The Value of Shapeshifting James Paul Gee makes a persuasive argument to educate students, as a facet of literacy, the skill of tailoring their identities, as a valuable tool to prepare them to compete for employment in the “New Capitalism” marketplace (Gee, “New Literacy” 412). He describes this new work environment as a fast pace, short term, project orientated model, where successful employees tailor their professional personas, to make themselves attractive to new project opportunities. Further, he references a study to demonstrate how teenagers from Upper Middle class families seem to be assimilating these key skills from parents who are doctors, lawyers, and other highly paid professionals. Mr. Gee continues his argument using his research …show more content…
Gee seeks to prepare the students with the literacy “shapeshifting” tool, which he referred to as “Sociotechnical designing” to navigate through the difficult corporate jungle. All students can benefit from this skill to acquire better employment opportunities (Gee, “New Literacy” 414). His approach would positively affect all students. Nor does he neglect to acknowledge the negative side of this skill when he says, “[They]… fashion themselves in terms of (anxiety-filled) movement through “achievement space” (Gee, “New Literacy” 419). During my years in the Information Technology (IT) industry, we used terms such as “lowest hanging fruit” as a reference to a method to gain the most benefit quickly. When referring to tasks, this was an indication to get the quickest tasks out of the way to allow us to budget the majority of the time to the more difficult tasks (McGraw-Hill). Applying this concept to the amount of time involved in “De-centering” English as White advocates, his solution would only allow the study of one or perhaps two dialects. This would leave the five hundred Native American languages, the various other ethnic, cultural, and regional dialect student’s feeling excluded. Conversely, Stephanie Jones’
In “Hidden Intellectualism”, Gerald Graff argues the difference between “book smarts” (intellectualism) and “street smarts.” Graff explains that some people take on different approaches and interests certain subjects not related to “book smarts”, such as sports, television, fashion, etc. Everyone has a variation of both “book” and “street” smarts, but one is more profound than the other in a person, thus making the other a form of “hidden intellectualism”. He then claims that intellectualism in someone is often belittled and labeled as being geeky. As a kid, he was afraid to show his intellectual side in fear that he would be bullied and made fun of.
Mike Rose author of “Blue Collar Brilliance” he reminisces about his childhood and how he was observing his mother at work and how much she multitasked and how he experienced the blue collar work. His purpose was to describe how people integrate physical and mental work is in the field and supports people in the blue collar field. I felt as if I was at a dead end job and earning nothing from it, but Mike Rose’s article influenced me that I was actually learning and gaining skills at my work place. His intended audience would be blue collared workers and white collar workers. Rose informing that blue collar workers are also educated people even though they do not have a degree.
Racial stigmas and stereotypes have negative effects on a multitude of ethnic groups. Across our nation, members of numerous races experience difficulties surrounding their identity and inability to refine their English dialects. Anna Marie Quindlen, an American author, journalist, and New York Times columnist, once said, “Ethnic stereotypes are misshapen pearls, sometimes with a sandy grain of truth at their center... but they ignore complexity, change, and individuality”. Quindlen’s viewpoint is skillfully displayed in “Mother Tongue”, a first person narration by an Asian-American woman, Amy Tan.
The Beanie Babies Program is a reading program designed for Cycle 1 elementary classrooms, to work in tandem with classroom reading practice routines, such as a silent reading or team reading routine. It utilizes stuffed animals in order to teach a wide variety of decoding and comprehension strategies to help young students learn to read. The program is comprised of a series of Beanie Babies, each assigned a particular reading strategy. For example, the Stretchy Snake beanie baby is assigned the stretching strategy in which the reader stretches out each syllable of a word, sounding it out, in order to help read the word as a whole; The Questioning Owl would encourage students to ask questions about what their reading in order to further comprehension, and so forth. Various posters can be placed around the classroom explaining the strategies connect with each animal.
In her essay, The Legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt, author Betty Houchin Winfield argues that because of her journalistic career and the precedent she had on the role of the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the most influential women in American history. Winfield, unlike many other authors who write on the topic, does not spend an extensive amount of time focusing on Eleanor’s works in organizations and charities. However, Winfield chooses to support her argument by supplying ample information concerning the precedent Eleanor left not only on the role of the first lady, but also on the role of the American woman. Although only briefly mentioning her active involvement in several organizations, The Legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt is effective in demonstrating how by
The Skin That We Speak The way a person speaks is a direct link to a person’s culture and the environment which he or she was raised in. A person’s language, skin color as well as economic status influences the way he or she is perceived by others. Lisa Delpit and eleven other educators provide different viewpoints on how language from students of different cultures, ethnicity, and even economic status can be misinterpreted due to slang and dialect or nonstandard English by the teachers as well as his or her own peers. The Skin That We Speak: Thoughts on Language and Culture in the Classroom by Lisa Delpit and Joanne Kilgour Dowdy, who collected essays from a diverse group of educators and scholars to reflect on the issue of language
Coders Are Worth It In James Somers article “Are coders worth it?” he describes his work life, one Thursday night he received a really good job offer. He was going to receive a $120,000 salary, a $10,000 signing bonus, stock options, free gym membership and many other benefits.
Bill Cosby believes that it is crucial to learn the proper English language. He does not believe that African-Americans have fought this hard to get an education, for the younger generation to not take full advantage of leaning to speak English properly. I do not agree with Cosby because I do not believe that there is anything wrong with younger people communicating in African American Vernacular English. Although this is true, I can argue that Cosby is correct to a certain extent, because African Americans have fought to be educated while it seems that youngsters give up much easier on learning. I do not think that Smitherman would agree with Bill Cosby.
“Intelligence is closely associated with formal education- the type of schooling a person has, how much and how long- and most people seem to move comfortably from that notion to a belief that work requiring less schooling requires less intelligence” (Rose). What Rose is trying to infer is that just because you are labeled blue collar: meaning you have to earn your income from manual labor, and have lack of educational knowledge, does not mean you cannot earn the knowledge in your work career. There are many opportunities to learn from your job even if you are less experienced. “...One who is so intelligent about so many things in life seems unable to apply that intelligence to academic work.
Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” These limits are apparent in David Sedaris’ essay Me Talk Pretty One Day, where he addresses the challenges associated with learning a second language through personal experience. Although Sedaris breaks Orwell’s rule, “never use a metaphor…which you are used to seeing in print,” he does so effectively throughout the text. Additionally, an easy to follow method of organization and his appeal to Ethos and Pathos allows the reader to easily relate to his experiences. Sedaris uses a variety of dying metaphors throughout his essay to convey numerous ideas.
Jaswinder Bolina uses his identification as Other, to describe difficulties within the writing and speaking community related to what is commonly identified as “white” English in his essay, Writing Like a White Guy. Bolina’s audience is people whom identify as “Other” or “non-white”. He emphasizes, “The first perhaps essential step in assimilating into any culture is the successful adoption of the host country’s language. What’s unusual in America is that this is no different for the immigrant than for the native-born nonwhite.”
In the essay “Blue-Collar Brilliance” it begins with a fairly detailed description of Mike Rose’s mother at her work as a waitress in Los Angeles during the 1950’s, when he was a child. Mike Rose is a professor at the UCLA graduate school of education and information studies. This article originally appeared in 2009 in the American Scholar, a magazine published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society. Rose’s intended audience for this article is white collar workers, who usually hold a negative perspective towards their colleagues who aren’t as well educated as them. Mike Rose uses his mother and uncle as examples of his argument that those without formal education have important kinds of intelligence as well just in different ways.
The blue-collar work force has been the building block for many centuries, even without directly realizing it. In “Blue Collar Brilliance” the author Mike Rose discusses how his mother strengthened social and memory skills which allowed her to excel in her job as a waitress. Mike Rose realized everything that although his mother was smart in her own respect, working without a proper education is not all that it is cracked up to be. For example, blue collar jobs may require reading, but it is reading symbols.
Have you ever tried to bolster a child’s self-esteem by saying “You can be anything you want when you grow up”? What if you knew that in today’s society, saying this would increase disappointment; thus faltering a child’s self-esteem later on in life. Author Leslie Garrett, who wrote the article “You Can Do It, Baby!” in 2015, talks about the common phenomena of hindering a child’s opportunity of finding satisfaction in life, by encouraging them that they will grow up to be anything they want, without limitations. Garrett utilizes rhetorical devices to promote the emotional and logical perspectives supporting her claim; however, she incorporates a handful of in-text citations from scholars, psychiatrists, and academic professionals in order to persuade the reader of the article’s credibility.
This is highly related to one of the topic which is ‘’changing work condition’’ in this course. It is quite sure that Hong Kong face the similar situation. In this book review, I will, firstly, briefly introduce the disadvantages of the modern capitalism as well as comparing disadvantages stated by the author with the situation of Hong Kong. Lastly, I will give an evaluation to the author 's solution of drawbacks of the modern