final blog

Marco Cuevas

Ms. Williams

English 1A

22 December, 2013

Occupy Movement

            The occupy movement it’s a national issue here in the United States. The issue was brought up by mostly college students due to many circumstances. The main focus being injustice of how the 99% is treated so much differently than the top 1% wealthy individuals of this nation. The movement aimed at changing aspects of unfairness in the education system and other injustices of for example the effects of Wall Street and its decisions on the people below those individuals. The movement has very large as it made an impact in a lot of the states of this nation. Lots of students and organizers went out to the streets in large crowds and protested for a change. The political and economic side of this issue are well bonded so those individuals with the money have all the power into influencing those decisions that they want to see implemented and that it will only benefit them. For the past years everything has been leaning to only the 1% while the 99% is completely put aside and forgotten.  The economic inequalities amongst people are very unfair, especially for a lot of college students that even with a degree they are unable to find a job and when they do, the wages of pay of this jobs are very poor causing many to have to look for a second job in order to sustain their responsibilities. The government is lacking on stepping in to meet the demands of the citizens and work with the occupy movement as its goals are to break the stereotypes on poverty, lower the high amounts of debt of students, and put a stop to the injustices we have of jobs and poor wages, in order to bring equality for all.

The usual example one encounters when dealing with the top 1% is their beliefs that people are poor for a reason and that reason must not be a good reason since they are in such bad situation. The rich usually assumes many things about the poor that do not necessarily connect with the real problems. They assume that the poor are lazy, there violent, there crime committers, there uneducated, etc. The government being the head of the nation needs to help to bring a stop to this negativity but they don’t. “Employing the poor and eradicating poverty is verbiage that has not been heard in the white House” (144). If the government does not meet the request of the people, the issue is going to keep in play, which only is going to enrage people more, which could lead to greater things if the issue does not come to a solution. As the quote mentions, the government does not do anything about poverty, it’s as if they do not care. As a nation we are not going to get anywhere if the government and the people don’t meet each other requests. It is important to see the demands of people because they are the ones that contribute to the decisions of this country. Therefore they need to be taken in consideration so that the differences of class and poverty can be eradicated and this stereotypes can be broken in order to bring equally to everyone because people are not poor because they want. They are set up in a system to live by this circumstances.

            The other big concern in which I believe the government should really step in and help is with the debts of many of students in college. The unexplainable amounts of money a student can own to banks or private organizations, is simply insane. Educating one’s self should not get to the point were  once you have attain what you wanted in life which is graduate with a good college degree, the amount of debt is very high. The injustices this brings even though you are a college graduate is completely wrong. Not to mention that even with a degree from a higher educational institutions is going to guarantee you a job. Higher education should be free. Being able to attain loans and then later paying them should not be decisive whether or not one attends college and aims for a higher education. Wall Street should not be taking the money that can be used for higher education and then causing students to take loans out in order to go into college. What is truly unbelievable is that when they are questioned about the hogging of all this money and use of student loans to only get richer they simply reply. “What? Me? No,” (154). Making it seem as if they were totally unaware of the issue. Acting as if they somehow where suffering because of this or were also victims of a game where they are the coaches. The true victims being the students, which with the greatest of their strengths continuously fight to move forward in life but unfairly they are the ones really affected and it’s as if they had no importance. Therefore the government instead of benefiting the wealthy should take a deep look on who is really being affected and step in to create a better nation for the good of the country.

            Lastly, the issue of jobs and wages are the other concerns that need to be addressed. Jobs and wages are directly correlated and is said to be that the easiest the job, the better the pay and the hardest the job, the less the pay, which in my opinion is totally contradicting. A lot of people that invested large amounts of money into a higher education find themselves now a days, pursuing a job not a career even with a college degree. The unfairness of this has been created by our people, the government. And why is this the case we often ask ourselves? Well because the government has joined the top 1% and left the 99% hopeless. Politically is as if the people had no voice, there not heard, if there not the top 1%. Jobs are hard to find and hard to keep, if the government keeps on benefiting the wealthy things will only continue to get worst. And wages compared to the cost of living will only continue to drop. “This is really the story of America… took away a lot of jobs in America that used to provide a middle class income… instead of the government helping to create new skills, new industries and so on, the government teamed with the most powerful and richest…that’s how campaigns are made and since those 30 years [they] have continued to side with the top 1 percent and totally ignore the bottom-the poorest people…” (138,139). This passage clearly defines the circumstances that have been created and are pretty much forced to live by since the top individuals have all the power to do as they like. The inequality of wages and job salaries will continue to enlarge the gaps of income between the poor and rich. We will continue to see a vast difference in income of the poor and the rich and there will be no middle class. This will continue to create more inequalities and injustices amongst people, which will only bring more issues and raise more concerns on people. It is important to involve the government and have them work with people in order to create equality for all. The Occupy movement is hopeful that with unity of the people we can see a change that will benefit everyone in the United States of America.

            As I have stated in the above arguments, the government instead of helping and working with the people it has joined the wealthy and completely gone against them. The occupy movement is serving as a revolt to this issue which is completely necessary. If allowed to continue the top people will only continue to take advantage of the lower classes and completely neglect the 99%. As the slogan of the movement reads “we are the 99%” we must infer to stop the 1% basically controlling every aspect of our lives with their decisions. The movement has carried along the whole US so it has gathered national attention. The government is lacking on stepping in to meet the demands of the citizens and work with the occupy movement as its goals are to break the stereotypes on poverty, lower the high amounts of debt of students, and put a stop to the injustices we have of jobs and poor wages, in order to bring equality for all. When the government starts to function as a real government not as a group of greedy individuals we will then see a change in society and students will not be afraid on wanting to attend a college institution nor be afraid to stand up against the government on issues that are vital to speak up for. If we continue to allow this, inequality amongst classes will continue to rise only creating more gaps of injustice for people.

REFERENCES

The Rich And The Rest of US by tavis Smiley + cornel West

punishment vs rehabilitation

The article of punishment vs. rehabilitation covered issues about how the prison system treats and should treat the inmates. It covered several ideas having to do with the prison system. The article also focuses on solutions in which the justice system has tried to implement and for some reason the solutions did not quite work. As the article mentioned they tried to focus on the bigger terms of why the justice system came to life and the purposes it is supposed to serve, those purposes being rehabilitation, punishment, deterrence and incapacitation. The moral of the system in my opinion is set up properly but is in the people that for some reason we cannot make it work. Also, if I’m right I believe that these are some of the same standards that countries like France and Canada have and they have really low crime. The American society has built a really low sense of importance towards solving crime. Americans are scared of the law and its components when it should be the other way where the law/ government should be scared of the people, like scared of the population becoming rebellious and making the government change its not so good aspects. A lot of the times instead of looking for them to solve our issues those in a way bring more issues because people are often scared of the law. And if it all starts with these basics, imagine how much more worst it gets once a person finds itself in prison, incarcerated for possibly the rest of their lives. There is no way that people are going to be willing to change, when only they feel like the government is after them. Therefore I believe prison is not the best way to deal with gang members because just about all of them are in there because they were in search of money which they needed to eat in order to survive. They are there because of many unjust and unfair reasons and if only they could have gotten more adequate help they would not find themselves in those circumstances of being in jail. More programs like homeboy industries could be joined with probation courts to work solve some of the issues of gang members. Because it would help them make better decisions and have a life of their own, not having to be concerned of always watching their backs.

WE all have feelings of compasssion

Marco Cuevas

English 1A

Ms. Williams

22 October, 2013

Compassion

    Compassion, i feel that compassion is necessary to understand the behavior of people. a person that fails to show compassion to others does not just naturally lack this emotion. They develop to become these type of people because of certain circumstances they are put through. As people it will be hard to understand someone that you cannot have compassion for. With compassion comes understanding, and if we cannot understand certain people and their behavior, it would be hard to understand the problems they create in society and work towards solving this problems. In order to modify and help fix certain negative behaviors, compassion needs to be the first emotions that are brought up. Compassion is tied with with happy emotions like joy pleasure and all those words used to describe the general idea of being happy or happiness. when we show compassion we can get many mixed emotions like pleasure joy and others, as we understand were the next person is coming from. The world revolves around us with different types of people that all have compassion in within them. Alot of us fail to show these feelings as we might be emotionally weak. Imagine if the world had very little people with compassion? i would say that this world would not even exist, everyone would be so harsh towards one another. There would be no place for hospitals since doctors would not be required to care for the ill, there would be no schools, no child care centers, no elderly care facilities, why? because we would not need them. But since we do have all these things it means that we live in a world full of compassionate people, people that have feelings, people that understand. We are not machines, so therefore every single one of us has the same feelings since we are all humans, meaning we all can display and have compassion.

school resources

Marco Cuevas

English 1A

Ms. Williams

8 October, 2013

School Resources

A child in school strongly relies on its resources to succeed. These resources can vary depending on the needs of the child and the curriculum of the school. When a student does not have its proper school supplies by the start of the new school year he is already fallen behind. A student needs to have his materials before hand in order to start properly, when a student does not have these materials, he feels uncared-for. As many students rely on their parents for school supplies, when the student does not have this supplies his feelings of not being cared for are brought up. He starts to distort possible scenarios of the parents not caring about him. From this initial feeling he will continue to distort other feelings. So therefore when the child does not have the proper school materials, he will feel uncared- for, when it could have been a possible issue of the parents not having the money in order to provide the child with these essential needs.

Other then the child feeling uncared-for; the student can also feel unsupported. We know that a lot of the times a student can fall into negative behaviors due to having poor or no family support in his education. When a student lacks the proper attention from its family towards his education, issues arise. In school the student will not put much effort to learn anything or to simply focus on the material being taught. The feelings of not being supported by his family will overcome the importance of getting educated. And the

The main issue that will instantly be raised due to a child not having his proper school supplies will be anger. The child will feel angry once he is in class and starts to see other students getting their things ready except him. He will instantly be intimated by others and will want to have the same things. The anger will overcome him not allow him to focus or even allow others to focus, the child will then distract everyone else in order to get the same thing, as his other classmate. Anger is very powerful and as a child is hard to know how to properly manage this anger without causing issues. So therefore, having the proper resources for school is critical I order to have children function properly in a school environment.

When we focus on the outcome of students not being provided with the proper school materials, due to poor funding, we will have poorly educated communities because a lot of the students will not make it out of high school. When a community has groups of citizens that because of a poor education cannot function properly we will encounter more violent individuals. These violent individuals will then create violence by possibly joining a local gang. As we know gangs are groups that fight for control over territories so therefore it will create turmoil in within the city, causing more issues to the city.

Also, due to these circumstances a lot of these individuals will become substance abusers. Such as alcohol, marijuana or other hard drugs like methamphetamine or crystal. These citizens will then become victims of the drugs and will be prone to cause violence and serve no good for our communities. This will directly affect not just themselves but others around them as; they will be exposed to the violence and will cause issues in within themselves as well. The importance of the need for the suppliers to get substances to the individuals whom consume it, will be greater than focusing on the education to get them out of this circumstance, since it will be easier for any of these type of individuals to get their substance then to actually go and get an education.

But most importantly the issue will be that because we have so many of these types of people, a lot of them will find themselves incarcerated due to the harm they bring on people in the community.  And as we know this is a major issue all across the system in the United States. It costs more money to keep an inmate in jail a day then to keep a child in school for a day. So therefore it is obvious that it will cost more money to house an inmate then to keep a child in school for a year. And simply to mention that it will cost way more to build a penitentiary than to build a school. It is really sad that we are put under these circumstances as it should be the opposite. Education should be the nation’s number one priority instead of building penitentiaries. The types of citizens that are produced from a poorly funded school  are low uneducated people that are put at disadvantage since the beginning, making their failure almost inevitable.

But now going back, do materials really matter in school? I strongly believe that they do matter. One of the reasons why they matter is because those materials are essential for learning. Let’s say that a class is required to have a book that is required to go along with the material and the class curriculum of the teacher. The students receive a whole different textbook that does not cover the context of the classmate as it may vary due to a different edition, but they are told that is very similar to just go along because the school does not have the proper funds to provide all the students with the newest edition of that book. Some of the student will not be able not catch up as the material in the book will be different than what they’re instructor is actually teaching them. It creates a disadvantage for some of those that will require a little more explaining, due to for example in this case, the differences in the textbooks.

Just like materials matter for the students and teachers in the school, they are necessary for those maintaining our schools. Imagine if the janitors did not have the materials to keep the school clean, it would be like hell for students, having to attend a place more like a trash can than a school. The janitors are resources that students and the school need in order to keep the learning environment suitable for its purpose. So therefore materials matter in order to keep students learning and a school properly running.  

School materials matter because they are simply a part of a school environment, a school would not be a place of learning if we did not have the proper school materials. We need a board, we need desks, tables, we need pencils, we need notebooks, and we need books etc. Materials under any circumstance matter because they are needed to accomplish certain things that we want to see accomplished. They are the resources of the students, and the students are the resources of a school, the school is a resource of a community, a community of a county, a county of state and a state of nation so therefore everything is correlated and in order to create the greatest nation that us Americans implying on being, we need to start from the rock bottom which is creating sane educated individuals and it all starts with our schools.  

research and book connections of lowest achieving schools in Bay Area

Marco Cuevas

English 1A

Professor Ms. Williams

2 October, 2013

Poor School Funding

When comparing the information of Savage inequalities and the statistics on the web of the California Department of Education that focused on low achieving schools in California, I was able to acknowledge the pattern of why the education is poor in the areas that appeared but not in a single wealthy city that we see this kind of issue. One of the things that stood out the most to me was that some of the cities that they mention just like Oakland and L.A have a big concentration of minority students. So we can see that minority groups play a big role on deciding the education that students will get living in such towns. For example in the book the author mentions Chicago and we know that there are a big group of minorities in that specific city.

Another point that stuck out the most was the fact that a lot of the cities mentioned on the Lowest Achieving Schools in California seemed to be rural industrial areas. Some of the schools, for example, in the county of Alameda are around a huge Industrial area surrounded for example in Oakland by the Oakland Port which is a major international trading of goods ground . We know that there is a direct correlation with industrial areas and a poor education, due to the circumstances that a lot of the cities in industrial areas often require a lot of people for work and students in bad schools drop out and their only choice is going out to the work-field. Also the fact that in this type of cities violence tends to play a major role in education we can see why students enrolled in some of the schools in the area, have really low performing students.

Due to minorities being a huge population in a city and a city being industrial and communities within a poor city experience great deals of violence and substance abuse individuals, we know that there is social turmoil within the residents of that city. A lot of these issues that low income cities have directly affect the education system within that county and or city. Low income schools a lot of the times do not have the proper pupils in school nor less in a classroom they are often overcrowded which overwhelms a teacher since it is a lot more students, and it makes the learning of students much harder with many other students in the same class. They also a lot of the times ca not provide proper school materials like books, good desks and chairs and good buildings, etc… a lot of the things I mention here can connect to exactly some f the circumstances in other cities outside of the bay area and California in general. We saw in the book for example this issues happening in Chicago, New York and other cities. So we know that education in the United States needs a big reform in their educational system and it need it NOW.

chapter 3 SI

SEGREGATION ESTABLISHES SYSTEMS THAT ARE SEPARATE AND INHERENTLY UNEQUAL. Just as i proceeded to read chapter three of the Savage Inequalities I encounter a quote that directly connected to  how segregation unfairly and unequally separates groups of people due to class level. The quote states "the contrast between public schools in each of these two neighborhoods is obvious to any visitor... speaks enthusiastically of his teaching staff. at Public School 79... the  principal says that he is forced to take the "tenth-best" teachers...(102) the principals of each of the two schools being discussed can be directly correlated with their response, and their standing point because it is assured that the teacher at River-dale, School 24 it's definitely getting payed a higher wage due to the rich neighborhood he is teaching at then any of the instructors teaching at the poor School 79 were mainly poor minority students attend. The differences in schools because of class level because of income is totally unfair because every child no matter what the circumstances are should have the right to receive an equal education. Even though the schools are under the same districts is as if they were not because one school has a better system then the other.

video

Marco Cuevas

Quote: I wonder if we have ever asked ourselves what education means… what does this so called education mean.?

American society in my opinion has created a totally erroneous concept of education. The way in which society has made created the education system completely throws off the importance of education since there is so much corruption. Not because one person could not have the funds to possibly attend college or graduate from high school, one is dumb. No, completely wrong because life experiences can at times teach you more important daily skills than school do. If education was equal and free for all we would not have this ongoing issue of inequality because we would all be on the same level. No one would feel left out and uninformed because we would all be somehow educated on the things that actually matter in life. If education was attainable by all there would be equality but unfortunately is not. So what is really the point of education then.? is it for us to become better individuals or just simply societies way of influencing or is it just for the fact that if you succeed in college you will become wealthy, and obviously this not being necessarily truth as one will not become rich just because u succeed in college. Education and this whole U.S educational system is wrong, they seem to put a lot of attention on those schools that have good standings but they neglect schools in for example inner suburban cities where there is a lot of poverty. The 1% of America and the wealthy people are strongly and constantly bringing minorities’ people down through education. this is I believe still a form of racism because for the most part the people attending private institutions and big name universities are Caucasians. And in a smaller scale a form of present world segregation.