This blog is designed for a class at Brigham Young University. Students use this blog to discuss elements of our multicultural society that we learn about in class. Due to the limit in the number of authors allowed, only students will be able to make posts on this blog. We welcome comments to the posts. Our hope is that this blog will foster dialogue about a number of difficult issues regarding diversity, which in turn will help us to better understand other people's diverse perspectives.
I found this program really interesting and very insightful. I especially enjoyed listening to the people who called in, particularly the teacher who teaches in a poverty-stricken school. My favorite aspect though was the way they stated that culture can possibly be a factor in why poverty exists. In my life, I haven't experienced a lot of poverty, but I have seen it. And from my perspective, I think culture plays a large role in the idea of poverty and why people live in poverty. In Provo, there are two high schools; the "rich" school and the "poor" school. When you compare the environments of each school, you will most definitely notice a difference. At the rich school, most of the kids come from upper middle, if not millionaire, homes. At the poor school, most students come from lower class to poverty-situated homes. The poor school is known for its cases of drug abuse, somewhat of a pregnancy rate, and gang violence in and outside of school. At the rich school, there are only a few people that are known to maybe smoking cigarettes, while all the other students are what you would call typical "Utah Mormons." If you were to ask anyone who lives in Provo why these schools are so different, they might tell you something along the lines of "Because the Mexicans and white trash go to [the poor] school." I believe that because the kids who attend both of these schools know these public perspectives, they act the way that they think people will already judge them as being. So at the poor school, kids are more likely to get themselves into bad situations because that's all that soceity expects from them, while the kids at the rich school will act (somewhat) prim and proper as is expected because they supposedly know better. In a way, what we think are society's expectations of us will be what drive our behaviors, and our behaviors represent our culture. So when we judge poverty by culture, I think we need to look at the expectations those people believe that other people have of them, or in other words, what their culture believes of them.
I'm posting this for Sami Pehrson:
ReplyDeleteI found this program really interesting and very insightful. I especially enjoyed listening to the people who called in, particularly the teacher who teaches in a poverty-stricken school. My favorite aspect though was the way they stated that culture can possibly be a factor in why poverty exists. In my life, I haven't experienced a lot of poverty, but I have seen it. And from my perspective, I think culture plays a large role in the idea of poverty and why people live in poverty. In Provo, there are two high schools; the "rich" school and the "poor" school. When you compare the environments of each school, you will most definitely notice a difference. At the rich school, most of the kids come from upper middle, if not millionaire, homes. At the poor school, most students come from lower class to poverty-situated homes. The poor school is known for its cases of drug abuse, somewhat of a pregnancy rate, and gang violence in and outside of school. At the rich school, there are only a few people that are known to maybe smoking cigarettes, while all the other students are what you would call typical "Utah Mormons." If you were to ask anyone who lives in Provo why these schools are so different, they might tell you something along the lines of "Because the Mexicans and white trash go to [the poor] school." I believe that because the kids who attend both of these schools know these public perspectives, they act the way that they think people will already judge them as being. So at the poor school, kids are more likely to get themselves into bad situations because that's all that soceity expects from them, while the kids at the rich school will act (somewhat) prim and proper as is expected because they supposedly know better. In a way, what we think are society's expectations of us will be what drive our behaviors, and our behaviors represent our culture. So when we judge poverty by culture, I think we need to look at the expectations those people believe that other people have of them, or in other words, what their culture believes of them.