Final

Frankie Huang

Ms. Williams

English 1A

10 December 2013

The Occupy Movement

            Poverty, an issue brought up in the Occupy Movement, has grown to touch those who were once in the middle class.  The continued belief that we’re still better off than the person who lives out on the street is not helping either, it is just pushing us farther apart from each other, dividing the growing poverty class, and that is what the wealthiest people in America want to happen.  We talk down about those who are doing worse than us though because “We all want to feel like we have some sort of stature in life” (Smiley, West).  With a divided poverty class, the wealthy are able to keep on taking money away from the rest of us and living their overly lavish life styles.  Those in poverty are too distracted from believing that those who are in poverty are lazy, criminals, drug addicts, or uneducated to figure out that the wealthy are just distracting themselves so large corporations are able to control the world in a way that undermines democracy and benefits only the rich. 

          Our neighbors may look like they’re not as better off than us, but that could be an understatement.  We want to say that so it would make ourselves feel better about our economic state.  It keeps us from helping one another and distracts us from the big problem.  What this problem is large corporations taking our money away from us for themselves.  A great example would be the bank bailout a few years back.  Big banks needed money and we paid them out of our own pockets but still let the companies go under and gave their employees large bonuses.  It wasn’t an idea that we came up with together though.  Large corporations and the government came up with it.  We let this happen and we need to fix it.  If we don’t unite and fight for what is right, we will more than likely see another Depression.

With a government controlled by wealth, all we can see in the future is instability.  We fear that fighting for what we really want would bring us farther into poverty because it would mean that we could lose our jobs that give use wages that we need to live; even if those wages are substantially low.  With the emergence of the Occupy Movement, the gap dividing the poor is closing and bringing all of us together, making us more willing to fight against the wealthy.  “We Americans have sacrificed and fought hard together for the common good throughout our history once we truly understood what we were sacrificing and fighting for” (Smiley, West 186).  Though even with this movement going on, not many of us can spare the time to protest against big business because you might miss a paycheck and or possibly get fired.  It is troubling that if we try to fight for economic and political equality it could potentially set you back even further into poverty, placing us in this spot where we want to fight but we can’t because we are working for these big businesses in order to survive. It’s this vicious cycle that keeps us from fighting that we must break. 

American citizens have dealt with harsh dilemmas before and we will still be able to now and in the future.  We fought in wars and against economic fallout.  We are able to endure anything that gets in our way.  We cannot do that though if we aren’t united.

8th Post - U.S. Prisons Myth vs. Mayhem

U.S. Prisons Myth vs. Mayhem

This article is about United States prisons are really not doing what we think they are.  They are only housing a bunch of dangerous people in one area away from society.  It’s very explosive inside these prisons because of the amount of dangerous people in one area.  This makes it not the best way to deal with criminals and gang members.  It only hardens them and makes them more dangerous.  The article talked about how we can make criminals pay for their crime by making them repay those that they have offended.  I thought that was interesting.  Because of how advanced society is now, we can partner gps tracking along with this way of punishing offenders by making sure they do their time.  What confused me was something that confused the writer too; why are we still paying into prisons if they aren’t doing what they are intended to do?

7th Post- Poorly Funded Schools (Continued)

Why do bad teachers exist?

            Bad teachers only exist because they know that they can’t get fired easily so they don’t try to teach at all.  It’s hard to fire a teacher because of the teachers union and if they have tenure it’s even harder.  Tenure is a permanent job contract.  So the teacher is pretty much there for life unless he or she does something bad enough to have his or her contract terminated.  This is usually not the case, but not doing their job should be severe enough for their contract to be terminated.  Bad teachers exist because they know that they can abuse this power.

            There are schools districts out there that want to negotiate with the teachers union to revise the job contract but the teachers union is not willing.  The teachers union only wants to keep teachers from being wrongly fired.  Whenever a teacher is fired, the teachers union fights back but doesn't ask why they were fired in the first place.  The schools districts need to find a way to make the teachers union listen or find some middle ground or more students will suffer from a bad education.

            It really affects the students when teachers don’t do their job.  The students don’t get the full education when a teacher doesn't do their job correctly.  Teachers are supposed to be teaching over one-hundred and fifty percent of the information to students so they can keep up when they graduate.  If a teacher doesn't teach even close enough to one-hundred percent of the material, they should be fired in my opinion.  They aren't doing their job correctly if the students aren't getting all of the information that they should.

Are bad teachers just as bad as bad parents?

            Bad teachers are just as bad as bad parents.  Students spend most of their childhood and young adult lives with their teachers.  If the students aren't learning what they should be, it’s like you’re withholding their future from them.  It’s very difficult to succeed in life without a good education.  There is no such thing as the perfect parent, but they sure try to be most of the time, so teachers should to because teachers spend just as much time with the child as the parents do.

            In elementary school, a student spends about maybe eight hours a day, five days a week with their teacher. That should be more than enough time to teach one-hundred and fifty percent of the material to the students. But it doesn't seem like it for poor schools.  One elementary school shown in the documentary “Waiting for Superman” is doing a very poor job of teaching.  One of the students was having a hard time adding two and three together.  It wasn't the affect of bad parenting so we can’t blame the father because the father was trying to help his kid learn.

            If bad teachers are just as bad as bad parents, kids will not learn or grow up how we hope they will.  They won’t have a nice future with a great job.  When a child grows up with a bad education, the best they can do job wise is maybe become a truck driver or a factory worker.  Giving them a bad education is preparing them for unskilled labor or low level jobs.  Shouldn't we be preparing children for more than that?

What types of citizens are produced from a lack of good teachers in poorly funded schools?

            We produce citizens that only work in unskilled labor or don’t work at all.  They contribute the least to helping society evolve, that’s the same with bad teachers.  Some end up being unproductive citizens who live at home, homeless, or even in jail.  Education is the key to happiness isn't it? So why aren't we doing as much as we possibly can to help fund schools and get the best teachers to teach every student?

            Most criminals, unskilled workers, and one skill workers have a poor education.  They aren't able to get better jobs because they require higher levels of education.  Our society is becoming more advanced and more technical so we need citizens with high levels of knowledge to do the job.  Most low leveled jobs are already filled now so quite a few people end up not being able to work.  I remember watching a 30 Days episode in my high school sociology class about jail, 30 days is a documentary style television series.  Morgan Spurlock, the star of the show, spent thirty days in a jail with convicts.  He spoke with many of them and most of them blamed having a bad education for being in jail because they don’t know any better.

            If we don’t give students the education they need, we’ll be creating more criminals.  It is costly to house criminals as well so more money is taken out of our pockets to keep them in jails as well.  I bet that’s where most of our taxes are going instead of going to our schools.  So if we give students a good education, they will more often than not become productive skilled citizens of society that can help push humanity forward and keep less people in jail and also more money in our own pockets.

6th Post - Consistently Low-Achieving Schools in the Bay Area

            On the list of persistently low achieving schools, the schools mentioned are in the poorer or more distraught parts of the bay like Oakland and Hayward.  Basically, most of Alameda County and Contra Costa County was mentioned.  In these worse areas with less money, the schools get less funding.  The schools then end up with little resources, average to below average teachers, and the students who go to the bad schools are unable to go to the better school so that the better schools are protected from bad influences.  It seems very similar to the schools in Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol.  The book was published in 1991 and we are currently in the year 2013.  Schools like these will stay this way if we don’t try to change it.

5th Post - Improperly funded schools.

                Improperly funding teachers makes it so that motivated good teachers want to only teach at better school because they want to get paid more.  Then those worse teachers who are desperate for work get hired by worse schools.  Those worse schools have less funds so the teachers who are hire there are only hired as permanent substitutes and are “paid only $10,000 yearly, as a way of saving money.” (Kozol 90).  But because they have less funds and need to pay the teachers, they still are unable to fund the rest of the school to try and give the kids a better education.  So it’s basically a domino effect where the school doesn't get funded properly and everything else goes downhill where it affects the kids the most, and also the community.

Fourth post - 3 Reasons

            There are many reasons why my point of view is very important but these stick out the most to me. My first reason is that we students are the future and if we don’t have passion or the capability to think critically, there would be no big advancements or change in the future. The future would look very much the same, which isn’t the best and the future could in theory repeat the past and many mistakes that have been already made will also be repeated.  The future needs change, I know that there are a lot of people in the world that don’t like change, but change is what the world really needs if you’re paying attention to what is happening around the world at this very moment.

            My second reason needs to be that here in the United States, we elect our leaders, and if we are not able to think critically we will make the wrong choices and elect horrible leaders into office.  And if we cannot think critically about those that we elect into office, those that want to be elected into office can abuse that weakness to their liking.  If we don’t want corrupt people elected in office, we need be passionate about taking time to think critically about them.

            The third reason is that a world without critical thinkers or passionate people would be a dull world.  Where would we be without passionate critical thinkers?  There would not be people like Elon Musk, who designed a 800 mile per hour hyperloop, or Nikola Tesla, who designed alternating current (also known as AC, the power our wall outlets use).  The world would have no innovation and we would be, in theory, still be living in the stone age.

Third Post - TED Talk with Sir Ken Robinson

What in education is out of date like a wristwatch?

The linearity of education is out of date like a wristwatch.  One does not have to follow the linear pathway education has become  but there are still many who believe this is what you have to do; this is what my parents believe needs to be done.  Education needs reform, but not entirely, it should reform in a way that adapts to your specific situation; like how Sir Ken Robinson says on TED Talks, education should reform in an agricultural manner, you take advantage of the situation and manipulate it to do what you need it to do.