Khyber – HallSpring19

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Not My President

Society has always been susceptible to media exposure as it determines how receptive society becomes towards certain ideas. The media has evolved into a powerful tool that many people utilize with the goal of expressing their discontent and expose the social issues that are dramatically transforming our society. Individuals can use a wide range of methods to express their beliefs. For example, the 2016 presidential election was very controversial as it showcased the diverse ideologies that our current president has towards immigrants in this country. He used the presidential platform to degrade immigrants, provoking a sense of xenophobia amongst the American people. On the other hand, there are artist who employs the same platform to spread positivity and political awareness. Two controversial songs that were published before and after the presidential election demonstrated the resistance among many minority groups in our communities. On the other hand, the songs also exposed the inability of those same communities to make the right presidential choice.

Trump’s discriminatory remarks stimulated society’s interest in a way that enabled people to express themselves through music. The song “Fuck Donald Trump by YG and Nipsey Hussle, emerged before the presidential election. Not only was the song used as a method to express one’s opposition towards the political climate at the time, but the song can also be analyzed as a warning to the American People. The song states, “Don’t let Donald Trump win, that nigga cancer…He can’t make decisions for this country…we can’t be a slave for him”. When I first heard this song, it seemed to me as a cry for help to the American people and listing the many reasons why he should not get society’s support. The song also alludes to the injustices that minorities experience in society when he states, “And if you been to jail you can [probably] still vote”. A lot of minorities do not enjoy the privilege to vote as a consequence of previous convictions for minor crimes. The songs also empower the youth by saying “We the youth, We the people of this country, we got a voice too, we will be seen, and we will be heard”, with the hope of encouraging them to vote. On the other hand, even when it uses these expressions as a way to appeal to the public, there are many barriers that hinder people’s ability to vote. Both undocumented residents and legal residents of the United States do not have the right to vote, which subsequently leads to lack of participation.

The song “Not My President” was published on February 12, 2017. The slogan “Not My President” turned into a movement after the 2016 presidential election. At first, I had mixed feelings with this song as it represented a general ideology of the current political status. As an immigrant from Hungary I have experienced discrimination, but I found myself conflicted with choosing whether I could relate to the song or not. When I first got exposed to this song, I thought I was very catchy as the artist presented the public with a humorous description of Donald Trump by stating “Donald trump look like a bird from the sesame’s”. It then took a more serious approach when the song addresses the negative comments Donald trump has made about Mexican immigrants residing in the United States. Added to that, the artist states, “and this is the guy that we picked for our next president, fuck that yo, you really got me fucked up”. To a certain extent the artist is also criticizing the American people’s ability to vote for a president. Very frequently, citizens do not take their democratic duties seriously and sometimes take it for granted while other people like myself, wished they had the opportunity to voice their concerns. Therefore, we are forced to leave these political choices in the hands of American citizens who look within their own individual needs to pick the leader of our country.

The phrase “Not My President” is problematic because it does not only show, but it also shows the inequality of votes among the American people. Both of these songs attest to the fact that not everyone can vote. Those who protest might have not had the ability to make their voices be heard. I, myself, was not able to vote and as much as I did not like the results, one has to acknowledge that it is one’s responsibility to make their voices be heard. Minorities in our community have let upper middle-class individuals from making decisions regarding our future due to the lack of education or the lack of interest. Both of these songs serve as a mechanism to spread awareness and educate people on the social issues that are affecting our daily lives. When the artist states “I thought all that Donald Trump bullshit was a joke” illustrate our current president used the how people thought it was absurd for Donald Trump to run for president. Nevertheless, the use of joke served as a method of propaganda that resulted in his election. On the other hand, his victory was a wakeup call for a lot of people to devote more of their time worrying about issues that matter.

As 20-year-old student, I was never involved in politics as I knew my voice did not count as I have yet not earned the right to vote. To a certain degree, I was convinced that Donald Trump used his political platform to speak about undocumented immigrants because he understood that as much as they opposed his beliefs their votes would not count. However, as I witnessed peoples’ resistance through the media I have been diligent in finding practical ways to keep myself involved. I strive to become more educated about potential presidential candidates while influencing others who have the privilege to vote.

rough draft

Sonny’s Blues

The part that moved me in this story was when at the end Sonny is at the bar playing music with his friends. Sonny’s brother while listening, memories come back to him. ” I saw my mother face again and felt for the first time how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet. I saw the moonlit road where my father’s brother died.” He remembered the sad feeling his parents were going through while listening to the brother who also didn’t grow up with a happy life. In Addition, there was another part where Sonny’s brother went to visit his brother they were arguing and Sonny took his brother outside. “Then he pushed me to the door and the other people looked on as though nothing were happening, and he slammed the door behind me. I stood in the hallway, staring at the door. I heard somebody laugh in the room and then the tears came to my eyes.” His brother cares a lot about Sonny, he is trying to make him a better person, but Sonny looks like he doesn’t care about his brother’s feelings. Furthermore this line of the text moved me because earlier his mom told him that watch out for his brother when they are no longer in this world, but he replied as if nothing bad will happen to Sonny and the relationship of each other. But the mom’s words were right at the end that there will be difficult times but try to always look out for him.

Revision One Essay

Tell your fellow Americans that the school system is trash, and guess what most Americans will agree with your statement. There are a lot of reasons why in the United States K-12 schooling is low standard. Depending how you slice it, the public school education system in the United States conditions students to be gullible and mindless consumers. The consequences for both school and society shows that we students and teachers are potentially devastating in contribution to the system.

Someday people will cling to the hope that the school system will change, and view its service not as something that sucks and that they hate, but as something that is actually nice and that they don’t hate. In my life as I experienced K-12 schooling I noticed that when I was in middle school, each of my classes I attended we didn’t learn anything in class because the teachers couldn’t handle the students. There was only one particular class where the students didn’t misbehave and that was with our homeroom teacher.

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.evolvedigitas.com%2Fblog%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F04%2Feducation.jpg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%%2Fblog%2Fthe-evolving-education-sector%2F&docid=txL_mOdGe8bVCM&tbnid=sf4LWVzNMSLWSM%3A&vet=10ahUKEwi6h7eG_cHhAhVNiOAKHQFlB0EQMwhpKAEwAQ..i&w=700&h=352&bih=657&biw=1366&q=education&ved=0ahUKEwi6h7eG_cHhAhVNiOAKHQFlB0EQMwhpKAEwAQ&iact=mrc&uact=8

A lot of teachers in our schools don’t know how to teach and make the students enjoy school. Of course the students also need to cooperate with the teachers, however it is the teachers responsibility to guide and make the students behave in class. There are also times in school when students get bored sitting for hours just listening to teachers. As John Taylor Gatto the author of “Against School” states in his article, “One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head.(1)” The author also says when he was in school he was bored just as most kids during school. This also shows why most kids during school don’t want to learn, and listen to the teacher. This leads to the reason why the students do whatever they want in class because they are bored, or not interested during class when the teacher is conducting their lesson.

The goal for schools needs to be making sure that our children who are the future that they are in good place where they learn and continue progressing in school. Construct a school system where students are enjoying school with activities that involve moving around and cooperating with other students. Sitting for hours in chairs is boring and make students sleepy. Create social efficiency, the purpose of education is not to produce citizens, but productive workers that can succeed in life.

As I quickly learned in my experience, schools throw in unnecessary exams, and focuses more based on tests instead of making sure students actually learn something. “We have, for example, the great H.L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence…”(2) Thus, Gatto states that the education system doesn’t fill our young generations with knowledge as an alternative, they give us pressure with passing common core, regents, or other exams. Therefore, the modern schooling needs to be modified and reconstruct how they want to test the students learning.

In our American public school system, schools make our students to be gullible and mindless consumers. If the system would change and try to make our children into real thinkers who will benefit later on effectively is just a hope. Of course there are some people who benefited from our schooling, however there have been more who dropped out of school too. The change would help make students not being bored in classroom, but being involved in activities, and develop skills like teamwork and social efficiency with other students. Taking out of unnecessary exams that pressure students into passing them instead of testing their real knowledge. As a change this will only be a hope that our future won’t stay gullible and mindless consumers.

Revision One draft

Portrait of A Word

Tejelni

In the middle of summer, me and my foreigner friends were walking in the streets of Budapest Hungary. It was a beautiful hot day, people were half naked, there was loud Hungarian music going on in the local markets. We were near the beach and you could hear the sound of the water hitting the rocks. As we enter one of the liquor stores we try to buy cold beer. When we were about to pay the and go to the cashier, my friends who speak little English hear the cashier say “tejelni” they all burst into laughter. The cashier who doesn’t have the slightest clue why my friends are laughing at him gets mad and kicks us out. But what exactly the cashier meant when he said “tejelni”.

The word literally means to milk a cow so I understand why it seemed funny to them but the cashier meant to say to pay up when he said “tejelni”. The Hungarians use a lot of slang words and they all sound weird compared to English. Furthermore, Hungarian is considered to be one of the most difficult language to learn. Learning the slang makes it also easier to communicate in Hungary. “Tejelni” is a word many people use when they tell someone to pay up, so it is a good thing if you know what this slang means.

The Hungarian language is totally different to the dialects spoken by its neighbors, which usually speak Indo-European languages. In fact, Hungarian comes from the Ularic region of Asia and belongs to the Finno-Ugric language group, meaning its closest relatives are actually Finnish and Estonian. Before Hungarian the language was spoken in Latin, but then it was replaced by Hungarian in 1844.

The word “Tejelni” originated in the 20th century and first mainly people in the city called Pecs were first using this word. However later through the years the word was used in every part of Hungary. The meaning to pay up came from when people were milking a cow they were making a lot of money in the farms. So basically the slang word came from that to pay (money).

When people use this word people who just learn the language and doesn’t know much about the slang words in Hungary might get confused what the person might trying to say. It is a very important aspect to learn as much slang in Hungary as you could, because when communicating it is easier to understand the person.

One fun fact about slang in Hungary that there is a word that made out of 44 words with no English equivalent, Hungary’s longest word is the 44 letter long phrase: Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért. Because due to its length, it’s not used in daily conversation on a regular basis. What does it mean? Something along the lines of “for your continued behavior as if you could not be desecrated”. Hungarian is an agglutinative language, which means that various grammatical components – such as affixes and stems can be added to a word to increase its length (and change its meaning). Thanks to this, words of over 100 letters have been created in the past, although the longer the word, the more it can tend to lose its meaning.

Over the years since its creation as a language, Hungarian has evolved and changed just like any other dialect. However, staying true to its ancient roots, Hungarian contains a whopping 68% of its etymons, or original words. Compare this with the four percent retained by the English language, or the five percent kept by Hebrew, and the scale is even more impressive.

In the end “Tejelni” is an important slang used by Hungarians because many people use it when someone has to pay something, so it is better if you know the actual meaning behind it because people definitely don’t mean to tell you to milk a cow.

Source: https://dailymagyar.wordpress.com/category/hungarian-words-all-posts/hungarian-slang/

https://books.google.com/books?id=y_MBw_clh4UC&pg=PA110&lpg=PA110&dq=Tejelni+szo+szarmazasa&source=bl&ots=8czZToURSY&sig=ACfU3U264Jsfc0Fr1Qv3RTFvBsl3oiY9MA&hl=hu&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-t9nArI3hAhWKY98KHfNiBB0Q6AEwBXoECAgQAQ

Soapstone

The Speaker is called Ta-Nehisi Coates, and he is an African American. We also know that in the article it says that he has 6 brothers and sister.
Coates is trying to tell us the word “nigger” used in our society. He is trying to bring this up because there are some white people who say the word, but they are not allowed to. Furthermore a Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver called a black security guard N word.
He is talking to the NFL,NBA, and MLB players and our american society. In the article he says ” Tony Kornheiser called on the commissioners of the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball to ban their players from publicly using the word.”
Coates is trying to accomplish that the word used takes on meaning from context and relationship. People can’t just say the “n” word whoever they want to, but only black people when they say the word to each other because of the relationship to each other.
The tone of the essay is straightforward. Coates is trying to tell why only black people should use the word, and tells us examples why it would be ridiculous if they want these people to stop saying it.
I Agree with Coates, because just as he said the word only should be used between them because the context and relationship matters when one speaks to each other.

Final Draft

Education At Its Lowest

The public school education system in the United States conditions students to be gullible, and produces mindless consumers. Many students these days go to school just to waste time, and at the end of the day, they don’t learn anything. As John Taylor Gatto the author of the article called Against School also states that public education cripples our students. The K-12 schooling in the united states is nonsense and need to be changed. Therefore, public school education system in our country shapes our students to be credulous.

During my K-12 schooling years I experienced that the way school systems are constructed, it’s more about passing the exams than learning in school. In addition, most cases the classes are boring and we sit in class for hours just to wait for the bell to ring and leave. For example, during my middle school, each of my classes I attended we didn’t learn anything during the class sessions, instead we just played around with my classmates, and the teacher gave up in teaching us. In the article Against School, Gatto states that “One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. (1)” The author also says when he was in school he was bored just as most kids during school. This also shows why most kids during school don’t want to learn and instead don’t listen to the teacher and do whatever they want in class because they are bored or not interested in class.

The modern schooling needs to be modified, because in my experience I became aware of that most of us when we go to school we sit there for hours and hours and we have to do whatever the teachers wants us to believe, moreover because it is mandatory. The school system makes some of us the opposite to learn because of how the school system is constructed. If schools would be fun and entertaining more kids would want to learn and enjoy school. In our society passing exams and tests became the priority instead of learning and knowledge.”We have, for example, the great H.L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence…”(2) Thus, Gatto states that the education system doesn’t fill our young generations with knowledge as an alternative, they give us pressure with passing common core, regents, or other exams.

A lot of students drop out of school because they are failing too many classes and they didn’t learn anything useful, therefore that results in students to failing exams. Our young generation at public schools believe whatever the teachers are telling them without the broad knowledge and truth behind the words. In the Gatto article it says “First, though, we must wake up to what our schools really are: laboratories of experimentation on young minds, drill centers for the habits and attitudes that corporate society demands. (5)” John Taylor Gatto trying to tell us in his article that schools does not make us learn or make us more knowledgeable, but instead we are like laboratory experiments, whatever we do it is to make us gullible, and mindless consumers.

The reason why our education is at its lowest because our society doesn’t have a broad knowledge of the world. For example, in the article it says, “We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”(4) In our society our students don’t have a broad knowledge that prepares them to deal with complexity , diversity, and change. If we would have liberal education it would make the students more knowledgeable to prepare them for the society.

At Last, the modern K-12 education system is useless and trash because the education system does not make the students into real independent individuals. Many of the students waste time at school for the whole day just to be bored in class and uninterested. The school system makes exams more of a priority than knowledge itself. Most students drop out because of the consequences of going to school just to fool around there. The education that supposed to teach us something in school does not exist because the system is made in a way to make us as feel like we are servants to the school and whatever they tell us we have to obey. The way the system is constructed is not to make us critical thinkers but exam passers. Therefore, the public school education system in the Unites States conditions students to be gullible, and produces mindless consumers.

Works Cited;

John Taylor Gatto** Against School*

Continue reading “Final Draft”

Author: Khyber