Saturday, January 30, 2010

Class Entry

Mr. Glenn I am a little disappointed with you this weekend because I desperately needed some time to work on my paper and a million other projects but now I have to write these blogs instead.
This week’s reading was very interesting and I would say amusing. I enjoyed reading the Carver stories and the Meghan Daum essay about AIDS. Although they were both a little unclear as to what the true purpose of the writing was, I still enjoyed reading them. On the topic of the Meghan Daum essay, I would have to say that I agree with her perspective that until we know the facts about our risk factor to get the disease, we can not take proper precautions. These days in health, whether it is elementary school, middle school, or high school, sex is a topic most teachers would rather not discuss and usually throw the “have sex and die” mantra at students. My mom told me they used to do the banana on a condom thing when she was in school but now the instructors merely say that abstinence is the best way and do not properly teach how to have sex safely. Maybe if they did we wouldn’t be watching shows on MTV such as “16 and Pregnant” or “Teen Mom”. The teen pregnancy rate has been steadily on the rise over the past twenty years and I believe we have the schools to blame. The health teachers are leaving the students ignorant about the sex topic and are actually putting them at risk for contracting diseases. Sarah mentioned the demonstration about ripping the tape off of your arm. I highly doubt those freshmen in that class took away anything from that exercise except maybe a red and hairless arm. Health teachers show you the pictures of disgusting viral infections and oozing sores basically just to scare you away from having sex. If they changed up their lesson plans a little I think there would be less teen pregnancy.
The Carver stories were easy to read for me, mainly because they were pretty short. I enjoyed the one titled “Fat” the most. I thought it was really rude and mean that the other people in the story, and the narrator at the beginning, just referred to him as fatty. I feel awful saying bad things about people and I do not know how those people could live with themselves just making fun of that man without knowing anything about him. They would not have walked up to him and said oh hey fatty! It makes them worse that they would not even stand by their argument if someone were to have asked them if they had called him fatty. That’s kind of like when people walk up to me and just say, “Aw! You’re so short!” Seriously? Would you go up to someone and say, “Aw! You’re so fat!”? No, you would not. You never know what might make someone self conscious or cause them emotional pain. Those people did not even know the man, but when the waitress began to talk to him she realized he was nice and stopped calling him fatty.

No comments:

Post a Comment