Month: June 2019

Do people want consistency? Or do they want variety? In our world, this is a real question. On the one hand, consumers want consistency and precision. When people go to McDonald’s to purchase a cheeseburger, they know what they are getting every time they buy it, due to predictability (Ritzer 105). Andy Warhol outs the consistency in this: “What’s great about this country is America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.” Coca Cola is consistent so anyone can enjoy the product, and every Coke is the same, no matter how much is paid for it. However, consumers sometimes want to have a say in what they receive in a product. That may be a color preference, flavor, consistency or other options. Purchasing soda is an example of how variety comes into play. The consumer gets a choice, but different flavors may vary in appeal and in price. There is no lack of familiarity because the taste is expected. Consistency is a good quality in a product line, but variety is frequently desired as well.

One company that is often engaging in planned obsolescence when a product is destined to become obsolete is Apple Incorporated (Elmer-DeWitt). Their tactic is to release a few new features with each model of their iPhone devices so their customer base will want to upgrade to a newer model. Companies add new features to their products all the time, but Apple often withholds, and even removes these features that are in other phones for years, such as the NFC chip and in the newest generation, the headphone jack (Kastrenakes). The author of this essay took a quick poll of 100 people who owned iPhones. 51 people had iPhones from the 6^th generation, 20 had iPhones from the 5^th generation, and only 19 had phones from the 7^th generation which was released on September 7^th, 2016. The people who participated in the poll were current US residents and used an iPhone as their primary cell phone. As seen from the results of this survey, not many people were early adopters of the newer iPhones because they were either happy with their current devices or did not want to lose essential features such as the headphone jack. This is an example of how consistency and planned obsolescence can go wrong, because if there is an outdated piece of technology that people expect on their devices, removing it destroys what customers come to expect from company.

When people purchase an iPhone, they come to expect a few things: a somewhat rectangular device with a round home button at the bottom, headphone and charger jacks at the bottom, a speaker at the top, and control buttons such as power and volume keys. Over the course of the last nine years, there have been 15 versions of the iPhone, and currently 5 different devices are in production for sale (Apple). The 3 devices from the previous generation of iPhones include a headphone jack while the 2 current devices (iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus) do not. Mobile statistics demonstrate that only the four 6^th generation iPhone devices and the iPhone 5c budget-phone are listed as the top 5 iPhone devices most commonly used (Mixpanel). The adoption rate for the new iPhone generation, the percentage of people who purchase newer models, is significantly behind the previous generations due to the removal of the headphone jack, which breaks the chain of consistency in the company’s products.

In the modern day, choosing a cell phone is much like purchasing a bottle of soda from the supermarket. There are many different sizes and flavors to choose from. From the low budget “can” phones to “half-gallon” phablets, the endless possibilities of sizes and flavors appeal to everyone differently yet will always be somewhat consistent, no matter what size they are. Having a mix of consistency and variety is essential for consumer acceptance in the marketplace.

Works Cited

Apple. “IPhone.” Apple, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.

Elmer-DeWitt, Philip. “John Gruber on Apple: Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don’t.” Fortune. N.p., 2013. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.

Kastrenakes, Jacob. “The IPhone 7 Has No Headphone Jack.” The Verge. N.p., 2016. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.

Mixpanel. “Mixpanel Trends – Mixpanel | Mobile Analytics.” N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.

Ritzer, George. The McDonalization of Society: An Investigation into the Changing Character of Contemporary Social Life. N.p.: Wiley-Blackwell, 1993. Print.

Public education in the United States varies greatly in quality by the district. Schools that are lacking funding often can’t hire qualified teachers or afford updated textbooks and equipment. In the words of John Gatto, “But what shocks is that we should so eagerly have adopted one of the very worst aspects of Prussian culture: an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens — all in order to render the populace ‘manageable’.” (Gatto). The public schools are currently set up to be limiting the students and their education. Some aspects, such as the Common Core standards, were originally intended to improve college preparation but ended up as a standardized testing mechanism that doesn’t prepare students for highly selective universities (Pioneer). This incomplete educational system isn’t meeting the needs of some students, as they aren’t always being prepared for the transition to college because of poor curriculum, lack of school funding and unqualified teachers.

The public education system in our country needs repair. Students are being denied quality schooling and are being taught mainly to improve standardized test scores. The teachers are underpaid, and the schools can’t afford more qualified, experienced educators. This can be improved, no matter which candidate is elected. It would significantly increase the number of students properly prepared for college if the elected candidate succeeded in his or her plan for a better education in America.

Of potential ways to fix these issues, one way it can be done is by knocking it down completely. Donald Trump has proposed School-Choice, where $20 billion in Federal block grants would be directed to low-income families, so they can choose what schools their children attend (Emma). Under this proposal, schools would be competing to get students instead of receiving a list assigned by district, like how the Public-School system currently works. School-Choice would force schools to improve the quality of education to meet the approval of the parents. This would be positive for the schools, would likely create a more diverse student body, and would better prepare students for college.

School-Choice may not be the most effective solution to guarantee and provide an equal education. Hillary Clinton plans on reprioritizing federal funding, to put forward more for school equipment and raising teacher salaries. By raising the pay, more qualified individuals would become available to teach, thus improving the quality of the education. She also plans on starting a campaign for modernizing and elevating the profession of teaching, as she feels teachers aren’t being “set up for success.” (Hillary for America). This solution seems like what our government has already been doing over time, only the plan seems geared more towards the teachers than the students.

One problem with schools is when they receive extra funding to follow bad standards, such as extra testing. As demonstrated in an article by Lizette Alvarez, school testing is a large standard and is overwhelming the students and teachers alike. In Florida, a third of the school year could be dedicated to standardized tests alone. Former Governor Jeb Bush was one of the first governors to introduce high-stakes testing and an A-to-F school grading system. This was especially a problem for underperforming schools. Many parents pulled their children out of Florida schools because of these excessive Common Core based assessments (Alvarez). The Common Core standard is a base for the Math and Language Arts curriculum that is used for standardized testing. The more testing there is, the less learning is accomplished, which is not a good thing, especially for college readiness.

Common Core is a problem that made its way into the public-school system. The Obama administration pushed states to adopt certain school reforms, including Common Core to receive additional federal funding. During a GOP debate, in response to a question about how he would cut government spending, Donald Trump stated that he plans on getting rid of the Common Core “disaster” completely, and instead would let the schools educate at the “local level” (Strauss). Hillary Clinton believes that there should be national standards, and was formerly very positive about Common Core, but says it doesn’t really work the way its goal states “… to come up with a core of learning that we might expect students to achieve across our country, no matter what kind of school district they were in, no matter how poor their family was, that there wouldn’t be two tiers of education.” (LaTour). Hopefully, Common Core will be replaced with better standards that properly prepare students a college level education with high-quality material.

Student debt is an extensive problem in our country. For higher level education, both candidates have ideas on how to relieve students of debt. Hillary Clinton proposed the plan of debt-free colleges by the year 2021. Families with an income of $125,000 or less would pay no tuition. It would be fully paid for by “limiting certain tax expenditures for high-income taxpayers” (Hillary for America #2). Donald Trump wants federal student loans to be issued by private banks, allowing the banks to decide the worthiness of the loans based on the student’s major and future prospective earnings (Nykiel). This would not be positive for students with liberal arts majors, but will not be a bad deal for students of most business majors.

These plans will probably not happen anytime soon, if at all. They are only ideas on how we can bring our country’s educational standards to its full potential. However, if the government keeps the goal of trying to improve the system in progress, we may just reach the point of obtaining an equal and plentiful education for the next generations of youth in the United States. Hopefully, all American students might someday be fully prepared for the college level curriculum ahead of them.

Works Cited

Alvarez, L. (2014) “States Listen as parents give rampant testing an F.”. In Conversation: A Thematic Reader for Critical Thinking. 2016. (Pg. 34 & 35)

Emma, Caitlyn Z. “Trump Unveils $20B School Choice Proposal.” Politico. 8 Sept. 2016. Web. 28 Sept. 2016. http://politi.co/2chps1W

Gatto, J. (2003) “Against School”. In Conversation: A Thematic Reader for Critical Thinking. 2016. (Pg. 25)

Hillary for America “K-12 education”. (n.d.). Hillary for America. http://hrc.io/1NloShp

Hillary for America “Making college debt-free and taking on student debt”. (n.d.). Hillary for America, http://hrc.io/1KwhDzK

LaTour, A. ” The Hillary Clinton Common Core Plan: Don’t Rock the Boat” GenFKD. YoungAmerica.Org,Inc., http://www.genfkd.org/hillary-clinton-common-core-plan-dont-rock-boat

Nykiel, T. (2016, July 25). 4 Ways a Trump Win Could Impact College Students. NerdWallet. https://nerd.me/2acTx1C

Pioneer Institute (2013, Oct. 1). “Lowering the Bar: How Common Core Math Fails to Prepare Students for STEM”, Pioneer Institute, http://pioneerinstitute.org/news/lowering-the-bar-how-common-core-math-fails-to-prepare-students-for-stem/

Rappeport, A. “Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton: Where They Stand on Education.” The New York Times 2016: Academic OneFile. Web. 28 Sept. 2016. http://nyti.ms/2csQgei

Strauss, V. “Donald Trump is wrong about Common Core — but he’s not the only candidate who is” The Washington Post, 4 Mar. 2016, http://wapo.st/1LYwjVM