My Writing

Welcome to my blog about English 201!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

I Just Wanna Be Average

In "I Just Wanna Be Average" by Mike Rose I really enjoyed how descriptive he was. I was captivated by the detail in which he described the effects school can have on students. How crazy and demanding of an environment it is. School changes people, expects them to excel and strive to do their best. It is a time to define you. The word that stuck out to me was "average" - typical; common; ordinary. However, to be average is not a bad thing. Many students may not want to be average but they may expect that they can achieve nothing more than to just be average. This is because they lack the motivation to excel or even the right person to push them in that direction. It wasn't until his teacher Mr. MacFarland pushed the author Mike Rose to try harder in his classes did he make any effort. I think everyone can relate to that one teacher that actually cared. The teacher that when beyond teaching and pushed their students to better themselves. I also found the description of vocational education and how students were placed there to be appalling. Mike Rose describes a vocational track as "a place for those who are just not making it, a dumping ground for the disaffected." I know it is meant to help these students but in the end it sounds much like it is not challenging them. Overall this article was extremely interesting to read especially about the how affected he was by the way his school taught their students.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

The Achievement of Desire

In "The Achievement of Desire" Richard Rodriguez explains the meaning of education. Education is not just a tool used for students to grow in knowledge but also an adaptive environment to mold the student's minds. Richard Rodriguez speaks of the difficulty he had in his academic growth. This difficulty was produced by the necessity to balance his school life with his home life. He said that he would spend hours reading and completing homework however; his parents were unable to understand his passion for learning. His parents, especially his mother, did however encourage him to continue on with his studies in hopes of attaining a good job later on in life. Throughout his studies he realized the changes that were occurring within him as a person. As he saw these changes he became more and more frightened that he was loosing himself. He was so changed by his studies that his home life became awkward to the point where he could hardly hold a conversation with his parents. He states "...the scholarship boy grows nostalgic because he remains the uncertain scholar, bright enough to have moved from his past, yet unable to feel easy, a part of a community of academics." This quote describes his difficult transition into a scholarship boy. He had great potential to be a scholar and was able to break away from his past however, he was unable to feel as though he was apart of the academic community he so longed to be in. I found this story gave me new perspective on education and how it affects students.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Inventing the University

In reading Inventing the University and completing assignment 2 I have thought a lot about my writing both at home and in the classroom. In class "students have to appropriate (or be appropriated by) a specialized discourse, and they have to do this as though they were easily and comfortably one with their audience, as though they were members of the academy..." This quote speaks for itself in course writings we have to change our mindset to fit with what is required of us. I found it very interesting how David Bartholomae describes course writing and the different examples he provided of what was acceptable or unacceptable for academic discourse. It was also intriguing in reading his examples about what was considered "creativity" in student’s writings. Creativity is defined by dictionary.com as " from originality of thought, expression, etc.; imaginative resulting." The story about the clay model was considered creative while the story about the football players socks was unoriginal and nowhere near unique. This brought up the memory of my entrance essay and how I could have better taken on my role in writing to impress and relate to my readers, the faculty members. I also thought about how we have to write in a language as the scholars do in order to write the academic discourse.