The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society free essay sample

The Education Problems in America The United States is supposed to be one of the world’s most affluent and technologically-advanced societies. Unfortunately, education is not as effective as it should be. There are many problems with public education. I think redistributing funding, collecting the comments on education system from the public, could really make an impact on our education system. What is wrong with the education system? Referring to Rose’s â€Å"I Just Wanna Be Average†, there were spate of reports on the school criticizes parents for not involving themselves in the education of their children. We will write a custom essay sample on The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Without the parents’ help, how would someone like middle or high school level student know what to ask? Not like in the past, our parents is not being very involved with our education, they neither won’t asked about your grades nor homework every day when you got home. They seem not interested in the school life of their children. However, an important consideration in the middle or high schools is the identity development which takes place during adolescence. The role of parents is coach and the mentor toward their kids. As a mentor, they should provide advices and training to their children in order to help them gain experience.It is the best way encouraging students to learn. Lack of parental involvement, students could not pass through the difficulty of studying or even give up learning. By reading what Rose’s experience during the vocational study, one main idea can be summarized. That is, there were a few teachers who worked hard at education. As mentioned, some of them only work for paid and mostly had no idea of how to engage the imaginations of the students. Lack of awareness of the significance of education makes them disinterested in teaching and lessons become bored. Thus, education is boring would branded into students’ mind.And, what is wrong in this society? In the United States, millions of adult illiterates are suffering in the courses of their routine existence. Illiteracy means not being able to read and write. Among the main causes of illiteracy the first is poverty. Teenagers might need to work for paid in order to help the family and cannot be spared for school. Although the government improves the education system even better than before, they still cannot benefit from it. Lake of educational facilities is also a major factor. Since the illiterates were not well-educated, so employers would not be willing to pay much for hiring them.If the school or other educational facilities are located far away from where they live, they probably cannot afford the transportation fee. A woman in Detroit, for example, brought home a gallon of Crisco for her children because she thought that she had bought the chicken that was pictured on the label. Looking at the reality described above by reading Kozol’s â€Å"The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society†, they are always misleading by the wrong information. You may say the illiteracy problem is just affecting the illiterates themselves, but the true is the America, even the world as a whole would be affected.Since they all have the right to vote for any US political organizations, if the unsuitable person was picked up, the whole country would be suffered. Nowadays, intelligence usually linked with well-educated in this society. Is there a correlation between people who score highly on the exam and those who seem to be more intelligence? According to Asimov’s essay, the answer would be â€Å"NO†. He argued that the exam result could only indicate you are very good at answering the type of academic questions but not really intelligence.Unlucky, the government is willing to provide more resources on people who did well on the exam than the others. Therefore, illiteracy is not caused by a lack of intelligence. It is caused by the resources wrongly located. The illiterates cannot get what they need for improvement. Illiterates who is suffer most from the education problems in the United States, so their comments are most important to make our education system better, to make our society, a better society. And we need to redistribute the resources in order to help them for improvement. The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society free essay sample The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society Illiteracy in America can have negative and devastating effects on society as a whole. The effects that illiteracy has range from embarrassment to low self-esteem as well as high crime rates. Illiteracy seems to have an even more devastating effect in the lower income communities. Based on that, Johnathan Kozol wrote â€Å"The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society,† that was an article in Illiterate America (1985) to show how illiteracy lowers people’s quality of life, reduce the education, and prevents them take part in democratic society fully. Negative effects of illiteracy in America are also heavy in politics. One has to wonder how someone who cannot read or write manages to vote. In order for a person to vote or make a wise decision about who they should vote for, and one must know how to read. As Jonathan Kozol writes†: The number of illiterate adults exceeds by 16 million the entire vote cast for the winner in the 1980 presidential contest. We will write a custom essay sample on The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page If even one third of all illiterates could vote, and read enough and so sufficient math to vote in their self-interest, Ronald Regan would not likely have been chosen president. There is, of course, no way to know for sure† (253). Most illiterate people that do vote based on what the person looks like but not for what they know about the person and what he or she can do to help. If 60 million people in the United States cannot read, then they cannot cast a vote truly representation of their opinions. As Kozol Claims, the United States has in fact become a government â€Å"of those two thirds whose wealth, skin color, or parental privilege allows them opportunity to profit from the provocation and instruction of written word† (253). Every day, the illiterates suffer in the panic of life that they cannot understand. It can affect their parenting roles when the illiterates cannot read or write note to their children’ teacher, even they are not able to help with the homework. Illiterates cannot practice with many regular health measures or heed health dangers such as medications can pose a great danger on illiterates because they cannot read to educate themselves about instructions. Especially, illiterates are endangers by not being able to read stipulations. They would be scared and intimidated by lack of understanding. In addition, due to the illiteracy of some women and lack of help in under –privileged hospital, incorrect surgeries have been performed on unsuspecting women and taken away their right of child-bearing. Illiterates cannot manage living expenses. They cannot pay bills easily and often spend more than necessary. They also have to rely on others to know what is going on or explain things to them. Their rights are being violated as citizens because they are not fully informed; they need ask the others but some of whom are not really trustworthy. Illiterates lack the comfort of being able to even do such simple things as emergency phone numbers. In particularity, driving down a street and not knowing how to read the street sings can be scary to an illiterate person Small to big situations, such as ordering food to calling for help are all fears in the everyday life of an illiterate. The fear of not knowing, the fear of being humiliated, the fear of being insure of the rights are all sometimes more problematic than the issue at hand. Sometimes illiterates would rather suffer in silence than be humiliated by someone finding out they cannot read. Kozol uses the essay â€Å"The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society† to demonstrate the effects illiteracy has on society. He shows different examples, some of which are dramatic; to portray the dangers illiteracy poses in such simple everyday life tasks. He also explains how illiteracy can have effects on society as a whole. He feels that government has neglected this issue for too long. Kozol hopes this essay can recruit the reader into an effort to get the problem of illiteracy addressed and corrected.