SOCIAL INEQUALITY

One person is different from another person. People are different and people change. The thing is, you can’t see that one the outside of a person, you rarely can’t look at a person and know his or hers story.  However, in this article, I will tell you a little bit about my views, thoughts, experiences and opinions on how literature or movies can make us more aware of social inequality, past or present.  I will use examples from a movie we saw in class today called “the blind side” and from the book I read a couple a weeks ago called “the Hunger Games”.

Humans need experience to get wise, smarter, see solutions and basically to do almost everything other things in life. To get friends, jobs, know what to do when a problem rise and to know how to act around other people. Children need a role model.  They need someone to learn from, experience things from and someone to look up to. I have had a really nice childhood, incredible many great memories. But many people have for example had an awful childhood or many bad memories. They may have experienced terrible things. But how can I, who had had a wonderful childhood, understand and realize how those kids have lived? I need experience and I need to learn. And I believe most of that learning happens when I read books, or watch movies. When you watch movies or read, you learn and experience new things and information all the time. You extend your knowledge, and I believe knowledge makes you wise. 

The hunger games is an example of a movie and book that probably can make you learn more about different social inequality. I know the hunger games are an action, adventure and science fiction movie and book, but if you have read the book or seen the movie, you know that there are several totally different characters in the book. There are the poor people in the 12 districts and there are the people of the capitol. Those people have an incredible different social inequality. And when we look at Katniss, we can’t see what she has been through. We can’t see that she almost starved to death and that she lost her father at age 12. However, what I am trying to say is that when you look at a girl, and all you can see is a smile, you may think that she has a perfect life and blah, blah blah. But many awful memories can hide behind her smile; the smile can be fake and just a thin wall to how awful her life has been.  What I mean is that the person that you think you know, maybe sitting next to you smiling in the classroom, can have many terrible experiences. 

The movie we saw in class today is called the blind side. It is about a family that takes a homeless boy home. The boy Michael Oher has had a terrible childhood, never owned his own bed and never had a real family. He can’t do anything at school; his grades are bad, his social skills, but when the family doesn’t give up on him he starts to do better at school. But this family takes care of him, and slowly he starts to become a part of their family. At the end of the movies he gets a football scholarship and he goes to college. When I saw this movie I thought about how people with a bad childhood can make it, with maybe just a little help and how you don’t know how a person got to the point in life where the person is when you met him or her. I got more aware on how lucky I have been with my childhood, and I thought about children all over the world having bad childhoods. 

When you read books, or see movies, you learn and you think about new things. You become more aware of social inequities, past and present. You think about things you have never ever thought about before. 

My reading of the Hunger Games

A book written by Suzanne Collins

Theme	In a dark vision of the near future, twelve boys and twelve girls are forced to appear in a live TV show called the hunger games. There is only one rule: kill or be killed.	The paragraph was actually on the back on the book cover. I chose to write this on theme because I thought it showed the main theme excellent and it also gives the reader a good impression and a short summary on what the theme and the book is about.
Setting	The rules of the hunger games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to death. The last tribute standing wins.	I think this paragraph was great to fill in, in this coulmn. It showed how awful the hunger games are and how mean the capitol is. How they control everything and everyone. And how everyone do what they say or demand, because they are scared of what the capitol might do if they protest.
Plot	“Maybe,” I say, because I can hardly tell my mother to carry on if I’ve already given up myself. Besides, it isn’t in my nature to go down without a fight, even when things seem insurmountable. “Then we’d been as rich as Haymitch.” “I don’t care if we’re rich. I just want you to come home. You will try, won’t you? Really, really try?” asks Prim. “Really, really try. I swear it,” I say. And I know, because of Prim, I’ll have to.	I think this paragraph is just right in this column because it gives you an outline on what the plan or plot is. Katniss believes she has got a death sentence when she volunteer to step in for her sister in the games. But she knows that she has to a least try to survive for her sister and for her mother.So they will have the chance to become a family again.
Character development	The news sinks in. Two tributes can win this year. If they’re from the same district. Both can live. Both of us can live. Before I can stop myself, I call out Peeta’s name.	Katniss changes a lot from the start to the end of the book.  The book starts with Katniss thinking she is going to die. She is also a very suspicious person. She reads into everything, looking for something that will make her not trust a person.  But slowly she becomes more and more eager to win and she slowly starts to trust her fellow tribute Peeta. I think this paragraph show us that very good. How she turns from this girl who thinks she is going to die and not trusting anyone to a girl partly in love thinking she can win. When Katniss and Peeta start working together, they feel safer and they also start thinking they might have a chance at coming home. Alive.

 My opinion of the book:

For some reason I didn’t have so high expectations to the book. I don’t know why, because I had just read great reviews on the book. All of my friends too, had told me it was a fantastic book. Even though, I didn’t was interested enough to read it myself or to see the movie. But when our teacher presented us which books we could choose between, I immediately chose the hunger games. I am very happy with that decision. 

I started to read the book, thinking I would use many weeks and actually force myself to read, because I kind of thought it would be boring. But there I got myself a surprise. I had problems to stop reading the book! I even started to imagine how things would turn out and got surprised many times in the book because things turned out in a whole different way than I expected. Also, I started hoping and kind of cheering on how Katniss relationships with Gale and Peeta would turn out.

However, I got totally surprised! I loved the book! And I started to read the second book as soon as I finished the first book. I am finished with the second book, catching fire now, and I have started the third book, mockingjay. I hope this book, the last one, will have an ending I will be satisfied with. I have also seen the movie and it was great. Now, I am just looking forward to the next movie, catching fire.

The Hunger Games written by Suzanne Collins

Katniss Everdeen in the movie The Hunger Games, played by Jennifer Lawrence.

The last couple of weeks

Hi!
I know I have not blogged in a while, but we have been busy writing an online book in class. We have written a lot of differents texts about everything from how to make a skype profile to smart and safe searching on the computer. The book is a project almost everyone in class is working on and we hope you will buy our book. You can learn many different and interesting facts you probably did not know before. Here are some of the texts I have written for the book. You can read them and if you like them you can buy the whole book when it gets published!

Student voice and writing a book in English class:

What would you do if no one heard your words or your voice? What would you do if no people bothered to care about your feelings or opinions? You would definitely not make any progress exploring your ideas and opinions, that’s for sure.

I think it is extremely important that students can say their opinions and thoughts. Then they can express them self, say want they want to do in the classroom, how they learn best and what they think is important and interesting. The fact that I have a voice in my classroom is very important to me. When I have a say in the classroom, the teacher, I and of course my fellow students can agree or disagree about something together. We can decide many things together and figure out what we think is the best way to do things.

I think it is really exiting to write a book in English class. I have never ever done anything like this before, so I enjoy doing something new. And on cool thing is that almost everyone in the whole class is working together. I don’t think everyone have worked together before. I feel that I learn a lot when I write on this book, especially because I am thinking about that other people are going to read what I write, not only the teacher. 

Flexibility when learning on the computer:

It is many great things about learning and working on the computer. But one incredible great thing, I know a lot of people don’t think of, is the flexibility that you can work from wherever you are in the whole world. If you are in Asia, then you can work from Asia. If you don’t feel well one day, you stay home, and you can do your school work from home.

It’s really great for people who are sick a lot, or for people with other reasons to be away from school. Take me for an example; I have been really sick and a lot away from my class. But I have managed to keep up with the homework. Much thanks to the flexibility when my class is working a lot on the computer. Right now, I am sitting in Stavern and writing this, two hours away from my school. But I can do my work, even though I can’t be at school. I think we can call that quit EXCELENT. 

What is the main difference between your education and your parent’s education?

This is a tricky question because I don’t exactly know how everything was when my parents were in school. I can only think and guess how most things were. I can try to picture them and the systems years ago, but I most likely cannot see the whole picture. In this text I will write about what I believe is true and then I will have my parents look over and comment. I will write what we do in class, what I like, and why I think we work like this.

I believe many stuff was much, much stricter before than many things are now. I think this is at least one of the main differences between my education and my parent’s education.  I think many students had more respect for their teachers and the school systems 15 years ago than now. Many young people, teenagers, children and young adults have been a little bit spoiled. They may almost think or a least behave as if the students were the bosses of the teacher. This is perhaps more for young children in elementary school, not so much in high school. But from what I have seen in old movies, the school systems were much stricter before. The students had incredible much respect for their teachers and no one ever thought about being naughty or unreasonable.

One other important difference is the fact that on my school we learn a lot on the computer. We use the internet a lot when we Skype with other classes in other countries, and we also use our blog and our twitter account a lot. We also deliver assignments online and if we want an answer to anything at all, all we have to is type the question on Google and that’s all. We do a lot more research online and have more presentations. Working in groups is also something we do a lot. I don’t believe my parents could use the internet to find and search for answers. I think they used books and worked a lot alone in a row in the classrooms.

All together I believe on of the main differences between my and my parent’s education is that many things was stricter before. The other main difference is that we learn in very different ways. We use the internet a lot to learn and my parents probably red different books and listened to the teacher for learning.

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That was some of the texts I wrote. I hope you liked them. Those texts was perhaps more reflections texts than factual texts, but it will be many factual texts as well. Although, I hope you got an impression on what the book will be like!

- Heidi