Thinking Critically about College and Career

Jonathan Matthew Holland

Mr. Andrew Smith

English 1020

April 8, 2009

What about us?

As students, we are expected to follow the guidelines others have set up for us. What about the students that do not fit into the perfect cookie cutter view of what an education should be? Should these students be punished because they go about learning in a different way? When should we allow the students to excel at things such as the arts or sports if we remove them because they are not part of our country’s prescribed core curriculum? For many, the thought’s of sitting through a day of boring classes is not welcome. In the essay “Hidden Intellectualism,” Professor and writer, Gerald Graff, demonstrates how being book smart is not always a desired feat. Graff uses his own personal experiences in designing a way for those students that do not excel at the core, math science, history, and English, classes to excel in learning through things that they are interested in.

With ideas such as our “No Child Left Behind” program, students that have a different way of learning are subject to get over it and try to fit their cylindrical peg into America’s rigid rectangle. While discussing the idea of street smarts versus book smarts, Gerald Graff believes: “We associate the educated life, the life of the mind, too narrowly and exclusively with subjects and texts that we consider inherently weighty and academic” (142). The inclusion of students with street smarts into the academic world can aid in the understanding of experiences that help to broaden our view of the academic texts that we come into contact with. Some students do excel in this mold of education, but what about the others that would rather be learning about sports or theatre or music? These students just have to deal with it mostly due to the strict guidelines that they must follow in order to graduate. Would you rather sit through a boring statistics class trying to decide the best way to make a bee line to the door when the bell rings, or would you rather be out at the baseball game counting up your favorite teams batting statistics? Clearly, for most street smart kids, the answer would be the more exciting and invigorating one. Graff suggests this when he says that, “Making students nonacademic interests an object of study is useful then, for getting students’ attention and overcoming their boredom and alienation” (147). This helps to distract students from the harder and more boring subjects by applying what they are studying to something that they may enjoy in the real world.

When did school stop catering towards the future and just become a boring day to day chore that every young person must be a part of? In a recent survey of an eleventh grade advanced placement English class at Cookeville High School, I found that while many of the students appreciate the effort of their teachers that try to incorporate the eight different multiple intelligences.[1] Sadly, I also gathered that these same students do not believe that many of their teachers achieve enough of these intelligences in the other classes that they are in. For example, while reading a story about a baseball game in a third grade class, the desks have been arranged so that the teacher can have demonstrations of the different movements that pertain to the baseball game. At the beginning of the story, the teacher has a couple of volunteers imitate the pitch of the first pitch and the crack of the bat as the ball connects with the bat. Next, he has a student act as if he needs to slide into the base so that he would be safe from being out. By including activities such as this the students with street smarts can express themselves while the book smart students may have the option to take turns reading part of the story that is being acted out.

Students nowadays have even less of a chance to voice their opinions on how they want to learn and definitely do not have any way of deciding what they want to learn in most classrooms. The amounts of teachers that allow their students to make decisions are few and far between, because most of them are just trying to wade through the multitudes of paperwork that comes with teaching students. Because of the ridiculous amounts of paperwork, teachers lose their passion and lose the needed focus on their students. Due to this the students as a whole lose out on education but those that need the most help due to the fact that they are not “book smart,” lose out more than the others. A current example of this would be the inclusion of a graduation test in Florida that Governor Bush instituted, which requires students to pass a test that says whether they are allowed to graduate or if they have to be held back for another year to take the year over even if they have good grades going into the test.

Our Nation has figured out that college isn’t for everyone, why can’t education figure this out? Just as the music industry caters to the tastes of everyone, should not education? Graff defends his beliefs once again by saying, “I believe that street smarts beat out book smarts in our culture not because street smarts are non-intellectual, as we generally suppose, but because they satisfy an intellectual thirst more thoroughly than school culture which seems pale and unreal” (146). It has been proven that everyone does not learn the same way so schools should use this information to better the learning experience for everyone.

In conclusion, kids that are more street smart than book smart are shown a great disservice by our education system. They are expected to learn in the same ways that everyone else does even though they are more interested in fashion or sports or the arts. Assignments that students are given should allow them more freedom in subject matter so that they will not grow to resent learning and be able to discuss something that they care about. Students should be able to have a say in how they learn and what does or does not work for them. As Graff has described in his essay “Hidden Intellectualism,” students should be given the chance to show what they are passionate about while they are meeting the requirements that must be met by state standards.

Works Cited

Graff, Gerald. “Hidden Intellectualism.” They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter In Academic Writing. Cathy Birkenstein and Gerald Graff. New York. WW Norton, 2006. 142-148.

---

[1] The eight multiple intelligences in children are linguistics, logical/mathematical, special, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. These show a student’s strongest and weakest ways that they are able to learn. These multiple intelligences can be used for any age child in school.

Look What I Can Do!

Walking through large cities everywhere you are bound to see at least one street performer. Even on college campuses you see chalk artwork on the sidewalks as you walk around. Street performance has been around for a long time because as people find out how to do new and fun things, they are bound to want to show someone. Another form of street performance
is when a person goes out on the street corner and preaches about God or preaches about some other thing that they are extremely passionate about. An example of a street performer that I have recently seen is a man that was preaching about his religion on the South Patio earlier this week and then on Dixie Avenue today. As Hakim Bey stated, anyone can be a poetic terrorist by doing things as simple as scrawling out a simple poem on a bathroom stall or spicing up a boring looking subway car with a little art.

Really, I'm pretty sure I didn't want to know that about you!

Texting, calling, and then texting again, this is a cycle that has become part of everyday life. While the cell companies come out with newer and better phones such as the ones that you can listen to music on or check your email, we as a people just find new ways to pay even less attention to what is going on around us. Annie Nakao has even stated that being on your cell phone in public is just absolutely rude!

To be honest, there are some situations that I would agree with Nakao that this is true such as, the doctor’s office, in the checkout line at the store. These places are typically the places I do not want to hear someone talking about how they need to get their nails done or how bitchy their boss was that day at work. Also it does not matter where you are if you are talking as loud as you can to the one on the phone, really can you not just ask them politely to turn their volume up? This is really not that hard and would allow you to be more polite to those around you when you are talking on your cell phone!

We all have seen the poor child sitting next to his mom or dad while they are cussing, as if cuss words were the only words they had ever bothered to learn, at someone that probably is not paying attention to something much more important that may be going on. THIS NEEDS TO STOP! Surprisingly cussing on the phone is neither in the time or place it should be when a child is nearby. If you must be on your cell phone in a public place at least remember to be polite to others around you that may not want to know your ENTIRE life story.

Vagina Monologues February 2009

This show was very eye opening even after seeing the video about the beginning of the V-Day movement. I have grown even more respect for women after seeing this production. I learned about many things that women go through or that they have had to go through in the past. The fact that they included a question and answer style meeting after the show was a very interesting ending to such a powerful evening.
The most powerful scene I believe was the one when the performer told the audience the story of the comfort women. It saddened me that people would force these young women to be their sexual slaves, having sex upwards of fifty times a day. I am glad that there has been some forward motion in these women being publicly apologized to by the Japanese government.

The most fun scenes in the play were when Annika’s character came on stage and declared that she was bringing the word CUNT back and when Emily’s character talked about making all the other women moan. The audience found great joy in yelling the word CUNT when they were asked to amongst all the laughter. Emily must have had to work at not laughing during this moaning scene because everyone was laughing about all the different moaning creations that the cast made on stage. My personal favorite was when Laura did her Catholic school girl moan, proclaiming, “Forgive Me Father!”

The guest appearance of Jennifer Dotson-Creter during the let your fingers do the walking scene was spectacular! She looked so beautiful and her entire dance was flawless. I knew that she taught dance at Stage One, but I had no clue how talented she was above the fact that she taught dance.

I loved this performance and was very glad that I had decided to go and see it with a few of my friends!

It's Just an Illusion...

I have been performing on stage for almost 7 years now and decided that I would try something new and a bit more challenging by transforming myself into something that I am not. This transformation is that I turned myself into a female persona named Emma. I do not dress as a woman all the time just on special occasions such as amateur night at the club or the major parties that are held at the club.

Although this is my first time performing in the Cookeville area it is not the first time that I have ever performed as a woman at different clubs. I have performed in the Chattanooga area twice and then in Boston every night for a week while I was on vacation with some friends. In the past I had used other names like Chloe Andrews, and Emily St. James.

The birth of Emma was this past January, when I officially decided that I wanted to perform for the first time in Cookeville at the Forbidden Tiki Bar, the alternative lifestyle club in Cookeville. Since her birth I have performed once, shopped countless hours for clothing, makeup and accessories, and listened to hundreds of songs trying to decide which songs matched her personality for the evening best. Now I own three wigs, tons of makeup, and have a few cute clothing items that I have worn at the club.

Unfortunately, I have to miss this month’s show do to a few scheduling conflicts, but I am looking forward to performing as a female impersonator in the April drag amateur night at Forbidden. Since I am unable to perform this month, it has allowed me to use my time to find new and exciting songs that Emma can perform in the future.

8 x 10

At the beginning of the semester, I had told myself that I was not going to be in any theatre productions this semester. This went strong while there was not a show that I was eligible to be in, but then I decided that I would accompany a friend of mine to the 8 x 10 auditions a few weeks ago. The show, I was told, is a grouping of eight ten minute plays that are shown one after the other much like scenes of a regular show with an intermission in the middle. I started out by just sitting quietly in the midst of all of the hopeful auditioners and decided to go for it and see if I had a chance on a new stage. Sadly, I did not get a part in the 8 x 10 production on stage but was asked to work behind the scenes for the show.

Through these past weeks of rehearsal, I have learned many things and gotten to meet many different people that are working on the production. These people include the producer of the shows at the Cookeville Drama Center, the three directors; Kim, Dave, and David; the stage managers; Michelle and Randi; and all of the many members of the cast. I have learned how to fly in curtains for the show and then helped to move props on and off of the stage between each play.

Overall, this has been a great experience to sort of experience what the Cookeville dramatic community has to offer the many actors that live in the town. I have really enjoyed every aspect of working on the 8 x 10 production and hope to perform or work backstage on many more productions at the Cookevill Drama Center while I am in school at Tennessee Tech.