Essay for Week 14: Learning, Grading, and Schooling

I really liked this topic for the essay this week so I felt like saving it for the end of the semester in this class.  Having a mother, two aunts, an uncle, a set of grandparents, and a sister who are all teachers as well as having experience myself with tutoring and working in an after school program for several years, I have really been indoctrinated into the school system.  I absolutely love where we've come as a society in teaching and learning, yet I realize that there are many areas that we need to fix.  My background is in grade schooling (under 5th grade) so I will mainly be talking to that point.

For me, I believe that one of the biggest strengths that our school systems have is that our teachers have a great passion for instructing and guiding youth.  While I know there are always bad apples in the group, the majority of teachers I know absolutely love making an impact on their wards and pushing them to be their best.  Even when I was a kid back in first grade, one of my favorite teachers pushed me to strive for more.  I remember she would give me extra material to work on when I breezed through the regular material.  She made learning challenging yet exciting, and I actually got to work with her when I was older in high school.

 My absolute favorite comic series Calvin and Hobbes.  Web Source

However, the flip side to this is passionless teachers who are there acting almost like a babysitter.  For my school and several other public schools I know of, oftentimes sports coaches are put into certain teaching areas that they have no reason to be in.  While I know there are exceptions because I've had several, they care more about coaching than teaching.  Personally, I had a very weak background in history and social studies because our school filled in certain history positions with coaches who would be gone or more concerned with the upcoming games.  I know this can't be helped because its costs the already broke schools lots of money to have lots of teachers in different areas, but regardless the importance of equipping students with a strong education is great because although it is cliche children really are our future.

Week 12 Essay: Beowulf Reading Assessment

 First Page of Beowulf.  Source

Looking back at everything I have read up to this point, I must say that the Beowulf has been my favorite unit to read so far, even more than Hiawatha which was my favorite up to this point.  I honestly can say that I enjoyed every part of the epic, from the exposition to the conclusion.  I thought that it began strongly, showing Beowulf as a gifted youth who wanted to test his limits.  The background was good as well; it gave enough information to immerse the reader in the world but not enough to bore with pointless information.  This reading fits into my plan to add a new story between my first and second storybook entries.  The character of Wiglaf and the dynamics between him and Beowulf can work out for my storytelling for a transition between my stories, which I felt were too spaced.  The main things that surprised me were Beowulf's age and the story involving the dragon.  After that abomination of a CG Beowulf movie, I just assumed that it followed closely and Beowulf was an older man when all of the story occurs instead of a very young man.  I also didn't think there would be a dragon in the telling of Beowulf, but I thought it was a nice part.  In regards to the story itself, I thought everything worked very well.  The descriptions were phenomenal, when I was reading the unit I could imagine what was occurring with ease.  It reminded me a lot of a game I used to play on Xbox, The Elder Scrolls, Skyrim, which had a lot of similar story telling methods and similar backgrounds and themes.  I was slightly surprised that this was a English story though, I always just assumed that Beowulf was a Scandinavian tale instead.

Beowulf

Essay Analysis: The Song of Hiawatha

   I really enjoyed The Song of Hiawatha for this week’s reading, especially Hiawatha himself as a heroic character.  While I covered the topic of heroes before when I read the Iliad, I believe that enough time has passed for me to revisit the topic.  Hiawatha possessed the many different aspects that a hero requires in addition to accomplishing many different heroic feats.  Hiawatha has somewhat of a divine birth since his father is essentially a god and his mother was once a celestial being.  Hiawatha also possesses superhuman strength, speed, and endurance, as seen when he fights his father for several days without rest.  He also fights for other people, such as ridding the land of The Pearl Feather whose magic was hurting people and the land.  Altogether these different characteristics make up what many believe to be necessary for a hero to possess.

Little Hiawatha.  Web Source:  Disney

   One thing that I liked about Hiawatha specifically was that he was not too overpowered.  What I mean by that is sometimes a superhero character is too strong and has no real enemies.  For example, Superman oftentimes gets complaints because he has so many different powers, has very few weaknesses, and is too strong of a character.  Another example would be Goku from the Dragonball Z series, who eventually becomes so strong that all of the other characters from the show are essentially useless.  In my opinion a hero that is so much stronger than his enemies or does not require help from other characters is too much of a hero.  Why I went on that long spiel is because I believe that Hiawatha is a pretty rounded character.  When fighting, he possesses superhuman strength but he also requires help from the other characters, such as when he needed the help of the woodpecker to defeat Pearl Feather.  In my opinion, Hiawatha is a very solid hero who could be included with the list of greats such as Achilles and Hercules.

Week 9 Essay Option 3: Future of Written Media

Future of Written Media

 For this week's essay, I am going to write about the future of writing and my thoughts on what that future might look like.
      Personally, I am a bit more old school and I like reading things on paper.  While that might be destroying the rainforests or whatever, I cannot sit down and read something on a screen for a long period of time, it just doesn't feel right.  Of course, I am slightly biased because I have only used a tablet not really designed for specifically reading and I have never read anything at length on a Kindle or anything similar.  Also, it's not where my eyes hurt, I have spent many hours playing video games staring directly into a computer screen, I just think that paper is the perfect medium for reading.  The best comparison I could make would be comparing a steak grilled outside on a grill compared to inside on a George Foreman grill.  Both do the same job and the George Foreman grill is more efficient, but there is something about a steak cooked over flames.

 Stone Tablets.  Web Source:  New Scientist

   However, I cannot discredit the movement of written media from paper to screen.  Its just another step in the evolution of communication.  I could almost image someone griping about getting rid of oral tradition and writing things down on paper.  There are still oral stories, they didn't disappear with the times.  I believe that its just another way to read, communicate, learn, etc.  In fact, I believe that news is the one media source that will benefit the most from the addition of digital technology.  News spreads so much farther and quicker now that we have this form of communication, and we don't waste nearly as much paper since there is less need for daily papers.
   Lastly, I believe that the conversion of books to digital data is a necessary movement.  The amount of data, media, and literature humanity has been compiling in the past century is staggering.  While I can't remember the source, I remember hearing a factoid that human knowledge is exponentially growing at an insane pace.  Therefore, to stay relevant and informed, it is so much easier to carry a laptop that can access thousands of libraries of information just like that.  If I had to carry the equivalent amount of literature that a Kindle can hold in the form of books, it would be at least 12,000 lbs. based on an average hardcover book weight of two pounds.
    In conclusion, while I prefer to read on paper and I believe that many other people do, written media's transference to a digital platform is extremely convenient.  I believe that books will not be eliminated but instead they will be supplemented by digital writing.

Arabian Nights Tricksters Essay, Week 5

Tricksters in Arabian Nights

   What stood out for me in Arabian Nights was the large amount of tricksters found in the stories.  The heroine Scheherazade, the three old men who help the merchant, the fisherman, the physician, and the Sultan could all be considered tricksters.  I would consider these characters to be not foolish but rather wise and well spoken.  Scheherazade is able to trick her husband, the Sultan, into not killing her and she instead stalls him with elaborate and lengthy stories.  The three old men who help the merchant manage to convince the genie to spare the merchants life with what I believed to be made up stories, but I could be wrong.  The physician manages to kill the Sultan from the story within a story by tricking him into licking a poisoned book.  The fisherman tricks the genie into sparing his life by betting the Genie that he couldn't fit back into his lamp.  Finally, the Sultan from the fisherman's story manages to trick the enchantress into believing he was the slave, allowing him to change everything back to normal and to kill her.  The other characters generally have a poor experience when meeting these trickster; most of characters that interacted with the tricksters ended up dead or they were dissuaded from their original plan.  Also, the other characters generally don't realize what is going on until it is too late for them.  

Scheherazade.  Web Source:  Wikipedia 

   The latter half of Arabian Nights had a trickster, but it wasn't Aladdin.  I considered the magician from Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp to be probably the best trickster from the section.  He convinces Aladdin and his mother that he is a long lost uncle, he convinces Aladdin to retrieve the lamp, and he tricks the princess into trading the magic lamp for a useless lamp.  However, I found him to be foolish because he gives Aladdin a genie from the start since he gave him a magic ring and also leaves him with the magic lamp.  He could have easily overpowered Aladdin after he got him out of the cave.

Week 4 Essay The Voyages of Sindbad: Story Analysis

The Voyages of Sindbad:  Story Analysis

           For this essay analysis, I will focus on the topic of a recurring motif in The Voyages of Sindbad.  This by far, and in fact in probably all of my reading experiences during my life, has the most formulaic repetition of a motif.  My reading of The Voyages of Sindbad was definitely a roller coaster experience and especially my opinion of the story.  At first, I enjoyed the smooth writing style that was presented and the apt use of description.  I had previously read both the Iliad and the Odyssey and I felt like this was a superior story in terms of reading flow, description, and story progression in the sections.  However, my enjoyment of The Voyages of Sindbad quickly plummeted as I began to realize that the entire story had a formulaic pattern:  Sindbad travels to see, his travel is abruptly stopped, he and/or the people with him are placed in danger which results in his companions being eaten, he finds treasure which he takes with him, and then he is miraculously saved after which he returns home a rich man.  There were countless variations of this basic framework in The Voyages of Sindbad but much to my dismay it felt very monotonous reading. 

Sindbad and the Old Man of the Sea.  Web Source:  Stefanmart.de

        After I had time to get over my frustration of the reading, I tried to reason why the story was told as such.  At first I tried to find perhaps an underlying theme that links these tales together.  Maybe these situations were symbolic of an overlying theme or message.  I attempted to reason for this but I got nowhere.  Next, I thought maybe the stories were supposed to build up into a climax.  While one could maybe draw this conclusion since his situations get more convoluted and dire, I don't believe this is the case since he was in danger the entire time.  Finally, after much deliberation, I decided that my opinion was the The Voyages of Sindbad was written as such to show the helplessness of man.  Having read previously other Arabic texts, I've often seen this idea that man has little influence on the world and only survives.  I believe that this is the case for this story as well since Sindbad is just drug along the swift current of his circumstances.  Again, I don't have much support for this claim but that was the interpretation I came up with after reading this story.

Week 3 Essay Assessment: The Odyssey

Assessment:  The Odyssey

  For this week's essay option, I decided to look back at my reading of The Odyssey and make an assessment for this unit.  I thought this was a well rounded and easy to read unit compared to most of the other units that I have gone through so far.  The majority of sections in  The Odyssey unit were very good and flowed together very nicely, compared to its Iliad counterpart which felt very disconnected.  However, I did find a couple of sections in the Odyssey unit unnecessary and should be replaced with others.  My main qualm was with the sections involving the ghosts.  While they are definitely an important part of the epic that Homer gives us, I felt like they could have been put as just as an introduction summary for another section.  We are given a long section over a fairly unimportant character who is only mentioned with by his unfortunate death prior to the trip to the underworld.  Also, the ghosts of famous women section, at least in my opinion, was pointless because the majority of these women haven't been brought up in previous sections or they are not commonplace names.  The sections over Agamemnon and Achilles were all right, they did bring some conclusion if you had read The Iliad, but they did bring in new information that didn't fit very well, such as Achilles having a son who fought in the Trojan War also.  The Ghost of Ajax was in my opinion decent.  My main problem was that it was extremely short and again brought in information that didn't further the Odyssey.  

Odysseus.  Web Source:  Hellenica

   In summation, I felt like these 6 or so sections took up too much of the reading and detracted from the total story.  In fact most of the information was summed up at the beginning of The Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis, where it says that Odysseus got information on the Sirens, Scylla, and Charybdis.  Instead, while I don't know whether this would have worked, but I would have preferred to have some information on when he returns home or even other adventures along the way.  I understand it might not have worked due to a large portion of the book remaining, but I felt like better sections could have been used.  When I finished the Odyssey, I felt like I had watched parts of, for example, the Lord of the Rings where Frodo is on his adventure to Mordor to destroy the One Ring, but never actually saw him destroy it and instead maybe stopped halfway through.  Sure, the majority of parts were good, but without the conclusion you are left somewhat wanting.

Essay for Week 2: The Most Manly of Men, a Look at Heroes in The Iliad

The Most Manly of Men, a Look at Heroes in The Iliad

     By beginning the regular weeks of class with reading The Iliad, I believe that I found a decent motif to begin the class with:  a look at heroes in mythology.  While I could take a more specific look at different elements, I will begin this year fairly broad and try to narrow down to something a bit more specific while looking at heroes.  Before I look at The Iliad, I will try to wrangle down what I believe to be a hero.  I believe that a hero, in the context of this class, is a character who strives for more than an average life and attempts feats that would break a lesser man.  A hero also adheres to a higher purpose or a greater morality, but of course they still possess human qualities and do make mistakes.

Achilles Slays Hector by Peter Paul Rubens. Source:  Artble

      The Iliad is what easily defines what a hero should look like.  Homer gives us numerous heroes to look at, Achilles, Odysseus, Hector, etc., and sets forth standards which these heroes and other heroes can be measured with.  Achilles is a prime example in my opinion of what a hero should look like.  He is physically superior, caring of others, and sticks very closely to his purpose and what he believes to be right and wrong.  Achilles does possess his flaws, but I believe they are not enough to discredit him from being considered a hero.  The prime example of him being a hero, at least in my context, is him doing superhuman feats, such as defeating large amounts of soldiers or chasing down a man aided by a God.  This characteristic to me separates a hero from a protagonist.  Another hero I would consider would be Hector.  While Hector opposes Achilles in battle as a Trojan, I don't believe that he is portrayed as an antagonist in the epic and is instead just another hero who is pitted against Achilles.  Hector would give his life for his comrades, serves his country dutifully, and is no pushover in battle.

     While my decision may change over the course of this class, I will try to look at heroes as a standard guideline for my future projects.

Link to Iliad