“Your final exam will be in three parts: multiple choice, primary source analysis, and three major essays. I won’t be allowed within 2 miles of you when you take the exam.” The words of Mr. F, my AP US History teacher, reverberated between my ear drums. He either didn’t notice or didn’t seem to care: “The AP US History exam will be on a Saturday in mid May. It’s graded on a scale of 0 to 5. Zero being the lowest possible score, 5 being the highest.” A student in the front row raises her hand, interrupting our baptism by fire. Mr. F motions for her to speak.
“Are you related to Stephen King?” I didn’t realize it at the time (because let’s face it, I didn’t voluntarily read anything that wasn’t a motorcycle magazine until my senior year of high school) but Mr. F bore an uncanny resemblance to the best selling suspense author. Even their eyeglasses were similar.
“He’s my cousin.” the teacher nodded, pausing to recollect his thoughts. “The test is pretty simple, but it’s probably more difficult than anything you’ve taken before.” I had yet to learn the eccentricities of the oxymoron, but that fact didn’t hinder Mr. F as he grinned slyly while he mouthed the previous statement. “The Regents exams have 4 possible answers. The AP has 5, and they’re usually more difficult to discriminate between. The primary source section will be basically the same thing you run into on Regents Part 2s: political cartoons or other documents accompanied by a set of questions. The essays are probably going to be the biggest hurdle for you. You are required to write three instead of the usual one or two on a Regents exam. Like the Regents, you will be given a limited choice between essay topics to write on, and at least one of the essays will probably...
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... feedback, he had to show me what the AP would think of my essay. Mr. F wasn’t flawed. The whole process was - pardon the shamelessly obvious pun - flawed (you had to see that coming since the first 2 lines of the paper). Especially after having read Peter Elbow’s book on the teacherless writing class, thinking about that year of AP US History is absolutely appalling. The whole writing process was turned on its head. It wasn’t about learning to write or how to improve writing. It was about what to do in order to pass. I can only imagine how a member of the Iroquois Nation must feel about living in 21st Century New York: join us or be left behind in poverty. Write this way. It is the only way. Indians are subhuman. Be a man: become an American. No, a real American. Write this way. It’s the only real way to write. And then again . . . maybe I just don’t like US history.
I was taking AP World History, my first AP class. Keeping up my grades in the class was one of my biggest concerns, but surprisingly, it turned out to be a relatively laid-back class without much homework. Throughout the year, the class was mainly notes and document analysis. The only difficult part of the class was the tests. They were long and arduous with several vague questions based on specific parts of the curriculum that we had only gone over lightly. The course became more vigorous as the exam date drew closer; we began writing more essays, the tests we took grew longer, there were after school study sessions, and even a mock
The Essay, I have chosen to read from is ReReading America was An Indian Story by Roger Jack. The topic of this narrative explores the life of an Indian boy who grows up away from his father in the Pacific Northwest. Roger Jack describes the growing up of a young Indian boy to a man, who lives away from his father. Roger demonstrates values of the Indian culture and their morals through exploration of family ties and change in these specific ties. He also demonstrates that growing up away from one’s father doesn’t mean one can’t be successful in life, it only takes a proper role model, such as the author provides for the young boy.
Local histories written in the nineteenth century are often neglected today. Yet from these accounts, one can see a pattern develop: the myth of Indian extinction, the superiority of White colonists and also to understand how American attitudes and values evolved. The myths were put forth for a reason according to Jean O’Brien. O’Brien explains how the process came to fruition in Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England. In the majority of local town histories, Indians are mentioned in passing, as a past that will never return. Indians were ancient, whereas English colonists brought modernity to New England. Jean O’Brien argues that local histories were the primary means by which white European Americans asserted
This program is part of the PBS series American Experience. In this episode, a critical eye is cast on the early efforts by Congress to "civilize" Native Americans. This homogenization process required the removal of Native American children from their homes and placing them in special Indian schools. Forced to stay for years at a time without returning home, children were required to eschew their own language and culture and learn instead the ways of the white man. Archival photographs and clips, newspaper accounts, journals, personal recollections, and commentary by historians relate the particulars of this era in American History and its ultimate demise. ~ Rose of Sharon Winter, All Movie Guide
There have been reports, even from elementary schools, that young children vomit in their standardized test booklets from stress. If children this young are already becoming sick with school-related stress, we can only begin to imagine their state of being once the added pressure of middle school, high school and college enters their lives. It is critical for school boards to realize that the crippling anxiety that runs rampant through the crowded halls of American schools is a serious cause for concern. Part of this concern stems from the disadvantage at which high stakes testing often puts students with testing anxiety. An example of this can be found when Audrey, whose life Robbins chronicles in The Overachievers, feels that tests do not reflect her knowledge of a topic. Indeed, it is true that if a student is mentally distressed on an extreme level, he/she is not in a good position to show his/her knowledge. In discussing this phenomenon it is important to understand that while most students feel anxious about high stakes tests, it is the ones with clinical anxiety who suffer the most, who vomit in their textbooks and who are
Poverty is a huge issue for Native Americans, an everyday trip to school is walking in the freezing cold with only a T-shirt and a ripped pair of jeans. Walking down the road you see nothing but rundown houses and a group of punks beating up a kid. Looking to the side of the road you see a man, about thirty-two years old, lying on the sidewalk surrounded by about eight empty liquor bottles. You get to school, and in the hallway there is a kid leaning up against a cold brick wall, he is pale, skinny, and he looks really sick. He is so hungry and so skinny that you can see under his rib cage. You also notice that half the teachers chose not to go to school and all the hallways are empty from lack of kids actually going to school. In my essay,
All in all, the treatment of the American Indian during the expansion westward was cruel and harsh. Thus, A Century of Dishonor conveys the truth about the frontier more so than the frontier thesis. Additionally, the common beliefs about the old west are founded in lies and deception. The despair that comes with knowing that people will continue to believe in these false ideas is epitomized by Terrell’s statement, “Perhaps nothing will ever penetrate the haze of puerile romance with which writers unfaithful to their profession and to themselves have surrounded the westerner who made a living in the saddle” (Terrell 182).
My first college English class was ENC 1101 at the State College of Florida. In this course, I learned a vast amount of information about writing, reading, and grammar. When I first walked into ENC 1101 in August, I expected the class to be like any other English class in High School; with rushed busy work and a lot of useless tests and quizzes. However, throughout each week of the semester, Professor Knutsen’s class made me beg to differ. This class was not like any other high school English class. In this class I actually learned important information and did not do work just to complete it. This class had a few assignments here and there, enough to maintain, in order to learn proper information. I learned a lot in this class because I was not rushed to
The thesis statement "In preparing for the Cherokee Removal, state, and federal officials were motivated solely by desire to seize the Natives' land." First off, who is preparing for the removal? Was it the white settlers or was it entailing the natives themselves? The thesis statement is not complex enough and fails to mention the Trail of Tears or the preparations that were taken to remove the Cherokee's. In this way, the full historical picture is avoided making the thesis difficult to under why and how the natives were affected.
When we look back into history, we are now able to fully comprehend the atrocities the Indians faced at the hands of the historic general and President, Andrew Jackson. It can be seen as one of the most shameful and unjust series of political actions taken by an American government. However, as an American living almost 200 years later, it is crucial to look at the motives possessed by Andrew Jackson, and ask whether he fully comprehended the repercussions of his actions or if is was simply ignorant to what he was subjection the natives to. We must also consider weather he truly had the countries best interest in mind, or his own.
Nevertheless, in the author’s note, Dunbar-Ortiz promises to provide a unique perspective that she did not gain from secondary texts, sources, or even her own formal education but rather from outside the academy. Furthermore, in her introduction, she claims her work to “be a history of the United States from an Indigenous peoples’ perspective but there is no such thing as a collective Indigenous peoples’ perspective (13).” She states in the next paragraph that her focus is to discuss the colonist settler state, but the previous statement raises flags for how and why she attempts to write it through an Indigenous perspective. Dunbar-Ortiz appears to anchor herself in this Indian identity but at the same time raises question about Indigenous perspective. Dunbar-Ortiz must be careful not to assume that just because her mother was “most likely Cherokee,” her voice automatically resonates and serves as an Indigenous perspective. These confusing and contradictory statements do raise interesting questions about Indigenous identity that Dunbar-Ortiz should have further examined. Are
In Thomas King’s novel, The Inconvenient Indian, the story of North America’s history is discussed from his original viewpoint and perspective. In his first chapter, “Forgetting Columbus,” he voices his opinion about how he feel towards the way white people have told America’s history and portraying it as an adventurous tale of triumph, strength and freedom. King hunts down the evidence needed to reveal more facts on the controversial relationship between the whites and natives and how it has affected the culture of Americans. Mainly untangling the confusion between the idea of Native Americans being savages and whites constantly reigning in glory. He exposes the truth about how Native Americans were treated and how their actual stories were
To be an American means to go about life being yourself, doing what makes you happy, and knowing what you want to do and doing it. My past built me into who I am today, and because I chose to do what I wanted and lived my life the way I wanted it helped me become the strong person I believe I am.
The war has been okay for now. Right now we are stationed near a fort along the mid-section of the Mississippi river. We have just captured Fort Henry and we foraged for food for a good while after that. Our one dogrobber was killed in battle, so now we have lost the only man in our squadron who knew how to cook decent meals. If only he had some horse sense then he would have survived in battle. You don’t need to worry about me cause I learned many tactics from General Ulysses S. Grant himself, without him we would have been easy prey for those johnnies. After my contract is over I hope to come back home to lots of home-cooked meals. The vittles here are revolting, yet I still am tough as a knot. Everybody else here seems to be struggling like
My freshman seminar class hitherto has been good. In this class I have been learning about various topics. These topics fall into helping us for high school and preparing us for the future. These topics was important and necessary because they helped us to avoid from not being successful. One of the topics we have recently accomplished was budgeting.