts of things, however, these are all things that can be considered luxury, or stuff that is beyond the family’s budget, or something that seems extremely unlikely. Eventually it is revealed at the end of the story that the box contained a bunch of encyclopedias, which the three kids of the Gonzales family decide to use it in their own way, 2 of them decide to waste the gift they are given and ruin the …show more content…
Well, let’s look at the outlook for the full story. Instead of focusing on the theme, let’s focus on the background of our main character, the family. The family lives with an economic status that can be described as the low-class bracket category in terms of financial stability. So, how does poverty affect the learning of the kids of the Gonzales family? Are the children of the Gonzales family able to succeed in school because of their economic status? I believe that this story goes on to show how Ruben is set up to be the successful member of the family, the one to break the cycle of poverty! He is expected to become the future provider for the family based on how the story ends. To show the connections between this story and my theory, I will be diving into an academic journal titled, “The Effects of Poverty on Lifelong Learning: Important Lessons for Educators” written by Patricia Boatwright and Lisa Midcalf. In their document, they speak of certain factors that can affect learning in the young, and what educators may be able to do to help students succeed. In this journal they mention the probable causes of learning disadvantages with students living in
Barbara Ehrenreich’s story, in her book “Nickel and Dimed,” was humbling to read. Her quote at the end of her book left me speechless. She states, “I grew up hearing over and over to the point of tedium that hard work was the secret to success: ‘Work hard and you’ll get ahead’ or ‘It’s hard work that got us where we are.’ No one ever said that you could work hard—harder even than you ever thought possible—and still find yourself sinking ever deeper into poverty and debt (220).’” When I first started to read this quote I thought it was going to be encouraging, but by the end my heart felt heavy for people like Ehrenreich that are stuck in poverty and can’t seem to get out, no matter how hard they work. It is such an eye opener to me because I have grown up hearing things such as “work hard to get what you want”, which is similar to what Ehrenreich has heard as well, yet Ehrenreich didn’t find this to be true. Being privileged and having parents that support my financially is something that I take for granted.
Rodriguez’s situation was that “his parents are immigrants to the United States and several of his siblings were born in the United States in the State of Texas.” His dad was well educated back in their country, Mexico, but they’re being declined because of the existence of bigotry. “His parents were having a tough time finding a job because of their situation – they have found several jobs but are paid below minimum sometimes.” Rodriguez’s parents have multiple jobs just to survive on their daily basis. Rodriguez’s family situation has affected them all – Luis was affected the most and went astray as he was so desperate into fitting into the society and is able to help his parents. No matter how hard life will be, there are ways to avoid gangs and criminal behavior – government programs and other resource center helps a family to survive and even lend a hand to parents and educate them of how to suppress their child to go astray and be involved with crimes and gang
...ther being, that lower income people are in fact hard workers and are stuck in their social economic class. Finally, this paper discusses how it relates to our PS 204 class, and how one can link the ideas in this class with those from the book. Issues like equality which are mentioned in the book, and others like voter participation, which was a question raised by this author, are major issues in our country today. These issues need to be addressed so that individuals like Gail and Holly don t have to worry if they are injured on the job, because they know they will be taken care of. Confucius says it best, “In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.” (quote site). Our country has the ability to help these individuals, the question is, what are YOU going to do about it?
People from lower classes try to achieve success but tend to struggle depending upon their foundation. The problem that people don’t want see is that we all want to become successful, and have the capability to do so but are just restricted by the lack of income.
and it manifests itself in a multitude of cultural and social ways.” The author discussed the problems that occur from economic and social classes. The purpose of this argument is to debate on what kind of people will be successful in life. Everyone has a shot at being successful, and that they do with it is
America was once known as a land of opportunity and prosperity. Now we are seeing that upward mobility is increasingly rare in the US. In fact, many Northern and Western European nations provide greater opportunity than the US. Despite this, many Americans continue to believe that social class is determined by hard work. 69% of Americans in a survey agreed that people are rewarded for intelligence, skill, and effort (139). This is obviously not the case, or millions of Americans would not be in the situation they’re in today. For instance, Terry Neumann strived to find full time work, but she could not afford her house after years of part time jobs and her divorce. The Stanley’s were also very hardworking, but stayed in their class. After years of work from both Jackie and Claude, they still had to put Keith’s college tuition on a credit card. Both of the families illustrate the challenge of upward mobility and America’s declining prosperity.
Instead of loving and caring for her baby, and forgetting about Danny, she became worse than him. Rodriguez presents many aspects of the minority class that live in the United States, specifically the South Bronx. Even though the cases presented in Rodriguez’s short stories are difficult to mellow with, they are a reality that is constant in many lives. Everyday someone goes through life suffering, due to lack of responsibility, lack of knowledge, submission to another entity or just lack of wanting to have a better life. People that go through these situations are people who have not finished studying, so they have fewer opportunities in life.
With each class comes a certain level in financial standing, the lower class having the lowest income and the upper class having the highest income. According to Mantsios’ “Class in America” the wealthiest one percent of the American population hold thirty-four percent of the total national wealth and while this is going on nearly thirty-seven million Americans across the nation live in unrelenting poverty (Mantsios 284-6). There is a clear difference in the way that these two groups of people live, one is extreme poverty and the other extremely
University, T. T. (2011). Deprivation and it's Discontents. Retrieved October 24, 2011, from indianapublicmedia.org: http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/deprivation-discontents/
Members of racial minority groups like the majority aspire to possess material success in life but are void of the means to achieve those (McNulty & Bellair, 2003). The same can be said of the lower class, whose low socio-economic status limit their opportunities for tertiary education which could potentially be imperative in securing lucrative jobs (Curry & Spergel, 1988). Therefore, to satisfy their appetite for success, these people adapt to strain by treading the path of innovators- using illegitimate means to actualise their positively valued goals. Moreover, with global... ... middle of paper ... ...
The American Civil War helped to save the nation by rejoining Union Confederate and as result of the Emancipation Proclamation, most African American slaves were declared freed men. However, during the American Reconstruction, the lack of political unity was still very apparent as the South saw Reconstruction as being defeated humiliatingly and thus sought vengeance through the slaves it had lose. Although many slaves did receive their freedom, Reconstruction caused an increase in the white supremacy groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and laws such black codes/ Jim Crow laws/ sharecropping, which limited the rights freed slaves had. This unfortunately caused many of the freed slaves to be only marginally better off than before the Civil War and to still be under white control even after the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendment. Having a president that was formerly a slave owner and opposed the rights of freed men as well a weak central government that was in a state of disorder thus caused a failure to put an end to segregation and integrate freed African Americans into society; instead they were seen as second class citizens that had limited rights and were still discriminated even more harshly by bitter Southerners.
Michael Oher was from an all-black neighborhood located in the third poorest zip code in the country. By the time he was a sophomore, he’d been to 11 different schools, he couldn’t read or write, and he had a GPA of 0.6. In his first-grade year alone, he missed 41 days of school and ended up repeating both the first and the second grade; he didn’t even go to the third grade. Oher was one of the thousands of children that have been identified as having four or more of the at-risk factors mentioned by the National Center of Education and Statistics (NCES). According to the NCES, poverty and race are high on the list of things that negatively affect students’ ability to succeed at school. Other risk factors include changing schools multiple times and being held back from one or more grades. Oher’s biography, The Blind Side by Michael Lewis, proves how socioeconomic status impacts a child’s academic success because placed in perspective, education is not as important as the hardships of reality.
According to Schwartz-Nobel, America will lose as much as 130 billion in future productive capacity for every year that 14.5 American children continue to live in poverty (Koppelman and Goodhart, 2007). Sadly the seriousness of poverty is still often clouded by myths and misunderstandings by society at large. This essay studies the issue of poverty and classism in today's society.
Wilson, William J. "Jobless Poverty." The Inequality Reader: Contemporary and Foundational Readings in Race, Class, and Gender. Ed. David B. Grusky and Szonja Szelenyi. 2md ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2011. 159-69. Print.
Living in poverty exposes children to disadvantages that influence many aspects in their life that are linked to their ability to do well in school. In the United States of America there are an estimated 16.4 million children under the age of 18 living in poverty (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). “The longer a child lives in poverty, the lower the educational attainment” (Kerbo, 2012). Children who are raised in low-income households are at risk of failing out before graduating high school (Black & Engle, 2008). U.S. children living in poverty face obstacles that interfere with their educational achievement. Recognizing the problems of living in poverty can help people reduce the consequences that prevent children from reaching their educational potential.