Monday, April 19, 2010
Week 2: Indexes
The other day, I was having lunch at Chili's and I noticed a man and woman eating together and having a very lively conversation. They looked about the same age and seemed very interested in what the other person was saying. I noticed these two people eating lunch together to be an index pointing to them being on a date. I seem to notice this type of index quite often. In our society, if two members of the opposite sex and of the same age group dine out by themselves, we almost always assume that they are on a date. I am not sure if this is because dating is supposed to be a common thing and we find it odd to hang out with a member of the opposite sex if we're friends, but it almost always seems to point to that. Another index that I discovered recently after our discussion on the subject was something that people had been assuming about me and some other people I know for quite some time. I noticed that if you tell someone you go to a community college, they almost always assume you are some sort of "screw-up." By this I mean that community college are often misread as indexes for stupid, lazy screw-ups. Screw-ups who are trying to take classes so that they can transfer to a university or even just obtain an AA/AS degree simply to say that they have a degree. It makes me angry when people assume this about me and read community college as an index for me not being as "good" as them. I went to a private, catholic highschool and graduated with a 3.8 cumulative GPA with excellent extracurriculars and I currently have a college GPA of 4.0. I came to De Anza because of financial difficulties and people who read it as an index for something else and assume things just don't know the circumstances. This shows that our society values education that is well paid for. Any education that lets anybody take courses and is not overly expensive comes across as a poor quality education in most people's eyes. Being sociologically mindful can change this, but unfortunately, most people can't master this skill and do not care to.
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Popular (mis)perceptions of community colleges also reveal an attitude about higher education in this country. Many people do not view higher education as a right for all in a democratic society. Rather, they view higher education as a privilege that should be granted only to the "best and brightest." The majority of industrialized, democratic nations subsidize higher education for all because they recognize the importance of an educated populace for a healthy democracy. What happens to a country when a majority of people are not educated?
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