Running Head: EDUCATION PLAY AS A POWERFUL WEAPON

Education plays as a powerful weapon eliminating the invisible wall in the way to

achieve the American Dream

Yinan Liu

Oregon State University

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When it comes to the American Dream, people used to talk about owning a nice

house, buying a good car, no loan debt and a number of things relating to achieving a

material life. Common sense seems to dictate that through hard working—a core tenet of

the American Dream—every American can succeed financially and have potential to lead

a happy and full life. However, majorities of contemporary America’s people are

suffering from a considerable economic inequality, and it eventually contributes to the

fact that the traditional American Dream is no longer affordable. This economic disparity

is dangerous, not merely because it literally has a large economic gap between the poor

and rich, but because it undermines upward mobility. As a result, the poor nowadays are

becoming harder and harder to escape from poverty. For contemporary American

citizens, especially for those who are stuck in earning middle-class wages, they are

supposed to get higher educated to overcome the obstacle in their ways achieving the

American Dream.

It is not an exaggeration: poor at 20, poor for life—it really is getting harder to

move up in America, stated by Semuels (2016). This is to say, those who can earn very

little money in their initial stage of their career will probably still be earning little in

decades. Ironically, people who start out at the privileged line are likely to continue

making good money throughout their working spans. According to Michael D. Carr and

Emily E. Wiemers, two economists at the University of Massachusetts, “the chance that

someone starting in the bottom 10 percent would move above the 40th percentile

decreased by 16 percent. The chance that someone starting in the middle of the earnings

distribution would reach one of the top two earnings deciles decreased by 20 percent.

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(cited by Semuels, 2016).” It suggests that it is getting harder and harder that American

middle class could have a shot to earn more money so that they can live a better

life.Additionally, American workers have to contend with this changeless and hopeless

situation for a long time due to the fact that there are less educational opportunities for

young generation so that they can make a difference. Increased inequality and decreasing

mobility have threatened the American Dream fundamentally.

To solve this problem, we should acknowledge the situation which attributes to

the partial education distribution and why there is a such big gap between the polar ends

of the economic distribution. Now there are fewer and fewer opportunities for people in

different working-lines to ever encounter each other in person. They go to different

schools, shop at different stores, work in different places. Among these discrepancies, the

point is they are not given impartial educational opportunities. Consequently, an invisible

wall turns out be generating between the lines. Yet the ubiquity of social media and

television plays a vital role to make them be aware of each other. Just as Nohria(2017)

says in The Lines That Divide America, “You can gawk at the lives of the privileged on

Instagram, tap into the resentment of the white working class on Brietbart, and see the

plight of the disenfranchised on Vice.” As a matter of fact, this kind of phenomenon

causes American people a range of negative emotions, including resentment, entitlement,

envy, and despair. Of course, it is tearing America apart. The wall which is produced by

distinct educational background could not only obstruct the cultural communication

between the classes, it causes the economic segregation. Consequently, it leads to a fact

that the probability of ending where a person starts has gone up, and the probability of

moving up from where a person starts has gone down.

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There are several solutions which can narrow this gap. In my opinion, the best

way is that the governments are strongly encouraged to create more educational

opportunities for middle class people and offer a certain number of aids for them.

The essential reason for the authorities to give more opportunities to middle class

children is that the education system plays a fundamental role in the national economic

growth and stability. Many economists agree that education is directly correlated with

economic growth and stability. Countries thrive when their educational systems thrive.

The more educated the citizens of a country are, the more likely their personal and

societal economies are to develop and succeed. According to economists at Harvard

University (cited by Allen, 2016), the 60% to 70% rise in wage inequality is based on the

degree of education for high school and college graduates. If the level of education for

every middle-class individual can be elevated, meanwhile, the economic segregation can

also be gradually shrinked. Furthermore, as George Schultz and Eric Hanushek write in

the Wall Street Journal, “educational outcomes strongly affect economic growth and the

distribution of income.” Education benefits entire countries as well. Schultz and

Hanushek explain that the more educated the citizens of a country are the more the

country experiences economic growth. Both on personal and national levels, education

has been shown to increase economic growth and stability.

On top of that, society can be regarded as a whole benefits as a result of

education. An educated community is a united community. Education leads to feelings of

“togetherness” and compatibility within a society. Anne Bert Dijkstra (2017) writes that

in order for a society to grow, it must share common goals and values while

simultaneously promoting variance and uniqueness. He explains that in a peaceful, strong

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and vibrant society, differences can only exist if there is sufficient common ground.

When inhabitants of a country come together to participate in shared democratic

activities, such as voting in national polls and surveys, they experience feelings of

solidarity and nationalism as a collective unit working to move their country forward.

Education helps to promote an awareness of these activities and how we should perform

or observe them. The more educated a country’s citizens are, the more the country will

advance and progress.

Admittedly, as with all proposed solutions, I acknowledge that some people may

harbor a pessimistic attitude at the prediction that whether the middle-class children could

have got a higher education. They might think the path to a higher education may cause a

financial burden to middle-class family. Eventually it leads to a tendency that the

economic gap is becoming larger and larger. In When It Comes to College Costs, Middle-

Class Kids Are Still Screwed, Williams (2016) reports that low- and middle-income

earners in certain states now must spend as much as 76 percent of their annual income to

pay a student’s tuition and expenses at a school. Things aren’t any better at the

community college level, where some households with income of $30,000 or less are

likely to pay as much as 61 percent of their earnings for costs at a two-year public school.

In other words, educational achievement may have an adverse impact on both middle-

class families and American economy system.

While opponents of this solution do have a valid point, it is inappropriate to say

with certainty that education has a negative effect to middle class and domestic economy

system. Firstly, paying for private school probably imposes a much greater and even

impossible hardship on middle-class families than it does on the wealthy, but middle-

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class families can shift their focus from going to a private school to how to make public

schools work. Without doubt, the cost of a public education is more budget-friendly to

middle-class families. Besides, public school tends to have more superiorities that private

school would not be able to have. For example, class sizes, academic opportunities,

services, and teacher qualifications—these elements would be all restricted by the

school’s scale and government funding to the school. On top of that, earning scholarship

is a feasible way for middle-class students to alleviate the economic stress. Although

students cannot achieve academic success without working industriously, but they also

need scholarship as the fuel in their academic life, claimed by Cowan (2016). Cowan

insists that scholarship can not only be an assist to students’ academic life, it also can be a

motivation or stimulation to student to get excellence.

In general, the American Dream has changed. America has been suffering from

the inequality of economic distribution which contributes to a series of negative emotions

—resentment, entitlement, envy, and despair. But American citizens still have chips.

Education is the key. America’s economic future depends in large part on the association

and communication between the privileged-class and the middle-class. And education

now is playing a decisive role which determines the probability that a middle class family

could have a shot at upward mobility and the authorities can eliminate the invisible wall

between the two classes and elevate domestic economic system.

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References

Allen, J.(Dec 8, 2016). The Benefits of Higher Education. The HASTAC, Blog Post.

Cowan, S.( Apr 7, 2016). Students Create Scholarship to Help Send Undocumented

Teens to College. Takepart, big issues.

Dijkstra A.(Winter, 2017) Inspecting School Social Quality: Assessing and Improving

School Effectiveness in the Social Domain. Journal of Social Science

Education, 16,42-50.

Nohria, N.( Dec 2, 2017). The Lines That Divide America. The Atlantic, Politics.

Semuels, A.( Jul 14, 2016). Poor at 20, Poor for Life. The Atlantic, Business.

Williams, J.( Apr 29, 2016). When It Comes to College Costs, Middle-Class Kids Are

Still Screwed. Takepart, big issues.