Organizational Behavior Trends

Critical Thinking and Language Essay Ð'- Week Two Homework Assignment

Wanting the Best Education Possible for our Children

Education is the door through which our children must pass to claim their rightful heritage as Americans. Education is the great equalizer in American society. It unlocks the doors to many opportunities. It's the key to accessing opportunity and getting ahead in this country. Of course, education isn't a surefire guarantee of success in life. But statistics show beyond a shadow of a doubt that the better educated you are, the better off you'll be economically and the more educated you are, the less likely you are to be unemployed. Getting a good education has always given young people a leg up on life. (Hugh B. Price, 1998)

Getting an education is the most important thing to me for myself and my children. It's one of the main reasons I decided to go back to school to prove to my kids and myself that I could achieve the American dream of finishing college. I remember when I was growing up my mother would always talk about me finishing high school and going on to college. She would say just about 80 percent of all jobs in the U.S. economy were semiskilled or unskilled. That means most workers back then didn't require much in the way of formal education. Even if they never finished high school, they could easily earn enough, for instance, as factory workers to enjoy a decent standard of living, buy a home and a car, take an occasional vacation, and send their kids to college. The exact opposite is true today. Eighty-five percent of all jobs these days are skilled or professional. The bottom line is that you definitely need a solid education in order to succeed in the Information Age economy of the twenty-first century. (Allen Walter R., 2001)

There's a crisis in the classrooms. In virtually every school district across America, African American children achieve at lower levels, earn lousier test scores, are placed frequently into special education or remedial and less challenging classes, and are discouraged from striving to excel academically, or demanding excellence from themselves. The perception is that they are intellectually inferior, which is tragically reinforced by a vocal and destructive segment within our own culture that seeks to portray academic achievement as a sell-out to other ethnic backgrounds. Experts say that perception is wrong as a matter of scientific fat. But we cannot allow those attitudes to continue. Indifference toward academic achievement will doom our children to a future far beneath their capabilities and that has to change. (Hrabowski, Freeman A., 1998)

The role language and language diversity plays in the critical thinking process is once you discover the keys to becoming an effective, informed advocate in the educational community, as well as strategies for communicating with teachers and administrators for the maximum benefit of yourself or your child, and African American children in general you can begin to change the mind-set of the few that does not want the best for themselves.

Language empowers the expression of thoughts when