Semester II Meta Post: A Time of Reflection

The blog post that I thought best reflected both my growth in blogging and my ability to connect ideas throughout the year, with both topics of discussion in American Studies, field trips/experiences, and literature we have read this quarter was the blog post Physical Barriers Defining Chicago Neighborhoods.

I was writing this blog post when I was researching and writing my Junior Theme (the topic being segregation in Chicago), so it wasn't difficult for me to thoroughly explore the idea of physical boundaries within Chicago. Not only did this post relate back to first semester and our field trip to to this exact location, Hyde Park and Englewood, but it also connected to the literature we were reading at the time, The Great Gatsby. I related this very real separation of classes in Chicago to the separation of old money from new money in East Egg and West Egg. This topic also was connected to my Junior Theme, adding another layer of relevance to the post. Overall, I think it best demonstrates my progression throughout the year to being able to connect many different ideas and layers of topics we have explored this year in American Studies.

In the post, I also experimented with different ways of visually laying out my posts. I emphasized words I found key to my argument that really summarized the idea I was trying to convey to my reader, such as "separated" or "most dangerous neighborhood." This, I believe, created more of a dynamic for my reader, which in result peaked their interest in my topic.

I also believe I have grown as a blogger this semester by discussing and analyzing a wide variety of different topics.

First semester, I mainly focused on philosophical arguments and ideas (as discussed in my first meta post). This semester, I pushed myself to root my arguments in more current, factual topics that related more directly to class than my interests. I varied my posts this semester from my third quarter post about the obsession with fame in Breaking News: Disney Star Inadvertently Teaches Children About Safe Sex at Dr. Seuss Premiere (which links to heavily discussed topic of social class in America) to my blog post about a Ted Talk proposing educational reform in the post Education: Training Kids out of Creativity.

I believe my blog is a great way to see my progression as a writer, as a thinker, and as a citizen who is constantly questioning, discussing, and analyzing American society as we see it every day.

Education: Training Kids Out of Creativity

"All children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up."-Picasso

I recently watched a very moving Ted Talk in my Dance Lab class that focused on reforms in education and the way our current system is producing students that have been trained since the beginning of their education out of their creativity.
In this Ted Talk, Ken Robinson proposes an education system the nurtures (and not undermines) creativity in young children. I recommend you watch the clip I included from 5:50 to 6:33 to obtain the main idea of the lecture.

"As children grow up, we start educating them progressively from the waist up." - Ken Robinson

Our system of education is in the middle of a great revolution. With academic inflation (college degrees becoming useless to find jobs, most of which now requiring a BA or a PhD 10 years ago) combined with the emphasis of academic success, numerical test scores, and the growing fear of being wrong in young learners has defined the system of education. The arts are no longer valued or taken seriously in schools, being put on the bottom of the hierarchy of subjects. The arts, the roots of creativity, are being cheated in the education systems.

Here, Ken Robinson proposes to put just as much emphasis in a subject like dance as math is currently taught in schools today. The key to success for society and its progression is not memorizing formulas or mastering shakespeare's many sonnets, but to take understandings of academics and applying them in a creative, successful, unique way.

Why are school systems across the world rate core academics rated more important than the arts in the hierarchy-based system if creativity is now much more valued in society today? How do school systems "train children out of creativity"? Does New Trier's system, offering an intense academic learning environment & wide variety of arts, train its student in or out of creativity?

Money=Power: White Noise Blogpost

"These things happen to the poor people who live in exposed areas. Society is set up in such a way that it's the poor and uneducated people who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters." 

-Don DeLillo, 112

In American Studies, we have been focusing on social class, economic class, and what comes with the territory of each. Here, DeLillo is commenting on society and the way it is organized. Those with less money have less power, right? Those with less money, according to DeLillo, are the ones that are supposed to take the main impact of disasters.

Are those who are poor more deserving of hardship and disaster? Why is society organized in a way that money means safety and power? Is money the way America actually measures how much power a person has? Is this a fair system?

Physical Barriers Defining Chicago Neighborhoods

In the novel The Great Gatsby, a book focused on economic classes in the 1920s, two neighboring communities are the setting for the story. Separated by a bay, the community of West Egg on one side and the community of East Egg on the other. West Egg is a neighborhood filled with "new money" and is much less fashionable than East Egg, where all of the glamorous, old money resides. Throughout the novel, the difference between the two are strongly emphasized, each town virtually defining the characters residing in it.

The separation between the communities is by a vast, gorgeous bay, which prevents the two neighborhoods from mingling. I found this description to be extremely similar to the city of Chicago and its neighborhoods of Hyde Park and Englewood. Hyde Park is a neighborhood that houses the prestigious University of Chicago, and is known as a well-respected, sought out upper class community that is virtually all white. To the west of the community is Washington Park, which is a large community park which separates itself from Englewood: a community that is made up of over 98% African Americans and is considered the most dangerous neighborhood in the city and the most dangerous in the country in 2010. My American Studies class actually drove through the neighborhood of Hyde Park, through Washington Park, and into Englewood. Through this experience, we really got to understand the extreme differences between the two communities.

Many believe that this park, like many other natural barriers within the city, are purposefully created to separate different communities. This is to prevent violence in the upper class neighborhoods inflicted by their neighbors and to prevent the converging of the communities. Do you find that physical barriers have an overall positive outcome on the city? Is it detrimental to the two communities? Is it racist or unfair?

Race-Based Public Transportation Funding

The CTA (Chicago Transit Association) has recently been questioned in their fairness in distributing funds for the different types of transportation used throughout Chicago. There are three main forms of public transportation by commuters in Chicago: CTA rail and bus or the Metra. The CTA forms of transportation are widely used by Chicago inhabitants, allowing them to travel within the city versus the Metra, which is a train for commuters from the usually white-dominant suburbs into the downtown business district.

Two commuters sued the state of Illinois, claiming that "regional funding has systematically under-funded inner-city bus and L train service for the benefit of suburban train lines, therefore denying equal transportation access to the region’s minority populations and violating federal and state law." Looking at the Distribution of Total Expenditures Chart on the left, it's clear that CTA is much more widely used then Metra (4.5 million versus 1 million). Also, the large majority of the Metra riders are white, versus on the CTA who only has 31% of non-hispanic whites--the rest are minorities. This clear difference between the two types of transportation in racial makeup raises the question: is the funding for public transportation racist? Or is it just a coincidence that the racial minorities' transportation is underfunded?

The Windy City Being Blown Away by Segregation

As we all know, Chicago is the most segregated city in the United States of America. Made up of over 200 neighborhoods and 77 community areas, it's difficult to mentally imagine just how divided up our windy city is. To the bottom right, there is an image of the Chicagoland area. Every dot that is placed on this map represents 25 people (pink=white, blue=black, green=asian, orange=hispanic) and where they live (according to the 2000 census). The black lines represent the official community area boundaries.

This image was attached with an article by The Chicagoist entitled Chicago Still the Most Segregated U.S. City. The 28% of whites maintain the majority of the north side and the suburbs of Chicago, while the black population (35%) are mostly found on the south and west sides.
When Mayor Daley was fighting for the 2016 Olympics, he said "Out of our diversity comes our city's greatest strength" (Chicago Reader). Unfortunately, diversity turns into segregation when the abundant amounts of races in a city are separated by community borders. The disruption of borders such of these can lead to extreme situations (like the race riots of 1919 in Chicago, started when an Irish man killed a black boy named Eugene Williams because he swam past his "racial boundary" into the Twenty-ninth street beach). Diversity, in many ways, is our weakness.
This constant tension between races and neighborhoods within our city creates many problems for Chicago. The disconnection and aversion from neighborhoods within a city creates discrimination against individuals, unequal treatment, and significant economic differences.


Why do you think Chicago is such a segregated city? Do you think segregation is a choice, or is it forced upon the citizens of Chicago? How would desegregating Chicago have a positive affect on the city?

Boredom: The New Justification for Animal Cruelty

I was listening to the radio yesterday morning, tired and groggy, when I heard this startling story.  A 22 year old man and a 13 year boy from the far west side Austin neighborhood of Chicago were arrested for animal abuse on Friday. These two individuals recorded videos of torturing 5 adult dogs and 5 puppies and posted their videos on YouTube. These movies contained horrific, violent acts towards the dogs, ranging from flinging them around in the air to putting duct tape on a dog's testicles, ripping it off, and pouring alcohol onto his genitalia. To read more about these gruesome acts, you can read an article from the Chicago Sun Times by clicking here.

Immediately after I heard this disturbing story, I wanted to hear what the two men had to say. How could they justify acts as heinous as these? The 22 year old man, Joshua Moore, described it as "not a big deal" and that they were "bored". Forcing animals to eat their own fecal matter? Pouring lemon juice down dogs' throats? Is this what we are naturally inclined to do for entertainment? Violence has become such a norm in American society today. We see murder and bloodshed daily on the news--whether on the radio or the t.v. or the internet. When we are not hearing about violent things happening in the world around us, we immerse ourselves into video games and t.v. shows that encourage kids to punch, shoot, and kill. Are acts such as Moore's due to the overwhelming amount of violence American society has exposed to its people? Are we now finding violent acts such as these "not a big deal"? What are the other factors that are prompting people to do these horrific things?