We started this project by reading the book brave new world and annotating it. We then did a seminar on the book discussing the truth behind happiness and how the characters found their happiness. After this we began our annotated bibliography and did our individual research.
Socialization and mask Project
Project description
The first mini project we focused on was our strength and weakness posters. In these posters we had to add thing to the poster that we really thought were our weaknesses and our strengths. The reason I think we did this mini project was so we could feel vulnerable without feeling embassy. After that project we dived into the identity category. Identity category are things like race, religion, age, gender, and sexual orientation. In the new posters we made we were able to choose one of these category and focus on how the circle of socialization affected it. Later on in the project we watched a video on a girl called Genie, Genie is a girl that was locked in one room her entire life. Genie was around the age of 10 and was not able to talk, walk and she acted like an animal. This video showed that without the simple things in life we wouldn't be human. After this we ventured into race, age and gender and how we did that was reading Mexican white boy.
Essay Socialization: Its strengths and its weaknesses. What do you think makes us human? Socialization gives you your human traits like comunication, walking, basic writing math skills and also your relationships. There is a example for what happens if you aren't socialized this example is Genie. We watched a video “Genie: Secret of the wild child” this was about how she was kept in the same room for all of her life she was around 13 years old. She knew nothing of the outside world, she had no way to communicate, she didn't know how to walk correctly and was not in a good health condition. Genie was almost animal like. Another part of socialization is that there are target and agent groups this connect to the way we see our socility.Target groups include women, people of color, the poor and disabled people. Agent group include White people, the rich and abled people. We are socialized through our age, race and the media. But because I am a teen I can't be lazy, bratty and have to focus on school, But because i'm mostly I can have things like a chance to make money and have a life that no one can judge me by my skin color.
All boys in this generation and past generations are told that they can't show emotion. They are also told “stop being a girl.” These things are told to boys can stick them in something called a man box. In the Ted talk the call to men by Tony Porter he stated “ That men lead, and they follow and do what we say; Men are superior;women are inferior; That men are strong; women are weak; That woman are of less value; property of men, and objects:”. This is because women are supposed to be appealing toward men and the men are supposed to judge the woman by what they look like. I feel that these limits should not be placed on men and woman. If we just let our judgment disappear and stop putting people down for what they look like. I do not feel I am in a man box at home but sometimes I put myself in a man box when i'm out in the world. You don't want to be emotional because it means that you're weak. We learned about this man box in a ted talk. In the video porter explained that the man box is something men are limited to because they have to be strong, the worker and show no emotion. What if there was no limits on what we do or choice to wear.
We are socialized as teens. They can be know to be bratty, always in trouble and stereotypes like these.We watched Inside the teenage brain by frontline and learned how it works and why teens can be lazy.The doctor in the video was experimenting with a brain scanning system. He would take a teen and send them into the machine and have them sleep. After the scan he looked at it and he compared the scan to a infants . He explained how the brain growth of a teen is about the same as the infants. The brain development is part of why teens can be lazy, emotional, bratty and in need of sleep. The doctor also gave the point that the teen brain needs 10 hours of sleep a night. This can be affected by the teens staying up late and having to get up early. The stereotypes of the teen are not always right because most teens aren't disrespectful but the stereotypes are partly true and have been apart of our socialization. I don't think that I am apart of the these stereotypes and feel that i'm not yours typical teen. Even though I feel that way I do get stereotyped. For example I was walking down the street at night with my friends and a cop pulled up to us with his lights on and started asking us if we were setting off fireworks. We then replayed with “no but they were coming from up the hill.” The cop then said that he just thought it was us because we look suspicious.”
I have been socialized by the media that only white people can be powerful. I am mostly white but my grandma and my mom are from Japan. When I'm out with my grandma I do see how some people give her less respect. My grandma told me that in Japan the people are considerate of each other and are respectful. For example when you're on the subway the people don't hog room they just share the extra space they have. Also when you meet someone you bow thats shows that you respect them.People that are in a minority race can feel they are put down and thought of as bad or weird. If you are in a majority class which is white people then you are given a better start in the world because you aren't thought of as different. They also get into college easier, get jobs easier and can travel easier. For example in the article White privilege: Unpacking the invisible backpack they explain that white people have a backpack with all of the necessary. Peggy McIntosh, a white author of the article used the term “invisible.” Other races can be treated differently because of one small group that are bad and the same skin color as them. For example muslims can be stereotyped as terrorists because of isis and the taliban. But these groups are a very small part of the race. Also muslims have a religion that is more peaceful than many think but just because of those people the whole religion of 1.9 billion is thought of the couple thousand isis members and taliban members. But the white people are still thought of as good even after the people like the columbine shooters, the las vegas shooter, the texas massacre shooter and the KKK. Why do we think of the muslims as bad and some the white people aren't the bad ones. In class we watched a ted talk and in the ted talk a man by the name of stew made a song about stereotypes. The song was called black men ski and how he was stereotyped in aspen. It showed that people can stereotype even when they don't try. Things that are stereotyped are activities like black men don't ski, Black men rap and white people are the active ones. This has shaped my identity by showing me how the world treats people that are different. It will be hard to change the way people are treated but we can start by changing ourselves.I will use the way I have been socialized and not judge people by what they look like.
We could solve these problems but its has been drilled into us. These problems are problems that they had 30 to 40 years ago we can change that. The man box problem we can fix by teaching the kids that they can share feelings.A real life example of this is happening is the video called my princess boy. In the video the mom of the boy embraces that he wants to dress like a girl. Also that teens can break their stereotypes by not being afraid to talk about their problems. Next the targeted races can show that thoughts stereotypes that they have are not really what they are and the white people need to treat everyone the same and not by their race. What I have learned is that you don't have to follow that majority and that you have to be fine with who you are. If we were to treat everyone equally then we would have no conflicts and be able to see everyone's perspective. For an example in sports and schools people us things like the indians and the red skins. If they were named the black skins their would be more conflict. Will we break these socialization limits.
In my mask I am showing a dry side and a side with water. In the middle I put a brick wall with cracks in it. This is to represent how we are separated and how we can start to push and crack the limits set by society. The dirt is the poor and as you get further down the mask the dirt gets lighter to show the growth in the income levels and then they get hit with a brick wall. In this wall there are crack to show how hard it is to get up to the top. Also on the lower part of the mask the water changes with the income levels, the water is on the bottom to show how little people have wealth.The other thing i'm representing in my mask is how men and all teens are stuck in a small box that is putting them down.
Mask
Reflection
My writing has grown based on my learning of new ways to write. My first draft of my essay I was just writing in one perspective, for example I wrote “ The way teens are socialized is to think that everything is not going their way and that parents are trying to hold you back.” This was just in the perspective of the video called Inside the teenage brain. This was then refined by my classmate Colton. After this I started to write my essay on what I thought and not what a video we watched thought. The other way that my writing has grown was writing on sensitive topics. What I mean by this is in middle school I would try and avoid the sensitive topics and only focus on something that didn't make me uncomfortable. This essay I had to dive into the topics and I have learned that it is ok to be vulnerable. The largest takeaways from this project were that everyone tries to fit into one specific image and that it's a lot of people's goals. The media and the corporations try and guide people into being beautiful. This is just a way for companies to make money off of people trying to fit into a certain role in society. If someone is born into a certain class or race they will try and get out of that role in society. For example we watched a video that broke the boundaries of people that don't try and fit in. This video was call “My princess boy” in this video there was a boy that loved to wear “girl clothes” but he didn't care what other people thought of him. I have grown as a project worker by expressing my ideas. In past project at mountain I would just listen to people's ideas and help them make that idea possibly but these last project that I have done here I have shared my ideas and i have grown on them. This gave me more control over how I wanted the exhibition to go and how I wanted to learn. I also think that I need to work on my time management. I have always had a problem with time management and I always tell myself i'll fit it but I never do. As a group member I help put together our designs and our plans for the exhibition. I think that our group really succeed at our planning. Why I think this is the case is because we would have a different opinion but we would almost combine our ideas to make one. The group I was in was always finding new and improved ideas but we did have disagreements. One person would wants something, for example Daniel and I wanted food in our room but Vincent didn't want food because he said it would take away from the learning. Daniel and I did finally agree with him and everything at the exhibition turned out fine.