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A major part of parenting is knowing when to let go of your child. Parents will try to protect their kids for as long as they can, but parents have to let their kids live and make mistakes. Parents (especially white ones from middle america) are trying to protect their kids from every little danger. They try to create this perfect little world. The result of this are kids who are use to the easy life and don't know how to deal with any sort of struggle.

While letting your kid have freedom is good, at the same time there needs to be limits. As a parent its your to teach your kids that they cant do what ever they like. They have to learn that they can not get a candy bar just because they want one. Also when a kid does something wrong, you need to blame the kid. It seems like these days parents are ready to blame everyone but their kids when their kids do something wrong. These days everything from music to children's shows are being blamed for the problems in todays youth. Your kid isnt fat because the blue monster on sesame street eats cookies, he's fat because all he eats is candy that you keep buying for him.

I think the idea of self soothing has some merit. I think when a baby is first born you should respond right away when he cries because at that stage they cry because something is wrong. But as the baby gets older you should let them cry for abit. I think this will prevent the kid from thinking that crying will get him what he wants. When my son or daughter reaches the age of 5 crying for any reason besides sadness or because they are hurt will be overlooked. When the kid knows crying will not get them what they want they will look for other ways to get it. Best case senerio this means they will use their words.

The article about physical touch reminds me of the experiment where they put new born monkeys in a room alone. In this isolation they were given no other contact other then a stuffed monkey. The quickly grew attached to this monkey and never let go of it. When the doll was taken away they flipped out. This shows us just how important physical touch is to the development of children.

56

What kind of house were you brought up in?
-I was brought up in an average family. I had two parents a brother and a dog. I grew up in the suburbs.
-My family was kinda crazy. My mom was an artist and my dad was a musician so the arts were important.
-I kinda did my own thing as a kid. My dad wasnt in the picture and my mom worked two jobs.

How has your childhood effected you parenting?
-My mother taught me alot about respect and manners so i try to pass that along to my kids.
-I let my kids do their own thing and i try not to block their creative side
-Since my parents werent there i want to be ther for my kids.

How do you think your children will be as parents?
-I dont know because while I grew up in the suburbs they are growing up in the city which is much diffrent
-I think they will raise their kids much like i raised them.
-They will grow up in a family with a loving dad so in return they will be a loving parent


It has become clear that the type of parent someone will be depends on how they look back on their childhood. The artist was happy that his parents were free thinkers and let him be creative so in return he will do the same with his kids. On the other hand the last guy had kind of a broken home which he didnt like so he is trying to make it diffrent for his kids. Your view on your upbringing will effect your parenting.

If there was one thing you could change about the way your parents raised you what would it be?

54

I thought the quiz was just ok. I dont remember what I was labeled but I remember it was pretty on track and that 3.2 of "the population" were like me. The original website didnt give me enough info about "my personality" so I had to go to another. When I was reading it while I was entertained by the things about me they got right, I wasnt blown away by how much they knew me. I think its alittle bit of a stretch to say that everyone in the world falls into these catogories.

53

Taking the test was strange for me. My family isn't your average family. With out being self pitying or self proclaiming, I can say my family's situation is a little worse then the average. Along with that is my families don't ask don't tell attitude when it comes to family issues. So to fill out a question that asked me in depth about my family was a little strange.

While reading the scored I have to say I was a little disappointed. I was expecting some scandalous results that would be good plots for a family drama series, but everything was pretty normal. I realized that the survey showed most families as good but not amazing. for questions like "You talk to an adult in your family household for more than 5 minutes about your day, pretty much every day" the majority was yes generally. Most peoples family is in between mediocre and amazing. I wonder how this would change if we looked at a different demographic of people. How would the scores be if we looked at families who were really rich compared to families who were below the poverty line?

I read the article about teen sex and I thought a lot of it was using statistics to scare people. one fact was "Only 8% of sexually active teens use birth control pills, the most effective means of preventing pregnancy ". When I read this I was just like no shit. Being a teenager I know the only girls who use the pill are ones who have boyfriends or for some reason fuck a lot. Most teens aren't like that. Most teens have occasion sex and use simple birth control like a condom. After reading the facts I found it kind of hard to take the article seriously.

“When I was around your age I realized life was about one thing” said my Muay Thai coach as we sat on the ring before class. “The only thing that we really care about, the only reason we do things like get a job, Is to get laid.” While the phrasing of this philosophical ideal may have been crude, the rings true. Because the fact is when we go back to our most ancient animal instinct, all we really want to do is pass on our genes in the only way we know how. Almost every choice of living we make has sex as the driving force behind it. The clothes you wear, the career you choose, and even the people you hang with are all chosen partly based on what you think will attract the best possible partners.


Another animal instinct that humans clearly possess is the desire to travel in packs. This most easily translates to conformity. Humans naturally prefer to be in some sort of group with other people. Sometimes to fit into a group we change who we are. Animals feel safe in a pack, there is safety in numbers. When you’re in a group you feel more significant. You feel like you’re part of something bigger and more important then you. Travling in a pack can also lead to making the beast with two backs.

"the biggest lie you can tell yourself is when you get what you want you will be happy" Humans can never be complete. Everyone needs some kind of struggle to define their lives. This can be the wanna be rappers trying to get rich, or the shoalin monks working for enlightenment. A hundred years ago people didnt need to look for a struggle. They had to work on their fields and crop to survive. These days are diffrent. Food can now be obtained with a simple trip around the corner. So instead people look for other problems they can devote their time to.

What is this new obsession with kids being safe. In virgina there is a strict no touching rule. A parent justifies this because they are afriad pokes will turn to fights and they are afraid of gang handshakes. It is this everything must be perfect additude (usually set forth by white adults) that I think is weakening the youth. There is a new breed of parent that wants to protect their kid from everything. They are trying to create their own little eurtopia. And this only seems to be true in America. Last year there was a series of fights. The worse injury sustained was a cut from when one kids lip hit his braces. But the parents flipped out, putting pressure on the school who was forced to suspend everyone involved. Even a kid who filmed the fights and in no way added to them was suspended. You compare this adittude to other areas of the world such as south america where a fight never involves more then the two people fighting. Maternal instinct is understandable, but shouldnt kids learn some lessons the hard way? Smooth seas never made a good mariner.

paper

What is the most important part of a teenager’s life? The answer to that question is school. Besides being a place where teenagers spend most of their time, school is the number one variable in how a kid’s future will turn out. Chances are if somebody flunks out of high school they will not get a fulfilling career. If so much is riding on school, how come so many kids are so unmotivated? I can mark myself as a prime example. I have known this paper was coming for weeks, and yet I start it 11 hours before it is due. Nobody needs to tell kids that school is important, but every day my math teacher needs to tell my class to stop talking and get to work. The focus of this paper will be motivation. The reason kids are so unmotivated is because they are put into a system that is too generic to handle the different kinds of student.
As Americans we are lucky to have a public school system. This allows kids from all different social and economic backgrounds to go to school. But a school system is not an easy thing to manage. Public schools are managed by the government. The government does have the time or money to individually handle each school. So instead what they do is set guidelines for every school to fallow. In the end the public school system is like a bag of skittles; every school has its own color, but in the end it’s still a skittle. So what happens when you give skittles to millions of kids? Some will love the skittles and enjoy whatever color you give them, others will not like the color they got but will eat it anyway, the third kind will want M&Ms. it is this third type of kid which will become unmotivated. If these kids are given M&Ms they will be happy and succeed, but they are forced to have skittles. In this paper I will talk about how unmotivated kids treat the school system, why some schools do better than others, and I will end with examples of people who have tried to give kids M&Ms.
What do kids do in school when they don’t want to learn? They use school as an opportunity to push their agenda. This is clear in The Boondocks by Aaron Mcgruder. The Boondocks tells the story of two black kids in an all white suburbia. Students are not motivated so they see school less as a place to learn and more of a place to do their own thing. A main character in the Boondocks is Huey. Huey's character is the stereo typical American revolutionary. In the Boondocks he thinks that public schools are brainwashing the youth into the euro-centric capitalists. This can most easily be seen in the bottom of page 41. Huey was just caught reading a different book in class and he explains his reasoning to the teacher. "{teacher} so if I understand correctly, you do not have your textbook with you, Huey. ... Because you felt there were other texts that deserved priority in your book bag?...Texts like shabazz k. Jenkins How to Tell if Your Teacher is Brainwashing You with Euro centrism. {Huey} Given your stirring tribute to Christopher Columbus last month, I believe I made the right call" (Boondocks Right to be Hostile, p.41) Huey does not trust the school system. So he uses the time to study his own interests. He is not in any way shape or form motivated to learn what they teacher wants to teach him so he what he thinks he should do. While the Boondocks is fiction it is easy to compare the way these two kids view school to how kids in reality view school. I’m arguing that Huey is unmotivated because he did not have the option of choosing a school that would better fit his needs. If Huey had the option of going to a school that taught more about African history or self empowerment he would have been reading the right textbook.
It is common opinion that private schools are better than public schools. This is because private schools are micro managed. I have spent many years in both public and private schools, so I am able to fairly compare them. Private schools have the major advantage of smaller class sizes. This allows the teachers to really get to know the students and make changes to the curriculum that they think will help the students. It wasn’t until I came to a public school did I hear “I don’t have time; I have too many papers to grade”. This is a common case of quality versus quantity. Since public schools have to deal with so many different types of student they don’t have the time to change the curriculum to maximize the learning of the students. Instead they teach what they are told and they hope the students get it. Private schools are usually better because since they are run on their own they can change the way they teach instead of having to fallow guidelines.
In 1995 Lisa Delpit came out with the book Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom. She said that low income children are at a disadvantage because of the way they grew up. A child coming from a wealthy family will have 100 books read to them, while low income child will only have 15. (Not real statistics). She then says that this leads to lack of motivation in the lower class kids. By not being read books she argues, kids don’t learn to enjoy reading which has obvious negative effects. She argues that facts like that give children of low income families (usually of color) a disadvantage that should be addressed. By making this realization she has opened up a way to make schools more personal. By her logic if schools expose lower class kids to books when they are young they can increase the chance that those kids will be better motivated students in the future.
What is the number one motivation of teenagers to do well in school? The simple fact is most kids are only motivated enough to not fail. They are more focused on getting out of the school then immersing themselves in the school. It is this fear of failing that has me finishing a paper at 10:33 the night before it’s due. By forcing kids to go to a generic school they have no motivation to learn because they have no desire to be at that school. The reason kids are so unmotivated is because they are put into a system that is too generic to handle the different kinds of student.

mr. Gatto writes about what he really teaches. A teacher for twenty six years he has broken down the jobs of teachers into six lessons. These lessons differ from what people think his job is. He says that instead of teaching the revolutionary war or reconstruction, he teaches things like how to make what ever your boss tells you to do the most important thing in your life. He states that school has less to do about learning facts, and more about learning obedience.

Here is another crusader, on a mission to show the world what the education system is really like. After reading many texts about school I have grown to see the different types of people who write about the education system. This guy seems no different from the rest. He talks about how the school system is really teaching kids to be mindless drones, yet he forgets the reason he is able to write an article so many people read is because he did well in school. He says "habits are the only thing truely learned". But what about what is taught in the classes. The fact school is the only place I learned physics.

In Paulo Freire's article Freire sees school as filling an empty cup with water. (my words not his) But instead of filling a cup of water, its the teacher filling the students with knowledge. He also states that the school system is set up so that the teacher is the important almost godlike figure, while the students are worthless.

Once again here is a man out to show the world the truth behind the education system. This guy has taken the truth and hyped it up. He talks about how the teacher is in control and the students must do as they are told, when the fact is this is blantenly obvious. When you go to the hospital do you complain that you werent allowed to pick the antibiotic the doctor gave you, no because its the doctors job to do it. He has been trained to pick the right drug. The same goes for teacher, you go to school so that people who are trained to teach, teach you. You cant go there expecting to be the center of attention.

The interview with delpit showed her unique view on the education system. She said that low income children are at a disadvantage because of the way they grew up. A child coming from a wealthy family will have 100 books read to them, while low income child will only have 15. (not real statistics) She argues that facts like that give children of low income families (usually of color) a disadvantage that should be addressed.

I liked this women a lot more then the others for two reasons. The first is that she doesn't bash the school system. She sees the system has flaws but she also understand that schools can help kids succeed. She has taken a very logical look at schools. She is not making any big claims about what schools are really teaching; she is looking at why the kids aren't succeeding. This leads to the second thing I like. While the other authors talk a lot about how American school suck, she is actually doing something about it.