High school beginning

High school beginning

Prior to 1827 anyone that could not afford to send their kids to higher education would have to send them to learn a trade or getting an apprenticeship with someone to learn a special skill. In 1920 Massachusetts started a movement to start a public secondary school system; this school system type would be thorouly on a voluntary basis only in the state of Boston. The established state board of education made it a law in massachussets for all children to have an education through high school level to ensure their child has a chance in becoming the best they are able to become.
The House of Representatives stated that each town or district in the commonwealth that has 50 families or more will be provided a teacher or several teachers, these teachers would have to be of high morals, meaning anyone they elect to be an educator must be in the church, married and does not use any alcohol because they would have to instruct the children in reading, writing, orthography, English grammar, geography, mathematics, and how to behave properly, they’ve also added to the curricula American history, bookkeeping by single entry, geometry, algebra, surveying. Each teacher prior to becoming a teacher must have an was called at least twenty-four months of master of good morals, in any town that has four-thousand or more people these masters should be well versed in order to teach, in addition to all the branches they also have to be able teach Latin; Latin was very important because these town were what we would consider to a bible belt, the reason for the establishments of these school systems were to make new preachers and clergymen because the bible was written in Latin, therefore Latin was very important part of the higher education curricula, the Greek language was also an important part of their curricula because this is how they learned their history and stories such as Greek mythology also rhetoric is also part of the curricula because it’s style of education that will teach a student how to debate their opinions and also logic.

Interviewing Ms. Moton

Interviewing Ms. Moton

The person I chose to interview for this assignment was Ms. Stephanie Moton, Ms. Moton is from the state of New Jersey came down to Miami to attend the university of Miami on a track and field scholarship, after graduating with honors from UM, Ms. Moton decided to stay in the sunshine state because she fell in love with the weather. I asked Ms. Moton why she decided to become a teacher, she said simply because she wanted to make a difference in a child’s life, she further explained when a teacher makes a difference in a child’s life the impact is immediate you can see how you as an educator can become a positive influence on that child’s life. What subjects do you teach at Miami Northwestern Senior High School? I teach math, to be more specific I teach honors algebra. Is it a challenge teaching such a hard subject? It is at times, you saw some of the papers you helped me grade, the grades were horrible, some students are actually making slight improvements, I also offer to tutor them afterschool if they want to stay, for the most part I see the same students coming to me for help and it’s the handful that actually want to learn that keeps me going. Looking at some of your colleagues is there anyone of those teachers that you see around the school that shows they don’t really care to teach? Yes I definitely have noticed that, but they are the older teachers that refuse to change with the time and continuing to teach in the same way they were teaching when they started, I guess my students can relate to me because I am not that much older than they are, that within itself is a motivating factor that I use to motivate them to let them know they too can become educators or any other career path they’ve chosen, but unfortunately being that they live in an area where the only heroes are those dope boys allot of the young men this is what they are aspiring to become, or professional athletes their parents are not pushing them academically and the other teachers are not either, it’s sad but I try to make my mark it’s the best I can do. I just want to say one thing, when I let you take over the classroom I expected you to fold and sweat (she laughed) but you held your own in there answering their academic questions and answering them in a professional manner, I can honestly say you will make a fine teacher, you just need to loosen up a little and you will get over your shyness. I reply thank you for that vote of confidence I hope to become as good a teacher as you.

Following the American School system

Following the American School System

The early American system of education was heavily influenced by the French and also had some influences by the Native Americans. The puritans schools were to educate future preachers and the text they used were mainly bible scriptures because their main objectives was to teach each villager how to read and to them knowing the word of god is a good way to save their souls, Religion played an important role in developing an educational system in the United States. The Cherokee Indians influence the American educational system because they were the first people to have written language. The Puritans, are strict fundamentalist Protestant sect who immigrated to the United States for religious freedom starting in 1609, believed that education was necessary in order to read the Bible to receive god’s blessings. This was in line with the beliefs of the reformed Protestants. Their schools made no distinction between religious and everyday life and were also used to inspire children to put up with the hardships of a life in the new land through religious devotion.
The settlers in certain areas were heavily influenced the development of schools and formal education in the American colonies. The puritans believe humans were very bad sinners and believed children were worst sinners due to the fact they do not know how to behave or use any of their instincts when it comes to the matters of right and wrong, therefore they must behave as an adult would, therefore they would have to learn how to read the scriptures.
The basis of hiring a teacher for these schools was an easy process because their only qualifications were that the teacher knew how to speak and write in Latin because the text they were reading out of was written in Latin, because the preachers had so much influences in the communities and also they were in a way training their own replacements in a way of apprenticeship, if the person that was to be hired for this position was not a clergymen they would have to be men of high moral standards and also know how to speak and write in Latin.

Double Standards

Double standards

Growing up in the U.S. especially in Miami I’ve noticed the bias against the Haitians, it’s clear to me that Haitians are like the unwanted people in Miami. I say this not only how they are treated by other people but also by the immigration system especially the wet foot dry foot rule, we have read or seen how majority if not all Cubans that enter the U.S. shores are given asylum and rarely do they get detained by the INS, more often than not they are released to their relatives and does not have to worry about anymore interference from the INS ever. The part this I don’t understand and still struggling with is if Cuba is under an embargo by the U.S, how come then they are given free entrance to the America? This question is one that I can never receive an answer to by anyone. Cuba is a communistic country which will not change their ways for several years, they don’t have any trade agreement with the United States therefore America has really no interest in Cuba.
Haitians are not really welcome here for the most part, I feel like even if a Haitian refugee is caught on dry land and a Cuban were caught together and were facing the same persecution back in their own homelands I truly believe they would still deport the Haitian refugee and give asylum to the Cuban , this is not fair at all, I believe both countries are going through some of the same financial strains it’s well documented that Haiti is one of the poorest if not the poorest country in the world. In Haiti it is so bad that you will find more uneducated people than educated ones, it is the total opposite in Cuba, Cubans have it better than the Haitians if there were ever any country that would be worthy of given a free pass to enter the U.S it would have to be the Haitians.
I may be bias in my opinion but the facts are there anyone can check the comparison between the two countries and I am sure they would arrive to the same conclusion I’ve come up with and if not one hundred percent agreement but I would say somewhere in the neighborhood of the high ninety percentile. The only thing I want to see is everyone given fair chance and not being judged for where an individual is from but for their situation on an individual basis.

Race and Bigotry

Race and Bigotry

Race is made up of many different things one is country of origin, the second is skin color, whether it be Caucasian or black. When it comes to blacks there are many different shades of this skin color, we have the dark skin, the mocha or brown skinned and high yellow. Racism is discriminating against a person because of their skin color or country of origin. America is the prime example of what we can call a melting pot. Imagine a country where there are multiple ethnic people mixed up together.
Because of this mixing of races and religions there will of course be a tremendous amount of turmoil, one race will always thought of their race as being the superior race and with the aid of a crowd of people who are fed this message they will start to abuse the other races. In America we have such groups as the Klu Klux Klan, which are a bunch of whites mostly southerners that banned together to kill blacks in the united states through violence and propaganda. With the aid of likeminded people they were cheering them on and others that did not share in that frame of thought but stood by and did not to prevent these acts of violence due to them not trying to look and called a race trader, even if they were to make any reports to the police or sheriff they would often than not be threatened because majority of the time the law enforcement were often part of the Klan. The second hate group share in the same beliefs as the Nazis, the go under different names such as skinheads, these groups unlike the KKK, not only target blacks they also target homosexuals, Jews and any other non-Caucasians, they are not as connected or organized as the KKK, they are made up of mainly young males from broken homes that are looking for somewhere to belong and these hate groups often than not provide these impressionable young adolescents a false sense of family. Racism is the worst form of prejudice around the world and no matter how much progress we’ve made over the years we still have a very long way to go.

Learning through diversity

Learning through diversity

The reason Sam needs the diversity course is simply because America has become a melting pot, we have students from different social, economical and race which will be attending the same school and will also be studying in the same classroom, furthermore diversity class will teach you the proper way of interacting and ways to reach these different races and cultures. When a student feels like you take their culture serious they will more than likely feel more comfortable to learning about the new culture they are now in. Because not all ethnics are the same, we tend to be very protective of our way of life and we are more often find it easy to be offended by others lack of sensitivity to our way of life.
Coming from Haiti and moving to the United States at an early age, I had to learn cultures, my Haitian culture and the American way of life. I often find myself getting offended when an American person make fun of a fellow countrymen because of their thick Creole accents and way of dressing, while the Americans were wearing jeans, sneakers and t-shirts, the Haitian kids were wearing more of a dressy type with slacks or docker style pants and button down shirts and their haircuts were not high top fades but regular haircuts more like an afro style. There were constant confrontations amongst the two groups because no one took the first step to try to better understand each other and their cultures.
Teachers were not thought anything about diversity in the school or the real world basically the students were winging on their own carrying and acting on their own prejudices and often times were not positive ones rather resentful of the next person that did not act like they did. Today’s society is so diverse that major company started implanting and making mandatory that each employee takes a diversity and or sensitivity class in order to avoid people saying the wrong things to embarrass the company, because the majority of businesses in America are dealing with international companies now more than ever we have to learn and be mindful and respectful to each other’s way of life.

inclusion teaching

Inclusion Teaching

This is the best form of teaching I found out of all the teaching forms, even with this great technique, we are still faced with many different ways of doing it, there are the good way and the wrong way of teaching through inclusion. In a classroom especially an elementary school where children often want to be heard and praised for their effort children would more than likely learn better when they are included in the classroom discussions they tend to be more proactive in their learning when they have someone listening and paying attention to them. I know this firsthand because when my daughter receives praise from her teachers I see the gleam in her eyes and she tries even harder to please us and her teachers.
There are two ways of including a child into a discussion one is volunteering the second is the worst one is calling on the student. When a teacher ask a question or post a problem on the board, and ask is there any volunteers to solve the problem there are some students that will volunteer, not because they know the answer to the problem or question asked, this is due to a high self-esteem, self esteem plays a major role in a child’s education, these kids would be more popular and excel in their studies, then there are the students that has to be called on, they tend to keep a low profile and are often easily embarrassed due to the lack of self esteem, they would be loners and likes to stay out of sight and live an invisible existence, they usually are very bright in their studies but socially they are outsiders or outcasts feel like they don’t belong anywhere. To allow a child to come out of his or her shell on her own without being pressured or place under the spotlight because they are not ready to be placed under that light at the moment.
Once I’ve become a teacher I would implement the volunteer system, to put my students at ease and make the classroom environment very friendly and not allow any student to pick on one another because I believe in building a child scholastically as well as their social behavior. When a child learns early on how important it is to belong they will make better choices about their lives outside of the school and will be more open to accepting others into their circle and become better students and citizens.

Unsderstanding Your sexuality

Understanding your sexuality

Some people believe homosexuality is a disease and it’s an extra X chromosomes when the child was born that makes them a homosexual, there’s been a lot of research done on the subject because as of late this taboo subject has been one that no one wanted to bring into the forefront of any discussion. Homosexuals were often harassed for merely being homosexuals; they would often be the victims of severe beatings and would be ostracized by members of their respective communities, therefore a lot of them would prefer to continue living in the preverbal closet.
I on the other don’t feel the same way about the findings of these studies, I believe it’s a conscious decision a person make to be homosexual. I only say this because I’ve met many people that were homosexuals yes, they are now heterosexual now, I mean if you were supposed to be born gay how can you now make the conscious decision to now become straight? The answer is simple you can’t, you can be one or the other I believe god did not make any mistakes at all, If we are to believe that god is perfect and does not make any mistakes and human being are there to reproduce and the only way to reproduce is for a man and a woman to come together to make that happen, if a man or a woman decides that they are going to lay with one of the same sex than you are making a conscious decision to defy god’s laws.
After reading these different passages on homosexuality my mind has not really been swayed from how I used to feel prior to reading this. I still believe in what I believe but I have gained a better understanding of what they are going through, regardless of how I may feel about the choices they’ve made no one is ever supposed to be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation.

sexual confusion

SEXUAL CONFUSIONS

Imagine being born with both male and female genitals that would be confusing for any adult now try to imagine that growing up as child not knowing your own role in society, I am sure this would not be easy for anyone dealing with this extremely sensitive life decision. As a parent you would have to determine how to choose the sex you will raise your child as and secondly if you decide to let the child grow and when they are old enough to make the choice of what sex they would be raised as.
This is what most hermaphrodites have to deal with; a lot of them do not know how to cope with these important life altering decisions. How would a person know which sex would they find themselves attracted to, I would say not such an easy choice, I would assume a lot of these people would seclude themselves and would not enter any sexual relationship due to the shame of having being different. Studies show that majority of hermaphrodites would choose to be female instead of male, even though they are not able to get pregnant because their reproductive systems are not fully developed and their male parts usually are not functioning at all this would add more confusion to this already crazy existence.
After reading this passage I gained a better understand and outlook into this world that knew almost nothing about, this reading really opened my eyes to this phenomenon especially with all the research and it shows these people are not freaks of nature and that they also deserve the love and understanding that all people deserve. They don’t need our sympathy just our understanding and respect for their choices. Our society has place stigma over anyone that does not look and acts like the rest of society’s norms.

Ethnic Cleansing

Ethnic cleansing

I really don’t see any real difference in the different types of genocides; they are all the same to me. The end result is all the same the murdering of women, children and men for looking or belonging to a different group or tribe.
Rwanda is a country that is almost the size of the state of Massachusetts which is not such a big geographical area yet this tiny little piece of land was the site of a huge genocide during the April and June of 1994. This bloodshed was the result of the death of Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana who was a member of the Hutu tribe, president Habyarimana’s plane was shot down on the Kigali airport, a French judge which was a close friend of the president blamed the incident on the Tutsi tribe, which they vehemently denied and blame Hutu extremist for the rocket attack. This was enough to spark the war between the two ethnic groups, there has always been tension between them, there were some obvious characteristics differences between the two groups, the Tutsis are usually taller and more slender than the Hutus, during this genocide, some Hutu militia soldier would actually throw the dead bodies of the slain Tutsis into the rivers and would say they were sending them back to Ethiopia. During this war there were 800,000 to 1,000,000 deaths on both sides, the majority of the casualties were on the Hutu side. This genocide was both a revenge and jealousy.
I’ve learned that people are good and also are capable of evil deeds as well, reading about the Rwandan genocides was very hard and I went on an emotional rollercoaster to see how people would be able to kill another human being that looks and speaks the same language as themselves, I personally would not be able to partake in anything like this. I could understand a wa where the killings were strictly between the two opposing militias and exclude civilians, this so called war killed and raped women, young girls and also kill yound males and elderly people, this was crazy.

Why we hate what's different

Why we hate what’s different

This passage was about understanding the reason why and how people learn to be prejudice, which is better than focusing the victims or rather the after effects of prejudice. This study helps us to understand where we learn to be prejudice; mostly we learn to judge others by holding them to the same standards as our own. Some of these are blacks are lazy, Hispanics or Mexicans are gardeners, these prejudices only get worse as time goes on that is because people never got the opportunity to leave their own culture to learn anything about a new culture, their minds are closed to learning new cultures and beliefs therefore they deal with it with anger and disgust from anyone that is different from themselves. There are those who actually would step away from their own comfort zones and explore other cultures, because of their curiosities they become more open minded and learn that we are not so different at all, and bonds and friendships are established. Homophobia is a big problem now days, before homosexuals were the type of people that were thought of as perverts and people would not let their kids be around them, there are some countries especially countries in the Caribbean that would kill a homosexual if they were discovered, therefore to avoid death they kept to themselves and pretend to be heterosexual, some of them would even get married and have children, lead normal lives these men also lead a double life as gay men. Homosexuality was blamed for the occurrence of the a.i.d.s epidemic around the world, because it was a lifestyle that was not accepted in society everyone seems to agree. I don’t agree with the homosexual lifestyle, I don’t feel comfortable with homosexuals in my presence as sad as it may seem I grew up in a world where men were men and only lay with women.

Holocaust

Holocaust
We’ve all read or seen the history of the holocaust in Germany during World War 2, rather you are Jewish or catholic, black or white, no matter what your religion or race may be these images would have a profound effect on you. I remember reading about the holocaust when I was in elementary school, I remember it being the saddest images I’ve ever seen and the stories of the scientific experiments that were conducted on children as well as grownups we stuff I’ve only seen in scary movies, this was not something I could imagine would ever happen in real life.
The holocaust was a ongoing development started by Adolf Hitler, who after taking over the presidency from the aged president Hindenburg, started slowly taking away the democratic human rights of the people, starting with freedom of the press, speech and the right to assemble. He also implemented his own private army around Germany that was loyal to only him and was willing to do anything he asked, called the Gestapo or storm troopers, these SS police would murder any of Hitler’s political oppositions, those oppositions submit all power to Hitler’s regime, which gave Hitler complete power of Germany.
During the 1930’s Hitler started practicing his racist ideologies, which was told that Germans were superior to all other races, he saw the Jews, gypsies and other races as inferior. With the German people sharing in his propaganda he then set his plan into action, he started blaming all of Germany’s economical problems on the Jews and gypsies, he then passed a law to force Jews to leave their civil service jobs and limit their citizenships which really limit their worth in German society, much like the way the Africans were treated in the united states, when you can view a person as less than human it becomes easier to mistreat them and not feel any remorse at all. Once the courts stripped Jews of their citizenships they were then started to be rounded to concentration camps and then executed and burned and buried in huge holes, nearly six millions Jews were reported killed in those concentration camps.
There are those people who would like to believe the holocaust was an actual event, even with the survivors of the concentration camps’ testimonies and the evidence of the tattoos they had to wear to mark them as Jewish and which concentration camps they belonged to. The diary of Ann Frank was a firsthand encounter of brutality of the times.

Key to a great nation

Key to a great nation

Every country around the world has this belief that education is the key. If a society does not have educated members residing there, they would like be a chaotic living environment. We come to notice non educated or endogenous people lack the knowledge and discipline to produce a healthy culture. Imagine living in a country where education was not the main source of knowledge, not saying that these individuals would not survive but their survival would be extremely difficult, because they would not be able to make good decisions or choices, passing on the same old traditions that were handed down from generation to generations as the homo erectus of the early ages.
Knowing how the world around us works determine how long the culture may flourish, certain subjects such as medicine, geography, history and mathematics are all necessary to the survival of a country, the only way we can achieve the knowledge is through education. Studying different types of diseases and knowing how to prevent them and how to treat these different diseases will definitely increase how long your culture will survive.
I agree with the notion to have a successful civilization it can only be achieve through education, having a good education will unlock your mind and allow you the to be able to make good choices. Especially when it comes to choosing a leader, the reason a politician campaign is to try to sway the citizens to chose them over their opposition, that is because they have to appeal to what we know now as common sense there are a lot of people in this world that are not book smart but have common knowledge on how the world works. Many different countries share the same ideas on education because, education has for centuries been the centerpiece of how a society is defined and remembered. Without education and schools we would still be in the cave, which means our minds would be locked and refuse any new information.

colonial education

Colonial Education

The colonial education was geared more towards teaching people the bible, as a way of saving people’s souls, unfortunately it was not made to actually teach students trades or general knowledge. Because of this students were only thought the importance of learning and adhering to the scriptures from the bible. The second purpose of the Latin grammar schools were to teach the Latin language, because the colleges of the time were thought mainly in Latin, therefore the students that were being prepared to attend colleges had to be fluent in Latin. School were heavy into religion because the purpose of the people migrating from England to the new land was to be able to practice their religious beliefs, the men and women that came here came to escape persecution from practicing their faith.
In todays educational system is very different from colonial times because we are focused more on technology and learning than religion. Religion is no longer allowed in the school system because of the many different faiths practiced by the students, to prevent forcing a Jewish child to pray to a Christian god would be disrespectful to his or her faith. I do believe it was a wise move to remove religion from the school, while I agree with this decision, it really bring down morals colonial children were more respectful of each other because they had the fear of god. There is no such thing as love of one another and respect in the schools in today’s society, which is because we are not thought morals in schools anymore.
Teachers are more qualified today than they were back in the colonial days because in the colonial days there main focus was the studying of the bible, where as today we are geared toward training people for the future. With the advancements we’ve made, we are constantly searching to discover newer and better technologies.
The one thing constant in today’s and as well as colonial times has to be discrimination, in colonial times people were discriminated against not by race but by gender, only boys were given the opportunity to attend school and get an education, women were not allowed to receive an education beyond basic reading and writing. Today we face discrimination in many different criteria, the most noticeable one has to be color, and many non Anglo-Saxons were not permitted to learn. Even after the ban was lifted, teachers refused to teach African American children, the school houses were run down and not suitable for living, the books were several years old.

understand new costums

After reading this passage, i found myself looking back to the different times where i've traveled outstide of the United States, and i've encountered people who have dislikes of Americans and they would treat me with sort of hate. I found myself telling them that i am not American and their attitude would change slightly but not drastically, I than came to realize Americans are not well received around the world as we may think. Even within my own culture and other non-American cultures, they dispise the American way of doing things. This is the reason when we travel to different countries the reception is not often warm.

Self Actualization

Self Actualization

Is a complex theory about understanding our own self, there were many studies done on the subject because people are really curious to understand themselves, such as why they do some of the things they do, like certain things and also attracted to a type of person? There many different names to the studies done on this subject one such study I am really interested in are self-esteem. Self esteem has two different levels of self-esteem, there’s low self-esteem and high self-esteem. As you can already tell by their names low self-esteem is when a person does not have high regards for themselves, these individuals are often loners, they always have a sense that they do not belong anywhere and no one likes them or want them around, they are often refrain from showing emotions and not well kept physically, often these people suffer from severe depression and often suicidal. Low self esteem individuals usually can’t find any good qualities in themselves. Usually due to a bad childhood and child abuse, usually the end result.
Having a high self esteem means that person thinks highly of themselves and usually perform higher in school and in society, these individuals are usually are happier than most because they are always on a natural high about themselves, it’s usually hard to bring that individual down, because of the self love they have for themselves, their physical appearance is usually well groomed and physically fit. Their upbringings are usually happy ones.
Self actualization grows by four characteristics are auditory, physical sensations, body image, and personal memories. A person view themselves in these four cues, because we look at the celebrities and each of these people on television and print magazines are a constant reminder to regular people how much we are not measuring up, we strive to look like the people we see on the television and magazines all the time, we buy the products they endorsed and sometimes we even change our religious beliefs because our favorite star believe their religion is better. We need to be able to look within ourselves and learn what’s right for ourselves and not let others influence our choices.

Rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is a form of education I could compare to a debate, the people who practice that type of education believe that nothing is real, that is the most absurd statement ever, and how could nothing in existence not be real? These so called educators believe more about making the argument rather than proving the point, it’s all about show not substance. The practitioners of this form of education were called sophists; sophists were paid professional teachers in Greece classical education, that teach student orally, basically their job was to teach what we not call speech or public speaking to the children of politicians and other members’ government. As we can already tell the sophists were criticized by real scholars, such as Socrates and Plato, for not producing any real facts but only care about appearances, this did not hold well with these early scholars.
Rethors were good salesmen, because they had the power of words and were unable to back anything they said, they were like professional liars, they are able to talk about anything and make it sound like they had knowledge about the subjects. The powers of words are very overwhelming these orators were able to manipulate the good to seem bad and good can also be manipulated to seem bad, this was a very powerful weapon for politicians, one of Socrates’ accusers Lycon was an orator, which Socrates held in such low regards, because they sold their loyalty to the highest bidder, their motive were only monetary and not about making any real contributions to the educational society.
The Roman educational system was not too different from the rhetics because they are both sticking to the idea of truth was nonexistent, the roman only teach the basic reading and writing. The main difference between the two different styles is that one teaches on paper such as reading and writing which would be considered traditional style and the other uses grammar and does not use text to get their point across.

Romans Vs. Athenians school

Romans vs. Athenian schools

Roman education from all the readings that I’ve read, seemed to be governed more by fear than everything else, the roman scholars believed that a young man that is afraid to get caned would perform better, seemed really cruel that type of intimidation would scare anyone from doing actual learning because you would be too afraid to open your mouth and recite your lessons. The Romans did not use text books because text books were too expensive for even the riches people in Rome. Education was very important to the Roman Empire; even the poorer members of the empire knew how to read and write with one exception, the fathers would teach their sons at home, the lessons would include basic reading, writing and arithmetic that are because they could not afford to send their children to a formal school. Even in the formal schools the subjects were very few so the children would often be bored at the school, but with the fear of being flogged by the teachers the children would take the time to memorizing their lessons. The school days were longer than they are today by many hours, the day started from sunrise and ends at sunset and that has to be repeated for seven days, the only times the child is at home is afterschool to go to bed, would place a great amount of strain on the mind of a young child, I’m sure they would not memorize much of their lessons. The girl’s were also educated only those that could afford the education, well the difference is the type of education, they young ladies would be thought how to be a good wife and keep up good home and cooking on the other hand the poorer women would be thought by their mothers how to weave baskets, sew, they would practice these skills every day.
The Athenians had a more formal education with broader subjects, even though they still practice the art of memorization they also wrote ideas down. They Greeks also practice such subjects as philosophy, science, medicine; the Greeks had a more advance education system than the Romans.

Freud's take on Personality

Freud’s take on personality

The part of Freud’s personality theory I found most interesting is his topographical theory, this theory is about the conscious and unconsciousness. Freud believed our personalities are based on the unconsciousness and we keep our needs and wishes in the unconscious area of our psyche, the needs that are locked in our unconscious secretly influence a person’s personality. The unconscious really does not care about consequences it only care about satisfying that need nothing else matters, except getting what their needs met at any cost. Sometimes we do things or have a certain feeling about a person or situation whether good or bad and not know why we feel and react that way; this is cause by our subconscious, this part of our psyche that we are unaware of.
The part of our psyche we are aware of is called conscious, conscious is when a person is awake and formulates their thoughts and know exactly what they want and go forth to achieve those goals to make they happy. When a person is aware of what they want they are also conscious of the consequences of their actions, which means they choose to knowing what may happen whether positive or negative they are definitely aware of the different choices that they are making and totally accept the rewards and punishment that may be the result of such choices.
Freud was a very complex man, his research was more about understanding the human psyche and to understanding why we act and do some of the things that we do. He is often referred to as the father of modern psychiatry, which is a proper title for such a brilliant mind. The success he had with treating people with mental disease and actually curing them was within itself a very amazing feat. After studying Freud, I gained a better understand about human behaviors.

Beliefs and Attitudes

Beliefs and attitude

After reading these passages I could not chose just one part to write about because I believe a person’s beliefs definitely dictate their attitude towards everything. Therefore you can’t pick one without choosing the other, I believe they work great together because one definitely influence the other tremendously, rather it’s for good or bad you cannot have one without mentioning the other.
Beliefs are usually form by the persons’ societal views and majority of the time are mostly influenced by their parents and elders of a society. Majority of beliefs people all around the world share would be religious beliefs, everyone that I’ve come across share some religious beliefs, rather it’s Christianity or Islam and many other religions, the other beliefs are political views, rather it’s a democratic or communist. The thing they share in common is that they totally believe in these ideas whole heartedly, these two subjects are two subjects that can cause major arguments and even fights. People usually dismiss any other idea that is contradictory to what their beliefs are, their minds are closed to even accept or examine any other facts that will be introduced to them, this is when their attitude changes.
Attitude is the way a person reacts to an idea or any other object; the reaction can be good or bad depending on the perception of the person’s beliefs. Usually if it’s something that contradicts the values that has been thought to that individual since birth they would have an adverse reaction to any idea they would deem stupid, because their minds had been shaped by their parents since their infancy and their believe system has become ingrained in them almost becoming a part of their DNA, they tend to have a closed mind, not to mention people with closed mind usually don’t achieve high levels of education or acceptance of other cultures, because of their refusal to accept and interpret new information.
What I came away with is to keep an open mind because the world is constantly changing and with the different mode of transportation and human curiosities they world is closer than ever, we need to learn to respect each other and each other’s cultures, you never know what you will learn from someone else, sometimes we use others on our beliefs and see them as being evil or no good because they are not living upto our standards, it is unfair to do so and we need to adjust our attitudes.

Aristotle's take on the world

Aristotle’s take on the world

Aristotle was in interesting philosopher to me because he was definitely ahead of his time in his thought process. Reading his life story and his works I definitely had a rude awakening, because I never knew that type of thinking was going on in those time, due to the lack of technology because some of the thinking he had would not even be possible to accomplish today without the aid of a computer or any technological help. If I were to give my opinion about who was the greatest philosopher of the early times it would definitely have to be Aristotle. His take on such things as ethics which all psychiatrists still uses today, this is that ethics is divided in two parts which is the Rational which is your intellect and moral virtue, and Irrational which is the nutritional virtue, politics, art and poetics, soul and psychology, nature, metaphysics, and logic.
According to Aristotle logic is the ability to reason orally and this concept consist of ten different categories; substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, condition, action, and passion. Think about it when you are asking a question what is the first thing you ask? You ask what happened. How did it happen? Who was involved? How many? These are the main ten principles of trying to gain knowledge and sharpening your reasoning skills. Normally an individual would ask these same things in not exactly the same order as he named but they would be the same questions that would normally be asked from a student to a teacher or parent.
Aristotle started his work on metaphysics after being curious about existence, through his curiosity and asking the church and he realized that the church would only give him a broad understanding of human existence; he took it upon himself to gain the knowledge himself. Through his readings he saw many speculations from the mathematical theory of Pythagoras and nature theories of Thales and Anaximines, neither one of these theories satisfied his curiosity, this is a theory that cannot be explained.

Plato' Idealism

Plato’s idealisms

Plato’s idealisms are basic but realistic in today’s standards, but back in his days these ideas were sort of taboo, because people were not allowed to voice or question their leaders rules and ideas for them. Socrates started the whole movement about questioning ideas and search for the truth for you and finding why things happen and how things work, Plato continued where Socrates left off and added some ideas of his own. Some of these ideas are; truth is in all things, we should look for the truth because the truth is eternal and perfect, there should be a universal truth, and his claim of that people are born ignorant and living in a cave of shadows and illusions, chained by apathy. These ideas are meant that we are to spend the rest of our lives searching for happiness and that happiness is knowledge.
Truth in all things simply means that in everything that we see and experience in this life, has many different meanings other than what you were brought up to believe. We must seek what the truth is for us individually and not for the masses. Sometimes the explanation that is giving to you about a certain even is not complete and that usually leave people baffled, but back then people did not have the level of education that we do now to ever question what was told to them, they just accept that to be the truth and will pass that down from generation to generation, they would defend those ideas with their lives if they had to.
We should always look for the truth in everything because truth is eternal and perfect, this means that truth cannot be disproved no matter how you try to change it around the end results will always be the same. In order for you to achieve this ultimate truth we must do research and allow ourselves to look at alternative methods of achieving what we are looking for, and also keep an open mind, not going into a research with an open mind will not result in ultimate truth because you already know what results you wanted, some of the world’s most useful inventions came by accidents, these scientist had an open mind.
These ideas affect today’s education system, by allowing it’s students to investigate different ideas and bring their own ideas to life. Today’s students are not restricted to the level of education they can achieve as long as they are willing to do the work.

Awareness

Awareness

Awareness; is the way we see the environment around us, and the way we interact with our environment. This is on our own knowledge and experiences, before we can have our own opinion we first need to have at the least a broad understanding of the world around us and how things normally supposed to work. This way we are to make judgments, mostly through our education we can make correct assumptions. Most people who believe in such things as the super natural, is because of culture. People that believe in such things such as the evil eye, voodoo and even Christianity, these people often believe in those things so much that physically and psychologically they will become affected. Take for instance people who believe that a curse can be place on you; these people would blame every bad things that happen in their lives to that curse. Some Christians who believe in god will attribute every good thing that happens to Jesus Christ, and if something bad was to happen they will blame that on the devil. These people are not crazy by a long shot it’s just part of their culture, if a person believe in something so much, one of the most bizarre thing that I’ve heard is that a voodoo priest can point a finger of death at a person from the tribe and that person will actually die, that is because of the fear and respect that priest as over the tribe. I remember attending a church where the pastor would touch the person and that person would instantly start to fallout and speak in tongues, well when it was my turn and I went up to the priest and she touched my forehead and nothing happened, I started then to question the validity of her so called powers, I come to the realization that everyone at the church was just acting and playing along with what the other people were doing.
Consciousness is being aware of what is going on; basically you are making things happen on your own and you doing it because you actually want to do whatever it is you want to make happen. This is a way of getting the results you wish to get out of your experiment. Doing something with your eyes open and questioning whatever it are you are being thought and making decisions on your own.

Impact of Sputnik

Impact of Sputnik

The impact the sputnik launched in 1950-1960’s had a more positive impact on the American educational system, because it showed us just how far we are behind in certain areas, and these areas were mathematics and science. America is a country that does not like to be last in any advancement at all; they like to think of themselves as being the innovators of everything technological. Americans had to really take a look into their curriculums and they noticed that they were behind in the math and science department.
After learning this fact the powers of the school systems rearranged their system to focus more on the math and science department. Unfortunately it took this to force us to realize the students were not being thought what they needed to be successful. Even today these two subjects are not the focal points in the education system. Math is deemed not important and science as well because most students and faculty are not focusing on these subjects. Math are being focused on now days because of the creation of standardized testing, standardized testing is a result of the poor achievements of the schools and officials were forced to take action to raise the educational levels. This system takes away the other subjects such as geography, economics, and history these subjects have been completely taken out of the curriculum and focused more on the subjects that are on the standardized test. Some students can’t even find their state or city on a map and other students can’t even tell you anything about American history not to any fault of their own but because they are not being through this in the public school systems. Science has become obsolete in today’s educational system, even with the teachers that teach science they are not willing to teach because they don’t feel like the students are taking their science importantly.
Taking standardized testing out of the school system we will have more well rounded students. Seems to me that we are back to the same educational levels as the 1950-1960’s, the American school system is ranked the lowest in the world and that is very unacceptable for a country that is supposed to be a super power. Something has to be done and I don’t think that standardized testing is the answer.

Father of Reasoning

Father of Reasoning

Socrates was a man that was ahead of his time, because the times he live in people did not question anything that was set in place, they just went along with whatever ideas that was already put in place for them. The reason was the people did not possess the education needed to for their own ideas. Socrates was the first person to ever question the many different norms that Greeks believed and enforced. Reasoning is when people question things that are around them, by asking how, when, who, when and where. The system of the Greeks were that of a god belief, not that they believed that they themselves were god like, but they did not believe humans were capable of achieving anything but, they only believed that all things are done by the gods and humans are not wise enough to do great works, and I believe these ideas arrived from the lack of education and as well the priests, this was a form of brain wash.
Socrates never formally wrote anything or had a formal school, that is because he believed that knowledge is interactive and a living force. This means knowledge grows because life is ongoing and there are new things to experience and we must remain open minded to absorb every change that life has to offer, know never stays the same. The hierarchy in the Greek city of Athens accused Socrates of corrupting the minds of the youths of Greece; according to his accusers he was introducing new gods to the youths. Socrates was found guilty at the end and was given poison as a form of execution tool, although he could’ve have escape the punishment by not speaking his mind anymore, he chose to drink the poison to prove a point, Socrates became the first martyr for education.
Elenchus is a questioning method; this method was created by the philosopher Socrates. The saying a wise men recognized that he knows nothing at all. This means that we’ll never know everything about everything in the world, therefore we must continue to be skeptical and not accepting everything that is presented t us.
Socrates believed that knowledge is the key to happiness. When a person has great reasoning skills that individual has a better understanding about what they truly want.
They influential part Socrates has over the today’s educational system is that so much have on the old ideas. Human curiosity has been credited too much of the technological advancements in the word. We are thought the old ideas in as we get older we start to question the validity of the old findings and then we start to experiment different ways.

Self Identity

Self Identity

My parents always preached to me that I was equal to everyone else and that no one was better than I was. I truly believed that until the day I started school in America and I realized that no matter how much I thought of myself as being equal, other weren’t going to let me forget just how wrong I was. The African American students did not like me because I was Haitian, African Americans does not believe Haitians were black, only they are the real blacks sad right. The whites did not seem to take to me because of the obvious reasons, I was a black kid, and they did not need to know if I was not African American but as long as the color of my skin was different from theirs that pretty much was it for them. The Hispanics were neutral because they themselves were going through the same thing I was going through. I thought I would seek refuge with my people, but I did not fit in there either, they did not feel like I was Haitian enough because I grew up in the united states, so to them I was a fake Haitian, which means I was lost. I would come home and my parents would see that something was very wrong with me and they could not figure it out and afterwards we sat down and talked and they told me that in this country we as Haitians have to work three times harder than everyone else because we are the black sheep country, which means we are social outcast even amongst other immigrant countries.
I am a male which means we are not to show fear or any feelings that are deemed feminine. I was brought up to be tough a provider and a good father, protector and husband. We are to be the disciplinary in our house. This type of stereotype about men has been passed down from generation to generation and even the women have been brought up to believe that and most of them also have come to except that because of how their fathers were.
Sex was thought to be something that we are only were supposed to engage in sex after marriage, I did not become sexually active until I got married. My wife and I were each other’s first and that was the most fulfilling feeling in the world to know that we shared something so beautiful with one another. Unfortunately in today’s society children are becoming sexually active before they reached their teens which is one of the reasons there are so many teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, these young people were never properly educated in the proper ways of protecting themselves.

Gatekeeper

Gatekeeper

The teacher is the gatekeeper; means that education is the key to a better and more wholesome existence. The teacher is the keeper of knowledge, since the teacher is the one with the knowledge that means they hold the key to open up the most powerful in the world, that door is the human mind. A closed mind is an ignorant mind, a person that does not think for themselves is a person that is without knowledge, and therefore they do not have the capacity to think for themselves. The only way they can gain that ability is through gaining knowledge on how the world and their society work. Some societies restrict education from their citizens, because keeping people ignorant makes it easier to control them. Take for instance the ordeal African Americans faced during the days of slavery and onward to the time of the Arkansas nine. Education was not offered to the slaves at all during slavery days, the government was in such support of this that they made it illegal for any citizens to teach a slaves, it was a felony to teach slaves the whites would be jailed for teaching the slave and as for the slave themselves being educated is a death sentence, they would be killed if they even knew how to read. Even after the days of slavery was over and the blacks were given their freedom education was still being restricted from the African Americans, this was designed to keep their minds locked even though their bodies were not in chains their minds were still locked up. The same practice was being utilized by the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians and the Mesopotamians. Even though there cultures were a more advanced culture as for as education is concerned, there tactics were still as barbaric, the common citizen were not allowed to be educated, only the most influential citizens were given the opportunity to an education. They knew if their citizens minds were unlocked and gained wisdom, the citizens would start to think and make their own decision, therefore keeping their minds locked was the solution they came up with to have complete control over the citizens.

Diverse School System

Diverse school systems

After reading the article about the Sumerian school system, I realized we owe our form of education to them. Their system went above the normal Egyptian school system. The Egyptian school system was a closed system, where only the wealthy and powerful members of the Egyptian society were able to receive an education. The education their son’s were to receive were only basic reading and writing skills, the school offers no further education. The kids are enrolled into the school at age five and by the time they reached the age of eleven, they were to be graduates and ready to take their perspective jobs, some were sent to work directly for the king and members of his kingdom and others worked for generals to document their victories and keep track of the amount of soldiers. The Egyptian system were mainly preparing their student to serve, they were not offered any further educational progress. The system that was the closest to modern day educational system would have to be the Mesopotamians, because their system also thought some of the same things as the Egyptians, but they also went beyond the basic reading and writing. Their system was more advance in the subjects they thought, subjects such as mathematics, science, astrology, medicine and botany. The most advance school system is the Sumerian school system, not only does it teaches the same discipline as the Egyptian and Mesopotamians, the Sumerian’s system was not governed by the king, therefore the school was independent, this made it an open system, where they will enroll anyone as long as they were able to pay the tuition, it was still an all male system. This system is the first time teachers were being paid a salary and this salary they were receiving came from the tuition the student’s families were paying to the school father.
The Sumerians were also responsible for setting the structure of the school and assign responsibilities to each faculty member. They also had a more refined system, each person in that system had a title and responsibilities, starting with the father of the school or in today’s term would be principal; he is the overseer of the entire school, he is in charge of the lesson plans, student enrolments, and paying the salaries, after him was the school’s big brother and in today’s term is the vice principal, his duties would include a more administrative type responsibilities, he passes on the lesson plans prepared by the school father to the teachers and also to sit in and grade the student’s in the reciting and presentation of their lessons, next came the teachers their duties were to present the student’s with the lessons and show them how to write and read and listen to view their work, lastly is the sons of the schools or students their duties were to listen and practice their writing and reading skills and prepare to recite their lessons. Because the Sumerians believe that the key to learning is memorization, students were not only supposed to write their lesson, they were expected to remember everything and be able to recall them at a moment’s notice.
As we can clearly see, each system is evolving from the previous, this is to ensure each generation that comes after has something new to offer, we never suppose to remain in the same system forever, as people become more and more intelligent and curious we have to find new ways to satisfy that curiosity this is when progress takes place.

rites of passage and formal education

Rites of passage and formal education

Rites of passage is important for many different reasons, these reasons vary from culture to culture, even subcultures such as tribes. These rites of passages can include physical or emotional depending on the tribe or culture. These are knowledge that are being passed down from one previous generation to current generation, this is done because most non-literate cultures do not have the necessary knowledge or ability to write down their cultures, these people would have to rely on the passing of these historical knowledge, usually the elders are the keepers of these stories and traditions. Once a child has completed their rites of passage they are now welcomed into adulthood and are now able to marry, own properties, get married and have children. Without completing these tasks these young adolescent will remain as a child or be removed from the tribe for failing where they might be seen as weak and unworthy of being in the tribe, their family maybe shamed as well.
Facing Mount Kenya was a story written by Jomo Kenyatta, this story was a very descriptive account on the rite of passage of a tribe in Kenya, where both the boys and girls are circumcised. Although it may sound bad but, it’s a way of life for them, this is their transition from boy or girl in to men or womanhood. The irua practice is a done after a two weeks celebration, where the child has responsibilities and as well as the parents of the child. If the procedure were not performed to the young lady, she would be austrocised by the tribe and looked upon as a whore, in order to prevent this from happening the parents would forced their child to undergo this painful procedure.
The story of Sitting Quietly was about two young Kpelle twins, that were about to take on their rites of passage into manhood. The task was for them to be taken away and live inside of a shack with several other young men and for several nights they would undergo different task by the supposed forest thing, which was a beast they had to kill with the spear they carved themselves. If they survived they week they were called individually to the forest to fight the forest thing. There were no such beast but the children never knew that, and some were so afraid that they died and the ones that survived were welcomed into adulthood and bestowed honor on their families, those that died were considered weak.
The Sambians rites of passage is the most horrific of all, children would have to perform regular follatio in order to become a man, because it was compared to a mother’s milk. This is to me so disturbing I guess it’s because we grew up in a society where something like this would land someone in jail, because this would’ve been seen as child molestation.
The only difference I can see between rites of passage and formal education, is that rites of passage is practiced amongst non literate cultures where theres no schools to teach history, reading and writing.

Declined of American System

Declined of American education system

Due to the low educational scores on international test and companies from corporate America and the military. Counties and state officials had to take a long look into their school system and curriculums, to see what was wrong. In order to better evaluate these failures, school officials had to evaluate not only the students but the quality of the teachers and their teaching abilities. Corporations were asking for better reading and mathematical scores. Some of the solutions were to increase the length of the school year, increase requirements for promotions to the next grade and even to graduate, the most important solution was to increase teachers’ qualification and raise the qualified teachers pay. All of the new ideas gave birth to the creation of the three wave of reform.
The first wave of this reform system, was to raise the standards, which means more testing and additional courses for the students as well as the teachers, if a teacher is not qualified and is not up to date with the advancement of the technology of their respective field, than you cannot teach these students effectively, advancements in every field changes over time and as an educator you cannot be left behind. The second wave was the restructuring the schools, this was to relinquishing power to the teachers, this gives the teachers control over their school and classrooms, this was a way to hold teachers accountable for the success of their students. For too long teachers were complaining about not having any control over how their students and their ways of teaching, they felt like puppets on a string. The third wave is comprehensive services; this is to ensure the students have everything they need to make the students school experience better, by providing food, medical help, transportation, counseling, security, social and recreational services. All of these services are there to make the school experience more enjoyable one, the upside is the students learn teamwork and compassion.
The reason we continue to use the three wave system is because the system works. No longer are students being sent into the world without having the proper education or under qualified teachers in the in the classrooms anymore. With tests such as the F.C.A.T, standardized testing like this are mendatory before a child can be promoted to the next grade, these test shows the school board exactly how much information a student retained prior to being promoted to the grade and even to graduate from school.

Eyptian School Vs. Mesopotamians School

Egyptian School vs. Mesopotamians School

Formal school in Egypt was reserved for the elite members of society, where only the high ranking members of society were given the chance to receive a formal education. The less fortunate and common members of the Egyptian society had to resort to an informal educational methods of educating their children.
The young men of Egypt were learning their trades or jobs by imitating their fathers. As they get older and older they are given more and more responsibilities. Children during those days were not able to choose their own trades or occupations, but rather the trade was chosen for them. Depending on the family they were born into. If for example your father was a farmer, your career in the future would be the same as his, if your father was a craftsman you were a craftsman. This was because his father and his father’s father had the same occupation and the skills and knowledge were handed down from father to son and so forth and so on. Since there was no set form of education you had to gain knowledge by apprenticeship this was a method where you watch your father and he teaches you his job from the time you were able to walk.
Ethics were also thought, these rules were found in one book which was “Book of instructions or wisdom literature”. These books were most likely dictated from the king or by elder noblemen of the royal family, these laws were recognized and abided by all level of society from the upper to the lower class, no one was exempt from following the laws of the land. Justice, wisdom, obedience, humanity and restraint were the content of the book. Teaching the citizens of Egypt these text, were written by the students of the scribal schools, these students were servants and answer only to the king.
The Mesopotamians also had a formal school system, their system were far more advance and sophisticated system from the Egyptian system. Although they shared one common trait, and that is only the high society were worthy of learning, this is where the similarities end. The Mesopotamians education went beyond basic writing and reading, they were being thought mathematics, science, astrology, medicine and criminal justice. The priest of these school believed the key to learning is memorization, the students were giving a set of scrolls to study and memorized and were expected to recite what they have read in front of the priest the next day without any errors. These same lessons the recited later the student would have to write down on a scroll.

Little Rock 9

Little Rock 9

The times were different then and I’m sure very hard for blacks in the united states, it must have been hell to be treated like a second class citizen only because of the color of their skin, blacks were denied the most basics of rights, they could not drink from the same water fountain as whites, eat in the same dining establishments as whites, even riding public transportation they were not permitted to sit on the front of the bus and if the front was full and a white person needed to sit the black person would have to get up and give up his or her sit to that individual, very unfair indeed.
African-Americans had the worse schools systems, their classrooms were church basements and run down school houses that the Caucasians stopped using because of the poor conditions they were in, their books were used and torn and often times outdated, it’s clear to me after reading this passage the blacks were setup for failure, because the one way for a person to know their worth is through education, keeping a group of people ignorant would ensure their demise, because they will know nothing much than to servants and to do jobs that does not require any reading or writing, the only thing that African-Americans ever wanted was to be treated and be seen as equals no more, no less.
In 1957 Little Rock, Arkansas, the school name was Central High School, which was an all white high school just like every high school in the south. After a long fight the NAACP fought and won the right for African-Americans to attend the school, of course this was met with a lot of anger and hatred, parents were protesting and pulling their kids out of the school because they did not want their white children to be in the same classroom with “Niggers” even some teachers quit their jobs. Having to be escorted to class everyday by armed guards would have left me unable to concentrate on my school work, I would be too afraid someone may get to me and do bodily harm to me and the others, I would question if it was all worth it, but at the same time it would’ve motivate me to outperform the white kids that were attending the school, to show everyone that we are all capable of achieving greatness, given the opportunity. Because of the sacrifices and ridicule these student endured in the past, paved the way to us now having the same opportunities to an education, it really hurts me to see African-Americans taking this right as lightly as they are, if they only knew how many people sacrificed their freedom and their life to give them this opportunity and yet they are taking it for granted.

Understanding Eachother

Understanding each other

This world is full of diverse cultures and each of these cultures also has sub-cultures, each of these sub-cultures has their own customs, history and beliefs. Some of these customs may seem weird and strange to any outsiders never the less we have to learn to respect them; most of all learn to keep our own prejudices aside and keep an open mind. We have to know the same way we view their customs as being weird or different they themselves have the same perception of our own customs. With the diverse ways of traveling we have open trades of not only goods with other countries; we have sometimes adopted some of their ways as well, such as art, music, language and different types of medicines.
Language has always been the main barrier keeping people apart, without understanding linguistics there is no way we can ever learn what we need to know, it takes a lot of patience and open mind to learn each other’s way of life. Respect is the next and as important as language, show the person you will abide by the rules of the land and not disrespect their customs, some of these people would die for their belief because they believe that deeply and we must know that we are there to observe and take notes and not intervene and place our own beliefs into the mix, this could seem in many places as a form of disrespect. Food is a big deterrence because some cultures would eat some things that would turn your stomach, I’ve watched Japanese sell and eat rats in the streets, and nowhere in America would we ever consider eating a rodent. Some of the other soldiers that were with me makes obscene gestures and point and laugh at the sight of someone eating a rat, I can see the look on the peoples’ faces and I saw anger I really felt like I needed to apologize to them for what my fellow soldiers were doing. I am a product of another culture and my culture has prejudices against any other culture that is not theirs which to me is sad because we don’t give other people a chance.
Reading these two passages really open my eyes, not that they were ever closed after coming to America at an early age my parents forced my brother and I to learn the American way of life, because as they put it, the only way to succeed in this country is to learn the culture and language at the same time not to forget our own cultures.

Importance of Writing

Importance of writing

Initially writing was invented for early men to keep track of cattle, grains and other properties; eventually they found many other uses for writing. Writing was also used to mark territory in order to warn others of dangers. The most important use of writing has to be documenting events in order to share with others and these stories would be told to other generations, which are the first glimpse into recorded history. The writing and reciting of these event or history to the new generations is a way of establishing traditions and culture, through these writings we gain knowledge and understanding of the past, can we make improvements on the future. By keeping records we can see just how far we have evolved from the past to the future.
Writing styles however have made tremendous changes over the years, early writing can actually be dated in about forty-thousand years ago, starting with the cave drawings, these drawings were pictures, this early style of writing is called pictograph, the use of pictures to tell a story, and sometimes these writings are just writings. The ancient Egyptians also used and still used a more refined version of this style of writing; we can see evidence of this in art effects such as vases and tombs. Different symbols had specific meanings; some were to show the wealth, status and role in society. Early Egyptians also started a new more modern style of writing, which was called acrophony, this was the beginning of what we now used today this style which is the alphabet. The early version of the alphabet had a lot of characteristics of pictographs, letters were still being represented by symbols now instead of these pictures meaning a whole story, now with this new style each of these symbols represent a letters. There are countries that are still using hieroglyphics as their writing style; such cultures are Iraq, china, Japan and most Middle Eastern and Asian countries. The only countries that use the alphabetic system are mostly Europeans and countries that have European influences.
Without the invention of writing we would have never known our history and cultures, in order to establish a civilized culture. History played a major role in preserving ways of life of their ancestors.

Rites of passage

Rites of passage

Rites of passage and teaching are similar, because both serves the same purpose and that is to prepare the individual for the next stage in their life. Rites of passage are a way of passing along cultural, ideologies and traditions along to the upcoming generations. Most non-literate cultures often pass on their knowledge and traditions along to their offspring by allowing that child to follow and imitate their parents and elders, this process is called shaping, that child is being molded into their parents without having to read and learn about their culture. Mostly the elder in the tribe would tell stories and these stories would explain traditions to the youngster, these stories are stories that are passed down from generation to generation.
The main difference between the methods is rites of passage only teaches the person about his or her own culture and nothing else, where as learning teaches about diverse cultures and academics, such as language, culture and mathematics. Through teaching and learning cultures are able to aid in the survival of all cultures, with knowledge we are able to document and learn and experiment with different ideologies and improve on each objects, therefore ensuring the preservations and spreading of their culture. Both types of learning are very critical to societal and cultural understanding.
Rites of passage are mainly a transitioning from adolescents into adulthood. These rituals exist to teach young males and females their place in society and teach them the necessary requirements to becoming an adult. Some of these rituals are may seem barbaric to outsiders because some may include male and female circumcision other cultures may also have males fight or beat the young man to see if he is worthy and strong enough to withstand the physical pain without showing fear or pain, if this individual passes he will bring pride and status to his family but if he was to fail he will bring shame and maybe driven out of the tribe. The one aspect of these traditions is that only the strong are welcome into the society, all of these rites of passage are there to weed out the weak and frail. There was an episode of such a ritual on Discovery Channel, where a young man was being tested; his task was to run on the backs of ten cows, five times without falling down. The day of the initiation the women are also preparing as well, their preparation was the harshest; they were placed in the middle of a circle while the males of the tribe had switches or tree branch in their hands, they women danced after being served traditional beer to help them deal with the pain. The drummer started beating the drums and the women started dancing and the men started beating them until their skin were bleeding, this is to show their devotion and loyalty to their relative. If the young man would have failed it’s all would have been for nothing, fortunately the young man even after falling once, the elders allowed him to continue, once he was allowed to start over he then completed his task and was now a man, he is now able to marry and have cattle and a farm of his own.

paradigm

Paradigisms

Paradigm can be describe as point of view, a way a person or group of people view and interpret reality. These interpretations are mostly learned from generation to generation. One of the most well known sorts of paradigms in any culture is religion. Religion is the one common thread that most of us have in common. No matter what denomination you are, you share a common belief with other members of that faith. Take for instance the story of Adam and Eve, all religions with the exception of Buddhism and Islamic faith has that story in their books (bible). Most Christian faiths, such religions with the same beliefs are Catholics, Jewish, Baptist, just to name a few. These followers never question anything from the bible; they whole-heartedly believe every word to be truth even without facts. The story of Mary and her immaculate conception, to us we most like would look at this with some type of Sinicism.
Paradigm shift is an individual or group of people who refuses to believe anything without questioning their validity. By questioning everything is one way humans can discover new objects, new inventions, all of the new inventions such as cell phones, microwave ovens, television and the most important tool today the PC or (personal computer). If it weren’t for men’s curiosities we would still be in the Stone Age, cars and space travelling would never have been realized. Every generation has evolved more from the previous generation, which is due to paradigm shift.
It is important for teachers to practice paradigm change, is because classrooms are become more and more diverse in more ways than one. Classrooms have children of many different learning styles and capabilities, which mean teachers, would have to get rid of their old world teaching methods. Now some classrooms have special education students mixed in with mainstream children, the special education students may require more attention than mainstream students. No longer is education general because of the diversity of the students.

Changes in Men

Changes in Men

No one has ever thought us that there were so many different types of prehistoric human beings. Looking at the pictures of the skulls of the early sapiens, I’ve noticed significant changes in their skull features. The earliest such men were the Homo Habilis, which are also known as Neanderthals or “cavemen”, there skull features are more ape than human. Then came the Homo erectus, they are the result of men’s evolving from walking on four limbs into bipedal. Homo erectus as they name clearly shows they were erected meaning they walked on two legs and had a much larger brain then the Habilis; this is the result of the eating of red meat, which produces proteins and helps the brain become more developed.
The passage on the Hominids really just presented more evidence of the evolutions men went through to become as we are today. These two readings really showed me just how far human evolution has come. There are a total of nineteen different types of hominids from the beginning of time. This shows the many different types of evolutions men went through, throughout the centuries. We went through changes mentally as well as physically.
Lucy and the story of African eve both confirmed my belief that life began in Africa. Reading any magazines or archeological journals, you always read that prehistoric human bones were always being discovered in Africa. All of the pieces of literature could not be wrong, this further confirmed my theory where life begun. All of the different types of humans are being discovered in Africa, from Homo habilis to Homo erectus. It is important to recognize where life began because it’s way to know that we are all related and are the same. The human skin body changes with the climate, the African skin remained dark because of the sun in Africa, where the Anglo Saxon skin turned light to deal with the cold weather. The truth is we are all the same inside and out, all brothers and sisters.

Cultural Diversity

Looking back on my elementary education, I would definitely say it was multicultural. The school I attended was in an area where there were diverse nationalities living there. I attended Allapatah Elemementary school, deep in the heart of Liberty city. Which if anyone that grew up in Miami knows that it is a pretty rough area?
The reason why I felt my education would be classified as being multicultural is because the school had different ethnicities. There were African-Americans, Haitians, Cubans, Puertoricans and Dominicans. The group that dominated the school was the African-Americans; they were ruthless and view all foreigners as bait. Never the less we all had to learn to learn together and coexist within the same community and school.
I would say it was more of the transformation approach, because we had to learn to tolerate the other ethnic groups and learn about their customs to better understand and accept them as friends. Some of us were able to put aside certain prejudices about the other group and talk out our differences. Being Haitian going to school in that area was tough, the students did not like us because they never really gave us a chance, while on the other hand we were strongly trying to learn the custom and culture of this country in order to fit in. Some of the teachers treated foreigners as leapers and did not care if we understood the lesson that was presented in class.
I would really like for my teachers to use the transformation approach. Because if the teachers would’ve thought that approach, it would make it easier for the students to try to put prejudices that were implanted in their minds by people outside of the school grounds. Learning to respect and accept everyone is one way of keeping peace with the school grounds and beyond. We all have had prejudices or misunderstandings about another culture or person, that if we take our time to learn why that person act or do certain things would make life easier.

Growth

Another way we can say transform is growth. Outwardly as well as internally, humans as well as animals grow and change over time. We rarely stay the same; we all have dreams and goals to accomplish in our lifetime. The means we use to achieve those goals are usually education, without an education, achieving our goals is nearly impossible to achieve.
Take for example a butterfly, usually begin as an ugly worm, through time and evolution that same ugly larvae spins a silky cocoon and soon after it emerges as a beautiful butterfly, this is the perfect example of transformation. We all grow everyday of our lives, as long as we live and breathe we will go under several transformations. As the world changes, technology evolve we all have to grow or be left behind and no one wants to be left behind, therefore we must continue to learn and grow.
One of the most significant forms of transformation is the ability to live in another culture and surviving, America is a prime example of this. Many foreigners came to the United States, without knowing the language or the culture, as time progresses these people slowly learn the language and soon the culture itself. Coming from a Haiti, I had to learn the language and the culture of America prior to coming to America, my parents prepared us to be able to face the many different struggles we would be facing, because he himself went through those exact challenges, which helped us out a lot.
One of the greatest and hardest things for a person to do is to look at his or herself and reinvent themselves. Reinventing oneself is the hardest thing for a person to do, is because of the comfort zone aspect, once a person gets comfortable, it is harder for them to try anything else, even if their comfort zone is a bad zone to be in. Case in point, a drug addict knows that what they are doing is not good for them but they are comfortable doing it, making changes would hinder their comfort zone and they are not willing to try and make that change even if they know it’s the best thing for them.
Change and growth are inevitable in life; the problem is we willing to make the changes for good or bad? As usual the choice is up to the individual.

Early Inventions

After reading these passages, I gained a lot of insight of how early humans use of fire are pretty much the same as our use today. This shows that early humans were slowly evolving from apes to men, these are very significant to our growing brains, these people used fire to cooked red meat and the protein from the red meat helped with the growth of the human brain. Each generation that stems from eating red meat is very significant. Fire became a source of light and warmth, that allowed Homo erectus the ability to leave Africa and migrate to Asia and cold parts around the world. The reason we now have more races and colors all over the world, it is because of the invention of fire.
One of the more useful inventions beside the invention of fire is of course the invention of the wheel. The wheel starts off as a piece of round rock created by the Homo erectus, which is the smarter of the early Homo sapiens. The wheel went a lot of transformations over the year. The wheel was used to navigate large ships, also was used behind horses to pull coaches and now the wheel is used to move our vehicles. We owe our use of transportation to them.
Reading the section on early writing I gained a very good insight, especially seeing how writing has changed over centuries. From cave writing to European writings, cave writings were mainly pictures on a cave wall that tells a story and warns other cave men of dangers. Some countries still uses that type of image writings, which are called hieroglyphics, countries like Egypt, Asia.
As a student wanting to embark in the education field, it is important for us to learn the history of all types of teachings; we must learn our past in order to figure out how to continue evolving. Being a teacher mean we have to learn a lot about early life in order to be successful.

Living with technology

Framing is a way of storing information into memory, and to be able at a later time able to recall that information later. When that information is retrieved, that data are usually in bits and pieces. To describe how memory works, let me explain, it’s like a set of codes that can be recalled and connect to other related information already stored in the brain. These codes can be put together with new memory. Usually if you are driving or walking and maybe just listening to the radio or watching television. Often we see or hear something and you instantly remind you of something else in your own life that is how framing works. Framing and framework are a tool that gives us the tools to organize and experiences into pictures and writings.
Paradigms are a way we see life and other experiences and beliefs. One such is the concept of organized religions. Where a group of people of diverse economic and racial backgrounds comes together in the belief in one way of living and that is according to the bible. In the history of the Roman Catholicism, no one has ever challenged the validity of the bible. If anyone was to ever disagree with or challenge the bible that person would be set away by everyone that he or she loves. Most people that grew up in the certain religious faith follow the leader of that church blindly without challenge. I’ve conducted an experiment, where I asked strict religious people; “why did you choose your particular faith”? Majority of these people did not know why and the only answer I would get would be “ I grew up that way, or my parents raised me that way.” None have ever evaluate their belief and make the choice to change or stay in that religion.
Every day of our lives we are advancing technologically. Look around the room or classroom and compare the technology of last ten or even five years ago and see the just how fast we are advancing. We’ve all heard the saying “ The only constant in life is change”. Technology is a great thing, but in today’s society we are depending more and more on our gadgets, we cannot go one hour without our cellphones. That is also one of the reason a lot of grown up and children are obese. If we as a society would use technology sparingly not only will that help us physically also would be great for the environment.

Evolution of Education

Evolution of education

After reading this passage I’ve learned a lot about the teaching profession I would have never known had it was not for this chapter. I’ve always thought growing up that to be a teacher there were a lot of preparation involved. During colonial times teachers were not trained at all nor were it even a profession that people took serious. The see drunks and thieves and elementary school graduates as teachers now days would never happen with our strict code of conducts that teachers have to go by, those types of people would have never been allowed to teach in a classroom.
I’m all for any on the job training, but not really a big fan of the (TFA) which stands for Teach For America, this program seems to place inexperience teachers into classrooms and expect them to make a difference, without ever providing them any real teaching courses, after a period of time these so-called teachers are given a certificate to become real teachers. I really do not like this program because we cannot play with a child’s education, I strongly believe especially teaching a minor child of pre-school to elementary grade level the teacher should be highly trained and to also be very knowledgably in their craft, these kids minds are developing and they are absorbing everything the teacher is telling, we really have to make sure the person that is doing the teaching is qualified before placing them in the classrooms. I’m sure some teachers that will come out of that program will be good teachers. It seems like they are taking a shortcut into achieving their goals.
I admire the work of these two groups, the Holmes Group and The Carnegie Forum; both of these prestigious group of educators, worked to set standards on preparation of future educators, by putting an end to teaching as only an undergraduate program into a masters level degree. Although not every college or university will adopt that change, but over the years that change will come. Now teachers can be looked at as professionals and not semi-professional.

About Mr. Serphy

My name is Reginald Serphy, i'm from the great island called Haiti. It's a nice place to live, i lived there for the first part of my childhood, which was a very great one i must say, i was raised by my both of my grandparents on both side of my family. I moved to the U.S. when i was six years old. My parents were already living in America, they left my brother and I to be raised by our grandparents in order for them to come to America and established themselves here to provide my brother and I a good life.

I still remember the day i arrived to the United States, it was so very different here than in Haiti, when the plane touched down at Miami International Airport, i was thanking god that we were on solid ground, I have a great fear of flying and i was holding my breathe the entire flight well ofcourse not literraly but the whole experience was a very intense one i must admit. It was a very long drive back to the house, when our parents picked us up they were like strangers to us, because we had never met them before, i was very young when they left for America, all i ever saw were black and white photographs of them and some color ones that they sent to us from America, we heard the sound of their voices because they were always sending us letters and cassette recordings.

My first school was Allapatah Middle School. Talk about scary, not in the sense i had a language barrier or anything, when i arrived to the America both my brother and I were very fluent in english, because in Haiti, our grandparents were very afluent in their community, they were able with our parents help place us in an American private school in Haiti, called L'ecole American, we learned to speak in write in english. The American kids were not as respectful or behave as well as the students in Haiti. watching those kids talk back to the teachers and cussing like they had no home training was really different to what i was used to. The learning method was very different, in Haiti we would have to study our lessons and the next day recite the entire page(s) in front of the teacher, but here we don't even study.

After i graduated High School at North Miami Senior, I went to Florida Memorial College which is now Florda Memorial University, where I studied Criminal Justice and Business Adminitstration. That was when I met the love of my life Micheline Cadette, she was and still is my inspiration. During a Christmas break I took my brother to the Army recruting office, my brother failed the test, the recruiter approached me to take it, i scored in the high ninety percentile, I really did not have any directions for after school, after speaking with my now wife we both decided that the Army would be a good place to start, it was a very good experience, I felt complete I had my wife, child and a good career that allowed me to support my family. When I left the Army I quickly found out it was not easy to land a job, my wife convinced me to return back to school and do something that I love and that is to teach kids, I'm really looking forward to start my new career as a teacher because I have a lot of life experience I can use to inspire my students.