Literacy is all that you’ve learned from even your first learning experience as an infant. I was brought up in a working class family, so the grades I got did not really matter to my parents. I was always taught just to get a passing grade and that’s all. Now that I’m older and in college I have come to realize the way you speak and write means a lot. I believe those who have more struggles with how they practice there literacy skills tells a lot about a person. This is something I have been working on to improve.
In Joe Amatos’s narrative he illustrates how he did not have much growing up. He was an immigrant from Italy, and even though he wasn’t a citizen he was an over achiever. I can relate to Amato because my father was raised by a native Czech Republic father, and his mother was an immigrant from Italy. My father’s upbringing now influences me because he is not aware of all the technology that there is today, and he isn’t concerned with grades from school. It’s challenging to me to navigate myself through college now because everything is based on technology and the grades you get. However he has the most authority in my house, so for now I’m stuck without a computer, and still keeping track of my own grades, making sure I’m doing the best I know I can do.
I find Joe Amato to be inspiring to me. He started off my speaking “Italian English” then later found himself to speak structured, proper English. Also I was baffled that he had a degree in engineering. That’s pretty incredible if you think about it. This young man went from living in a household where they did not have much of anything, to fulfilling his dream and accomplishing what he knew he could.
In all, I do not believe that if you grow up lower class you will stay there. People prove that to be wrong every day. There are rich people in society today who end up as working class people. There should be no reason why one would not want to better themselves no matter how they grew up, or where they came from. Everybody has the opportunity to be whatever it is they want to be.
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I agree with you in the sense that we grew up in a different time than Amato, I was also brought up in a working class family, and my grades, although they were important, I didn’t get penalized for a moderate report card. You bring up a lot of good points just in your first paragraph about how a person struggles tells a lot about who they are and I think the same thing goes for Joe Amato. I enjoy reading right off the bat that you truly have an idea as to where he was coming from being as your parents emigrated from other countries. You saw firsthand similar struggles that Joe saw because just as you are he wasn’t always up to date with the new technology.
ReplyDeleteYour 3rd paragraph I believe is awesome and you bring up so many good points. I also noticed how his English’s changed throughout the essay and how he even described a family members of his to have “broken English.” Being the first in his family to obtain a college degree in engineering while also having his professor assistant job on the side must have been a huge accomplishment for him. It makes you so thankful for being fortunate enough to be able to go to college and get the education you need to be successful in life. And, I don’t know about you but it makes me think I could have and should have tried harder in high school.
Overall I think your blog post was excellent and I don’t think there is anything I would change about it. I agree with you in almost every aspect of your blog. Your last point about how people are proving the “myth” of how if you’re in a lower class you will stay there is something that is pretty controversial. Once again I’m going to have to agree with you, I’m sure you saw and overcame very similar challenges to Joe and I think it is wonderful that you were also able to work around and overcome aspects such as not having a computer in your household.
I understand where you're coming from but you have to tell your father, you know listen in todays world everything is run by computer, if you don't change with the times, you'll be left behind.
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