The Homeless and their Children

The writing “The Homeless and their Children” by Jonathan Kozol describes one families way of life in the Martinique Hotel in New York City. This is a hotel that houses around four hundred homeless families. When I first started to read this writing, my first impression of the hotel was a good one. I thought, “Wow that is very nice of that city to have a whole hotel for homeless people to stay.” As I read on my opinion soon changed.

The family described in this writing contains a mother and four children. One of her children is very sick with lead poisoning. This woman does not have a job but is on welfare. She has to pay 1500 dollars every two weeks to stay in this hotel for the homeless. This is outrageous. There is no way that the condition that this woman and her family are living in is worth even half of 1500 dollars. To get a picture in your head, the woman’s room is described as having pools of sewage on the floor, a radiator with a broken valve, a very unstable crib for the baby, and horrible lighting. All the room contains is two chairs, a fridge and a T.V that doesn’t work. By the time the writing had described all this I was thinking to myself, “This woman might be better off living on the street.”

Sometimes cities or organizations are not what they appear to be. Although it looks like something nice is being done for someone, the situation is not as grand as it is cut out to be. There is something seriously wrong with this picture. If someone wants to make an effort to help someone, that’s great, but they should truly help them and try their best to get that person back on their feet. In this woman’s case, this hotel where she was staying was more of a burden to her than it was a help. What is the point of even having an organization like that if it is not going to help anyone? To me it seems as if this city was just in it for the money. The hotel described in this story overcharged this woman for her room and never even made an effort to improve her living conditions. Organizations like the Martinique Hotel should really be ashamed of themselves. They are not helping anyone and would be better off shut down.

Immigrants "stealing" jobs

In the writing, “Do Americans Really want Jobs” Rueben Navarrette discusses the issue of Americans who don’t want to do a certain job until an illegal immigrant takes the job. I find this to be very true in a lot of cases. There are many Americans who complain about their jobs, are lazy with their jobs, and also very picky about their jobs. If a job requires too much physical labor and is not exactly what a person wants, many times he/she will deny the job and search for a “better” one. However, if an illegal immigrant happens to get one of these “throw away” jobs all of a sudden people are offended and upset about a job that they didn’t want in the first place. So what is the issue here? Is it that illegal immigrants are stealing American jobs? Or is it that Americans tend to be picky, selfish, and greedy?

I have experienced in the workplace situations where people just don’t want to work. They do it so they can get paid but they don’t work very hard at it and sometimes decide not to show up or they come in late. Often times a person will quit a job because they don’t like it or it was “too hard on them.” I think that illegal immigrants should be allowed to take these “throw away jobs” if they choose to. It is just wrong for an American to dispose of a job and when someone wants to take it the American suddenly wants it back. This is no different than a person throwing away a hamburger and when a homeless person digs it out of the trash to eat it the person suddenly wants it back. Americans are just greedy with their jobs. If an immigrant wants to take an unwanted job, legal or illegal, I think they have every right to. Americans have no place to complain about illegal immigrants “stealing” their jobs because in all actuality, they are just digging those jobs out of the trash.

Grade Inflation

The article “Thousands of students victims of ‘grade inflation’” by Nancy Mitchell explores the idea of many schools being under the influence of grade inflation. The main argument in this article is that many students are not truly earning their good grades; they are victims of grade inflation. A good way to describe this grade inflation is that students are not challenged and are just given good grades for getting work done. In some cases, students who put a lot of effort in their work but don’t meet the teacher’s standards are still given good grades for their effort. So when we step back and look at it, one group of students get an A for meeting all the standards and putting up no effort and another group get an A for trying really hard but not meeting the standards.

In some ways I agree that grade inflation is bad. In my own life I have experienced this in a negative way. A couple other students and I were chosen to go to a math contest at a local school. We were chosen because we were in the hardest class in our school (calculus) and we all had an A in the class. Honestly it wasn’t too hard for me to get that A. Since this was calculus I did have to give more effort than I did in other classes to obtain good grades. There were, however, students who were trying way harder than I in this class and were struggling to keep a C. When we went to the math contest and faced other schools in a contest, I honestly felt like the dumbest person in the room. There were students there who knew so much more than I did and I didn’t understand why since I came from the top class at my own school. I believe it was because of grade inflation. In the article, a student’s school tried to fix its grade inflation and when it did, her GPA went from a 4.0 to 3.4. It was simply because now she had to work harder to get better grades. She admitted that although her GPA was lower she felt smarter. I wonder if the same thing would happen to me if our school tried to fix the inflation. My GPA probably would drop but I think it would be worth it. I would be able to truly learn and be more knowledgeable about things instead of being seemingly smart on paper.

“Cesar Chavez Saved My Life”

In the writing, “Cesar Chavez Saved My Life”, by Daniel Alejandrez, the story is told of Daniel’s childhood. He describes how he experienced discrimination toward him and his family because they were immigrants. He describes the hate that was built up in him and the actions that sprang from this hate. Although this man ended up using his experience to help others, there are people who, when they go through hard situations, spend the rest of their life living in the pain, anger and hatred that they experienced.

Sometimes we come across people in life who are always mad at everyone, always sad about everything, or who have a burning hatred toward people in general. Why do people act that way? After reading this writing and listening to the experience of Daniel Alejandrez, I realized that a lot of the time this hatred and anger comes from past experiences. Daniel was being pushed around and treated like nothing by people who thought that they were better than him and as a result hatred formed in him. This hatred caused him to stab, shoot and almost kill people by the age of 17. I see teens at school sometimes who act as if they hate the world. Could it be that they have a pretty bad home life and feel like they have to treat everyone else the same way that they are treated at home? It is so easy to pass judgment and just assume they “woke up on the wrong side of the bed.” Although I do believe that it is ones choice as to whether or not he/she hates the world or not, some people need help identifying the hatred and getting rid of it.

Daniel ended up breaking free from his hatred because of something he heard Cesar Chavez say. What if he would have never heard the words that inspired him to stand up for himself without violence and help others do the same? Maybe he would have ended up actually killing someone and spending the rest if his miserable life in prison. When we pass by people at school who hate us or are angry at us we need to try to reach out to them. Instead of smarting back to them when they say something rude we should try to love them. I know it might sound hard and a little cliché but if all they get in their whole life hate, anger, and slander, they will never see what it means to love someone. When we see people who look like they really do not want to hear what we have to say, we should speak up anyway. They could be just like Daniel Alejandrez, needing that one word of inspiration to change their life forever.

"That Parent-Child Conversation is Becoming Instant and Online"

In the article, “That Parent-Child Conversation Is Becoming Instant, and Online” John Swartz discusses the topic of families communicating through instant messaging. Many times the comment is made that it is easier for parents to talk to their teenagers because the teens are more open to listen because there is no face to face communication. They say that it is less intense because the two are not looking eye to eye and it causes teens to open up more. I do agree that it probably is easier to talk to teens this way but I think that this also causes people to have slower social skills when talking to people face to face.

If instant messaging is used every time a child needs to talk about something serious to his/her parent, they will probably have problems trying to have any serious conversation directly with people as they grow up. For example, a person has never had to talk to someone directly about a serious issue; something comes up at work where their boss confronts them about something serious or needs to talk and they have never been pushed out of that comfort zone so they do not know what to do. They can’t just pull out their computer or phone and say “well let me text you what I want t say.” People need to be pushed out of their comfort zones to where they can take on any situation face to face. It seems as if the instant messaging has been used as a way out for a person’s cowardly attitude. If someone has something to say they should be able to say it to a persons face.

There is one part in the article where a parent says it is just easier to get more out of her kids through instant messaging. Although this might be true, I think she should still make an effort to push her kids to talk face to face. I am not saying instant messaging is bad but in some ways it takes away from the intensity and reality of a relationship. Talking face to face with a person grows a relationship more than talking over instant messaging whether a person says more through IM or not. I have a personal experience with this issue. I had a friend that I actually met by texting. We would text for hours every day. Once I saw him in person it was really awkward and I felt like I did not know the person at all. Instant messaging, although it can be convenient, takes away from the strength of relationships.