Week of 4-26-15

In American Literature this week we spent a class studying a quote from Tom about the Great Depression. He says, "To begin with, I turn back time. I reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, where the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy." Every student in my class wrote their own paragraph about the imagery in this quotation as a rough draft for a prepared reading paragraph. But I want to focus more on what this quotation implies about the cause of the Great Depression, rather than the literary devices used in it. 

Clearly, there's a lot that can be read into these few lines. It's an interesting metaphor throughout, but I want to look specifically toward the beginning: "Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes...." Who exactly does Tom blame in this? Where does he place the responsibility? Oftentimes, when proposing two options, writers will place the more significant one second. The first option might be logical, then the second contradicts it and is more thought-provoking. Maybe because it is meant to correct the first. Maybe because the more recent option will stick in the reader's mind. But either way, it's a trick that I've noticed time and time again. But does it apply here? The unusualness of the second concept - failing one's eyes instead of one's eyes failing- seems to say yes, the second option is meant to be considered more than the first. 

What this comes down to, in my opinion, is the blame game. Do we blame the whole society for the failure of the economy? Do we blame the economic system itself? Can we even place blame squarely on any one thing? There are so many different theories as to what caused the Great Depression that it seems impossible that it could be any singular cause. More likely, the matter is too complicated to grasp within one 384-word blog post. But the general conceptual question remains: Do we fail society, or does society fail us? Can we fault a system that we ourselves created without faulting ourselves?

Week of 3-2-15

You have probably at some point in your life heard the term 'balancing act.' I think this term is particularly relevant to what we've been learning recently. What I'm talking about here is Prohibition.

If you think about Prohibition theoretically, there are practically no downsides. It would take away all the harmful medical side effects of drinking alcohol, as well as eliminate alcohol-related deaths by getting rid of things like drunk driving. It could help reduce domestic violence and even make our economy run more smoothly, not to mention create a much more efficient work force.

So why did so many people have enough of a problem with it to repeal it in 1933 — and why do people still have a problem with the idea today? The answer is in what Prohibition takes away. For all its benefits, and in spite of the fact that alcohol holds no useful place in society, Prohibition restricted rights that the government didn't have the right to restrict. The attempt at making alcohol illegal was a balancing act between increasing safety and restricting freedom, between benefitting society and controlling liberty. In this case, the balance didn't work out and freedom won out over safety.

But that doesn't mean that sometimes safety can't win out over freedom. For example, gun control. Is it too late to ban guns? If Pandora's box has been opened, is there a point in trying to close it? Or should we act based on the fact that taking away guns will still reduce gun-related deaths, even if we can't get rid of them all? Again, a balancing act. Does the government have the right to restrict our right to carry arms? Is our safety more important than an outdated Amendment? Is the Second Amendment outdated?

These questions are very similar to those that must have been asked when passing Prohibition in 1920. They balanced it one way. Would you balance it differently? Why?

Week of 12-1-14

When going through the various sources for my annotated bibliography, I read about the motivation behind the activism career of Mary Church Terrell, the woman I'm studying about. Apparently, the initial inspiration to become an activist was the lynching of her childhood friend, Tom Moss. This made me think of the current events that are being referred to as "modern-day lynchings." Most of you probably know what I'm referring to - Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, the list goes on. When I was looking into case after case of black civilian shootings by white police officers, I saw something that stuck out to me. It was a post on Twitter.

It made me start thinking. All of these people that we've chosen for National History Day, all of the people that we're learning about in American Studies, they all succeeded in making a difference. So what's going on? Why hasn't a single officer been convicted of a crime? Even after witnessing the outrage of the country at the verdicts of previous cases, each jury either finds the officer not guilty or doesn't indict. The jury for the Trayvon Martin case had only one non-white member. 75% of the jury for the Michael Brown case was white. In Eric Garner's case, there was actual video footage of the police officer using an illegal chokehold to take Garner down, despite the fact that he was largely outnumbered and could be heard on tape saying "I can't breathe" eleven different times. I don't know how it's possible to find that officer not guilty of anything, and clearly the trials for Martin and Brown were ruled by predominantly white jurors.

All over the US, people have been taking to the streets to protest. It's a present-day version of the time period we're studying for NHD, with protests and marches and all kinds of issues that turn ordinary citizens into activists. We just need to be as successful as the leaders we write about in our endeavors to make a difference.

Week of 11-10-14

This week we've learned about the assimilation programs that were forced on the American Indians. What stuck out to me was the irony behind the situation. They are being forced to fit in with the so-called civilized life - their goal is to be exactly like the white people, to replicate the lifestyles of the "superior." At the same time, they will be treated as inferior even if they reach that goal. They will never actually be white, because that's physically impossible for them. It reminds me quite a bit of high school, actually - no matter how hard you try to fit in completely, it's impossible, because no one is 100% normal.

Last week I talked about how Emily Dickinson had to stand against what everybody else was doing in their religious lives. And out of that difference, a lot of great poems were born. It seems to be a recurring theme that the details that make a person an individual are what creates the greatness in them. So going back to the American Indians, it seems to be that those customs and traditions are things we should be celebrating, just as Luther Standing Bear said. The way I see it, we haven't done a very good job learning from our past. Yes, the US is better than a lot of places for accepting differences. But we should be promoting them and celebrating them, not just accepting them.

I recently watched Belle, a movie about the true story of a mixed-race girl being raised in a white relative's family in eighteenth century England. When explaining why she was breaking off her engagement with a man of high social status, she said, "My greatest misfortune would be to marry into a family who would carry me as their shame." This is the crux of the matter; we need to stop carrying our differences as shameful, as things to overcome, and make them into things we aspire to.

Week of 10-27-14

This week in American Literature, we had to pick a poem and analyze it. I chose It's all I have to bring today (26) by Emily Dickinson. When I made the connection between the clover that she talks about and the Holy Trinity (the number 3 shows up a lot in that poem) I began thinking about how big of an issue religion was for Dickinson. She struggled with it quite a bit, and felt pressured to join the church as all her family and friends professed their faith and became full-fledged Christians. But Dickinson never did, and that suggests a strong sense of self. There's an anonymous saying that goes, "Stand up for what you believe in, even if it means standing alone."

That's what I think Dickinson did, and that's what I think a lot of the people we're studying for National History Day had to do. Even if some people had had the same viewpoint for a while, it takes courage to be one of the only ones expressing it. Starting the bandwagon moving is the hardest step. Looking at the women's rights movement, the notion had existed since the founding of the country with Abigail Adams. That means it can't be that foreign of a concept. But the people who decided to do something about it are the ones who stood up and turned it from a concept into a cause.

It takes a lot of strength to stand against what everyone else is doing. Dickinson wrote many poems about that struggle, and it's not hard to see it taking place in the time period we're looking at for NHD (1870 - 1917). The year Dickinson's father, sister, and future sister-in-law joined the church, she wrote in a letter, "I am standing alone in rebellion." This is the same sentiment expressed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony when they wrote "But standing alone we learned our power..." This idea, that strength and courage reside in standing up for what you want regardless of how popular that is, seems to be one that many people still struggle with today. And based on how long that's been true, I'd say it's not about to change.

Are you comfortable with standing alone? Is it easier with other people? Or are you more likely to purposely stand against the social norm?

Week of 10-6-14

We are about to start our poetry unit in American Literature, and I'm actually a little bit excited about it. I know a lot of people really hate poetry, but I think there's a lot more to analyze than with prose. We've already looked at The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe, which is the perfect example. There's repetition, in the line "Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore.'" But there's also the author's decision to only end every stanza with that line towards the end of the poem. To me, there's just so much you could read into that - maybe the narrator is losing his mind until this is all he can think of, or the idea of never seeing his wife again is overwhelming him the more he thinks about it.

We were also given that very long packet, chock full of poems. It's daunting because of the size, but it's also, in my opinion, better than the readings we've had in the past. Because there are so many poems, we have options of what we want to analyze or close read -  and you could probably find one that you either relate to or are interested in. There are also so many different styles and topics of poetry that it's very easy to connect with as a category of literature, so I'm hoping we'll be able to choose some of our own. Are you dreading or looking forward to this unit? Do you like poetry?

Week of 9-29-14

Yesterday we had our first unit test of the year. It was open note, so there wasn't very much memorization, and I didn't feel like I needed to study facts and dates. While I really enjoy having that kind of test, I also know that I was not all that happy about having to take the notes that made that test possible.

I know that almost every teacher lectures sometimes. But for me, personally, I can't really understand the material we're learning by sitting in the same place for an hour, writing down the important information and listening to a lecture. I prefer to do interactive activities - group work, maybe, or a discussion. Debates really help me understand the different views and perspectives of the people we're studying, because I can get involved in what we're learning

Can you learn well from note-taking? Do you think having open-note tests is worth it? I know some people are auditory learners, some are visual, and some are kinesthetic. I feel like in order for a teaching method to be successful, you have to address all of those preferences. But maybe that's just me.

I know notes can be helpful at times, but I'd like to see some more interactive classes in the future. How do you feel about it?