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?

Where is the Line?

As I was going back to edit my Perilous Times paper I had a thought after talking with Mr. Bolos.

Some people could say that a dictatorship is the safest place in the world to live.  It makes sense because of all of the laws and the law enforcement, things generally run well.  But at a certain point it becomes worth it to have rights rather than an absolute security.

It's like airport security today with the new TSA rules.  When do the security measures taken go too far and violate personal space? When does it become worth it to take a small risk safety-wise, and allow people to go through security without getting a pat-down or an x-ray-like machine?

Just like people in a dictatorship would want the right to free speech, don't people at the airport want the right to not be subjected to a full-body search every time they go through security?

Meta-Post II

     Almost halfway through junior year, the year people go crazy with schoolwork and lose time to focus on anything else.  But blogging for American Studies has done the opposite.  Sure, blogging is work, but its goal is to connect the writers with the outside world, at least that’s how I think of it.

     I think that my writing has improved because now as I blog, I feel more comfortable putting my opinion out there.  It’s now that I was ever unsure of how I felt, but more that I didn’t really know how to say it.  For example, in my post It’s MY Life? I freely spoke about my thoughts on people judging other people.   In doing this I connected The Crucible to a subject Doc Oc brought up in class that I’m beginning to go through, the college process.  I like how I connected the two, though I wish I had come up with the connection, but I do think I made it clear that I was taking what Doc Oc had said and then taking it a step further.  I think I furthered the class conversation by digging deeper into a conversation that was had in class, and I wasn’t the only one who wanted to do that because two people commented on that post.

     I think, like I said in my last Meta Post, I’m still having a little bit of trouble leaving posts open ended.  I do think it has improved a little bit, according to my “stats page” because while there are around the same number of total comments, they are more spread over several posts this quarter whereas they were highly concentrated on certain posts last year.  To think that I am putting out a variety of topics that seem to appeal to different people makes me think that I must be doing something better this quarter with my writing. 

     I think one thing that I can really work on is trying to come up with more creative titles.  It may seem like a small thing at first, but the title is what draws the reader to the post.  When I’m picking classmates blogs to comment on, all I can see is the title and maybe the first sentence or a picture.  One of my goals is to get more people to comment, and for that to happen, I first have to have more people read my posts.

The post that I feel best represents how I want to be as a blogger for this quarter is Man vs. Woman. Or is it Woman vs. Man? I feel pretty strongly about what I was blogging about, that women are really coming to the top.  I connected the post to an article from class, as well as to a class discussion.  The article and discussion had been conflicting because the article said women were rising, while our discussion of famous New Trier graduates was about only men except for one lady, the CEO of Playboy. I think it would have been a good post for people to comment on, but I can understand that maybe people were a bit overwhelmed because of the information I presented.

     I think blogging is a great way to further improve my writing, as well as to keep in mind the larger picture of the United States, and even larger, the world.  Not everything in my life should have to be about school, even though the blog ironically is.

Money Doesn't Grow on Trees

      This doesn't really have anything to do with what we talked about in class, but it definitely has to do with the United States.  The other day my mom showed me an article from the Chicago Tribune about the national debt.  (I would link it but I couldn't find it anywhere... It's titled "The U.S. Debt: Zero In On This" in case anybody wants to look) The nation has a debt limit, which is $14.294 trillion.  That is a LOT of money.  On June 1, 2010, the U.S. was $13 trillion in debt and as of December 31, 2010, the U.S. was $14 trillion in debt.  That's $1 trillion in 7 months. $1,000,000,000,000. The Tribune did the math and that comes out to $54,084 per second that the U.S. loses.
     From what I've learned the government, specifically Obama and the Democrats are pushing for the limit to be increased, while Republicans are doing their best to keep it.  I'm not really sure where I stand on the issue, and I definitely don't know enough to pass a judgement.  What I do know is that $14.294 trillion is a LOT of money... It seems ridiculous to keep a government functioning at this rate if we lose money at the rate we are losing it.  What happens to the U.S. credibility and accountability in the world? When do people start to realize that the U.S. isn't the best investment, that maybe a place like China is?  Money doesn't grow on trees.

Man vs. Woman. Or is it Woman vs. Man?

     In class we were talking about New Trier alumni.  We talked a little bit about the wall that shows some old students and "Where They Are Now."  All five of the people there are currently college professors and three of the five were African Americans.  This topic led to the topic of a fundraiser New Trier is doing with a "Hall of Fame."  A group of five New Trier graduates were picked who supposedly represent our school's motto of "to commit minds to inquiry, hearts to compassion, and lives to the service of humanity." The five people chosen were Christie Hefner (the CEO of Playboy), Donald Rumsfeld ((in)famous politician), Rainn Wilson (a famous actor from the popular television show "The Office"), a guy who won the Nobel Prize in physics, and a humanitarian.  That was how the names were given to me.  I looked the last two up and found Jack Steinberger to be the Nobel Prize winner but I still have no idea who the other man is.

     As a class we started to talk about whether or not those people truly portray New Trier's motto.  It is my opinion that the Nobel Prize winner and the humanitarian definitely do, quite clearly representing the first and third part of the motto respectively.  But I don't know so much about the other three.  They were the names that people would recognize because they are famous, and I guess that's what a Hall of Fame should do but not necessarily under the facade of representing the New Trier motto.
     What struck me most though, is that in class we have also been talking a lot about women versus men.  We took an opinion quiz, a few of the questions being are girls more mature than boys? And, are boys inherently more curious and mischievous than girls? Then an article titled "The End of Men" was brought up.  It brings up the idea that the future of society might be more focused on women than men, and that women may be "better suited" to it.  I went home and read the article which was very long, but I also found it to be very interesting.
     Then when I thought back to class, I realized that only one out of five of the Hall of Famers is a woman and I don't know if any of the "Where Are They Now" people is a woman.  Maybe because it's the past, but it isn't that far into history.... Why aren't more of the representatives women?