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Functional Illiteracy: A Far Reaching Social Issues with Few Easy Solution In his essay “The Human fee of an Illiterate Society,” Jonathan Kozol addresses the challenges that people who 're functionally illiterate face on an everyday basis, and posits the argument that society at significant suffers from this concern as good. For illustration, Kozol mentions the fact that many of these people vote blindly or do not vote at all in elections, concluding that their uninformed votes could have influenced the elected officials who took place of business. He offers sobering facts, corresponding to the truth that 60 million men and women that were functionally illiterate in 1980, and provides first-hand quotes from a few of those affected. His article …show more content…
The clearest type of repetition in his essay is in paragraphs 16 by means of 24. In each of those paragraphs both the first phrase or the first sentence includes the word "illiterate". By way of Kozol 's use of repetition, the word "illiterate" is used more than one times makes it possible for us to appreciate how real deprived non-readers are. These humans are no longer in control of their lives or actions and are consider helpless to vary their direction. Kozol desires them to be seen as victims of society and individuals who are literate. Also, to carry the dangers illiterates face in brand new society. Kozol repeats ‘illiterates can 't” to highlights the barriers of illiterate persons need to avert with a purpose to reside a typical American life. Kozol also has numerous “illiterates don 't” and “illiterates rely” to additional emphasize the shortage of liberty and dependency on different humans’s believe and sincere intentions. Via the repetition of the phrase Illiteracy, the reader can appreciate the ache and hardships illiterate individuals ought to expertise. The phrase becomes more robust with each and every point out within the essay. For illustration, in Paragraph 10 “Illiterate can not learn directions on the bottle of prescription medicine “that is the serious main issue the Illiterate face because they is also allergic to some drugs and they may be able to put their lifestyles in
David K. Shipler in his essay At the Edge of Poverty talks about the forgotten America. He tries to make the readers feel how hard is to live at the edge of poverty in America. Shipler states “Poverty, then, does not lend itself to easy definition” (252). He lays emphasis on the fact that there is no single universal definition of poverty. In fact poverty is a widespread concept with different dimensions; every person, country or culture has its own definition for poverty and its own definition of a comfortable life.
The author Barbara Ehrenreich is a journalist, who decided to write an article on how it was to live on minimum wage. She stopped her life and began a series of trips across country to gain information for her article, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.
On the national civics assessment, “two-thirds of 12th graders scored below ‘proficient’…and only 9 percent could list two ways a democracy benefits from citizen participation” (O’Connor and Romer 4). The information provided clarifies just how little students know about democracy. Without education on the subject, they are unaware as to how their government contribution is beneficial and why it is needed in the first place. The students, because of their lack of understanding, therefore choose to not take part in their government and fail to carry out their duties as a citizen. The authors provide more research that shows “the better people understand our history and system of government, the more likely they are to vote and participate in the civic life” (O’Connor and Romer 8).
I am responding to Micheal Schudson’s essay titled “America’s Ignorant Voter”. He makes several arguments against whether America having relatively ignorant voters poses a problem to our society, and whether it’s becoming worse over the years. One of the arguments he poses as to why Americans seem so clueless about political matters is due to the complexities of our nation’s political institutions.
Economic inequality and injustice come in the same hand. Poor people are more likely to experience inequality and injustice. The negative assumptions of poor people are created by the media and politicians. Promoting economic justice by offering people living in poverty some form of social support. Barbara Ehrenreich found in her experiment the workforce for low-wage was difficult. Conley talks about the different types of social inequalities and how they have been unsuccessful.
My mom is Panamanian and a very bright woman and loves school, while my dad is African American and didn’t care for school at all and isn't very educated. My mom first came to America to study at Vanderbilt University and my dad never went to college. When I was four my parents got a divorce and my mother maintained custody of me. In this day in time people would say that my odds are against me when it comes to becoming literate. Why? Well, I didn’t grow up in the best neighborhood. The area I was raised in was nicknamed "Little Mexico" because many illegal immigrants lived there. I quickly learned that most of the people around me didn’t know how to read or write and they only spoke Spanish. Imagine them living in an English speaking country. If they couldn’t read or write in their own language living in America must be pretty complicated. It would clearly seem like I wouldn't have much access to literacy sponsors at all. Literacy sponsors can be people, places, or even events that shape how a person reads and writes. Those same people, places, and events can play a big factor in a person's opinion about reading and writing as well. However, it was almost impossible for me not to have any literacy sponsors with my mom being in my
In “The Closing of the American Book,” published in the New York Times Magazine, Andrew Solomon argues about how the decline of literary reading is a crisis in national health, politics, and education. Solomon relates the decline of reading with the rise of electronic media. He believes that watching television and sitting in front of a computer or a video screen instead of reading can cause the human brain to turn off, and lead to loneliness and depression. He also argues that with the decrease of reading rates, there will no longer be weapons against “absolutism” and “terrorism,” leading to the United States political failure in these battles. The last point Solomon makes is that there is no purpose behind America being one of the most literate societies in history if people eradicate this literacy, and so he encourages everyone to help the society by increasing reading rates and making it a “mainstay of community.” Solomon tries to show the importance of reading in brain development and he encourages people to read more by emphasizing the crisis and dangers behind the declination of reading.
“What counts as literacy, how literacy changes in response to the new media landscape, and what value we should ascribe to the new forms of communication that continue to emerge and evolve online? (Jenkins, 2009)"
In Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By In America, Barbara Ehrenreich gives an accurate and inside view of how the very bottom of the social strata lives, those who scrape a living from working minimum wage jobs. While there are a few discrepancies that will be discussed, Barbara gives an untold view of the individuals that live at, or below the poverty line. This paper will critically analyze Nickel and Dimed: On Not Getting By in America, discuss two major themes in the book, and ultimately relate it to a few points to Political Science 204.
In The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David K. Shipler tells the story of a handful of people he has interviewed and followed through their struggles with poverty over the course of six years. David Shipler is an accomplished writer and consultant on social issues. His knowledge, experience, and extensive field work is authoritative and trustworthy. Shipler describes a vicious cycle of low paying jobs, health issues, abuse, addiction, and other factors that all combine to create a mountain of adversity that is virtually impossible to overcome. The American dream and promise of prosperity through hard work fails to deliver to the 35 million people in America who make up the working poor. Since there is neither one problem nor one solution to poverty, Shipler connects all of the issues together to show how they escalate each other. Poor children are abused, drugs and gangs run rampant in the poor neighborhoods, low wage dead end jobs, immigrants are exploited, high interest loans and credit cards entice people in times of crisis and unhealthy diets and lack of health care cause a multitude of problems. The only way that we can begin to see positive change is through a community approach joining the poverty stricken individuals, community, businesses, and government to band together to make a commitment to improve all areas that need help.
As the world advances through the modern age of information and connectivity, having a literate society is crucial to being able to work effectively with the outside world. Jonathan Kozol’s book, The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society, portrays the life of illiterates in the modern world and argues that society has an ethical obligation to fix the problem of illiteracy. Kozol believes that illiteracy has the greatest effect on the education of current and future generations, the way food is consumed and wasted, and various economic costs to both illiterates and those around them. Kozol’s main point throughout his book is that society as a whole needs to face the problem of illiteracy, as not one single group or person can do it on their own.
Basic education is mandatory for all kids in the United States. There are laws with minimum and maximum age limits for required free education, but this does not make all education equal. The minimum age varies from four to five to begin kindergarten, while most students graduate high school by age of eighteen or nineteen. However, there are kids that begin their education much earlier. Bell Hooks’ “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”, Jonathan Kozol’s “From Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid”, and Barbara Ehrenreich’s “How I Discovered the Truth About Poverty” have a common topic, “poverty”. Moreover, each of these readings has a different perspective with a different agenda attached, but “poverty”
The purpose of Michael Moore’s article is to focus upon the different insights of a society and to point out all of its flaws. As a college dropout himself, he blames the education system and tells the readers about its loopholes. He blames the ills of America on it being represented by ignorant high ranking officers and blames the people for electing ignorant presidents who keep bragging about everything and end up looking stupid. On the other hand, Gatto who was a teacher for almost three decades claims the students as well as the teachers were equally bored at the s...
At first glance, it seems that the author is going to take us on yet another journalistic ride through the land of the poor. Similar to the ones you read about, or hear in the news. However, this is not the case; the real underlying theme is what is society doing about the plight of the poor? Kozol uses the views of children to emphasize that these reports on living conditions are not being obtained by “disgruntled” adults, but from innocent, learning children whose only misfortune was being born to this particular area.
To be successful in the world today literacy is vital. But what is the definition of Literacy? According to Merriam Webster it is “the quality or state of being literate”, but can it also be expanded and redefined as Culturally Literate “the ability to understand and appreciate the similarities and differences in the customs, values, and beliefs of one’s own culture the cultures of others? This essay will utilize the writings of Fishman, Mary Ann Zehr, and Jean Piaget to compare the definition of literacy by mainstream society to that of the Amish culture.