WEEK 9: Adrienne Rich

1.) The hints she gives for giving women more soft-skills in education is to "consider what we have to work against, as well as with, in ourselves, our students, in the context of the curriculum, in the structure of the institution, in the society at large. And that means, first of all, taking ourselves seriously: recognizing that central responsibility of a woman to herself, without which we remain always the Other, the defined, the object, the victim; believing that there is a unique quality of validation, affirmation, challenge, support, that one woman can offer another."
The ways she gives is very important because I do think that women should recognize what they are capable of and every human being should take themselves seriously. Women, especially, like to play the victim in everything, but if you expect others to take you seriously and see that you're not just an object or incapable of doing some things, you cannot act like you're the victim. I also think that this is an even more important issue today because of the media making women out to be incapable of anything really and that they're there to just look pretty for men.
2.) I don't agree that the issues with gender are the same as the issues with race and class. They are not even close because if a person is being discriminated due to their race or class, it is not something that they can help. People are born a certain race and cannot change that and you are born into a class because of your family. And even though you can change the class that you're in based on the money you make when you get older, it doesn't mean that the class you were born into just disappears. Women are being discriminated based on gender because they're made out to be stupid and incapable of doing important things. That can be changed by the woman working hard and proving that everyone is wrong about her. Even though I don't agree with the perception that people have on women, I still think that there are some things meant for a man to do and not a woman. There is no way that a woman could run the country the same way that a man could. Women are too emotional and when their emotions get in the way, things go wrong. I think a man is much more suited for that type of positon than a woman could ever be. We also need to understand the difference in biology of a man and woman. I'm not saying that women should stay home and cook and clean every day and let men to absolutely everything, but there are just certain things that a woman is suited to do as well as a man. I think the university still has a lot of work to do in this area and always will because there will always be people who have different feelings on such a touchy subject.

Week 8: Gains and Losses

Question 1:
a). At home, my family speaks all english, so there are no differences from my home and school dealing with language. I do have a friend whose parents are Spanish and has grown up speaking spanish at home, but at school is taught English. It seems to be hard for her sometimes, because at home, her parents only speak spanish and know a little bit of english, but when she goes to school or talks with her friends, she speaks complete english.
b). I think that when you grow up learning a certain language it will obviously be easier to learn than having to learn a language for your career. The reasons it would be easier is that if you grow up your whole life hearing a certain language spoken, it will stick better with you and it's just how you were raised your whole life. Once you grow up speaking this language, it can be very difficult to try and learn a different language because you already know one language and it's so normal to you to speak that and putting another in there to learn can get confusing and hard.
c). Belonging should always be an important thing when referring to language use. It's important to be confident and be proud of who you are and I think belonging has to do with just that. Then, feeling that belonging will make you not afraid to speak in public with any language, whether you grew up speaking it or learned it for a career. People can always tell if a person is confident or not and seeing that confidence in a person could get you farther in your career.
Question 2:
a). As children grow up, their families will change because people themselves change all the time whether they notice it or not. It is not always a bad thing, but it happens. In Rodriguez's case, the change wasn't a good one because of the language barriers and the fact that his uncle, who raised him, didn't speak much. I do think that achieving success does take sacrificing, but I don't think it should be your family. There's always going to be sacrifices made to be able to get to where you want and that's where your moral value should come in so that the sacrifices aren't things that will hurt someone in the end.
b). Having intimacy with language in our career and academics would certainly be fulfilling. Without the intimacy, there's really no feeling behind your achievements with the language. Having the intimacy shows that you care and want to achieve the most you can and when you do that, it should be a fulfilling experience because those goals are the reasons you were intimate with a language.
c). The way Rodriguez speaks about going back to the time of his youth when he hears someone speaking Spanish makes me think that he isn't sad or even thankful of what he "lost". He seems very comfortable and confident with the language that he speaks now, but I think that because he doesn't speak Spanish anymore, whenever he hears it, he appreciates his youth more and goes back to a time when he would hear his family speaking and that brings joy to him. It makes him happy for a little while and brings back good memories.

Assessing Your Essay Author's Rhetorical Situation

Lisa D. Delpit is an African-American Scholar in education who is writing "Education in a Multicultural Society" in an informative and precise way. She uses personal experience to show that students, depending on their background, need different styles of teaching and that their teachers need to recognize this. The teachers need to understand the students lives outside of the classroom to determine what their abilities are.
The audience, mainly teachers and upcoming teachers, are very open when reading this and are wanting to understand and be informed of the difference in backgrounds and how to go about teaching them.
The whole purpose is this text is to show that teachers often take things how they see it, meaning they do not go into a deeper meaning or understanding of the students life outside of the classroom. They are stereotyping children depending on their ethnicity and background - asian students are perfect and don't need help with learning, black students are a lost cause and won't learn much because of where they live and how they were raised, white students get the most attention because they are white and dominant, Indian students are very quiet and keep to themselves in the classroom, and Latino students don't really care to be there at all. This stereotyping needs to be understood by the teachers and addressed in certain manors. Delpit uses examples from personal experience and the examples of people she knows personally to give the reader a better understanding and to show that what she is writing is very factual.
This is all taking place in today's generation. This is happening in our communities wherever we may live in the United States.

"On Self-Respect" by Joan Didion

1.) The effect that this has on the reader is a good and bad effect. It helps the reader to better understand the points she is making, but it can also be hard understand some of the analogies she is using. It could also be easier to understand because she is using real situations. Therefore, it can or cannot be helpful to the reader depending on how well they understand what she is saying. I don't think it is alienating because with examples like hers, we can apply them to ourselves and something like that that we have had experience with.
2.) "Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about." "To have the sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent."I think that generally, people would agree with this. It is almost an understood thing that our grandparents know respect because they were raised much differently than we were and were taught to respect everyone or they would get into serious trouble. Also, when we have self-respect, we feel like we have everything. I think that when asking for forgiveness, whether is be adultery or any mistake, it takes a lot of courage to recognize the fact that you have screwed up. It takes away from character when you make those mistakes, but it also builds character to realize what you have done wrong and then to ask for forgiveness.
3.) Those statements go together with writing skills because like she says, having self respect in "habit of mind" and "can't be faked." You can't fake caring about your work in order to do well. Self-respect is a discipline and we need discipline to do our work to the best of our ability. It shows that a person has self-respect when they do well with writing skills or any work. They are showing that they care enough about themselves to succeed.