The Capital-T Truth is...

Let me just say that of all the pieces that we have read so far, I absolutely love this one. It calls so much attention to the very thing that gives us life(in my opinion): awareness Not only does awarness gives everything living thing life but it is what separates us humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. Our awarness of killing. Our awarness of habitat. Our awareness of education and so forth. But this speech is really brillant to me.

My absolute favorite part is where he begins to talk about worshipping "There is no such thing as not worshipping...Worship intellect, being seen as smart- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out." It's like he hit it right on the spot. I had never thought about the idea that religion could move past a spiritual being(s) that one believed. But it is really true because some people really do worship money. I have a few friends who honestly believe that beauty is skin deep. They refuse to befriend anyone below their standards; in doing so they have missed out on making friends who will actually mean something and stick around. But I just love how he makes it a point to let it be known that religion is beyond a person; it can be a concept, or thing as well.

Another point that he makes that I like is about "socially conscious" thinking. It made me smile after I read this speech because I try to be more socially conscious of what is going on around me. If I'm doing that then it means that I am aware of what is going on in life. I like to be that kind of person. The way that I grew up was a bit on the spoiled side and I use to have a motto that "everything was about me." So for me "self centered" thinking was my default setting. The fact that I can switch from self centered to socially conscious is a major plus for me.

All in all I really like this speech. Can't say that enough. But it had really good meaning and a great message. For me it screamed "you can be aware without being moral." It's not that things can't happen or exist it's just that you accept the notion that it is possible.

Banking Concept of Education

Here's my opinion in this topic(as it always is with my blog haha) but I just feel like there is too much of a AP between what is considered to be republican, libertarian, and democratic policies. In all honesty none of the parties or ideologies work completely alone. We need them all to make a society function properly. Though Freire makes some valid points about how the classroom should work. No teachers should not feel as though they know all and students know nothing. Yes the classes should have some solidarity to them but how can the pupils learn how society works if there is no structure within the class. In all honesty I feel as though the change should start in the both directions. That is to say that the change should come within the classrooms as well as the offices. If society continues to run the way that it is all the newly educated people will only come off as barbarians with their efforts to change. You see the minority has had power since the beginning of time and no one has noticed that there is power in numbers except in a few places in time, American Revolution, French Revolution, Apartheid in Africa, and other revolutions. Yet with all these successful rebellions no one has yet make this idea concrete and solid and we have had disasters like the Holocaust where 13 million people were killed by the minority. In the instance of the Holocaust the Banking Concept was in fact used. It was used so well with propaganda that it not only convinced people that Jews were bad but it brain washed thousands of people. In a sense the banking concept may not be all bad but it can be used for bad. There needs to be a structure in where there is an authority figure that takes into consideration the ideas and creativity of an individual. Such as the way society should be.

Research Blog II

I have decided to do my research on the Educational System in the United States. It seems that we have fell off the map in the rankings(as we have in many other aspects of life) in education. But I have also decided that with every question that I present I hope to have a solution to accompany the problem. I also want to take a hands on approach and see what people of my generation think of education. Is it something that is done because it needs to be or are people actually excited about the perks that learning gives. Maybe the systems aren't working anymore because the people don't appreciate what it has to offer. This topic stands out because of the question that the preview staffer proposed about what happened to the peace-loving yet rebellious students that wanted nothing more than dual rights and a good education. It amazes me at the numbers of students that drop out or don't further their education, especially within the African American community. With all that our ancestors have done to afford us these rights we don't even use them. In my neighborhood we have a saying "Rosa Parks went to jail just for us and ya'll still sitting in the back." it's like we have the opportunity we just don't take them. Why not? How have things changed since our parents were in school? Grandparents? Is it a cultural thing within America? There are 3 main questions that arise when I think of this research:
1) What is the Educational System about(government aspects)
2) what makes American values of education different from other countries(government and cultural)
3) is there a cultural difference within America that causes a problem for education.
One source that I find extremely intriguing is an article from Huffington Post titled "Education in America: Our Broken Escalator." This article talks about what is actually happening to the education "tools"--as I like to call them and how all we're doing is cutting the tools that we need in order to succeed. For instance education budget cuts. This article acknowledges that there is something wrong with te education system and I hope to use this source as a way to find the problems within the system. Another article from ABC News entitled Stupid America. With this article I hope to find possible solution as to what can be done about the failing education system here. My last source I'd like to use would be the UF population. It has a huge amount of culturally different people who have different backgrounds. And the people are part of the generation in question. It helps to get first hand experiences when trying to answer/solve questions that relate to reality math not included.

"Education in America: Our Broken Escalator"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/opinion/sunday/17kristof.html?_r=1

"Stupid America"
http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=1500338

The Achievement of Desire

Richard Rodriguez's The Achievement of Desire barely makes any connection to my life. I was always the golden child. My parents are working class but it didn't take their wants of better lives for their children for me to want better for myself. Growing up I've been to 3 different elementary schools all witting 3 years. I went from a poor lower class to an elite upper class back down to middle class. I knew from there what I wanted. And I knew what it took to get there. My parents loved me and did what they could to help me but instead of having the inability to help me at a certain point it was more of certain areas. My mom was always a genius in the English department and my daddy has always loved anything medical so his help came more so in high school when I was introduced to a course called HOPE. Back to my academic career, my dad had instilled in me and all of his children that we were here to do great things. But he also let me know that there was a ladder that I needed to climb and at the moment I was at the very bottom. I was/am a peasant. And I understood this concept very well. I took this concept and ran with it. I knew I would have to work harder than my parents had. However unlike the "Scholarship boy" that Robert Hoggart describes; I knew how to differentiate between my life at home and my life at school. I can partially say that part of the reason that I could was because I attended majority African American students with a faculty of African Americans who truly believed in us. That was all I needed. Even though my family was working class we all understood the importance of reading and learning. Unlike Rodriguez's brother who even though he excelled in school himself still taunted his younger brother with names like "Hey, Four Eyes!" or jokes being made within the family that I was "hiding under my bed with a book." I was the kid who could balance both lives.

"Why Bother?" Summary

"Why Bother?" is an article written by Michael Pollan an environmentalist journalist that argues the point of why individuals should bother to make changes in the way they live, to help climate change. It was published in New York Times Magazine. Pollan gives a very distinct list of reason why actual bothering would really just be a waste of time and space. However as one reads deeper into the article you will see his reasons of how "bothering can actually help. His biggest factor is gardening. "...growing even a little of your own food...instead of begetting a new set of problems-the way "solutions like ethanol and nuclear power inevitably do- actually beget other solutions."(94) Gardening presents more solutions than problems as the other "solutions" would have us to think. What we should realize, according to Pollan, is that us bothering to make a change in our own lives can in fact help to create other changes. Pollan called it "viral social change"(94)

Pollan, Michael. "Why Bother" New York Times Magazine 20 Apr. 2008: 19+. Rpt. in The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing. John D. Ramage, John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 6th ed. New York: Pearson, 2012. 88-94. Print.

Possible Ideas for Research

When I was in high school I had a spanish teacher that I had managed to get all four years of my high school career. He was always "talking" about how kids in America were underprivileged. He always told us that "back home en Puerto Rico tomo Ingles desde el nivel elemental" I roll my eyes every time I think about it. But I can't help but think that he has a point somewhere in his stories he would always tell. What has become of American education? Where are we as a generation going to be when it is our time to step up to the plate? Will we be able to cope or even better, have the courage to stand up and do something. Why have we as college students stopped being the rebellious people that our predecessors once were? I think I'd like to do my research on the education system and the values of young americans. Do we watch the news? I mean real news. Not the local news. I mean BBC or CNN. What happened to voicing our opinions? Is it authority that has caused this drastic change in the young people? I want to attempt to answer these questions in my paper.

The Idea of Hidden Meanings

Today in class one of the students brought up the concept of reading to search for deeper meanings. I felt like this book really struck a nerve within me when it came to that subject. Throughout most of my high school career all I've ever known to do when reading an article, book, drama, or even watching a movie is "what deeper meaning/relation does the author/director make?" Bartholomae and Petrosky couldn't have out it in any better words than this passage:
     
 "Student readers, for example, can take responsibility for determining the meaning of the text. They work as though they were as though they were doing something other than finding ideas already there on the page and they can be guided by their impressions or questions as they read. We are not, now, talking about finding hidden meanings. If such things as hidden meanings can be said to exist, they are hidden by readers' habits and prejudices (by readers' assumptions that what they read should tell them what they already know), or by readers' timidity and passivity (by their unwillingness to take the responsibility to speak their minds and say what they notice)"(6)

I never really actually got into the habit of looking for deeper meanings, just waited until the teacher told me what she saw and then went off of that. But now I feel as though someone understands the kind of thinker that I am. When I tell you what I inferred from a passage or understood it not simply written by the author and reiterated by me. No it is what I felt the author was saying to me in a particular case. I did not pull my findings out of thin air; they came from my experiences that I saw within the piece.

That is all. Thank you for listening to my little rant :)

P.S. I think I'm really gonna like this class.

Kisses_Ashley