Saints and Roughnecks

So a major topic discussed in our short week was the reading Saints and Roughnecks, where students were treated differently for doing the same thing because of the way they went about it. The "Saints" were upper middle class kids with good grades who would ditch class regularly but do it in such a way that they only seemed better as students. The "Roughnecks’" were just as deviant but they didn’t have as good a reputation and weren’t as creative about it. So they were labeled as "the bad kids". The sad thing about this story is that it applies to real life too. If you're labeled a "good kid" by society (because of who you are or how you act) you do tend to get the benefit of the doubt more often and often times are treated better. People expect more from you so a mistake is a mistake, while for other kids their mistakes may be seen as life choices. I'm not sure why but this bothers me. I've known this stuff for a long time, but seeing it in black and white just made me feel horrible about society. Money and grades shouldn’t mean everything about a person. What you were born into shouldn’t determine how society looks at you, but this is a fact of life. You judge a person twelve seconds after meeting them, you look at: hair, clothes and manners. It’s a human trait and it is how it’s always been. The reason these boys were treated differently was only skin deep, but it changed them for the rest of their lives because they learned that society will never expect anything different from them. So the "Saints" were successful and the "Roughnecks" were not. I realize of course that we all do this. I've had circumstances where I had to go talk to a teacher and ask for a favor, and I knew I would get it because I’m usually quiet and don’t disturb the class. My friends say that teachers like that because they do all there homework and don’t make much noise. It’s a fact of life; we are all stereotyped by how we act. And due to that we know what we can get away with and what is expected of us. It’s not fair but it’s true. I had a friend who was failing a class and her teacher hated giving extra credit. But she sat in the front, did all her homework and never disturbed the class. So when she went in and asked fro extra credit the teacher gave it to her, but no one else in the class. Because she was deemed the "good kid" that tried hard and deserved it. But she never studied, so technically this stereotype was false. But the teacher would never have known it.