Blog #8

In our previous class, Julian informed us by getting involve in club at university. It was very useful information for knowing some activities at university. I really like to join to sociology and psychology clubs, and I also like to join to sport club, but my problem for this semester is that I don’t have enough time for spending my times to those clubs. I have 14 units and one of my classes is held at Thousands Oak campus which makes really hard for me to join to those clubs. When I was at college, I was an active member of sociology, philosophy, and psychology clubs, and I can not wait to join for one of those clubs for next semester at Channel Islands. After that we change our subject to discuss about one of  the articles that we read, and  it was about anti-homosexual discussion. I really liked that the principle stood up against the Chic-Fil-A restaurant chin’s because they were advocating anti-homosexuality explicitly, and there is no place to be against gays in any forms at this era.  If I were the principle, I would do the same, and I also educate the students by telling them, there is no differences between gays and heterosexual people and more than 80% of the gay people are not practicing same sex activity or chose to be gay, however, most gays born like this. Although students are about age 13, but by providing facts or statistics and good arguments, they could grasp what was going on. Giving students knowledge and good argument can nurture their critical thinking and is the best way to make them think differently not just to think like teachers.

I did not like Ronald Hallett’s article because he was arguing about financial aids problems and how some homeless students did not want to go home for holidays.  For instance, Tenisha did not want to go home for holiday because she was homeless. Ronald Hallett just argued about some federal laws and financial  aids problem, but he did not argue about the underlying problems of poor people and give a practical solution for homeless people. For examples, he argues that many homeless students do not pursue education because they do not believe that earning a degree is a realistic possibility, however, I believe that 9 out of 10 homeless people do not have access to basic needs for life. Homeless people are struggling for surviving. Most of the time they think about shelter and food; how come they could pursue for education, and most of them drop the school during the high school. I really liked the article A Conversation About Social Class and College Attendance by Adam Howard because the writer argued about real world that poor students were facing everyday. For instance, he argues that examples of success don’t exist in most poor communities any more, and I do absolutely agree with him because for poor people success is something to have more food for a week. I believe, as long as there is no safety and security, the education and  success is meaningless for most of humans. For poor people and poor communities who are most advantage, the success means to be a gang leader, pimp, and a successful drug dealer. Unfortunately, this is the real world for poor people. In the Responsibility for Reduction Poverty article, the writer argued about social class and problem sophisticatedly. He claims that social problems cannot be solved by social engineers, and he is right because solving social problems needs to have a deep knowledge of social problems and know how society works. Therefore, poverty cannot be eliminated by government or blaming the poor for being poor, rather it needs a verity of responsibilities from the whole society including poor themselves.