Are Public Schools Creating 'Standardized' Students?

           Having attended public school from kindergarten to tenth grade, I can say that I have first-hand knowledge of the public that public schools try to create. From my experience, public schools do fail to create a diverse environment for students to learn in. Although public schools do try to create a sense of diversity among the students, public schools actively combat diversity in academics through a stagnant curriculum called the common core.

            In The End of Education, Neil Postman states that “sameness is the enemy of vitality and creativity” (Postman 78). Sameness was certainly part of the curriculum in public school. In high school, teachers were forced to adopt a curriculum called the Common Core, which is a national curriculum determined to make sure students learn the exact same lesson as every other student. Every single Honors English two student read 1984 and Macbeth and did the same exact assignments to go along with each book. How can a school system create a diverse learning environment, and a diverse citizenry, when every student reads the same books and does the same assignments? At times, I felt as if school was trying to create identical students, or at least a public that could provide a wonderful analysis of 1984 and Macbeth, but no other books.

            In addition to teaching the same exact material down to every individual assignment, public schools often relied heavily on textbooks and textbook reading to teach courses. Neil Postman and I agree that textbooks are not the effective way to convey information to a student: “Textbooks, to me, are enemies of education, instruments for promoting dogmatism and trivial learning” (Postman 116). Textbooks do not allow a student to question its contents, nor do they allow for active discussions about the subject matter. Textbooks simply present facts that must be memorized for quizzes and tests. In my tenth grade Biology class, I don’t remember my teacher once standing in front of the class, and discussing biology with us. Instead, we were given sections out of a collection of online videos to watch and answer questions on. Better yet, our homework was usually to read and take notes on a chapter of the textbook. Better still, the final exam was a standardized test made by the Maryland education system that tested the students on how well they memorized biology.

            Public schools create a learning environment that encourages sameness, and discourages diversity. Although, there programs in place to learn skills in diverse professions (everything from engineering to cosmetology) very few students were given the opportunity to pursue such diversity. However, more students need to be afforded the opportunity to pursue such interests in our public schools in order to create a diverse citizenry with many different educational backgrounds.

Work Cited

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New  York: Penguin, 2006. Print.

Going After The Truth

            In honor of the AP Lit and the seminar project, I will be criticizing Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien. The protagonist of the novel, Paul Berlin, uses his imagination to deal with the horrors he experiences in the Vietnam War. He imagines that he and his fellow soldiers are chasing a deserter, Cacciato, from Vietnam to Paris, France. Obviously, they didn’t actually do this, so I will criticize Going After Caccito from the perspective of Kierkegaard.

            In Sophie’s World, Gaardner writes that Kierkegaard meant to say, “Only these truths are 'true for me'” (Gaardner 374). One question Kierkegaard might ask is what is Berlin’s truth, and how could his truth be different from the other characters of the novel? It is obvious that Berlin’s truth is different from everyone else’s; On the first page, the narrator says, “Billy Boy had dies of fright, scared to death on the field of battle…” (O’Brien 1). Berlin imagines that Billy Boy Watkins literally dies of fright on the battlefield, but later in the novel we learn the truth; he died after stepping on a land mine. Berlin even imagines a fictional woman, Sarkin Aung Wan!

            However, Kierkegaard might also ask why Berlin’s truth is so different? Berlin imagines an alternate death for Billy, a trip to Paris, and a beautiful woman in order to cope with the terrible events of the war. Berlin’s father offers Berlin this piece of advice before he heads to Vietnam: “You'll see some terrible stuff, I guess.  That's how it goes.  But try to look for the good things, too.  They'll be there if you look.  So watch for them” (O’Brien 63).  Berlin’s father instructs him to see a different truth than the other soldiers, to watch for the “good things.” Indeed, Berlin does not remember the horrible sights he sees during the war. He does not remember the mutiny of his commanding officer Lieutenant Martin or the actual death of Billy Boy Watkins. He leaves his imagination to create his own truth: a trip to Paris and even a beautiful woman. His truth may diverge from reality, but at least he found the truth for him.

Works Cited

Gaarder, Jostein. Sophie's World. New York: Berkely Books, 1994. Print.

O’Brien, Tim. Going after Cacciato. New York: Broadway, 1999. Print.

Was Bush Justified?

      To claim that killing Osama Bin Laden without a trial is unlawful would be like claiming that the United States illegally declared war on Japan after Pearl Harbor. An attack on American soil killing innocent lives is not an ordinary crime that requires the due process of law. It is a declaration of war that requires retaliation. President Bush made such a declaration after the events of 9/11. He declared that “[The Taliban] will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate”, and operation Geronimo finally sealed the fate for the terrorist who planned the 9/11 attacks (Bush). President Bush’s declaration and the operation that followed are not examples of “American exceptionalism”; they are the actions of Americans protecting a country, and a culture that we love (Chomsky). 

            Noam Chomsky argues that Osama Bin Laden’s part in the 9/11 attacks was a horrendous crime, and therefore Bin Laden should have been apprehended, but not killed so he could stand trial. His ‘crimes,’ however, killed about as many people as did the events of Pearl Harbor, which was considered an act of war. His ‘crimes,’ also had a strategic purpose; as Bush declared in his speech, their purpose was “to disrupt and end a way of life” (Bush). As the President of the United States, it was the duty of Bush, and Obama after him, to protect the constitution of the United States, and provide for the common defense. In order to fulfill this duty, the nation had to respond to the violence as a declaration of war to protect the way of life the Taliban declared war on September 11^th.

            Another flaw in Chomsky’s argument is his use of comparison of Bush’s policy to the crimes of the Nazi’s. Interestingly enough, Bush actually compares the terrorists to the Nazis as well. The use of this comparison may be used by both authors because of the negative connotation the word has today, certainly making it easier to appeal to the audience’s emotions. However, Chomsky’s use of the word seems based on the one fact that both the Nazis and Americans used aggression against their enemies, and created a “murderous sectarian conflict” (Chomsky). The difference is the Nazis killed millions of innocent people without being provoked, while the Americans killed the leader of a terrorist organization who wanted to end the United States. The actions of the President were in retaliation to a declaration of war by terrorists and not an example of “American exceptionalism” as claimed by Chomsky.

Works Cited

Bush, George W. "President George W Bush's Address to Congress and the Nation on

Terrorism." 20 Sept. 2001 Speech.

Chomsky, Noam. "Was There an Alternative?" The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 6 Sep. 2011. Web. 10 Sept. 2015.