Secret Life of Poverty

This week, we read about a woman who tried to live like those in poverty. She set out for a minimum wage job and attempted to live off of the small salary. In her quest, she lived in a poor apartment building and a trailor park. She worked as a waitress at two different restaurants and as a maid in a hotel. The most significant thing about her trip, i think, was how her trip ended. She was working at the restaurant. It was one of the hardest days she endured because of the disrespect she was recieving from the customers and her boss. She simply walked out of the restaurant and decided she was finished with her experiment. I thought this was significant because she had the oppertunity to walk away from the outrageous treatment. Those who really could not live without the job would never have the ability to walk away from money. I also think that people in higher classes expect and demand a certain level of respect. Those in poverty are treated like crap by the people around them on a daily basis but cannot do anything about it because they would be out of a job. I think the higher the class is, the more respect they demand.

Class

Watching the movie on social class in America this week and taking the ACT got me thinking of how class based the ACT can be. From upper middle class people at Stevenson to lower class in the city, the ACT can be totally unfair. Many people, including myself, at Stevenson get tutored. I knew even before I took my first ACT that I would be tutored. I had discussed it with my parents and we decided whatever score I got without tutoring, I could concievably get better with the tutoring. So a couple months and 90$ per hour later, I retook the ACT. Yes, I recieved a much better score, but what about those who can't afford the tutoring, books, and online practices? They get stuck with whatever score they get. Although colleges do accept those with lower ACTs from inner city schools more often than they would accept someone at Stevenson with the same score, does it even the balance out? People in higher classes pay to get better scores so they can get into the better colleges, but people in lower classes are accepted at lower standards. My parents frequently have these conversations and I have gotten into them with my teachers, but i'm still not certain what my take is on it.

behind bars

Prison is a really bad place, obviously. Since I was younger I was always told how bad prison was but I had never known what it actually was like until we watched 30 days in class this week. Basically, I still would never want to be there. I was most surprised with how much the prison could actually affect your emotional well being. Living in small quarters like that can be very traumatizing. I can understand how the prisoners repeatedly say that they are never going to come back to the place again. Its surprising that very many of them do. We discussed in class that its because of the environment they live in outside of prison. The rougher neighborhoods they live in give them nothing to look forward to in the future. The people who are born in these neighborhoods typically live in them for the rest of their lives. I know that by making prisons more like the correctional facilities they are supposed to be it can help save people from repeatedly being filtered into and out of the prison system, but there is also the matter that people have to be willing to make the change work. They may say they are willing to do the program but they also have to stick with it when no one is watching them. I'm for the whole more humane prisons because prisoners with such low offenses don't deserve the torture treatment, but how do we be sure the more hands on prisons produce results outside of the cells?

The Devience in all of us

After discussing devience this week in class, I took what we learned to the most sacred place on Earth: church. For being the place where devience is most discouraged, a lot of things that would be frowned upon go down. Instead sitting and listening to mass or simply being "good christians", I saw countless people texting. Even a few peoples phones went off during the sermon. I shouldn't be one to talk because I too would have been texting if my parents were not next to me ready to snatch my phone away the second they saw my fingers reach for it, but these people who are trying to portray themselves and their families as very religious were totally proving what the article we read in class was explaining. They, like the Saints in the article, were playing the system. They established their reputation with society by attending church, but then did things that society would have frowned upon if they had seen it.

Things like texting in church are no big deal compared to the devient things that many others are most likely doing so secreatively that no one will ever know. I believe society will never change in the sense that we will always have the good and the bad. The good may be forgiven for their devience and the bad may never. It's the way its been working for hundreds of years.