Chapter 5: Identity and Society
Mirror by Sylvia Plath
(/plæθ/; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965), as well as The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death in 1963. The Collected Poems were published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth to receive this honor posthumously.Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Plath studied at Smith College in Massachusetts and at Newnham College in Cambridge, England. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England. Their relationship was tumultuous. Plath described, in her letters, the abuse she suffered at his hands. They had two children before separating in 1962.
Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life, and was treated multiple times with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). She killed herself in 1963.
Plath was clinically depressed for most of her adult life, and was treated multiple times with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). She killed herself in 1963.
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Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, biting social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism.
As a writer, Orwell produced literary criticism and poetry, fiction and polemical journalism; and is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics and literature, language and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked George Orwell second among "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Two Minutes Hate", "Room 101", "memory hole", "Newspeak", "doublethink", "proles", "unperson", and "thoughtcrime".
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Orwell's wife Eileen started working in the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information in central London, staying during the week with her family in Greenwich. Orwell also submitted his name to the Central Register for war work, but nothing transpired. "They won't have me in the army, at any rate at present, because of my lungs", Orwell told Geoffrey Gorer. He returned to Wallington, and in late 1939 he wrote material for his first collection of essays, Inside the Whale. For the next year he was occupied writing reviews for plays, films and books for The Listener, Time and Tide and New Adelphi. On 29 March 1940 his long association with Tribune began with a review of a sergeant's account of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. At the beginning of 1940, the first edition of Connolly's Horizon appeared, and this provided a new outlet for Orwell's work as well as new literary contacts. In May the Orwells took lease of a flat in London at Dorset Chambers, Chagford Street, Marylebone. It was the time of the Dunkirk evacuation and the death in France of Eileen's brother Lawrence caused her considerable grief and long-term depression. Throughout this period Orwell kept a wartime diary.
During most of his career, Orwell was best known for his journalism, in essays, reviews, columns in newspapers and magazines and in his books of reportage: Down and Out in Paris and London (describing a period of poverty in these cities), The Road to Wigan Pier (describing the living conditions of the poor in northern England, and class division generally) and Homage to Catalonia. According to Irving Howe, Orwell was "the best English essayist since Hazlitt, perhaps since Dr Johnson."[128]
Modern readers are more often introduced to Orwell as a novelist, particularly through his enormously successful titles Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The former is often thought to reflect degeneration in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism; the latter, life under totalitarian rule. Nineteen Eighty-Four is often compared to Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; both are powerful dystopian novels warning of a future world where the state machine exerts complete control over social life. In 1984, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 were honoured with the Prometheus Award for their contributions to dystopian literature. In 2011 he received it again for Animal Farm.
Coming Up for Air, his last novel before World War II, is the most "English" of his novels; alarms of war mingle with images of idyllic Thames-side Edwardian childhood of protagonist George Bowling. The novel is pessimistic; industrialism and capitalism have killed the best of Old England, and there were great, new external threats. In homely terms, its protagonist George Bowling posits the totalitarian hypotheses of Franz Borkenau, Orwell, Ignazio Silone and Koestler: "Old Hitler's something different. So's Joe Stalin. They aren't like these chaps in the old days who crucified people and chopped their heads off and so forth, just for the fun of it ... They're something quite new—something that's never been heard of before".
As a writer, Orwell produced literary criticism and poetry, fiction and polemical journalism; and is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics and literature, language and culture. In 2008, The Times ranked George Orwell second among "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Two Minutes Hate", "Room 101", "memory hole", "Newspeak", "doublethink", "proles", "unperson", and "thoughtcrime".
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Orwell's wife Eileen started working in the Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information in central London, staying during the week with her family in Greenwich. Orwell also submitted his name to the Central Register for war work, but nothing transpired. "They won't have me in the army, at any rate at present, because of my lungs", Orwell told Geoffrey Gorer. He returned to Wallington, and in late 1939 he wrote material for his first collection of essays, Inside the Whale. For the next year he was occupied writing reviews for plays, films and books for The Listener, Time and Tide and New Adelphi. On 29 March 1940 his long association with Tribune began with a review of a sergeant's account of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. At the beginning of 1940, the first edition of Connolly's Horizon appeared, and this provided a new outlet for Orwell's work as well as new literary contacts. In May the Orwells took lease of a flat in London at Dorset Chambers, Chagford Street, Marylebone. It was the time of the Dunkirk evacuation and the death in France of Eileen's brother Lawrence caused her considerable grief and long-term depression. Throughout this period Orwell kept a wartime diary.
During most of his career, Orwell was best known for his journalism, in essays, reviews, columns in newspapers and magazines and in his books of reportage: Down and Out in Paris and London (describing a period of poverty in these cities), The Road to Wigan Pier (describing the living conditions of the poor in northern England, and class division generally) and Homage to Catalonia. According to Irving Howe, Orwell was "the best English essayist since Hazlitt, perhaps since Dr Johnson."[128]
Modern readers are more often introduced to Orwell as a novelist, particularly through his enormously successful titles Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The former is often thought to reflect degeneration in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism; the latter, life under totalitarian rule. Nineteen Eighty-Four is often compared to Brave New World by Aldous Huxley; both are powerful dystopian novels warning of a future world where the state machine exerts complete control over social life. In 1984, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 were honoured with the Prometheus Award for their contributions to dystopian literature. In 2011 he received it again for Animal Farm.
Coming Up for Air, his last novel before World War II, is the most "English" of his novels; alarms of war mingle with images of idyllic Thames-side Edwardian childhood of protagonist George Bowling. The novel is pessimistic; industrialism and capitalism have killed the best of Old England, and there were great, new external threats. In homely terms, its protagonist George Bowling posits the totalitarian hypotheses of Franz Borkenau, Orwell, Ignazio Silone and Koestler: "Old Hitler's something different. So's Joe Stalin. They aren't like these chaps in the old days who crucified people and chopped their heads off and so forth, just for the fun of it ... They're something quite new—something that's never been heard of before".
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CONVERSATION: Changes and Transformations
SOURCES:
1. Jon Krakauer / The Devil's Thumb (nonfiction)
2. Caitlin Horrocks / Zolaria (fiction)
3. Sharon Olds / My Son the Man and The Possessive (poetry)
4. William Shakespeare / The Seven Ages of Man (drama)
5. James Joyce / Eveline (fiction)
6. from Souvenir of the Carlisle Indian School (photographs)
The Devil's Thumb
Jon Krakauer
(born April 12, 1954) is an American writer and mountaineer. He is the author of best-selling non-fiction books--Into the Wild; Into Thin Air; Under the Banner of Heaven; and Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman—as well as numerous magazine articles. He was a member of an ill-fated expedition to summit Mount Everest in 1996, one of the deadliest disasters in the history of climbing Everest.
After graduating from college, Krakauer spent five weeks alone in the wilderness of the Stikine Icecap region of Alaska and climbed a new route on the Devils Thumb, an experience he described in Eiger Dreams and in Into the Wild. In 1992, he made his way to Cerro Torre in the Andes of Patagonia—a sheer granite peak considered to be one of the most difficult technical climbs in the world.
In 1996, Krakauer took part in a guided ascent of Mount Everest. His group was one of those caught in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, in which a violent storm trapped a number of climbers high on the slopes of the mountain. Krakauer reached the peak and returned to camp, but four of his teammates (including group leader Rob Hall) died while making their descent in the storm.
A candid recollection of the event was published in Outside magazine and, later, in the book Into Thin Air. By the end of the 1996 climbing season, fifteen people had died on the mountain, making it the deadliest single year in Everest history to that point. This has been exceeded by the sixteen deaths in the 2014 Mount Everest avalanche, and the 2015 earthquake avalanche disaster in which nineteen people were killed. Krakauer has publicly criticized the commercialization of Mount Everest.
After graduating from college, Krakauer spent five weeks alone in the wilderness of the Stikine Icecap region of Alaska and climbed a new route on the Devils Thumb, an experience he described in Eiger Dreams and in Into the Wild. In 1992, he made his way to Cerro Torre in the Andes of Patagonia—a sheer granite peak considered to be one of the most difficult technical climbs in the world.
In 1996, Krakauer took part in a guided ascent of Mount Everest. His group was one of those caught in the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, in which a violent storm trapped a number of climbers high on the slopes of the mountain. Krakauer reached the peak and returned to camp, but four of his teammates (including group leader Rob Hall) died while making their descent in the storm.
A candid recollection of the event was published in Outside magazine and, later, in the book Into Thin Air. By the end of the 1996 climbing season, fifteen people had died on the mountain, making it the deadliest single year in Everest history to that point. This has been exceeded by the sixteen deaths in the 2014 Mount Everest avalanche, and the 2015 earthquake avalanche disaster in which nineteen people were killed. Krakauer has publicly criticized the commercialization of Mount Everest.
Text: spark.adobe.com/page/5ab90539-955e-4e87-9fc4-981225c66272/
Zolaria
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My Son the Man and The Possessive
Sharon Olds
(born November 19, 1942) is an American poet. Olds won the first San Francisco Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She teaches creative writing at New York University and is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU.
Following her Ph.D., Olds let go of an attachment to what she thought she knew about poetic convention and began to write about her family, abuse, and sex, focusing on the work and not the audience.
Olds has said that she is more informed by the work of poets such as Galway Kinnell, Muriel Rukeyser and Gwendolyn Brooks than by confessional poets like Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath. Plath, she comments "was a great genius, with an IQ of at least double mine" and while these women charted well the way of women in the world she says "their steps were not steps I wanted to put my feet in."
When Olds first sent her poetry to a literary magazine she received a reply saying, "This is a literary magazine. If you wish to write about this sort of subject, may we suggest the Ladies' Home Journal. The true subjects of poetry are … male subjects, not your children.
Olds' book The Wellspring (1996), shares with her previous work the use of raw language and startling images to convey truths about domestic and political violence and family relationships. In a New York Times review, Lucy McDiarmid hailed her poetry for its vision: "like Whitman, Ms. Olds sings the body in celebration of a power stronger than political oppression." Alicia Ostriker noted Olds traces the "erotics of family love and pain." Ostriker continues: "In later collections, [Olds] writes of an abusive childhood, in which miserably married parents bully and punish and silence her. She writes, too, of her mother's apology "after 37 years," a moment when "The sky seemed to be splintering, like a window/someone is bursting into or out of." Olds' work is anthologized in over 100 collections, ranging from literary/poetry textbooks to special collections. Her poetry has been translated into seven languages for international publications. She has been published in Beloit Poetry Journal. She was the New York State Poet Laureate for 1998–2000.
Following her Ph.D., Olds let go of an attachment to what she thought she knew about poetic convention and began to write about her family, abuse, and sex, focusing on the work and not the audience.
Olds has said that she is more informed by the work of poets such as Galway Kinnell, Muriel Rukeyser and Gwendolyn Brooks than by confessional poets like Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath. Plath, she comments "was a great genius, with an IQ of at least double mine" and while these women charted well the way of women in the world she says "their steps were not steps I wanted to put my feet in."
When Olds first sent her poetry to a literary magazine she received a reply saying, "This is a literary magazine. If you wish to write about this sort of subject, may we suggest the Ladies' Home Journal. The true subjects of poetry are … male subjects, not your children.
Olds' book The Wellspring (1996), shares with her previous work the use of raw language and startling images to convey truths about domestic and political violence and family relationships. In a New York Times review, Lucy McDiarmid hailed her poetry for its vision: "like Whitman, Ms. Olds sings the body in celebration of a power stronger than political oppression." Alicia Ostriker noted Olds traces the "erotics of family love and pain." Ostriker continues: "In later collections, [Olds] writes of an abusive childhood, in which miserably married parents bully and punish and silence her. She writes, too, of her mother's apology "after 37 years," a moment when "The sky seemed to be splintering, like a window/someone is bursting into or out of." Olds' work is anthologized in over 100 collections, ranging from literary/poetry textbooks to special collections. Her poetry has been translated into seven languages for international publications. She has been published in Beloit Poetry Journal. She was the New York State Poet Laureate for 1998–2000.
Text: onbeing.org/poetry/my-son-the-man/
The Seven Ages of Man
William Shakespeare
(bapt. 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. They also continue to be studied and reinterpreted.Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy in his lifetime. However, in 1623, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that included all but two of his plays. The volume was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Jonson presciently hailed Shakespeare in a now-famous quote as "not of an age, but for all time".
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best work produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy in his lifetime. However, in 1623, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that included all but two of his plays. The volume was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Jonson presciently hailed Shakespeare in a now-famous quote as "not of an age, but for all time".
Eveline
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, most famously stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, his published letters and occasional journalism.
Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. A brilliant student, he briefly attended the Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School before excelling at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances. He went on to attend University College Dublin.
Although most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe centres on Dublin and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies, and friends from his time there. Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses, he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world.
Joyce's work has been an important influence on writers and scholars. Ulysses has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire Modernist movement". The Bulgarian-French literary theorist Julia Kristeva characterised Joyce's novel writing as "polyphonic" and a hallmark of post-modernity.
Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. A brilliant student, he briefly attended the Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School before excelling at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances. He went on to attend University College Dublin.
Although most of his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe centres on Dublin and is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies, and friends from his time there. Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses, he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying, "For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world.
Joyce's work has been an important influence on writers and scholars. Ulysses has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire Modernist movement". The Bulgarian-French literary theorist Julia Kristeva characterised Joyce's novel writing as "polyphonic" and a hallmark of post-modernity.
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from Souvenir of the Carlisle Indian School
CONVERSATION: The Individual in School
1. Alexandra Robbins / from The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth (nonfiction)
2. Faith Erin Hicks / from Friends with Boys (graphic novel)
3. John Taylor Gatto / Against School (nonfiction)
4. Horace Mann / from The Common School Journal (nonfiction)
5. Theodore Sizer / from Horace's School: Redesigning the American High School (nonfiction)
6. Maya Angelou / from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (memoir)
The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth
Alexandria Robbins
is a journalist, lecturer, and author. Her books focus on young adults, education, and modern college life. Five of her books have been New York Times Bestsellers.
She graduated from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland in 1994, and summa cum laude from Yale University in 1998. She was editor-in-chief of her high school newspaper, the Black & White.
Robbins has won several awards for her writing. Her book The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth won the Best Nonfiction Book of the Year Award in the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards. Robbins also received a Books for a Better Life Award in 2012.
In 2014, Robbins was the winner of the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism. Her article, "Children Are Dying," investigated a shortage of critical nutrients that premature babies and other patients need to survive. One week after Washingtonian Magazine published Robbins’ article, the FDA agreed to import the nutrients from other countries.
On May 28, 2015, Robbins wrote a New York Times op-ed about inadequate nurse staffing at hospitals in the United States.Along with author Jane Mayer, she broke the story about President Bush's unimpressive college grades and SATs in The New Yorker. The article got such media attention that reporters called to interview her and asked what her SAT scores were. She has not made her scores known publicly. Robbins was a member of Scroll and Key, one of Yale's secret societies, and has written a book, "Secrets of the Tomb", a social history of societies at Yale, featuring Skull and Bones. The book's 2002 release was timely given the membership of George W. Bush and George H. W. Bush in Bones, and then more so when John Kerry, another member, was the Democratic Party's 2004 presidential nominee.
Robbins was a guest on the satirical program The Colbert Report on August 9 of 2006, during which Colbert challenged claims Robbins makes in The Overachievers, citing some observations of Robbins' own experience, while she countered with observations about systemic problems resulting from a highly competitive system, the cheating that is endemic to competition and problems with standardized testing, arguing that the aforementioned conditions teach misplaced values.
She graduated from Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland in 1994, and summa cum laude from Yale University in 1998. She was editor-in-chief of her high school newspaper, the Black & White.
Robbins has won several awards for her writing. Her book The Geeks Shall Inherit The Earth won the Best Nonfiction Book of the Year Award in the 2011 Goodreads Choice Awards. Robbins also received a Books for a Better Life Award in 2012.
In 2014, Robbins was the winner of the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism. Her article, "Children Are Dying," investigated a shortage of critical nutrients that premature babies and other patients need to survive. One week after Washingtonian Magazine published Robbins’ article, the FDA agreed to import the nutrients from other countries.
On May 28, 2015, Robbins wrote a New York Times op-ed about inadequate nurse staffing at hospitals in the United States.Along with author Jane Mayer, she broke the story about President Bush's unimpressive college grades and SATs in The New Yorker. The article got such media attention that reporters called to interview her and asked what her SAT scores were. She has not made her scores known publicly. Robbins was a member of Scroll and Key, one of Yale's secret societies, and has written a book, "Secrets of the Tomb", a social history of societies at Yale, featuring Skull and Bones. The book's 2002 release was timely given the membership of George W. Bush and George H. W. Bush in Bones, and then more so when John Kerry, another member, was the Democratic Party's 2004 presidential nominee.
Robbins was a guest on the satirical program The Colbert Report on August 9 of 2006, during which Colbert challenged claims Robbins makes in The Overachievers, citing some observations of Robbins' own experience, while she countered with observations about systemic problems resulting from a highly competitive system, the cheating that is endemic to competition and problems with standardized testing, arguing that the aforementioned conditions teach misplaced values.
Friends with Boys
Faith Erin Hicks
is a Canadian cartoonist and animator living in Vancouver, British Columbia.She has created a number of graphic novels, both as sole creator (such as Zombies Calling! and Friends with Boys) and as a collaborator (Nothing Could Possibly Go Wrong and Buffy: The High School Years), as well as serialized works like Demonology 101 and The Adventures of Superhero Girl.After studying animation at Sheridan College, Faith Erin Hicks came to prominence with her long-running webcomic Demonology 101 (D101).
Since the beginning of Demonology 101, Hicks has completed a spinoff of the D101 character Sachs entitled A Distant Faith. She also began work on a zombie-movie inspired comic called Zombies Calling, as well as the dystopian comic Ice (originally published on Modern Tales).
As part of her day job she has also contributed backgrounds to the George of the Jungle animated series and created Jenny’s Brothers, a comic strip to the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. She is currently drawing her original comic series, The Adventures of Superhero Girl, which is run weekly in Halifax's local free paper, The Coast, as well as on her own website. Faith's most recently finished full-length graphic novel is Friends with Boys, which was published in February 2012 from First Second. She was also the illustrator and co-writer for the graphic novel The Last of Us: American Dreams, along with Neil Druckmann.
On January 30, 2014, it was announced that Hicks would illustrate the first of two graphic novels written by young adult author Rainbow Rowell. This book would be published as Pumpkinheads on August 27, 2019. On July 25, 2014, Hicks won the 2014 Eisner Award for Best Publication for Kids for her work on The Adventures of Superhero Girl.
Since the beginning of Demonology 101, Hicks has completed a spinoff of the D101 character Sachs entitled A Distant Faith. She also began work on a zombie-movie inspired comic called Zombies Calling, as well as the dystopian comic Ice (originally published on Modern Tales).
As part of her day job she has also contributed backgrounds to the George of the Jungle animated series and created Jenny’s Brothers, a comic strip to the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. She is currently drawing her original comic series, The Adventures of Superhero Girl, which is run weekly in Halifax's local free paper, The Coast, as well as on her own website. Faith's most recently finished full-length graphic novel is Friends with Boys, which was published in February 2012 from First Second. She was also the illustrator and co-writer for the graphic novel The Last of Us: American Dreams, along with Neil Druckmann.
On January 30, 2014, it was announced that Hicks would illustrate the first of two graphic novels written by young adult author Rainbow Rowell. This book would be published as Pumpkinheads on August 27, 2019. On July 25, 2014, Hicks won the 2014 Eisner Award for Best Publication for Kids for her work on The Adventures of Superhero Girl.
Against School
John Taylor Gatto
(December 15, 1935 – October 25, 2018) was an American author and school teacher. After teaching for nearly 30 years he authored several books on modern education, criticizing its ideology, history, and consequences. He is best known for his books Dumbing Us Down: the Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, and The Underground History of American Education: A Schoolteacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling, which is sometimes considered to be his magnum opus. He was named New York City Teacher of the Year in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991.
Gatto asserts the following regarding what school does to children in Dumbing Us Down:
1. It confuses the students.
2. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school.
3. Apart from the tests and trials, this programming is similar to the television; it fills almost all the "free" time of children.
4. One sees and hears something, only to forget it again.
An article published online by the Foundation for Economic Education described John Taylor Gatto as having mentored "millions of people in writing their own scripts". In his book, Dumbing us Down, John Gatto urged parents to control the education of their children. He made a critical analysis of state education and described the system as comprehensive, informal, historical, and philosophical. John wrote several lectures which disclosed a significant conclusion which encouraged splitting institutional schools and removing certification from teaching. His belief was privatization of education along with a free market system was the most viable option. Gatto's book aimed to inspire education advocates and the inception of Praxis tests. This testing measured academic competence and knowledge of specific subjects required for teaching. Praxis tests are taken by potential educators as part of certification required by state and professional licensing entities.
Gatto demystifies the apparent confusion and meaninglessness of public schooling system by exposing its real purpose and function. According to Gatto, the purpose of public education can be boiled down to six functions:
Gatto asserts the following regarding what school does to children in Dumbing Us Down:
1. It confuses the students.
2. It presents an incoherent ensemble of information that the child needs to memorize to stay in school.
3. Apart from the tests and trials, this programming is similar to the television; it fills almost all the "free" time of children.
4. One sees and hears something, only to forget it again.
- It teaches them to accept their class affiliation.
- It makes them indifferent.
- It makes them emotionally dependent.
- It makes them intellectually dependent.
- It teaches them a kind of self-confidence that requires constant confirmation by experts (provisional self-esteem).
- It makes it clear to them that they cannot hide, because they are always supervised.
An article published online by the Foundation for Economic Education described John Taylor Gatto as having mentored "millions of people in writing their own scripts". In his book, Dumbing us Down, John Gatto urged parents to control the education of their children. He made a critical analysis of state education and described the system as comprehensive, informal, historical, and philosophical. John wrote several lectures which disclosed a significant conclusion which encouraged splitting institutional schools and removing certification from teaching. His belief was privatization of education along with a free market system was the most viable option. Gatto's book aimed to inspire education advocates and the inception of Praxis tests. This testing measured academic competence and knowledge of specific subjects required for teaching. Praxis tests are taken by potential educators as part of certification required by state and professional licensing entities.
Gatto demystifies the apparent confusion and meaninglessness of public schooling system by exposing its real purpose and function. According to Gatto, the purpose of public education can be boiled down to six functions:
- The adjustive or adaptive function. Schools are designed to establish fixed habits of response to authority.
- The integrating function. The purpose of this function is to make kids as like as possible.
- The diagnostic and directive function. Schools determine each student's proper social role.
- The differentiating function. Students are trained no more than to meet the standards of determined social role.
- The selective function. Unadopted students are treated like inferiors in order to prevent their reproduction.
- The propaedeutic function. Small fraction of selected students is created in order to continue the schooling system.
john_taylor_gatto_thepurposeofschooling.pdf | |
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The Common School Journal
Horace Mann
(May 4, 1796 – August 2, 1859) was an American educational reformer and Whig politician known for his commitment to promoting public education. In 1848, after public service as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, Mann was elected to the United States House of Representatives (1848–1853). From September 1852 to his death, he served as President of Antioch College. About Mann's intellectual progressivism, the historian Ellwood P. Cubberley said:
No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends.
Arguing that universal public education was the best way to turn unruly American children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens, Mann won widespread approval from modernizers, especially in the Whig Party, for building public schools. Most U.S. states adopted a version of the system Mann established in Massachusetts, especially the program for normal schools to train professional teachers. Educational historians credit Horace Mann, along with Henry Barnard and Catherine Beecher as one of the major advocates of the Common School Movement.It was not until he was appointed Secretary in 1837 of the newly created Massachusetts Board of Education that he began the work which was to place him in the foremost rank of American educators. On entering on his duties, he withdrew from all other professional or business engagements and politics.
He held this position, and worked with a remarkable intensity, holding teachers' conventions, delivering numerous lectures and addresses, carrying on an extensive correspondence, and introducing numerous reforms. Mann persuaded his fellow modernizers, especially those in the Whig Party, to legislate tax-supported elementary public education in their states and to feminize the teaching force. Most northern states adopted one version or another of the system he established in Massachusetts, especially the program for "normal schools" to train professional teachers.
Mann traveled to every School in the state so he could physically examine each school ground.[citation needed] He planned and inaugurated the Massachusetts normal school system in Lexington (which shortly thereafter moved to Framingham), Barre (which shortly thereafter moved to Westfield) and Bridgewater, and began preparing a series of annual reports, which had a wide circulation and were considered as being "among the best expositions, if, indeed, they are not the very best ones, of the practical benefits of a common school education both to the individual and to the state". By his advocacy of the disuse of corporal punishment in school discipline, he was involved in a controversy with some of the Boston teachers that resulted in the adoption of his views.
In 1838, he founded and edited The Common School Journal. In this journal, Mann targeted the public school and its problems. His six main principles were:
Mann hoped that by bringing all children of all classes together, they could have a common learning experience. This would also allow the less fortunate to advance in the social scale and education would "equalize the conditions of men." Moreover, it was viewed also as a road to social advancement by the early labor movement and as a goal of having common schools. Mann also suggested that having schools would help those students who did not have appropriate discipline in the home. Building a person's character was just as important as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Instilling values such as obedience to authority, promptness in attendance, and organizing the time according to bell ringing helped students prepare for future employment.
Mann faced some resistance from parents who did not want to give up the moral education to teachers and bureaucrats. The normal schools trained mostly women, giving them new career opportunities as teachers. Mann believed that women were better suited for teaching, regardless of their status as a mother, and used his position to push for a feminization of the profession.
The practical result of Mann's work was a revolution in the approach used in the common school system of Massachusetts, which in turn influenced the direction of other states. In carrying out his work, Mann met with bitter opposition by some Boston schoolmasters who strongly disapproved of his innovative pedagogical ideas, and by various religious sectarians, who contended against the exclusion of all sectarian instruction from the schools.
No one did more than he to establish in the minds of the American people the conception that education should be universal, non-sectarian, free, and that its aims should be social efficiency, civic virtue, and character, rather than mere learning or the advancement of sectarian ends.
Arguing that universal public education was the best way to turn unruly American children into disciplined, judicious republican citizens, Mann won widespread approval from modernizers, especially in the Whig Party, for building public schools. Most U.S. states adopted a version of the system Mann established in Massachusetts, especially the program for normal schools to train professional teachers. Educational historians credit Horace Mann, along with Henry Barnard and Catherine Beecher as one of the major advocates of the Common School Movement.It was not until he was appointed Secretary in 1837 of the newly created Massachusetts Board of Education that he began the work which was to place him in the foremost rank of American educators. On entering on his duties, he withdrew from all other professional or business engagements and politics.
He held this position, and worked with a remarkable intensity, holding teachers' conventions, delivering numerous lectures and addresses, carrying on an extensive correspondence, and introducing numerous reforms. Mann persuaded his fellow modernizers, especially those in the Whig Party, to legislate tax-supported elementary public education in their states and to feminize the teaching force. Most northern states adopted one version or another of the system he established in Massachusetts, especially the program for "normal schools" to train professional teachers.
Mann traveled to every School in the state so he could physically examine each school ground.[citation needed] He planned and inaugurated the Massachusetts normal school system in Lexington (which shortly thereafter moved to Framingham), Barre (which shortly thereafter moved to Westfield) and Bridgewater, and began preparing a series of annual reports, which had a wide circulation and were considered as being "among the best expositions, if, indeed, they are not the very best ones, of the practical benefits of a common school education both to the individual and to the state". By his advocacy of the disuse of corporal punishment in school discipline, he was involved in a controversy with some of the Boston teachers that resulted in the adoption of his views.
In 1838, he founded and edited The Common School Journal. In this journal, Mann targeted the public school and its problems. His six main principles were:
- the public should no longer remain ignorant;
- that such education should be paid for, controlled, and sustained by an interested public;
- that this education will be best provided in schools that embrace children from a variety of backgrounds;
- that this education must be non-sectarian;
- that this education must be taught using the tenets of a free society; and
- that education should be provided by well-trained, professional teachers.
Mann hoped that by bringing all children of all classes together, they could have a common learning experience. This would also allow the less fortunate to advance in the social scale and education would "equalize the conditions of men." Moreover, it was viewed also as a road to social advancement by the early labor movement and as a goal of having common schools. Mann also suggested that having schools would help those students who did not have appropriate discipline in the home. Building a person's character was just as important as reading, writing, and arithmetic. Instilling values such as obedience to authority, promptness in attendance, and organizing the time according to bell ringing helped students prepare for future employment.
Mann faced some resistance from parents who did not want to give up the moral education to teachers and bureaucrats. The normal schools trained mostly women, giving them new career opportunities as teachers. Mann believed that women were better suited for teaching, regardless of their status as a mother, and used his position to push for a feminization of the profession.
The practical result of Mann's work was a revolution in the approach used in the common school system of Massachusetts, which in turn influenced the direction of other states. In carrying out his work, Mann met with bitter opposition by some Boston schoolmasters who strongly disapproved of his innovative pedagogical ideas, and by various religious sectarians, who contended against the exclusion of all sectarian instruction from the schools.
from Horace's School: Redesigning the American High School
Theodore Sizer
(June 23, 1932 – October 21, 2009) was a leader of educational reform in the United States, the founder (and eventually President Emeritus) of the Essential school movement and was known for challenging longstanding practices and assumptions about the functioning of American secondary schools. Beginning in the late 1970s, he had worked with hundreds of high schools, studying the development and design of the American educational system, leading to his major work Horace's Compromise in 1984. In the same year, he founded the Coalition of Essential Schools based on the principles espoused in Horace's Compromise.
After teaching in high schools, he earned his masters and doctorate in education from Harvard University in 1957 and 1961, respectively. He was a faculty member and later dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a position he held during the 1969 Harvard student strike. While dean, he reorganized the school into seven departments, expanding the resources available for research (particularly in the area of urban education), while expanding minority enrollment. In 1970, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Education.Sizer left Harvard to serve as headmaster of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts from 1972 to 1981, to lead a study of American high schools sponsored by the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the National Association of Independent Schools. From 1983 to 1997, he worked at Brown University as a professor and chair of the education department, and in 1993, he became the Founding Director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
During his years at Brown, he produced most of his books, including Horace's Compromise. In it, he examined the fundamental compromise at the heart of allegedly successful American high schools. He suggested that the students agree to generally behave in exchange for the schools agreeing not to push them too hard or challenge them too severely. Thus, he widened the scope of schools that were failing to do their best to educate children far beyond the traditionally criticized poor and urban schools and challenged the conceptions of what could be considered a successful school. The ideas explored in his Horace Trilogy supply much of the foundation of the Coalition of Essential Schools.
After retiring from Brown, Sizer took a one-year position during the 1998–99 school year as co-principal (with his wife Nancy Faust Sizer) of the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School, of which he was a Trustee Emeritus and helped to found. Their book, Keeping School (coauthored with Deborah Meier and Nancy Faust Sizer), drew from this experience. From 1997 through 2006, Sizer returned to the Harvard Graduate School of Education as a visiting professor, co-teaching a course on redesigning the American secondary school with his wife,[10] while he continued to work on the issues of integrating the multiple services that low socio-economic status families need in poor communities.
After teaching in high schools, he earned his masters and doctorate in education from Harvard University in 1957 and 1961, respectively. He was a faculty member and later dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a position he held during the 1969 Harvard student strike. While dean, he reorganized the school into seven departments, expanding the resources available for research (particularly in the area of urban education), while expanding minority enrollment. In 1970, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Education.Sizer left Harvard to serve as headmaster of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts from 1972 to 1981, to lead a study of American high schools sponsored by the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the National Association of Independent Schools. From 1983 to 1997, he worked at Brown University as a professor and chair of the education department, and in 1993, he became the Founding Director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
During his years at Brown, he produced most of his books, including Horace's Compromise. In it, he examined the fundamental compromise at the heart of allegedly successful American high schools. He suggested that the students agree to generally behave in exchange for the schools agreeing not to push them too hard or challenge them too severely. Thus, he widened the scope of schools that were failing to do their best to educate children far beyond the traditionally criticized poor and urban schools and challenged the conceptions of what could be considered a successful school. The ideas explored in his Horace Trilogy supply much of the foundation of the Coalition of Essential Schools.
After retiring from Brown, Sizer took a one-year position during the 1998–99 school year as co-principal (with his wife Nancy Faust Sizer) of the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School, of which he was a Trustee Emeritus and helped to found. Their book, Keeping School (coauthored with Deborah Meier and Nancy Faust Sizer), drew from this experience. From 1997 through 2006, Sizer returned to the Harvard Graduate School of Education as a visiting professor, co-teaching a course on redesigning the American secondary school with his wife,[10] while he continued to work on the issues of integrating the multiple services that low socio-economic status families need in poor communities.
Synopsis Review: digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1301&context=ce
from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
(/ˈændʒəloʊ/ (listen) AN-jə-loh; born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of seven autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. She was also an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.
With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for Black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of Black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some US libraries. Angelou's most celebrated works have been labeled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes including racism, identity, family and travel.
With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for Black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of Black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some US libraries. Angelou's most celebrated works have been labeled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes including racism, identity, family and travel.