History? Or His Story?

      Recently in class we read a poem called "The History Teacher" by Billy Collins. It was about a history teacher fabricating the events of wars with intentions of protecting the innocence of his students. 

However the same teacher who was trying to 'protect' is students didn't know that it was them whom other students needed protection from, while they bullied kids and broke their glasses. 

There seems to be a slight misinterpretation and a thin line between protection and ignorance, approach and avoidance. 

Protecting someone doesn't necessarily entail the act of having to lie to them, but to simply restrain from sharing too much in too much detail for them to process and interpret what it means to themselves. 

There's a reason why the hideous crimes committed were never explained to us as children but simply labelled as 'bad things' done by 'bad strangers'. 

It's not like our parents or other adult figures hid the truth from us, they just never disclosed the severity and detail of things we weren't prepared to be so aware of. 

We still aren't prepared to be aware of some of the things we are made to. 

It's simply a matter of how we comprehend our surroundings.

Sometimes we can't be protected from the things we learn. We can only learn from the things that can't protect us.    

Punctuat!on

hey guys how are ya I feel excited for the holidays are you you should be because its one of the best times of year dont  you think so I know I do

Well that shouldn't have been to difficult to read, right? At this point I think all of us have a sense of where and when to punctuate our sentences with pauses, breaks, questions and excitement. 

Punctuation is something that has been taught as vital to our english education. We need to what this means! Or what this means? I'm pretty sure you noticed the difference in tone and stressed words. 

Punctuation is the solid foundation of any canvas that is to be painted on. Changing punctuation or getting rid of it altogether may provide more availability to creativity, but an inevitable cry for chaos. 

The only reason we feel like we could do without punctuation is because we know that we will always have it with us. Would you be willing to give up something if you could never ever see it again? Don't say yes to contradict me be nice and go with the flow. 

In future years when children are learning grammar and punctuation, yes there maybe hundreds of changes and or elimination altogether. But how will they learn? They could use anything they wanted in the name of punctuation and the teacher, who grew up with the education we did, would have to take deep breathing lessons just to understand and decode this new language. 

Punctuation is an art of its own, it has rules, restrictions and worldwide relevance.  

How much is too much?

 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is a novel talking about many things, one of them being the want for more. 

'More' can be described in many ways: more freedom, more food, more power and beauty etc... 

But where does the want for more come from? We all have our personal missions to accomplish and points to prove. 

In the end of The story Pecola finally gets her blue eyes but then we see how constantly insecure and self conscious she is of her own newly found "beauty". 

If that isn't enough, just like the blueness of her eyes, she judges everyone with blue eyes that passes by with her friend. 

She makes her tell her whos eyes are bluer or prettier. 

This drastic behavior shows how there's always someone with more than you who's better than you. Society will pressurize you into following the 'status quo' and being better than everyone else. 

This goes to show that too less of anything or too much of anything is bad. It affects the individuals and the society surrounding the society socially emotionally and mentally. 

Dandelyin'

   We all know a few celebrities, we love some and we despise others. The celebrities we despise may be rich, good looking and successful, but some of us will dislike them because of who they are and what kind of person they may try to be. 

Now, we could also compare this to a school setting. Although discrimination and bullying is now highly frowned upon, it was and still is quite a big problem. 

Even in school, the victims of exclusion and rejection may not necessarily look or seem like they are hated but are hated because they simply are who they are. 

In our english class we are reading "the bluest eye" by Toni Morrison. 

Morrison makes an analogy using a metaphor; comparing the black society to a dandelion. 

She implies that even if some find the dandelion beautiful, it will always be frowned upon, unwanted, rejected and considered ugly for the simple fact that it is a weed and weeds are to be removed from the yard. 

This can be paralleled with the black society, although you may consider the black society beautiful, in that time period, they would always be considered ugly simply because they are black. 

Remember when we were little kids and we would find those fuzzy dandelions that looked really cool and would make us sneeze? Remember how we would pick tons of them and blow all of those tiny stems into the air? 

Did you know they were weeds back then?

Well I didn't. 

I just thought they looked fuzzy and nice and I wanted to see the little stems fly into air. 

As children, we are oblivious to society's harsh norms as to what is acceptable and what is beautiful. 

Same thing with school, although this may be a touchy and controversial statement; when you were a little kid did you pick your friends based on how they looked? 

Or did you pick based on how what color they likes? Or what season or sport or food they liked best? 

What about now? 

We're too busy making assumptions and judging eachother on social media to ever take an initiative and get to know one another without being blinded by preconceptions. 

I'm not accusing anyone here as I myself am guilty of doing the things I just talked about, and I'm pretty sure most of us are, but this just goes to show how perception really can change everything. 

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - infinite" - William Blake