disgraceful_admin wrote:
Streets paved with gold wrote:Is it possible to fail in America while obeying the advice given in the subject heading?
No trolls please.
Discus.
Very easy to fail. Actually quite difficult to succeed even in a generous sense.
"Learn to speak English, get a job, buy a car and keep your kids in school: The American Key to Success"
What are you doing as you learn English? You're unlikely to learn English very well. You'll be able communicate without issue, but your speech and especially writing will be full of grammatical errors. Either way, you're almost certainly stuck with a job that pays less than $10/hr.
You have kids - plural - so it's pretty tough to pay for the house, kids, and car. So, you probably work long hours and can't spend too much time with your kids. You're probably not able to help them with anything beyond the most basic English spelling and grammar questions, and you're likely to speak to them in another language. They'll likely speak with an accent and pick up the grammatic errors of the immigrant family and friends they spend most time around. This will be very problematic for them in later years.
So, your kids will probably be placed in ESL classes on a slow curriculum and spend time with other students who are behind. By 4th grade or so, your kids are likely to be 4+ grade levels behind other kids in reading comprehension and writing, so they don't get access to advanced or accelerated programs in middle school.
You expect that American schools and teachers are top notch, little do you know the truth. And it's impossible for you to find out, because you didn't go to college in your home country, so you don't know what good education entails.
Meanwhile, you probably haven't advanced in your $8/hr job. Your kids are in school, but they've grown to dislike it because they were treated like outsiders, nothing much was ever expected of them from teachers, and they didn't have anyone to tell them what level they should be at.
By high school, their friend group has many immigrants, especially if their parents all speak the same language at home or came from the same region. These kids are more likely to be poor, struggling in school, and to do drugs or get into crimes. There's not really a great role model among them, and they grow to dislike the kids who have money for sports and music clubs.
You yell at your kid to focus on school, but the advanced classes are just beyond them after years of poor education and being put in ESL or lower level classes. This is very frustrating to your kids, because the wealthier mostly non-minority kids they grew up with whose parents constantly helped them with schoolwork in the early years, are now thriving.
Your kids have probably repeatedly heard that college costs tens of thousands of dollars, so they give up on it as not possible due to their socioeconomic status. Their marginal grades and low standardized test scores mean getting into a university is tough. What nobody told them was that they could likely get massive financial aid and go for next to nothing, if only they are admitted to a university.
Their best option is now going to community college, but those actually do cost money. So they get a part-time job while taking a few crap classes. Most likely, they don't proceed into a professional career or to a university, and end up working full time for $12-15/hr. This is the best-possible scenario for almost every case like this.
It's really a toss up for the kids. If they get exposed to the right kids, the right teachers, the right role models, they could get into top universities and achieve their wildest dreams. It's more likely that they end up following the path of least resistance, where the system is set up against their success.
Even something as simple as getting the kids to run cross country and/or track could be life-changing, as far as exposing them to other kids who have a positive life outlook, know about post-high school opportunities, are motivated and very likely to go to college and to get good grades in high school in order to do so.