In Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” the happiness and wealth of the utopian society solely depends on the suffering of an innocent child in the city, kept away from any contact with the outside world. The city of Omelas is at a constant state of peacefulness reliant on an individual child living in an unsanitary, filthy closet where he is forced to stay. The suffering of the child in this appalling nature, is why the utopia triumphs in prosperity. The people in the city are stunned at this fact, but know that if they do anything to assist the child, will put an end to all happiness and salvation there is in the city (Rayner). In theory the story is perceived as a utopia, but in reality the story is sought to be an imperfect …show more content…
The quality of education someone obtains depends on the amount of wealth that they or their parents acquire. Someone who is in the upper class of social hierarchy is able to attend private school or enter an Ivy League university because they are able to meet the financial means that these schools require. A student who is part of the lower class and is not financially stable might only be able to acquire a high school education in a public school and may or may not obtain an upper level degree. Le Guin states that “In a basement under one of the beautiful public buildings…there is a room. It has one locked door, and no window.” (Le Guin).The basement is symbolized as the wealthy students who have a sense of “fuel less power” (Le Guin), able to obtain a college degree or high school diploma without worrying about the financial means to pay for it. The people in …show more content…
Today, the United States is ranked number 12 for its educational intelligence and literacy and less than one third of each state’s population holds a college degree (Lewin). Some people are able to enroll in some kind of upper level of education, but the problem is the decreasing amount of people graduating with a college degree, or a high school diploma for that matter. Therefore, Lewin states in “Once a Leader, U.S. Lags in College Degree”, “To improve our college completion rates, we must think ‘P-16’ and improve education from preschool through higher education.” In 2001, the No Child Left Behind Act, or NCLB, was enacted to increase the role of the federal government in elementary and secondary school education. The NCLB Act “require[d] that states test students in reading and math” (Schoof), but this emphasis on annual testing is being revamped into “recognize[ing] that schools need more support – more money – than they receive today” (Schoof). The United States “seem[s] to know where [it is] going”(Le Guin) in terms of decreasing the educational deficit and is trying to implicate “more state-financed preschool programs, better high school and middle school college counseling, dropout prevention programs, an alignment with international curricular standards and improved teacher