Collegiate Gladiator in the Gauntlet of Education
I felt the presence of early morning dew against my skin as I marched through a grass field on a brisk October day. My classmates exuded enthusiasm; this excursion was reason to escape the confines of our bleak high school. There was abundant conversation with the occasional youthful act of animation, like sprinting downfield or throwing a rock. The world seems just a bit different when a student is taken from a classroom setting into a non-academic one. Opportunity and freedom appear to be ever so present. Perhaps, that was reason for our class being outside during my regularly scheduled English period. In all honesty I was quite skeptical. I have never been a morning person and can be a silent cynic when it comes to group events. I staggered behind the group, hands in pocket, submerged in totally unrelated thought.
My teacher led the way stammering uphill and clenching his worn black book, almost appearing as if he was Moses carrying the Ten Commandments up Mount Sinai. After trekking through the endless barren of soccer and lacrosse fields, we came upon the overgrown pathway that led into the woods. Many of us were familiar to this area, coaches often made their teams run through these wild trails. Others seemed puzzled. Stepping into the wild that day we crossed the threshold on many levels: not just escaping into nature but escaping from ordinary thinking. For me, the change in location would also mark a change in philosophy. Some distance I have covered.
The start of my journey seems like a lifetime ago. Blinded by innocence and burdened with little responsibility, being eight years old had its perks. Sure I had to attend school, but what exactly was school at that echelon? A day spent singing songs, playing dodge ball, paper macheing cardboard figurines, with the occasional napping and recess break. Almost like summer camp. To my surprise, second grade was far from what I imagined. My year revolved daily lessons on reading and writing... in hopes of achieving basic literacy. With the occasional dip into the kiddy pool of arithmetic, second grade was a year of hard work. I was lucky to have an incredible teacher like Mrs. Perdiz. She pushed me so hard, so hard that at times I disliked her. Music, math, and art took a definite backseat to reading.
Throughout all texts discussed, there is a pervasive and unmistakable sense of journey in its unmeasurable and intangible form. The journeys undertaken, are not physically transformative ones but are journeys which usher in an emotional and spiritual alteration. They are all life changing anomaly’s that alter the course and outlook each individual has on their life. Indeed, through the exploitation of knowledge in both a positive and negative context, the canvassed texts accommodate the notion that journeys bear the greatest magnitude when they change your life in some fashion.
Herbert Otto, an esteemed author, once wrote, “Change and growth take place when a person has risked themselves and dares to become involved in experimenting with their own life” (Wilderdom: A Project in Natural Living & Transformation). Essentially, Otto is saying that in order to grow as a person and become educated, one must break free from what bring him or her comfort, which allows him or her to be daring and adventurous. Christopher McCandless holds a similar view point on education and experimentation or adventure, which can be seen in Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild. McCandless believes that once people find a way to break free from the default and comfortable setting that so many of us function on, are we able to discover our adventurous
The wild is a place to push yourself to the limit and take a look at who you truly are inside. “Wilderness areas have value as symbols of unselfishness” (Nash). Roderick Nash’s philosophy states that the wilderness gives people an opportunity to learn humility but they fight this because they do not have a true desire to be humble. Human-kind wants to give out the illusion that they are nature lovers when in reality, they are far from it. “When we go to designated wilderness we are, as the 1964 act says, "visitors" in someone else's home” (Nash). People do not like what they cannot control and nature is uncontrollable. Ecocentrism, the belief that nature is the most important element of life, is not widely accepted. The novel Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer depicts a young boy who goes on an exploration to teach himself the true concept of humility. Chris McCandless, the protagonist, does not place confidence in the universal ideology that human beings are the most significant species on the planet, anthropocentrism.
Many people in the 1920s lived very extravagant lives. The time of the “Jazz Age” or the “Roaring 20s” where girls were flappers and the men were bootleggers. People loved to have fun and be carefree. However, alcohol dependence was becoming a problem and many started realizing that. Taking action to stop this was the hard part. Alcohol was corrupting the 1920s even though some did not recognize it. In the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald displays the corruption during the 1902s through his main character, Jay Gatsby, and his illustration of prohibition.
Transcendentalism is a religious, philosophical, literary, and social movement of the nineteenth century. Essentially, this movement was based upon the ideals of the “sixth sense,” nature, and non-conformity, as well as individualism, intuition, idealism, imagination, and inspiration. A few of the works and writings featured in the transcendental unit include Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, The Beatification of Chris McCandless: From Thieving Poacher into Saint by Craig Medred, and Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The primary focus of this essay is to provide an opinion on a strikingly debatable topic; Whether or not Christopher McCandless, hero of Krakauer’s Into the Wild, was a true transcendentalist. Despite the bold actions of Chris McCandless on his daring Alaskan odyssey, he turned out to be far from a true transcendentalist, failing to meet the definition of transcendentalism, being solely concerned with himself, and acting out of revenge rather than seeking self discovery - nothing more than a childish suicidal rebel.
What does the word propaganda really mean? For most of us we assume that it is a word for negativity use. Just to assure those that think of propaganda as a negative word. Propaganda does have a positive objective if used correctly. The word propaganda is defined in a few different ways, But in the most general usage, it varies from bad to good persuasion of our minds. It is used during election time to our daily lives on television to our newspaper stands. According to Donna Cross’s essay, “Propaganda: How Not to Be Bamboozled,” there are thirteen different types of propaganda; this paper will discuss six varieties. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney used primarily every sort of propaganda to influence the citizens; therefore, our national society needs to develop awareness in the propaganda used by such politicians so that they can make wise decisions intelligently.
Good morning! How many of you think that learning to read and write is necessary for children in order to become successful? Good. We are going to talk about the Reading Recovery Program that is available for students that have difficulty learning to read and write. Nine out of ten children that do not meet expectations in reading and writing in the first grade continue to fall behind in fourth grade. These children are likely to be retained, referred to special education, and drop out of school. With the help of Reading Recovery teachers, children accelerate their learning and meet academic expectations.
The concept of tragic hero is very important in the construction of tragedy. It is the main cause of pity and fear. The tragic hero is a character between the two extremes; he is neither virtuous nor evil. At the same time, this character is better than the ordinary men or audience, he has some good qualities. Moreover, as a tragic hero, he is moving from happiness to misery by his downfall at the end. In fact, this downfall is caused by an error or a flaw in his character not by a vice or depravity. Another feature in the tragic hero is that he has good reputation and he is a man of prosperity. It can be said that Oedipus is a tragic hero because he has all the previous mentioned characteristics and the whole play is a classical application of this concept.
When children first start school they begin a new extensive journey, first meeting all new people and then having to learn a broad array of new things. One of those new things is how to read and also write. Teachers start out slow by having students write in big capital letters on funny looking red and green striped paper, next moving on to cursive letters with still that same silly paper. After a short while the students are on their own, writing notes for classes, notes to friends and family, along with research papers and stories for their teachers in school. And that is where my story begins, room 216 on the second floor of Pottsville Area High School.
Oedipus the King by Sophocles has the ingredients necessary for a good Aristotelian tragedy. The play has the essential parts that form the plot, consisting of the peripeteia, anagnorisis and a catastrophe; which are all necessary for a good tragedy according to the Aristotelian notion. Oedipus is the perfect tragic protagonist, for his happiness changes to misery due to hamartia (an error). Oedipus also evokes both pity and fear in its audience, causing the audience to experience catharsis or a purging of emotion, which is the true test for any tragedy according to Aristotle.
It was a gloomy Tuesday despite the fact that it was late August. I had missed the first day of school because I always hated the idea of introductions and forced social situations during those times. I hated my particular school ever since I started as a freshman the
“Oedipus the King” by Sophocles is a tragedy of a man who unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. Aristotles’ ideas of tragedy are tragic hero, hamartia, peripeteia, anagnorisis, and catharsis these ideas well demonstrated throughout Sophocles tragic drama of “Oedipus the King”.
Oedipus is depicted as a “marionette in the hands of a daemonic power”(pg150), but like all tragic hero’s he fights and struggles against fate even when the odds are against him. His most tragic flaw is his morality, as he struggles between the good and the evil of his life. The good is that he was pitied by the Shepard who saved him from death as a baby. The evil is his fate, where he is to kill his father and marry his mother. His hubris or excessive pride and self-righteousness are the lead causes to his downfall. Oedipus is a tragic hero who suffers the consequences of his immoral actions, and must learn from these mistakes. This Aristotelian theory of tragedy exists today, as an example of what happens when men and women that fall from high positions politically and socially.
In The Poetics, the greatest statement of classical dramatic theory, Aristotle cites Oedipus as the best example of Greek tragedy. According to Aristotle, Oedipus is a tragic hero because he is not perfect, but has tragic flaws (hamartia). Aristotle points out that Oedipus' tragic flaw is excessive pride (hubris) and self-righteousness. Aristotle also enlightens certain characteristics that determine a tragic hero. Using Oedipus as an ideal model, Aristotle says that a tragic hero must be an important or influential man who commits an error in judgment, and who must then suffer the consequences of his actions. The tragic hero must learn a lesson from his errors in judgment, his tragic flaw, and become an example to the audience of what happens when great men fall from their arrogant social or political positions. According to Aristotle, a tragedy must be an imitation of life in the form of a serious story that is complete in it; in other words, the story must be realistic and narrow in focus. A good tragedy will evoke pity and fear in its viewers, causing the viewers to experience a feeling of catharsis. Catharsis, in Greek, means "purgation" or "purification"; running through the...
The students who disapprove of morning assembly argue that assemblies can be time-consuming and tedious and that the weather conditions outside can distract them from paying attention to the announcements. When the weather is hot outside, students claim that it is difficult to concentrate on the announcements. On some occasions the assembly lasts more than the ten minutes it is allotted and it can make students late for class. “Morning assembly is painfully long and boring and is an unnecessary tradition that I think should not be continued,” truthfully states Taylor Giorlando-Wall, a current junior at Jesuit High School. Many students believe t...