"Why on the rich kids get good schools?"

I recently read an article that was about a man who opened a school in which the goal was to send 100% of its students to college afterwards. They mainly focused on minorities from bad neighborhoods to give them the opportunity to have a learning environment similar to that of a school such as New Trier. I found it interesting when he posed the question, “why only the rich kids get good schools?” It got me thinking about the constitution and what it says about the right to equal opportunities. I think that this article proves that many poor kids do not get that right. They are deprived of a stable educational environment in which they are encouraged to work hard and get into college like we are in Winnekta. A stunning report states that after graduation, 53 percent of poor high school students are ready for college, while 86 percent of wealthy graduates are prepared. This study proves that the kids from poor families don't have the same opportunity as kids from wealthy families to get into college and have a good education.


This poses the questions, how do we change our educational systems to create the same opportunities for everyone? Why is it that poor kids have to work so much harder than a kid born into a privileged life? And lastly, is the right to equal opportunities a granted right in the US?

I've Got My Eye on You

In class today, we discussed the never ending topic of privacy on the internet. Do we really have any privacy once we log onto sites such as Facebook, MySpace or Gmail? Intrigued, I decided to do some further research. But of course, before I delve into my homework mode, I always check my emails and I found a message from my friend who suggested a band she likes. Being the procrastinator I am, I decided to check it out before I started my work. I listened to a few songs on iTunes and found myself logging into Facebook. Right when I logged on, I noticed an ad that stood out to me. It was an ad for the band I had just looked up. I have never listened, talked or heard of their music before today and I was stunned that this ad happened to appear right after I had been searching for them online. Disturbed, I began my research of Facebook Ads. What I found was pretty disturbing; “We continually strive to build core featured that enhance our users' experience on Facebook, which include Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads was built to transform traditional marketing into messages that are tailored to each individual user based on who they are and how they interact and affiliate with their friends, family, brands, music artists, and businesses they care about.”

I thought to myself, “How can they possibly know who I am and how I interact with my family and friends without going through my messages?” Is this a constitutional way to treat their users or is what Facebook is doing just another sacrifice users have to make when logging on to a social networking site?

Firefighters vs. Celebrities

The heroic acts of a firefighter or police person may not seem comparable to actors, singers and models in Hollywood. However, when I was looking through an entertainment magazine, I was shocked to see that Hiedie Montag of the Hills earns $100,000 per episode. I immediately went to the computer and looked up the average salary of a firefighter. The average hourly wage of a firefighter is a little over 18$ and hour. A fire chief makes between 70 and 80 thousand dollars a year in Chicago (Wiki Answers). Compared to actress Jennifer Aniston, a fire chief makes less than 1% of her 27 million dollars. If you compare their hourly wages, Jennifer would rake in $3,080 an hour if she worked 24 hours a day 7 days a week while the chief would only make $9.13 working the same hours. What these numbers are saying is that we feel running into a fire to save people is a less valuable job than acting in a movie for other people's enjoyment. I don't believe we all feel this way but I wonder why the paying system isn't changed. Why does Tyler Perry make 125 Million dollars in one year while the starting salary for a Chicago police officer is $43,104. (Wikipedia) I think that this difference isn't due to the fact that we value an actress more than a firefighter, I think it comes down to people not realizing how much the police and firefighters do for them. They only praise them when it directly effects their lives, which may not be very often while most people watch television or go see movies a lot. I think people take these people for granted and don't realize what their lives would be like without them.

Tonights the Night, Lets Live it Up

I read a previous blog post discussing the topic of current movies and how they are not as good as older movies used to be. I found this interesting because movies should be getting better with technology but it seems they are getting worse and worse. A similar topic is the fact that popular music these days is in the gutter as well. Most music played on the 'hits' stations such as Kiss FM, b96 and WGCI are not up par with the type of music popular music played 10 or 20 years ago. I feel like there are many good songs out there that aren't recognized by radio stations. So many of the songs played on the top 100 are unintelligent songs that talk about things like woman, how much money they make or a song dedicated to a dance move. While I do enjoy some songs that are out now that are considered popular, I do find myself questioning song such as Party in the USA (#1 on itunes) and I Got a Feeling (#6 on itunes) which are songs basically about nothing at all. I wonder why songs have lost meaning and depth and concentrate more on how good the melody is or how strong the bass is. Could this be due to an incline interest in partying or a decline in intellect?