U. S. Leadership Essay Example for Free

U. S. Leadership Essay Minorities are concentrated in urban areas or CBD’s by a variety of forces. After World War II, many people (mostly African Americans) migrated from the South to the North. The housing demand was much greater than the housing supply. The FHA and other organizations, supported by the U. S. government, began offering low interest loans to white people in the newly developing suburbs. â€Å"While many organizations were providing low-cost financing for houses in the suburbs, such as the Home Owners Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration and the Veteran’s Mortgage Guarantee Program, the FHA refused to guarantee suburban loans to poor people, nonwhites, Jews and other ‘inharmonious’ racial and ethnic groups because the value of homes in the neighborhood, according to the FHA, would drop in value (Chudacoff 270). Because of these low interest loans to aid whites in moving to the suburbs and the restrictive covenants that kept blacks and other minorities out of suburban areas, minorities were not able to move out of CBD’s. So whites fled to the suburbs (a phenomenon called white flight), but minorities were forced to stay. Many jobs went to the suburbs as well, which means that urban jobs became decentralized as well. Black neighborhoods were then further divided by freeways and other projects of urban renewal. The freeways became barriers between whites and other races, as Graham Greene called this â€Å"the racing and placing of America† (Greene 39). Jalbert also sums this up with â€Å"Suburbanization was a decidedly white experience enforced by blatant racism, unequal access to economic opportunity, and restrictive housing covenants† (Jalbert). This segregation affects schools in a variety of ways. Since schools are funded chiefly by state property taxes (except for the 8. 5% from the federal government), suburban schools have always fared better. Economic differences exist between CBD and suburban areas obviously. Because of white flight, enhanced by the FHA’s low interest loans for whites to buy in the suburbs, and restrictive covenants that left minorities out of the suburbs, economic inequity remains. Houses in the suburbs are assessed generously while houses in the CBD are redlined, or assessed for less money because the neighborhoods are mixed). Education is unequal. This is a large and seemingly insurmountable problem in American education. Harris (2002) sums up the entire problem quite eloquently in the following quote. It is perfectly obvious that the highest at-risk students have the poorest, most run-down physical environments, the greatest instability of teachers coming and going, the fewest fully qualified teachers, a shortage of textbooks and instructional materials, far less availability of technology in the classroom, overcrowded classrooms, poor working conditions for the teachers, and fewer resources to teach students to pass the tests that they have little chance of being properly prepared to take. To compare these schools with those serving the most affluent majority of students is akin to comparing a backward, emerging nation with a highly industrialized nation. It is no contest† (Harris. 37). The inequities in education are directly caused by the breakdown of the CBD’s. The U. S. government put money behind the loans the FHA program and others gave to whites. The government even financed the freeway system with 50/50’s so that suburban people could have roads for a faster commute. Minorities were relegated to the CBD’s. Even in recent years, projects of urban renewal have further harmed CBD’s, like Dodger Stadium in an area called Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles. Schools in this country are more segregated than they were before Brown vs. the Board of Education, and schools in CBD’s are mostly minorities. To further illustrate the reality of these inequities in education, a quote by Jonathan Kozol’s recently published article for The Nation is needed. â€Å"The contrasts between what is spent today to educate child in the poorest New York City neighborhoods, where teacher salaries are often even lower. than the city averages, and spending levels in the wealthiest suburban areas are daunting challenges to any hope New Yorkers might retain that even semblances of fairness still prevail. Teachers in the schools of District 7 in Mott Haven, for example, where some 99. 8 percent of children are black or Latino, now receive a median salary that is approximately half the median salary of teachers in the affluent communities of Great Neck and Manhasset. (The actual numbers, which are annually compiled by the state, are $42,000 for a teacher in Mott Haven, versus $82,000 for the teachers in these two Long Island suburbs.) Including all the other costs of operation of a public school, a third-grade class of twenty-five children in the schools of Great Neck now receives at least $200,000 more per year than does a class the same size in Mott Haven, while children in a comparable classroom in Manhasset now receive a quarter-million dollars more. † (Kozol 1) Kozol sums it up absolutely. These are the cold hard facts of urban economics in the schools of New York City. Schools in CBD’s are inequitable; they are segregated. They contain the students who need the most help with the teachers who are least prepared to help them. They need more money for remediation programs, but do not have the property taxes nor the influential parents to get the money. They never had an equal chance from the start, and if education is to play the role of the great equalizer, these problems need to be fixed. Works Cited Chudacoff, Howard. â€Å"The Politics of Growth in the Era of Suburbanization, 1945-1974, in Chudacoff and Smith, The Evolution of American Urban Society, pp. 263-296. Greene, Ronald Walter, Malthusian Worlds: U. S. Leadership and the Governing of the Population Crisis, 1939. Harris, Louis (2002). If You Want to Know About the Schools, Ask the Teachers: A Survey of the Status of Public Education in New York. Prepared for Recruiting Teachers, Inc. (July 2002). p. 37. Jalbert, Matthew, â€Å"Burbs, Blockbusting, and Blacks: Morphosis of the Postwar American City, â€Å"Radical Urban Theory, Accessed March 29, 2007, at www. radicalurbantheory. com/mjalbert/burbs/index8. html Kozol, Jonathan. (2002) Malign Neglect. Children in New York public schools are being shortchanged-again. The Nation. June 10, 2002. Retrieved March 26, 2007, from http://www. thirdworldtraveler. com/Third_World_US/Malign_Neglect_Kozol. html

Comparing the Dance of Life in My Papa’s Waltz and Saturday Night Fev

Parallels of The Dance of Life   in My Papa’s Waltz   and Saturday Night Fever   Throughout the ages, dance has played an important role in society. It symbolizes tradition, family, bonding, and entertainment. In almost every decade of the twentieth century, a different style of dance prevailed. In the 1970s, John Travolta brought disco dancing into the spotlight with his portrayal of Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. Through his depiction of this character, John Travolta shows the monumental effects of dancing. Literature can also artfully explore the effect of dance on people. Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" dramatizes a special and positive moment in a boy's life. The author's word choice reflects the significance of this moment of bonding between a father and his son. Some critics have seen this boy's memories as a recollection of a time of abuse. This poem does not reflect an instance of abuse, but rather a dance of life.    In Saturday Night Fever, Tony and his friends often drink before and after they dance. It is a part of their routine, but it does not aff...

How Many Different Types of Memory System Are There?

Although the belief that memory is composed of several distinct systems is not novel, it is only around the mid 20th century that experimental studies carried out on amnesic patients have started to confirm it (Squire, 2004). This essay will discuss the different types of memory systems that have been found, their distinctions and evidence supporting their existence derived from studies on amnesiacs. Atkinson and Shiffrin’s (1968) multi-store model suggests that memory is a flow of information processed through three stores (Myers, 2010).The first system called sensory memory (SM) processes mainly visual and auditory information from our environment (Myers, 2010). It is made up of several components associated with each sense and filters information experienced by the senses – iconic SM which receives visual information has a very short retention time of merely a half of a second while echoic SM which receives auditory stimuli has a slightly longer retention time of thr ee to four seconds (Sperling, 1960; Myers, 2010). If attention is brought to sensory information, it is transferred to the next system called short term memory (STM) (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968).This system processes visual and auditory information received from SM for approximately one minute and also temporarily uses retrieved information from the long-term memory for problem-solving (Myers, 2010). Miller’s (1956) study has shown that STM is not only limited in retention duration but also in capacity having on average a storage capacity of seven bits of information whether verbal or numerical (Myers, 2010). The last system is long term memory (LTM), often referred to as the ‘permanent storage’ (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968).As its name suggests, it has unlimited capacity to store a vast amount of information such as motor skills, language, autobiographical and factual information (Baddeley, Eysenck, & Anderson, 2009). The three basic memory stores are distinct from each other in terms of encoded information, capacity and duration of information retention (McLeod, 2007). One of the strongest evidence to support this distinction lies in Murdock’s (1962) experiment – when presented with a list of words, the tendency was that the participants would more likely recall the first words (primacy effect) and the last words (recency effect) than the words in the iddle of the list (Myers, 2010). This is known as the serial position effect whereby the first words are recalled since they have been transferred to LTM and the last words were still accessible in STM (Myers, 2010). However, the middle words were present for too long to be in the STM but not long enough to be encoded in LTM, giving evidence that STM and LTM are two different and separate stores (McLeod, 2008). Research on patients suffering from amnesia also support the multi-store model (Groome, 2006).One classic case is reported by Corkin (1968) about a patient HM who suffered from anterograde amnesia – He was unable to form new memories and lost part of his existing memories (Groome, 2006). However, despite his inability to create new memories, he was still able to have a conversation thus indicating that his STM processes were intact with normal capacity and duration (Wickelgren, 1968 as cited in Groome, 2006). He lost the capacity of only one store hence supporting the idea that STM and LTM are separated (Groome, 2006).Another case is a patient known as KF who suffered damaged to his STM – he was still able to temporarily recall visual information but could not process auditory information which made conversation difficult (Myers, 2010). On the other hand, his LTM processes were retained, again providing evidence that STM and LTM are separated systems (Myers, 2010). Although KF’s case study explicitly provides strong evidence for distinction of STM and LTM, it also questions the idea of having only one STM (Groome, 2006).The damage in KF’s STM seemed to have only affected the echoic and verbal aspects leaving the visual aspects intact (Groome, 2006). This suggests that STM is more complex and has separate stores for visual and auditory processing (Groome, 2006). Based on this finding, Baddeley and Hitch (1974) argued that STM illustrated by the multi-store model is too simplistic (McLeod, 2008). They developed another model of STM known as the Working Memory (WM) which comprised of a two subsystems controlled by the central executive (Groome, 2006).The central executive takes on cognitive processes such as problem-solving while controlling allocation of data to the two subsystems namely Phonological loop (PL) which deals with auditory and speech-based information and visuo-spatial sketchpad (VSS) which, as its name suggests, holds information about visual and spatial information (McLeod, 2008; Groome, 2006). By analyzing in more depth KF’s case study, it is reported that KF had suffered impairme nt of his PL but still had his VSS abilities, hence providing support that STM is not unitary but in fact divided into subsystems (Warrington & Shallice, 1972 as cited in Groome, 2006).Similarly, HM who had an impaired LTM was unable to form new memories but surprisingly could still learn new motor skills although he was not aware that he actually learnt the skills (Groome, 2006). This finding questions the unified nature of LTM and suggests that there are two memory systems (Squire, 2004). McDougall (1924) investigated the term implicit memory which involves unconscious learning and explicit memory which involves learning with consciousness (Graf & Schacter, 1985; Schacter, 1987; Brooks, 2012).Cohen and Squire (1980) suggested that amnesiacs such as HM had an impaired explicit or declarative memory which hindered their abilities to recall previous or make new memories of facts and events (Groome, 2006). They referred implicit memory as procedural memory involved in knowledge of ski lls which would explain why HM could still learn new motor skills (Groome, 2006). According to Tulving, Schacter and Stark (1982), declarative or explicit memory can be further separated into two conscious systems: episodic and semantic memory (Squire, 2004).Episodic memory contains autobiographical contents, is a record of a person’s personal history such as birth dates and deals with past experiences (Tulving 1972; 1993; 2002). In contrast, semantic memory is a storage system of facts, meanings of words and general knowledge of the world such as the capital of cities (Tulving, 1972). Research on memory is arduous and the problems questioned are not easily solved (Tulving, 1985). At the beginning, the answer to the title question would be ‘three’ but when looking into further research based on studies of amnesiacs, the number increased to about approximately ‘seven’.However, being aware of the difficult nature of memory and the limitations of its st udy, the more reasonable and sensible answer would be ‘at least three and probably many more’ (Tulving, 1985). References Atkinson, R. C. , & Shiffrin, R. M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes. In K. W. Spence & J. T. Spense (Eds. ), The psychology of learning and motivation (pp. 13-195). New York, NY: Academic Press. Baddeley, A. D. , Eysenck, M. W. , & Anderson, M. C. (2009). Memory. New York: Psychology Press. Baddeley, A.D. , & Hitch, G. J. (1974). Working memory. In G. A. Bower (Ed. ), Recent advances in learning and motivation (pp. 47-90). New York, NY: Academic Press. Brooks, S. L. (2012). Long-term memory of American Sign Language in a chimpanzee (Pan Troglodytes). Master of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies. San Diego State University. Cohen, N. J. , & Squire, L. R. (1980). Preserved learning and retention of pattern-analyzing skill in amnesia: Dissociation of â€Å"knowing how† and â€Å"knowing that? ‘ Science, 210. Milner, B. , Corkin, S. , & Teuber, H. L. 1968). Further analysis of the hippocampal amnesic syndrome: 14 year follow-up study of H. M.. Neuropsychologia, 6. Graf, P. and Schacter, D. L. (1985). Implicit and explicit memory for new associations in normal and amnesic subjects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 11. Groome, D. (2006). An introduction to cognitive psychology: processes and disorders. 2nd ed. New York: Psychology Press. McDougall, W. (1923). Outline of Psychology. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. McLeod, S. A. (2007). Short Term Memory. online] Retrieved from: http://www. simplypsychology. org/short-term-memory. html [Accessed: 7 Mar 2013]. McLeod, S. A. (2008). Primacy-Recency. [online] Retrieved from: http://www. simplypsychology. org/primacy-recency. html [Accessed: 7 Mar 2013]. Miller, G. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological Review, 63. Murd ock, B. B. (1962). The serial position effect of free recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64. Myers, D. (2010). Psychology. 9th ed.New York: Worth Publishers. Schacter, D. L. (1987). Implicit Memory: History and Current Status. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 13 (3). Sperling, G. (1960). The information available in brief visual presentations. Psychological Monographs, 74. Squire, L. R. (2004). Memory systems of the brain: A brief history and current perspective. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 82. Tulving, E. , Schacter, D. L. , & Stark, H. A. (1982). Priming effects in word-fragment completion are independent of recognition memory.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 8. Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In E. Tulving & W. Donaldson (Eds. ), Organization of memory (pp. 381-403). New York: Academic Press. Tulving, E. (1985). Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology, 26. Tulving, E. (1985). How many memory systems are there? American Psychologist. 40(4). Tulving, E. (1993). What is episodic memory? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2. Tulving, E. (2002). Episodic memory: From mind to brain. Annual Review of Psychology, 53.

Sociological Theories Essay - 944 Words

Sociological Theories One of the sociological theories is conflict theory. The conflict theory deals with peoples level on wealth, or class. The conflict theory says that social change is beneficial, contrary to focuses on social order. In the story of the woman and her children, the conflict theory plays a big role on the situation. Police of higher class are threatening the homeless woman. The conflict theory is a constant struggle of people of higher class over powering people of lower class, or the weaker. The police are trying to over power the woman by telling her to leave. Even though the woman and her children were doing nothing wrong, the police used their power to tell her to leave. Also the people of the area showed†¦show more content†¦The symbolic interactionist theory is another theory that plays a part in the situation of the homeless woman and her children. The symbolic interactionist theory deals with the interactions people make to one another by using gestures. In or der to understand each other, they have to put themselves in the other person?s position to find out what they are trying to say. The woman could have been using gestures such as the clothes she was wearing. She was probably wearing the same clothes every day. This showed she had no money to spend. Also she had a van parked around where she was always seen sitting. This could be a symbol that she had no home and was forced to live in her van. The woman may not have felt welcome there because the people of the community may have looked at her funny. They might have used such gestures as turning their heads when she looked at them, or trying to avoid her when she tried to talk to them. On the other hand the people may have felt sorry for the woman and her children and could have used gestures such as a sad face. They may have called the police to take her to a homeless shelter. The cops may have used some symbolic gestures such as making a disgusted face or a sad face when they were talking to the woman. There are many possibilities of people using symbols that may have occurred. The functionalistShow MoreRelatedClassical And Contemporary Sociological Theories1898 Words   |  8 PagesAngelica Rhyman TUT0006 angelica.rhyman@mail.utronto.ca 1003965079 Applying Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theories Sexual harassment is a negative aspect that society would like to forget about. However, there has been a lot of talk about the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the sexual harassment allegations (Ravelli and Webber 2016). 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