2024 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Keynote Lecture Chaos. The. A term that takes many forms in everyone’s life. From a student’s daily struggle with homework and exams to an impoverished child working at a young age to help support their family. Chaos will always be prevalent in the world. Byron Pitts provides insight into how to fix the chaos in the world during his 2024 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Keynote Lecture, “On the Front Lines: Chaos or Community,” on January 24th at the University Center. Byron Pitts is a multiple Emmy award-winning journalist best known for his thoughtful storytelling, on-the-ground reporting, and in-depth interviews. As an experienced veteran, he has covered some of the world’s most influential stories of our time, …show more content…
As a child, Byron was functionally illiterate. He was tested twice for any mental conditions and eventually called mentally retarded by doctors and told he should be institutionalized. His mother stood strong by his side, and eventually, Byron made it to college at Ohio Wesleyan. During his freshman Fall, he failed Freshman English. The following semester, he took the same class with the same professor. After their first paper, the professor announced to the class that it was his best work, gave him a D+, and told him to meet him after class. He was told he didn’t have what was required to survive and he should leave the school. While crying and filling out withdrawal forms, another English professor noticed him and helped him pass English class. He worked hard with his roommate's help and eventually graduated. Later in his professional career, while giving a speech to schoolchildren in Baltimore, a student named Pilar asked the question, “Where do you go when the world hurts too much?” Pilar was put into foster care at a young age, where a 17-year-old boy bullied her. The boy was eventually removed from the home, and Byron became Pilar’s pen pal. Byron closes his keynote by relating the speech back to the audience. Half the audience are people of privilege and should
Pashtana said she would rather die than not go to school and acted on her words. Her education is limited and she doesn’t have all the recourses to make school easier, yet she still loves and wants all the knowledge she can get. While I sit in my three story private school, a clean uniform free of holes or loose seams, my macbook air in my lap, the smell of cookies rising up from the cafeteria, wishing to be anywhere else but there. No one has beat me because I want to go to school, no one has forced me into a marriage, I’ve never put my life in jeopardy for the sake of education. Pashtana’s life and choices made me take a moment to stop and reflect on my own life and how fortunate I am to have what I have. We dread the thought of school because to us it is a chore, it’s a hassle, it’s something that messes with our sleep schedule, it is something that gets in the way of lounging around and binge watching Netflix. Pashtana doesn’t take her school and education for granted because she does not have the same liberties we do. While we enjoy driving into the city and shopping over the weekend, Pashtana unwillingly makes wedding arrangements with her cousin. While we complain about our mom nagging us to clean our room, Pashtana is getting beaten by her father because she wants to learn more about the world. While we have stocked fridges and pantries and
Bryan grew up in poor rural area in Delaware where people were divided by “colored sections” by railroads. This is an area where people lived in tiny shacks and lacked indoor plumbing. None of his relatives were not able to escape and to college. His grandfather died when he was teenager and he felt that no one care saying that “it didn’t seem to matter the world much.” Therefore when he talks to clients he shows that he cares. When his client Herbert was sent to execution, Bryan promised to attend his his execution. He drove two hours Atmore to get there. When Bryan got arrived at the prison, he prayed with Herbert and his family. Herbert then says “I know this ain 't easy for you either , but I’m grateful to you for standing with me. Another example is when Bryan goes Repton, a town close to Monroeville, to visit the family of Walter to answer question. “We talked for well over an hour - or they talked while they I listened” Bryan said. He was there just for comfort. Then there was a fourteen named Charlie. He was abused by his mother’s boyfriend. Charlie refused to speak to Bryan, but Bryan would not leave until he responded. He spent hours asking “Are u okay”. Bryan he made sure the he
Geryon, called “stupid” and abandoned by his brother on his trip to kindergarten, unsurprisingly agrees because he’s little and doesn’t know any better. He thinks “stupid was correct. But when justice is done the world drops away” (Carson 24) Understanding justice is understanding exclusion, and Geryon does feel excluded, especially when he is standing alone outside a classroom while the snow “silenced all trace of the world” (Carson 25). Geryon’s first justice is an intense isolation, a strangled silence.
As Pollock states, “Equity efforts treat all young people as equally and infinitely valuable” (202). This book has made me realize that first and foremost: We must get to know each of our students on a personal level. Every student has been shaped by their own personal life experiences. We must take this into consideration for all situations. In life, I have learned that there is a reason why people act the way that they do. When people seem to have a “chip on their shoulder”, they have usually faced many hardships in life. “The goal of all such questions is deeper learning about real, respected lives: to encourage educators to learn more about (and build on) young people’s experiences in various communities, to consider their own such experiences, to avoid any premature assumptions about a young person’s “cultural practices,” and to consider their own reactions to young people as extremely consequential.” (3995) was also another excerpt from the book that was extremely powerful for me. Everyone wants to be heard and understood. I feel that I owe it to each of my students to know their stories and help them navigate through the hard times. On the other hand, even though a student seems like he/she has it all together, I shouldn’t just assume that they do. I must be sure that these students are receiving the attention and tools needed to succeed,
Mike Rose shares his personal story to the public in “I just wanna be average”, as he reveals the many flaws within the educational system of a high school in an economically depressed neighborhood in Los Angeles. Rose, starting his first day of high school, was placed by an administrative error in the vocational track, due to the results of another student with his same last name. This mistake or error went unnoticed over the first year of his school. His classes were all dead end. The author encountered many terrible teachers in charge of this remedial track; most of these educators were paranoid, abusive, racist, and unprepared.
...eral topic of school. The sister strives to graduate and go to school even though she is poor while her brother blames the school for him dropping out and not graduating. “I got out my social studies. Hot legs has this idea of a test every Wednesday” (118). This demonstrates that she is driven to study for class and get good grades while her brother tries to convince her that school is worth nothing and that there is no point in attending. “‘Why don’t you get out before they chuck you out. That’s all crap,’ he said, knocking the books across the floor. ‘You’ll only fail your exam and they don’t want failures, spoils their bloody numbers. They’ll ask you to leave, see if they don’t’” (118). The brother tries to convince his sister that school is not a necessity and that living the way he does, being a drop out living in a poverty stricken family is the best thing.
Bill Strickland’s first semester of college was not the easiest, he was surrounded by mostly white students that grew up in balanced neighborhoods. When Strickland first started college he really struggled at first. He did not gain the right skills to obtain a lot of information at once while he was still in high school, because it was not the best school. Strickland tried his best to learn and pay attention by writing everything down, but as some teachers move to fast some of his work looked like scribbles. While Strickland tried to study and go over his notes, it just confused him even more. At this point, he did not
Imagine a society where education isn’t entirely dependent upon the merits of one’s personal knowledge. Where the learning environment is utilized for personal development and growth rather than competition and separation. A sanctuary composed of unity and equity among peers. A place where college isn’t the only goal, but rather personal identity and initiative are established along the way. Such a society, fully embodies Baldwin’s ideology regarding education, and the prejudices therein. In his speech, “A Talk to Teachers” Baldwin delivers a compelling argument, in which he criticizes the problems and prejudices within the educational system in his day. However, through his sagacious philosophies and eye-opening opinions, Baldwin manifests the cruel, unspoken truth within his speech, that the hindrances and prejudices experienced in his day are still existent in 2016.
I realize that life is really cruel to some people, and when the world is cruel to people, they lose hope that things will get better for them. There are many people in the world who have lost hope. Our society is not always fair, and Junior learns to fight through the stereotypes and expectations of his tribe. I think that our society can understand people who have lost hope from seeing Junior’s struggles. I now understand that not everyone sees the world as a happy place, and that people are really struggling to have faith in themselves. I believe that if we all stick together through thick and thin, people will be more optimistic, like the Rearden kids and Junior. Matters will get better for the oppressed if others believe in
In modern society, the rules for school are simple and straightforward. To do well in school means to do well later in all aspects of life and guaranteed success will come. Sadly however, this is not the case for Ken Harvey or Mike Rose. Author Mike Rose goes to Our Lady of Mercy, a small school located deep in Southern Los Angeles where he meets other troubled students. Being accidentally placed in the vocational track for the school, Rose scuttles the deep pond with other troubled youths. Dealt with incompetent, lazy and often uninvolved teachers, the mix of different students ‘s attention and imagination run wild. Rose then describes his classmates, most of them trying to gasp for air in the dead school environment. On a normal day in religion
During the 60’s and 70’s, people have thrashed out with their words and each other. This caused some awareness in schools due to the offensiveness of the matter. During the 80’s schools began on focusing on preventing this kind of speech on their campuses. Since then, students have become more and more sensitive in a negative way. The authors used an example of a kid shouting “Shut up, you water buffalo” at an Israeli born student. That incident made national news, just for calling another kid a “water buffalo.” Another example is when a university found a student guilty of racial harassment for reading a book honoring student opposition to the Ku Klux Clan. The picture on the cover of the book offended one of the student’s co-workers. Just because the student was reading a book, minding his own business, the student was punished from the university. Never said anything or hurt anyone physically, and his education was ruined by someone taking offense to a book he was reading. The authors used this extreme example to prove that accepting the fact that student are fragile and letting them be fragile is not the right way to go and the past can prove
Murphy expresses how justifying bad deeds for good is cruel by first stirring the reader’s emotions on the topic of bullying with pathos. In “White Lies,” Murphy shares a childhood memory that takes the readers into a pitiful classroom setting with Arpi, a Lebanese girl, and the arrival of Connie, the new girl. Murphy describes how Arpi was teased about how she spoke and her name “a Lebanese girl who pronounced ask as ax...had a name that sounded too close to Alpo, a brand of dog food...” (382). For Connie, being albino made her different and alone from everyone else around her “Connie was albino, exceptionally white even by the ultra-Caucasian standards... Connie by comparison, was alone in her difference” (382). Murphy tries to get the readers to relate and pity the girls, who were bullied for being different. The author also stirs the readers to dislike the bullies and their fifth grade teacher. Murphy shares a few of the hurtful comments Connie faced such as “Casper, chalk face, Q-Tip... What’d ya do take a bath in bleach? Who’s your boyfriend-Frosty the Snowman?” (382). Reading the cruel words can immediately help one to remember a personal memory of a hurtful comment said to them and conclude a negative opinion of the bullies. The same goes for the fifth grade teac...
Lacking the necessary support, many start to devalue the importance of doing well in school deciding that perhaps school isn’t part of their identity. In Susan’s case she’s eliciting multiple forms of subordination, and within each dimension she’s being subjective to different types of oppression; racial oppression, gender oppression, and class oppression, she’s experiencing cultural alienation and isolation and is not only based on her ethnicity as a Latina but is also influenced by how she is treated as a female, as a member of a certain socioeconomic class, and in relation to her English language proficiency, and even her perceived immigration status. In this sense, students like Susan experience different forms of discrimination or marginalization that stems from
The students that learn about history might say that James Wolfe could have had the best way of being in the military field, but really William Pitt did. William Pitt was usually involved with the parliament or the government. When he was not working on government issues he was figuring out new military strategies. William Pitt was known for leading the British to victory in the Seven Years War. Another way to tell that Pitt was better in the military field is that he also helped with the war of Austrian. The last reason would be that it was his plan to send out James Wolfe and Jeffery Amherst to recapture the fortress of Louisbourg.
Humans may be characteristically neither good nor bad, but the lack of any definable structure is what leads to chaos; fear and self-preservation are what will typically lead to the state of war and competition for resources and scarce goods.