how can i make a difference

Brenna Gustafson

Stacey Knapp

English 1A

28 April 2013

                                                            If I Could Make a Difference

            If I could make a difference in my community I would want to create more positive outlets for children to be a part of in hopes that they would have a chance at life without gangs. There are many aspects of why kids go towards gangs. To get to the heart of the problem that is affecting nearly all neighborhoods in America one would have to break down the components of why kids go towards gangs. So I ask myself what are the problems and how can I counter act the appeal of gang life? The problems that I can see are lack of proper support from parents or parent, lack of education from parents on the signs of their children’s fascination towards gangs, the lack of positive support from teachers and adults in children’s lives, and the lack of things for children to do after school. In order for a drastic change to happen the whole community would have to participate in the rehabilitation of our young.

            It is one of the hardest problems to tackle, and that is the lack of proper support from a single or both parents. A lot of the time parents do not care what their children are doing. Parents also minimize and justify their children’s behavior. I would want a law set in place for those parents who let their children do what they want to lose parental rights and for the parents who really care about their kids there should be free classes on parenting that should be mandatory, which our community should offer. Not every situation is black and white and not every parent who is unintentionally neglecting their child is doing so purposely. Every case would have to be really examined with care by someone who cared about the lives of our young.

            There is also a lack of education available to parents who notice signs that their children are acting out. I would want to start groups that parents can go to help them set boundaries and stick to them no matter what. It is imperative for parents to be able to catch the signs before it is too late.  The is only a small amount of time that you have before you lose your kid for good then it is too late and your child will be lost in the never ending cycle of jails, institutions, and misery. For those parents who say that they do not have the time for groups I would say to you that you will regret not taking time off for your kid to save their life because when your kid turns thirteen or fourteen it will be too late. Gangs recruit kid young and the reason for that is young kids are easily manipulated.      

            It sounds like a lot but it is worth it to invest time and money in our youth they are the future. You may not think that this can happen to you but gangs are reaching the suburbs. I went through this with my nephew who is now fifteen. I saw the early signs of him going down the wrong road. I followed my simple rules and I was able to help him through the grips of gang life.

RR# 3 Rereading America

Brenna Gustafson

Stacy Knapp

English 1 a

14 April 2013

                                                         RR#3 Rereading America

            In the book "Rereading America" by editors Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie

Lisle there is this very heavy and controversial topic that is affecting America presently. The

book is about teens peer pressure, and how the corporations in America are capitalizing on our

counties youth's so called" rebellion". According to Rushkoff  “Today five enormous companies

are responsible for selling nearly all of youth culture"(650). Rushkoff goes on by saying that

these giant corporations go after our youth by sending spies to watch and find out what is so

called "cool". This statement is not very surprising. If one really takes a look at any big

corporation whether it be a food corporation or anything that is being sold to us it is clear as day

that the only thing that really matters is money. There is no integrity in the money

making business, no moral standards, and ultimately it is about turning a profit at the expense of

whoever stands in the way.

  In the chapter "No Limits" the subject of this part in the book is the momentum that is

building to do the most shocking trends and inventive lengths that people are trying to be

enlightened. The author touches on the fact that any crazy or some may say horrifying trends can

be made to sound appealing, but when one looks at the actual trend it may not be what you

thought you were buying into. This chapter goes over the new trend called suspension and the

way that people are being drawn into this crazy notation of “freeing yourself”. To me this is a

form of marketing to try to sell people things to get our hard earned money. Anything that needs

to be dressed up for consumption is a way of tricking people. Something that we as humans are

searching for like a product, idea, style, music, spiritual enlightenment, should not be dressed up

in manipulated ways to make you believe what you are being told, whatever it is that we are

searching for should speak for its self.

            I

In this article I agree with some of what the author is concluding, but on the other hand I

do not think that society can move backwards in time to so call “heal one family at a time” the

bigger issue is not just the corporations or the way marketing is done to reach our young. I think

that way to give the young people of America a chance at a stable, ethical future is to teach

parents how to be good parents. I think that we as a community should offer parenting classes for

the parents who want to make a difference in their children’s lives. I also think that we should

have stricter laws for parents who do not care about their children. We as America should hold

parents accountable for having kids and not caring for them. There are a lot of people in

America, especially young people, who are trying to find some sort of identity and spiritual

enlightenment and as parents it is our job to fully educated our kid and build their self esteem.

               

MLA information

The source that I used in my topic essay was a  article publish online by Joshua Bearman. According to the UNC University Library  "Citations beginning with names and those beginning with titles are to be alphabetized together. Numbers in titles are treated as though they have been spelled out. For names, alphabetize based on the letters that come before the comma separating the last name from the first, and disregard any spaces or other punctuation in the last name. For titles, ignore articles such as "a" and "the" (and equivalents in other languages) for alphabetization purposes." This information as well as the library 10 that I am taking ,in conjunction with this English1a class, has helped me be able to understand how to properly give credit to the people who have composed or done research on any of the topics that I will be researching.