The Decline of Education Social and Economic Inequality...

In the year 2020, Kevin Hanley works as a janitor. By 2050, his son is a beggar on the street. How did this happen to Kevin Hanley’s son? This story was just a fictional one, titled â€Å"The Fable of the Lazy Teenager† by Ben Stein. It is about the decline of America through the degradation of the American educational system. If the educational system fails, than we will become no better than our ancestors in that we will have no education, and therefore people would be back to the starting block positions of hard manual labor. However, according to James Loewen’s â€Å"The Land of Opportunity,† even the educational system is slipping, stating that when he asked questions like, â€Å"why are people poor?† he got woefully inadequate responses. In both†¦show more content†¦Only one of the textbooks that were mentioned in both works talked about the three social strati, the high, the middle, and the lower classes, that actually existed in Am erica. This was vitally important to our rise as a country, because the rich provided work for the poor, and the poor made money, making it available to obtain good, quality education for themselves and their children. Their children will then use the education that they received to grasp at higher paying jobs that then starts the cycle all over again. However, this cycle has a flaw. This flaw is determination. According to Stein’s article, what caused the Kevin in 2050 to become a beggar was a lack of determination on his part and his ancestor’s part. The story tells of a student named Kevin in 1990 who has a dream about his ancestors and their journey to freedom and education and then their digression back to ignorance. The flaw was that as each Kevin was pushed harder and harder by their fathers, the sons promised to not push their sons as hard, thus leading to a drop in their son’s determination, because their sons had no one pushing them. If the sons had kept working hard, as hard as their ancestors, then they would have stayed out of poverty. If textbooks and teachers do not maintain their student’s interest, this scenario may very well happen. In â€Å"The Land of Opportunity,† Loewen brings up the importance of theShow MoreRelatedCauses Of Economic Inequality820 Words   |  4 Pages Inequality has always been a factor present in existing societies. However, as modern societies arise, economic inequality is beginning to appear more frequently. In the last two decades in the United States, many factors contributed to the increase in economic inequality compared to that of other developed countries. The most notable factors that explain the increase in economic inequality are technology, decline in manufacturing, and government policies. 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