People Like Us and Media Magic

                       Media Magic: Making Class Invisible

          In today’s world, the mass media is arguably the most influential in molding public consciousness. Media is highly concentrated, and the different corporations are getting smaller because of ownership and control related issues. But because the companies are shrinking the control of the industry is expanding. In my opinion media plays a big role in our cultural lives, helping us understand society, and know what is going on in the world.

          The U.S is the most highly stratified society in the industrialized world. But if we are the most industrialized society in the world, why are there so many poor people. Many people in the world don’t know what’s going on in the poverty society because the media chooses to provide its users with meager coverage of the poor, which is usually misleading information. Many people believe that the media ignores the poor. And I completely agree with this because in my 19 years of watching the news I rarely see or hear anything about the poor. What people in society should know is that the rate of poverty is increasing twice as fast as the population growth. My question is, why do we have a government? The government is supposed to help their citizens, but recently their more focused on abroad affairs. All you see on the television is war related stuff, and other stuff about crimes. Yes those stuff are important, but we need to know more about the economy and financial related stuff to have a chance to survive as a working class family and become poor. When people hear poor, they roughly think about living on streets and being a disturbance to the world. That’s their opinion, but honestly people need to think if that was them what they would feel like. The Middle class and Upper class can be cold hearted sometimes to people lower than them.

          When the media talks about everyone else, they say we are divided between the”Underclass” and everyone else. In my eyes I really don’t understand what they mean about this, but this message is often contradictory. Much of the information provided to us from the media focuses its attention on the concerns of the wealthy and privileged class of people. This is completely true. For example, recently all you see on the new is celebrities, wealthy people and the president. I say who cares about them; all they do is flash/ show off their money especially the celebrities. Another example I see mostly on the news is the sports in school. All you see is Private schools games on the news. What happened to the other schools that win constantly and win division championships? You rarely see them on the news because it’s most likely public school.

          This article was an eye opener for me. Many of my views towards the media are answered. Only the rich and wealthy prosper on media not the underclass people. The poor and working class people work twice as hard as rich people but get payed so low just because this concept of social structure. Many believe that whichever social classes you are born into you stay in that class. But no that is not true. People can go to school and get an education to better their lives. But the media shuts that down for most of the people; tell the world about misleading information and untrue stuff. The media need to pick up on the poverty issue which is growing dangerously fast.

                       People like Us: Social Classes in America

          This video is about the different class people fall in. It is basically against the American principle to belong to a class but it does exist. The Americans have trouble talking about class because they don’t want to admit that it exists, or let people have a thought of what class they are in. It is based on popularity, money, housing, and where your parents worked or where you work. Social Climbers are people who are very anxious to gain a higher social status.  Upper class people say that they won’t ever drive a Volvo because it is typically a middle-class to lower class car. But then again they say they won’t even drive a ford because it gets stolen a lot. One thing clouds my mind is the fact that they won’t drive a ford which are a middle class car but will drive an upper class car like a McLaren or BMW which tend to get stolen more often. What I see often and do as well is act very tough when an upper-class person comes up to you. Mostly in business middle to lower class people who get approached by upper class-men in suits tell them to take off the jacket and tie. Why? Because they won’t let them look down on them and disrespect them because they have money and power.

          One thing that’s very disturbing is children in schools are being segregated because of this so called class. For school kids, class does matter because other students judge you all kinds of ways. Mostly in fashion because who ever dress to impress tells the others that they are a higher class. This video showed me many things. But that disturbs me is that most of the upper class people in the video are white and tend to shut down other classes especially blacks. For example, one upper class guy tell the viewers that some parent don’t want their kids in public schools because of the blacks. To me that is totally racists. Another thing that is explained in the video is that America is divided by class by which neighborhood you live in, your education, or the way you dress. There are many Inequalities that cannot be explained about class, but class does exist in the world, its just people don’t like to talk about it.

                                                Extra Credit

                        Ted Talk Conference on Education

          Studies show that every 1 in 5 kids drop out of high school. That is almost 1 million students a years. Poverty and negative peer influence plays a big role in student’s lives and education. If a student is in poverty, they usually have messed up clothing which affects them because others kids make fun of them. This can lead to kids dropping out. When kids follow a bad crowd they are forced to do things they don’t want to do, but do it anyways because of peer pressure. One of the most looked at thing in education today is human connection and relationships between the teacher and their students. Without good relationships the student won’t listen to their teachers and won’t learn anything. But is the teachers show the kids that they care then that would help everything. Rita Pierson tells us that if a teacher says sorry to a student because he/she made a mistake in class, that can affect the student by letting them know you care for them. If a teacher just teaches and don’t explain the kids won’t lie them. And studies show that kids don’t learn from people they don’t like.

          According to Dr. Ramsey, teachers should know that student’s questions are very important. Answering the student questions can help them understand better and will show them that you care. He also argues that student should be curious of what there are being teached so that they can have a better understanding of it. He goes on telling the viewers that’s there is a big difference between knowledge and learning. And teachers need to see this in kids to help them better understand what is being thought.