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“It's a good day to die, it’s a good day to die all the way down the hallway” is a quote from the story Indian Education by Sherman Alexie. In the story it talks about Alexie childhood to adulthood and how he was treated being an indian.and the trial and tribulations that he went through and how he handled them. So i write this essay i'm got to tell my experience, and Alexie experiences and compare them and contrast. Preschool was the best time of my life. What I enjoyed most was taking naps and having recess . One day while at recess, I was on the playground, my teacher Ms. Clark told me to jump down and she would catch me. Being a little kid I laughed and prepared myself to jump. I jumped down,and as soon as I jumped, Ms. Clark turned away and I fell on my stomach, hitting the asphalt. I was crying and screaming because I had cuts on my leg. Ms. Clark picked me up and she asked me, ”Kenya, why did you jump off of there?” The nurse fixed me up I had to sit in the classroom during recess for three days. In first grade, my teacher Ms. Chile walked our class to the restrooms before we went to lunch and we lined up in front of the bathrooms and she let us go in four at a time. I was in line and this girl kept talking to me and I would respond. Ms. Chile told me to stand on the wall and not talk. I sat down …show more content…
on the floor but she demanded that I get up and I slid my back up the wall. When I was sliding up the wall, I accidentally pushed the fire alarm with my shoulder. The alarm sounded and all the kids came out the classroom and ran outside. I thought that I was going to get in trouble, I started crying and the janitor came upstairs, fixed the case and the alarm stopped. I promised my teacher I would never stand next to a fire alarm again. In the 8th grade, I had a teacher name Mr. Rahming. To me, I considered him to be the worst teacher I’ve ever had. He would constantly yell at the class for no reason, he made us stand outside the classroom for hours, he balled up our work and threw it away. Once, he threatened us when we asked him about his hair. For me, he made 8th grade year very stressful. In the first grade, Sherman Alexie talks about how white kids would chase him, beat him up, and bury his face in the dirt and the snow.
The kids also took his glasses and threw them so he couldn't see. They called him mean names such as; “junior falls down”, “Bloody nose”, “steal-his-lunch”, and “cries-like-a-white-boy.” In second grade, Halloween, Sherman drew a picture of the teacher on the broom with a scrawny cat on its back. The tech told him that God would never forgive him for that. In third grade, Alexie was writing for the school newspaper named The Tribal newspaper, the school got upset and forced him to stand in the corner alone as
punishment. Both Sherman Alexie and I can relate to being bullied by our teachers, specifically relating to my teacher Mr. Rahming and his 1st and 3rd grade story. Because we were both bullied either by students or teachers. To the point where we hated school and didn’t wanna go back.But i can contrast our stories because i talked about and event that happened in Pre-k but in sharman his stories started at 1st grade.Also the humiliation of him getting bullied and being laughed at i was laughed at when i jumped off the playground. In this story i learned that sherman Alexie can relate and contrast our experiences.such getting laughter and bullied and many more. But can contrast that being punished by my culture and how i wear my hair or wear my clothes.
Manifest destiny has been idealized in America since the budding of the nation, and in the late 1800s it went hand in hand with the American Dream. It was government funded and railroad approved, as both ruling powers promised immigrants and citizens a prosperous life in the West. Americans weren’t apt to allow anything to keep from recognizing their dream, and unfortunately Native American tribes in the West proved to be roadblocks for American settlers. Thus began the dissolution of tribes and the belief that colonization of the Native Americans would be anything but destructive. Though these actions may have been met with relief from American settlers, the implications of cultural immersion and forced education proved to be disadvantageous to Native Americans residing in the West.
The author, Sherman Alexie, is extremely effective through his use of ethos and ethical appeals. By sharing his own story of a sad, poor, indian boy, simply turning into something great. He establishes his authority and character to the audiences someone the reader can trust. “A little indian boy teaches himself to read at an early age and advances quickly…If he’d been anything but an Indian boy living in the reservations, he might have been called a prodigy.” Alexie mentions these two different ideas to show that he did have struggles and also to give the audience a chance to connect with his struggles and hopefully follow the same journey in becoming something great. By displaying his complications and struggles in life with stereotypical facts, Alexie is effective as the speaker because he has lived the live of the intended primary audience he is trying to encourage which would be young Indian
In "Indian Education" by Sherman Alexie, the story is about our narrator of the story Victor. Telling the sad, miserable cruelty and the emotions that his fellow students and teachers gave him from 1st grade all the way through 12th grade. The meaning of this story at first seems the most current for kids in school; bullying each other and calling each other names but the story goes much deeper than that. It shows a reality of the life on the reservation and how the education system is terrible and demeaning to other children who are considered soft spoken. Two pieces of dialogue that were the most interesting to me happened to be "Give me your lunch if you're just going to throw it up," because it ends with the sentence "There is more than one way to starve.
Alexie Sherman, a boy under an Indian Reservation that suffers from bullying since the 1st grade, who would have a hard time being around white people and even Indian boys. US Government provided him glasses, accommodation, and alimentation. Alexie chose to use the title "Indian Education" in an effort to express his internalized feelings towards the Native American education system and the way he grew up. He uses short stories separated by the different grades from first grade to twelfth grade to give an idea of what his life was like. He seemed to have grown up in a world surrounded by racism, discrimination, and bullying. This leads on to why he chose not to use the term Native American. He used the term "Indian" to generate negative connotations
Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his essay, it is evident that he faces many issues and is very frustrated growing up as an American Indian. Growing up, Alexie faces discrimination from white people, who he portrays as evil in every way, to show that his childhood was filled with anger, fear, and sorrow.
Alexie shows a strong difference between the treatment of Indian people versus the treatment of white people, and of Indian behavior in the non-Indian world versus in their own. A white kid reading classic English literature at the age of five was undeniably a "prodigy," whereas a change in skin tone would instead make that same kid an "oddity." Non-white excellence was taught to be viewed as volatile, as something incorrect. The use of this juxtaposition exemplifies and reveals the bias and racism faced by Alexie and Indian people everywhere by creating a stark and cruel contrast between perceptions of race. Indian kids were expected to stick to the background and only speak when spoken to. Those with some of the brightest, most curious minds answered in a single word at school but multiple paragraphs behind the comfort of closed doors, trained to save their energy and ideas for the privacy of home. The feistiest of the lot saw their sparks dulled when faced with a white adversary and those with the greatest potential were told that they had none. Their potential was confined to that six letter word, "Indian." This word had somehow become synonymous with failure, something which they had been taught was the only form of achievement they could ever reach. Acceptable and pitiable rejection from the
The Phoenix Indian School holds the largest amount of significance for American and Native American history in Arizona. However, some may still argue that this is not true. The Phoenix Indian School was an off-reservation school used to assimilate Native American children into mainstream American society in the 1800s. It was opened in Phoenix in 1891 and was closed in 1935 and had focused on providing the children with vocational training. Assimilation is the process of taking an ethnic group and conforming it to live by a different life style. Assimilation was not only used in Phoenix, but it was also used widely across the nation. The Phoenix Indian School was the largest assimilation school of its time in the United States, and it therefore
Growing up on a reservation where failing was welcomed and even somewhat encouraged, Alexie was pressured to conform to the stereotype and be just another average Indian. Instead, he refused to listen to anyone telling him how to act, and pursued his own interests in reading and writing at a young age. He looks back on his childhood, explaining about himself, “If he'd been anything but an Indian boy living on the reservation, he might have been called a prodigy. But he is an Indian boy living on the reservation and is simply an oddity” (17). Alexie compares the life and treatment of an Indian to life as a more privileged child. This side-by-side comparison furthers his point that
Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie is a work of humor, an investigation of community identity and family love, as well as a discussion of race and hate. Marie’s speech to the hapless Dr. Mat...
All over the world, people have always sought for power, they have struggled to defend their culture; they have worked beyond imaginable to obtain economic prosperity and political freedom. A matter of fact equality is something that nowadays we are still fighting to obtain. Education has always been the key to power. In the twenty-first century education means a way to obtain the American dream, in other words, to achieve success. However, schools were never intended to empower people to think for themselves or to help them succeed. At the beginning of the American school, different groups of people wanted different things to come out of schooling, one of those things was to facilitate reading the bible in the text it states that “Schooling became important as a means of sustaining a well- ordered religious commonwealth” (Spring 22).
With the obstacles that happen to Junior, it creates an emotional and traumatic impact on Junior as well as getting the readers hooked to turn the page and keep reading. To begin, in “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” Sherman Alexie describes a moment in Junior's life before he went to the white school. From comparing the death rates and even mentioning the deaths, Alexie shows an emotional impact on Junior from the deaths he has to go through. Alexie writes about how Junior being an Indian has impacted his life.
The modern American society is best defined by its education. The “American dream” is founded on going to school, getting a good job, and becoming successful. Ironically, the actual native peoples of this country are actually the least likely to attain this dream. The largest obstacle they face is lack of proper education. The standard educational practices being used for the instruction of Native American peoples is not effective. There are many pieces to this road-block, and many solutions. This can be rectified by having more culturally aware teachers and parents, and by teaching the general population more about the Native American cultures.
Why do Indian college students have high dropout rates? Why do Indian college students have hard times in college, and university atmospheres? Why do Indian college students have difficult times when it comes to making good grades? Maybe it’s because they have no role models in the home. Maybe they can’t relate to individuals with different cultures and backgrounds? Perhaps it is something simple as having poor study habits. The answers could Possibly be that Indian college students are just uncomfortable in a college environment, and don’t have an Indian studies program to go to, as in Reyhner’s essay. Whatever the reason may be Indian college students are scarce within the college scene, just as Indian people are in the United States of America.
It was the last Saturday in December of 1997. My brother, sister, and I were chasing after each other throughout the house. As we were running, our parents told us to come and sit down in the living room. They had to tell us something. So, we all went down stairs wondering what was going on. Once we all got down stairs, the three of us got onto the couch. Then, my mom said, “ Well…”
On that fateful day in March, I was a couple months shy of my third birthday. My family and I lived in New Mexico at the time and were renting a house with an outdoor in-ground pool. The day was beautiful. I was outside with my oldest sister Rachel and my father. Rachel was diligently reading curled up on a bench that sat against the house, and my father was mowing the backyard. My mother and my other sister were in the house. Off to one side of the house there was a group of large bushes. I was playing over there with one of her large cooking pots, off in my own little world. At one point while amusing and en...