What Is Education For?

"What is Education For?" truly opened my eyes to the responsibility we have to take care of the earth. This is the best reading selection I have read in the class so far. David Orr makes some very good points that I have never thought about before. Orr says that the most educated people are the ones destroying our country and not taking notice or doing anything with their education to stop it. Every discovery or invention comes with a price for the well being of our earth that is not always taken into account. My favorite part from the article is, "The plain fact is that the planet does not need more 'successful' people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restores, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form"(4). This article is telling us to realize that every action we preform has a consequence on our surroundings. In all the education we obtain, there is never enough about how to preserve and help our planet. Ohio University and its students should come together to protect our environment and encourage the city of Athens do join.

My Happy Place :)

Looking out the window, all I see is green. This is summer of course. The corn is taller than the car making a wall along the sides of the road. Usually, the sky is so blue and random white fluffy clouds cover the sun for a few seconds of shade. There is always a breeze going through the trees so it is rarely silent. The creek is now low enough to cross from the lack of rain. So we go back in the secluded meadow serounded with trees and have our fun. Camping in the back yard but it feels like we’re miles away from civilization. My best memories are in this meadow with my friends and family.

     Fall arrives and everything is beginning to turn brown and dust clouds swarm around the farm and up the long driveway. The days seem to get hours shorter and the sun doesn’t shine as bright. But the colors of the leaves make it worth country living. The leaves look like confetti when the wind rushes through them now. Then they cover the ground and cover up all the dead grass. The crops are harvested and it seems like I can see for miles, but there is not much to look at. Campfires and homemade apple cider are my favorite thing about the fall. The Indian summers are what I look forward to.

     Once winter comes, I feel like I am in a depression. The cold is rigid and the wind never stops. How many times will I fall down the hill on the ice this year? My whole attitude changes when the first snow arrives. Everything is breathtakingly beautiful, and the best part of all, snow days!

The end. I hope you pictured PEACEFUL

Seeing

     Seeing by Annie Dillard is definitely a detail driven essay. The author creates good mental pictures for her reader and shows her great love for nature and the world around us. At some points, I found myself unfocused from the reading because of how in depth every little scene was. I believe seeing is a very appropriate name because she is talking about the blind and what their experiences are when they gain their sight. They appriciate and notice every detail that people who have always had their sight often look over. This essay was very long so I did not pick up on a thesis. It is quite a rant but I got the message that we need to observe and not take the small things in life for granted.

Real Men Don't

     In Eugene R. August's Real Men Don't: Anit-Male Bias in English, he writes about all the stereotypes a male has from adolesence to adulthood. August gives specific examples of peices of writing that are against males and their specific roles in history and modern day. Eugene's arguements have a lot of details to back them up. He gives just about every example of words that guys are called to try and tear them down. However, August does not state any names that females are called or any literature against women.

The Perils of Indifference

     The Perils of Indifference speech was a little confusing to me because I did not know all the places and the events Wiesel talks about. He has a lot of passion in his words though which made me very interested to keep reading. I was not aware that the United States knew about the concentration camps and sent the ship of 1,000 Jews back to be tortured. History is always in favor of the person who is writing it and for Wiesel to proclaim a different prospective is very brave. He is an outsider of the United States who actually experiences the horriflic event and is still grateful for all the work the Clinton administration does even when he knows our flaws in the situation.
     Indifference was the whole topic of the speech. Wiesel saying the word repeditively really gets his point across about how harsh the Nazi's really were. The Nazi soldiers did not have any feelings for the children and their parents whom they were effecting. The statement he makes about God and if His presence was with the Jews or not was very upsetting and made me feel terrible about what these people went through. Wiesel is brave for speaking about his life changing experience in front of the leaders of the United States.

What's up Saunders' butt?

     Braindead Megaphone definitely held my attention until the end. Saunders has some very valid points but the way he presents his feelings are a bit harsh. I detected some personal issues in is past with the media or certain political parties that made the essay biased, but I could be wrong. This piece of writing was intended for the radical reformists in the United States who only dwell on what everyone else is doing wrong instead of what positive actions they can take to help our society. Yes, most of his information was correct, and I totally agree that the person with the loudest voice has the most influence, but the author's tone was rude and degrading.
     "The vegetable that has come to dominate our village is the profit motive" is the statement which really caught my attention. Everyone is trying to find the easiest and fastest way to become wealthy. Reporting on an issue such as the holiday shopping season does not compare with a larger issue like a natural disaster. In his essay, Saunders leaves out the positive aspects of the media and focuses on bashing all the "stupid" people for reporting on or watching items that are irrelevant to him.

Course Theme Post

Although there have been many horrors that came with the growth and development of the the human race, our society would not be what it is today without bad experiences to learn from. The water consumption rate is increasing with the population, but with today's technology and global awareness, people are taking action to help conserve water and other natural resources. Without the wars and other tragedies, we would not be as advanced in our technology, economy, or medicine. Maybe an apocalypse is in the future for us but I think we are better prepared now for whatever it is that will happen than we would have been without the horrors we created.