America still provides access to the American Dream. Some people might agree with this, but I am not one of those people. In past America probably did provide access to the American Dream. But that was the past, things were different then. Now it’s hard to reach the American Dream, and America isn’t making it any easier.
The American Dream was to be able to live comfortably, even as a middle-class family. Even if you are in the middle class, you still struggle. It used to be lower class, middle class, and upper class. Now it’s more like lower class, upper class, and upper upper class. Why do we have to sacrifice so much just to achieve and live comfortably? In the article ‘Is the American Dream Still Possible’ by David Wallechinsky, Simone and Miguel's story has a part that says: “The words retirement and vacation are not in our vocabulary you know that old Tennessee Ernie Ford song: ‘I owe my soul to the company store we don't think about retirement they'll have to take me out of here with my high-top tennies on’”. Some people don't even see retirement as an option. There's another part: “The American Dream is just a bygone”. They don't see the American Dream as something achievable in this period.
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People used to believe that they could achieve the American Dream by working hard and doing everything they could, but that's changed in the past years. The American Dream is something that we wish for and hopes that we can achieve one day, but it's not as easy to achieve it anymore. This is one of the reasons I feel like America does not still offer the American Dream.
Education is the foundation of a free society. This is true education is the foundation of a free society. Getting a good education is hard. In a speech by Barack Obama in 2004, he says that “young women in East St. Louis and thousands more like her who have the grades, have the drive, have the will, but doesn't have the money to go to college”. There are so many kids like this, not just females. Barack Obama also says that “people don't expect the government to solve all their problems, but they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all”. Yes, we don't expect the government to fix all our problems, but we do wish they would help us with the ones we can't fix ourselves. Not every child has doors of opportunities open for them. It's not fair why should some kids be able to get ahead in life just because they have more money or because their family is better off. Why can't every child have an opportunity to do great things even if they don't have a lot of money? America wants to offer the American Dream still, but we can't do that when we can't offer the simplest things, like giving every child a fair shot at a bright future.
Human beings are basically good and getting better. This isn't true in all cases. Yes, in some ways we are good and we're getting better at it, but this is not true in all cases. William Zinsser is right in ‘The Right to Fail’. “Who is there to say then if there is any right path to the top or even to say what the top consists of? Obviously, the colleges don't have more than a partial answer otherwise the young would not be so disaffected with an education that they considered vapid”. We are willing to go to another school for more time to get a degree or something else, why do we have to take classes did it not what we need? Will major in one thing, but we have to minor in so many more. We have to pay money to take these classes that we really don't want to take, but we have to do to get the credits to graduate. How is that fair how is this living the American Dream paying for things that we don't want and didn't ask for? William also says: “Maybe we are learning again to cherish the right of every person to succeed on his own terms and to fail as often as necessary along the way”. Maybe we are accepting that people will succeed in their own way. They might fail many times, but what matters is that we help them get back up and keep trying. The American Dream is meant to offer stability and freedom to learn what you want to learn and the way you want to, but if that were the case, we wouldn't make dropping out an insult. William says: “I like ‘dropout’ as an addition to the American language because it's brief and it's clear what I don't like is that we use it almost entirely as a dirty word”. And it's true, we use ‘dropout’ as a dirty word to teach children that bad things will happen if they don't go to school. That they automatically will be failures. But what we don't tell them is that a lot of brilliant people actually dropped out when they were younger to pursue their dreams. We don't want to tell them that there is a chance that they will succeed if they drop out. If America still truly provides the American Dream, we wouldn't make ‘dropout’ a dirty word and make it seem like the worst thing someone can do.
Can America still offer the American Dream? Yes, in some ways America can still offer the American Dream. I witnessed this firsthand as a child. From a young age, I was in and out of shelters with my mom and my brothers. Without the help of these government-funded and charity-funded shelters, I and my brothers would have grown up on the streets. America offers a lot of things to help you achieve your American Dream. When I live too far away from my school and any other elementary school, they provided me with a taxi ride from the shelter I lived in at the time to my school. Even now that I'm older, I still have things provided to me by the state. I have basic health insurance that is provided to me by the state. I also have a therapist provided to me by the state. There are a lot of things to state for us, you just have to look for them, but it's not always easy to find them. Without all of the help I got from the state as a child and even as a team, I don't think I would be alive today or anywhere near where I am right now. So yes, I do believe America still provides the American Dream in some ways. I still do firmly believe America does not provide the American Dream like it said it would. People sacrifice and give up things every day just to achieve something they were promised years ago. But that's the thing it was years ago, times have changed, things are different, and nothing is the same as it was 50 or 60 years ago. I've heard so many stories growing up of things that happened in the past, and back then America really provided the American Dream. That was in the past, we live in the present. From everything I've read, I firmly believe that America does not still provide access to the American Dream.
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