Do You Buy Clothes Made in a Sweatshop?

As consumers we should be aware of where our clothes are made. The treatment of people working in sweatshops is extremely cruel but many people do not realize their favorite clothes are being produced in these harsh quarters. Some people argue that we need these sweatshops so the poor children can have a way of making money whether it is morally correct or not. Others may argue that these sweatshops are a huge part of our national and worldly economy and they need to stay to keep the economy strong. These arguments leave consumers questioning where they should be buying their clothes from and what stores are not producing their clothes in these terrible sweatshops.

Most of our daily clothes have tags made from China, Philippines, and India. Even though we do not want to support sweatshops we do buy their products.  Most clothes are not made in America and would be hard to find.  For example, Nike is everywhere. All of their shoes, clothes and other products are made in sweatshops in third world countries. Even though everyone has heard about these awful working conditions they still buy Nike.  Consumers are responsible for cutting back on buying these products. It is going to take more then one person but it can be done. It is hard to try to stop buying clothes made in sweatshops because most of the clothes bought today are produced in these conditions. Unlike, a farmers market in a town, you can not just go and buy products made in your town. This is the problem with trying to buy clothes not made in sweat shops; there are not such places to buy  clothes made in safe conditions in the towns close to you. Today, buying clothes not produced in sweatshops is especially hard because people do not produce their own clothes anymore. Next time you go to buy your clothes, keep this in mind of where you are shopping.

Learning to Read

Ali:
My first memories of reading started in kindergarten. This was the easy stuff; small words and lots of pictures. As the years started to progress the reading got harder and harder. As a young child I remember not being the strongest reader. I must not have done extremely well on those tests they would give you each year because I had to get extra help with my reading. First, I had to go to extra help in my elementary school and then go to tutoring outside of school. I remember this like it was yesterday. My neighbor happened to be a teacher so a few times a week I would go to her house and read to her. I hated going to her house; I tried everything in my power to get out of it (which never worked I may add). She made me read the book "Saving Shiloh" and I just hated it. The only good thing about the tutoring was that I would get cookies! To this day I still vividly remember the tutoring. The funny part about this whole experience was that as soon as I got older the lady, who the next year was my third grade teacher, moved out of the house. The family that moved in had young children so I would babysit for them and go back to that same house. Every time I go back to that house, I remember Shiloh the dog and the cookies I would always get from my tutor when I was learning to read.

Katie:

I was introduced to reading in kindergarten.  The first step was learning the alphabet.  Sounding out vowels and consonants after our teacher wrote them on the white board.  We then had to come up with words that started with those letters. From then on I learned to read picture books and little kids books. I had a two favorite books; "Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear" and "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie".  I must have read them both a million times. Finally I think I just had them memorized so they didn't help much. My mom then introduced me to "hooked on phonics" which I hated. I would get stickers at the end of each lesson. I loved those stickers. Those were my first memories of learning how to read.

Between these two stories, the general concept of learning to read was the same. Both of us were first taught to read in kindergarten. We remember reading picture books and small words. Then moved on to longer books. Those books we read will stay with us forever. The most important similarities were being rewarded after reading. Ali received cookies while Katie got stickers.  Our generation  did not realize the importance of reading. We just read to be rewarded. Reading is so common to us that we take it for granted.