57

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.

Jake Westwood. A 11th grade history teacher wakes up and goes through his organized neat early morning routine. Before leaving the house though he does a line of coke. At school he prepares for the kids to come in on the first day. Once the kids are in he starts to tell them about how this year they will be learning about the darkerside of history. The kids are full of attention. They walking away interested in what that class is going to teach.
They kids have come to like history and work hard in that class. The teacher inspires them. But his coke habit has picked up and the kids begin to see signs. Rumors spread and more evidence is see till the teacher is one day caught in the act. The students lose respect in him and no longer pay attention in class. The teacher denies hes an addict. Situation get worse.
It’s a dark night, and the teacher goes to buy some coke but is robbed for it and left beaten in the street. A few of his student s are coming home from a party and find him. They bring him home. They come back the next morning (Saturday) and tell him that they are going to make him quit. Turns out they had already searched his home and found all of his hidden coke. Starting from then the kids pat him down every morning in school and when he comes home they are randomly searching his house for coke. Weeks go buy and Jake begins to improve.
Its almost the end of the year and Jake is totally clean. His students are interested again and life is good. One day he gets a call his brother died. His brother has come up in various parts of the movie and it is clear they were close. Jake is crying in his office after school. As he cries he reaches under his coffee bug and untapes a bag of coke. He puts it into lines and rolls a dollar, camera cuts out.

5-10 ideas

1. the teacher is boring and slow. the kids then fix the teacher (reverse of the usual teacher saves the kids)
2. kids are asked to express their world in videos.
3.some one trashes the classroom while the teacher is away for lunch.
4.one student lives in the hood and is trying to get out using education
5. have the one silent kid who makes a speech at the end

chop chop chop, judo flip

My choice of readding was The Boondocks by AAron Mcgruder. The Boondocks tells the story of two kids named Riley and Huey who move from chiago with their grandfather to an all white nieborhood in suburbia. McGruder uses the scenario of the only black family in white suburbia to show us his view on the topics of racism and politics. In The Boondocks niether Riley or Huey do very good in school. Riley doesnt because he is trying to be the steriotypical gangster and uses school to show how gangster he is to the other kids. Huey is the opposite. Huey's character is a revolutionist and he beleives that the schools are brainwashing eurocentrism into the society, so he spends his time in school researching his own things. Niether character is modivated to learn because niether of them wants to learn whats being taught, so they use the school as a place to do their own thing. Students are not modivated so they see school less as a place to learn and more of a place to do their own thing.

Huey's character is the sterio typical american revolutionary. In the Boondocks he thinks that public schools are brainwashing the youth into the euro-centric capitalists. This can most easly be seen in the bottom of page 41. Huey was just caught readding a diffrent book in class and he explains his reasoning to the teacher. "{teacher} So if i understand correctly, you do not ahve 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 Eurocentrism. {Huey} Given your stirring tribute to Christopher Columbus last month, I beleive 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 intrests. He is not in anyway shape or form modivated to learn what they teacher wants to teach him so he what he thinks he should do.

Riley, Huey's younger brother, is the opposite of Huey. He embraces the rap culture, which Huey strongly hates, and is constantly thinking about how to be more gangster. Riley uses school as a way to be more gangster. When Riley is asked to introduce himself on the first day he states "Aiiight, Y'all need to listen up to what esco got to say, word up. Don't ever in ya life confuse me for a punk that wont do some chin checkin, knaamean. I'm keepin $?%! real. Dun!..." (p.27) Riley makes sure his first impression shows off this thugness. He has no motivation for school because he doesnt think it will help him become a gangster. so he uses school for his own reasons.

hirsch vs sizer

In the open debate on school systems, there are two names that can not be ignored. Hirsch and Sizer. these two men can be compared to two warlords with their armies facing off. Born in 1932, Sizer founded the coalition of essential schools. Before starting the coalition Ted Sizer went around and studied high schools. He interviewed watched classrooms and interviewed various people around school. The end result was Horace's Compromise. In this book Sizer discusses many of the common problems of schools. While he mentioned things such as too much focused on sports, his main philosophy was that schools shouldn't just skim over a lot of subjects. they should go deeply into a few. Thus he created the habits of mind to achieve this goal. he stated he want to create schools where " students clearly exhibit the mastery of their school work."

Its hard for me to generally beleive in this idea even while attending a essintial school, infact its because I attend one that I'm not keen on the idea. While doing deep into a subject is good, it can backfire. It backfires when the students dont care about the subject. When students have to dive deeply into a subject they dont care about, the feeling can be described as beatting your head against a wall. We can all see why that isnt good.

On the other end of the battle field is E.D. Hirsch. Hirsch, born 1928, believed more in cultural literacy. He beleived that students would do better in life if they knew about many diffrent things, even if they werent experts in the subbjects. A jack of all trades master of none kind of thing. He says that students need a understanding of common cultural refrences. As an example he uses the sentence "Jones sacrificed and knocked in a run.". Now if you dont know baseball that sentence makes no sense. But understanding baseball will allow you to make sense of that sentence.

I prefer this philosophy better. High school's job is to prepare you for the future. A way to do that is to widen ones view of the world. If you take two students, student A and student B. student A learns about three subjects in depth. student B learns about 5 subjects but with only half the depth as student A. While student A knows more about those subjects, student B knows has a more spread out knowledge. Student A doesnt know about the 4th and 5th subject that B learned about. What happens if subject 5 enters his life somehow later, he wont be as prepared as student B. Another thing to think about is the more you learn about the better chance you have of finding something you like. Mabye student A would have loved subject #4 and want to turn it into a career, but because he spent so much time learning 1-3 he never got a chance to expirence it.

44

The point of school is to make personal achievement easier. It is meant to give you the basic skills and work ethic to succeed in the modern society. Because of this though school is, or should be, a personal experience. The opportunity is given and it is up to the individual student to take it. Obama's speech empathizes this. He says "That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them.". He doesn't talk about what he is going to do for the student, or how the system is brining the student down. He is holding the students responsible for their own education.  A school isnt a magical building that beams education into your head. You need to want the education and you have to work for it.

41

http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/mediarelations/NewsandSpeeches/2008-2009/20090622_grad_rates.htm

This article talks about the increase of high school graduation rates. In the article they act excited that the rate is 60% (the highest in four years). 60% graduation says alot about the modivation of students. Just over half of the public school population past, this also in includes students who just barely past. so the actually percentage of students who were modivated to do well is a smaller number.

http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-925/rate.htm
This website states a study that examined the drop out rate between normal school and a school that was based more toward a future career. The article states that the more focused the curriculum is, the less kids will drop out. The reason for this they state is because students have an idea of why they are learning something. Education can be explained like this: Imagen someone is making you jump up and down 100 times in one minute. If you only jump up and down 64 times, will you really care that much. It all depends if you know why you are jumping. If jumping less then 65 times results in the death of a kitten then yes. But if you arent really sure why you are jumping, and you dont want to be jumping, chances are you wont care.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/05/05/dropout.rate.study/index.html
This article was pretty basic except for the part where a girl talks about why she dropped out. She talks about how she lost interest after two of her friends were killed in a gang shooting. This brings up the idea of school in the big picture. Mabye kids arent motivated in school because they dont see it as that important compared to things in their life, such as staying alive.


http://diplomaguide.com/articles/GED_Statistics.html
In this source the article tells us basic facts about the GED. One interesting not about the GED is that the average age to get one is 24. That means that sometime after high school kids are remotivated and take extra steps to get where they want. Another Interesting fact is that one of the main reasons listed for getting a GED is "lack of interest in high school". I found this interesting because it shows that kids can get the end result of high school with out going through the process.


Unmotivated high school students need to personally see the connection between school and a sucsseful career and must gain the confidence to think they can do well.

This is an important topic because it has to deal with a major problem in schools, motivation. It is obvoiuse why the more kids that graduate the better it is for the society. Which would you want, 100 kids being doctors or 100 kids washing cars. I am not saying that high school is the only way to a good job, but it helps. By analyzing why kids arent motivated you can come up with a solution.

interview

Me:first lets start with the basics, how much schooling have you had.
Buisness suit man: I have a dagree in (a major that sounded made up) from (some college i have never heard of)
Me: Do you think that getting the dagree helped you get where you are
Him: yes its the only reason i am where i am today.
Me: so nobody can get to your level with out one
Him: No you need the dagree i got to get where i am
Me: so by getting the level of education you got, do you consider yourself better then some people
Him: Well i worked harder then them and i have a more important job then some people, so in a way yea.

Me:what do you do for a living
Teacher: im a teacher
Me: what do you teach
her: 5th grade history
me:is what you teach important, will they need it in years to come
her: i think so, just not directly. They will not need to know every fact just the general information. it prevents ingorance, and mabye the kid will realize they love history and become a historian.

me:what level of education do you have
hipster: I am currently going to school at bmcc
me: why community college
hipster: well i messed around in high school but then my parents convinced me that some college is better then no college
Me: what do you wanna do as a career
hipster: i dont know yet
me: so you went into college with no clear sense of direction
hipster: yea. I decided to just go in and hope i find my way soon
Me: i hope you dont go hiking with the same additude.
hipster: What?
me: nothing thank you for your time.

Me: hi, what grade are you in
Kid: im in 1st
me: do you know what you want to be when you grow up
Kid: i want to be a actor
Me: when the teacher tells you to sit down what do you do
kid: sit down
me: why?
kid: because the teacher said so dummy
me: why do you listen to the teacher
kid: because shes the boss and you always listen to the boss

Me:how much schooling do you have
brandon: i stopped after highschool.
me: do you think college is a necessity
brandon:no not really. It helps and you should. But i didnt go to college and look at me now im living in America. (brandon is my muay thai coach from australia)


The main thing school teaches you is how to do what ever you need to pass. for example, the kid knew to listen to the teacher. As you get more into school, it gets alittle more complicated. Depending on what kind of life you want to live, depends on how good your gonna do in school. If you want to be a top notch buisness man you need that dagree, so you are gonna need to get good grades. But if you want to be a muay thai coach, you dont really need to get a college dagree. Because of that all you dont really have to work that hard. I have come to the conclusion that school is not about teaching you the facts, but how to work to reach a goal. For example if you have an C but you want an A you need to figure out how to do that.

1. The teacher is never at fualt.
2. If you are not good at school it is assumed you will fail at life.
3. Students dont have a say in anything, no matter how many people voted you into student council.

In society school is seen as something that turns useless kids into someone the society can use. A diploma is like a stamp that tells the world we can be used. There are two stamps we get. The first stamp is high school. If you dont graduate high school and get that stamp you are considered stupid and worthless. If you graduate high school but dont go to college your are in a slightly better place but you are considered worthless. Only after graduatting college are you considered to be worth something to society, only then do people give you full respect. For some reason spending hours in a building where you learn things that you dont want to learn about, being treated as less then a person, and under the constant pressure to please; somehow doing all of those things gets you respect. Seeing someone as less of a person because they didnt do good in school is like seeing someone as less of a person because they didnt do well in jail. Because lets face it there is not much diffrent between jail and school. In both you are shuffled around from room to room under the watchful eye of superiors, for the ultimet purpouse of making you worthy to enter the world.

video analysis

The main point of my project was to show that cool is like a voice in my head that goes against what we originally think we should do. In the video juan places a high school student. In the first scene he sees katherine, a pretty high school female. Aberham, who plays the original voice in his head, tells him to go talk to her. Juan takes his advice but is shot down. Walking away he bumps into jace who is a tough guy and challenges juan. Once again aberham comes in and tells juan to apologize and avoid a conflict. But then granit comes in. Granit gives juan the opposite advice and tells him to act tough right back to jace. Juan takes Granits advice this time and jace not only backs off but offers juan a cigerette. Abe reappears to tell juan not to take it and that cigerettes are bad, this time granit physically moves abe out of the way to tell juan to take it. After juan takes the cigerette katherine comes back up to him offering to go to the movies. this time juan places it cool and gives her a mabye. the film ends with granit and juan walking away together, then granit turning back and giving the camera a sinister smile.

The point of the movie was to show what really goes on in the quest for cool. When ever we are faced with a choice we have to opposing voices in our heads. One voice (abe) is what we really want to do, the other voice (granit) is what needs to be done to be cool. The second part of the message is that unforetunetly listening to the cool is what gets us accepted.


. In this project i filmed and directed. I told people where to stand and what to say.
I wouldnt say that making art is cool. I mean that in the way that making art helps with the persona of being calm, which is my definition of cool. I like making movies because its you can express your ideas in more ways then most other art medias. In books you can write your thoughts, and in visual art you can show what you want to say. Only in movies can you do both. You can use dialog to get your ideas across, but you can use visuals at the same time.

cool

Life is like Halloween night. Everyone walks around with a pre-decided idea of who they want to be. They hope that if their costume is good enough they will get extra candy. At the same time is you see someone with a crappy costume you automatically label them not as good as you. In life we try to show our costume the best we can without showing that it is a costume. But if you spend all day wearing a costume eventually you forget what you look like. The majority of our personality is what we think people will respond positively to, not who we really are.
“I’m going to lose my cool!”We have all heard it before; usually said by a parent to stop whatever bratty thing you happen to be doing at the moment. But this is more than just a threatening warning; it also holds the definition of cool. When someone loses their cool they get angry, they lose their calmness. So to be cool is to be calm and collected. These days there is a constant pressure to be cool. The cool kids are the popular kids. This results in a giant hypocrisy. The quest for cool has caused people to put lots of effort into making life look effortless. Lets take the example of little Jimmy. Little Jimmy is a nice kid with a good sense of humor, but he is afraid of heights. He lives in a small town so he was able to keep this a secret, until he is invited to the local like to go cliff jumping. He soon finds himself at the top of a cliff looking at a 20 foot drop into dark waters. Little Jimmy couldn’t admit he was afraid of heights because then he wouldn’t be calm. But since he acted like we wasn’t afraid of heights he finds himself looking off the edge of the cliff. Sorry Jimmy, should have acted like cliff jumping was boring.
When we watch TV we all have that one character we like. “Oh I like Pierce, he’s funny”. On T.V. each character that has a certain trait that everything they do reinforces. In our life we try to emulate that. We have this idea of who we want to be and we try to play that role in every situation. If we are trying to play the role of the bad boy, you might light up a cigarette in detention. We do this because, just like the characters on tv, we all have certain types of people that we like. The bad boy will have a group of friends at union square who give him high fives when he tells them how he was smoking in detention. We take on a certain persona to please a certain group of people. This can happen on a small level such as high school clicks, but this is most clearly seen in the presidential elections. Both candidates take on a persona thinking it’s the one the American people want to see. We decided what group we want to be part of than act a certain way so they will like us.
I stood in Union Square watching a bunch of guys practice their break dancing. The dancers themselves were not that good, but they were doing it for fun and not for show. But I was not starring at the guy in the middle practicing his head spin, I was watching the guy standing waiting for his turn. More specifically i was staring at his back. It was a summer day and the heat had caused this man to take of his shirt, and there tattooed on his back was an outline of the Philippines. The tattoo was just a simple outline of the country that covered his whole back. To me this was a true a Tattoo. It was a simple statement of what this man considered to be important to him. The design was simple and was not made to attract attention to himself.
A tattoo should be a painting you paint and then hang in your living room. You have no for no other reason besides that you like it. You did not sell the picture or put it on public display you kept it to yourself. It uses to be that tattoos were looked down upon. That meant that getting a tattoo was personal. There was no cool tattoo; you did not get cool point because you had a Kio fish or a dragon. You throw away the common social standards for this personal meaning.
In other cultures tattoos have a meaning. It is said that in acient japan they would tattoo criminals so they stood out. This is how tattoo shirts started. when you joined the mob your whole body was tattooed. That way if you had gone to jail the tattoo that marked you as a criminal would be hidden by all the other tattoos. This is how much fads start out. In the beginning they have a real purpose. But by having a purpose you are associated with a group of people, meaning anyone who wants to be in that group needs to be with that fad. Tattoos are that to the extreme. When you get a tattoo you are stuck with it. Knowing this when people see a tattoo they think the person is strongly connected with it. In the end it can be the ultimate trick. If I want to be a hippie and I get the peace sign on my arm. Since I am stuck with it people assume I’m a hardcore hippie. I do not even have to open my mouth.

Tattoos

I stood in union square watching a bunch of guys practice their break dancing. The dancers themselves werent that good, but they were doing it for fun and not for show. But i wasnt starring at the guy in the middle practicing his head spin, I was watching the guy standing waitting for his turn. More specifically i was staring at his back. It was a summer day and the heat had caused this man to take of his shirt, and there tattooed on his back was an outline of the Philippines. The tattoo was just a simple outline of the country that covered his whole back. To me this was a true a Tattoo. It was a simple statement of what this man considered to be important to him. The design was simple and was not made to attract attention to himself.
A tattoo should be a painting you paint and then hang in your living room. You have no for no other reason besides that you like it. You didnt sell the picture or put it on public display you kept it to yourself. It use to be that tattoos were looked down upon. That meant that getting a tattoo was personal. There was no cool tattoo, you didnt get cool point because you had a koi fish or a dragon. You through away the common social standards for this personal meaning.
In other cultures tattoos have a meaning. It is said that in acient japan they would tattoo criminals so they stood out. This is how tattoo shirts started. when you joined the mob your whole body was tattooed. That way if you had gone to jail the tattoo that marked you as a criminal would be hidden by all the other tattoos. This is how much fads start out. In the beginning they have a real purpose. But by having a purpose you are associated with a group of people, meaning anyone who want to be in that group needs to be with that fad. Tattoos are that to the extreme. When you get a tattoo you are stuck with it. Knowing this when people see a tattoo they think the person is strongly connected with it. In the end it can be the ultimet trick. If i wanna be a hippie and i get the peace sighn on my arm. Since im stuck with it people assume im a hardcore hippie. I dont even have to open my mouth.