I use The Jungle as a way of examing the theme of The American Dream.
Yesterday, we watched a 30 Days episode on outsourcing. I wanted to show this early on because - to be frankly honest - my students won't read more than a chapter or two of the book at a time. And I also wanted to show it as kind of an interesting juxtaposition to the beginning of the book.
In The Jungle, Jurgis and his family come to America seeking - you guessed it - the American Dream. The only jobs available are the inhumane ones in the meat packing industry.
Well, today the opposite happens. Indians - for example - stay home and simply have our jobs outsourced to them. And the jobs are quite good (telemarketing, accounting, lawyering, and customer service). Beats the hell out of smacking cows on the heads with a sledge hammer for 12 or 16 hours a day. The Indians - for the most part - are willing to work and sacrifice like our ancestors did so we can have it so nice today. That is but one reason why Indians and the Chinese have more honor students than we have students. They have emphasized hard work and dedication to attaining their own version of the American Dream. While we have become - at least according to the previous definition of the American Dream - a bunch of lotus eaters!
To see what the students think of the American Dream I asked them to write a paragraph of their own personal definitions of the American Dream.
Then I asked them to interview someone older and see how they defined the American Dream.
A student just texted me the latter assignment - here's a snippet - The American dream would be lots of money, have no job, be able to watch sports on a big tv all day.
That explains so much about our current society - materialism, laziness/wellfare, and obesity.
The American Dream indeed.
No mention of family, passion, education, love, dedication, freedom . . .
What would our great-great grandfather and grandmothers have done during the depression and WWII if they had that kind of attitude? Would the depression have swamped us? Would we all have blond hair and blue eyes?
Anyone care to leave their version of the American Dream?
1 comment:
Mr. Reynolds
We have argued before about the movie "Forest Gump." Although it is more of a story, I see it differently. Forest is born with what seems to be a learning disability which almost prevents him from going to a normal school. His ability to overcome this is to me incredible. I like to think that opportunity is everywhere, and even if you aren't gifted or smart, you can still succeed with hard work. I know you think this is probably a bad example, but I think a lot of kids could relate.
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