What is Liberty, Really?

In "The War on Negative Liberty" by Katherin Mangu-Ward, we are given two different types of liberty. Positive liberty in which government places bans and barriers against things which some people deem to be impeding on their freedom to succeed in life, and Negative liberty in which there is a lack of government or anyone telling an  individual what he or she can or cannot do. Mangu-Ward is in favor of negative liberty and so am I. Although some laws are necessary to hold a country together, some are just not right, and as citizens we have the responsibility to change what needs to be changed. The difficulties of changing the way things are, is that there are so many citizens, and they all want different things. The only time that government should step in, is when a group of citizens are being oppressed by the views of others. But who decides what oppression is and who is being oppressed? And the government can hardly pay for itself to keep running so how can we ask for help? I say that people should keep their opinions to themselves unless something is blocking their pursuit of happiness. I believe in the christian god, my neighbor might worship Satan, but so long as my neighbor doesn't actively disturb my job, family, money, and we don't need to discuss our religions, I can still talk with them at the block party barbecue, we can agree that the other neighbor's cooking is delicious, and the fact that we worship direct opposites is not a huge deal. If however, this nice satanist neighbor of mine decides to write to congress for a law that bans Christianity, then I'm going to be upset, and fight against it. Up until the point where someone threatens YOUR PERSONAL HAPPINESS and success, just shut your mouth and tolerate it.

The new Emily Dickens-oh look a squirrel!

Lorine Niedecker is a very moving poet, and I love that her subject is almost always nature. When I (very seldom) write poems or short stories, it is also usually based in nature. The only thing about her work that I don't fully understand and don't like, is how her stanzas sometimes seem totally unconnected. The poem My Life By Water is sometimes connected between stanzas and when it is its barely a continuation of thought. It's as though when writing that poem she was experiencing ADD.  Some of her other poems are the same way, and it's hard to get an idea from what seems to be gibberish.

Teaching Teachers

I recently read two essays, "Against School" by John Gatto and "I just wanna be average" by Mike Rose and I was surprised to find that there were actually adults who believed and cared that there is something wrong with today's educational system in America. Gatto talks about how the students are bored and don't care about what they're supposed to be learning because they do the same thing every year, and the teachers are also bored doing the same thing every year. I wondered how we could create better teachers, like Mr. Macfarland in "I Just wanna be average", and I remembered that teachers have to go to school too. So how do we teach teachers to be better teachers than the teachers they had? Or do we just leave it to chance and get a fluke, Mr. Macfarland the teacher who smokes all the time drinks coffee all the time and looks messy, but got through to the students labeled as remedial all their lives?
Stereotypes and labels are things we learn as we grow older, no child is born thinking "hey that kid is a bad kid and less intelligent than me because they wear black clothes and can't read as well as I can". We start thinking this way when those kids are put into separate classrooms to get extra help. It is not a bad thing to get extra help, but then we need to have children together for more than just recess gym and art. Otherwise they are doomed to be ostracized just as any kid in the "advanced classes" (if they are any) could be. Talent and difficulty should be recognized and treated differently than average, but not in a way that puts kids into a category, that is the easy way. And something I did NOT learn from school, is that "there is a difference between what is right, and what is easy"-Albus Dumbledore.

A hesitant introduction to blogging.

I've never liked blogs. I always thought they were for people to spew their opinions and claim they are right about everything.  I’m hoping blogging turns into Lima beans for me. When I was younger, I hated Lima beans, they tasted awful. But after still being made to eat them over the years, now I can say that they aren't so bad.