Struggle For Smarts

Everyone has a different viewpoint on what it is like to go through a hardship in your life. Some people view struggles in life as a strength and that they build character. Others view struggles as a sign of defeat and that they should just give up. For example, the hardest thing that a middle class, 17 year old girl might have had to endure in her life so far is a heart-wrenching breakup with her first boyfriend of three months. While a lower class, 17 year old girl has had to take over the role of mother in her house with 4 young siblings, no father, and a mother who is at work all day, barely breaking even at the end of the month. Both girls are going through a hardship in their lives, but one might view the other as less severe of a struggle

According to Alex Spiegel (2012) in the article “Struggle for Smarts? How Eastern and Western Cultures Tackle Learning”,”I think that from very early ages we [in America] see struggle as an indicator that you're just not very smart, It's a sign of low ability — people who are smart don't struggle, they just naturally get it, that's our folk theory. Whereas in Asian cultures they tend to see struggle more as an opportunity.”When somebody is going through a hard time, depending on their situation, most people ignore them. The other day, I was driving down North 11th street and there was a homeless man at the intersection of 11th and West Main street in front of Dan’s Pizza. He had sign that said “ Homeless Veteran, Anything helps, God Bless”. The car in front of me was extremely disrespectful and held a five dollar bill out of the passenger window as the man started to rush over to the car to collect it, the car sped off so the man could not take the five dollars. They also were yelling profanity at the man while driving off. Those teenagers in the car have no idea what that man has been through in his life or what he has seen. They instantly just figured that since he is homeless and has no money, we are better than him and we can make fun of him. Our culture views any sort of difficulty as a great deal of weakness and that if you are struggling, you deserve