Thursday, May 2, 2013
Pennies
This week in sociology, we played a game that involved gambling. Each person in the class started with 3 pennies, and we would have to gamble with those. Once you lost all your pennies, you're out but the other person keeps what they have and moves on. Eventually you're paired with someone who has a different amount of pennies than you do. This game should technically be fair because everyone starts with the same amount of pennies and has the same 50% chance of getting heads or tails. This game is supposed to relate to life and how everyone has equal opportunity, but I don't agree with that. We talked about how in life, not everyone starts with the same amount of money. Some people inherit it, some people start with nothing and have to work for it, and others are part of the lower class. It was very interesting to me to understand the sociology behind this and how wealth really does make a difference. For example, Stevenson is technically a wealthy school. This means we can do things like give students iPads which opens more opportunities but at other less wealthy schools, they don't have the ability to do that. So overall, how wealthy a person is really does make a difference as much as people want to say it doesn't.
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I agree with you that it wasn't perfectly related to life because not everyone starts out with the same amount of money,which isn't an equal opportunity.
ReplyDeleteThe lesson was supposed to relate to real life in some ways but be different in others. The ways it mirrored real life was:
ReplyDelete-It has the appearance of being fair and giving everyone an equal chance.
-The outcome was such that a few people have most of the wealth while most have very little.
-And, the more wealth you have, the greater advantage it gives you.
Those three points are true in the game and they are true in society as well.
Your post was a little unclear, It sounds like you are acknowledging that wealth makes a difference but at the end you contradict that. Would love to see you edit this and clarify knowing what you know now.