Glendon

She opens chapter six by giving an example of a survey done by the National Geographic Society, and says that young Americans ages 18 -24 performed worst of all, coming last out of the ten countries for this age group. This age group consists mostly of our college students, people who have gone through twelve years of schooling already and potentially six more years. Our society in particular, im not familiar about other countries, pushes schooling so hard and makes College out to be the ticket to a successful life. This to me is rather disturbing, that our society does push schooling, yet, when tested and compared to other leading nations, our college age students scored lowest. I would like to make the excuse we are just bad at geography, but that probably isn’t the case.

She then ends chapter seven by saying, “While the current state of art does not exactly provide grounds for optimism, it does leave room for the more sober, responsible, attitude that prophets have called hope.” I wonder if Barack Obama read this book, he probably hasn’t, but it isn’t that long ago when this book was written (twenty years). I found it very interesting that she ends with saying that there is potentially hope, and Barack Obama manifested his campaign around this notion.

My first question is much like Ernie’s question, have we progressed since that time? Also, was Obama’s campaign’s notion of hope being applied the same as she is using it?