Author Archives: is129579

During the last week of Sociology class the topic was mainly focus on gender discrimination in the work place.  I’ve always heard of such discrimination but I never recalled speaking about it such in depth within the class room environment.  It amazes me how in the 21st century females have yet to gain the fair treatment they are entitled to by law.  In many corporations it is a fact that women get paid less than men.  Sure women have the right to sue the workplace but then the workplace may have strict regulations indicating not to enclose one’s own salary therefore does the group really being discriminated really have a right to sue?

The video I posted is a prime example of gender discrimination.  A woman who was a devoted employee in a corporation was later treated unfairly after she came back from maternal leave.  I find that outrageous and unacceptable for the employers to behave in such a manner and discriminate due to a circumstance that by law, should be acceptable within the workplace.  The woman employee in the video along with ten other female victims sued the company.  The verdict was on their side and the court rewarded the eleven victims with 250 million dollars.  Now I don’t know if I agree with that reward considering the fact that those employees were no where near making such a fortune regardless of being treated equally or not but nonetheless they deserved to be compensated justly.  There were further incidents within the company that included employers sexually harassing the female employees and making them watch pornography  during and after work hours and so forth.  Discriminations such as this must stop within the work force and stricter beucratic measures have to be passed to provide gender equality in corporate America.

For the past several years the “middle class” in America has been consistently struggling. For the most part, America is seen as the haven for the middle class family.  Nice home with the white ticket fence, job security, and yearly vacations.  The American Dream is based on the middle class lifestyle but lately the middle class lifestyle is looking like the American Nightmare.

The video I posted shows how a middle class family is on the brink economic disparity.  In the video they were asked if they still consider themselves middle class and they answered stating that they are now a lower class family.  The reason for this problem, at least for the family in the video, was that the husband had been laid off from his job as an auto manufacturer and is now delivering newspapers.  As stated earlier in this blog, part of being middle class is job security and once that is lost, it is the beginning of the notion of the middle class struggle.  More and more middle class families are losing their homes  due to foreclosure and have no choice but to maintain their day to day living with food stamps, as shown in the video.  Problem is they still can’t find jobs due to the lack of job creation and economic stagnation.

Aside from middle class families not finding jobs, their taxes keep increasing and their benefits are at risk of being terminated depending on the upcoming election coming November.  If this lack of social class maintenance continues, there will no longer be a middle class, it will just end up being a nation composed of upper class families and lower class families.  What is to blame though, is it capitalism, the economy, government, or is it that the United States of America as a whole has lost the power to maintain hope and prosperity after so many years.  Regardless only time can tell whether this class struggle will turn into class fairness.

http://youtu.be/9pvvVzaplDU

Deviance is the act of behaving in an unacceptable manner.  Deviant behavior is frowned upon and even shunned but it happens all the time and even in front of us.  The video I posted is a group of teenagers who are acting up in the mall.  As shown, people are trying to avoid them, look at them the wrong way, and probably even comment about how stupid they are behaving.

I believe we can all say that at certain times in our lives we’ve all shown deviant behavior.  I remember back when I was in high school, after dismissal we would all get together and commute together and the things we would do were outrageous.  In the train we would all wrestle and box in front of other passengers and just behave reckless all around.  At times the passengers would switch to another train cart but most of the time they would just stay there and mind their own business, that was the fascinating part.

That last point goes back to the title of the blog post.  Deviant behavior is so common in our society that it is naturally accepted.  In the video, the two girls were clearly disrupting the public area in front of a security guard and he didn’t even make an effort to stop them.  Deviant behavior is so common that instead of trying to stop it or just make a big fuss about it, the public eye just turns the other way and continue on with what their agenda has in store for them as if nothing ever happened.

http://youtu.be/yl7evSLeABA

The premise in our last class was the education system in the United States.  As the video shows and what we see around us the education system in America is lacking.  The video states that out of the top 28 countries in education America is number 20, a huge decrease since the last several years.  In my opinion, I feel that this country focuses more on making a profit out of education than investing in education for the future of the country.  Standards in getting a job are getting higher and higher while efforts to get those standards keep lacking and lacking.

The heart of this issue is the educational institution itself.  Schools hire teachers with low qualifications and thus students are in the hands of those “professionals.”  Also, salaries for teachers are low and so teachers themselves have a low incentive to be effective.  Some states don’t even require teachers to have a master’s degree, so how effective can a teacher even be if they only have average academic qualifications?

One of the bigger issues in the education system in this country is the cost of higher education and the student loan debt problem.  The cost of higher education continues to rise and many students are unable to pay for those kind of tuitions.  With the way the job market is students are even reluctant to take out college loans and so the other way out is by not going to college thus leading to an unprogressive future for this country.

To remedy the issue of education I believe that higher education should at least be affordable, teachers should have higher qualifications and higher wages to establish a positive reinforcement for them, and the country as a whole should stop focusing on making such a profit out education and start investing more and more in it.

One of the biggest issues in our present society is the instability of the job market, especially for current college graduates.  The link above is a video illustrating the frustration of college graduates and how they can’t find a job right after college.  Presently, the unemployment rate for college graduates is approximately 53%, a staggering number compared to the 2000 college graduate unemployment rate, a merely 40%.  Before it was all about graduating college and getting that bachelor’s degree but it seems that’s just not enough.  One has to do more such as getting that prized internship during college or getting that “exclusive major” such as engineering and finance rather than history or communications.

The college graduate unemployment rate leads to consequent problems such as not being able to pay off college loans and not being able to participate in planned economic consumption.  The idea after college is to get a job, buying that nice condo with the brand new BMW, and just splurging the rest of that paycheck in vacations, high end clubs, and nice branded clothes but guess what, without that job you can’t do A, B, and C and therefore not only does it affect the individual but also the macro economy.  With no job you can’t pay off your loans and can’t progress financially therefore it doesn’t help you, your parents, or the economy.

The current administration have tried to remedy these problems but yet again I’ve been hearing about these “tries” since I was a sophomore in high school and nothing has changed, if anything it has gotten worse.  One can blame the government, one can blame the institution they graduated from, one can even blame God but the truth of the matter is that it really is nobody’s fault.  Times are just hard and at this point not one entity can do anything about it.  We’ll just have to wait and see.