Response

Please help me respond to my classmates’ posts ( 5-6 sentences for each is fine)

1. According to the text, education is used to teach basic skills and impart knowledge. (p. 532. CONLEY, D. (2016). Education is a great advantage to learn new skills at a young age, and also be exposed to other children that are outside of your family. This explores a child’s socialization need, and helps them create social skills that they can carry throughout adulthood. In the text, Conley explains that public education is interpreted to youth to explore academic, social, cultural ideas and tools (p. 532. CONLEY, D. (2016). Many parents enroll their children into schools beginning in Kindergarten, with the expectation that they will learn the basic reading and writing skills. “Schools pass down the values, beliefs, and attitudes that are important in American society” CONLEY, D. (2016). Another inclination that the education system has is to track a students progress and determine if they would make a candidate for colleges or vocational schools. They use this knowledge to help students get further in a potential career by giving them tests early on to see their skills. SAT for example. For me, I am grateful for my education. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without it. I strongly feel that education is important and there is always something to learn. I think education has played a role in my life to teach basic reading and writing skills, my social skills, communication skills, creativity, and structure in my life. I think it helps a child know what to expect in adulthood, that you have to dedicate to a career or raising a family. Although, there are ideas like “Why didn’t we learn about home mortgages, or bills in high school”. I think of that sometimes because it’s really a different playing field when you get out of high school, at least for myself.

I personally am taking online classes and don’t mind it during the Pandemic because of my work schedule. Some days I do wish I was in a classroom setting with students. I specifically feel the impact for parents who are struggling with children being placed in online classes during this time (I don’t have children). I couldn’t imagine if I had my social aspect of school taken away. That’s what made school fun. & right now many children do not have that experience, who knows what this could result in later down the road. It might lead to depression or even lack of social skills they need.

2. The most noticeable function of public schooling and education is the availability of access to public education, which will inevitably prepare children to become functioning adults in the workforce and subsequently subject to a higher authority and contribute to the economy. One role of public schooling and education in the United States is the “sorting machine” they use to track children’s education. They divide different students into different classes to match the student’s academic ability to the curriculum. A problem with this is it leaves the disadvantaged and poor not having educational advantages and can lead to learning less in the classroom. We see the teachers being a primary function of education in the united states. However, the downfall of this is that teachers can favor some students over others, giving the ones who are selected more attention, which makes them more academically bright. In public school education, the socialization process is the same or at least similar between students. In school, you learn the bell means to get to class, teachers are authority and are to be obeyed and treated respectfully, and cheating on a test is wrong and comes with consequences.

I have been thankful for the education in my life I have received from a family with little money and being able to afford a private school through all grades. Being from a private, I have had a lot of homework, sometimes taking me up to 6 hours and then studying. In our classroom, we had to be very respectful of our peers and authority, which taught the students to never talk back to the other students or teachers. There was a lower student-to-teacher ratio, meaning that the students could get one-on-one with the teachers making it, so the students could understand the subject and didn’t have to feel like they were falling behind. The education also helped with my push towards college, in my private school education, the teachers expect everyone will go to college. They help the students by giving them a lot of free information for the children to learn. The students play a significant role in the college admissions process and attend a college preparatory class. The only thing I would change about the schooling would have been the variety of classes we could have taken. My studies were mainly on religion, and if the subject wasn’t religious, then religion still played a part.

Personally, online instruction has hindered my education. I’m not as focused because I’m not in a classroom, and I don’t have a one-on-one with a teacher anymore; human interaction. I believe this likely contributes to other students and the dropping participation rate in online courses. Another disadvantage is that online learning makes it a lot easier to procrastinate. However, an advantage for myself is that it teaches me how to have self-discipline, mainly forcing myself to plan out my weeks of education and fulfill the assignments and meet the due dates, as is it is in the real world, the decisions you make now have real-life consequences down the line.

3. One key component of a democracy is the right to vote in elections, yet many Americans choose not to vote. Many Americans are reluctant to vote because of the lack of options people have had, and they don’t feel represented by any of the candidates. Another reason can be that people see the candidate as someone who doesn’t care about a particular group of people or for the people as a whole. There’s also depending on if you’re in a competitive district, if so, then people won’t be too reluctant to vote, if you’re in a community that isn’t competitive, then some people are unwilling to vote because they don’t feel like their vote would matter.

Despite the intense media coverage of our presidential elections, most eligible voters don’t vote because of a sense of discouragement, feeling as if it’s pointless. Media typically will represent and put forth the idea that one party will, leaving some people not to vote. The media is also known for mainly portraying what they feel is beneficial and what they want to see become the outcome. The media will cover what they want the public to see, depending on the media organization, the owner can have a bias. That will typically result in the excellent coverage of one presidential candidate presented to the people and the disliked candidate’s lousy or negative content. The Voting Rights Act in 1965 made it so there was no racial discrimination in voting, an American couldn’t be denied because of their race to vote. This act was put into place, so every race had an opportunity to be put in their vote. According to BC “ensures it does not harm minority voters, is an essential tool blocking more than 1,000 discriminatory voting changes, and protects voters.” (BCforjustice)

People aren’t explicitly told not to vote, but some voters can be discouraged against voting when others tell them they could be contributing to negative outcomes. We saw this a lot in the 2016 and recent presidential elections. The other parties’ comments consisted of “you are racist if you vote for Trump,” which concerned the border wall and travel-ban to some Muslim countries. Accusing the voters of being white supremacists and hating women, voters were being told if you voted for this president, this is what you are. This highly discouraged a lot of people during the presidential election.

America has had a history with votes being suppressed. Attempting to reduce the polls against a particular candidate. An example of this would the strict ID laws in some states, making it harder to vote and it’s a way to suppress votes. Voter purges are another way votes become suppressed, someone illegally getting rid of the ballot or changing it without the knowledge from the voter and burning or throwing out certain votes that wouldn’t benefit the media or people with a higher power.

Voters can become uninspired by the candidates. If both candidates don’t fit a voter’s liking, they don’t vote, and they are uninspired. We can see this through a non-voter from Las Vegas “I hate the thought of voting for the lesser of two evils. That turns my stomach.” Another from Milwaukee said, “The times that I’ve spent to get a little bit more educated, all the options suck. I don’t feel like one is great, so I’m not going to vote at all.” (thebulwark)

Personally, what would inspire me, friends, and family, to vote in a presidential election would be that the election has consequences. Depending on the candidate, it can have negative or positive outcomes for society. It’s about subjects such as school education, wages, and taxes, etc. Simply put, voting is power, says Dr. Cobb. “The theory of democracy is that it is a government for and by the people, and the vote is the basic building block that gives people the power to control their government and to shape what policies they want and the future direction of their town, state, and country.”