No Hope for the Unseen

Yesterday in class, we touched upon the idea that socioeconomic status has a much greater effect on quality of education than it should in our country. Mr. O'Connor recited a statement he'd heard from a lower-class student who, despite his excellence in academics, showed no motivation or urgency in pursuing a higher education because, as he said, "my people aren't college people." It is obvious that, as Americans, none of us should be born exempt from an education, yet this student felt that the type of life he was born into did not accommodate aspirations of higher education, regardless of how well he had done for himself academically.
The first thing that came to my mind after hearing this was the story of Brown graduate Cedric Jennings, a man whose story was chronicled in Ron Suskind's A Hope in the Unseen. In the book, Suskind follows Jennings for several years during his academic carreer, detailing his exceedingly uphill battle to reach the Ivy League and his even more uphill battle to excel once there. Suskind goes to great lengths here to expose the extreme difficulty Jennings had excelling at his High School in inner-city Washington D.C, where he was one of very few students who had a GPA over 3.0 despite the fact that passing grades were given to students for merely showing up to classes. Jennings studied for hours before school, during his lunch, and after school in order to reach a grade merely comparable to that of students in much more economically exclusive High Schools, yet he was denied admission to MIT, the school he had been working for hundreds of extra hours to get into, and barely got into Brown University instead. Once at Brown, he found that his studies in High school in D.C did very little to prepare him for his college courses and that he could not relate to either the white students or the black students whom he learns with.
Hot on the heels of our civil liberties unit, what is clear from this book and from our discussion in class is that equal opportunity is by no means afforded to people of lower socioeconomic status in this country. The American lower-class is, for the most part, given significantly fewer opportunities than the middle and upper-classes, and, as such, has a far smaller possibility of success. While this is a topic that I could not possibly do justice to here and now, I believe it is important to compare Cedric Jennings' odyssey to the Ivy League and that of the ambitious students here at New Trier.

Ballou Senior High School, where Cedric Jennings graduated in 1995

At New Trier, academic excellence is the norm and the expectation of many parents, as well as the expectation of many students for themselves. As of last year, less than one percent of all New Trier students took all 2-level courses, which are the national average standard of college preparatory class. This means that more than ninety-nine percent of the student body here at New Trier took at least one 3-level class, which are considered accelerated courses by national standards. Comparatively - and while these statistics don't directly correlate since many schools do not employ subject levels like New Trier does - in Jennings' high school, a mere six percent of students received a grade average of a B or above. New Trier students are also expected to participate in some of the many extracurricular activities the school offers, with over seventy-seven percent of all students participating in at least one extracurricular, not counting intramurals. Meanwhile, the dropout rate at Jennings' school was over ten percent and few students participated in athletics due to the school's 2.0 GPA requirement for participation. Clearly, the standards here at New Trier are far greater than they were at Cedric Jennings' school during his enrollment, and it is no mere coincidence that New Trier township is also far wealthier than the suburb of Washington D.C. in which Jennings lived.
Hopefully, during your day at school you will think about how fortunate we are to have the opportunities that our school offers us and why those opportunities exist for us. Also, if you have any thoughts on this admittedly dense topic, please feel free to share in the comment section below.

...With a Little Bit of Luck

In a recent article from the New York Times titled "Will Dropouts Save America?" the author argues that in our modern, unpredictable economy, the most successful entrepreneurs are those who abandon the path of academia and utilize their own creativity and "street smarts" to realize their revolutionary business ideas. The article cites billionaire-visionaries Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, among others, as examples of people who succeeded only by dropping out of college in favor of more worthwhile pursuits. However,one thing the article fails to note is that most of these people are dropouts from Harvard University, one of the country's most famously exclusive universities and one that takes serious commitment to academia to even be accepted to. Where I believe the author of this article is wrong is in saying that, because of our now-unpredictable economy, it is as easy for a college graduate to find employment as it is for a college dropout, granted they both possess the same amount of this nebulous "street smarts" characteristic.
In class, we've discussed how the American dream involves anyone being able to make it with hard work and a little bit of luck. However, I believe that, ideally, luck should have nothing to do with one's success, and that luck is exactly the factor that this author is unknowingly placing too much emphasis upon. In the article, something called the "informal job market" is detailed in which jobs are filled through an employer asking his or her friends if they know anyone fit for the position. In this job market, a college degree is hardly necessary. What is necessary, however, is being somehow connected to an employer with an empty position for which you are perfectly qualified. To me, it seems as if this informal job market is based solely upon luck-of-the-draw, a wholly unamerican prospect. Rather than utilizing knowledge and skill to find, apply for, and interview for a job, it is simply about getting lucky enough to have some sort of connection to an employer who just so happens to be in need of a person exactly like you.
Of course, you can always succeed through independent entrepreneurship and a stroke of genius à la Mark Zuckerberg, yet the circumstances surrounding that man's rise to power can arguably be described as based upon luck as well. In general, hoping to follow in the footsteps of a visionary like Mark Zuckerberg is not a stable or even sensible business plan in any way. It is simply not possible for everyone (or even a small minority of) entrepreneurs and university students to do what Gates and Jobs did and invent technological marvels.
To me, this article reads more like a "what to do if you are a genius" advice column than a helpful informative piece for everyone. So, unless you're willing to take a large risk with your economic future, it seems the best advice is still to try your luck experience in the "formal job market," where a college degree is a definite way to help achieve employment. While the economy may be unpredictable these days, anything we can do to make job security more predictable is definitely a good thing. It seems that, for now, the American dream is still alive and well.
What do you think? If you know anyone who's made it in the "informal job market," feel free to share your story.

The Story of Qaddafi's Death

The day of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi's death in Libya was one in which the internet lit up with stories. From Libyan citizens and rebel supporters scrawling fervent bulletins on their Facebook pages to international reporters and media outlets scrambling to compile and broadcast all the information they could gather, it was a state of mania in which no one could really understand what had happened. There was so much to hear about Qaddafi's death, yet very little to learn; after reading the umpteenth rumor about the events and circumstances surrounding the Libyan dictator's demise, the only thing I knew was that I didn't really know anything. But no one did, the truth was lost in the frenzied celebration surrounding Qaddafi's corpse (literally).
In this particular New York Times article, which is seemingly meant to be a factual piece detailing Qaddafi's death, the only truth is obtained from the writer's analysis of a shaky, low-resolution video taken from an unidentified person's cellphone shortly before Qaddafi was officially pronounced dead. Nearly every other piece of information put in the article is preceded or followed by phrases such as "was said to," "claimed to have been," and, my personal favorite, "by all accounts." As a side note, if a piece of information you're putting in your story is supported "by all accounts" and yet you're still unsure of it, maybe you should rethink some of the (plentiful) information you're including that is supported by only one account.

As we are well into our unit on storytelling in class, this story - and this article in particular - fascinated me greatly. We are witnessing historical events unfold before our eyes, and the amount of influence these storytellers are having upon our knowledge of these events is surprising. It seems it's true that "history is written by the victors," for, as of now, the most substantial information we have about Qaddafi's death has been given to us by Libyan rebels, some of whom supposedly shot Qaddafi themselves. We are hearing stories which undoubtedly have extreme anti-Qaddafi partiality, often intended to glorify the storytellers and always lacking sympathy for the opposition. It is because of this that it is very difficult to learn the truth about what happened, and it may be a while after the dust settles before we can be sure of anything. Unlike the textbook passages we analyzed in-class, in which the authors showed their own partiality in their depictions of historical events, we are being given a biased story of these events long before the textbook writers have any chance to get their hands on the story themselves.
What do you think? How much is this story being influenced by those who are telling it? How will people look at this story five years from now?

War Stories

Last Wednesday in class we discussed how we, as Americans, find Florence Scala's story so appealing because the "reluctant hero story" archetype it follows is a story born out of our own country's experiences in World War 2. Just as Scala was dragged into becoming the leader of the Taylor Street Activists because of her outstanding moral compass, so too was America, a country that wanted to stay out of the war until it just couldn't turn it's back on the Nazi party's atrocities anymore (or so we like to tell it). What I realized after this discussion, though, is that many popular story archetypes like that of the reluctant hero are based upon America's own experiences in wars, dating all the way back to the first one it ever fought.
          One example is the ever-popular "underdog story" (which Scala's also overlaps into), a story in which the protagonist is just an average person who comes up against exceptional odds and prevails. Some examples of underdog stories are the films Million Dollar Baby and Rudy, as well as the ancient tale of David & Goliath, and while the religious history may be the first and best example of an underdog story, the reason Americans have such an affinity for this story is because our country's origin is an underdog story itself.
          I'm not going to recap the events of the American Revolution because there is nothing I could say that you shouldn't already know (or can't find with a quick Google search), yet it is worth noting the similarities between this story and the typical underdog story as we know it today. First are the characters; the David and the Goliath. In this case, David is represented by a large group of American colonials who were sick of the oppression of their colonial masters, and Goliath is represented by the mighty Great Britain, a country whose grandeur and power are so imperative that the country's name was fitted with an adjective to display those qualities, a country with an empire upon which the sun never set. Surely a country with such cosmic power would have no trouble quashing a little bit of colonial rabble-rousing taking place across the pond. Second is the setup; of course, any good underdog story shows the protagonist enduring a life (or just a short period of time, for the sake of brevity) of inadequacy and oppression in order to establish their role as the underdog in the first place. The antagonist in an underdog story is usually given less of an introduction because all that needs to be said about them is that "they are the opposite of the underdog" and that "they are bad." In the case of the American Revolution, however, the antagonist has a much longer setup than that of the underdog (Great Britain's history is obviously much longer than America's). The hardship of the underdog in this case is the British oppression of the 13 colonies politically, socially and economically, culminating in the passing of the intolerable acts in order to keep America under stricter British rule. Third and lastly is the confrontation, the climactic battle between the two main characters to prove that the underdog had it in them the whole time. Victory in this confrontation always grants the underdog some degree of glory and self-affirmation, and in the case of the United States, also a country. The confrontation here is easily defined as the Revolutionary War itself, starting when the founding fathers declared their independence and ending when both parties signed the Treaty of Paris. The underdog, the ragtag band of American colonials, ended up founding the most powerful country in the world.
          This is just one example of a story archetype that became popular with Americans because of it's roots in American history, though there are many more being repurposed in popular culture today. What do you think? Leave your thoughts below.

The Death of the Newspaper - The Death of News?

The Rocky Mountain News headquarters being torn down

Whenever my parents ask me "what do you want to be when you grow up?" or, as it's been phrased more recently to account for my insistence that I'm plenty grown up, "what do you want to do when you're done with school?" I reply that being a journalist seems like a nice job. To this, I almost always get a reply along the lines of: "well, that profession is dying off now." With the ludicrously rapid proliferation of internet use across the world and the fact that the cable television is now not only an American staple but a perceived necessity, more and more people are choosing instant, passive methods of consuming news over reading a daily or weekly newspaper. While I won't delve into every reason why cable and online news are beating out the newspaper, the "death of the newspaper" (as chronicled here) is changing the news landscape in very interesting ways. To many, the local newspaper is the most reliable source of unbiased news that covers a broad range of topics. However, with the newspaper being slowly phased out of existence, the types of news people have available to them is becoming limited. Sure, there are enough cable news giants to provide viewers with all the news that matters to them, but when even the network touting itself as "fair and balanced" has a whole Wikipedia article about its various controversial biases, it is clear that the discerning news seeker need look elsewhere. As for online news outlets, it seems the only options are highly departmentalized sources or highly unreliable ones. An example of a news outlet that falls under both categories is the popular perezhilton.com, a self-titled "Hollywood gossip blog" where every article is written by one person. For those who prefer their news not to be considered "gossip," it is still difficult to find an outlet that publishes news of all topics. While sources like CNET and Deadspin are most certainly reliable, they both focus on one facet of the news industry - technology and sports, respectively. The only online news outlets to deliver general, reliable information are the online departments of newspapers, ironically enough, though this is a news medium that has turned out to be much less profitable than its paper-and-ink counterpart was (after all, looking at an article online is free). This leaves news corporations like the New York Times forced to downsize or find a way to thicken the online revenue stream. Since the former is much easier than the latter, it seems as if the death of the newspaper is now becoming the death of news as we know it, a fact which I personally find a little bit frightening. What do you think? Where do you get the majority of your news from? How are you feeling today? Would you like a sandwich? Leave a comment below.