Troubles vs. Issues: The Sociological Imagination

Do you have troubles or do you have issues? If you thought they were the same, they are not. According to C. Wright Mill's essay, "The Promise of Sociology", having troubles is a personal problem where issues are social problems that affect us personally. He says, "A trouble is a private matter: Values cherished by an individual are felt by him to be threatened. An issue is a public matter: Some value cherished by publics is felt to be threatened"(Adler, 14). In his essay, Mills challenges us to use a sociological imagination to see how troubles and issues may be interrelated and not necessarily separate issues. "Sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society"(Adler, 12). I really enjoyed reading this essay because it challenges one dimensional thinking. To not just look at ourselves but to look at ourselves, others, and the world and how both things or not separate but interchangeable.

What I like most about it is that I can see it playing out in my own life. I work with inner city kids in a low income neighborhood. In a passing conversation, I realized that one of the kids was struggling in school and wasn't a very strong reader. When we talked to him about school, he brushed it off and said he had a hard time focusing sometimes. In my mind, this is his own personal trouble. So we approached it as such. We started thinking of ways to encourage him. One day we decided to do a game where it required the kids to do some light reading. As we began the activity, we found that about 60% of the kids that attended had the exact same issues with reading. So we decided to start a tutoring program to help them along. One day, we were have group discussions on family, and the children began to open up and share a bit about their families. The ones that struggled the most had all been displaced at some point in their lives by ACS due to some form of negligence from their parents. In the year that the children had been visiting our center, we had never met their parents only signatures giving permission for the kids to come. When the program is over, the kids stay out for long hours into the night. These kids are only in middle school. These kids have major issues. Problems that extend beyond personal responsibility and beyond their control.

I cannot help them until I develop a social imagination and learn to think past the personal troubles of what I see with my kids. I have to learn to look at the big picture.