Urban Essay -- essays research papers

Urban Decay barricading our cities, And our mindsEveryone bemoans the way street crime, visible poverty, deteriorating infrastructure, decaying homes and boarded-up businesses are becoming progressively common features of city life, but we rarely ask ourselves how this deterioration in the world around us is affecting the way we look at the world. In not asking that question, we underestimate the importance of urban decay as a problem in its own right, and the degree to which it promotes other loving ills. knowledgeable city decay is part of a dangerous and silent progression that is not being given the attention it deserves the fragmentation of our society into potentially or actually hostile camps, barricaded off from each other. And it has the potential, in the end, to exercise an important influence on the course of national politics. In order to jaw why, we have to start by looking at how decay happens. It begins with an anti-urban bias, a belief, deeply-rooted in Canada an d the United States, that cities are, at best, a necessary evil, and the likely scene of violence, social disorder, dirt and tension. Rural and small-town life, by contrast, is associated with cleanliness, sturdy reliability and family values. The conclusion We may need cities for our livelihoods, but they are not good places to live. These conceptions have been promoted by a profusion of media images. Consider The Waltons, Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, or that odious Mslix comme...

Education Can End Systematic Oppression Essay -- Poverty and Oppressio

The subject of expectations for higher culture is one that tends to spark impassioned debate among educators, students and parents alike. In pedagogics of the Oppressed Paulo Freire presses his audience to consider such expectations in light of ones own intentions, motives, and affections toward those to be educated (Freire 50). He goes even further to suggest that a love for one another through empathetic dialogue, especially on the part of the educator, must be present in order for reverence to be wiped away and liberation to eventually take its place (Freire 89,90). It was that dialogical procession that made Freires literacy programs so successful in Brazil until his work was stop by a military dictatorship in the mid-60s and he was arrested and exiled to Chile (Palmer 128). Even after his release he continued to be an advocate for his approach to education, believing it worked toward liberation for all, freeing both the oppressor and the oppressed (Palmer 129). Some of the oppressed in our own society include, but are not limited to, individuals vitality in poverty, immigrants struggling to adapt and grow in a new culture, and people with developmental disabilities due to abuse and neglect. Many opportunities lie at our fingertips in America but until we apply an empathetic approach to reaching the oppressed in our society, we cannot expect all Americans to seek a college degree nor will education be a means toward societal change.According to the US Census Bureau, out of the 300 plus million people living in the coupled States, 46.5 million of them lived in poverty in 2012 without any change from the previous year (Dept of Commerce). Almost 22% of the people were children under the age of 18 (Dept of Commerce). A... ...riere_pedagogy.pdf. Hamilton, Jon. Orphans Lonely Beginnings Reveal How Parents Shape A Childs Brain. NPR. NPR, 24 Feb. 2014. Web. 26 Feb. 2014. . Koury, Amanda S., and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal. School Readiness of Children from Imm igrant Families Contributions of Region of Origin, Home, and Childcare. Journal of Educational Psychology 106.1 (2014) 268-88. ProQuest. Web. 24 Feb. 2014. Palmer, Joy, David E. Cooper, and Liora Bresler, eds. cardinal Modern Thinkers on Education From Piaget to the Present Day. London Routledge, 2001. Print. WHAT RESEARCH SAYS ABOUT PARENT INVOLVEMENT IN CHILDRENS EDUCATION. SOM - State of Michigan. Michigan Department of Education, Mar. 2002. Web. 24 Feb. 2014. .