Over this year in English and History I learned a lot about the nature of people. I learned that it is easy for people to stray off of human nature for various reasons. While writing my Op-ed I talked about how violent video games are blamed for many school shootings, when it really has to do with home problems or mental disabilities. This showed me how people are aware of things being able to change people, but might not have the best judgment to know what is changing them. For my first quarter English benchmark I talked about how the kids become more savage when exposed to less technology. Throughout Lord of the Flies the kids start to revert back to having animal like behavior while on the Island. This showed me how people are willing to go back to savage behavior very quickly, instead of work together and act civilized, or can make sure that they do not become savages. The way to not become savages would be to make the island like their life and not change anything, but this is very hard to do; that is why it is so easy for people to revert back to being savages.

            During the fourth quarter we learned about freedom and prisons. We had several assignments talking about torture. During these lessons we discussed how almost anyone could become a torturer. We watched and reflected on a video called The Milgram Obedience Experiments where “scientists” would bring in someone from the street, and ask them to question another person in a different room. Every time the person in the other room got a question wrong the person brought in from the street would press a button that they were told gave an electric charge to the other person. The person who was answering questions was not actually getting shocked, but was just acting and pretending to be in pain. The questioner was told to turn up the intensity of the shock until it got to a certain point, and keep it at that level. There were several circumstances, and the results varied from where the answerer was, where the person telling the questioner to do their job was, and if there was any other people in the room. In the end most people would go somewhat far, even though they could hear or see the other person that they thought they were torturing.

            One of the units in History dealt with sweatshops, and child labor. We talked about why it happens, what the benefits are, what the downsides are, and how it can affect consumers or other people. We had a group activity where everyone was split up into several teams for a Transnational Capital Auction. These teams were the Ruling Elite for countries. The object of the game was to try to please the Multinational Companies, so they would give work to our citizens, but to make sure that our citizens were not going to rebel against the government. We had to decide our standpoint on key issues like ability to form unions, child labor, laws on keeping a clean environment, and several others. There were five rounds to change the bids, and depending on what you did, the Multinational Companies would want to go to your country. The team that ended up winning didn’t put everything good for the Multinational Companies, because that would mean their citizens would be very unhappy with the government. The teams that did good put things somewhat in the middle of good and bad in the choices, even though they all seemed to be very bad from our standpoint in the United States.

            During the video the man protests shocking the other person, or asking a new question many times, and seems adamant on his decision. Almost every time the “scientists” are able to get him to go back and “shock” the other person by just talking to him and telling him what to do. I was surprised that the man would go back so many times, because he seemed ready to stop asking questions very early on, but continued because he was told to. The thing that surprised me the most was that after the person on the other side of the wall stopped yelling or making noise, the man didn’t show as much resistance until he finally decided to stop. 

            In middle school we are taught strictly into the essence of American History and grammar for English. No class discussions about opinions and no ideas of expression. What the teacher taught you was the way life was. &As we grew up, we took upon the role models of our parents. In my case, parents don’t show creativity or expression of opinion, so I was raised to reply on nothing being out of the ordinary.  As our knowledge of World History and the fights for revolutionary change have developed, so have our minds to the ability that we can fight for something we strongly believe in. Then our brains intertwine around mazes of creativity through English that taught us that you could go beyond the normal term of an “essay” and possibly create works of art. Thus leading us to express what we have learned in new and creative formations, like the poetry unit we used in order to learned forms of writing.

            If you enter the classroom of English and History you are entering a room full of doors. Doors that are all locked and wish for you too find the keys in which to open what they have held for your imagination. An imagination is a form of creativity that helps you show the person you really are and the thoughts that beg to be spoken. A door that many kids have opened was the door of play writing. As students we took topics that touched our hearts and expressed through Monologues what we feel these problems would be told in a story. It was an amazing way to let out how we truly feel in such a story after story break through.

            It’s always easy to understand yourself and the reasons for things you do or make, but it’s not always easy for other people to understand the beauty of the masterpiece inside your mind. Whenever we’ve debated on Trials for who is the killer of human civilization or when we try to inform people on the customs and diversity of Religion, people might not always understand how strongly or right our points of views and sides are. In order to help them understand the best, we must give as much as detail as we can possibly give. The more details the more of a vision we can give to the people. An example of this detail would be in the descriptive essays we have created in class.

            English and History both come together as partners on the road of education for us. For the past year we have learned a lot about our selves and the world. We have been taught to express and to teach. We can only hope that next year holds the same opportunity.

Sophomore year was a hard year for me emotionally, the one class that always had me thinking was English, and I felt the class related to me a lot in a personal way. For example the journal entries, my favorite had to have been the rant. I remember that day clearly I was in a really bad mood, I had this rush of anger going through me, and a rant was exactly what I needed. A lot of the other journals had me thinking too, like the “Remember when” one during the Night course, I was also very sad that day and writing that poem came easily to me and for some reason I felt moved after writing it.

            MY favorite unit had to be the poetry unit. I really like writing poems and, at that stage of my life all of my poems had a certain theme, and that theme happened to be about my bad decisions. “As much as I hate you I can’t forget you” Looking back on my poetry it’s kind of sad to see how unhappy I was, I know I brought it upon myself but I had no idea what to do, and I think in some weird way writing helped me get through it for that moment for that 65 minute English class the poetry took my mind off of the person that was screwing me up physically and emotionally.

Art in the open was amazing. I loved working outside of the classroom, and I couldn’t possibly ask for a better group. During Art in the Open I think I was the happiest I’ve been all year; I started to put my life back in check. With the Leah Stein project I learned to not judge a book by its cover. When I first heard about this I was a little creeped out I thought it was weird. But when we started dancing and actually got to meet Leah I knew that it was going to be an amazing experience. My group Rocky Road came together and as soon as we picked our location we knew exactly what we wanted to do and how we wanted to move, our piece flowed together and in the end we had a great final product.

I think the greatest thing that I learned in this class, was about myself. I didn’t know my limits at the beginning of the school year I thought I was indestructible; I thought I could handle anything that came my way. But after millions of journal entries and Mr. Block saying, “make smart decisions” I think it finally stuck with me, it may have taken 8 monthes but it happened. Mr. Block I’m going to miss you dearly thank you for everything, you may have not realized it but your class helped me so much this year, and I’m truly thankful.

letter outline

We were asked to write Descriptive Essay about something that happened in our life. I chose to write about the summer earlier that year. “Out in the 90-degree weather and a storm we were up on the roof trying to prevent the resistant leaks”.  As I realize now this first assignment in English was really the backing of the whole year. I had to learn to be more descriptive and creative at the same time. It was a bit challenging at first because I did not write like this before. As time went on and the projects called for more and more I started writing better and better.

Oddly enough the project that I surpassed my standard for writing was the Monologue Project for History.  For this project we had to pick a human rights struggle. I had to do a lot of research to understand and convey the topic clearly.  I had chosen drug trafficking because of the different reasons to do it and how some people don’t really have a choice. “I know she needs the money but its drug money!”(Scene-1). The daughter had kidney disease and the family needed fast money to pay for her medical bills.  This project forced me to be very original, descriptive and creative.   Though, we had a little help from Kate from Young Playwrights. She helped most of the class and I our plays.   Even still it really pushed my ability and raised the bar for realistic fiction writing that will come in the future.

            The Sweatshop trial that we as a class did in middle of the year was probably the most enjoyable activity for history.  The class split up into groups to take positions on the real world problem sweatshops. Each group was questioned on the amount of control that they had on the situation and why it was still going on. “U.S. Consumers - If you wanted these “sweat shops” to end, you would have to stop buying into these companies”. As well as, each group had to present opening and closing statements on their position.  Finally, as a class we voted to see which group we thought had the most guilt. My group was the Poor Country Ruling Elite.  We had to research a ton of statistics, information and articles to fathom our position and perspective on the issue.  This assignment taught me about perspective because we had to really see from a group of people’s point of view on a hard issue.

Overall this year has been very enjoyable and memorable. I learned many new things and polished others that we rough. I hopefully will remember the experiences or the hard earned skills. English and History class in sophomore year was a wonderful opportunity. 

Throughout Lord of the Flies the kids become more savage. The boys start out as somewhat civilized, but as they realize that they might not get saved, they get more savage. In several instances in our world, there have been people or groups who are against technology. The example about groups not having or wanting technology relates to the boys because they go back to their animal instincts.. The real life example hurt people for a not very good reason, and they either didn’t have or want technology. The diminishing amount of technology affects people in ways so that they revert back to their instinct of savagery.

During the book Piggy’s glasses go from good condition to being broken. While the glasses are diminishing, the savage instinct of the boys becomes more prevalent. A quote from the book from where the glasses are half broken is “You didn't ought to have let that fire out... one side's broken." page 71. During this section the kids are in the middle of being animals humans. This quote shows that they are starting to abandon one form of technology that they have, fire. They left the technology to go hunting; and because of this the ship that passes by didn’t see them. If they had kept their technology, then they would not be fighting about not getting rescued from the ship. The fire would have also kept them from killing the pig, so that they would be less savage. Only savages would leave something as important as the fire, to go kill a pig for food that they wouldn’t need if they were rescued.

Many of the older boys were hunters, or wanted to be with jack to kill a pig. Luddites were people in the early 1800’s who were against some new technology. The new technology would do their job faster, but they claimed that it wasn’t as authentic, or good. The luddites destroyed many of the machines, and killed some people in the riots. The luddites are similar to the boys in Lord of the Flies, because they ignore or demolish technology, and in the process they hurt things. This new technology made them destroy technology, which showed how they went back to their animal instincts, and didn’t think about anything else. The luddites were against new technology, while the hunters were against watching the fire. Both of them had their priorities wrong, the luddites could have found new jobs, or solved the problem without violence. The boys had their priorities wrong because they chose hunting, and fun over being saved.

There is a lot of symbolism in Lord of the Flies. One big part is Piggy’s glasses. They symbolize technology, which also shows civilization and how put together they boys are. In the beginning of the book, when the boys are civilized the glasses are fine. When the glasses are half broken the boys are splitting apart, and most of them are going back to their animal like instincts. Close to the end of the book the glasses become fully broken because of the Savagery. A quote close to when the glasses are broken is “”How can we make a fire?” Jack squatted back and frowned at the pig. “We’ll raid them and take fire.”” Page 136. This shows that Jack has turned savage; he wants to steal from other kids on the island without asking first. His animal instincts have taken over, where he thinks that violence is necessary and doesn’t even consider talking to them. Another type of technology that they have on the island is fire. At the beginning they use the fire because they realize that it is an important part of them getting saved. The first time that they let the fire go out was when they first started to become savage. They decided to kill a pig instead of get saved by a ship. The technology was not present, so the boys reverted back to their animal instincts. After the boys split into two groups the fire is almost not present, which shows that they are barley separated from animals. At the end of the book there are two significant fires. The first one is the cooking fire, which would not serve their purposes, this shows that they are using a different type of technology and have disregarded the signal fire. The other fire is when they light the forest on fire to try to kill Ralph, this fire shows how much of savages they are; that they would destroy the jungle in order to find and hurt one person that wouldn’t join them.

There is much symbolism around the technology in Lord of the Flies, along with much emphasis on how anyone can become savage.. Technology is one thing that separates us from animals, so when it goes away we go back to our animal instincts. The boys lost almost all of their technology throughout the book, which made their savage instincts easier to see. This happens in our world, where people loose their technology, or the technology changes and they revert back to being animal like.

The shootings at Columbine high school were blamed on many things. Among drugs, alcohol and mental disorders was the first person shooter video game called Doom. Many people blamed the video game because there was not a lot of drugs or alcohol that showed up on the tests. Bill Manville on NY daily news said “"Doesn’t that sound like they were trying to rack up a record score in some video arcade?" This isn’t a very realistic idea, there is no way that a violent video game can make you think that on your own.

Many studies say that when testing violent video games on kids, they test whether the games made kids more violent. Almost all of the studies concluded that the kids who played violent video games became more aggressive after playing them. Many people who play violent video games become more aggressive, but they don’t make you act on these emotions.

The reality is that millions of people play violent video games, and there are not millions of school shootings or violent crimes every year, so it cannot be affecting people so much that they want to act on their emotions. Recently, video games have become more popular.  As an article on PBS says, “According to federal crime statistics, the rate of juvenile violent crime in the United States is at a 30-year low." This combined with the fact that many of the other studies only said that the people playing violent video games only became more aggressive supports the idea that it makes people more aggressive, but they don’t act.

Violent video games do make people more aggressive, but they don’t act on these emotions. If the violent video games were having such an impact so that they made the kids to things like the columbine shootings, then there would be a lot more juvenile violent crimes. The study was only for the United States, but these statistics could be different for other parts of the world. A lot of these studies are not 100% accurate because they don’t account for everything in the game players life. This is almost impossible to do, so the data will never be completely correct for these kinds of studies.

The shootings at Columbine or any other school shootings are not majorly caused by the kids playing video games. Many people try to blame video games because they are something that many people can easily put the blame on, even though according to PBS 83% of video games that kids shouldn’t be playing are bought by their parents. Less of the blame should be put on video games, and more on other factors like illegal substances, or mental problems.

Overall many people find that violent video games are something easy to blame problems on. In fact the video games do make the players more aggressive, but not as violent. Although violent video games do hold some blame in violence today, there are many other factors such as drugs, alcohol, or mental problems that contribute to this violence more than violent video games.

Descriptive Essay

I walk through the living room, through the archway, look at the painting over the archway I remind myself when I was younger.  The painting is of a teacup, sugar and a spoon, which are really the only things you need for making tea except the tea itself. It reminds me how I would always end my day with a nice cup of it.   Pouring water into a mug and heating it in the microwave, the time around 1:45. Thinking of how the day went while the time passed.  Getting the black tea bag ready and bowl of sugar near by.  I would put too much sugar because I liked it very sweet.  And add little bit of milk to make it slightly less hot and more enjoyable.  Carefully bring it into the living room so I don’t spill it.  Then sitting down and relaxing by watching a good TV show, movie or doing nothing at all while I sipped the nice brew.   As I recap my childhood I can’t help but want to do that now but I’m not that much in the mood. Rest and relaxation are you need on a long day of work but pop-tarts and milk will be fine for now.  Sitting down eating I think of my day.

As my arm tires, I pull the trigger.  I drill into the drywall putting an inch and a quarter screw holding it in place. I put more screws in, so my dad could let go of the big piece. I’m not used to doing this work so I have to take breaks sometimes.  I grab more screws from my belt and finish the 4 by 8 piece of sheetrock. As I wait for my dad to finish putting in his side in, I drink some water.  There are two fans in the room but it’s still very hot. We walk into the hallway and pick up a large piece of sheetrock that was rested on top of wooden blocks. We walked back into the room and I noticed our progress so far.   The ceiling dry walled, and both of the remaining walls were insulated. We lift the piece up, held it in place and both drilled in the screws. Eating my pop-tart, I realize that it is important to know these things just in case something happens.  When I am older I might need these skills and a normal lazy person would rather stay home than work for the whole entire summer.  I’ve learned a lot of things of the summer, mostly skilled labor.  Patching roofs, framing a room and stapling installation.  One that particularly was very hard was patching the roof. 

Out in the 90-degree weather and a storm we were up on the roof trying to prevent the resistant leaks.  We weren’t sure where they were, so we decided to patch over the whole thing. I remember one time when storm clouds were moving in, we had to quickly secure and patch the whole back side of the roof.  We had most of it done when I tried to see how far the storm was but I couldn’t really tell and that’s when I felt the first drop.  Working faster I noticed I was coming down harder.  My dad and I rushed to complete out patchwork.  Having a few more parts to seal shut we scooped out the tar in the bucket and lathered in on. I got more tar on myself than the actual roof.  Trying to work together we put mesh in the seams to help strengthen it.  Doing all the work fairly decent, we deicide it will hold the water. We look at it for a second, and then rush down the ladder.  I enjoyed it very much when I think about.

When I look back at this year’s summer I feel it wasn’t at all a waste.  Learning trade, spending time with my dad and doing a good job at it was great. Of all things I learned, putting up drywall, spackling, painting, patching tarring and so on, I think just doing something for my summer was worth while. I feel proud of what I learned and the things I failed at. All in all, these things will probably help me later on somehow but for now I enjoy eating my snack.