Robert Putnam's Our Kids: The American Dream In Crisis

The book, Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, by Robert Putnam, Putnam goes to explain the biggest problem that the kids in America are facing today. Putnam seems to be questioning himself throughout the whole book, if people from different social and economic stances have the same opportunity to reach the “American Dream.” For the duration of the book, Putnam declares that there has been an opportunity gap in America. This is because of the of the children that grow up in more of an upper class family, seem to have more opportunities than those that grow up in lower class families, and only seems to have been getting worse throughout the decades. Putnam splits the books into six chapters to explain the reasons why this is a problems …show more content…
Putnam proclaims, that in the recent years due to the class split that has been happening in America, haven’t been providing the same level education to lower class kids as the kids growing up in upper class. In this chapter, Putnam sets the location in Orange County, California where we can clearly see the amount of education children are getting in the are based off there economic or social status. Putnam shows the stories of a wealthy Latino family that include, Clara, Ricardo, and their children Isabelle and Michael. Instantly in this wealthy family can see that the kids are pressed to only focus on their academics and the parents seem to pick their neighborhoods, based on people SATs scores around them. They also have to money to make their kids go to better school then those who can't afford to go in those schools. The students also care going into Ivy League colleges. On the other hand, on the poor side of the Latino community we get the stories of Lola and Sofia. In this story we see that the older sister can’t even take school seriously because she has to take care of members in her family. We also she that in the poorer schools, especially in high school, kids suffer a lot from substance abuse, violence, and teachers or facility that never really cared about helping students. Unlike the upper class kids, Sofia only cares about going into a community college. During the rest of the chapter we can see the total difference between the social and economic classes. In the wealthier classes we see that kids are able to have more extracurricular activities in their schools which helps with everyday life skills in the future. While lower class schools don't offer any after schools activities which only seems to worsen them in the