U.S. Prison Myth vs. Mayhem

There has always been this myth that the best solution to handling and dealing with gangsters and criminals is to put them in jail and have them do the time they deserve for the crime they have committed. This has been a myth, and according to our society today that is the best way to handle this situation. The reality is that we are running out of jail space and the only solution we all see is to build more prisons for the new people that are committing crimes. In the Article U.S Prison Myth vs. Mayhem by Frank Trippett he talks about how the American society is so set in the prison system and how it works that they ignore all other solutions to handling and dealing with criminals. The US government spends so much money housing the inmates each year they spent about 50,000 a year per cell in each prison and since the prisons are running out of space the solution they have come up with was to build more prisons with is going to cost us billions of dollars. Trippett talks about instead of building more prisons to hold more inmates there are a couple of alternatives. For example the inmates who are not dangerous who are not a threat to society can work on rebuilding or cleaning the society to pay them back instead of having them locked up in prison and having them serve time. offenders like these who have committed petite crimes by having them locked up in prison while serving there time it actually feeds their ego and makes them antisocial. so when they do manage to get out they become recidivists and keep repeating the same crimes over and over because they know once they go back to jail they can survive and just do their time. I believe that this is not the best solution to dealing with criminals or gangsters especially because once a gangsters goes into prison instead of rehabilitation they become stronger and meaner so when they do come out they might commit worse crimes than what they did to get them in jail in the first place. I believe that they should have centers of rehabilitation like Trippett said that some states have actually started to do. This way instead of having them locked up they are actually getting some help and are paying of there time by working while being closely supervised by government officials. This idea sounds like it would actually work better than the prison system because they are able to get a sense that by committing that crime they actually have to work it off instead of being locked up in jail and serving their time and getting three meals a day without doing anything in return. What I found interesting about this article is how much money the government actually spends on all of these prisons and according to this article some of the prisons are actually being controlled by the inmates themselves because the government actually has not control over them. this got me thinking because they are investing all these money for noting when they can be using it for greater things like build institutions where inmates can get psychological help and try to help them change their ways. What I found confusing about this article was that it didn't give us more detailed on what was the procedure that the prisons took when the inmates attacked the officials and what happen to those inmates. besides all of the negative stuff I believe we should come up with better ways to address this problem because if we keep continuing to throw everyone in jail that commits a crime we are actually contributing to the problem.

low achieving schools

While doing my research I was shocked about my findings. I found out that there are a lot of schools who are in need of help and are on the verge of getting shut down. I found out that there are a lot of proposals on the table and grants that the government has but don’t really approve them because of the situation and standing of the schools and a major factor of that is the students who attend these schools. Schools are being rated on how well the students do in test and at the level that they are performing. I believe that’s not fair because these schools don’t have the same privileges as other well equipped schools have, so they shouldn’t be concentrated just this they should concentrate in helping them grow and succeed in school.  

While I was reading and doing research on the subject of low achieving schools in the Bay Area, I found a lot of comparisons that relate to the book that we are reading in class Savage inequalities by Jonathon Kozol. One of the major things that I saw in comparisons to the book was that there are actually a lot of low achieving schools especially in Oakland which is one of the closes cities to where I live from. When I was reading the report I saw a couple of names of school which seemed familiar and I actually know a couple of people who attended one of those schools. When I used to talk to my friends that attended that school they would always complain of how ghetto of a school it was and that the teachers didn’t really cared about the students. When I was reading the reports for grants and money that the government is actually approving there are some schools that aren’t getting any money and if they do get some money they have the money pending. And don’t really know when the school will receive the money. They make these choices because the school has very low percentage of students actually graduating and not improving themselves.  In the book the schools actually receive money but they get the least amount of money compared to schools that are doing well or are in the suburbs.  They get the least amount of money because they are located in the ghettos and kids really aren’t learning anything. Students in these conditions don’t manage to succeed in school and just drop out.

                I read a report in which they were talking in order to save the schools and not shut them down and expect a turnaround they would need to do a lot of remodeling. Not only by remodeling the school but remodeling the whole entire staff from janitors to teachers and even the principals. The way that they explained it in the report is that a major reason that the student don’t do good in school is due to the teachers and the people the staff they around all day. In the schools that are in the verge of getting shut down there reports show that the teachers are not good at all and there are not motivated and they probably just show up to school to receive a pay check because they really don’t care about the children or their success. In the book the teachers either treat their students really bad and don’t really care for their success because in the classrooms the children would be doing one thing and a portion of them will be doing something else while the teacher is reading a magazine or something else not paying attention to the students.  In the report in order to get a good turnover of the schools they specify that they would have to hire new teachers who are motivated and care about teaching and will inspire students to get excited to come to schools. By hiring a new principal they would have better structures and rules that would be followed and reconstruct the school. The government still hasn’t decided to pass this yet though because of the children’s test scores and the way they are learning they are undecided that by investing all this money into the schools that there is actually going to be a turnover. This concept actually happen in the book as well because the government would invest in the schools that were in the ghetto because the children would do good and there would be no need to spend all that money for nothing if they weren’t going to see any turnover in the process. I believe that the reason why students don’t actually do well in the schools because they are forbidden from so many things like computers, textbooks, good teachers, supplies that they actually don’t get because of the money situation of the grants.

                If the government would just give these low achieving schools a better structure and more support specially grants and use them for the better to reconstruct the schools. There is an actually a good possibility that there would be a turnover of children and students getting excited and being motivated to go to school and actually pass the courses and manage to graduate as well. I think that having these options for schools especially replacing the staff because they are actually the ones that interact with the students and are the once whom have the greatest impact on the students to do well. Also by having the correct technology and supplies is an essential way to learn because if they don’t have the latest technology or supplies they actually get left behind because society is advancing so rapidly. If the government would have done all these changes a couple of years back when I was still in high school maybe just maybe my friends that attend these type of schools in Oakland might of managed to graduate and have a better life.

Survival of the children

                When it comes to our children’s educations there shouldn’t be a question of how we should try and help out the youth in order to succeed in school and in life. The united state government should definitely step up and do something about this situation especially when it comes to elementary school where children are barely growing and developing rapidly and that’s where they learn the basic lessons where they develop to succeed in every other course they get enrolled in school. When I was reading Savage Inequalities by Jonathon Kozol, he speaks about how the government helps students but there are preferences in the students they help the most. One of the messages that I got from this reading is that in poorly founded public schools there is greed and this greed makes the poor poorer and the rich richer. This is very true because Kozol spoke on all of the public schools that he would visit and depending on their location the government makes a better investment in that schools but if there are schools in the ghettos they still support them but give them the least amount of money because they think that since those schools are filled with blacks and Latino children they are going to achieve anything in life. Kozol says, “While some defend it as, in theory, “the survival of the fittest,” it is more accurate to call it the survival of the children of the fittest -or the most favored” (60). Kozol has a good point because the government favors those children whom they see that they will actually succeed but if you don’t give them the correct funding for schools how do they know that they won’t excel in school.  Principal Jack Foreman of Morris High school he by himself started to teach a theatre class without the help of the government because they wouldn’t give them any funding for classes or to better the schools structures. Once he started this class he had a student how had dropped out of school because he thought he wasn’t going to excel in anything, Carlos the student decided to return to school and took this theatre class and he excelled in this class he could memorize plays fast because he had a photographic memory. This are the things that the government should concentrate on the children not where they are located and judge them according to where they reside and there race because there are brilliant minds out there that are just waiting to be discovered but If you don’t give them the opportunity to do so those beautiful minds go to waste. That’s why we should change this statistics of the survival of the children because everyone deserves to survive and strive.  

Part Tres

The United States is a nation of mixed cultures, races, ethnicities and immigrants, which have had a huge part in building this great country from the bottom up to what it is today.  Then why is it that our government treats some but not all illegal immigrants in such harsh ways that they try to do the littlest they possibly can to support them, especially when it comes to immigrant’s students educations.  We can have significant changes by helping those immigrant students less fortunate then us. If the government would just simply put some part into helping the immigrant students succeed in their educations we would have so many more students in school and there would be more need for teachers some good teachers that actually love to teach not the kind of teachers that just show up to class and expect to receive a pay check at the end of the month. If there were more students in schools we would have the need for more teachers that can inspire students to succeed and motivate them to continue and purse a career, instead of having a lot of immigrant students not go to school.

If more the government would allow immigrants students to continue and go to college and they would help them out in the process. We can all participate in making a change for a better, brighter tomorrow for everyone. Like I said before there are some immigrant students who have come here since they were so young that they have accustom themselves and their lifestyles are the American ways. I remember that when I found out that every university was rejecting me I thought that I could join the army because that was like my second choice if I decided not to go to college. I was willing to go and join the army and give my life to this country that I have lived for my whole entire life because I surely didn’t remembered anything about Mexico. The truth reality is that even though you are willing to fight and die for this country because to me it was my country they still push you away because you are just an illegal immigrant to the government.  That’s why if the government would make some changes it would benefit everyone because I am sure that I’m not the only one who felt this way about this country that a lot of immigrant students live in.

The united states if their government would lend a helping hand to those immigrants that want to go to school and help them out in the process imagine how much more this country can be. With better education for immigrant students who want to succeed in their lives and receive a better education and a better life as well.  We would have more professions and people with careers which would increase the workforce and have better paying jobs. With better paying jobs they would have more money to spend on other things such as properties and tangible things, this would increase the money that we would spend and in a way it can benefit the united states by having more people spend money they can help reduce the united states debt deficit. It can also allow more jobs for other students who are in need of part time jobs while they are going to school. Allowing the immigrant students to continue with their college and finish they wouldn’t have the need to continue to be working part time or jobs in which they are only a server, host, and cashier or in the retail departments. This can open the doors to so many jobs if the government would just allow and help immigrant workers succeed in colleges.  I know that it will definitely help a lot of students succeed and get better jobs I know it would have definitely helped me a lot.

Ted talk

In ted talk Sir Ken Robinson, there were a couple of things that struck me. Yeah the first one was the wrist watch i think that in a matter of couple more years no one is going to be using wrist watches no more, they will go extinct and people are going to be using them only as a part of Jewelry. I personally dont like watches to me i feel like they take a lot of space around my wrist and they are uncomfortable and its so true that people under in there twenties or teenagers dont seem to care for them because we are living in a digital era where if we want to know something we pull out our phone and its more convenient since the phones can do multiple things at once and the watch may only do two which is tell the time and date. The other thing that struck me was when he said that we must take revolution on our governments educational process. The governments way is telling us what to do in life and they want us on that vertical road to take all of the steps and accomplish something when you are finished with that road. We should grow like that we should grow organic like he was talking about and take that road but dont take all those steps in a hurry, we must explore and see what we are good at; find our passion and our talents thats we really should do to achieve our full ptential in life. We dont want to be stuck doing something we dont like for the rest ouf our lifes feeling miserable with how we live. We must find our true passion and do what we love to do in order to be satisfied in our lives and that becomes us, then when you get asked what you do for a living you can trully say what you love doing and thats you, not that you work at a job you hate and hate your life. We must explore our passions and find out our talents in able to grow organically and have a wonderful life.

Immigrant Students

Armando Oseguera

Professor Monique Williams

English 1A

2 September 2013

What is The Government Doing about Immigrant Students?

            It is very hard for students to be motivated to continue to go to college after they graduate from high school. It is even harder for immigrant students that came to this country involuntarily it wasn’t their choice to come it was their parents’ choice to bring them here to give them a better life experience. Their parents choose to come to the United States to leave all of the suffering that they were doing back in their countries from lack of food on the tables to the cities or towns being too dangerous to live in. What they didn’t realize was that even in the United States their child life would be somewhat better; they were going to face lots of challenges when it came to their education. From the start when they were enrolled in school they enrolled them in (ESL) English as Second Language class but they still had a lot other classes where they didn’t understand the teacher or students due to the lack of English speaking communication. Even though the first years here they might have struggled a little they got enrolled in the public schools, learned to speak English, and absorbed American values. Yet, they have limited access to many mechanisms that promote upward mobility and social integration, Such as good education and good employment. This article relates to the passion project because if you aren’t motivated to do something or if you don’t possess any inspiration to keep going you won’t, that’s why they government should inspire and help immigrant students to keep going to school and continue to grow. “Nationwide, there are approximately 11 million undocumented people living in the United States. Between one and two million of them are children, and each year, 50,000 to 65,000 undocumented students like these described above graduate from United States high schools. While many will end their educational trajectories there, those who wish to continue on to college will face a series of obstacles” (4).  Some of the obstacles that students face is tuition the government charge a lot more tuition if you are an immigrant student. What this article also talked about is how they are proposing laws to help those students who wish to go to college and that they would only have to pay state tuition. “One would have to know how much it costs a state to offer reduced tuition to these students, controversy, how much a state benefits from those students acquiring a higher education and entering a the labor-force as more highly qualified workers”(11).  States would highly benefit from this. They would be producing more money and it will give allow the immigrant students to be more motivated to continue their studies and purse a career and have better lifestyles, not only because that’s why their parents brought them here in the first place, but it will benefit them and the United States as a whole.   

Library Database:  JULIE STEWART & THOMAS CHRISTIAN QUINN

To Include or Exclude: A Comparative Study of State Laws on In State for Undocumented Students In the United States.

Texas Hispanic Journal of Law & Policy. Fall2012, Vol. 18 Issue 1, p1-47. 47p.

Mind Blowing Post #1

This blog space reflects me because I do a lot of random things that are mind blowing. What does mind blowing mean? Mind blowing means I do random things that are somewhat weird or awkward to other people, however, my family and friends think that I am a very funny person even though I don’t try to be. Right now the most important thing to me is finishing school, because I want to do something better with my life and not continue doing what I am doing now. I am passionate about traveling and doing adventurous things. I recently went to the Dominican Republic and I had a blast. Some of the most memorable things I did there are swimming with sharks and the natural swimming pool in the middle of the ocean. These are some of the mind blowing things that I like doing that other people don't do often.  I am in school to get a better education and to one day get a career that I love. Another reason I am in school is to make my parents proud because they never got a chance to go to college and do something with their lives that they really love doing. I hope to become a better writer and a better critical thinker, because I feel like I lack some skills in both of those areas. I also want to become more interested in reading, because I don’t like it and I get bored really fast and sometimes even fall asleep. I value being successful and getting a good job one day, this is my motivation to succeed in college and in life. I also value family because they support me and want me to succeed in school and they want the best for me. They motivate me to do well in college so that one day I can be successful and make them proud.