Family Values

So, at first when i started reading Joe's family values i was extremely confused and easily lost because, it just felt like he was recounting his family history and really had no real point to his writing. i felt like this was the case all the way to about, page 11. i could respect that his family was poor and that his grandfather had immigrated to this country when he was so poor in his other country, and i could respect that his grandfather had worked for everything he had however, i didn't feel at all like i could relate. despite the fact that my grandfather had immigrated here from ireland and was so poor that he had to join the army just to survive, in my family we just never really talked about it so, i couldn't exactly relate.

When he got to page 11, joe started discussing all different types of literacy and since this is something we so often talk about in class, it caught my interest. he is absolutely right about there being many many different literacy's and how not all of them are appreciated or even, given a place in mainstream american culture; i found that statement to be pretty powerful. i also liked his statement on how all students are just blindly sucked into the corporate system of either being a boss, or having a boss. its not fair how your only options that you have if you want to make a living in the world are to either tell lots of people what to do or, be told what to do by lots of people. both me and my sister have found ourselves frustrated through our collage experiences because we do not want to get sucked into this system but realize that it is inevitable.

Joe also mentions how modern technology has had a significant impact on his life. although i can heavily relate to this, i prefer not to because it is for much different reasons. i never met or seriously considered any person that i had come in contact with online because i believe that human relationships should be much more personal that that however, the internet and modern technology in general are both wonderful ways of staying in touch with people who you already care about but are far away from. life is made much simpler by having so much of the world's knowledge available to you with the click of a button but, i dont think its right for people to rely so heavily on modern technology that they are helpless with out it. And it is especially sad when people hide behind computers so for so long that they inevitably become anti social in person.