"Amazing Grace" by Jonathan Kozol

"There are children in the poorest, most abandoned places who, despite their miseries and poisons that the world has pumped into their lives, seem, when you first meet them, to be cheerful anyway." (Page 6)

     Throughout my own life's experiences, I've made and lost many friends. Throughout the short eighteen years that I've lived though, many of the people who have stayed in my life and remained my friends have had innumerable accounts of "miseries" put in their lives. Despite this, these are the friends who are the happiest whenever I speak to them, the friends that I have never seen shed a tear over the difficulties they have had to overcome. This quote really spoke to me because it made me even further appreciate the friendships I've made that will last for a lifetime. So to me, this quote expresses in the text that despite all the troubles and turmoil a child can go through, they can have the uncanny ability to see the light and goodness in their lives. 

(Sorry, but I just had to add this! Some of the lyrics of the song reminded me of the first quote, so I thought I'd add it in!)

"I believe that we were put here for a purpose, but these people in the streets can't see a purpose. There's a whole world out there if you know it's there, if you can see it. But they're in a cage. They cannot see." (Page 24)

     Upon reading this quote, I immediately agreed with Kozol. People need to stop being so self-indulgent and narcissistic or else they will never be able to truly appreciate the beauty and wonder of the world. This quote additionally made me think of a quote from my favorite episode Doctor Who, titled "Vincent and the Doctor". The episode is about the character of the Doctor and his companion, Amy Pond, travelling to see Vincent Van Gogh in the midst of his work, but while meeting him, get wrapped up in an adventure battling a centipede like alien beast. You're probably wondering what anything like Doctor Who has to do with Kozol's reading. Well, towards the end of the episode, Vincent Van Gogh makes a statement, very much in fact like the quote above. He says to the Doctor and Amy:

     This quote has been my favorite in the show, so much that I even used it as my senior quote, but overall, it still has a connection to Kozol. Both quotes, no matter how you look at them express the need for everyone to take a step back from the egotistical views of today's society and appreciate the wonders of the world around us and look at life with a child-like amazement. All in all, just living life to the fullest that it can be lived.

"If poor people behaved rationally, they would seldom be poor for long in the first place." (pg. 21)

     Although this quote was stated by Lawrence Mead, a political science professor at New York University, I personally believe this is an extremely uneducated assumption and statement. Unlike the Ullucci's work, where the author discusses that people in poverty are more often than not forced into poverty through no fault of their own, this statement simply claims that all those in poverty are uncivilized idiots. Ullucci used the quote, “… they are poorly paid, underemployed, or working part-time. Thus, the problem is not that those in poverty are lazy and unmotivated, but that we have a low-wage and too-few-jobs problem (Anyon, 2005)" to express the real problem with those stuck in the rut we call poverty, so in my opinion, Professor Mead should do better research before making insensitive and utterly moronic statements.

Point to Share:

     Even though I do realize that humanity will never be able to truly "just get along", there should still be no reason why we don't try to do the best we can to make the world the best possible place for everyone. No one is ever going to fully agree on any points, but we can at least make it possible to be respectful of other people's views, beliefs, and opinions. No one should create an argument over little things and no one should ever get into a war over selfish reasons, such as material things or economical and social advancement. Humanity will never be able to get along with one another, we will never have that ability despite all of the amazing things we have created throughout such short years. But again, we should learn to be more accepting or respectful of differences, then at least, we can have done something right for humanity as a whole.