Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Mission
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Charlotte Iserbyt was Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, Department of Education during the first Reagan administration.
Creativity and critical thinking are very important. Kids are being conditioned to be workers, who follow orders and the methods of teaching in elementary and high school show this. There is a lack of creative and critical thinking in schools today, as well as a lack of traditional education of the founding fathers, Constitutional Law, classic literature, and basically all of the educational tools which this country was originally founded upon. To create separate class structures, the majority of the population, the bottom poorer part, is taught this workforce training version of education, where creativity is looked down upon. The advances in technology are also to blame for this, there is no more privacy, a student cannot formulate his own creative view or opinion because they are so inundated with what to think and when from all outside forces including and not limited to the tv, internet, social networking, advertising, corporate run media, and every other outside stimulus imaginable.
This is an excerpt from Jim Marrs’ book “The Trillion Dollar Conspiracy” where he quotes Beverly Eakman a former educator, government speech writer, and author of “Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks”: “Rugged individualism encompassed a range of characteristics — independence, self-sufficiency, thinking for oneself. In the 1970’s the axe was laid to all three. Negative terminologies like “loner” and “misfit” redefined the individualist. Independence was scrapped for interdependency, self-sufficiency for redistribution, and thinking for oneself was equated with intolerance. Today any close reading of the newspaper reminds us daily that the loner requires psychiatric intervention, and maybe drugs as well….”
I believe that we need to have children learn the basics, about english, math, and history, but achieving a higher level and mastery of all three, while reinforcing creativity and individual thinking. To be creative is not enough, and a creative mind easily falls into the world of getting a gold star and a pat on the back, without attaining a level of intelligence needed to be a driving and positive force in the world.
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The Marley kids know, in order to pull ourselves up, and not become the downtrodden victims of class warfare, we must educate ourselves and the youths with creativity, knowledge, science, research, math, true history, language, and all of the other foundations of intelligence. The other option is to be a worker who’s back is used to get someone else rich. Anyone reading this who thinks that they may come from an upper class family with money and this doesn’t apply to them. You don’t, we are talking about the global top 1%, and none of us are apart of it!
Independence and Symbiosis
What is the distinguishing line between being self-reliant and being independent? In Self-Reliance, Emerson wrote, “I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency.” Conformity versus trying to be different is a state of social dependence which we believe to be more correlated to independence rather than the proposed concept of self-reliance. In reality, everyone can be as Emerson writes, “what I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think”; everyone can be independent, each with their own unique thoughts and ideas. Whereas, self-reliance is a more physical state because you need to sufficiently isolate yourself from others and live your life doing everything on your own. And that is why you can be independent but not self-reliant in today’s world. That brings us to the point of symbiosis, which is the concept of organisms living together to benefit from each other. What Emerson seems to be describing is very much related to independence, which in today’s world, we all can accomplish to an extent. But self-reliance, on the other hand, goes against symbiosis. Everyone in this world is allowed to voice their own opinions, but mutual dependence is the basis of our survival.
Necessary Interdependence — Group 5-
The idea of Necessary Interdependence is the idea that we should rely on people when absolutely need to. Today, people rely on each other too much. In addition, they rely on each other unproductively. This gives rise to too much interdependence. In our new theory, people need to be more autonomous, and start to make simple decisions in life because learning how to make simply decisions in life will give rise to an individual making bigger decisions. There is no perfect “state” in the theory of Necessary Interdependence because as most classmates mentioned “it is impossible never to rely on anything”. Meaning, this world is totally connected through multiply networks, and random arrangements. So whether you live of off the dirt in the soil, or oxygen in the air, you still rely on something to survive. In conclusion, the general premise of this theory is to ONLY rely on people when you need to do so, and start making simply decisions by oneself. (Deon, Sal,Andre, and 2 others<– I dont remember there names..sorry)
Engines make my happy, does anyone else share this love?
I got this idea from another classmate (Marianna) after she listened to me rant on all day about this. Does anyone share a love for engines? I really really love engines, one may say an obsession. I when I work on my projects, I just zone out for hours at a time. I can simply say that engines make me happy, and I mean really really happy. As of now I’m really really happy because I just got the money for the engine I have been eye balling for about 2 months. = ) Particularly speaking I love 2 stroke engines, those are the smaller engines you find in lawn mowers, older motorcycles. Although I don’t mind a 4 stroke wet clutch engine you would find in a typical Ninja motorcycle, there fun too! The way engines work is amazing, if you understand and appreciate it. It’s the most beautiful thing ever. (PS. I would be impressed if some women shared this passion) They make me really happy. = )
Response Paper 4-Option 2
The two stories “Hills Like White Elephants” and “The Story of an Hour” depict happiness in ways that are unimaginable for the normal human being to understand. The normal human understands. In “The Story of an Hour”, written by Kate Choppin, the wife learns that her husband has just died in a horrible train accident. She of course feels sorrow at first along with regret but she cant help later feel happy that she is finally alone and independent from her husband. granted that woman at his point in history didnt have all the rights and freedoms that they do today, but no human being in the right mind would feel happy when they just found out that their spouse was killed in a train accident. Also in “Hills Like White Elephants”, there is a couple who are in between two train stations (going in opposite directions) which is symbolic for the couple making a decision on whether to have and abortion or not, it could go both ways, just as the trains can. the story ends without a known decision to the reader however.
neither of these stories depict what any human being sees as happiness, at least not in the right state of mind. in order for people to be happy, they have to be problem free and evidently, the characters in these two stories are deciding to deal with their problems in the most positive way. there is nobody that can be happy with the death of a spouse and while deciding whether to get an abortion or not in our society today.
Holon Childrens Museum
http://www.childrensmuseum.org.il/front/ShowCategory.aspx?CatId=99
Response Paper 4 – Option 1
“I like it when there is some feeling of threat or sense of menace in short stories. I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it’s good for the circulation. There has to be tension, a sense that something is imminent, that certain things are in relentless motion, or else, most often, there simply won’t be a story. What creates tension in a piece of fiction is partly the way the concrete words are linked together to make up the visible action of the story. But it’s also the things that are left out, that are implied, the landscape just under the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface of things.”
This quote, taken from Raymond Carver’s “Principles of a Story,” perfectly describes what he does in his short story, “Cathedral.” As I read “Cathedral,” I automatically assumed that this blind man is somebody the narrator’s wife had romantic relations with in the past. The narrator is clearly jealous of his existence and especially of the fact that he is going to stay in his home. We learn that the blind man’s wife just died which only makes us as the readers believe that something of an affair will occur when he stays over. This “tension” sticks with me until just before the end of the story.
Later we get to know the blind man and see that he really is something. He teaches the narrator how to see without actually seeing, as he does, without even trying to do so. He tells him to close his eyes as he draws a cathedral and the narrator ends up not even wanting to open his eyes to see what he drew. He felt like he was nowhere even though he knew he was in his own home. He was lost in his mind, in the world he created in his head without the help of his eyes.
Here, the tension dies. I no longer feel compassion for the blind man, for his lack of being able to see nor do I share the jealousy the narrator felt. I feel like the blind man can see more than I can. This was one of the most charming short stories I’ve read and I was essentially sucked in by the “sense of menace” that the introduction discharged.
Response Paper #4
Because the story did have a threatening tone, and a suspenseful plot, it got my attention from the opening paragraph. The story opens up with the husband and wife conversing about the infamous blind man, Robert coming for a visit. The blind man was a friend of the wives and as much as she was looking forward to seeing her friend after 10 years, it is clear that her husband isn’t to pleased about Robert’s visit. He even says, “A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward too.” He had no hesitation when it came down to bashing the blind, and basically just showing no pity for the disabled what so ever.
Raymond Carver does a phenomenal job at keeping the reader interested. In fact, after reading the short story, all I wanted to do was read more. For the most part the narrator sounds irritated, and sometimes hostile. Knowing how bothered the narrator is by Robert’s blindness I made an immediate connection to Aylmer in “The Birth-mark”. It was interesting to see that the things that bothered these two men the most, were things that were uncontrollable. You can’t control whether or not you will be born with a birthmark despite the size and shape. Similarly, it is fair to say that people who are born blind, do not chose that fate. In fact they are born with a disability that should never be questioned or ridiculed. Another similarity between Aylmer and the husband or narrator is although they seem relaxed as the stories progress; they both still challenge the imperfections of others. When the husband asks Robert to turn on the TV, clearly he is looking to test him.
I had no hope for the narrator until he allowed the blind man to help him draw the cathedral on a paper bag. This experience helped him learn about not only himself, but communicating with someone who earlier believed, was incapable of anything.
Out of all the short stories we have read this semester, this one seemed to intrigue me the most. I liked the fact that at the end of the story, he learned something from someone who he believed was inferior to him. That interested me the most. There are too many people out there who believe they are better than everyone, and capitalize on others flaws, instead of reaching out and in the end, ultimately bettering themselves.
