Cookings for Girls?

This is a video that has to do with the Orenstein, and Carlson piece. It’s an old Disney channel movie called eddies million dollar cook off in which a boy wants to cook, but that’s not normal because he’s a boy, and not their daughter. I’ll try to post them all but here is at least the first one. here is the website if i cant get this video to work right http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4nLeK1ZjPE

Diversity Event

For my diversity event I went to a function which was featuring a lecture by a local clergyman of the Nation of Islam. It was interesting to say the very least, brother Luis gave us insights deep into his own mind and religion, and helped to break the stigma that many people feel when they think of Islam. I learned the few differences between orthodox Muslim traditions and the traditions of the more modern NoI. Like that as part of their religion you must be clean shaven and well dressed. Which is a good thing, because it teaches young members of their faith to look professional at all times, and considering that most practitioners of the NoI are minorities. The church was founded out of Islam with the main difference of progressing the lives of blacks and in more modern times Hispanic and other minorities. Which reflects Delpit, and the codes of power. I also learned that even though they were not affiliated with any terrorist group members of the NoI, and American citizens get blamed for the events that happened on 9/11 and it made me feel some what upset at the way we treat some one because of their religion, because they don’t fit into the lines of S.C.W.A.A.M.P.

Johnson: what can we do?

Johnson talks about ways that we can challenge and “change patterns of exclusion, rejection, privilege, harassment, discrimination, and violence that are everywhere in this society…” according to Johnson the first myth we face is that it’s always has been and always will be. I like the part where he says, “… by choosing paths of greater resistance, as when men don’t take control and women refuse their own subordination.” Basically saying that we think that those are gender norms but we need to break those roles, just because it’s easy to follow them it doesn’t make it right. Like when in the last Johnson piece we read you have to say the words, and talk the talk, in this case you have to walk the walk, and you have to be the change that you want to see in this world.

Kliewer

In this article Kliewer discuses the problems with the “special ed” programs of today, and how it is un fair to stick students into these environments because they are different, and “can’t” learn like normal students. Once again another one of those eye opening essays for me to read because I had simply never thought of these concerns and problems that face many of these kids today. I hope you guys don’t mind that since his is late I’m adding in the video as well because I felt like it was very complimentary to this reading assignment, and I’m glad that I got to see the video. The essay is well written and everything but nothing gets the point across better then seeing the people who are affected by this first hand, and to be completely honest with you guys I find it appalling the way that some of the people in the movie and the reading were treated. “I wanted to take other classes that interested me. I had never felt so mad, I wanted to cry.” People with disabilities are just that, PEOPLE and that’s how they should be treated not as second class citizens who should have no control over their lives.

Oakes

I was going to do the Anyon Piece but for some reason the link kept pulling up as forbidden. So instead I decided to write on tracking. And the Oakes piece, which I found captivating, basically because it seems like this is the type of learning I have been exposed to my entire life. Which leads me to wonder if things like the “gifted” program were good or appropriate practices that were and are still being practiced in the schools I went to in my youth. At the same point in time is it? I’ the product of these programs, they helped me to become a better student, and to care more for my education and without them would I have possibly achieved as much as I have in my own life? “Tracking leads to substantial differences in day to day learning experiences students have at school.” While I was looking through microscopes were other kids just looking at pictures? “….students who are placed in high ability groups have access to far richer schooling experiences than other students.” And this third quote really made me think of my teacher I have for my service learning “in low ability classes for example teachers seem to be less encouraging and punitive, placing more emphasis on discipline and behavior and less on academic learning.” Because this is the exact thing I’ve realized my teacher doing. She cares more about students sitting still than knowing how to spell and read, and that is a crime.

Orenstein

Orenstein argues that in most classroom rooms female students don’t have proper role models to look at of theme selves. Actually that females are under represented across the board. She talks about how practicing teachers address such issues in practices in their classrooms. “This is a classroom that’s gone through the gender looking glass. It’s the mirror opposite of most classrooms that girls will enter…” it’s the same scenario as expressed in the Lawrence and Christensen pieces, women have no positive classroom role models it seems. It’s like being a girl is the worst thing you can be, as expressed in the thought “…but it’s degrading for a man to dress like a woman…” and when women see themselves as worthless how are the boys around them supposed to see them.
“You turn on MTV spring break and there’s these stupid girls with huge breasts and the tiniest bathing suits dancing around like pieces of meat.” I loved this piece it was a real eye opener and as a potential history teacher I want to integrate as many women as possible. It may be “HIS-STORY” but “she” helped out a lot too.

Lawrence

In this essay Lawrence discusses the progress since the case of Brown v. the Board of Ed.
The first quote I picked I really liked because its part of when Lawrence describes the purpose of segregation, which clearly shows that there is no way that the concept could lead to a separate but equal world. “The first is that segregation’s only purpose is to label or define blacks as inferior and thus exclude them from full and equal participation in society.” The other quote that I found interesting was, “it is nonetheless important that we keep these self evident truths clear in our minds. Too often have we been sidetracked in our struggles because we have lost sight of our goal, or accepted the oppressor’s definitions, or mistaken the means for the ends.” I love this quote because I completely agree. We as a society cannot just think that things are great the way they are, we all need to fight every day for issues of equality so that in future generations it will be better. But I know that even if today we destroyed the lines of inequality of race, gender, sex, and any other conceivable problem, there will be a new one that arises. Its human nature it seems to only care about your own “kind” so sadly there will always be something to fight for. But if we as a generation stand up to these inequalities it’ll hopefully make it easier for future generations to do the same.

Kahne and Westheimer

In the article Kahne and Westheimer talk about how people who work with or for children and how they see things as either a way to change the way things are, or for their own selfish needs. Through out this essay there were no really key quotes that I felt like I needed to capture for arguments sake. I feel like this piece was good and easy to read and cited some good examples of how service learning can help the classroom and the community but I think of this more like a case study than any actual “text

Christensen

Christensen talks about how the media in all forms depict things that set unrealistic goals and characteristics for children to follow which I got from the quote, “Our society’s culture industry colonizes their mind’s and teaches them how to act live and dream.” And she also wants children to question the secret code s of power as supported in the statement, “I want my students to question this accepted knowledge and the secret education delivered by cartoons as well as by the traditional literacy canon.”

This piece was interesting, although through other classes I had already learned about how the Disney Corporation sets incredibly ridiculous standards of beauty and sexist norms that girls should aspire to. For the most part can you think of one Disney princess that doesn’t need, or rely on a man to be her saving grace? In fact they’ve done this so much in fact it has inspired full movements against their ways. A person shouldn’t feel like any less of a person because of how they are portrayed. “I used to wonder why my people don’t believe in themselves, and then I saw the way they portrayed us to everyone else. They cursed us to only see the worst in ourselves, blind to the fact that we’re only deceiving ourselves.” Is a lyric by a man named immortal technique who is very political in nature who discuss the in his music how the mainstream society takes stereotypes for fact and have ruined the way that we as people of color see ourselves. Like the woman Kenya in the essay who says, “…women who aren’t white begin to feel left out and ugly because they never get to play the princess.” Which is true, has Disney ever had a black princess? To me the closest they ever came was Nala from the Lion King, but she was a lion. The story took place in Africa so it would have been a prime time to have one, but instead they’d rather have an animal?