Reflection

Looking back on the year in AiS class, I feel like it was nothing that I ever expected to get out of a class. I took so much out of this class in the past nine months than I think I have in any other class. It really makes me think of how much I have been shaped as a person. I now know more about different themes and symbolism and analyzing than I could have learned from any class. To be perfectly honest, when I came to AiS in August, I was a little skeptical of how much I was going to learn this year, or even what I was going to learn. Especially after the "Death of Mr. Bolos" exercise, I knew that I was in for one heck of a ride.
One thing I am taking away from this class is how I look at the world. I don't think there has been any one thing that I have not looked deeper into since the start of the school year. From looking through the lens of TV tokenism, or showing if something is more idealistic or realistic, I have grown both with knowledge and as a writer. Honestly, I have sat around with my friends from class on a weekend and just talked about how much we have taken away. It is amazing how one class can really effect the way you think for a lifetime. Truly amazing.
Although I would have been just as happy in a normal English class or learning about US History as some teacher would say is "the right way" to teach US History, I think that more schools should take advantage of this way of learning because the way we communicate in class is way above a high schooler's way of thinking. The thoughts and opinions that I have heard throughout this class are phenomenal and really made me think so much more critically. Thanks to Bolos and the OC for making this a great year!

The Power of Words

So this is going to be somewhat random, but I was thinking about everything we have done this year and wondering what the power of words are. So, to start, what is a word? I don't want to get all psychological and whatever, but do people really understand the gravity of their words when they speak them? In light of getting our Junior Themes back, I have been contemplating this a lot. I think the problem with papers like those are that people say want to say in their paper a lot more than they say what they have to say, meaning that they get so caught up in the topic of choice that they want to say everything that they have learned very blatantly instead of sticking what they should say to make a great paragraph. For people who are confused, because my words are confusing even myself: Do you say what you want to say or do you say what you have to say? For me, I say what I want to say a whole lot more than I say what I need to say. This is sometimes good, because it makes me be an honest and opinionated person, but it is also has its faults, like hurting someone or not answering the question you were originally asked. This doesn't really make sense, but its just something I have been thinking about lately.

Immigration

Immigration has been on my mind a lot lately because it has become the topic of discussion in my Spanish class. After watching the movie "El Norte" ("The North") in class, I have seen how illegal immigrants are treated both in their own countries and the United States. I think that it is a very complicated situation, but there should be some ways that we can help immigrants be legalized.
I decided to blog about this topic when I saw an article on the NY Times front page about how "270 Illegal Immigrants were sent to prison" yesterday. I think that it really sucks that there is nothing that these people can do to come into the United States legally. Also, one of the main reasons why immigrants come into the US is so that they can life a better or easier life, but they come over here and are put into factories to do all of the dirty work. What is the fairness in that? The unit changed my form of thinking for immigration because of this.
A question that I had to respond to for my class after finishing the unit is "Do you have any advice for the candidates for the presidency about the Immigration laws?" All I could say to that is, that I don't have any concrete thoughts, but I think that the immigrants who come into this country looking for a better life should feel more safe in the US. I think that it is not fair for immigrants to feel that they are in danger both in their countries and in ours. On the other hand, I believe that the laws in the US are as fair as they could be, for now, because the citizens of the US need to feel like they are not in danger also.
Thats all I have to say about that.

"Stumbling on Happiness"

So I just finished reading the pages in "Stumbling on Happiness" and the thing I was most surprised about was the graph. The graph (on page 243) shows that parents are most happy before they have children, and after their children leave home. The scales flicker in between those two points, but the are highest at those two. One thing that did not surprised me was that every one of the study's graphs went up from children who are 5 to children who are 10. I think that is understandable because the children are becoming less dependent on the parents and are learning to be at school and by themselves more. Surprisingly, every graph went way down for teenagers 12-16, and that is because of the difficulty that most teens have with their parents.
I found the excerpt really interesting because of the way it shows how people lie in the "belief game" example. Although people want to be honest, the article says, they have to lie and say that their happiness is in their children so they aren't to be blamed for "hating" (using that word lightly) their own children. Overall, I thought the article was interesting.

Junior Theme #3

After about another week of research, I have found my topic to be even more interesting than I though it would be. I have chosen to interview a special education teacher at a Transition School (18-22 year olds), but I have not been able to contact her as of yet.
I finshed my book last night. The only usuable part for my paper was the first half, or when the narrator was in primary and secondary school, but it was still interesting to read about the full like of an undiagnosed woman with autism. She went through her whole life, or at least until she was 26, before knowing what exactly she had, with people for the first 26 years of her life just calling her "disturbed" or "slow." It is really interesting to see the world through the lens of someone with autism, especially because I spend 2 periods of every school day with students who have the disease. Now, I can actually understand where they are coming from, and exactly why they do not feel emotions or even have that much communication with "our world" versus "their own world."
For my paper, I have only written an introduction, but I am very satisfied with it. I plan to write about a paragraph each night, and the next section of our paper is due Monday.

Illinois and Developmental Disabilities

During advisory today, I was at an ELS (Enriching Lives through Service) meeting. For those who do not know, ELS is a club at our school that allows regular-ed students to interact with special-ed student in a classroom environment. I participate in ELS during all of my free periods, which is about 8 periods each week. At the meeting, the sponsor brought up an article that was sent to him. I just read the article and was very surprised by what it said. It was about how out of the 50 states in the US, Illinois is 51st (when District of Columbia included) out of all of the states to have general funding for people with Developmental Disabilities. Think about it: the 10th most wealthiest state in the nation funds people with disabilities the least? That does not make any sense at all to me. The article said that in order for Illinois to reach average spending would take about $250 million. I think that something needs to be done so that students with disabilities all over Illinois can be taught at the exact level that they need to be taught at. I plan to use this article as evidence in my Junior Theme.

Junior Theme #2

So I have not blogged in a while, but this is just to tell you where I am going with Junior Theme. It took me a while, but I finally got a question. It started out as Why are there so many laws about the rights of and the responsibilities to people with special needs? I discovered that this is not exactly what I was looking for, so it changed to Why should society pay for autism therapy? Finally, my real question that I am most likely going to stick with is Why is there such an increase in the demand for special education?

Since there is such a wide range of disabilities, I plan to focus mainly on autism. I have looked on CQ Researcher, and I found a report that I will use. I have looked at a couple different books on autism, such as The Curious Incident of the dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin, and I have finally landed on Without Reason by Charles Hart. This book is about a man who copes with having both an older brother and a son diagnosed with autism. It is a little long, but I feel that it will be a very interesting book to read. One other thing that I am looking forward to doing is finding a movie that I can watch relating to this subject. So far I think I will watch Rain Man or Forrest Gump.

Junior Theme

Just warning you that this post is extremely random.
So we started talking about Junior Theme on Thursday, and since then I have been struck with the difficulty of thinking of what exactly the outcome will be. We have not gotten an exact outline of the paper or all that it entails yet, but isn't it just another research paper? My sister just turned hers in after countless hours of editing and re-editing. Talk about stressful I plan to just go into it thinking of it as another paper, but on something that I am actually interested in, and I feel like that will not put as much stress on myself.
The theme that I am choosing to do is on education. More specifically, my favorite topic that I have chosen is on students with disabilities, and how they are viewed in society, or even by regular ed students. This is a topic that is very important to me, and I can't wait to start learning more about it, which seems weird that I am really excited to start writing a paper.
The words "Junior Theme" to me have a very negative connotation. It is something that we have been hearing about from older siblings or have been daunted by since freshman year. Should it really be viewed as something so stressful and unnecessary? Yes, I am supporting writing a paper right now because I for one am a person who likes to research a topic that I am interested in, and I think that I will have a really good outcome of this paper. Anyone else?

Barbie Turns 49

I was looking on the NPR site today and I came across the latest talk, which was how Barbie, the doll that every girl grew up with, turned 49 on Sunday. It came as quite a shock to me, because I thought these dolls were much more recent than that. As I kept listening to the talk show, I was astonished to hear all of the political aspects and issues that surrounded a piece of plastic since their worldwide fame does not show any of this.
One of the issues was the tilt in her head. Don't remember that? That is because the shape of Barbie's face became upright because the head tilt connoted something towards the feminist movement. Also, initially, Sears, the first place to sell Barbie, would not sell the doll because if she would be a real person, her body would not be "proportional" if you know what I mean.
An interesting fact that I learned though, was the background of the doll. She had an entire history that got shafted to the background out of her fame. The original face was taken from that of a 40 year old to look like a 17 year old, which I find both weird and confusing.
I am relating this back to our women and children theme from before because, through this doll that seemed to change every 3 year olds life, the more important issues seem to parallel those of the ones we discussed in class. The picture above is of the first ever Barbie. Who knew Barbie had so many issues?

Child Study Center

After last week's discussion on Child Development: then and now, I was very interested in different ways Self Regulation has inevitably changed in the past years. After searching online, I came across the Child Study Center, a center whose work revolves around the developmental growth of infants in Virginia. I found it very interesting to see what interests children more than anything, which is animals, and how reading books either has huge or not so huge effects on their learning environment. It might just be me who finds this interesting, because I take such a liking to psychology and understanding what is going on in the minds of those who can not communicate to such an ability. It really surprises me, though, to read from this website that the picture books that we clung to so much in our childhood could possibly have no effect on us the first one hundred times that we read it. So how has Self Regulation changed? I believe that in the past two or three decades, children have been spoiled so much as children, that in the study we learned about in class, it disables their ability to pay attention for more than five minutes at a time. Through this, I think that we are really teaching our parents more than our parents are teaching us at these young ages because no one wants to make the same error twice. So are we really teaching our parents what to do, and will we make these same mistakes as parents?

What has our youth really come to?

World Clock

I was just looking around at Bolos' tags when I came across this WORLD CLOCK. It immediately caught my attention from the rapid pace of numbers increasing every single second. There are a lot of different elements to this site, counting a numerous variety of statistics.
I have to say that the one that is most interesting to me is the one that counts the abortions. It is very frightening for me to see that the number of abortions is almost the same as the number of marriages this year so far. It seems like every minute there is an average of 88 abortions and 82 marriages. I really think that this relates to our theme of Women and Children, because the women are not getting married once they are pregnant, so they decide to have an abortion. To me, this is kind of SCARY to think of, but I am not going to get in to the whole Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice debate right now.
Looking at the biological side of this site, I see that there are about 70 species extinct per day. Being a biology student myself, and know there are millions of species in the world, it still surprises me when that many species are becoming extinct each day. Another thing I pay attention to is the number of births and the number of deaths happening each minute. Each minute, there are about 250 births and 100 deaths in the world. I think this is kind of weird to think about because to me its weird to think about something bigger than what you know.
What do you guys think about this site? I overall think it is interesting, but at the same time gives me a perspective of the world that I may not wish to see a whole lot.

Hillary Clinton and Alicia Keys - Superwoman

This video was posted as a response to the Obama campaign's "Yes We Can" video on YouTube. In my opinion, I do not think it is as strong of a video because it is not an entire speech like Obama's was. Here are the lyrics to the song "Superwoman" by Alicia Keys:

Everywhere I'm turning
Nothing seems complete
I stand up and I'm searching
For the better part of me
I hang my head from sorrow
Slave to humanity
I wear it on my shoulders
Gotta find the strength in me

Chorus:

Cause I am a Superwoman
Yes I am
Yes she is
Even when I'm a mess
I still put on a vest
With an S on my chest
Oh yes
I'm a Superwoman

For all the mothers fighting
For better days to come
And all my women, all my women sitting here trying
To come home before the sun
And all my sisters
Coming together
Say yes I will
Yes I can

Chorus

When I'm breaking down
And I can't be found
And I start to get weak
Cause no one knows
Me underneath these clothes
But I can fly
We can fly, Oooohh

Clinton: "Too many have been invisible for too long. Well, you aren't invisible to me."

Cause I am a Superwoman
Yes I am
Yes she is
Even when I'm a mess
I still put on a vest
With an S on my chest
Oh yes
I'm a Superwoman

Propaganda

So we have recently been talking about propaganda and the different types. Propaganda, as we defined in class, means "one sided information that 'sells' you to the maker's viewpoint." I really enjoyed that lecture on Tuesday because it was both surprising and interesting to see different people characterize the big figures of WWII in different ways. For example, one of my favorite pictures in that power point was the one paralleling the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. For me, it was my first time hearing this term, but I was surprised to see the parallel the cartoonist made with the Bible in that way. Basically, all of the ones under the "enemy" headline really struck me how as very interesting, because I loved seeing how different people portray the enemy. For example, one of the drawings showed Hitler with a huge body and a tiny head, and right away, we could tell that the artist had the idea that the enemy had the "do not think, just do" persona, or that they are small minded.
On Wednesday we looked at the McCain video. Mr. O'Connor kept bringing up the word "parody." During class that day, I just thought it meant "satirical" or "funny," but the actual dictionary definition is "a humorous or satirical imitation of a serious piece of literature or writing." Now i understand why he was calling it a parody: because everyone took the Obama video so seriously, and this one was just like an imitation.<--my "blond" moment. We discussed if this video is propaganda or not. I believe that it is not propaganda, because it was meant as something satirical.
To me, propaganda is something that has to be sold, not needs to be sold because it is so often that you see on tv something that has the power to be propaganda...if that sentence does not make sense to anyone but me I am very sorry...it happens a lot.

Obama's Campaign: YES WE CAN

With Super Tuesday just two days away, Obama and Clinton are trying to get speeches in all around the nation so they can be the one to make American History. Although it is quite evident that Obama will win in Illinois on Tuesday, other states are not so confident.

Last night, my sister, who goes to college in St. Louis, spent her night at an Obama campaign. She is not very into politics herself, but her room mate is very big on politics and is a volunteer for Obama. My sister was convinced that Obama needed more help getting votes in Missouri than in Illinois, so she decided to change her voter registration to help out. So last night, the two of them went to a big sports arena in St. Louis, and stood for about two hours and with 20,000 other people waiting to hear Barack Obama speak.

When I talked to her this morning, I heard all about her experience. She told me how she could not see Obama because all of the cameras get to be in the front rows for advertisment. But, hearing the insperational words from Obama of YES WE CAN really told her that she made the right decision to go. She told me that from the people in the crowd, you would think that everyone was for Obama, which really is not true because Clinton is in the lead in Missouri.

I found this video this morning about an endorsment for Obama. I think it is very insperational, and it shows how many people and celebrities want the right kind of change in American and to truly say YES WE CAN? What do you think, and how please take my poll to see who our class thinks will win on Super Tuesday.

Where does the "N-Word" stand in the world today?

In class on Friday we talked a lot about the "N-word" and where it is destined to end up in the future. I found this discussion very interesting, especially after watching the movie about Huck Finn and looking at how the concerned parents of 1976 viewed the book. Is this kind of language okay to be used in Huck Finn? I think it is because it is history, and like Bolos said, teenaged students in our society know better than to go around repeating it in the hallways or to our friends. I agree with what the entire classed discussed, such as how it is almost getting whitewashed from history, but it is in history because it was offensive to be used during slavery.
In our world today, where does it stand? I think it stands in the history, or in the music in which some of us listen to. This does not mean it is okay, however because of cultural aspects, I don't think it should ever be used. It is kind of like how I make a lot of jokes about my religion with my friends of the same religion, but when someone of a different religion tries to make that joke, it is just insulting.
This weekend, I was watching The Longest Yard, the 2005 version of a classic movie made in the 70s. It is mainly about a prision relationship between the convicts and the guards. In one of the scenes, the convicts, who were mainly African American, were cleaning up the library, and when they were done, the Caucasian guards dropped more books on the ground. The guards were beating up on this one convict in particular, who is actually Nelly, and kept calling him the "N-word" along with "boy" and many other derrogatory names. I immediatley thought of our discussion when watching this scene. It really surprised me how much our history was coming through through that one scene.

White House e-mails missing

This political cartoon was my artifact for the final yesterday. I related it to many things like the Lessig Lecture on President Bush being pathological, the memory radiolab we listened to, Ellsberg and the pentagon papers, and more recent happenings like Guantanamo Bay and the Scooter Libby/Valerie Plame incident.
For those who don't know, Plame was a CIA operative who Libby disclosed in 2003. In this political cartoon, you see Bush and a CIA agent putting tapes into the fire. These tapes are documentation from the past seven years of Bush being in office.
I am writing this blog because today on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, a story caught my eye that was titled White House E-mails Missing. While reading the article, I realized that this cartoon is based off of what has been happening in the White House since 2003. E-mails are not being properly preserved like a law that President Clinton enacted in March 2000. The administration's emailing system has been under survaillence for quite some time now, and before 2003, all of the archieving tapes were recycled.
When I opened up the paper to read more of the article, Valerie Plame's picture was right next to the article. It is ironic that after such a long time of the tapes being hidden, this article comes out the day after our final.
Robert Dallek, a presidential historian is quoted in the article, saying "Given how secretive this administration has been, it of course fans the flames and suspicions about what has been destroyed here." He wants to get an investigation going to see what is actually going on. Could this be a scandal as big as Watergate?

What about Clinton?

On the front page of yesterday's Tribune, there was an article talking about what may have set Hillary Clinton more over the top than her conteders.

The first reason they addressed was her "rare display of emotion" on Monday. The paper called this the "Reverse Muskie Movement," commenting on Edmund Muskie who ran in 1972, won both the Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses, but because of his "display of emotion," did not go on to win the party nomination. Another reason is that she recieved about half of the woman's votes, where in Iowa, Obama recieved the majority of those votes.

So why all of a sudden did this happen? Since her display of emotion, which was no display at all, people have found Clinton much more personable. This artcile says that more people would rather have a personable President, because it would show that they actually care about what they are doing.

I think that this is not really the case. If someone wanted to succeed at their job, it is sure a lot useful to show that they care by showing some emotion. But, I think being President is in an entire different league. Not saying that it was terrible that she "choked up" on Monday, but just saying that many people would pull that off as being a more of a weak than personable measure, which is how I took it.

So, does it have to do with being so enthralled in her work, or was this "rare display of emotion" just a choke up?