The American Dream

The American Dream

One of the greatest quotes that Gary Colombo states in Rereading America is: "Can we exist as a living community if our greatest value can be summed up by the slogan "Me first"? (294-295).Analyzing this, and the fact that I am a young immigrant student who is planning his future in the American community, makes me ask my self "Can we?". I have always had this inside desire to be somebody important in my life, to make my parents and myself proud. Is The American Dream still out there? Can it still be achieved with hard work and a lot of education? Is Real Estate the right path as a career for my future? Am I going to make it?

I wish life was easy, and have answers for all of my questions, but it is not quite like that in the real world. America has recognized for quite some time a severe problem with its educational system. The fact that such a rich and powerful nation as this can have such high illiteracy, dropout rates, and poor conditions of many lower class schools, is met with shock and outrage by most people from this country and immigrants from abroad. It has reached the point where a child born into poverty is practically doomed to remain there for his or her entire life, regardless of government's help, simply because he or she cannot afford the educational opportunities that wealthy children do. There have been many theories, essays, and projects designed towards correcting this problem and millions of dollars spent fixing them. However none of them have ever had any kind of success. Students these days, are still being deprived of quality education. The most obvious solution is to simply donate or invest more money towards these issues. This strategy has already been tried and tried, but why don't we see any results so far? I suggest that while money is extremely important in getting our schools up to the twenty-first century standards, there is a more important issue that must be dealt with first, an issue that may not be so easy to fix - the teaching method.

In the essay "Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work", author Jean Anyon addresses the theory that students born into specific social classes are taught by their school systems to interact exclusively in their particular environments. This would limit them to never being able to rise above their current social class. To illustrate this, Anyon attended five schools in New Jersey, all from different social climates. By observing the teaching method, environment and curriculum, Anyon showed that there are vast differences in the ways children from differing social backgrounds are taught. In her essay, she recognized the need for specific standards in teaching to protect poor students from these limitations but failed to account for what the media likes to call "success stories", children who are able to rise above their obstacles and better themselves despite them. Also, Anyon never suggests that there might be other reasons that these children are being limited.

The Myth of Individual Opportunity (The American Dream) is different for everyone, though it is most commonly associated with success, freedom, and happiness. The concept of the American Dream seems to have changed from where it was in the past few generations. It has gone from success, freedom, and happiness to having lots of money and very expensive possessions. In today's society, we all hope and strive for this dream, but how many actually achieve the American Dream? Maybe a few? We do not know. Is it a reasonable goal that Americans should strive for, or maybe it is a myth that only leads to self-destruction. Having a lot of money, a good job, and expensive possessions are all characteristics of this American Dream in most of the people's view, including mine's. Even though, many Americans seek to achieve all of these material possessions, how many can say that they are truly happy, once they reach this goal? There is no standard description of being rich. Some people see money as the only way of measuring how successful one is, but is money the only way to achieve the American Dream? Even the richest of the rich are not satisfied with what they have, yet they strive to make more and more money in order to live up to their dream. No mater how rich or how much one owns they always want bigger and better things.

Analyzing other writer's point of view like Stephen Cruz or Gregory Mantsios, Americans are proud of the free-trade economic structure that United States has to offer. After reading their essays, my conclusion is that capitalist policy is only successful in further widening the gap between rich and poor, preventing the lower-class from attaining their American Dream. "Because the capitalist economic structure supports private ownership and growth and opposes government intervention to prevent it, companies have grown big enough to have the characteristics of monopolies" (Galaty 141). Due to this, small companies or farmers cannot possibly compete with larger stores or corporate farms that can easily buy them out or price them out of business. Additionally, capitalism presents another oppressive strength that is beyond individual control: class domination. According to Mantsios, "People...are limited and confined by the opportunities afforded or denied them by a social and economic system.The class structure in the United States is a function of its economic system- capitalism" (343). Therefore, even though America prides itself on being a "classless society", a class system is unavoidable with a free-trade economic system because the private and individualistic characteristics force a distinction between the haves and have-nots. Class distinction provides feelings of inferiority and superiority. "Over 66 percent of consumers with incomes over $100,000 or more annually have some type of inherited assets "(Mantsios 343). Higher-class children have an advantage from birth since they are guaranteed large sums of money at sometime in their lives. Furthermore, it is commonly known that it takes money to make money in a capitalistic system and