I Would Prefer Not To.

There are a lot of things I would prefer not to do.
I would prefer not to have to come to school for an 8:15 a.m. start.
I would prefer not to clear the kitchen table after meals.
I would prefer not to stop watching a great movie and do some homework.
I would prefer not to go to work and just hang out with some friends.
And yes, I would prefer not to take standardized tests to get into college.

I am referencing the Bartleby Project, whose website is linked here.  The objective of the project is to have high school juniors write "I would prefer not to take your test" across the front. The problem is that the brain of the project is 75, he won't be impacted, he doesn't have to make a sacrifice.  His name is John Taylor Gatto, he claims that it won't impact people getting into colleges because "College is a business before it's anything else; already a business starving for customers." In other words, colleges will accept anybody to make money.

As I said, there are a lot of things I would prefer not to do, but at some point I just have to accept them.  Is getting up early for school really so bad? Helping my mom around the house, or giving up a little free time here or there? So is taking a standardized test an awful thing? No. I'm still not willing to risk writing "I would prefer not to take your test" across the cover of my ACT booklet.  Why are standardized tests such a problem? And then my mom showed me an article from the Chicago Tribune.

The top Chicago Public Schools (CPS) are very hard to get into, and it starts with kindergarten.  Apparently, three and four year olds are getting tutors just to try to get into the top feeder schools that will feed into the best elementary and high schools.  The link to the article is here.  One particular quote struck me, "It's just yet another example that the country has gone test crazy." It reminded me of the Bartleby Project.  Now I'm having second thoughts about what I originally thought to be a terrible plan...

(The picture above is the one from the Tribune article, a three year old girl with a tutor being taught "visual sequencing")

Am I "articulate"?

Another follow-up to our discussion on characteristics of African Americans...

So as our class was having a discussion, Dani leaned over and told me a story. (You can check out her blog here, and if you see this Dani, correct me if I'm wrong!) Basically, the main idea in the story was that her dad works with an African American man. Someone made the observation that he was very "articulate," but the man, rather than flattered was kind of annoyed.  Should it be surprising that he is quote-on-quote "articulate"?

I am a huge Duke Basketball fan, my favorite player easily being Nolan Smith.  Mr. O'Connor brought up that he had seen Smith's name linked to the word "articulate" in a recent interview (which I couldn't find...) Why is it surprising that  a senior at Duke university is "articulate"? Shouldn't that be expected? Why should it make a difference if a person is black or white?

Has our country not progressed at all? It's easily said that we have changed, that we have Barack Obama, our first black President.  But what about the list of Oscar nominees? Not one African American. Arguably, pop culture influences the average American as much as politics, if not more.  Ask people when the next Congress session begins, they won't know.  Ask people who got eliminated on American Idol, full story plus details you didn't necessarily want...

Describe A _____ Person

The other day in class, we had an activity that was to come up with adjectives or characteristics for African Americans.  Then we had to back up our adjective with the source.  The objective was to come up with a portrayal, however false or true the characteristic was, and it was in no way intended to be offensive to anybody.  Some of the things we came up with were:
-"gangster" speech, the source was rap music and movies
-athletic, the source was looking at professional basketball and football players
-young parents, the source was the book There Are No Children Here
-joyous/dancing, the source was old films and cartoons
It got me thinking, because I know that no group of people is "monolithic" as Mr. O'Connor likes to say.  I know that there are other groups that are generalized and stereotyped, like that Asians are brilliant and amazing musicians, or that Jews have big noses.  Then I started to think about what people think of kids growing up on the North Shore.  Probably snobby, rich, arrogant, self-centered, etc. It made me think of my post about camp when another camper wasn't allowed to be friends with me because of where I was from.
None of those are fair assumptions to make.  It's not right to just generalize people.  Who am I to stereotype people, and who are other people to stereotype me?