Growing up in Bridgeville, an average neighborhood, in Pennsylvania, I thought I was sheltered and deprived from other cultures, until I began taking my Early Childhood classes. I quickly learned that in fact I was surrounded by many different cultures. Growing up all the schools in the area were let out around the same time after school all the neighborhood kids would go inside for about an hour but after that one hour the streets would be filled with kids well at least the block I lived on anyway my mom always encouraged me to play outside but not leave the block; children would walk their dogs, ride bikes, play street hockey, skate, swim in yard, and so much more. Today think back there were a lot of white and black families in the neighborhood. I remember one day I wanted to play with my next door neighbor but she was not allowed to come outside because of Passover. Being Catholic and seven years old I didn’t know what it meant I just remember being mad she couldn’t play with me. It makes me kind of sad thinking about this because today you may see a kid here or there around the neighborhood but they are walking and texting and are engulfed in their cellphones and technology. I learned that I was Italian very early on in my life. …show more content…
So I didn’t really feel out of place because of who I was or what my nationality is. However, as you know growing up in a big loud Italian family. I tend to talk very loud and use my hands to explain the boy who lived across the street from me was also Italian and when we would talk on the bus the bus driver always thought that we were fighting and other children would stare to that’s the only time I really remember feeling different and we still joke about this situation today because he is one of my best friends. Isn’t it funny how the world
The book In the Neighborhood, by Peter Lovenheim is a very interesting look into the lives of residents in modern suburban neighborhoods. His neighborhood in Rochester New York mirrors many communities across the country. He paints a familiar picture of a community that waves at each other as they drive by, yet do not know the person they are waving at. This disconnection of people that live their lives so close to one another was completely unnoticed by Lovenheim until tragedy struck his community. One night in 2000, a routine activity that Lovenheim practiced, walking his dogs, exposed his consciousness to the lack of association he shared with those who live in close proximity to him. As he approached his street he observed emergency vehicles
Living the Drama by David J. Harding is a text which draws on many sociological theories that are presently relevant to the lives of many individuals. Particularly this compilation of personal accounts and theoretical connections textbook focuses on the role of neighborhood and community’s effect on the lives of present day boys. The book provides real life examples are given to demonstrate two key topics being cultural heterogeneity and collective efficacy. In neighborhoods collective efficacy is relevant regardless of the racial or socioeconomic make up of the area, as it comprises the neighborhoods trust and cohesion with shared expectations of control, which in response determines the public order of that community. In these communities we then find cultural heterogeneity, which is defined as the existence of a myriad of competing and conflicting cultural models. Cultural Heterogeneity, according to Harding, is greater in disadvantaged neighborhoods especially in relation to the topic of academic ambitions and career aspirations of adolescents in these areas. Youth and juveniles are heavily effected by the collective efficacy of an area which determines how may different social models and norms there are in the area or neighborhood in question. In Living the Drama, examples are given which indicate that higher collective efficacy would likely result in less cultural heterogeneity. This relationship between the two theories Is important as it effects the collective leadership, direction and social norms of an area and plays a role in the success or failure of the youth from that specific neighborhood.
I was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. I lived in a very welcoming neighborhood. As a child, I had many friends on my street. We would ride bikes, climb trees, visit the playground at the local park district, and stay outside until the streetlights turned on. The families on my street always looked out for each other, so we didn't worry too much about safety. All of my friends attended the same school and participated in the Chicago Park District's activities such as Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, music and dance lessons, and open gym events. The park district hosted an annual gym show so the kids could perform for their families. Residents would get together on most Sundays to talk about issues in the neighborhood and share meals and stories.
Thesis: Growing up in a certain neighborhood doesn’t have to determine where you go in life.
Readers are persuaded to get to know their neighbors because of how Lovenheim describes the joy of forming a bond with neighbors. He points out that people have become fragmented by ethnicity and status quo as a society. They have isolated themselves from each other by dividing themselves with an invisible line. Neighbors living a few doors down from each other don’t know their neighbor’s names. Lovenhem cited a study from Robert Putman’s book “Bowling Alone,” that the decline began 20 years earlier, and that neighborhoods are less than half as strong as they were in
What Parents Need to Know about Playgrounds The essay, “Learning Responsibility on City Sidewalks” by Jane Jacobs, gives insight into the positive aspects that come out of neighborly interaction and expresses how the creation of playgrounds within the community can taint a child’s upbringing. The use of playgrounds is said to lead to a lack of joint responsibility which can have an influence on the youth within a community. The author feels that parks do not benefit pubescents in same the way that adult interaction does; therefore, they are frugal communal wastes.
Since I moved from Honduras to Florida, it has been some difficult first months, by having problems that every person that arrives to a new country can easily understand. Back in Honduras, I was a “privileged” teen, a teen that there daily routine is going to school, go back home, study, do indoors recreation, and go to sleep. Our parents put us on such a bubble, that the reality of our society, topics aborted on the conflict theory (on the textbook and A Brief History of Sociology media link), such as, ghettos, violence, child abuse, and delinquency were ignored, focusing only in my personal problems. With the knowledge that I learned this week, made me realize that those “privileged” teens had fallen into a False Social Conscious. That is to say, I made an effort to cover a little bit about my background and the main reason why I moved out (crime and economy), making room for my current personal trouble that is adapting to the society of Sarasota, Florida with my circumstances like, origin, religion, language, culture and ethnicity.
Very few people would want to live in a place where they don’t have security. Whether it be in cities or subdivisions, Jacobs, if alive, would ascertain that there needs to be a sense of connectedness to maintain communal safety. Public living “bring[s] together people who do not know each other in an intimate, private social fashion and in most cases do not care to know each other in that fashion” (Jacobs 55). Now that families typically center themselves around suburban lifestyles, residents should understand that the same connections that Jacobs says were to be made in cities need to now be made in subdivisions. Jacobs was scared that with houses being spread out in the suburbs, little interaction between neighbors would take place. In order to avoid this, neighborhoods need to promote a sidewalk lifestyle that they currently do not (Jacobs 70). With Kotkin stressing how urban areas are no longer preferable places to raise a family, saying only seven percent of their populations are children, he lacks compassion for the transients that now inhabit cities. Undoubtedly, those who now inhabit the city should also feel safe in their environments. Nowadays, members of a city isolate themselves from interactions with other citizens making it difficult to establish a social
In many ways, today’s Los Angeles can credit Anglo immigrants of the late 1800s and early 1900s as the driving force behind their communal roots. Their imagined reality of a rural city, the process of creating, leaving and fighting for their neighborhood, have left traces in the city. These traces can be seen in the fragmented infrastructure of Los Angeles. They can be seen in the callous, sometimes violent, social interaction within the community. Yet as youth and minority groups continue to socially interact in increased acceptance, Los Angeles will begin to lose some of its fragmented feel. Each generation will continue to unite Los Angeles through shared social interaction and experiences.
I’m sitting in band playing my trombone, killing it. I go to Portage Central Middle School and I’m currently in 1st hour. The door opens suddenly a girl walks in, she lights the room up the room like the sun. I've never seen her before.
One of the things I realized, at this time in society other cultures do not feel as joyous about their current cultural status like it, was when I was growing up. People were happy to be from another culture. I remember times when I went to events like Kwanzaa and Cinco de Mayo, with open conscious to learn and enjoy myself. My interview is with Carlos my neighbor, we talked about how the United States used to be described as a "melting pot" in which different cultures/events have contributed their own certain "flavors" to American culture. I instantly understood he knew he was from a very unaccepted minority group in his responses. Carlos, who is 58 years of age told me in the mid-80s he felt like he belongs to America. This indicated “speaking in
As I became a teenager, my peer’s influence on my socialization process became extremely apparent. My peers, which included mostly other middle school students at the time, influenced the way I started to dress for school. I started to purchase articles of clothing with flashy trademarks like the rest of my classmates. Although I seldom observed it, I even went as far as wearing a one-hundred-dollar G-Shock watch that resembled other watches worn by my peers. Even my peers influenced the food I started to eat. Food became a cultural gap between my parents and me; my parents began to cook food suitable to my tasting. Instead of the traditional Arabic dishes my parents prepared, I was set on having what my friends had for dinner each night (pizza,
When I was younger, I never truly appreciated my uniqueness. Most of my Chinese-Indonesian friends are pure Chinese. So naturally, I would think that I am as well. When I knew where I really came from, even that meant very little to me. I speak fluent Chinese, English, and Indonesian and passable Japanese. I can’t speak Dutch but I hear it on a daily basis that I understand what stuff meant. However, ...
Culture is defined as the ways of thinking, acting, and material objects that together form a people's way of life. With our melting pot status, American culture is constantly changing as new people, new ideas, and new technology make their way into our society and change the way we think and feel. The ebb and flow of our culture can be easily seen by walking our streets and seeing how different age groups and races act similarly and differently to stimulus. This essay will discuss how even though our
The two neighborhoods that I chose to use for this assignment are vastly different. The main reason is because they are on opposite sides of the country. The first neighborhood that I visited is the one that I grew up in. This neighborhood is in Connecticut, on the East Coast, all the way across the country from the neighborhood that I currently live in here in West Hollywood. Most of my family lives in Connecticut and Massachusetts and I’m the only one who lives on the West Coast. A big difference is that the neighborhood in Connecticut has houses that are more spaced out, have larger lawns, and very many more trees. There are very few apartments there, unlike where I live now where my entire street is almost all apartment buildings.