The story Seventh Grade (by Gary Soto) is a realistic fiction short story (it was a few pages of a story that could happen but didn’t/hasn’t) made for kids / teens. The purpose was to tell a lighthearted story about a seventh grade boy and a day in his school with his friend and his crush. The author used a lighthearted and funny tone in the story to make it interesting and told it from the third person limited point of view focused on Victor. There wasn’t too much indirect characterization, but there was some during the end of the story where he’s trying to catch the attention of his crush and lies about knowing French. This indirect characterization shows that he wants to be noticed by her by (pretty much) any means.
Don’t judge a book by it's cover People always say, “Don't judge a book by it's cover.”. But do we really listen? Do we try and get to know people, or do we ignore what we know is right? In the novel, Define Normal, written by Julie Anne Peters, the stereotypes developed to teach the reader to not judge a book by it's cover. Quotes from the story show how people stereotype Jazz.
Characterization in “Seventh Grade” Gary Soto uses small details, clues and hints in “Seventh Grade” to characterize the embarrassment of a seventh grade boy. “What is a noun?”.... Mr. Lucas asked Victor. “Teresa”...
The impactfulness of Jane Elliott's exercise is very evident with her third grade class. The accomplishment of permanently teaching children not to judge based on appearance over a few days is must not be overlooked. Bringing even more astonishing is the effect the exercise had on the children’s test scores, all of which achieved a higher average than before. Implementing this exercise across the nation could do a lot of good in teaching the next generation to have a little more understanding, but I appreciate Mrs. Elliott’s caution. Understanding how the same exercise could cause a lot of damage in a third grader if not done properly, She advises that to start, a few teachers go through training to learn how to properly teach the lesson.
“Hidden Intellectualism,” by Gerald Graff starts off with an older argument between being book smart and street smart. Throughout the reading, Graff uses his own life experiences to critique the education system today. Points made focus on the idea of overlooking the intellectual potential of those who come across as being, “street smart”. Different authors cited in the reading to show how to accept another’s different intellectual. However, we realize that people who come across as being intellectual weren’t always labeled as that.
In Gerald Graff 's essay “Hidden Intellectualism” starts of by talking about the stereotype of being so called “street smart” and and being “book smart” and how in school when you see someone who is street smart but doesn’t do go in school get a bad wrap. People look at them as a waste because they can’t apply there intelligences that they have and use it towards school, so people view them as not the right kind of smart because they are not a A student in school. Graff then goes on to say that maybe it is not the students that are the problem with how they do in school but maybe it is the school that have missed or overlooked the intellectual potential that kids with street smarts have. Graff also says that we only view the educated minds through schooling as the right way and schools and colleges look at kids who do not like school and don’t do well as anti-intellectual people.
Lewis Terman believed that IQ was the determining factor in any one person’s life - it would decide how successful they would be, how many awards they would receive and scholarly papers they would write, how well their future job might pay. He tested and gathered the most measurably intelligent children he could find - “gifted” individuals - and studied them over the course of their lives to observe how far they would go. The outcome of that study, and how Terman’s idea has created and influenced gifted programs for children in the United States, will show that not only does the gifted classification serve no long-term purpose, but it also tends to hurt the upcoming generations more than it helps them, creating a faulty dichotomy within the education system. Malcolm Gladwell disproves the idea of IQ determining success in his book Outliers, but that hasn’t stopped anyone from believing it.
Basic, Boring, and Plain are just three words of how to never describe the thought provoking research book, The Smartest Kids in the World, by the author, Amanda Ripley, who logically argues that education must be reformed. She mainly underscores the need to apply the revolutionizing techniques that she deliberately unveils to the audience with a hurl of statistics and appealing testimonies from foreign exchange students to the very developed nation: The United States. Ripley urges the nation to implement more rigor into students’ coursework, hire highly educated teachers, and hold both teachers and students accountable for results in order to prepare students for the flood of trenches that lay ahead. The author quickly grasps the attention of the reader by presenting three unlikely candidates, Finland, Poland, and South Korea, as her main role models of a good educational system that the modern world should learn from.
The best speculative stories start from a simple question: "What if…?" And this remarkable novel is no exception. Daniel Keyes's science fiction stories were periodically published during the 1950s, before he became a fiction editor at Marvel Science Fiction. Besides, he also worked as a high school teacher for mentally disabled adults. Of course, these two experiences have resulted in the masterpiece Flowers for Algernon.
Will Human Rights ever be achieved? Will society forever go on, day to day, knowingly contributing to the violation of people’s inalienable rights? Human rights are something that many activists have tried to achieve til this day but failed. The book Night by Elie Wiesel is a detailed memoir, of the tragedy he and many other endured during the Holocaust. In the book, Night, Mr. Wiesel and family were Jewish, during the holocaust they were taken from their home and transferred to several concentration camps.
Unlike Brave New World, social classes or groups occur naturally in today’s society. For example, in a school, students are put into different social groups for numerous reasons: intelligence, level of creativity or artistic ability, physical appearance, athleticism, or the outsiders who are not a part of the idealistic society. Once someone is categorized into a group or multiple groups, he or she will likely remain there for the rest of a school career. These groups, while not as uniform as those in Brave New World, are still able to prolong stability. Stability is maintained because of the stereotypes created about divergent groups.
The Cambridge Dictionary considers Culture as "the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time". According to this, it can be said that culture is responsible for guiding society, under certain parameters, rules and customs that must be respected and shared among individuals in the same society; thus, there is no culture without being in a society; in the same way, there is no society without individuals interacting with each other. The coexistence in society has long been affected by two disintegrating elements called Prejudice and Racism, both with a high cultural content that have gradually deteriorated the development of the modern society. Prejudice has become one of the most common evils within modern society; people often have attitudes and beliefs, usually negative that tend to hurt others. It is
Anti-Intellectualism: Why We Hate the Smart Kids is written in first-person point-of-view that gives the reader insight on why the majority of the population “Hate the Smart Kids”. This argumentative essay talks about why the majority of the population makes fun of the intelligent students in school and turn their backs on them. The tone that Grant Penrod gives off is his sympathy towards the intelligent students who are basically being bullied. This bulling of intellectuals is mainly receiving verbal abuse. As Penrod said, “Unfortunately, it represents just one statement along countless similar sites and positing, a veritable cornucopia of evidence attesting to society’s distaste for intellectuals” (755).
Poor and working class children are often seen as “deficit” or not as smart as the rest of the children. From common knowledge alone we should be able to understand that this is far from the truth. But for some, research needs to be put forth to prove that these poor and working class children are not stupid. Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez (2005) and Rodriguez-Brown (2010) both strive to discuss how these groups of children are intelligent, which is something we should assume of all children until proven otherwise. Rodriguez-Brown (2010) explains how Latino parents do not do any teaching of their children before they get to school.
Albert Einstein once said, "Everybody is a genius... But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid". Unfortunately, most school systems depict this quote. They judge a significant amount of the population by their ability to answer a few questions. They rate them with letters and numbers, and force students to be represented by these letters and numbers for the rest of their lives.
