social mobilization and education essays

social mobilization and education essays Meet Sandra, a mother recently divorced from her abusive middle-class husband. Her previous life had been comfortable; she now lives day-to-day with her children, working as a secretary while attending college courses in her little spare time, all while attending to her home and family. She finally ends up attaining her degree, yet can still find no job paying higher than her secretarial job, so she takes on a second job as a grocery checkout person, still barely making ends meet for her family. As described in Ch. 9 of the Giddens text, this woman had obviously worked very hard to attempt to restore her life back to her previous pre-divorce middle-class state. She says, You try to do the responsible thing, and youre penalized, because the system we have right now doesnt provide you with a way to make it. (p. 169) However, she learned the hard way that class is not quite as easy to transcend in this so-called land of opportunity. The United States is the most highly stratified societ y of the industrialized world. Class distinctions operate in virtually every aspect of our lives, determining the nature of our work, the quality of our schooling, and the health and safety of our loved ones. Yet, remarkably, we, as a nation retain illusions about living in the capitalist land of opportunity, where any average Joe can make his million if he works hard enough. The reality of the our situation is that the US is not as open as we think it may be, meaning that social mobility, or the movement between classes, is not nearly as easy as we may believe. This is due to the fact that many social issues, such as gender, racial, and economic class, serve as barriers that obstruct the path of ones social mobility. Despite our own personal efforts and talents, mobility in our society is primarily based on ones status, and overcoming the stereotypes that accompany one̵...

A Quiz About Parenthetical Punctuation

A Quiz About Parenthetical Punctuation A Quiz About Parenthetical Punctuation A Quiz About Parenthetical Punctuation By Mark Nichol Em dashes are woefully underused and misused. Here are five sentences that would be much improved by their proper use, or by proper use of other punctuation in cooperation with them. Determine how each sentence would benefit from changes in punctuation and compare your revisions with my suggested solutions at the bottom of the page: 1. â€Å"Not in years, like more than ten years, have I seen someone so committed to owning the stage.† 2. â€Å"Such pioneers trigger and indeed hope for gentrification leading to more and more middle-class home buyers being willing to take a chance on the neighborhood.† 3. â€Å"You, yes you, can say you were there for the advent of the Apple iPod.† 4. â€Å"It’ll take years to know if it works in humans but in mice the tumors almost completely disappeared.† 5. â€Å"Consumer-oriented businesses are trying to find the words, logo, image and, of course, products that will indelibly brand themselves as environmentally friendly.† Answers and Explanations 1. The phrase â€Å"like more than ten years† (with like, as an interjection, separated from the rest of the phrase with a comma), is more emphatic than one that would merely be parenthesized between commas: â€Å"Not in years like, more than ten years have I seen someone so committed to owning the stage.† 2. The clause beginning with leading does not merit being set off from the rest of the sentence with an em dash, but the phrase â€Å"and indeed hope for,† with the interjection indeed bracketed by commas, should be emphasized by being framed by a pair of em dashes: â€Å"Such pioneers trigger and, indeed, hope for gentrification, leading to more and more middle-class home buyers being willing to take a chance on the neighborhood.† 3. â€Å"Yes you,† with a necessary comma between the words, is such an interruptive element that bracketing by a pair of em dashes is necessary: â€Å"You- yes, you- can say you were there for the advent of the Apple iPod.† 4. Just as you’d do in the case of a pair of commas in a sentence that doesn’t sound quite right, diagnostically remove a parenthetical phrase framed by em dashes from an awkward sentence. In this case, â€Å"but in mice† is an essential dependent clause for the second half of the sentence, and the em dash following it is incorrect. The first em dash can be replaced by a comma, or the single dash can be retained: â€Å"It’ll take years to know if it works in humans but in mice, the tumors almost completely disappeared.† 5. Parentheticals are just that interjections, short or long, that are parenthetical to the main sentence, and any parts of speech within them are integral to the interjection alone. Therefore, without the parenthesis set off by em dashes, this sentence lacks a conjunction in the list of three elements preceding the first dash. Here’s the corrected version: â€Å"Consumer-oriented businesses are trying to find the words, logo, and image- and, of course, products- that will indelibly brand themselves as environmentally friendly.† Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Punctuation category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:45 Synonyms for â€Å"Food†5 Brainstorming Strategies for WritersList of Prefixes and Suffixes and their Meanings