Tammy's Story

I find Tammy's story...going no where. and its frusterating. They have to continue moving in that cycle. They can't move away to a different location where she would have more oppurtunity, b/c they have no money to transport themselves. She just has to keep doing the same thing everyday. What's also very frusterating is that she doesn't want her son to break out of the cycle. It seems like she doesn't want the best for her son, but maybe she thinks "the best" is staying to your roots. Its unfortunate that we accept the stereotypes of different classes, especially when these classes have no other choice

education and wealth

Its true that the higher a family's income is, the average ACT is a lot higher, and the higher the education the student recieves. With a higher education, the student will get a high income job, and then they have children and the whole cycle starts over again. So really, the middle class system is dying and wealthy will just keep getting wealthy. There are very few who start from the bottom to work there way to the top. The reason poorer families can't recieve higher education is because of "rules" of America. How would poorer families get good education if good educators don't want to work at a school with a smaller income. The children are deprived of better education.

30 days

Seeing the video of the guy trying out jail for 30 days was very interesting. Even though it the people seemed a lot less scary then i stereotyped them to be, the pain the prisoners suffered was even more frightening. Morgan was only in the jail for 30 days and he was craving being outdoors so much that I can't even imagine people who had been there for years. It also surprised me how much different the people are in the rehab prison, why isn't this used more? I had a lot of hope in the people who were being released that their life was going to change for the better, but instead they ended up back in jail. This shows that people can't get used to life outside of prison after being in it for so long. Why do people have such a hard time changing for the better? Why can't these prisoners refrain themselves from doing bad again? Do they not remember how much pain they went through inside of jail?

stereotypical teens

Teenagers are stereotypically viewed as being routy kids who look for trouble. Although, I know no one who wants to be in danger. I think this is why parents don't allow us to certain things that arn't actually dangerous at all. For example, about 2 weekends ago I was planning on going to a concert in Milwaukee, WI to the Rave. My parents only would allow me to go if parents we're driving me there, and wouldn't allow my friend to drive me there. They thought the neighborhood was too "shady", which it was, but I found it unfair that I wasn't allowed to go b/c of who drove there. I thought my mom should understand that we would be fine driving there, even though we're teenagers, and teenagers are thought of as unorganized and bad drivers. I didn't really mind I wasn't going to the concert, but I found it to be a perfect example of regulations parents set on teens. If I was allowed to go, it would teach me how to react to certain situations on the road, and maybe about the neighborhood I was in, but except I wasn't allowed to mature in those ways. What the parents don't realize is that I'm probably going to be in multiple situations like that next year, when I'm in college, and they're not there to help me.

Un-TV

The Un-TV assignment was very interesting on how it played out. When we were first assigned to it, I thought it would be a waste of time. I thought that I already knew the message Sal was trying to send us, and that watching the black tv screen for thirty minutes wouldn't change it. Although, when I did the assignment, I realized how wrong I was. The TV is really just a box, and the fact that we show emotion toward it seems so strange. We are reacting to moving images that arn't realistic at all b/c of editing, the story line. When we are watching TV, we are escaping reality by watching a fake story on a box. That is basically what we waste are time with. I'm not saying TV is bad, b/c sometimes I think something is worth watching. But I do belive that we (or at least I) should limit the amount of television I watch. To be entertained by pictures, and a story isn't the way I intended. I hope to stay more active in my actual hobbies.

Wow. It is true that disney films are stereotyping masculinity. I love those disney movies, so its weird to see that i was exposed to it so early. It causes girls to think that they want a guy to come sweep them off their feet, like every guy in a disney movie. Our culture should promote nonviolence in men, so guys wouldn't feel like they have to live up to the expectations of being violent. Some television programs do not promote violence. Like in the Office, Jim, the perfect guy, isn't violent and is thought of as being funny and cute. It works!

Fear in U.S.

I found Bowling for Columbine very interesting to watch. It was really surprising when Moore went to the leader of the NRA to ask questions about rallys he held in cities that just had killings caused by a gun and he couldn't answer. I also learned that even though Canada has so many guns, and is a prime hunting country, they have so very few deaths caused by guns there. In the US, we have over 11,000 deaths caused by guns. I think the reason for that is fear. US media and news has filled their citizens with so much fear in every news story. The news channels purposely try to find the story that sounds most dangerous to people. This may be a major cause of fear in the US and could be the reason there are many deaths caused by guns. It was funny how so many people, mostly adults, would say that child shootings were caused by Marylin Manson music. When people can't find the cause of a problem, they make quick reactions to make them feel safer.