Rheeanne Mae Amilasan March 29, 2019

GAS 11-A

CLAIMS OF VALUE

"College Is a Waste of Time and

Money"
Nowadays, says one sociologist, you don’t have to have a
reason for going to college; it’s an institution. His definition of an
institution is an arrangement everyone accepts without question;
the burden of proof is not on why you go, but why anyone thinks
there might be a reason for not going. The implication is that an
18-year-old…should listen to those who know best and go to
college.
I don’t agree. I believe that college has to be judged not on
what other people think is good for students, but on how good it
feels to the students themselves.

I believe that people have an inside view of what’s good for

them. If a child doesn't want to go to school some morning, better
let him stay at home, at least until you find out why. Maybe he
knows something you don’t. It’s the same with college. If high-
school graduates don’t want to go, or if they don’t want to go right
away, they may perceive more clearly than their elders that
college is not for them. It is no longer obvious that adolescents
are best off studying a core curriculum that was constructed when
all educated men could agree on what made them educated, or
that professors, advisors, or parents can be of any particular help
to young people in choosing a major or a career. High-school
graduates see college graduates driving cabs and decide it’s not
worth going. College students find no intellectual stimulation in
their studies and drop out.
Reem Awaluddin March 29, 2019
GAS 11-A
CLAIMS OF FACT

"A Case of Severe Bias"

This is who I am not. I am not a crack addict. I am not a welfare mother.
I am not illiterate; I am not a prostitute. I have never been in jail. My
children are not in gangs. My husband doesn't beat me. My home is not
a tenement. None of these things defines who I am, nor do they
describe the other black people I’ve known and worked with and loved
and befriended over these 40 years of my life.
Nor does it describe most of black America, period.
Yet in the eyes of the American news media, this is what black America
is: poor, criminal, addicted and dysfunctional. Indeed, media coverage
of black America is so one sided, so imbalanced that the most
victimized and hurting segment of the black community—a small
segment, at best— is presented not as the exception but as the norm. It
is an insidious practice, all the uglier for its blatancy.
In recent months, oftentimes in this very magazine, I have observed a
steady offering of media reports on crack babies, gang warfare, violent
youth, poverty and homelessness—and in most cases, the people
featured in the photos and stories were black. At the same time,
articles that discuss other aspects of American life—from home buying
to medicine to technology to nutrition—rarely, if ever, show blacks
playing a positive role, or for that matter, any role at all.
Day after day, week after week, this message—that black America is
dysfunctional and unwhole—gets transmitted across the American
landscape. Sadly, as a result, America never learns the truth about what
is actually a wonderful, vibrant, creative community of people.