National Student Essay Contest Winner (Grades 10-12)

Written by: Krissa Matthews
Marshall High School
Marshall, WI

One of the more remarkable things about our society is that it is always changing. People change their opinions and perspectives throughout their lives. Society will have many transformations taking place in the next thirty-five years. It will not happen suddenly, but eventually there will be an incomparable amount of equality taking place in our country. Some of the reasons include the growth of knowledge in younger generations and the diversifying of communities.

One reason people's views of others will change is that discrimination is funneled through generations. The older of the generations may still have large issues with people that are unlike them, but it decreases more and more with each new generation. That is because the new generations are living in today's wold and see people as people. They have been taught in school that everyone is equal. Some people are still living the past, when age, color, national origin and sex determined a person's social stature. Today, those rules are far from applying to society.

There has also been great progress in the diversifying of communities. Years ago, there was segregation between neighborhoods, but that has decreased greatly. As America continues to evolve, it will become harder and harder for people not to live in a place where they are surrounded by different cultures and races of people. People will be forced to open up to new things in their world regardless of whether they wish to view it with open eyes or not.

Today in jobs, we are already seeing the changes that have occurred. People are able to get nearly any job for which they wish to apply and do not have to be concerned whether their sex, age, national origin, race, color, or disability will affect the decision of the employers. Even though that is the case, there are still some people who cannot allow themselves to look past the exterior characteristics of a person. It is hard for these people to look inside a person when they believe they do not like what they see on the outside. This will greatly change in the next few years as people will be forced to look deep into something they never have before; then they will be able to see the creative energy each person may hold. They will have to disregard the stereotypes they once knew and move past viewing people as just a person in a wheel chair or just a person with dark skin.

Overall, society will become a place where diversity will not be a concern. Each community and place of employment will have an unavoidable amount of variance in the many individuals who are part of it. If a rainbow was made of one color, it would be dull, and if the wold was filled with one type of human, it would also be dull. It is the differences that make life interesting.