Media

I honestly was shocked after reading this. I never knew that half of these things were not true. I remember hearing all of these things on the news or at school growing up and never thinking twice about it. I guess that the media does a good job of blowing these things out of proportion. I can believe that they would though because our society has always needed some group to blame things on and I guess teenagers fit the bill. I mean if you think about it, they aren't going to do anything about the stereotype put on them, because most of them probably think that it is true. I know that when I was in middle school and high school I was told most of these things, like the high rate of suicide, the transmittal of sexual deceases, the use of drugs, the pregnancy, etc. and I believed that it was all true. I mean if you think about it they have found the perfect group to target as well as make money off of. It actually is quite sick if you really think about it that they are utilizing a group of impressionable kids into thinking these things about themselves.

The problems of youth

"Such debate also would challenge the extent to which youth have been blamed for social ills instead of addressing broader structural inequalities. This would also ideally mean that adults take responsibility for social problems, and identify sources of problems in social structures rather than projecting them onto the youth...And debating what adolescence means grows out of the recognition that social, political, and economic conditions made adolescence what is has become today."(Saltman 20)
I have been in my student placement for the last two days and I can already see what the author is talking about here through the teachers/ administrators conversations about the students. I mean some comments just show that they blame the child for all their issues and that they have just completely given up on them all together. I am actually in shock by how jaded most of these teachers are towards the children that they are supposedly teacher. For instance my co-op has two classes that I have sat in on. The first class of the day has most of her ED students and the second class has a large group of students that she had taught the previous year in 6th grade. The behavior of the two classes is somewhat comparable, chatty, random outbursts, talking back, not always doing what they are told, but the way she behaves towards them is completely night and day. With her first class she stays on top of them for a couple of minutes and then really just doesn't seem to care anymore but with the second class she is always involved and on top pf their behavior. I just cant believe that by the third week of school she has already in her mind labeled her first group of students as unmanageable and has basically gave up on them.
I feel that going into MPS you must look at the things that are going on outside of school in these children's lives and realize that they are not going to be little angels right off the bat. However, I think that society as a whole does put a lot of stresses onto its youth and them blames them when they act out for it. As a teacher, and especially in MPS, you should be more compassionate towards what these children are dealing with before you decide that they are just trouble makers and worthies cases that you cant wait to get rid of at the end of the year.

Terms

In the Kevin Kumashiro article he talks about the terms that he uses on the second page. Honestly, his explanation for the use of the word "queer" in his article irked me. I guess that I don't find his reasoning to be valid. It seems to me he thinks that because the gay community has reclaimed this word as their own it would be a good word to use in an essay on changing oppression. I don't feel that his reasoning is good because I am pretty sure that there is not anyone out there that would use the word "nigger" in order to refer to the African American group, however, they also as a group reclaimed that term as their own. Because this issue came up in the beginning of the essay I had a hard time reading the rest not only because I dislike the tediousness of working your way through all the academic filler of these types of articles, but it just kind of made me dislike the author as well. I am sure that there are a lot of different opinions on the word "queer", but if you are not part of that group or using it with friends that are members of that group than I don't think that it is an appropriate word to use when talking about the LGBT group.