The use of categories, aggregates, and groups helps to associate a person with a larger population, allowing for easier comparisons to be made between different factions of a population. Newspapers often use these distinctions when writing an article, allowing people to feel more personally affected by the article; for example if a paper were to say 600 women and 300 men from a local boston school went to college would not mean much. However, if the same idea were to be worded, women are more likely to go to college, and be prepared for higher paying jobs than men, this would personally affect all people as can be seen in the first article I read. .
There are many ways to divide people into categories. Perhaps the most obvious and commonly used distinctions are race and gender. The categories in the first article I dealt with were divided into men and women. The use of these categories divided society into only two halves, and included the entire population. The primary focus of this article was on th educational differences between men and women, and the negative effects they are having on society. The percentage of men attending college has dropped much below the percentage of women and is expected to continue falling. Men seem "less emotionally equipt to handle the choices they face if they go away to college" The decreased percentage of men attending college, correlates to a higher number of homes without fathers, an increased number of men in prison, decreased tax revenues, and higher social service costs.
The issue of lower percentages of men attending school is a serious problem that affects not only their chances of having a lucrative future, but can affect the lives of others as well. Facts put forth in the assigned reading back up this statement. In the reading, men were divided into two categories. One category being men with a higher education and more money, the other being men with lower education and less money.