Tenure proves to be problematic and has no benefits over schools or its students. In fact, tenure gets in the way of hiring newly qualified instructors and students do not get the quality education they are paying for. Perhaps if tenure is altered or even eliminated, there will be modern courses offered in the interests of new students, and will provide more opportunities for more teachers.
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0042098012437746
The article listed above defines gentrification as a fundamental political process. This article explains that there is a “double movement” between the neighborhoods of Harlem and Prenzlauger Berg, Berlin. Both are being impacted negatively by the market economy, and the relation between public policies and gentrification is unstable. This articles makes me want to know more about why the public policies are allowing these neighborhoods to have a higher poverty rate and how they plan to fix it.
In the recent years, it has been noticeable that veterans are more likely to be addicted to opiates than non-veterans. The articles “A Growing Number of Veterans Struggle to Quit Painkillers” by Lawrence (2014), and Childress’ (2016) “Veterans Face Greater Risks amid Opioid Crisis,” both argue that veterans are in more danger of an addiction or overdose, due to the fact they are over prescribed these drugs. Szalavitz (2016) of the article, “Can You Get over Addiction?” explains that drug addiction is an issue connected with the brain, more specifically a learning disorder. Although doctors believe that opioid treatments are the best for veterans, it is in fact causing an increase in veteran addiction.
Opioid addiction among veterans occurs due to chemical dependency in the brain. Often while troops are on the field, they are injured and are handed prescription opioids by their doctors. “The troops, if they’d got hurt, they’d just shove you a bag of pills,” veteran Mike McDonalds explains (Cited Lawrence, 2014, para. 13). If the medication caused a different issue, such as drowsiness, doctors would prescribe something else to take care of that. Many young veterans are handed a list of pills and usually did not question the doctors’ orders as reported by Jim Reed, and Army Veteran (Cited Childress, 2016, para. 15). Every issue on the field is resolved using drugs which leads these patients to believe they cannot go on without them.
Drug addiction for opioids has escalated across the whole country causing an increase in overdoses. The editorial board of the New York Times (2017) states, “299 people in Milwaukee County died of drug-related overdoses” (para. 84). Since 2014, there has been over 250 deaths in Milwaukee, but these numbers reached the highest in 2016. New Hampshire has also reached an all-time high with over 300 deaths in 2015. Woodruff (2016) reports, “The easy availability of cheap heroin and fentanyl, another opiate, has exploded into a crisis” (p. 5). Due to the easy access of heroin and other opioids, deaths are increasing and state leaders believe that this epidemic needs special attention to tackle the issue.
The article, “A Growing Number of Veterans Struggle to Quit Painkillers”, written by Quil Lawrence focuses on Bryan McDonel, a man who has served in the military. He is among many of the troop members and veterans who struggle with drug addiction. Drug addiction in the military occurs because doctors often prescribe opiates as a reliever of pain, thanks to the Department of Veterans Affairs. It is said that troop members are prescribed with these medications three times more than regular civilians, which also leads to a higher addiction rate. Often, when members of the army have any sort of physical problems, the doctor’s main solution is prescription medication. According to the Veterans Affair, drug addiction is also the leading cause of veterans becoming homeless.
Bryan McDonel is an example of someone who has experienced being homeless due to drug addiction; however, it didn’t start off as an addiction. During his second visit to Iraq, McDonel suffered a back injury. Before he even healed, he went back to working, being classified as “fit to deploy.” “I was hard-headed. I ended up probably reinjuring it before it had time to heal,” he explains. McDonel took many pills a day for the pain and stayed on them even after going home, eventually making him dependent on them. His dependency caused him to fail a routine drug test, which led him to resign his military position, and eventually got kicked out of his home due to stealing money for drugs. From then on, he officially became an addict. Brian McDonel is the epitome of what some troop members goes through, and the Veterans Affair is trying to change their approach to pain because of it. It might be too late for McDonel, but the Veterans Affair is using alternative methods, which can hopefully decrease the use of opiates within the military scene.
John Whyte, M.D., of the article listed above, talks about how drugs can affect men, women, and people of difference ethnicity differently. He also gives different examples and statistics to back up this main idea. This source is credible because it is coming straight from a government website, which is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. John Whyte, M.D. is also a former Chief Medical Expert, and Vice President of Health and Medical Education at Discovery Channel. A brief description of Dr. Whyte can be found here : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/john-whyte-md-mph.
In George Orwell’s, “Why I Write”, Orwell gives his readers an understanding on how being a lonely child and living through times of war influenced his purpose of writing. For example, Orwell explains that being a middle child of three, along with not having a relation with his father, sparked the start of his literary ambitions. This was because he often made up his own stories and held conversations with himself. He wrote many poems and stories starting from that young age. It wasn’t until he grew up experiencing poverty and becoming aware of the injustice coming from government authority, that he started writing for political purposes. He described wanting to turn political writing into art. “I write it because there is some lie that i want to expose…”, says Orwell. This shows that his main purpose of writing is not only to write about politics, but in an artistic way.
Writing and empathy can be similar in many forms. When a person writes, they are putting their feelings into words in a way they normally can’t do when they are speaking out loud. When reading a piece of writing, a person can visualize, understand and feel what the writer is feeling. A persons writing puts the reader in a situation where the reader feels a connection with them and can visually put them in their shoes. This will cause the reader to feel empathy for the writer of the piece they are reading.
Empathy is valuable for various reasons. For example, if someone is dealing with a certain hardship, they will not want to surround themselves around someone who brushes off their feelings because they do not understand where they are coming from. Rather, they will want to be around someone who has been through what they are going through, someone who understands the issues they are facing. Empathy gives comfort to one who is going through their hardships so they feel like they aren’t alone.
