"Times have changed for student protesters"

"The idea of a massive social movement that can rise up and change out government doesn't seem possible."

I found this line to very true of today's youth. As we were watching the video Two Days in October, I was thinking this exact thing. It seems impossible that today's apathetic youth (or semi-apathetic) could be capable of organizing something like the sit-in that the students at UW-Madison did.

The thing that hits me the hardest is the fact that all this technology that Lampert Smith talks about getting in our way, could really help us astronomically. We could have such an advantage over earlier generations. All we would have to do is send a mass text or put a message up on facebook, and we would instantly have the attention of all of our friends. With all this new technology comes so many more distractions and we fail to realize what is really important.

My Undying Love for Seth Meyers

Today in class, we were given a very brief introduction to satire through Jonathan Swift. The piece that Mr. Kunkle read to us "A Modest Proposal" was a very extreme example of satire. His "modest proposal" was that the poor people sell their babies to the rich for food and this would essentially eliminate the impoverished population. I, for one, am very excited about this unit, because it is so right up my alley. My favorite part of SNL every week is Weekend Update with Seth Meyers, possibly the greatest example of satire in our society :). Not only does it spoof the "night's top stories," it also, in a way spoofs the satirical news desk shows like John Stewart. Seth Meyers sits behind a weekend update news desk and talks about things that happened that week and occasionally interviews people who shed light on said happenings. The interviewees are portrayed by SNL cast members. He often has people to impersonate political figures, cartoon characters, celebrities, made-up characters, and once, a goose. Last year, they started airing a Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday. It was started by the popularity of the of the 2008 election and Tina Fey's impersonation of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. They are continuing to air the Thursday edition this year: three in the fall, three in the winter, and three in the spring. I tend to be one of those obnoxious people who use sarcasm as a way to deal with the weird things people say or do, so this unit on satire is very appealing to me!

Click here to see a video of my favorite Weekend Update guest. I encourage you to find the other two videos as well (I didn't want to overwhelm anyone with links in this post)!

Sound and Fury

I found out during a church homily that Helen Keller once said that of all three of her disabilities, she disliked being blind the most. It had something to do with the fact that seeing was the ultimate form of communication, how you use your eyes to look out onto the world, but people also use your eyes to look into, for lack of better explanation, your head, to search for hidden meanings or emotions (that was a crap ton of commas, sorry). Since her eyes were closed off both ways, she had no way to communicate inward or outward with people. I started thinking about how I couldn't fathom having just one of Helen Keller's disabilities, much less all three, and this got me thinking about Sound and Fury again.

In this day and age, doctors can fix just about everything, including being deaf. The cochlear implant is a device implanted into a deaf person's ear to help them hear well. It doesn't completely "fix" deafness, but it helps. In Sound and Fury, Peter talked about how he was deaf and was able to become successful at his job. He also admitted that he probably could not go any higher due to his deafness and that it was significantly harder for him than it would have been had he had the ability to hear. Peter's wife and children were also deaf. My concern with this documentary was that I felt like Peter was holding his family back.

First, he wouldn't allow Heather to get the implant. He was so proud to be deaf and to have a deaf family, that it clouded his judgment. He was more concerned with his pride than what was best for his daughter. If he had kept an open mind to start with, he might have realized sooner that it really was in her best interest for the future to be able to hear. She would have so many doors open to her. She could be even more successful, and it wouldn't be as hard on her. As her father, I would think that Peter would want to make life as easy as possible for Heather.

Second, he moved his entire family to the deaf community when they were more concerned about being apart of both the deaf and the hearing worlds. It felt to me like he forced their hands a bit. He just completely submerged them in the deaf world. That is something that would hold them back tremendously when they eventually left the deaf community. I don't know if he realized how greatly it would impact them.

I felt that Peter could have done more to help his family succeed and prosper and be a part of both the hearing world and the deaf world. I was really pleased to hear that the family (with the exception of Peter) did get the implant because I believe that it will help them all in the long run,

Thoughts on AP Comp

I'm going to take this time to comment on what I think about AP Comp at this point.
I was really looking forward to this class and it has really held up to my expectations. I've always enjoyed reading, so the course reader has acutally been a lot of fun to read. That's not to say that there haven't been any frustrating essays... As you all probably know, I like to write. My favorite so far was the college application essay. My prompt was from the University of Chicago and was a lot of fun to write about because it was a lot of things that I had been feeling, but didn't have a proper outlet to let them out (ha. maybe that's where the name came from!). Writing this essay, inspired me to do a little more research on the school and made me want to complete the rest of the application. One of my favorite parts of college lit. last year, was the discussions. Our class could sit and talk about Flannery O'Connor or Franz Kafka or Crash for an entire class period, and I was really looking forward to that with AP Comp. I think our class has a lot of really great discussions. That's one of my favorite parts about the class. I love hearing all the debates between classmates and gaining more perspective on pieces by hearing how my peers interpreted an essay. I'm having fun so far. I hope the rest of the class is as enjoyable!

P.S. I also stole this idea from Elise. :)

See Baby Discriminate

First off, I would like to thank Stefanie for picking such an interesting article. I found it very interesting and thought provoking which leads me to my blog:
As I was reading and annotating this essay, I found myself asking a lot of questions (I actually ran out of room to annotate on the second page because of this).
The sub-title of the essay made me think about how babies always seem to be these innocent little uncorrupt beings, but the fact they can already "judge others based on skin color?" That right there took me by surprise. After I read the article, I can't say that I necessarily believed that. I think that their research was very comprehensive; however, it failed to prove to me that babies pass judgement due to skin color. Merryman and Bronson certaintly proved that six-month-olds can differentiate, but it seemed to be that it was simply because it was something different than what they are used to. As we disscussed in class, this can happen with any number of things. Keep in mind that thier subjects were babies. They are learning everyday with each new thing they see, just because they stared at the picture of the black individual longer doesn't mean they were thinking anything negative about it. Anytime a baby sees something different, they are going to take longer to look at, because it's new.
I didn't understand a lot of the families' justifications for not talking to their kids about race. Some said that just by drawing attention to it by saying something, it would automatically shed a negative light on the issue. Some just didn't know how to deal with the topic and not accidentally sound racist. As they said in the essay, "For decades, we've assumed that children will see race only when society points it out to them." I think this might have been going through the parents' minds when approaching this. They assumed that their children didn't know the difference and would continue with their ignorance-is-bliss lifestyle. However, the studies show that children do recognize differences, regardless of whether they are pointed out or not. So I think it's better to talk about race with your children. It may be difficult or awkward, but by avoiding the subject, you run the risk of having your children not fully understand why there are some people who look different from them and may inadvertant say or do something that could be construed as racist. The essay brought up a good point: that it's hard to talk to children about something like race, but it is one of those things that needs to be dealt with by the parents.