Living On One Dollar Analysis

Improved Essays
The documentary “Living On One Dollar” truly opened my eyes to how different life is outside of the United States. Chris and Zach, two close friends studying international development in college, decided that textbooks were not enough to learn from. They needed to travel and gain the real-life experience reading could not provide. Chris and Zach decided they would take off to Guatemala for a 56-day trip living on only $1.00 per day. In Guatemala, they explained, citizens are not always confident when “payday” is. So, for this reason, the friends put papers into a hat with numbers on them. Each day they would draw a number, which would represent how much they were allowed to spend that day. Depending if their number was high or low, some days …show more content…
Students today do not understand how important schooling is. Nobody can take your education away; it is something you will forever possess. According to DoSomething.org, every year 1.2 million students drop out of high school in the United States. America used to have some of the highest graduation rates out of any country, however, they have now dropped due to students have become lazier and less appreciative of their opportunities. In the documentary “Living On One Dollar” any of the children would be lucky to get to finish middle school. Guatemala has a high drop out rate also, I learned after watching the documentary; however, it is for completely contrasting reasons. The dropout rates in third world countries are because families cannot afford to buy books and other supplies needed for school, along with the cost of being enrolled in school. An astonishing fact from the Global Education Fund, states that only 3 out of 10 children graduate from the 6th grade. Any of the children in other countries would agree that American’s have every opportunity available, but they are taking them for granted. We have the option to go past 6th grade, and even past high school. The problem is: we don’t learn how important education is until it is too late. We cannot take all of our advancements and opportunities for granted anymore for as a result, we might end up losing …show more content…
They think that if there isn’t enough food in the country that they should just “plant some.” However, what they don’t understand is that their land isn’t comparable to the land in the United States. Growing food is a laborious activity that is also extremely time consuming. Another point is, without other countries we wouldn’t have many of the things we need today. In 2015, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative the United States spent $4.1 billion dollars on goods from Guatemala. Next, if we didn’t have concern for this country’s well being, we would begin to develop issues in our country. Despite what others might think, countries do work together and depend on each other quite frequently. Others may also argue that education is not needed because without the lack of it, there wouldn’t be people to farm and work in factories to create the items we need. It is unfair that we get to profit from their strenuous work, furthermore, we have far more opportunities than the residents of Guatemala do. When they are old enough to understand the world they accept the fact that their life will not be spectacular, and they will do everything they are expected to do. In other words, if we want our country to succeed, we have to help others succeed as

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