Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Problem with discrimination

            I have started my volunteer work at Tunbridge public charter school and have been there twice. I am there for two hours every Thursday but I am only in the same classroom with them for one hour because then they go to their electives like art or drama. The very first day they were taking a test so I didn’t spend much time with them but I did witness some very interesting things. The second day they were working on a word problem and then they were taught about absolute integers. I have yet to actually work one on one with them but Mr. Graeff, my supervisor, says that I will soon begin to work with small groups that need the extra attention. From the first day when Mr. Graeff had me file graded assignments, I could see that there were a few of the same kids who were repeatedly receiving poor grades on quizzes and tests. I believe that my work with these kids will be the same message that is “Theology” by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, “Tableau” by Countee Cullen, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelly. They all state that discrimination of any kind is damaging and harmful to human nature.   
            “Theology” was written in 1896 and is an epigram talking about heaven and hell. He says that he knows there is a heaven because he can feel it in his soul which yearns to go there. Then he says there is a hell because if not “where would my neighbors go?” I sense that when Dunbar says neighbors he is talking about all the people who discriminated against him and his fellow African American people. He believes that they will go to hell for what they have done because discriminating against for the color of his skin is morally wrong. The students who need the extra attention should be discriminated on because we will be able to help them understand the material. The class should not move forward for the better of the whole class if some students don’t understand the material and that is what I am going to help them with.
            In “Tableau” the speaker writes about two boys who are walking beside each other locked arm in arm, but one is black and the other is white. The people stare at them as they walk together but the boys are unconscious of the stares and words and know that what they are doing is not wrong and what the future holds. Cullen writes “That lightning brilliant as a sword should blaze the path of thunder”. I see the path of thunder as a path of change. The kids at Tunbridge are the key to making a better future.

            In Frankenstein the first narrator in the story feels lonely on the ship and that is when he meets Victor Frankenstein and he becomes his friend. Then when it gets to the point in the novel where the monster is narrating his story of when he was created from victor he also describes feelings of loneliness. The village people were horrified whenever they saw him and would run from him and even his own creator didn’t want anything to do with him. I believe that whenever people are discriminated against they also develop a feeling loneliness like the monster even though it showed how he had emotions against the people in the cabin. At Tunbridge I don’t want the kids to feel lonely or discriminated against so I will do my best to give them all the attention they need. 

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