Lives On The Boundary Summary And Analysis English Language Essay

Lives On The Boundary Summary And Analysis English Language Essay The education system in America is broken according to Lives on the Boundary, by Mike Rose. Rose gives examples of how and why education should be equal for everyone. The first part of the book I found it very difficult to find a theory out of the things that Rose wrote because the majority of the first 67 pages were about how he grew up and the low socioeconomic world that he had the trudge through to get where he is now. But then when I look at the statistics from the beginning, I see that yes, our nation is not proficient in many subjects, but we are also growing in mass amounts with college and high school graduates when compared to other countries and even ourselves in the 1800s. In 1890, 6.7 percent of Americans fourteen to seventeen year olds were attending high school; by 1978 that number had risen to 94.1 percent. (Rose, pg 6) For a country that has a failing education system, that number seems to have grown, making me believe the opposite. Yes, I agree that our education sy stem is not perfect, but it is not as terrible as many believe it to be. For those students who have now will to learn, we as teachers can not force them and when people say lets look to the past for the answer, there was never an answer for why our schools are not working. There has never been a solution, only a problem that has been reworded and restated in so many different ways that when reading a book this about the failing of the education system seems to be redundant. When Mike Rose was growing up he had only a few books available to him so he began to buy comic books because he loved the heroes and the action. After comic books he moved to other items like the instructions to his chemistry set and science fiction novels. He wrote very little in his schooling until his last year of high school where a teacher helped him find an interest in doing so. My first enthusiasm about writing came because I wanted a teacher to like me. (Rose pg 102) Although he did become a good reader, with help from his comic books and chemistry set instructions, he did not score well on English tests. It can be assumed that Rose only liked to learn or read about the concrete things in life; basically he was only educated by what entertained him and tuned out the things he did not understand. He even states in his book that this was a method he commonly used, but it proved to be harmful for him and his education in the long run. Rose goes on to explain the struggles of immigrants in this country and their need to learn English to improve their own lifestyles. Not only are we all categorized as black, red, yellow and white, but we have to understand what those categorizations mean, especially when we are trying to understand the world of education. We all hope that racism does not exist amongst teachers and professors, but we can not say anything for the parents or siblings. The education system can not control the time a student is out of the classroom. As Rose points out, whether we like it or not, race can and sometimes does play a factor into education. Rose says a failed education is social more than intellectual in origin. We as educators must realize that a traumatizing experience may have a very negative effect on a students education. Losing a parent or a sibling can cause a student to regress or stand still in their education, unable to move forward. After such an experience, we should try to work w ith the students to help them regain the ability to learn and comprehend things, instead of just tuning out. The only solution I could really see Rose proposing is trying to keep the children engaged with each other as well as the teacher. This may have a positive effect so the child does not grow up to be the shy wall flower that is underprepared. Rose goes on to argue that great classic novels should be taught and the students should be able to learn from them by choice, not just because they have to regurgitate something later on for an exam or a paper. It would even be a good idea to revise these messages and redress past wrongs would involve more than adding some new books to the existing cannon. (Rose p. 107) In this quote, Rose is saying that education needs to be changed so that education is available to all, this can help the underprepared students to have a fair chance at advancing in their education. Also, by bring in great, classic novels, this can help students to become more cultured and well versed in literature. If teachers are trying to keep students engaged by bringing in books by Snookie and Lady Gaga, that is when I will agree that our education system is failing miserably because students need literature, not pop-culture trash. The more we try to cater to their needs with literature, the more of a decline w ill be apparent and the underprepared will then grossly outnumber the prepared. The narrative of this book offers the theory deeply buried within the authors own personal story. I think that I struggled reading a novel be such a narrative voice when I was trying to find a theory. When you as the reader get to move with him through his school experiences, being the underprepared and then into his own classrooms, you can see the growth that is possible. Many people believe it is not probable for the underprepared to succeed. That is where I believe the theory comes into plan. I began to see a theory emerge within Roses own experiences. Throughout the book, he is talking about how the underprepared are being stuck on a continued path of underachieving or even failure because no one seems to give them a real chance or the tools required to achieve success. For a good portion of the book, I felt like I was reading another article for class; the problem is brought up and addressed, in several different ways, but we never find a solid solutions. The only solution that educators have been using is to put all of the remedial or underprepared together so they dont hold anyone else back, but they also never get the opportunity to learn. Rose makes the good argument that tests or exams should not just be a regurgitation of information that the teacher gave, but failed to give more than one or two examples. To engage students, we as educators must be able to do more than just lecture for an hour and expect them to be paying attention. Teaching, I was coming to understand, was a kind of romanceà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦You wooed kids with these things, invented a relationship of sorts, the terms of connection being a narrative, the historical event.(Rose pg 102) I think this quote embodies everything that a teacher needs to do to engage students to help them want to learn. By creating a romance with learning, the students can feel excited and happy about learning. The students can feel giddy about buying a book or even solving the math equation, it all depends on how the teachers choose to engage them. All in all, Rose makes some very convincing arguments about the decline of the education system, but like many of the authors we have read, he only offers a few ideas to fix the problem. His idea of creating a kind of romance with education to engage the students is a good idea, but a lot of teachers may argue that it will meet with to much resistance. As many of us have witnessed or even experienced, standing at the front of the classroom and just lecturing does not engage many students and with todays generation, they will probably be on Facebook or Twitter while you are giving your lecture. So how do we engage the students of this generation? Do we turn to technology to help us run a classroom or do we stick with the old lecture and hope that students are paying attention? I believe there has to be a compromise between lecture, some form of group work and technology. By allowing group work, like Rose does in some of his classes, the students can learn from each other and help to e xpand their own ways of thinking. By still using some lecture, as Rose does as well, you as the teacher still get your say in, hopefully in a creative way that the students enjoy listening to and learning from. And with technology, the students in this generation get to use what they are familiar with to help them, and some students even find enjoyment when the teacher needs help with the new projector or smartboards. Rose brings up many problems and offers just a few good solutions but I believe the problem of education and the underprepared has been around for a very long time and it will take more than a book or a few ideas to fix it.

Confidence and Innocence Through Point of View

John Updike’s well-known short story, â€Å"A & P†, employs a unique form of narrative, utilizing the first person point of view.The themes of innocence and confidence of the youth intertwine in Updike’s story, through a play in narrative tone, as made possible by the first person point of view. As an effect of this narrative form, the story begins abruptly: â€Å"In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits.† The tension that will slowly build up as the story progresses is given right away at the narration’s first blow.Followed by the first sentence is a statement from the persona, which serves as a device to establish the story’s setting. At this point, a â€Å"camera† is set up for us in the place where the story happens. The voice in the narrative serves as the set of eyes by which we witness all events taking place. Set in the A & P grocery store, the story unfolds in a setting of complex structure—shelves with i tems lined up and several identical aisles.Perhaps, with this focused and limited set of eyes, the first person point of view allows the reader to get a simplified description of the A & P’s surroundings: â€Å"I’m in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door . . .† Throughout the story, we meet characters and witness events through this perspective.Updike’s narration, however, is not just unique in terms of point of view. The choice of perspective also enables the reader to hear a distinct â€Å"voice.†Accompanied by a pair of eyes is a voice and tone that contributes to strengthening the realistic feel of the story.  Ã‚   It is noticeable that the language used by the author is very conversational, making it feel like the voice connects directly to the reader. Not only does it tell the story; it slowly forms a personality, which, in this case of using the first person point of view, is not excluded from the story’s turn of event s.In â€Å"A & P†, we witness an incident caused by three teenage girls in bathing suits from the perspective of Sammy, a nineteen-year-old boy working at the check-out counter. It is interesting that his name is not revealed until the late middle portion of the story. Nevertheless, his character has already been established at the very beginning, where we hear his voice and vicariously experience the story. To further explore this point, let me cite a few lines, which contribute to establishing Sammy’s character.Seeing the three girls in bathing suits, he immediately focuses his attention to one girl, which he refers to as a â€Å"chunky kid.† Here, by noting his word choice, Sammy already appears to us as a free-spirited teenager. This is reiterated as he comments on the customer who complains as Sammy rings the purchase a second time:   â€Å"She's one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up. She'd been watching cash registers forty years and probably never seen a mistake before.†These lines are dabbed with a sense of annoyance towards elders, and in this case, an old lady. Later on in the story, we get the same feel in his somewhat mocking remark: â€Å". . . women generally put on a shirt or shorts or something before they get out of the car into the street. And anyway these are usually women with six children and varicose veins mapping their legs and nobody, including them, could care less.†This tone, which brings with it a sense of confidence freedom of spirit, also shows us the innocence behind the personality—his opinions are quite shallow, leaning towards trivial matters. This overall tone contributes and prepares us for the shifts that occur in the story. The finality in Sammy’s tone falters when he begins to speak of Lengel, the single figure of authority in the story. More and more, the image presen ted to us of Lengel reveals Sammy’s innocence. And indeed, the story’s conclusion confirms it.The presence of the three girls in A & P also reflects the innocent confidence of the youth. Baring all, they brazenly enter into a place, not caring that their outfits don’t blend in. At first, it appears to us as a dare, as something that â€Å"Queenie† perhaps suggested—a rebellious act, which could probably be an act against authority, intended to project superiority over rules and adults.However, this queen-like image of strength also falters at the entrance of Lengel into the story. Lengel obviously represents authority—as manager and as Sunday School teacher. Firm in his tone—not defensive or angry, nor is he loud and uncontrolled, he calls out the unfitting clothing worn by these three young ladies.As he speaks, we feel the stark contrast of tone between him and the teenagers in the story. Right after this, one of the girl mentions he r mother as an excuse: â€Å"My mother asked me to pick up a jar of herring snacks.† Immediately, the brazen air to â€Å"Queenie† vanishes—she appears to us as a little girl hiding under her mother’s skirt. By inserting a figure as Lengel into the narrative, Sammy’s tone is helplessly muffled—as if he suddenly gives in to how things are—and not as how he perceives things to be.The events that follow feel like a gradual crash. Impulsive as he is, Sammy decides to play the role of an â€Å"unsuspected hero.† And the way he narrates his story implies that his next act is only seemingly brave, defiant, and strong.He makes his motives clear: â€Å"The girls, and who'd blame them, are in a hurry to get out, so I say â€Å"I quit† to Lengel quick enough for them to hear, hoping they'll stop and watch me, their unsuspected hero.† Not knowing how to handle the situation, he puts up a front, faltering more and more:  "I started to say something that came out â€Å"Fiddle-de-doo.† It's a saying of my grand- mother's, and I know she would have been pleased.†Again, figures of authority are projected in the story—the mention of his grandmother, for instance. Soon after that, Lengel’s input to Sammy’s impulsiveness makes him look even more innocent and young—an image which veers away from the initial confidence suggested by the tone made possible by the narration’s first person point of view: â€Å"Lengel sighs and begins to look very patient and old and gray. He's been a friend of my parents for years.â€Å"Sammy, you don't want to do this to your Mom and Dad,† he tells me.† Parents once again come into the picture. And the mockery thrown by the

Artificial Selection in Plants

In the 1800s, Charles Darwin, with some help from Alfred Russel Wallace, first came up with and published his On the Origin of Species in which he proposed an actual mechanism explaining how species evolved over time. He called this mechanism natural selection, which basically means individuals possessing the most favorable adaptations for the environments in which they lived would survive long enough to reproduce and pass down those desirable traits to their offspring. Darwin hypothesized that in nature, this process would only occur over very long periods of time and through several generations of offspring but eventually, unfavorable characteristics would cease to exist and only the new, favorable adaptations would survive in the gene pool. Darwins Experiments With Artificial Selection When Darwin returned from his voyage on the HMS Beagle, during which he first began formulating his ideas on evolution, he wanted to test his new hypothesis. Since its aim is to accumulate favorable adaptations to create a more desirable species, artificial selection is very similar to natural selection. Instead of letting nature take its often lengthy course, however, evolution is helped along by humans who choose desirable traits and breed specimens possessing those characteristics in order to create offspring with those traits. Darwin turned to artificial selection to gather the data he needed to test out his theories. Darwin experimented with breeding birds, artificially selecting various characteristics such as beak size and shape and color. Through his efforts, he was able to show that he could change birds visible features and also breed for modified behavioral traits, much as natural selection might accomplish over many generations in the wild. Selective Breeding for Agriculture Artificial selection does not only work with animals, however. There was—and continues to be—a great demand for artificial selection in plants as well. For centuries, humans have been using artificial selection to manipulate the phenotypes of plants. Perhaps the most famous example of artificial selection in plant biology came from Austrian monk Gregor Mendel, whose experiments with breeding pea plants in his monastery garden and subsequently collecting and recording all of the pertinent data would go on to form the basis for the entire modern field of Genetics. By either cross-pollinating his subject plants or allowing them to self-pollinate, depending on which traits he wished to reproduce in the offspring generation, Mendel was able to figure out many of the laws that govern the genetics of sexually reproducing organisms. Over the last century, artificial selection has been successfully used to create new hybrids of crops and fruit. For instance, corn can be bred to be larger and thicker in the cobs to increase grain yield from a single plant. Other notable crosses include broccoflower (a cross between broccoli and cauliflower) and a tangelo (the hybrid of a tangerine and a grapefruit). The new crosses create a distinctive flavor of the vegetable or fruit that combines the properties of their parent plants. Genetically Modified Foods   More recently, a new kind of artificial selection has been used in efforts to enhance food and other crop plants for everything from disease resistance to shelf life to color and nutritional value. Genetically modified (GM foods), also known as  genetically engineered foods  (GE foods), or  bioengineered foods,  got their start in the late 1980s. Its a method that alters plants a cellular level by introducing genetically modified agents into the propagation process. Genetic modification was first tried out on tobacco plants but quickly spread to food crops—starting with the tomato—and has enjoyed remarkable success. The practice has undergone considerable backlash, however, from consumers concerned with the potential for unintentional negative side effects that may result from eating genetically altered fruits and vegetables. Artificial Selection for Plant Esthetics Apart from agricultural applications, one of the most common reasons for selective plant breeding is to produce esthetic adaptations. Take, for example, the breeding of flowers to create a particular color or shape (such as the mind-boggling variety of rose species currently available). Brides and/or their wedding planners often have a specific color scheme in mind for the special day, and flowers that match that theme are often an important factor in realizing their vision. To that end, florists and flower producers often use artificial selection to create blends of colors, different color patterns, and even leaf coloring patterns to achieve the desired results. Around Christmas time, poinsettia plants make popular decorations. Poinsettias can range in color from a deep red or burgundy to a more traditional bright Christmas red, to white—or a mixture of any of those. The colored portion of the poinsettia is actually a leaf, not a flower, however, artificial selection is still used to get the desired color for any given plant variety.