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Strength and weakness of cultural influence on behaviour
Strength and weakness of cultural influence on behaviour
Culture affects our behavior
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The thought of having selective hearing would be a gift to many teenagers. The idea of being able to ignore the barking commands of parents and lectures of teachers would be a gift only few could dream of. In the sports fiction novel Left Out, written by Tim Green, the notion of that dream is a real-life nightmare. In 341 pages, the life of Landon Dorch is nothing short of a rollercoaster ride. If being born deaf with cochlear implants to hear wasn’t hard enough, having to move from the fields of Cleveland to the metropolis of the Bronx may have pushed the limit. As Landon overcomes outcasted parents, a fiery sister, and endless bullies, one thing seems to always catch his eye; football. Although he’s not talented and plays the position of …show more content…
“left out”, things take a quick turnaround when he finds support in the Giants OL, Jonathan Wagner. Being the uncle of Brett, Landon’s only friend and teammate, Jonathan is a perfect candidate to believe in Landon. Nonetheless, 90 minutes after learning the fundamentals, Landon is a natural machine. Taking on player after player nobody can stop him, especially on his run to a championship. The novel Left Out is more than just a book about the life of a struggling athlete.
The main theme of the story is not to judge a book by its cover. Left Out is a prime representation of this motif because of the layout of the novel and the language that comes with it. In the novel, Landon’s life starts out as struggling and problematic. It’s clear when Landon says,”Creep! Doofus!”, describing the names he is called by his peers (LO 2). Later in the novel after the structure of the book is near the climax, Jonathan Wagner is presented. He is the main character that helps to carry out the motif, and it’s obvious when he says,”What do you think? Maybe I can whip him into some kind of usable shape” (LO 279). He is the only character throughout this whole book who takes the time to believe in Landon and use his size as a gift and not a humiliation tactic. Lastly, Jonathan never uses Landon’s hearing disability as an excuse like the other coaches and players. Instead, he encourages him to push through it and make the best of it. Therefore, the motif of this story is to never judge a book by its cover and with the presence of Jonathan Wagner, Landon is more than just a school reject. With the right drive and support, he becomes a wandering all star on and off the
field. If the rating of a book could be over a ten, this novel would be the one. The plot of the story, along with the intense drama and action, lead the reader into a frenzy wishing they could be there themselves. The novel does an excellent job of breaking up the chapters into small reads containing action followed by a drastic cliffhanger right at the end. My favorite part about the novel was during the standoff between Landon and his bullies, Just when the reader thinks the bullies will get another successful picking, Brett comes out of nowhere and fights all of them off with ease. Lastly, the book has nothing I would consider to change or revise. The layout is perfect for a book with such action and drama, but still the extra information is essential and comes together at the end of the novel for the best possible ending. In conclusion, Left Out by Tim Green is an intense novel for any reader craving sports fiction and modern drama.
The main characters in the novel are Jonas, Levi, and the coach Hartwell. Jonas had just recently moved to Seattle and needs to earn a spot on the basketball roster. It captures teenagers right away because that is about
Mark Drolsbaugh’s Deaf Again is a biography about his life between two dimensions of the Deaf world and the Hearing world as well as the implications he faced throughout his journeys’. Mark Drolsbaugh was born from two deaf parents and was basically forced to adapt to the hearing world even though his parents are deaf. When Drolsbaugh was born he was hearing, however, by first grade his parents and teachers discovered he was losing his hearing. As time went on Mark realized the issues he faced from trying to adapt to the hearing world. Mark Drolsbaugh quotes in his biography, “Deafness is bad. I am deaf. I need to be fixed. I must be like them, no matter what, because deaf is bad.” However, no matter what his family believed that he
Wes Moore, the author, had many important role models in his life that would eventually enable him to live up to his full capability. Uncle Howard, Wes’ mother’s brother, filled the hole that was left when Moore’s father died and when“[he] was eleven… and having difficulty in and out of the classroom [he could lean] on Uncle Howard’s shoulder”. Moore’s uncle was the man who convinced Moore that he could achieve more than just basketball at school, that education would allow him to reach his full potential. The persuasion to drop basketball as a career, enabled
Students should read this book in high school to learn how to take a negative situation and make it positive. Hutch is extremely jealous of Darryl because he knows that Darryl is a better baseball player, but he also knows that if he wants his team to win the championship, then he needs to find a way to get along with him. This book does appeal to the interest of most teenage students. Most teenagers have played some type of sport and have had to find a way to deal with being on a team with competition. A team that is not able to work together will not win together. It is important for teammates to suppo...
Remember that boy in high school that was the star of the basketball team? He still holds most of the records for the team. He scored more points than anyone else in the school’s history. He never studied much because he was an athlete. His basketball skills were going to take him places. But high school ended and there are no more games to be played. Where is that former all-star now? In his poem “Ex-Basketball Player,” John Updike examines the life of a former high school basketball star. Flick Webb was a local hero, and he loved basketball. He never studied much in school or learned a trade because he was a talented athlete. Now years later, the only job Flick can find is working at the local gas station. He used to be a star, but now he just “sells gas, checks oil, and changes flats” (19-20). The purpose of Updike’s poem is to convince the reader that athletes should also focus on getting a good education.
Have you ever felt like there was nothing that you can do for your child? In this book, Deaf Like Me, by Thomas S. Spradley and James P. Spradley, I can see the journey that Lynn’s parents took to get her help. (Spradley & Spradley, 1978). This book was an excellent read. I really liked the way that they described the ways they tried to help Lynn to understand the world around her. The book, is a great asset for any family that might be unexpectedly put into a situation that they know nothing about such as a deaf child.
The book, Deaf Again, written by Mark Drolsbaugh, is an autobiography telling his life story which starts with a young boy growing up who goes through the process of losing his hearing and then, as he gets older, he struggles with trying to fit in as a normal child. When Mark was very young, he could hear fairly well then gradually he went hard of hearing until he eventually went completely deaf. Even though he had two deaf parents, the doctors advised speech therapy and hearing aids because they did not understand Deaf Culture and they thought that Mark would be a lot happier if he could hang on to his hearing persona. Throughout the rest of the book, Mark goes through a lot of stages of trying to fit in with everyone and eventually does find himself and realizes that being Deaf is not a disease, but just a part of who he is.
Tanner, D.C. (2003). Chapter 6: Hearing Loss and Deafness. In Exploring communication disorders: A 21st century introduction through literature and media (2nd ed., p.192). Boston, Massachusetts: Allyn and Bacon.
Bissinger creates empathy in the reader by narrating the lives of once Permian heros. Charlie Billingsley, a Permian football player, “was somewhere at the top” while he was playing. It was hard for the football town of Odessa to forget “how that son of a bitch played the game in the late sixties”(80). While in Odessa, Permian players receive praise unmatched by even professional football. This unmatchable praise becomes something Permian players like Billingsley become accustomed to, and when he “found out that...you were a lot more expendable in college(80). This lack of appreciation that is equivalent to the one that they have received their whole life makes them go from “a hero one day to a broken down nobody the next”(81). With the realization of this reality, Billingsley becomes one of the many to spend life as a wastrel, living in his memory of playing for the Permian Panthers. The reader becomes empathetic towards how the once likely to succeed Billingsley, becomes another Odessan wastrel due to the over emphasis and extreme praise the Odessan football team receives. Bissinger does not stop with a classic riches to rags story to spur the reader’s empathy but talks about the effect the Odessan attitude toward football has on the health of its players. Just like in many parts of the world, in Odessa, sports equates to manliness and manliness equates to not showing signs of pain. Philip, an eighth grade boy aspiring to one day be a Permian Panther is lauded by his stepfather as he “broke his arm during the first demonstrative series of a game ...[but] managed to set it back in” and continued playing for the rest of the game. It is noted that Philip’s arm “swelled considerably, to the point the forearm pads...had to be cut off”(43). By adding details such as these, Bissinger
There are many ideas, experiences, values and beliefs in the play Blackrock by Nick Enright. The play is based on a true story and is set in late November to early January in an Industrial city and its beachside suburb of Blackrock. It is about a girl called Tracy aged 15 who was raped and murdered at a teenage party and the effects of it on the locals and community. Three main ideas explored in the play that challenged and confirmed my own beliefs include “Disrespect toward women”, “Victim blaming” and “Double standards”.
A wise person once said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does change the future.” If a person receives forgiveness, it will change their future. It allows a person to transform and live their life, moving forward, in a better way. This is true of Brent because he has to be forgiven and forgive himself, not to forget what he has done, but, to transform and live a better life. If he did not find forgiveness, Brent would still be angry, selfish, and sad. In the brilliant novel Whirligig, by Paul Fleischman, the main character Brent requires forgiveness from himself and from others in order to undergo a transformation.
I chose to watch the movie Stick It which is an original screenplay. Moreover, it is about a troubled girl, Haley, that gets in trouble with legal matters again and decides to take her punishment to returning to her old life of gymnastics on a team. Haley used to do gymnastics, but she ran away from the sport leaving her team behind to lose. Now she returns to her old life on a new team under a popular coach, Burt. The movie is about Haley going through obstacles of her past coming up, her future, and helping her friends become more confident and less uptight. She also helps all of them at an important event scratch which is not doing the gymnastics act but just like touching the bars but not doing flips. Thus, she helps all the girls win and
All Paul had the desire for at Lake Windsor Middle School was to just be the goalie of the soccer team. In fact, he just wanted to play soccer in general. Paul was prepared to play soccer at the school until suddenly he was forced off because he had an IEP for his vision. Paul did everything in his power to convince the coach that he could see perfectly fine, but nothing worked. Until on major incident changed everything.
Kathy was born in a relatively small town by the name of Wickliffe, Ohio. At a very young age, her family began to notice that something was wrong. Kathy had an inability to communicate. As a child, Kathy remembers attempting to play with other children, which was often difficult (Buckley). “By the time I’d hear someone say ‘hey Kathy, come and get us’ the game would be over,” she said (Buckley). Originally, her parents concluded that she was slow. However, it wasn’t until the 2nd grade that school administrators, psychologist, and audiologist determined that it was just a case of hearing loss. Having hearing loss affects your ability to speak correctly. When she discovered that she had a hearing loss, she had to begin wearing a hearing aid. Unfortunately, her hearing aid did more bad than good. The hearing aid she would wear was loud and painful to the point that it would bring her to tears (Buckley). While at school, her teachers did not give her the proper attention that someone with a disability should receive. She soon decided to transfer to a school that was specifically for her needs. To her benefit sh...
When Zackery Lystedt was “returned to play” after sustaining a first concussion, and then sustained a second (second-impact syndrome,) he would never be the same again. After being airlifted to a major medical facility in Seattle, this athlete woke to his new life as a brain injured individual: he could not walk, he could not speak, he could swallow—the star athlete of his football team would not walk more than twenty-steps until he turned eighteen-years of age (Washingtonjustice, 2014). It was not until the Zackery Lystedt law, did this idea become “controversial.” Since its implementation in Washington State, fueled much by the NFL--every state in the United States has adopted this version of the law, completed in 2010 (Adler & Giersch, 2014). Furthermore, if there is a suspicion of Head Injury, parents and coaches cannot return them to play (BIAWA, 2015). In WA only licensed practitioners trained in Brain Injury have the authority to return this child to play because if they suffer a second head injury after the first, they could die (BIAWA,