Reflecting on the First Marking Period

    Eleventh grade is a really busy and chaotic year for everyone, as students attempt to juggle various APs, Honors classes, and extracurricular committments within the average school day. With such busy schedules, half the grade is probably deprived of sleep already. Out of all this confusion, especially from the wide-ranging material we have covered in Pre-Calc and AP Biology so far, it was a great relief to end the day with Language Arts, at least one class that wasn't incredibly stressful and mind-boggling (though time management was needed with weekly blog posts, themes, and independent reading projects going on simultaneously). I think one of the reasons why Language Arts wasn't so hectic was that I actually liked the book we were assigned this first marking period. Unlike the very strange Like Water for Chocolate from last year which was horrid, To Kill A Mockingbird actually had deeper meaning, a well-thought out plot, and sufficient character development. It was more relatable and enjoyable than previous core novel assignments with likable characters and humor, as well as an interesting historical setting. Another thing I liked about Language Arts this first marking period was how we used blog posts for analysis and connections instead of having to fill out endless worksheets, something I have been used to doing in other classes. Also, the To Kill A Mockingbird chapter quizzes were reasonable and objective. I appreciate the fact that Mr. Mogg provided keynotes packets, which came in handy for studying. I hope that by the year's end, my study habits and time management skills will improve.

Waiting on the World to Change (Blog #5: Musical Connection)

    The song Waiting on the World to Change by John Mayer is a "perfect fit" to To Kill A Mockingbird in its theme of changing the world. John Mayer intended his song to raise the question of why people today see injustice in the world but just wait around for change to happen -- without stepping up to make a difference themselves.

"Now we see everything that's going wrong
With the world and those who lead it
We just feel like we don't have the means
To rise above and beat it"

"One day our generation
is going to rule the population
so we keep on waiting, waiting
Waiting on the World to Change"

    The generation that is waiting for the change to come in TKAM is the generation of Scout, Dill, and Jem -- the children who realize that everything is not okay in the world, with the way whites treat colored people or those of lower social status.  However, they feel like they don't have the means, or the ability, to change anything in the world of grown-ups. Jem especially gets frustrated after the jury unanimously declares Tom Robinson to be guilty. When Scout's second grade teacher, Ms. Gates, informed the class about Hitler's discrimination of the Jews in Europe, Scout is confused and asks Jem why people are allowed to hate Hitler for the evil things he did to the Jews in Europe, if people were discriminating here in Maycomb too. One kid in the class even said it was bad to do so to the Jews because "they were white, ain't they?", showing the great inequality between the races at the time. Scout also is upset when Aunt Alexandra tells her not the hang around with Walter Cunningham because he is inferior to them. In this way, the characters of TKAM (or at least the children) are aware of the wrongs of society and are waiting on the world to change, or else growing up until they can do something about it.

Blog #4: Emmett Till: Where do you see social injustice today?

Social justice - (n) is the equal enforcement and protection of laws in a society without prejudice, regardless of race, gender, religion, or wealth.

    Although the world in general has made much progress in this area within the past half-century, social injustice is still evident in many societies today. Even in America, where we pride ourselves in fairness, freedom, and justice, this egalitarian ideal has yet to be reached. In 1955, an African American boy was brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi, for supposedly flirting with a twenty-one year old white woman. The boy's name was Emmett Till, and he was just 14 years old, simply visiting his relatives at the time. The two murderers, Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, kidnapped, beat, and shot Emmett before dumping his body into the river. Yet they were acquitted by the all-white jury and later even boasted about the murder in a Look magazine interview. In May 2004, the Department of Justice condemned the verdict a "grotesque miscarriage of justice."
     Even more recently, in December 2006, another social injustice arose in what was known as the Jena Six. A group of six black teenagers, Robert Bailey (age 17), Mychal Bell (16), Carwin Jones (18), Bryant Purvis (17), Theo Shaw (17), and Jesse Ray Beard (14), were convicted of assaulting Justin Barker, a white student at Jena High School in Louisiana. Although only one of them could be legally tried as 18 years of age, five of them were at first charged as severely as an adult. Many civil rights advocates protested against the court, condemning the punishments as un-proportionate. Moreover, in the background of the confrontation was accumulating racial tension and conflict, beginning in August 2006. During a back-to-school assembly at the high school, an African American student asked the assistant principal whether he and his friends could sit under a school tree, which had been largely known as the "White Tree," a gathering spot for white students. The principal said yes, of course. However, the next morning, several rope nooses were found hanging from the tree -- highly offensive and considered as racial intimidation by many, especially in a town where 85% of the population is white with a strong history of racial conflict. Subsequent fighting broke out in the following months. As a result, the Jena Six case raised the question of how much race plays a part in the American justice system of the South.


References
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmjustice5.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/louisiana/jena/index.html

Blog #3: Brown vs. Board of Education

     Brown vs. Board of Education of 1954 was a landmark court case in U.S. history, one of the first steps towards social justice and eliminating racial discrimination in America. Up until that year, colored children were denied admission to public schools near their homes because of their race. Among them was eight-year-old Linda Brown, who had requested to attend a public elementary school near her home in Topeka, Kansas. Since the nearby school she applied for was a “white” school, the board of education denied her request and registered her to a colored school over twenty blocks from her home. Her parents filed a lawsuit against the school board, which eventually reached the Supreme Court level to “determine whether the segregation of schools was at all constitutional.” Brown argued that the separate schools based on race were harmful to African American children, while the school board argued that the facilities were “equal” by Plessy vs. Ferguson standards from 1896. However, all nine Supreme Court judges ruled in favor of Brown. The official verdict given by Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall decided against racial segregation on the grounds that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guaranteed all citizens equal protection of the law. From that moment onward, racial segregation in schools and other public facilities was declared both unconstitutional and unlawful.
     Although racial discrimination still continued, the ruling at Brown vs. Board of Education had a monumental impact, setting off the social justice movement of the 1950s and 1960s. If the Court’s ruling had never happened, the social justice movements that had followed would likely have been delayed, and without the verdict, the United States would not be as culturally diverse or representative of freedom and opportunity.

References:

http://brownvboard.org/summary/
http://www.infoplease.com/us/supreme-court/cases/ar04.html

Connections to Doubt: What role does gossip play in TKAM? (Blog #2)

     In the movie Doubt, the priest uses an analogy to embellish on his sermon: that if you were to stand on top of a tall building, rip apart a pillow, and let every feather be carried away by the wind, you would find it a very difficult, if not impossible, task to retrieve each and every one of those feathers and bring them back to their original source. He particularly made it a point that "it cannot be done." By this analogy, the priest meant to convey the irreversible and wicked nature of gossip. Once the feathers are blown away from their original source and carried in all directions by the wind, it is almost impossible to take them back; in the same way, once the seeds of gossip are spread, they are almost impossible to get rid of -- even if the person who started it all tries to stop it. Gossip has the ability to ruin a person's reputation in a way that can't be retracted.
     This irrevocable gossip the priest talks about in Doubt also plays a huge role in defining characters and driving the plot forward in To Kill A Mockingbird. Like the priest's analogy of the person who first ripped apart the pillow and released thousands of feathers, Ms. Stephanie Crawford is the one who started most of the gossip in Maycomb, and is consistently the most avid gossipmonger of the county. So far, the main objects of her gossip have been Arthur ("Boo") Radley and his reclusive family. When he was younger, Boo had gotten in trouble with the law and his father had grounded him in the house as a punishment. He wasn't seen again for fifteen years until he supposedly attacked his father with a pair of scissors on the porch -- an event Ms. Crawford claimed to have witnessed from her property. The townspeople were convinced that Boo was crazy, but Mr. Radley refused to let him be admitted to an asylum, so again Boo was kept shut in his home. As the Radleys' neighbor, Ms. Crawford naturally spread rumors about Boo. According to her accounts, Boo Radley sometimes peeked into her windows at night. Later other rumors spread among the schoolchildren that Boo ate squirrels or cats for dinner and poisoned berries on his property so that people who tried to eat them would die. Although none of these ridiculous theories had been actually backed up by factual evidence, they were enough to degrade Boo's reputation as some kind of crazy pet-eating maniac. Moreover, the town gossip was left largely unchecked since Boo hadn't been seen out of his house in years. Thus, Boo's image was left to the townspeople's imagination as a six-foot-tall, scarred, yellow-teethed, and drooling phantom -- all based upon unfounded rumors. As a result, the schoolchildren in the community, including Jem and Scout Finch, were afraid of being near the creepy Radley house, thinking that they would be kidnapped or killed if they went by. Some kids avoid the street altogether and take a long route home rather than pass the house unaccompanied by an adult.
     However, from what the author shows readers by his actions, Boo really isn't the evil person the town gossip makes him out to be. Defying Ms. Crawford's nonsensical claims, Ms. Maudie recalls that Boo had always been polite to her when he was little. Moreover, his good nature is demonstrated when Boo tries to mend Jem's pants. Also, when Ms. Maudie's house catches on fire in the middle of the night and the entire neighborhood goes out to help, Boo does too without anyone noticing. He puts a blanket around Scout when she is shivering. From this, readers can infer that Boo is really not a monster, despite all the gossip.

Who is Harper Lee?

     Although Nelle Harper Lee has only written one novel, To Kill A Mockingbird (TKAM), she still stands as one of the most influential authors in America, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom of the United States for Literature in 2007. Born and raised in Monroeville, Alabama, her book deals with the issues of racism and prejudice she observed during her childhood. She was the youngest of four children of Amasa Coleman Lee and Frances Cunningham Finch Lee – names that you might have noticed were incorporated into her work. Similar to the character Atticus in TKAM, her own father was a lawyer who served in the Alabama State Legislature from 1926 to 1938, and she herself was like the main character, Scout: an avid reader and tomboy in her childhood. Lee initially developed her interest in English literature during high school. In college, entered a law program but soon found that her true calling was to write. She left college early for New York, hoping to follow her dream. She struggled for several years, working as a ticket agent for two airlines before her friends helped her achieve her goal. In Christmas 1956, Mr. and Mrs. Brown gave her the boost to become a writer – supporting her for one year so that she could work on writing a novel fulltime, and helping her find an agent, Maurice Crain. Thanks to all their support, Harper Lee was able to publish her manuscript, which has since become one of the most widely-read pieces of American literature.

References
http://www.harperlee.com/bio.htm
http://www.biography.com/articles/Harper-Lee-9377021
http://www.nndb.com/people/572/000025497/