Provocative Articles...

All of the articles were extremly provocative and I thought a lot about them. From first article about the media playing a role in the negative image most people have of teenagers, I agreed with the author almost wholeheartedly. I did have a question though, dispite the fact that teenage sexuality and violence is not statistically increasing, is it true that it is occuring at younger and younger ages? For one, my young cousins know way more about what to do with their boyfriends in middle school than I did in my first two years of high school. Second, I recently read the book "Our America" by two African American boys growing up in a southside ghetto of Chicago where an 11 year old threw a 5 year old boy out of a 14 story window. Both parties were children, young children at that.
In the article about poverty violence I wanted to point out that teenagers today can see the rich and famous and all of the material items they have on a daily basis. TV shows that focus on rich people and how they live put a view in teenagers mind of what they think they can accomplish or have. For the majority of the nation, this is grossly exaggerated. How can a teenager from a poor family in a poor neighborhood expect to get a Blackberry cell phone? By stealing it. They dont have the means to buy it legitimately so to live like the people they see on TV, they steal. Therefore, I completly believe the author and their point that poverty drives violence.
The third article about children in beauty pageants was over exagerated in my point of view. Yes, when parents take the pageants to a level where their child is physically hurt for not winning, we have a problem there. However I feel that things like pageants, dance recitals or any other form of performing arts only boosts the self esteem of young girls. Young boys can be pushed by their parents to be all-start 3-sport athletes and no one sees that as abuse? As for their self-esteem suffering from losing... that is something children today NEED to deal with. It seems that more and more 'participation ribbons' are handed out to every kid who participates in sports or academic competitions than ever before. We don't want to hurt the kid who didnt win, but then again are we really creating any incentive for kids to try their very best to actually win that first place trophey. To apply this to the larger world view, everyone says the US is falling behind other nations in technology and other advancements. If our kids have no incentive to strive for excellence because we don't want to hurt their self-esteem, how would our country ever produce leaders, inventors and overall advanced thinkers? I understand the idea of inclusion and making sure every child has the opportunity to attain sucess but saying that parents who sign their daughters up for pageants is abuse is taking it a little far. Again, parents who go overboard are different, but parents who want to introduce their daughters to feeling confident are not doing anything wrong in my book.

Adolescence Mirrors Society

As we all read, adolescence is a fairly new part of our life stages and is very much so socially constructed. I would agree that biology plays A role in adolescence but I believe the society kids grow up in is THE most determining factor. It is sort of the nature v. nurture debate often discussed in sociology and psychology. Were we born this way or have our life experiences made us this way? Along the same lines as the authors, I belive it is both working together. However, a clear way to show the influence of society is to look at how adolescence has changed throughout history.

For example, take a look at this picture of young boys working in a cigar box factory.

They are probably working to support their families who recently moved to the city.

Today, these young boys would probably be playing video games or doing a whole lot of nothing.

Because we have such a high standard of living adolescents do not need to spend their days working. They have the free time that most adults work to try and achieve.

Interestingly though, if our economy continues as it is right now for an extended period of time, we might see more adolescents helping to support their families. This again shows that adolescents reflect the "social, political and economic conditions" (text p. 20) of the time.

Anti-Opressive Education

This was an interesting article to say the least. The author poses an arguement and supports it but I don't think I necessarily agree to all of what he says. Kumashiro makes the argument that schools are "harmful spaces". I think that schools can be great spaces for building social relations, learning, playing sports, tons of things. They can be harmful of course but I don't think the author should have dramaticized it so much. Also, he suggests that there should be separate spaces for students who are the other. This sounds riddiculous to me. I imagine he meant separate classrooms with teachers who are willing to help students if they feel out of place, that theyve been bullied or anything like that. To me, this would just further the separation between these 'other kids' and everyone else. They should feel integrated in the school community, not that they need a separate place to brew in their depression. How to do that, I dont know.

I dont really know what I'm doing!

I'm not entirely sure how to use this thing but I'm sure we will all figure it out.

I just wanted to mention that my SWEET picture is from when I was in Hawaii a few weeks ago. My fiance and I went to Dog the Bounty Hunter's bail bonds store and got some awesome signed pictures!! (if you don't know who the Dog is... you are missing out!!) "Keep off ice brah"