Cathleen Schine's 'I Was A Teenage Illiterate'

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Ever since I became literate, literacy relied on as an important life skill to the point where I would challenge other kids to see who appeared smarter. But I've grown up to learn that obsessing over intelligence has not and will not make me any smarter. This relates similarly to one scholar, Cathleen Schine, who claims she is an illiterate to the world due to her poor choices of obsessing how smart she is, but she learned to control and outgrow the phase while she had the chance to in her article “I was A Teenage Illiterate”. Cathleen would carry intelligent and authentic books, but she only understood 10% of a classic novel and ended up developing into the 90% as she grew up (“I was a Teenage Illiterate”). This goes with the fact that as …show more content…

For me, reading as well as rereading, books such as Junie B Jones, Berenstain Bears, or the Harry Potter series, impacted my life immensely by increasing my vocabulary, developing my vital language skills and many more developmental skills. In the past, being literate meant beating kids in how many books I could read and being able to comprehend difficult vocabulary, but now being literate in the adult world means developing new and creative ideas or being able to prosper an opinion based on facts and previous knowledge.
My reading experience in junior-high and first three years of high school were not so much different. I had never been enthusiastic to read about predetermined topics assigned by my teacher and they continued to assign predetermined reading topics that made me feel frustrated and at times uncomfortable. But there was positivity that came out of these repulsive and devastating books, such as Lord of The Flies by William Golding or The Night by Elie Wiesel. Lord of the Flies caused me to confirm that humans must have rules and a government to help …show more content…

Many books demonstrate racial and sexist motifs, but the book The Help by Kathryn Stockett, makes readers view the perspective of both black and white woman in situations that the world should not have ever been through. One event, in particular, is when one of the main characters Aibileen, a black maid for Leefolt family, was babysitting Mae Mobley and her mother yells at Mae for using Aibileen's “colored” bathroom, “I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain't a color, disease ain't the negro side of town. I want to stop that moment from coming – and it come in every white child's life – when they start to think that colored folks are not as good as whites” (Stockett 95). This text teaches the world about the upsetting perspective of segregation, it makes people realize children are not inherently racist. It comes from the judgment and knowledge in education and family beliefs which are developed at a young age. Stockett makes one realize that people need to help develop a good judgment upon young ones so they can make smart decisions when they are older and be more accepting towards different people in society. Reading this text helps others recognize that racism is a difficult topic to approach but putting

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