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Three Miles Analysis

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Response Paper 2 This American Life’s podcast episode “Three Miles” tells the story of three different students from a poorly funded public school, University Heights High School, in the Bronx, New York City. This school had a pen pal program with one of New York City’s most elite private schools, Fieldston, and each year they would take the students from the pen pal program at the public school to the private school for a visit. The three students that our story focuses on had three different reactions when visiting this rich private school. This reaction shaped their attitudes toward college and how they were going to approach it. This podcast along with Brown’s article challenge the idea of meritocracy in America, because only …show more content…
Capital is something that is gained, builds over time, and is valued in certain scenarios. They were all aware they lacked in economic capital at their school. Economic capital is money and material resources (Conley, 2015). When they went to Fieldston they realized just how much economic capital they lacked. Melanie cried and ran away from Fieldston. She thought it was so unfair, and she was so embarrassed by her appearance and economic status that she ran away from Fieldston the day they visited (Joffee-Walt 2015: 2:45-4:30). Raquel and Jonathan had this same experience but did not react quite the same or as strongly. Raquel saw how different Fieldston was from her school and wanted it for herself. Jonathan saw Fieldston and thought he could never belong in a place like it (Joffee-Walt 2015). This economic capital disadvantage affected them getting into college as well. Raquel, Jonathan, and Melanie all applied for the same scholarship, the posse scholarship. Melanie did not get this scholarship and had not applied for any other scholarships. She could not afford college so she graduated early and did not attend. Raquel did not receive this scholarship either, but she had planned ahead and applied for other scholarships and was able to pay to go through college. Jonathan got the posse scholarship and went to college but his attitude about not being able to fit in …show more content…
The only exception from these two sources is Raquel who actually went to college, graduated, and got a job. The cards are definitely stacked against those in poverty. Brown’s article, “The High Cost of Poverty” explains well that those living in poverty pay more for everything, especially in time. They don’t get to dictate how they use their time the way people living above the poverty line do. They are always waiting. They have to work more to make half as much (Brown, 2015). Without being able to dictate the use of their time, the poor often lose many opportunities to gain social and cultural capital. Social capital is networks and friendships that you can trust, and cultural capital is being able to appreciate and be involved in certain lifestyles and the parts of those lifestyles (Conley, 2015). Without these social and cultural networks Jonathan from “Three Miles” felt he could never fit in at a college and belong. This made him lose his drive to succeed and he eventually flunked out because he felt like he couldn’t ask for help. After Melanie did not get the scholarship she excepted her low cultural capital and fell into the norm of the people around her and gave up on college (Joffee-Walt 2015). America has the cards stacked against the poor. While there are a few exceptions like Raquel, it is extremely difficult to succeed when you start at such a disadvantage.

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