American Culture

AMERICAN CULTURE

We have every week a class in American Culture, for me it has been the best history class, I have learned a lot of things about American Culture. I love history and we have learnend about their habits and things that we need to know to teach our students and for our own. 

Some questions our teacher ask us to research are follow:

How is the American family changing?

     The typical nuclear family of a generation ago is slowly disappearing. There is a significant rise in single-parented homes, and same-gender marriages (with or without children).

     As the birthrate for married and teenaged women has declined, the birthrate is on the rise for single, non-teenaged women. For whatever reason, more and more women are trying to fulfill the need for family sans the father.

     For the families that still resemble the one father/one mother motif, the practice of "family time" is all but gone: family meals are on the decline; parents spending quality time with the children is on the decline; all social interactions are being replaced by electronics.

(Ron Christman Jr - He is American and married with a Brazilian woman.)

How is business helping and hurting US society?

Business helps the US society by proving employment. With that employment comes benefits which may or may not contain health insurance, PTO, maternity leave, 401k, etc... The employment provides income. That income, in turn, provides spending power within the US society. However, noted is that fact that the general populace works for a pay rate that is consistently below the inflation index. Therefore, the power of each dollar of income is weakened over time. Business hurts US society because it is part of the "microwave mentality," it is devilishly opportunistic no matter the cost, and it often times will take advantage of socioeconomic conditions to the detriment of the labor force. As the business world has developed since the 1950's, slick PR and advertisements have swayed the masses to desire what they do not need, if only to "keep up with the Jones'." Businesses, when large enough and with enough capital, hire lobbyists to sway the US congress to pass/block laws that will help their respective companies. They will do this even if it harms a portion of the US population. Businesses will even pay their employees as little as possible but expect an ROI equal to that of higher payed employees. For example, Company A traditionally payed $12 per hour for a specific position. Once the economy goes in a downturn, and their are more people looking for that specific job than there are available positions, the Company will hire a new person at $9-$10 per hour because the market can bear it. In some respects business is necessary and good for the US society. Yet, in many ways business, in our modern times, is hurting the US society.

 (Ron Christman Jr - He is American and married with a Brazilian woman.)

DISTRUST AND INDIVIDUALISM

Something I think I found about the difference between Americans and other people, they don't wait anybody to do anything, they do everything by themselves. It's similar when decades ago everybody, in the begining, they needed to do everything, they needed to grow(cultivate), to construct their houses, to prepare their meals, etc.