The idea of Social Darwinism influenced Americans, especially during early 1920’s. The idea of the survival of the fittest is showing that the body is more important to fit in society. Also, the physical fitness is considered as the key of success and a way to fit in society, if someone is not physically fit he will be isolated. The movie “College” (1927) by Buster Keaton, presents the idea of physical culture in college life and how fitness is a key of success which leads efficiency in society.
During the 1920’s people thought that if the body is fit it is going to reflect to the mind and if there is fitness in society it is going to result efficiency in society. This idea resulted a society that focuses in physical training more than the mind. As the movie shows, Jeff, the athletic guy is the most popular guy in the school because he is physically fit and all girls are around him. He also got the audience’s attention and the boys were supporting him while he received his certificate because he was an athletic champion. However, Buster, the “mama’s boy”, who does not care about the sports and all his focuses in books and studies, is acting like a crazy guy who does not know anything about life from wearing clothes to opening an umbrella. He also, does not have any popularity between his schoolmates because he was against physical he did not involve in sports.
During that time, everyone who was against sports and physical culture is considered as a lagged person. Also, if someone does not support or involved in sport, he will be isolated from the society. Buster faced his first isolation when he started to talk about books and studying while showing that he was against sports and feels that people won’t benefit from sports, becau...
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...ry hitch and hurdle and reached the room and start fighting with Jeff until he ran away. While trying to save Mary he was doing everything that he could not do before like: hitting the balls in baseball, jogging, high jumping and javelin. In that moment Mary realized that being fit is not everything. Then they decided to get married, at the end of the movie it shows that Mary was reading a book with Buster and that means the period of Social Darwinism reached its end.
To sum up, Social Darwinism influenced American society so that it reached its education and became part of their culture by making the fitness is a key of success in a period of time. The movie “College” presented it in a way the impact of Social Darwinism in the American society especially in a college life. Showing Buster married Mary by using his fitness presented how fitness is a key of success.
Botstein begins his essay by listing examples to assert that the American high school is obsolete. He describes high school as if to someone who knows nothing about it, so as to better expose the failings of the institution. Current or former high-schoolers remember the team sport culture, but might not realize its harm without Botstein’s detached and somewhat analytical description.
As seen throughout the entire report it is evident that the perceptions held by StAC students are no different then the common stereotypes held by society towards aerobics. This has been done by examining each level of Figueroa’s framework as well as Maslow’s hierarchy and relating to the data collected by myself. If the recommendation’s stated earlier are implemented then these perceptions here at StAC will change for the better.
Sumner was the follower of Darwin’s ideas and Herbert Spencer’s, Social Darwinism. He is considered to be vigorous and influential social Darwinist in America. He was a professor at Yale College. He developed the concepts of Folkways, diffusion, and ethnocentrism. He is not as big as Spencer but his ideas were bold enough to be recognized. He played three important roles in the development of American thought, he was a great Puritan preacher, an exponent of the Classical pessimism of Ricardo and Malthus, and an assimilator and popularizer of evolution. He was able to build a bridge between the economic ethic set in motion by the Reformation and the thought of the nineteenth century.
Fitness consumes society and distracts them from problems emerging around in the country. The problems, the real source of anxiety, keep developing and classes have become to engrossed in themselves to notice. Ehrenreich emphasis, “By confusing health and virtue, we’ve gotten testier, less tolerant, and ultimately less capable of confronting the sources of disease…” (Ehrenreich, 2016, p. 339). Her emphasis sheds light on America’s failure to understand the impact society makes, as a whole, since the individual selves take the focus. American society lost sight of worth and in their attempts to find it placed their worthiness into how strong and toned they became. The worth of America society as a collective is the influence they can bring about and if America can find that worth, as Ehrenreich urges, “…It can make us fit for something: strong enough to fight the big-time polluters, for example, the corporate waste dumpers; tough enough to take on economic arrangements that condemn so many to poverty and to dangerous occupations; lean and powerful enough to demand a more nurturing, less anxiety ridden social ladder” (Ehrenreich, 2016, p. 340). Building up strength and endurance to come together as “We the people” and invoke change is among some of Americas greatest worth. However, if society does not pull the cord of the so-called medicine, that is healthism, off America will never be able to wake up and return to her former
In their minds, if they do well in school, they can get a career that can help them become successful. Although the students do not put limits on the relationship between social class and education, the school system does. The view that the school system has for the classifications of intellectualism leaves out the interests of most of the students. The writer Graff address this in his article within the lines, “ Only much later did it dawn on me that the sports world was more compelling than school because it was more intellectual than school, not less. Sports after all was full of challenging arguments, debates, problems for analysis, and intricate statistics that you could care about, as school conspicuously was not.” (Graff 790) In those lines, he speaks about sports, which is a topic that is not considered to hold intellectual value by the school system. He shows that other interests besides the things we learn in school can have intellectual value. He makes it apparent that it does not matter the individual’s economic status because they can still be smart. This article shows that everyone can connect and contribute to learning with their different interests, and their interest can bridge the gap that society creates between the social classes if they decide that they want to be successful and take their education
For example Zirin stated “And as it turned out this gendery of athletic achievement, present a problem not just for women who just play sports but also for the men who don’t measure up to the sports culture masculine ideal.” Men who don’t play any sports are consider not masculine because they didn’t lived up to what society expect from them to do which is to play sports. A book called Sociology of North American Sport authors George H. Sage and D. Stanley Eitzen have similarly in their book that connect with the movie and Dave Zirin quote, like for example in the book I quote “Each individual in society is because of his or her wealth, occupation, education, religion, racial and ethnic heritage, gender, and family background ranked by complex hierarchy exerts pressures, both subtle and blatant, on people to behave in prescribed ways”(Sage and Eitzen 7).We can see how their is a connection between the movie and the book because both sources describe a society where a person background is measured by a hierarchy system that put pressure on that person to live up to that stereotypes. Another connections between the book and movie would be how in the movie historically African American were segregated from sports with whites. Zirin stated “Robinson demonstrated great courage in the face of hostility from the legion of white people
Athletics in American schools have always been controversial for many reasons. Some of these reasons include health concerns, safety precautions, and academic significance. Daniel H. Bowen and Colin Hitt wrote an article titled, “High-School Sports Aren’t Killing Academics” to present the factors of positive correlation between success in athletics and academics. I believe that athletics in high schools not only benefit students socially, but also academically.
As a nation coming out of a devastating war, America faced many changes in the 1920s. It was a decade of growth and improvements. It was also a decade of great economic and political confidence. However, with all the changes comes opposition. Social and cultural fears still caused dichotomous rifts in American society.
High school sports are approached with clashing opinions. Some of these opinions are positive, and supportive of athletics. “Athleticism, among many activities, offers teens a physical outlet to exert their troubles, anger, emotions, and other feelings” (Chen 1). This can be observed in nearly all of the football players in Friday Night Lights. This can also be noticed in the world today. “Athletics help high school students understand their own abilities and talents” (Chen 1). This piece of evidence is very accurate when describing high school athletes. Sports can make a high school student humble. As can be seen by the preceding information, high school athletics can have a positive impact on a student’s life.
One of these is normative social influences, this is “the influence others have on us because we want them to like us (King, 2013, p. 447). Andrew shows this when he talks about how he got in detention. Andrew states he bullied a kid, so the kid would think he was cool. You see that Andrew does this disgusting action to this kid so he could be seen as cool. Another social behavior that is seen in the film is the fundamental attribution error, which is observers overestimate the importance of the internal traits and underestimate the importance of external factors when explaining others behaviors. We see the fundamental attribution error a lot in this movie. First we see it with Brian, everyone sees him as smart. But when Brian explains that he failed shop class people were surprised; they never thought this kid would ever fail, since he is so smart. Another is with Bender, they see him as disrespectful and aggressive. What they do not know is, at home, he is being verbally and physically abused by his dad and has to defend himself. This can bring us to conformity, which is a change in a person’s behavior to get more closely with group standards. We see this with all five of the students. Let’s start with Andrew, he covers up his hatred for him father so he wouldn’t be seen as abnormal. Then you have Brian who talks about contemplating suicide for failing a class. He did not want to
The concept of Social Darwinism was a widely accepted theory in the nineteenth-century. Various intellectual, and political figures from each side of the political spectrum grasped the theory and interpreted it in various ways. In this paper, we will discuss three different nineteenth-century thinkers and their conception of Social Darwinism. The conservative, Heinrich von Treitschke, and liberal Herbert Spencer both gave arguments on the usefulness of competition between people on a global scale. The anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, refuted the belief of constant competition among members of the same species and emphasized mutual aid.
As Miller and Wilson revealed, athleticism is not always analogous with success. Willy regarded Biff highly because he observed Biff’s presence and athleticism, and he believed these qualities would result in immediate success. Today many parents associate sports with success and therefore pressure their children to excel in sports. In today’s society it is very rare that fears of discrimination would cause children to not pursue a lucrative career in sports. Both Miller and Wilson knew the impact of sports on family dynamics, and how sports have evolved from a leisure time activity to a full-time commitment. Clearly, many of the qualitative aspects of sports--competition, teamwork and physical dexterity can contribute to being a success in almost any career.
American History X (1998) illustrates how segregation is aggravated by missing father figures as well as the herd mentality of the characters in the film. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of the herd mentality states that people need a concept or a worldview to adopt in order to give meaning to their lives. This herding of people who choose to adopt this certain ideal or ideals in effect causes the stifling of individual thoughts or creativity because everyone chooses to think a certain way (Floyd). This mindset that people are attracted to is not always chosen or forced but is rather seen as an obligation because of loyalties certain people have to others.
We need to act in a way that will improve our reproductive success. This will cause social processes that will increase genetic fitness and ability to pass this on to our children. According to this theory those of us who are fit will survive and our population will evolve in a way that their traits will manifest
Sports are what help students get through school, for a majority of kids sports are why they even go to school. However, after secondary education, families contemplate on what type of high school to send their child to for their 4-year career. They take into the consideration how the school will influence and advance their child’s education, but some parents also want their child to excel athletically in their specialized sport. When the child realizes that they are being sent to a school for sports as much as they are academically, that causes a downfall on the society. Multiple athletic programs on account of specialized public and private high schools, along with college institutes around the country, are achieving