Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis

By Robert Putnam

Library book

I was eagerly awaiting this book since I first heard about it. I loved Bowling Alone, Putnam's earlier work, and the topic "the new age of gross inequality in America" really intrigues me.

Pg 9 "we were poor but we didnt know it" and I can add some were rich but they didn't show it. (Ha im a poet and dont know it). That line about not knowing you were poor is prevelant even in my generation. We had a swimming pool, we went on family.vacations every year, sometimes twice, and had all the other perks of what I considered wealth. But in reality we were just lower to middle middle class. But i never felt deprived or poor in any way. Putnam says one can also say in reality,compared to what was to come that "We were [actually] rich and didn't know it." Rich in the opportunitiees that were there for us but would soon dissapear. 

So, in chapter one we learn that education is the great separator of the new classes, and those who have it rise, while those who don't stagnate. And thanks to the "Big Sort" we now live different lives as different classes. Those community bonds that held rich and poor together have fallen away and the classes have repaired to their own neutral corners.

Putnam detail tthe fact that school itself helps to separate us. Now more and more kidsnfrom different socioeconomic classes instead of having the differences moderated, its just further exacerbates them.

Soft skills are just as important to child development as hard education. Extra curricular activites like sports and musicnprograms and clubs teach important organizational skills and teaches leadership and working in a team and.following through things.

176 Putnam uotes Wellington to make his point,"It is here [on the playing fields of Eton] that the battle of Waterloo was won." He meant the soft skills that go along with, and are vital to, a good education.

188 The factors that widen the education gap include; family structure, parenting, childhood development, peer groups and extra curricular opportunities.

190 Aptitude is now less important to a childs educational success as socioeconomic backround. Studies show that high scoring poor kids are less likely than low scoring rich kids in attaining a degree. The author remarks,"[So much for the  idea that] at the heart of the American Dream: [lies] equality of opportunity." Lil, Horatio Alger has left the country.

Books:

Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (You have this on Ebook)

1954 David Potter People of Plenty

Essays:
Crmbling American Dreams

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2013/08/03/crumbling-american-dreams/