the american dream photo essay

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Lesson Plan The American Dream

This lesson invites students to search and sift through rare print documents, early motion pictures, photographs, and recorded sounds from the Library of Congress. Students experience the depth and breadth of the digital resources of the Library, tell the story of a decade, and help define the American Dream.

Objectives:

Students will be able to:

• analyze, interpret, and conduct research with digitized primary source documents
• 19th and 20th century social life in the United States using digitized documents from the Library of Congress
• define, present and defend their ideas about what the American Dream has been, through the decades
• relate what they have uncovered from inquiry and research to their own American Dream

Time Required

Two to three weeks

Lesson Preparation

• Teacher's Guides and Analysis Tool
• Background essay: "What Is the American Dream?"

Wall of Dreams

• Citing Primary Sources

Lesson Procedure

Introduction, entry level skills and knowledge.

A basic understanding of Internet research, knowledge of search terms to navigate Library of Congress digital content, and reasonable facility with multimedia tools are needed.

When working with archival collections students must think like historians and archivists. Resources from the Teachers Page can help students get started. Acquaint students with the unique qualities of primary resources. You may want to create or use a set of primary sources to help students understand the process of primary source analysis.

Organizational Requirements

Define the scope of the project:.

Before introducing the lesson, or as a class, define the scope of the historical research conducted in this project. Will teams gather material from a specific decade? Will they work with a single Digital Collection ? Will research be guided by a theme, such as immigration? Will research be linked to literature the class is reading?

Determine desired learning outcomes:

What do you expect your students to know and be able to do when they have completed the activities. Create an assessment rubric for students based on your expectations.

Determine required learning product(s):

You may want students to create a Web page, a multimedia product, a video, or a contribution to the transformation of their classroom into a Decades Museum. Whatever format the student product may take, students should present and defend their ideas.

Engage students:

Invite students to begin their inquiry by considering the dreams of today and the dreamers of the present. Next, use The Library of Congress collections to learn about our cultural heritage and find evidence of the dreamers in our collective history. Finally, ask your students to compare their own dreams to the dreams of those who lived before them. Students should understand that history is the continuing story of human experience, the stories of people like themselves. Help students to understand that as they define and pursue their own dreams, they create the future of our nation and the world.

Introduce students to the student lesson pages. Divide your class into learning teams and assign roles and responsibilities.

Each team will select (or be assigned) a research role (photographer, lawyer, poet, politician, producer, comedian, musician). Each student will work as part of the team to complete the project. Remind students that while they each have specific tasks, all team members pitch in and help one another. Provide time for students to explore the student page of the project.

Individual responsibilities might include:

• Team Manager As team manager you have full responsibility for this team. You will manage all aspects of the project by assisting the research, production, and archive managers in meeting their obligations to complete the project. Excellent interpersonal and management skills are required. You are ultimately responsible for helping the team meet the project deadline.
• Research Manager Your job is key to the success of this project. You can shape the research by using focus questions. You will assist others in finding just the right quote, picture, or sound bite. Your team will rely on effective use of your detective and inquiry skills as you search the collections.
• Production Manager You will lead the group in building the final product. You must gather materials from your archive manager and work with the researcher during production. You must be flexible and resourceful as you work and assist others with last minute changes; manage graphics, sound or movie clips; and deal with the unexpected occurrences of creating a product.
• Archive Manager Excellent organizational skills make this job a challenge. You will keep track of all materials for the team and check to be sure that resources are compatible. For example, are your sound clips in the correct format? You will keep the original files, and back up files, and organize the the final project.

Building Background Knowledge and Skills 

(suggested- 2 class periods)

Anticipatory Set:

Link to students' prior knowledge and work with them to develop a concept of the traditional "American Dream." Use the "What Is the American Dream?" essay to initiate a discussion (either as a whole class or in team groups).

You may wish to have your students conduct interviews, explore other readings, engage in further class discussions, or hear guest speakers. Pair them to brainstorm: What do you already know about the American Dream? They might use paper or visual thinking software to record ideas and then share them with the learning team members in their groups.

Primary Source Analysis:

Before students begin their research, review strategies for analyzing primary source materials. Each student team will work with a set of pre-selected materials. Students analyze the materials recording their thoughts on the Primary Source Analysis Tool . Before the students begin, select questions from the teacher's guide Analyzing Primary Sources to focus and prompt analysis and discussion.

Each team will analyze its assigned primary source.

• Photographer - George O. Waters(?), Dry Valley, near Comstock Nebraska
• Poet - "Dedication," Robert Frost's presidential inaugural poem, 20 January 1961
• Politician - "Americanism", Harding, Warren G. (Warren Gamaliel), 1865-1923
• Producer - Arrival of immigrants, Ellis Island
• Comedian - Katzenjammer Kids: "Policy and pie"
• Lawyer - An Account of the Proceedings on the Trail of Susan B. Anthony
• Musician - The old cabin home. H. De Marsan, Publisher, 54 Chatham Street, New York
• Reporter - The Boston Gazette, and Country Journal. Monday, March 12, 1770

Researching Online and Gathering Primary Resources

(suggested - 5 class periods)

Guide students in choosing a research role and developing an action plan. One strategy is to assign roles, such as team manager, research manager, production manager or archive manager. Support students as needed in identifying tasks to be completed and drafting a timeline.

Possible considerations during research might include:

• Theme or Topic: What is your focus for inquiry? Identify your research topic or theme.
• Research Questions: What questions will focus your research? List a series of questions you intend to answer to focus your research. What additional information do you need to answer these questions?
• Primary Sources: How will you know you've found what you are looking for? List the type of resources you intend to look for to answer your research questions. What primary resources from the Library of Congress will you search for?
• Evidence: How do you know that the examples you've found are valid? Once you have located a few examples of primary sources, what are your criteria for selecting these as evidence?

You may require each team to keep a "research log" of work accomplished during each work session to help students stay focused and, later, to help in the evaluative process.

Choose the questions that will provide a focus for the project. Students can use these questions to guide their research.

As a class, create and continually add to, a list of "tried and true" search terms. Remind students that the Library of Congress Web site is a collection of collections. It is not encyclopedic and it simply does not have "everything." If an initial search does not yield desired results, guide students in how they can narrow or refocus the search. Your schedule may limit students to visiting only the suggested collections and provided links for each team. As possible, however, encourage them to identify additional items in the Library of Congress collections and to expand their resources with other sources.

Supply students with primary source analysis tools to use to record their growing set of evidence. Allow at least two (more preferred) days/class periods for exploration and research.

Creating the Learning Product

Students can produce a variety of products to demonstrate their interpretation of the material. Public or private Web sites, podcasting, digital narratives, video documentaries, slide shows, oral presentations, booklets or newspapers, or museum display within the classroom of print documents, multimedia, and realia are all excellent vehicles for students to share their learning.

Creating and refining a final learning product that allows students to represent, present and defend their ideas about the American Dream is the tangible outcome of this project. Allow plenty of time for this vital phase. (Having students add what transpires during this phase of the project to their research log can provide useful insight in the  evaluation process.)

Reinforce ethical use of the Internet by requiring that proper citation and/or bibliographical entry be used for all collected print and Internet resources.

Developing a Personal Dream for their Future

(1 class period)

When students have completed their research and have produced and presented the products that share their learning, they can be invited to consider their own American Dream – for themselves, their families and loved ones, their community, their nation and the world. Encourage students to give serious thought and honest expression to their hopes and dreams for the future. For inspiration, they may wish to view the Wall of Dreams contributed by other students.

Who are the dreamers that inspire us today? Ask students to read about or interview others who have a dream. Enrich this project with your own web resources, books, movie clips, interviews, or guest speakers.

Lesson Evaluation

Self and peer assessment.

A confidential self-evaluation from each student can provide the teacher with further valuable input, and will help the student reflect upon their own learning and performance. Students are also asked to evaluate the work and contributions of team members.

Teacher Assessment

Student teams may be asked the following assessment questions:

• What is the American Dream?
• How has the American Dream changed over time?
• How do diverse cultures view the American Dream?
• How have significant historical events affected the American Dream?
• How will new opportunities of the 21st century challenge the American Dream?
• What makes your area of interest an effective medium for sharing the American Dream?
• What is your American Dream?

The team products, and their presentation, should provide evidence of understanding from each team member. Be sure to require that each student contribute to the important tasks of presenting and defending a specific viewpoint.

Evaluate student work according to the evaluative criteria you and your students identified before beginning the project.

Kathleen Ferenz and Leni Donlan, American Memory Fellows, 1997

What is the American Dream? Is it the same for all Americans? Is it a myth? Is it simply a quest for a better life? How has the American Dream changed over time? Some see their dreams wither and die while others see their dreams fulfilled. Why? Everyone has dreams about a personally fulfilled life ...what is your dream?

Your job is to research the dreams of others. You will then create and publish your interpretation of the "American Dream."

• Divide into teams by research roles (photographer, lawyer, poet, politician, producer, comedian, musician).
• Define the American Dream with your group.
• Search in the Digital Colections and document the dreams of those who lived in the past.
• Identify and publish your interpretation of the "American Dream" according to your research role and the evidence you found.
• Reflect upon your personal dream — for the nation and for yourself.
• Review the Wall of Dreams for ideas. Write your own personal dream to share with your teacher and class.

These dreams are a sampling from the thousands of student dreams collected from 1998 - 2006. Define your dream for yourself, your family, your community, your country and our world.

My dream is to write a story that makes people think, dream, imagine, care, and feel. I want to change the world by making people care for each other. I want to show the world my thoughts through the words in my stories and maybe see how others like me feel. L. C., Student, Dakota Valley High School. Grade 11

My dream is that someday... kids will not have to live in poverty. It makes me see how fortunate I am to have what I have. My other dream is for all wars to stop, and to declare world peace. All of this fighting is putting a bad impression on people, some think life is all about war, and we could live in a better place and be better people if we could all get along.  A. B., Student, Henderson Intermediate School, Grade 6

My American Dream is to make the world a happier and more joyful place. I can achieve it by helping other people conquer sickness, hardships, and sadness. The world is a troubled place now. I hope I can make a difference. People all over the world are having tough times. War is killing many people and causing great sadness. This is my American Dream because we are seeing death everywhere now. J. C., Student, Encinal Elementary, Grade 5

My American Dream has several parts. First, I want my family to be happy, healthy, and comfortable. Rich is not necessary, though it would be nice. Second, I want to be able to use my brains and skills to become a geneticist so that I can create cures to help people live better. If I can make the world better for even one person, I will have met that goal. I want chocolate to be declared a health food. I know, that's not reasonable, but it is a dream I have. "Are you ill? Take two Hershey bars and call me in the morning." I want to invent the self-cleaning bedroom. (No further explanation necessary). But more than any of these, I dream of peace. I want everyone here to understand and help each other, regardless of race, religion, color, creed, size, shape, sexual orientation, just because we are all members of the same species: Homo sapien. That is my American Dream.  A. G., Student, Home Schooled, Grade 8

My American Dream is one in which all the children recognize their potential and work to understand they can be the best in whatever they choose to do as a life work. I wish for them to be gentle but honest with themselves, to love themselves and see the special persons they are becoming and that they work to live in harmony with all humankind.  M. B., Teacher, Crawford AuSable, Grade 8

I have a dream that everyone will stop smoking and people will stop polluting and that everybody will live in peace. W. P., Student, Beech Tree Elementary School, Grades K-3

My dream is to help our nation realize greater freedom and opportunity for all its citizens. Racial, sexual, and economic dividers are still very much in place in our nation, and overcoming such forms of bias comes only with affirmative action as well as educating our people against prejudice and discrimination. And most importantly, it is our duty to remember our nation's involvement in slavery, our deliberate mistreatment of America's native peoples, and our apathetic complacency during the worst act of genocide in history--these must all be painfully remembered to prevent such blots to fall on our account again. I wish to be actively involved in history, a living history that will affect every person out there in our great land, who will remember our past, its glories, triumphs, and yes, its failures. To do this is our responsibility to future generations, to make our nation a more thoughtful nation and our people more thoughtful people. That is my American Dream. A. I., Student, Homeschool, Grade 12

Everyone says that their American Dream is for every American to be equal. This is very unrealistic because everyone is different in some way. America has the most diverse population in the world. This trait sets us apart from other countries. So instead of being equal, my American Dream is for everyone to receive and give the utmost respect to all Americans despite differences we all have.  A. M., Student, Cass Tech High School, Grade 11

My American Dream is to be able to live in my country as a free person - free to live, free to dream, free to change and free to live with others who are not the same as me. I don't want to accumulate 'stuff' and have more than the other guy. I want to make sure that we all have enough to live and care for our country. It is not about getting ahead or beating another person, but it is about working together to make and keep the United States a great place. We all can do this by working in the system and changing it when we see that change is needed. In this way we can all live our American Dream together. J. M., Student, CPDLF, Grade 8

I dream that America will turn its goodwill and wealth to the rest of the world and help end poverty and war. We can do this by providing more help and education to the poorest nations, and by building a just system around the world where the children are fed, healthy and educated and perhaps they would not hate us so much. If we helped them develop their own resources instead of stealing their resources they could then support themselves and be proud of themselves and not hate us.  P. W., Student, Florida Virtual School, Grade 8

My dream is that I wish people would not judge people because they are different from them. The only reason why people are racist is because they are scared of changes. I would hope that people would become mature enough and forget their differences between each other.  T. S., Student, James A. Garfield Community Magnet School, Grade 8

My dream is for the children to grow up in a country, any country, feeling proud, free, and safe. I would hope that the politicians worldwide would put the interests of their citizens first, their military second, and themselves last. K. M., Teacher, St. John's, postgraduate

My dream is peace in my lifetime between people of all religions: Peace so my father will not have to go to war again, Peace so my little brother can grow up unafraid.  C. S., Student, ML King, Grade 5

My American Dream is to be a fair person and treat everybody equal. I want the people that come to America from different countries to feel like they have a place here in the United States. We can make them feel like this is their home. Also my American Dream is to give everybody the same rights. That even if you're homeless or rich you still have the same rights as everybody else. I think everybody should have the same equal rights. V. K., Student, Clara Barton, Grade 5

My dream is to have a crime free world. People should be able to feel safe in their neighborhoods. I also want the world to be free of homeless people. Everybody should have a place to live and food to eat. Everybody should have access to quality medical attention and quality education. I want worldwide peace and no more wars. I also want world hunger to come to an end. M. Y., Student, MBTA. Grade 8

Similar to the many past dreamers such as Martin Luther King, who wanted equal rights, I want everyone to have equal rights. Based on the culture and values that I have been brought up with, I know that it is especially hard to stop a prejudice that has been traveling through every generation. But, by teaching our children and being a model of acceptance ourselves, we can avoid making those same mistakes from past generations. It has definitely gotten better, and I believe our generation can become the role models for the new millennium.  K. L., Student, Allentown High School, Grade 11

My American Dream is a place where no one is discriminated against nor judged because of their race, where everyone is equal, where people are never deprived of their rights, and where the accused have the chance to explain. I dream of a place where justice is served righteously and schools have capable teachers who do everything to help the children they teach. I dream of a place where people can understand and accept new and different things. This is my dream and I hope it becomes a reality. E. L., Student, FLVS, Grade 8

My American Dream is for people to be able to express themselves without catching ridicule from their peers. It hurts when your individuality crushes who you try to present yourself to be because you feel shameful of who you really are.  S. F., Student, Pell City High School, Grade 10

I dream that one day the world will be united in a world where all people can speak and understand one another. I dream of a world where nobody goes to bed hungry or abused. I dream of a world that is free from violence--a world in which all people could live peacefully with one another.  L. B., Teacher, HSU, Grade K-3

Getting Started

Choose a research role.

As a group, choose one of the research roles to create your project:

Photographer

You are the eyes of America.

Design a photo essay that shows the American Dream. You might show how the Dream has been affected by time, cultural influences, and significant historical events (war, economic depression, elections, etc.).

Team Management Roles

Assessment questions.

How will your project be assessed? Identify which of these questions you will use to guide your inquiry:

• What makes being a photographer an effective medium for exploring the American Dream?

Action Plan

Create an action plan and and determine your timeline for completing the project. Include the following information in your action plan:

Timeline and Responsibilities

• Choose your team management responsibilities and decide each manager's specific responsibilities.
• How much time do you have?
• What deadlines do you need to meet?
• What materials do you need?
• How do you plan to manage the materials?

Research Strategies

What is your focus for inquiry? Identify your research topic or theme. What questions will focus your research? List a series of genuine questions you intend to answer by your research. What additional information do you need to answer these questions?

How will you know you've found what you are looking for? List the type of resources you intend to look for to answer your research questions. What primary resources from Digital Collections will you search for?

How do you know that the examples you've found are valid? Once you have located a few examples of primary sources, what are your criteria for selecting these as evidence? Record your ideas on the primary source analysis tool . Be sure to note information you'll need for Citing Primary Sources .

To search all photographic collections, click here: Photographs, Prints, and Drawings

Specific Collections that may be of help:

• Architecture and Interior Design for 20th Century America: Photographs by Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner , 1935-1955
• By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s
• Daguerreotypes
• Detroit Publishing Company
• Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives
• Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Color Photographs
• Horydczak Collection
• Panoramic Photographs
• Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945-1982
• Votes for Women - The Struggle for Women's Suffrage

Your passion for controversy and debate will guide your vision of the American Dream. Prepare a written or oral legal brief about the status of the American Dream. Defend your argument with evidence from the collections. (A legal brief includes: title, who vs. whom, statement of facts, argument, conclusion, references.)

• What makes being a lawyer an effective medium for exploring the American Dream?

To Search text collections use the following links:

• Manuscripts/Mixed Material
• Books/Printed Material
• An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
• Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division's First 100 Years
• A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774-1873
• The National American Women Suffrage Association Collection

Using your poetic grasp of language you seek out the heart and soul of the American Dream.

Create a poet's notebook that shows the American Dream. Include samples of your poetry that show how the Dream has been affected by time, cultural influences, and significant historical events (war, economic depression, elections, etc.).

• What makes being a reporter for a newspaper an effective medium for exploring the American Dream?
• "California as I Saw It": First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900
• Voices from the Dust Bowl: the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941
• Hispano Music & Culture from the Northern Rio Grande: The Juan B. Rael Collection
• American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
• Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910
• Poet at Work: Recovered Notebooks from the Thomas Biggs Harned Walt Whitman Collection

With a finger on the pulse of the American people you create the policies that shape the American Dream.

Write and deliver a speech that traces the political events that shape the American Dream. Your speech may reflect significant events that have shaped American politics.

• What makes being a politician an effective medium for exploring the American Dream?
• The Hannah Arendt Papers at the Library of Congress
• Documents from the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, 1774-1789
• George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741-1799
• American Leaders Speak: Recordings from World War I and the 1920 Election

Lights, camera, action! You show the American Dream with stories, films, and a script for a movie.

Make a storyboard for your movie. Sequence the scenes to produce the movie of the American Dream.

• What makes being a producer an effective medium for exploring the American Dream?

To search early Motion Pictures, click here: Early Motion Pictures, 1897-1916

• Inside an American Factory: Films of the Westinghouse Works, 1904
• Origins of American Animation
• The Last Days of a President: Films of McKinley and the Pan-American Exposition, 1901
• The Life of a City: Early Films of New York, 1898-1906
• Before and After the Great Earthquake and Fire: Early Films of San Francisco, 1897-1916
• America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures from 1894-1915

You find the irony in the American Dream. Write a standup comic script or create a politcal cartoon or cartoon strip that expresses irony or the humorous side of the American Dream.

• What makes being a comedian an effective medium for exploring the American Dream?
• Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939
• The American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920

With your ear for melody you play the music of the American Dream.

Write the sheet music or play and record music that characterizes the American Dream from your research.

• What makes being a musician an effective medium for exploring the American Dream?

To search all sheet music/song sheet collections: Sheet Music, Song Sheets .

To search all sound recording collections: Sound Recordings .

• "Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943
• The Leonard Bernstein Collection, ca. 1920-1989
• Band Music from the Civil War Era
• The Aaron Copland Collection, ca. 1900-1990
• Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection
• California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties. Collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell
• William P. Gottlieb: Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz
• Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1870-1885
• America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets

On the newsbeat, you report and chronicle the events which shape the American Dream.

Write a news article that reports the results of your research on the American Dream. (Article includes: title, who, what, when, where, and how.) Your news article describes the significant events that shaped the American Dream through the decades.

• Search all Digital Collections
• Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers at the Library of Congress
• Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera
• Posters: WPA Posters

Record the results of your discussion.

What do you already know about the American Dream?

Your group needs to define the American Dream. Read "What Is The American Dream?". Find out what the dream means to each member of your group. Brainstorm and share your ideas. What do you know about the "American Dream"? With a partner create a mind map of what you know, or believe you know, about the American Dream. All ideas are valid. Use paper or visual thinking software to record your ideas. Share the results with your learning team members in your group. This is the beginning of your project, so file your results with your archive manager.

What Is The American Dream?

James Truslow Adams, in his book The Epic of America, which was written in 1931, stated that the American dream is "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position." (p.214-215)

The authors of the United States’ Declaration of Independence held certain truths to be self-evident: that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness." Might this sentiment be considered the foundation of the American Dream?

Were homesteaders who left the big cities of the east to find happiness and their piece of land in the unknown wilderness pursuing these inalienable Rights? Were the immigrants who came to the United States looking for their bit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their Dream? And what did the desire of the veteran of World War II - to settle down, to have a home, a car and a family - tell us about this evolving Dream? Is the American Dream attainable by all Americans?

Some say, that the American Dream has become the pursuit of material prosperity - that people work more hours to get bigger cars, fancier homes, the fruits of prosperity for their families - but have less time to enjoy their prosperity. Others say that the American Dream is beyond the grasp of the working poor who must work two jobs to insure their family’s survival. Yet others look toward a new American Dream with less focus on financial gain and more emphasis on living a simple, fulfilling life.

Thomas Wolfe said, "…to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity ….the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him."

Is this your American Dream?

Define your Project

Determine your research theme or topic: Are you interested in immigration/emigration, families, social life? Will you investigate one decade or compare how the American Dream evolved over the decades? Discuss topic ideas with your group.

Analyzing Documents

Use the Primary Source Analysis tool and questions provided by your teacher to practice reading and interpreting sources with sample materials. Your team will look at resources through the lens of your research role.

• Photographer - Sylvester Rawding family in front of sod house, north of Sargent, Custer County, Nebraska
• Lawyer - The case of Dred Scott in the United States Supreme Court
• Reporter - Suffrage Ratification Is Completed by Tennessee

Research — Gather Evidence — Create the Team Product

As a group, be sure you all understand the task for your team's research role. Divide the tasks. Create an action plan. Record the results of your discussion.

Discuss possible questions and anticipate how you will answer them. Search the digital collections collections and gather your evidence.

Create your learning product. Develop a strategy to share your learning project which allows all team members to contribute and share their ideas.

You and your teacher established expectations for the project before you started your work. You and your team recorded your progress.  Your teacher may be using a rubric to evaluate your work. You understand the difference between excellent, good, and satisfactory work.

Complete a confidential team and self evaluation that describes how you contributed to your team’s effort and what you have learned.

You were challenged to investigate the American Dream, to see if it is the same for all Americans and whether it is real or just a myth. Did you find that it is simply a quest for a better life? What did you discover about how the Dream has changed over time? Do you now know why some see their dreams wither and die while others see their dreams fulfilled? What is your dream?

You've finished a group project. You've presented your ideas to your class. Has this experience influenced your view of the American Dream? How? Now that you have completed your project:

• What questions do you still have about the American Dream?
• What can the dreams of others teach you?
• Who are the dreamers of today?
• Were the dreams of yesteryear like your own dreams? In what ways?
• What IS the American Dream? Can it be simply stated?
• How will YOUR personal dream become a part of America's (and the world's) future?

• Winter 2021

The State of the American Dream

A Brief History of the American Dream

Over time, the phrase “American dream” has come to be associated with upward mobility and enough economic success to lead a comfortable life. Historically, however, the phrase represented the idealism of the great American experiment.

If you ask most people around the world what they mean by the “American dream,” nearly all will respond with some version of upward social mobility, the American success story, or the self-made man (rarely the self-made woman). Perhaps they will invoke the symbolic house with a white picket fence that suggests economic self-sufficiency and security; many will associate the phrase with the land of opportunity for immigrants. No less an authority than the Oxford English Dictionary defines the American dream as “the ideal that every citizen of the United States should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.”

If success and prosperity are the American dream, however, it’s hard to understand why it was under assault by a mob of insurrectionists at the Capitol in January — but that is precisely what international commentators concluded. From Iran to Australia to Britain, global observers construed the Capitol riot as an assault on “the American dream,” although it was not a mob driven by economic grievance, but rather an explicitly political assault on the democratic process.

No matter how often we talk about the American dream as a socioeconomic promise of material success, the truth is that most people — even people around the world — understand instinctively that the American dream is also a sociopolitical one, meaning something more profound and aspirational than simple material comfort. And indeed, that’s what the phrase denoted to the Americans who first popularized it.

In 1931 a historian named James Truslow Adams set out to make sense of the crisis of the Great Depression, which in 1931 was both an economic crisis and a looming political crisis. Authoritarianism in Europe was on the rise, and many Americans were concerned that similar “despotic” energies would support the fabled “man on horseback” who might become an American tyrant. Adams concluded that America had lost its way by prizing material success above all other values: Indeed, it had started to treat money as a value, instead of merely as a means to produce or measure value.

Adams concluded that America had lost its way by prizing material success above all other values: Indeed, it had started to treat money  as   a value, instead of merely as a means to produce or measure value.

For Adams, worshipping material success was not the definition of the American dream: It was, by contrast, the failure of “the American dream of a better, richer, and happier life for all our citizens of every rank.” Adams did not mean “richer” materially, but spiritually; he distinguished the American dream from dreams of prosperity. It was, he declared, “not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

That repudiation is crucial, but almost always overlooked when this famous passage is quoted. Adams specifically gainsays the idea that the American dream is of material success. The American dream, according to Adams, was about collective moral character: It was a vision of “commonweal,” common well-being, well-being that is held in common and therefore mutually supported.

It was, as Adams said, a “dream of social order,” in which every citizen could attain the best of which they were capable. And it was that dream of social order that was so conspicuously under assault on January 6 th . It was the same American dream that Martin Luther King Jr. would call to service in the civil rights struggle in 1963, when he told white America that Black Americans shared that dream:

I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

The idea of an American creed, now all but forgotten, was once a staple of American political discourse, a broad belief system comprising liberty, democratic equality, social justice, economic opportunity, and individual advancement. Before 1945, when it was replaced by the Pledge of Allegiance, the creed was recited by most American schoolchildren — including, presumably, a young Martin Luther King Jr.:

I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people, whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic and a sovereign nation of many sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.

It was in that creed that the phrase the American dream was first used to articulate — not in 1931, when it was popularized, but when it first appeared in American political discourse, at the turn of the 20 th century.

The American dream was rarely, if ever, used to describe the familiar idea of Horatio Alger individual upward social mobility until after the Second World War. Quite the opposite, in fact. In 1899, a Vermont doctor made the news when he built a house with 60 rooms on 4,000 acres, which was described as “the largest country place in America” at the time. It came as a shock to readers, and struck many of them as an “utterly un-American dream” in its inequality: “Until a few years ago the thought of such an estate as that would have seemed a wild and utterly un-American dream to any Vermonter,” one article commented. “It was a state of almost ideally democratic equality, where everybody worked and nobody went hungry.” We don’t have to accept that Vermont was ever a utopian ideal to recognize that the comment overturns our received wisdoms about the American dream. Today, such an estate would seem the epitome of the American dream to most Americans.

The American dream was rarely, if ever, used to describe the familiar idea of “Horatio Alger” individual upward social mobility until after the Second World War.

In 1900, the New York Post warned its readers that the “greatest risk” to “every republic” was not from the so-called rabble, but “discontented multimillionaires.” All previous republics, it noted, had been “overthrown by rich men” and this could happen too in America, where monopoly capitalists were “deriding the Constitution, unrebuked by the executive or by public opinion.” If they had their way “it would be the end of the American dream,” because the American dream was of democracy — of equality of opportunity, of justice for all. Again, today most Americans would clearly say that becoming a multimillionaire defines the American dream, but the fact is that the expression emerged to criticize, not endorse, the amassing of great personal wealth.

Although many now assume that the phrase American dream was first used to describe 19 th century immigrants’ archetypal dreams of finding a land where the streets were paved with gold, not until 1918 have I found any instance of the “American dream” being used to describe the immigrant experience — the same year that the language of the “American creed” was first published.

There were only a few passing mentions of the idea of an American dream before Adams popularized it in 1931, most notably in Walter Lippmann’s 1914 Drift and Mastery, which described what Lippmann called America’s “fear economy” of unbridled capitalism. Lippmann argued that the nation’s “dream of endless progress” would need to be restrained, because it was fundamentally illusory: “It opens a chasm between fact and fancy, and the whole fine dream is detached from the living zone of the present.” This dream of endless progress was indistinguishable, Lippmann wrote, “from those who dream of a glorious past.” Both dreams were equally illusory.

For Lippmann, the American dream was the idea that the common man is inherently good and a moral barometer of the nation, the belief that “if only you let men alone, they’ll be good.” For Lippmann, the American dream was a delusion not because upward social mobility was a myth, but because undisciplined goodness is:

The past which men create for themselves is a place where thought is unnecessary and happiness inevitable. The American temperament leans generally to a kind of mystical anarchism, in which the “natural” humanity in each man is adored as the savior of society…  “If only you let men alone, they’ll be good,” a typical American reformer said to me the other day. He believed, as most Americans do, in the unsophisticated man, in his basic kindliness and his instinctive practical sense.  A critical outlook seemed to the reformer an inhuman one; he distrusted … the appearance of the expert; he believed that whatever faults the common man might show were due to some kind of Machiavellian corruption. He had the American dream, which may be summed up … in the statement that the undisciplined man is the salt of the earth.

The American faith in the individual taken to its inevitable extreme creates the monstrosity of a self with no consciousness of other standards or perspectives, let alone a sense of principle.

James Truslow Adams ended The Epic of America with what he said was the perfect symbol of the American dream in action. It was not the example of an immigrant who made good, a self-made man who bootstrapped his way from poverty to power, or the iconic house with a white picket fence. For Adams, the American dream was embodied in the Main Reading Room at the Library of Congress.

It was a room that the nation had gifted to itself, so that every American  — “old and young, rich and poor, Black and white, the executive and the laborer, the general and the private, the noted scholar and the schoolboy”  — could sit together, “reading at their own library provided by their own democracy. It has always seemed to me,” Adams continued,

to be a perfect working out in a concrete example of the American dream — the means provided by the accumulated resources of the people themselves, a public intelligent enough to use them, and men of high distinction, themselves a part of the great democracy, devoting themselves to the good of the whole, uncloistered.

It is an image of peaceful, collective, enlightened self-improvement. That is the American dream, according to the man who bequeathed us the phrase. It is an image that takes for granted the value of education, of shared knowledge and curiosity, of historical inquiry and a commitment to the good of the whole.

It is an image of peaceful, collective, enlightened self-improvement. That is the American dream, according to the man who bequeathed us the phrase.

That depiction of a group of Americans serenely reading together on Capitol Hill serves as a deeply painful corrective for the nation we have become, filled with people who put political partisanship above country, above democracy, above any principle of civic good or collective well-being.

Writing in the midst of the Great Depression, Adams was neither naïve nor especially sentimental about the America he was viewing in 1931. His reflections on the Library of Congress as the American dream led him to conclude that its fundamental purpose was to keep democracy alive:

No ruling class has ever willingly abdicated. Democracy can never be saved, and would not be worth saving, unless it can save itself. The Library of Congress, however, has come straight from the heart of democracy, as it has been taken to it, and I here use it as a symbol of what democracy can accomplish on its own behalf.

That is the American dream: what democracy can accomplish on its own behalf for its citizens. The first voices to speak of the “American dream” used it not as a promise, or a guarantee, but as an exhortation, urging all Americans to do better, to be fairer, to combat bigotry and inequality, to keep striving for a republic of equals. That is the American dream we need to revive: the dream of a social order defined by the American creed, a belief in the United States of America as a government whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic.

• Previous Article The Evolution of the Idea An Essay by J.H. Cullum Clark, Director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative
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103 American Dream Essay Topics & Examples

If you’re in need of American dream topics for an essay, research paper, or discussion, this article is for you. Our experts have prepared some ideas and writing tips that you will find below.

📃 10 Tips for Writing American Dream Essays

🏆 best american dream essay topics & essay examples, 👍 catchy american dream topics, ❓ american dream research questions.

The American dream is an interesting topic that one can discuss from various perspectives. If you need to write an essay on the American dream, you should understand this concept clearly.

You can choose to present the American dream as a miracle that one cannot reach or depict a free and wealthy nation. In any case, the American dream essay is a good opportunity to reflect on the concept and learn more about it.

There are many topics you can choose from while writing your essay. Here are some examples of the American dream essay topics we can suggest:

• The true meaning of the American dream
• The image of the American dream in the Great Gatsby
• Is the American dream still relevant in today’s society?
• The role of the American dream: Discussion
• Americans’ beliefs and values: The American dream
• Can we achieve the American dream?
• The American dream in today’s world and society

Remember that you do not have to select one of the American dream essay titles and can come up with your own one. Once you have selected the topic, start working on your essay. Here are ten useful tips that will help you to write an outstanding paper:

• Start working on your essay ahead of time. You will need some time to study the issue, write the paper, and correct possible errors.
• Do preliminary research on the issue you want to discuss. The more information you know about the question, the better. We advise you to rely on credible sources exclusively and avoid using Wikipedia or similar websites.
• Check out the American dream essay examples online if you are not sure that the selected problem is relevant. Avoid copying the information you will find and only use it as guidance.
• Write an outline for your essay. Think of how you can organize your paper and choose titles for each of the sections. Remember that you should include an introductory paragraph and a concluding section along with body paragraphs.
• Remember that you should present the American dream essay thesis clearly. You can put it in the last sentence of your introductory paragraph.
• Your essay should be engaging for the audience. Help your reader to know something new about the issue and include some interesting facts that may not know about. Avoid overly complex sentences and structures.
• Make your essay personal, if it is possible. Do not focus on your opinion solely but provide your perspectives on the issue or discuss your concern about it. You can talk about your experiences with the American dream, too.
• Provide statistical data if you can. For example, you can find the results of surveys about people’s perspectives on the American dream.
• The concluding paragraph is an important section of the paper. Present the thesis and all of your arguments once again and provide recommendations, if necessary. Remember that this paragraph should not include new information or in-text citations.
• Do not send your paper to your professor right away. Check it several times to make sure that there are no grammatical mistakes in it. If you have time, you can put the paper away for several days and revise it later with “fresh” eyes.

Feel free to find an essay sample in our collection and get some ideas for your outstanding paper!

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• The American Dream in Arthur Miller’s Plays Willy has a distorted vision of the American Dream, and he has such blind faith in this inaccurate vision that it leads to his mental disturbance when he is not able to accept how the […]
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• American Dream and Unfulfilling Reality Living the American dream is the ultimate dream for most of the American citizens and those aspiring to acquire American citizenship.
• American Dream of Early Settlers He did not tell the settlers of the difficulties they were going to face in moving from Europe to the land of honey that is America.
• The American Dream in The Great Gatsby After spending some time in this neighborhood, Nick finally attends Gatsby’s exuberant parties only to realize that Gatsby organizes these parties to impress Daisy, Nick’s cousin, and wife to Tom.
• In Pursuit of the American Dream: An Analysis of Willa Cather’s O Pioneers The experiences of the characters in the novel portray the endeavors of the early immigrants’ pursuit of the American dream. The instinct to forgo the comforts, which a home country offers by default and then […]
• Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’, Steinbeck’s ‘Of Mice and Men’ and the American Dream “The America Dream’ is a longstanding common belief of the American population that in the United States, people are free to realize the full potential of their labor and their talents and every person in […]
• The American Dream, Social Status and Hierarchies The persistence of social status and hierarchies in modern-day America undermines the possibility of realizing Winthrop’s ideal community as a goal for the current American Dream, considering his argument of wouldivinely ordained’ holds no traction […]
• The American Dream and Its Roots The tension between the ideals of the American Dream as espoused by the Puritans and the realities of American life has been a recurrent theme in American history.
• Tensions in the American Dream The imbalance can lead to debates and discussions about the meaning and purpose of the American Dream, as well as a conflict between the ideals of freedom and agency and the desire for a more […]
• Support of the American Dream Act of 2001 In contrast to many supporters of the American Dream Act, some individuals claim that the policy promotes the entrance of illegal immigrants.
• The Possibility of Realizing the American Dream Thus, according to the author, the American dream is only a fantasy. Returning to the ideas of Krugman, Cox and Alm, and Dalmia, it seems necessary to highlight some aspects.
• Reflection on the American Dream Concept The vision of the American Dream can be different for individuals, and people create their interpretations according to their specific experiences.
• Reaching the American Dream From Scratch For example, the experience of a person coming to the United States from Haiti is one of poverty, under-resourced communities, and a complete disillusion with the promise of a good life.
• The American Dream Based on “Re Jane” by Patricia Park The main difference is that Jane had a chance to live her dreams in New York than in Seoul. Nina is an example of Jane’s friends who want her to succeed and understand the flaws […]
• The American Dream in Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain The personal experience of the characters can be explained by their varying life conditions and, hence, are linked to the notion of the American Dream, which can be achieved by everyone while the efforts differ.
• The Corrupted American Dream and Its Significance in “The Great Gatsby” The development of the American dream and its impact on the society of the United States is a pertinent topic of discussion for various authors.
• Color Adjustment: False Image of American Dream The documentary tells the story of white, well-dressed people advertising the American dream, completely ignoring that the U.S.is not only a country of the white race.
• Femininity and the American Dream in Works of Chopin, Gilman, and Williams Even though the general understanding of the American dream was advertised to everyone, the idea was more applicable to the male members of the American society, which is reflected in Chopin’s “The Story of an […]
• The American Dream: Franklin’s and Douglass’s Perception The objective of this paper, therefore, is to discuss the topic of the American dream and how both Franklin and Douglass, each exemplify this dream.
• The American Dream and Success One of the most pertinent topics associated with the American Dream is taking the courage to act and seize the opportunity.
• Racial Wealth Gap and the American Dream The speaker evaluates the accumulative wealth of Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites in America and arrives to the conclusion that race plays a role in financial burdens that many people of color experience.
• American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 Although the major idea of the book is a critical one, the author’s intention does not concern analyzing approaches to the American social evolution in order to define the most adequate one.
• History of Achieving the American Dream James Truslow Adams who wrote the book “The Epic of America” defined the American dream as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity […]
• The American Dream in the 21st Century It is the labor of these people that allowed the country to afford to build its industry and set up a base for fulfilling the American Dream.
• Willy Loman and the American Dream As a result of his boasting, a great deal of what his family knows about Willy is based upon the image he feels he must portray of himself in order to bring himself in line […]
• American Dream and Reality for Minorities The topic of our concern is the reality that is faced by women, blacks, and war veterans who are associated with the American army.
• Richard Rodriguez’s Opinion on Migration and the American Dream American seems to refer only to the citizen of the United States and does not include the rest of the people in the continent!
• American Dream Is Not a Myth The paper is based on the argument, a simplified definition of the American dream: the American dream can be defined as “the achievement of economic and social advancement through hard work and determination”.
• The Immigrant Experience and the Failure of the American Dream The fates of the heroes of the book amaze with their tragedy, and this is the story of slaves of wage labor.
• Tycoons and Their American Dream The American Dream as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Morgan, and others saw it and forged it to be seen by others contributed meaningfully to the values of the American people and the priorities of a nation.
• American Dream in Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” The play Death of a salesman is indeed an anatomy of the American dream especially because the plot of the story revolves around some of the basic material gains that individuals in the American society […]
• “American Dream” of English and Chinese Immigrants My family decided to move to the US from England because of the low wages in our town. My intentions were to explore the new opportunities of the West and to earn more money than […]
• American Dream and Equity of Outcome and Opportunity The American dream is one of the most famous declarations of the world and the American subsequent governments have kept the dream alive for the last hundred years.
• Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream This is one of the drawbacks that should be taken into account by the viewers who want to get a better idea about the causes of the problems described in the movie.
• American Dream in Hansberry’s and Miller’s Tragedies Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” and Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” tell the stories about how people can perceive and be affected by the idea of the American Dream, how they choose wrong dreams […]
• Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream – Movie Analysis It can be taken as the national ethos of the citizens of the USA. The basis of the American society is broken and it is not united anymore.
• Music Talent Shows and the American Dream Talent search shows, like American Idol and The Voice, have suffered a lot of criticism for different reasons. Stanley says the main reason for this cynicism is the failure of such shows to focus on […]
• Michelle Obama’s Remarks on American Dream She added that the main goal was to secure the blessings of liberty and to bring about the fulfillment of the promise of equality.
• The American Dream’s Concept The American economy is also likely to improve as a result of realizing the American dream 2013 since most of the residents are likely to indulge in productive activities as stipulated in the American dream […]
• The Dilemmas of the American Dream in The Great Gatsby The Great Gatsby is a story of a young man in the early twentieth century who seems to know what he wants in the way of that dream and what to do to achieve it.
• The Concept of Progress or the Pursuit of the American Dream The concept of progress or the pursuit of the American Dream since 1930s has been a matter of concern for many immigrants who believe that they can achieve much in the US than in their […]
• The Book American Dream by Jason DeParle From the name of the book, it is clear that the cardinal theme of the book is the American dream. This is contrary to the fact that she was pregnant and in a crack house.
• The Definition of the Great American Dream: Hearing Opportunity Knock Although the concept of the American Dream is very recognizable, its essence is very hard to nail down, since it incorporates a number of social, economical and financial principles; largely, the American Dream is the […]
• The American Dream Negative Sides and Benefits The United States is thought of as the land of opportunity and there are many people who want to live “The American Dream”.
• Role of Money in the American Dream’s Concept Many people lack the meaning of the American dream because they are always looking forward to find opportunity and fail to realize that the opportunity to succeed is always around them in the work they […]
• The Reality of American Dream The government encouraged the immigration of the population whose labor and skills were required in the United States. The housing in the urban was overcrowded with very unsanitary conditions, and some of the immigrants did […]
• Social Status Anxiety and the American Dream The pain of a loss and the status anxiety that came with being inferior to other students at Harvard instigated the urge to revenge and brought a desire to achieve success.
• Francis Scott Fitzgerald & His American Dream In the novel “Tender is the Night,” Fitzgerald describes the society in Riviera where he and his family had moved to live after his misfortune of late inheritance.
• American Dream: Is It Still There? It is a dream for immigrants from the Middle East to be in America; a country where discrimination is history and where no one will prevent them from achieving their dreams in life.
• The American Dream: Walt Disney’s Cinderella and Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man This is attributed to the fact that the original ideas and the fundamental principals that founded the dream are quickly fading away given the changing fortunes of the average American.
• The Death of the American Dream It is the moral decay that leads to the loss of freedom, the very essence of the founding of the American dream.
• Inequality and the American Dream It is only after the poor workers are assured of their jobs that the American model can be said to be successful.
• A Response to the Article “Inequality and the American Dream” It has drawn my attention that other world countries embrace the “American model” since the super power has enormous wealth and its economic development is marked by up-to-date juggernauts of globalization and technology.
• Fitzgerald’s American Dream in The Great Gatsby & Winter Dreams To my mind, Winter Dream is a perfect example of the American Dream, since the main hero, Dexter, implemented each point of it, he was persistent and very hard-working, he was a very sensible and […]
• How Did Ben Franklin Exemplify the American Dream?
• Does Fitzgerald Condemn the American Dream in “The Great Gatsby”?
• How Do Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass Represent the American Dream?
• Has America Lost Its Potential to Achieve the American Dream?
• How Has Disney’s Social Power Influenced the Vision of the American Dream?
• Does the American Dream Really Exist?
• How Does the Great Gatsby Portray the Death of the American Dream?
• What Does “The Great Gatsby” Have to Say About the Condition of the American Dream in the 1920s?
• How Does One Achieve the American Dream?
• What Are the Greatest Obstacles of Full Access to the American Dream?
• How Has the American Dream Been Translated Into Popular Film?
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• Why Will Equal Pay Help Women Achieve the American Dream?
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• How Does Extreme Inequality Make the American Dream Inaccessible?
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• How Does Society Influence the Idea of the American Dream?
• Why Must the United States Renew Opportunities to Achieve the American Dream to Reform Immigration Policy?
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James Truslow Adams: Dreaming up the American Dream

Background on James Truslow Adams, who coined the phrase The American Dream.

With the 2016 Presidential election approaching, we can all be sure we’ll be hearing about the American Dream a lot in the coming months. Where did the concept come from?

There was, in fact, a founding father of the American Dream. He was James Truslow Adams and he coined the phrase in his 1931 bestseller The Epic of America . Adams, who was no relation to the Presidential Adamses, had actually wanted to name the book after his central thesis, but his publisher thought that a book called The American Dream wouldn’t sell well during the Great Depression.

Adams’s definition: “a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

He put it more succinctly elsewhere in the book: a “dream of a better, richer and happier life for all our citizens of every rank.” This contemporary review of Epic notes that Adams alluded to the idea in fifty or more passages in the book. The unnamed reviewer thought Adams believed the dream to be “our greatest contribution to the thought of the world.”

Adams himself was born fortuitously into a wealthy Brooklyn family and became a successful investment banker before transforming himself into a best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. This  short essay on Chief Justice John Marshall  published in  The American Scholar  shows he didn’t talk down to a popular audience. The piece is dense and closely-argued, and goes to the heart of the question about just what kind of democracy we have, and might have in the future—his notion that the nation-state was on the way out may have been premature.

Calling something a dream is a tricky proposition, since matching “a better, richer and happier life for all” to today’s economic disparities, limited social mobility, and the overweening power of money in politics makes it sound like a far-fetched fantasy indeed.

Adams himself was clear-eyed: he wrote the American Dream “has been realized more fully in actual life here than anywhere else, though very imperfectly even among ourselves.”

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American Dream

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• Corporate Finance Institute - American Dream
• Brookings - Is the American dream really dead?
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American Dream , ideal that the United States is a land of opportunity that allows the possibility of upward mobility , freedom , and equality for people of all classes who work hard and have the will to succeed.

The roots of the American Dream lie in the goals and aspirations of the first European settlers and colonizers . Most of these people came to the North American continent to escape tyranny , religious and political persecution, or poverty . In 1776 their reasons for coming were captured by the Founders in the Declaration of Independence : “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” These lines have often been cited by groups seeking equal standing in American society.

While the idea of the American Dream may have originated well before 1776, the phrase itself was coined by American businessman and historian James Truslow Adams in his 1931 book The Epic of America . That work defines the past and future of the American Dream, which, according to Adams, is:

“not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

To Adams, the American Dream is about aspiring to be one’s best self and to rise above the station one was born into. It is not about simply acquiring wealth and material possessions.

Despite Adams’s optimism about the United States as a land of opportunity, his book warns of flaws in the American way of life. It calls out the dangers of unbridled capitalism and mass consumption . The worker, he wrote, gets “into a treadmill in which he earns, not that he may enjoy, but that he may spend, in order that the owners of the factories may grow richer.” Adams’s book also cites dangers to “the intellectual worker” who must adjust his or her work “to the needs of business or mass consumption.” The result of this accommodation, according to Adams, “is to lower the quality of…thought,” as represented in newspapers and journals, “to that of the least common denominator of the minds of the millions of consumers.” In addition, Adams’s book calls out the devotion to accumulation of wealth without regard for the good of society:

“A system that steadily increases the gulf between the ordinary man and the super-rich, that permits the resources of society to be gathered into personal fortunes that afford their owners millions of income a year, with only the chance that here and there a few may be moved to confer some of their surplus upon the public in ways chosen wholly by themselves, is assuredly a wasteful and unjust system. It is, perhaps, as inimical as anything could be to the American dream.”

What Adams foresaw appears to have become a reality in 21st-century America: consumerism and materialism abound, threatening the environment and the political structure. Intellectualism has become tribalized. The gulf between rich and poor continues to increase. In addition, it is becoming more and more difficult to attain the American Dream for many people, including religious and ethnic minorities , women, and the poor. Hard work alone is often not enough for families or their children to get ahead, especially if they are low-wage earners. Black and Hispanic women are least likely to move upward. In fact, roughly one in six Black Americans do not believe in the American Dream at all. Certain areas of the country, in particular the Southeast and the Midwestern Rust Belt , have trended much lower in economic mobility than other areas. According to one study, 92 percent of children born in 1940 earned more money than their parents. However, only 50 percent of children born in the 1980s have done so. Sentiment among Millennials , Generation Z , and Generation X , as captured in a 2020 opinion poll , reflected these trends, indicating that 46 percent, 52 percent, and 53 percent of each group, respectively, felt that the American Dream is attainable. On the basis of these trends, policy groups are working to improve the probability of upward mobility in the United States.

While the American Dream may be increasingly difficult to attain in the United States, the idea has arguably been exported successfully. Around the world, people are fulfilling their own version of the American Dream. Many countries are working toward more-just economic, educational, and legal systems to support equality and upward mobility .

How Rural Students Define the American Dream

A photo essay highlights the perspectives of teens on politics, education, and hopes for the future.

The belief that if a person works hard enough she can become financially successful, regardless of existing barriers to opportunity, is integral to the American mythos of meritocracy . But a 2011 Pew Charitable Trust poll found that many Americans—whether they are living in cities, small towns, or rural communities—share pessimism about upward mobility.

Rural communities experience higher rates of poverty and lower rates of college completion than urban communities, making upward mobility for rural students more difficult. What do students in rural communities think about the American Dream? Does it exist, is it attainable, and what role does education play in their climb? I spoke with students from rural communities about the American Dream and what it means to them. Below are highlights from five of those interviews.

Madison Ortega, 10th grade—Morehead, Kentucky (population: 6,845)

In middle school, we had an assembly about hunger and poverty in Eastern Kentucky, and they had these numbers, and they’d have students stand up, and they’d be like, “this is how many students in your school could be facing hunger or could be facing poverty.” I find that that is a big issue in our community, living in Eastern Kentucky. I grew up when I was little with both parents, and when I was in first grade, my parents did get a divorce. Neither of my parents went to college. My mom actually went for a little bit, but she never graduated, and my father didn’t go at all. I now live with my mom, and we actually recently moved in with her mom, so it’s the three of us. My mom’s going back to college at our town’s university, Morehead State. That’s exciting. We’ve been low income my entire life, especially since I’ve just been living with my mom, because she hasn’t had a job, we’ve kind of just been living off of child support and what not.

To me, the American Dream means that you have the opportunity and the resources to live out the ideas that you have, to live how you want to live. Honestly, I think that my family and I would be living the American Dream. My mom—she’s going to get a job here one of these days, and I’m going to school and hopefully going to get into a college to get a decent job. Education is the key to a lot of things, and it is the key to ending the cycle of poverty. Poverty is a vicious cycle. Education is the key to getting into a good college, which is the key to getting a good job, which is the key to making money, to getting out of poverty. It is all about money, based on where you live and how much money is in that area, how much is going into that school, what family you’re born into, how much money they’re able to put into your education. I think that we might just break our family’s cycle of poverty. I think that we are living the American Dream.

Jadaci Henderson, 12th grade—Dumas, Arkansas (population: 4,706)

The term ‘the American Dream’ to me means me being able to feel safe on every corner of America. It means I am offered the same opportunities as anybody else —male, female, black, white, whatever. And, it means to me that I can do whatever I want as long as it’s lawful. I should be able to do whatever I feel like. Honestly, no. I don’t feel like I’m living the American Dream, especially not here, in Southeast Arkansas, being a black female with a big mouth. You’re looked at funny when you want to be something more than just a wife one day and you live in Dumas. Or you want to be something more than just a teacher. If you have dreams beyond what other people feel like you should, you can’t live the American Dream in a place like this.

Chris Mayes, 11th grade,—Swannanoa, North Carolina (population: 4,576)

This is how I used to think about the American Dream: graduate college after I graduate high school, move to L.A., get a job out there, have a nice house, have a wife and two kids. That’s what I thought was the American Dream for me. I’m gay. I used to just deny everything. Now, for me, I want to graduate college, it’s pretty much the same, but I want to go out to L.A. and become an actor, I want to get a house, get into a relationship, and then I want to travel. That would be my dream. Just to travel everywhere. Be like, “Oh, hey, I’m in Paris.” Two weeks later, “Oh, I’m in Japan.” Just never stop having fun and being me and that’s what I think my American Dream is. I’m about halfway there.

Perry Allen, 11th grade—Nicholasville, KY (population: 28,015)

I don’t know that the standard definition of the American Dream—of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and making something of yourself—[has] ever been entirely true, and I definitely don’t think it is now. The spirit of America as a democracy requires that a good citizen should be involved and be informed, but that also requires a certain level of security and success. The American Dream is to get to a place where you can be an active member of civil discourse and an active member of governance. I think there’s a variety of cultural and institutional obstacles to that kind of participation.

Culturally, there’s not necessarily a huge amount of support for education, and in some parts of the community, not everyone necessarily subscribes to the idea that being successful in high school and going to college and getting a degree is the best way to achieve your goals and to be prosperous. While not everyone needs a bachelor’s degree, that doesn’t mean that education isn’t important. Those attitudes are definitely not good for the intellectual health of the community.

Going from the middle to the upper class, you have access to the basic resources: the education, the social and cultural know-how. There’s a larger gap between the lower and the middle class. I definitely don’t think it’s impossible to move up from that, because people do it. It’s objectively possible, because there are success stories, but it’s definitely not possible for everyone to do it, because the people who move from the lower to the middle class got lucky in some way, whether they had a terrible home life and they happened to be put in a class with a teacher who noticed and accommodated them and pushed them towards success, or whether they heard about some scholarship in their junior year that they could have just entirely missed that allowed them to go to college. Those opportunities don’t pop up for everyone, and there are not enough opportunities to elevate everyone from the lower to the middle class. It’s never going to be possible for everyone, and some serendipity is necessary.

Shamus Hayes, 9th grade—Bristol, Vermont (population: 3,894)

I don’t think [being American is] like eating McDonald’s, shooting shotguns, and hanging an American flag in the back of a Chevy. I feel like it’s actually caring about America, which isn’t all those things, like, hating Muslims. That’s not American. The whole basis of America, it’s an immigrant country. All the people from Western Europe came over here and they took the land in the first place from the Natives. No American is truly native. I feel like the American Dream would be more accepting and helping other countries, and helping our own country more, instead of like rich politicians helping themselves, which was one of the reasons Bernie Sanders was a good candidate, because he wanted to take down all those wealthy people giving themselves tax breaks or what not, and help the middle lower class. I feel like that’s more the American Dream than banning Muslims from America.

Recommended Reading

The Purpose of Education—According to Students

America’s Epidemic of Unkindness

The Curse of an Open Floor Plan

I feel like there’s a line between defending your country and its people, and then harming other countries by being extreme. All the people from Mexico, or South America trying to get into America—I don’t think everybody understands that they’re trying to come to America because they don’t have good lives where they’re living. By building a wall, they’re still going to try to get over here because, either they stay there and just live a poor life, or die and get pulled into drugs or whatever life they’re living there. They’re still going to try to get over the wall, get a job. Instead of building a wall, we should aid all those impoverished countries that actually need help. Building a wall isn’t going to do anything.

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The American Dream Without a House? Believe It

As housing costs soar, younger adults are trying to reimagine prosperity — without the white picket fence.

Credit... Photo illustration by Pablo Delcan

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By Anna Kodé

• Published Sept. 7, 2024 Updated Sept. 8, 2024

“American Dream Properties” is the name of a McMansion developer in New Jersey. About a decade ago, Arlington, Texas, rebranded itself as “The American Dream City,” promising “diverse neighborhoods where the housing dollar stretches further than most cities.” At a campaign rally in York County, Pa., last month, Donald J. Trump said, “We’re going to bring back a thing called the American dream.”

The American dream symbolizes many abstract ideals: hard work, assimilation, equal opportunity. But for generations it has meant one particular path in life: Get a job, save up for a down payment, and achieve the fairy-tale ending of domestic bliss and monthly mortgage payments.

Now, though, with soaring housing costs — along with student loan debt and inflation — homeownership is becoming increasingly inaccessible for young Americans. As of June, according to Redfin, nearly one in 10 homes in the country were worth $1 million or more — a share that more than doubled since June 2019. And as prices rise, people are becoming first-time homeowners later in life. In a 2023 report from the National Association of Realtors, the median age for a first-time home buyer was 35. In 1981, it was 29.

Even before the current housing crisis, people have been arguing that the American dream was disappearing, deteriorating, dying or dead. But perhaps it is simply changing.

Over the past month, I’ve been speaking with millennials and zoomers across the country to learn how they think about the American dream. My survey was nonscientific, but it dovetailed with recent polling: Many of the people I spoke with expressed how today’s exorbitantly high prices have made homeownership feel unattainable, and that in such an uncertain world — plagued by pandemics, political turmoil, war, climate change and other disasters — it felt foolish to pinch pennies for the goal of one day buying property. Instead, many young people are placing more value on community and family, growing their wealth in other ways, or spending more on everyday pleasures.

When the concept of the American dream first emerged, it was meant to be an ideal for people to mold into whatever fit their lives. Over time, it became a more rigid model, cementing homeownership at its core. Now, young Americans have been forced into a turning point for the American dream, one that might not have a house in it at all.

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Home — Essay Samples — Economics — American Dream — Is the American Dream Still Alive?

Is The American Dream Still Alive?

• Categories: American Dream

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Words: 712 |

Published: Jan 30, 2024

Words: 712 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, history of the american dream, economic perspective on the american dream, social perspective on the american dream, cultural perspective on the american dream, personal perspective on the american dream, counterarguments to the american dream, references:.

• Kelly, P. (2020). The American Dream. Forbes.
• Gallup. (2020). Americans Still Believe in the American Dream.
• Kochhar, R. (2016). The American Dream: Dead, Alive, or on Hold? Pew Research Center.
• Wilhelm, H. & Schulte, B. (2020). Is the American Dream Dead? Global Young Voices.
• Delgado, R. & Stefancic, J. (2001). Understanding Words That Wound.

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