Week One

Para Teresa is a poem about two girls that grew up in a different culture than they experienced when they were in elementary school. The author chose to write in both English and Spanish to show that duality that existed in the speakers life at this point in time. In school she, the speaker, was taught not to speak Spanish there and only to speak English. At home her parents probably only understand Spanish and that was what they were most comfortable with.

It seems that when she's writing in English she's reflecting on times and situations where she would have spoken English. Whenever she mentioned details surrounding her school or teachers she would write in English. On the other hand whenever she was reflecting on something about her family or grandparents she would switch to Spanish. Also when she discussed the bond and the struggles that the speaker and Teresa had shared she would write in Spanish to show the connection that they had to each other.

In the article regarding Proposition 30 that I chose, the author, Joe Mathews, compares Prop 30 to a hostage situation. The hostages in this situation are our schools, and the hostage taker is Jerry Brown. If Prop 30 passes then there will be a school tax to help boost school funding but if it fails then the schools will lose even more funding. If Jerry Brown executes on these "trigger cuts" that will cut school funding then he may face serious backlash from the Democratic party, but if he doesn't then he will lose his bargaining power and credibility in the future. The author believes that this is not a fair tactic for the Governor to use.

I read the article called Against School by John Taylor Gatto. In this article Gatto lays out the experiences he had teaching in "some of the worst schools in Manhattan". He talks about the bored students and the boring teachers, how if someone tried to change this, like him, they would be fired for going against the grain. He believes that the whole educational system that was set up is completely false and does the opposite of its apparent goals. There are three main goals that our system claims to uphold he says, "1. To make good people. 2. To make good citizens. 3. To make each person his or her personal best".

Gatto doesn't just believe that these goals failed to be met, but that the whole system was designed for a completely different set of goals. These goals are: to create a populatioin that knows how to react to authority, to breed conformity, to track students into specialized areas so that their social roles can be determined, to teach enough for the pupil to get the job done but no more, to weed out the "failures", and to train a small amount of these students to continue on this system.

In the end of the article he ends with a positive note. He remarks that if you understand the true intentions of the American educational system you can avoid its traps and succeed.