Education and Healthy lifestyle are the shaking pillars of the American Dream
The American dream is no a destination, but a journey – to paraphrase a famous saying. Insanely quick development and emancipation of society has led to change of the game. Today it is not enough to be either smart or beautiful; in order to get ahead of others in modern the world, one needs to be both. Higher education has always been an index of success. Just as a body image becoming nowadays. People aim to take care of their brains just as much as they take care about their bodies. Especially the latter has been elevated to the rank of obsession. Therefore, its contradiction is even more striking. While the new American dream goal is perfection inside and out, there are more and more people who suffer from the adverse effects; in recent years more and more people are refusing to complete higher education for various reasons, including economic, and at the same time the level of obese and diabetic people, suffering from fast food consequences increases rapidly. This battle of opposing camps leads to global confusion.
Original definition of the American Dream, presented by James T. Adams is the following: “the dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability and achievement, regardless of social class or circumstances of birth” (King, 611-612). Looking back in history this was not possible even one hundred years ago. Today this is still an issue for some remote areas of certain countries while overall children have access to education almost everywhere. Today education has gone through a great series of reforms and has become more practical and adaptive to today’s world.
However, there will always be people who believe that the school produces mediocrities. Certainly, there will always be people who have built their companies from scratch, who have achieved impossible heights after dropping out from school. Maybe they would have done much better with education, we will never know. For now, we could consider them exceptions that support the general rule.
The way we look today is just as important as the knowledge we have inside. This almost obsessive desire to be fit and healthy derives from the problem that society is facing today. Emerging rates of diabetes and obesity among children and adult population finally seem to sound the alarms of society. As it is clearly put in an investigative article by Michael Moss that we even, know the companies who are majorly responsible for such turn of events (Moss, 491).
On the other hand, these heads of corporations argue that it is not their food that is doing the damage but people themselves and that people simply could consume less of fast food products. Apart from this, big corporations traditionally do not confirm harmful products to be used in their production (Moss, 491). Those seldom who do, still refuse to change the recipe of their hit products, since it may decrease the sales and profit is the only thing that matters. The situation is interesting in a way that both: fast food companies and regular people are chasing the American Dream. Just that, despite the similar final destination, for both of them it has a different way of reaching it. This all brings confusion to many processes involved, including high school cafeteria choice of food.
The choice of better living conditions can be done with proper education. According to Freeman Hrabowski and many reliable researches, college or university graduates are much more likely to get a job than those with only a high school diploma. Moreover, they are usually paid higher salaries (Hrabowski, 260). This is because today, students are more prepared for any work environment, because of the modern educational programs.
Some people may argue that it is the performance upon which people are judged. It would be nice to agree with that, but the world is material and physical things, like a piece of paper, such as diploma matter.
Another physical aspect - how healthy a person is can also be a decisive moment when deciding whom to hire. Fitness and proper nutrition are seen as attributes of a successful and balanced person. Healthy lifestyle became an integrate part of the American dream as it exists today, with a lot of money being spent on fighting unhealthy habits. This makes us all being caught in between the companies that feed us food that is bad for us and companies who fight our bad food habits.
This is often argued by different types of groups promoting social equality. They still insist that the world we live in is good and that the main point of the American dream is that you can achieve whatever if you work hard enough. It is true, just that in modern society, one has to put just as much effort in looking after the appearance, as one needs to put inside the brain. As for the fact that a healthy lifestyle became a global obsession, well, it is just a sign of a mature society.
Another sign of a mature society is that people no longer take words of the governmental or other social institutions as an order, but start to analyze different situations. . In the recent years, more and more children and their parents decided to reconsider applying to college or university because of the high price, which they think is unjustified. People now can make their own conclusions based on the presented information. The problem with this is that the system is not transparent and scares many people away even before they take a closer look at the offer. Therefore it is a problem of the government who, in order to support the rate of graduates, has to make education more accessible and available.
In a confusing economic situation as the one would found itself after the recession of 2009, a renowned economist Cal Thomas explains that today the meaning of the American Dream is that “anybody can climb out of hardship and achieve success” (Moss, 615). This way it feels that the original idea of the American Dream is not lost at all; it just underwent a transformation of time.
While education remains a prevalent component of the American dream, the battle for a healthy lifestyle against all corporations became a major side project of the overall concept. People are now educated about their rights and know what companies and institutions are harming or oppressing them. With proper knowledge, people today are ready to stand for themselves and sometimes even fight back on their way to the American dream.
Works Cited
Hrabowski, Freeman. “Colleges prepare people for life”, 258-263. Graff, Gerald and
Birkinstein, Kathy. They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc. 2015. Print.
King, Brandon. “The American dream: dead, alive or on hold?” 610-617. Graff, Gerald and
Birkinstein, Kathy. They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. 2015. Print.
Moss, Michael. “The extraordinary science of Addictive Junk Food”, 471-495. Graff, Gerald
and Birkinstein, Kathy. They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic
Writing. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. 2015. Print.
