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Racial disparities in the education system within the united states
Literature and society
Literature and society
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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. Victor grows up in school both on the American Indian Reservation, then later in the farm town junior high. He faces serious discrimination at both of these schools, due to his Native American background. This is made clear in both of the schools by the way the other students treat him as well as how his teachers treat him. His classmates would steal his glasses, trip him, call him names, fight him, and many other forms of bullying. His teachers also bullied him verbally. One of his teachers gave him a spelling test and because he aced it, she made him swallow the test. When Victor was at a high school dance and he passed out on the ground. His teacher approached him and the first thing he asked was, “What’s that boy been drinking? ... ... middle of paper ... .... He is trying to show that these girls are wasting their food when at home their choices are very limited and their reality is much different than the white kids he goes to school with. Overall, Alexie clearly faced much difficulty adjusting to the white culture as a Native American growing up, and expresses this through Victor in his essay, “Indian Education.” He goes through all of the stages of his childhood in comparison with his white counterparts. Racism and bullying are both evident throughout the whole essay. The frustration Alexie got from this is clear through the negativity and humor presented in the experiences he had to face, both on and off of the American Indian reservation. It is evident that 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.
He did not want to go and leave his family and especially his mother behind. When he first got to school, he did not want to let go of his mother, and it took the teacher to pull him off from his mother in order for him to take his seat. He was not allowed to speak Spanish at school with the other kids. His teacher hated Mexicans, thought they were dirty and ugly, and how they will bring knives and guns to school. Then Victor tries to run away from home instead of facing the punishment from his parents. One his way of running away, he meets these two cowboys and he is so fascinated with them, he tells them they can stay at his family’s ranch. When he talks to his father and his father decided to let the cowboys stay at the ranch. When Victor learns that the cowboys told his father about him running away and how it deeply upset his father. The cowboys were surprised because usually the white kids are the ones who always run away how the Mexican kids the ones are known as good people. The story then jumps to when Victor started going back to school where he had a teacher who was actually nice to him and cared about him. He was very good at mathematics, but was not very good at reading and would try anything to get out of it. His teacher started to notice that he was not reading aloud and how he was paying some the other students a nickel in order to get out of reading. His teacher thought since he was so good at math he would be able to catch up with his reading by the end of the year. Yet, when the end of the year ended up rolling around his teacher had to call his parents to let them know that Victor had to be held back a year. Yet, he father ended up becoming angry that the teacher did not even truly know his son and how his teachers kept pushing them around. Then he asked how much it would take to buy off the teacher to let Victor go to the next
He made the decision because education was limited at the Reservation and he wanted more for himself. It was in seventh grade where he leaned out the window and he first kissed a white girl for the first time and the rest of the Indian kids who stayed on the reservation gave him a hard time for being with a white girl. It is not until he goes to the eighth grade at the small town junior high school where he experiences a moment of culture shock when he sees most white girls are anorexic and bulimic. At a school dance after a basketball game Victor passes out during a slow song and the teachers assume he has been drinking because he is an Indian, when then later diagnosed to have diabetes. Victor plays basketball on the high school team and even though they are called the Indians he figures he is the only Indian to ever step foot in the gym. In tenth grade Victor passed the writing test for his driver’s license with flying colors but barely squeezed by on the driving section. He graduates as the valedictorian of the high school and watches as his former Indian classmates from the reservation high school cannot read, some are getting attendance diplomas and Victor realizes that he made the right choice and bettering himself for the future. When talked about having a class reunion Victor states, “Why should we organize a reservation high school reunion? My graduating class has a reunion every weekend at the Powwow Tavern.” (Alexie
How White people assumed they were better than Indians and tried to bully a young boy under the US Reservation. Alexie was bullied by his classmates, teammates, and teachers since he was young because he was an Indian. Even though Alexie didn’t come from a good background, he found the right path and didn’t let his hands down. He had two ways to go to, either become a better, educated and strong person, either be like his brother Steven that was following a bad path, where Alexie chose to become a better and educated person. I believe that Alexie learned how to get stronger, and stand up for himself in the hard moments of his life by many struggles that he passed through. He overcame all his struggles and rose above them
The construction of identity in Native American literature tends to be contingent on the trope of alienation. Protagonists then must come to terms with their exile/alienated condition, and disengage from the world in order to regain a sense of their pre-colonial life. In utilizing the plight of the American Indian, authors expose the effects decolonization and how individuals must undergo a process of recovery. Under these circumstances, characters are able reclaim knowledge of a tribal self that had been distorted by years of oppression. Through Welch’s Winter in the Blood and The Heartsong of Charging Elk, and Alexie’s Flight, we can see how the protagonists suffer from the tensions of living on the margins of conflicting societies, and that they must overcome their alienations in order to reconnect with a native identity.
...efers back to Marie’s hostile statement. Although not every Indian feels as Marie and Reggie do, certainly not John Smith in his dream, the ominous metaphor of the owls marks Alexie’s prediction for the future: unless hate can be reconciled, the spirit of murder and blood shed will continue to plague man kind. While the title of the work serves to encompass victims of both white and Indian cultural backgrounds and closes on the image of the ambiguous killer, (could it be Wilson dancing wildly with his store bought cassette tape? Or could it be Reggie living large in his bloody victories?), the content of the novel is a living account of human actions to historical contexts. Alexies’ work is exaggerated beyond reality, to be sure, yet his assessment of Native American identity is intriguing and universal in the story of recovery from human inflicted violence and hate.
...the story. By concluding in with a sulky mood, Alexie supports the idea that the Native American youth must continue to fight against injustice and to not let previous fights stop them. If they do not continue to fight for their rights, they will continue to live an impoverished life on the reservation.
Being unwanted, uncared for, unloved and forgotten by everybody even by your own family is a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. As the book The absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie talks about an Indian boy, Arnold Spirit, who was born in the Spokane Indian reservation in Wellpinit with brain damage. Arnold takes us along on his journey and we learn how absolutely awful and devastating poverty is and it is not for an individual but for an entire community. This condition leads to senseless death. They never had the chance to be anything but poor and hopeless Indians. If they stop dreaming of being poor and start searching for hope and try to live up with high expectations and accept more to them. They will look to their future with excitement and confidence and begin to do more of what they ever imagined. As a result, they will have a better living condition. Throughout the novel, we learn from Arnold’s fight for a better life. He inspires us and gives us hope. He goes to Reardan where white people live searching for hope. There, he makes new white friends and changes their ideas about Indians. Another inspiration we see in this book is, Mary Spirit, Arnold’s older sister, who leaves her reservation to make her dream come true. She goes to Montana, gets married and starts focusing more on writing her romance novels rather than focusing more on the reservation opinions. Therefore, Arnold’s and Mary’s decision is that they are not simply Indians or White but human being who belongs to many tribes.
The Absolute True Diary of a Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, is about a high schooler trying to get away from his futureless culture. Although the book was an easy, amusing read, filled with pictures, and funny captions. Portraying the hopelessness of the Native American people, his culture, in his eyes. By analysing the text you dig past this comedic writing to see the true struggles of a kid our own age. “You’ve been fighting since you
Indian Education written by Sheman Alexie, describes the story of one young men that had overcome obstacle in his life, when people surround him tried to oppose by causing bulling and prejudicing him because of his appearance and fellow actions. Alexie writes this story to emphasize how different type of people are prejudice from their own culture and people out of their culture in a daily base. In fact, he describe a time when he was being judge by his teacher by accusing him of being an alcoholic because his others fellow who were Indians like him also drink. The author also chooses to title the story Indian Education because of the influence that it could have in many Indians as well as other people when reading it. As human people encounter
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
Alexie begins the essay by telling the audience some background information about himself and his family. He tells of how they lived on an Indian Reservation and survived on “a combination of irregular paychecks, hope, fear and government surplus food.” (Page 1, para. 1) Right from the start, Alexie grabs the emotions of his audience. Alexie then goes on to talk of his father and how because of his love for his father, he developed a love for reading. “My father loved books, and since I loved my father with an aching devotion, I decided to love books as well.” (Page 1, para. 2) He talks of how he taught himself to read and that because of the books he began to thirst for more knowledge. Alexie says that once he learned to read, he began to advance quickly in his schooling. However, because of his thirst for knowledge, he got into much trouble. “A smart Indian was a dangerous person, widely feared and ridiculed by Indians and non-Indians alike.” (Page 2, para. 6) This statement is one of the most powerful statements in the entire essay. The reason for this being that Alexie knows that trouble will come but he was not going to let it ...
Growing up on an Indian reservation, Alexie knows how it feels to be expected to be undereducated and arrogant. Therefore, when he has the opportunity to help change that for the children currently living on the reservation, it is important to him that he succeeds. This quote shows just how hard he is trying even though they don’t want to lear. Alexie tells us about the children who just don’t care about education, “Then there are the sullen and already defeated Indian kids who sit in the back rows
This story, written by Sherman Alexie, is about a young man named Victor who is dealing with some life changes. It is clear to see that how he reacts stems from experiences as an adolescent. For instance, when he heard about the death of his father in Phoenix Arizona his actions displayed a non-caring approach. His urgency to travel to Arizona was not out of concern, love or care for his father, but to claim what was left behind by his father’s estate. This exhibited his greed and self-centered attitude.
Sherman Alexie displays his cultural relevancy by giving a voice to a group of people that many have forgotten about, “Indians.” Native Americans are often overlooked of forgotten when talking about racial issues, this may be since there has been racial issues against Native Americans ever since America began. Alexie also talks about the importance of family and emotional support.
Throughout my comparative studies class, American Indians in Film, I have learned a great amount about American Indians and their culture. Since writing my first response paper, I have learned even more information and interesting facts that are displayed through the American Indian culture. In this response paper I will talk about who tells American Indian stories, oral traditions that are most expressed in the American Indian culture and community, issues that are viewed in American Indian literature/film, and film itself.