Most Significant Events Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Most Significant Events - Essay Example The last half of the twentieth century brought to America many remarkable social, economic and political events. Choosing the five I feel had the most powerful effect on America and the World was no easy task. Each decade held many amazing, newsworthy and notable times. After much consideration the five I have elected to go with are The Cold war, The Vietnam War, Reaganomics, Nixon’s Legacy, and Liberal Reform. Following World War II, there was a significant increase in births. The children born of this era were called, â€Å"The Baby Boom Generation†. This year, 2011, the Baby Boom Generation ranges in age from forty-six to sixty-five and represent about twenty-seven percent of the United States population. This almost twenty-year span saw the largest number of births on U.S. record. The parents of the â€Å"Baby Boomers† were spawned of the â€Å"Great Depression† and the â€Å"Dust Bowl†; children of poverty, deprived of so much. The greatest war in human history, World War II, changed their lives. After World War II the Baby Boomers and their parents experienced that American Dream. Mostly because of the GI Bill of Rights that was passed on June 22nd, 1944. This bill allowed returning GI’s to be able to buy homes and return to school. Jobs were everywhere and easy to find, particularly in the North East and along the coast. Because of the GI Bill, the suburbs were born as a couple after the couple moved their families outside the cities.... This caused a great boost to the economy as new housing developments, new schools and shopping centers sprung up everywhere; a nice safe place for children to grow up. The fifties were a time of innocence, in the beginning, but by the close of the fifties, innocence was lost as suburban moms began to work outside the home and â€Å"Latch Key† kids were born. The Sixties was the divining moment for the â€Å"Baby Boomers†. Their music, social ideas, lifestyles and the Civil Rights movement changed many things. â€Å"Make Love Not War was their motto and they lived for the advice of Timothy Leary’s advice to, â€Å"Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out†. By 1979, lots of â€Å"Boomers† were increasing the divorce rate. The sixties ideals had changed the way people thought, acted and believed. Times had changed and for most, there was no going back. From 1945-1954, President Truman evolved a policy of containment designed to hedge in the U.S.S.R., but even so , the cold war turned hot in Korea. At home, an anti-Communist crusade against suspected subversives subsided only after its reckless leader, Senator Joseph McCarthy, was censured. From 1963-1975, the idea that communism in Southeast Asia threatened vital American interests was argued and debated by many presidents. But it was Lyndon Johnson, who became President after Kennedy’s assignation; who began a massive bombing campaign and sent half a million American troops to intervene in Vietnam’s civil war. In 1974, amid dissent at home, Richard Nixon, then President of the United States, gradually began to withdraw U.S. forces from Vietnam, signaling limits to America’s influence as a superpower. In 1965, thousands of US

Existing Economic Research on Benefits and Opportunities of Public Term Paper

Existing Economic Research on Benefits and Opportunities of Public Education - Term Paper Example The paper focuses on the benefits and opportunities of public education with optimal policy suggestions for improvement. Summaries The article, Identity and Schooling: Some Lessons of the Economics of Education written by Akerlof and Kranton describes the identity generation of the students in several educational institutions. The pupils attending the privately managed schools generally tend to emerge from more socio-economically advanced backgrounds and the pupils from weak financial background opt for a public school education. In other words there lies a socio-economic stratification of the students attending publicly and privately managed schools. Identity generation is the prime motive in both types of educational institutions. For the development of identity, the economists often focus on the social interactions of the pupils in schools. The quality of the school is an important parameter in establishing the way in which the students fit themselves in a school’s social s etting. Again, the academic achievement is also a prime variable for the development of the identity of a student. ... selves to some social categories or groups with varied racial and ethnic designations which are found in the instances of the words used such as jock and nerds. Remaining within a social group, stereotypical physical attributes are developed within the individuals and the utility loss and gain are simultaneously related with low or high status respectively1. Educational achievement of the students also depends on the internalization of the school values among the students. Comer has demonstrated the disciplinary process with the case of an angry fifth grader attacking a small child with his belt. The teacher instead of punishing him helped the child to write a letter to his father who has been denied a pass from the jail for the Christmas. The teacher made the child understand that he could not take out his anger over other children in the school. The teacher taught him how to obey the rules. This internalization of moral values as entrusted upon the students by the school authoritie s should help the students in achieving success in their future life2. In the article, Competition between Private and Public Schools, Vouchers and Peer-Group Effects written by Epple and Romano, the competitive strategies adopted in the private schools and the public school are described. An overall preexisting notion is that the public schools are more or less tax free institutions. On the other hand the private schools are basically known to be institutions which are tax financed and the students studying in those schools have to pay tuition fees. Similarly there is also a pre-existing notion about the social positioning of the students studying in public school and the private schools. Various measures of reforms in the educational system have been encountered in the past decades. One