In my opinion, solitary confinement should not be allowed because it may cause one to turn crazy and one to be tortured. For example, being alone for a long time may cause distress and depression. During the Coronavirus, one may feel annoyed for not being able to play with friends or meet up with family members. I was deeply heartbroken at the thought of not being able to go on playdates, only online meetings. Even having to meet online is difficult, so being completely isolated is a more miserable thought. Also, without meeting anyone for long periods of time may cause one to long for another glimpse of a human being. One prisoner was so lonely that he looked under the doorway just to see if anybody came. Only thinking about how painful this must have been for the prisoner may cause one to feel sympathy for them. To conclude, solitary confinement, or pure torture, should not be used on prisoners, no matter how wicked they are.
A poem based on “The Moustache” by Robert Cormier
Mike grew a decent moustache,
his sister didn’t like it,
she gave him an electric razor for Christmas,
he didn’t bother to use it.
He’d learned to like the moustache, bit by bit,
he kept it, until he got his sister to admit,
“Well, at least you combed it.” she said,
Mike, didn’t listen, so he sighed instead.
His mom persuaded him to visit his grandma,
and he said ” absolutely, I can not.”
“The smell of the nursing home is similar to hospitals and the sight of blood makes me feel faint.”
He ended up going, as guilty as ever,
he hadn’t gone in a long time, and it seemed forever.
His grandma welcomed him, in a manner he thought was spooky,
and the expresion on her face, was rather droopy.
She thought that Mike was her husband,
speaking what seemed like non-sense to Mike and asking for him to forgive her,
he thought that she was crazy, until he seemed to understand,
she seemed to be making a forgiveness demand,
So he said “I forgive you.” and turned away,
hoping that he didn’t have to stay.
When he got home he got out the razor,
and shaved off his moustache, without thinking much longer.
The Mouśtaché SUMMARY :)
”The Moustache” by Robert Cormier is a short story about a teenage boy by the name of Mike who is visiting his grandmother, Nana, in a nursing home. Because of his moustache, Mike’s grandmother mistakes him for her dead husband. As a result, Mike learns that Nana has guilted herself with her final argument with her husband before his death.
Mike has a girlfriend, Cindy, and he was bringing her to the movies in the Downtown Cinema. Mike’s mom was checking up on Mike so he could be formal for the movie, and then she said: “And that moustache. I still say a seventeen-year-old has no business wearing a moustache.”
Mike told her mother: “It’s an experiment,” but his mother wasn’t convinced and told him that the moustache is costing him money.
It is a Friday night and the Downtown Cinema has a half price for high school couples, seventeen and younger. Sadly, the woman in the box office took one look at Mike’s moustache and charged full price, even Cindy’s ticket. He couldn’t buy a burger for Cindy or himself since the clerk charged full price. Also, Mike has to study hard for a scholarship, so he didn’t own a car, and Cindy is really frustrated over that.
In order to cheer his girlfriend up, he told her that he would shave it off, although he wasn’t planning to. He has to visit his grandmother and her mother told him that his grandmother won’t even recognize him.
Soon enough, he reached the nursing home and there he was greeted by his grandmother who said: “Mike, Mike, I didn’t think you’d come,” and continued with: “I’ve been waiting all this time. See the birds? I’ve been watching them at the feeder. I love to see them come. Even the blue jays. The blue jays are like hawks — they take the food that the small birds should
have. But the small birds, the chickadees, watch the blue jays and at least learn where the feeder is.”
Mike looked around and didn’t see a feeder nor a bird. She complimented about a new coat, and Mike was dumbfounded, and then the attendant came in for juice time, and she conspiratorial winked at Mike and asked Mike’s grandmother for cranberry or orange juice. She noted that cranberyr was good for the bones.
She continued and realized that before his grandpa died, he had a big fight with his grandma, and also, she thought that Mike was the grandpa due to the moustache. She forced Mike to say: “I forgive you, Meg.” With this information in his head, he rushed home, hoping this didn’t happen between his parents.
Then, he shaved off the moustache with the electric razor that Cindy gave him for Christmas. He did this since he didn’t want any relation to the things he just interpreted.
Solving Food Allergies
Oral immunotherapy has come into use as a treatment for food allergies, which affect about 32 million people in the United States. Allergists have begun treating food allergy patients with doses of the food that they are allergic to, to calm their allergic responses. It grew in popularity with the approval of a standardized version, a set of daily capsules to treat the peanut allergy.
But oral immunotherapy also has downsides. It can be nerve-racking, since it involves daily consumption of food that could kill them. It doesn’t work for everyone and does only a little bit to fix the allergy. It mostly means gaining the ability to safely eat several peanuts, rather than having an allergic reaction to just a speck of peanut flour. Nagler and other researchers are working to find ways to treat food allergies more easily and durably. They’re focusing on what they believe is a root cause, imbalances in the community of microbiomes, hoping to let them handle their allergy.
Producing a microbiome-based treatment will be hard, with many details, such as which microbes to provide and how to best deliver them. But the approach is gaining momentum. Nagler’s team and another group reported an important step forward. They prevented severe allergic responses in mice with allergies by getting microbes from non-allergic human babies. So far, there has been a lot of progress to curing food allergies.
what the government did to some of us.
90 miles from Denver lies the ADX prison, that features a higher level of custody then the average prison. There is one place that is Solitary Confinement, a room the size of a bathroom.
The US government often says that they don’t have solitary confinement, but North Korea and Iraq has. That, in fact, is not true. In the ADX prison, the solitary confinement room is the size of a bathroom. It has no windows and food is delivered by a hatch. To exercise, there is a private, locked up room. The point is to prevent the person from seeing others.
Prisoners who have been there have gone crazy. The ADX prison doesn’t even allow pictures to be taken. Many people forgot who they are, because of lack of human contact.
Some people even tried to commit suicide.
As you can see, the government lied to many of us. They do solitary confinement. But, I think this is too harsh. They are still people who just made mistakes. After all, the Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal.
Not sure what to title this.
Teaching methods usually fit on a spectrum, with the ends being letting the students do whatever they want or the micromanagement of every move. These two polar opposites are presented in “Miss Awful” by Author Cavanaugh through the characters of Miss Wilson and Miss Orville. They resemble the ends of the spectrum along wither their advantages and flaws. By the ends of the story, it is clear how both can be applied.
Miss Wilson is a teacher that is very popular with the students. When a boy in her class decided to lie down and rest in the middle of class, she suggested that “‘we’d all have a rest, it was perfectly normal in the middle of the day'”. Obviously, her style of teaching makes sure that the students have fun and it relieves the stress of education. However giving students, especially little kids, this much freedom is deleterious to their education. Small children simply cannot be trusted to be self driven. Additionally, no matter how nice the teacher is to the students, they will eventually take advantage of her.
So let’s consider the other option. When Miss Wilson left for Omaha, Miss Orville became the substitute. On her first day, she yelled at the kids to march in a military like fashion. If a student had bad handwriting, she would scream at them. Even if someone is slouching they will get scolded. This teaching style on the surface has many drawbacks. First, not every single aspect should be corrected. Also, the students should be allowed room to grow and learn some responsibilities.
Which form of education is better? Well looking back, it was previously stated that Wilson and Orville’s teaching methods are ends to a spectrum. Like most things in the world, taking the middle road is usually a path that takes the good from both sides. Teachers should allow students to be independent and responsible, but help them in the right direction. However, this idea should be modified based on different age groups. For example, younger students should be managed more, as they lack self control and their education should be more focused on learning, rather than results. For older people like college students, they have been through twelve years of schooling and definitely know how to take control of their own progress. Also, what is more important at their age is to get their projects completed and in on time. In conclusion, what is most succesful is a mix of the two teaching styles, which encourage students to learn and also get things done.
Miss Awful
When Miss Orville arrived to St. Geoff’s as a substitute teacher for Roger’s class, she made lot of changes that required the students obedience. She was a harsh and strict teacher, that’s why Roger called her ”Miss Awful”. However on Miss Orville’s last day before she leaves Roger’s class, Roger found out that Miss Orville’s point of being harsh and strict was that she wanted to teach them how to be good humans in society, which will help to reduce violence. Roger learned that we shouldn’t judge people before we get to know them.
Roger, the main character of the story, had the best teacher before, Miss Wilson. She used to play with the students during classes and even let the students take some rest. When she gave homework, Roger didn’t even care about it. Once she left for a week to Omaha, the students got a new substitute. She was old, the meanest, and the strictest teacher ever. She came to the classroom with her beloved plant and a lot of work. She was Miss. Orville which students referred to as Miss Awful or the witch. The first day, Miss Orville took Roger’s toys (that he brought to play with his friends,) ripped the papers of students who didn’t do the homework correctly, marched them in and out from the schools, and complained about the students to their parents. “You know, of course, that Roger is a prodigy,…A prodigy of misspelling.” Then she asked Roger to spell flower and castle but he couldn’t. After this embarrassment of Mrs.Clark in between other parents, she and Mr. Clark were surprised to see how Roger took his education seriously and was afraid of her. Another day when parents came to pick up their children Nancy Reeves, Roger’s friend’s Bruce Reeves mother remembered that she knew Miss Orville and said that she was evicted from her apartment and was left homeless with her plants.
Since the students hated her they thought of many horrible ways of getting rid of her like beating her up. One of Roger’s classmate came up with the idea to rip the leaves of her plant. Miss Awful started her last day with what is going on in the world. “If I have been severe with you this past week, it was for your benefit. The world needs good citizens.” Then after when she saw the plant all bare she said “You see…. Violence and destruction… Whoever is responsible, I beg of you only to be sorry.” After the class ended there was no forming lines and some students were silent, or in regret while others were happy. She gave Roger his toys. He now understood how much it meant to be educated and to show how she helped him he spelled the two words she gave him before beautifully and left the room.
Reading Slowly
In a Ted Talk by Jacqueline Woodson in April 2019, she tells the importance of reading slowly and cherishing a book. She reminds us to remember the weeks, years, or even decades an author spends on a book, and how people should respect the author by cherishing their book. Furthermore, there are also academic benefits to reading a book slowly. Last year, I learned the importance of slow reading.
Last year, in my English class, we were given the book Whirligig by Paul Fleischman to read together as a class. Before we began reading, I decided to first read the book by myself to first get to know what the book was about and what to expect in class. The first time I read the book, I finished in about an hour, and I decided that I did not like the book. Frankly, I did not like the book since I did not understand the general plot of the story and many details surrounding the plot. Many important parts of the story did not connect together and I did not understand why we would be reading that book together as a class.
In class, as we took our time reading and processed every word and detail, my understanding of the book entirely changed. I realized that I only found the book uninteresting and boring because I read too quickly and did not understand all of the plot and details. Furthermore, after rereading the story with my class and taking our time to analyze the story, I saw the true beauty of the story containing various symbols and details. From this experience, I learned to truly cherish books by reading them slowly not only to respect the author, but also for the personal benefit of understanding a book.
Now, when I read a book, I try to take it more slowly by reminding myself of my experience with Whirligig. When I do not understand a detail or feel a bit confused, I simply reread a section, and most of the time, the logic becomes clear. I know that I have learned many things connecting to Jacqueline Woodson’s Ted Talk through my own experiences, and I hope that others can also learn the same lesson one way or another.
People Judge With Comparison
What’s your favorite color? Oh it’s blue! Are those peppers spicy? Nah, those aren’t spicy at all. These are all examples of personal judgment, or the amount of favor given to a specific subject. The short story Miss Awful by Arthur Cavanaugh is about a strict substitute teacher who is teaching a group of children. The group of children think the teacher is extremely evil and cruel, but in reality, the teacher is just trying to instruct them on how to be civilized. The only reason the students judged the substitute with such hate is because their original teacher is extremely nice. In many informative pieces and reality, it is obvious people judge with comparison.
The original teacher of this story is called Mrs. Wilson. Mrs. Wilson was extremely nice to the point which her students took advantage of her. Many of her students did not even complete their homework because they knew they would not be disciplined. When the substitute teacher, Ms. Orville came along, every single student thought the teacher was mean. This is because the students are accustomed to experiencing niceness, and they are comparing their two teachers. If Ms. Orville was the first teacher they ever had, they would see Ms. Orville as the middle ground. In this case, the students would think every teacher is relatively nice. In a video showcasing Elon Musk explaining tips for success, one of his reasons was to create products much better than one’s competitors. Suppose company A is an old company which everyone goes to and trusts. Then one day, company B opens up, and presents astronomically better products. To begin, most of the people would see company A as the middle ground because it is the place they always go to. Once they start buying products from company B, company A will be pushed down into the bad category, and company B will become the new middle ground. Creating a much better product is crucial in order to put weight on competitors and bring oneself into the spotlight. Not only is this concept presented in writing and videos, it is also shown all throughout real life.
Getting sick is something everyone hates. Imagine a sickness scale from 0 to 10. The larger the number, the more severe the sickness. In many of the common diseases, the severeness increases very quickly, then slowly recovers. The sick individual will keep feeling more and more sick until one has reached the peak. When their sickness progresses from 0 to 1, they say their condition is terrible, and same for when it progresses from 5 to 6. Once their condition has reached the peak and is starting to recover, they still start to say that they are feeling good. Once one considers both cases it is easy to realize that a person at sickness 6 might “feel better” than the same person at sickness 2. This occurs because the increase from 1 to 2 feels terrible, however, the decreases from 7 to 6 feels wonderful. At the San Francisco Exploratorium, there is a station that explains how people perceive temperature with comparisons. The station had three pipes with distinct temperatures. One was cold, one was at room temperature, and one was hot. When somebody places their hands on the cold pipe then moves to the RM (room temperature pipe), or when someone changes pipes from RM to hot, one feels that the RM and hot pipe, respectively, are the same temperature. Additionally, when someone transitions from the hot pipe to the RM, or from the RM to the cold pipe, one feels that the RM and the cold pipe, respectively, have the same temperatures. Additionally, Andrew Wang TM said that people judge water temperature by the temperature of the air. This is because it the water is colder than the air, one will think the water is cold, and if the water is warmer than the air, one will think the water is warmer. This can cause someone to believe a body of water at a higher temperature is colder than that of a colder temperature just by changing the temperature of the air. Also a common feeling that time is flying faster and faster each year is because of this concept. A year passing for a baby will feel much longer than a year passing for the baby’s grandmother, but in reality, they both experienced the same amount of time. These are just a few of the many ways this concept is presented in real life.
In conclusion, the way us humans judge certain occurrences is all by comparison. This concept is presented almost everywhere, from writing to videos to movies to real life. Judgment by comparison can also be deceiving in many ways. Albert Einstein is the creator of the Theory of Relativity, and says that, “Everything is relative.” When one looks closer at the Theory of Relativity, one realizes that it simply means that people judge with comparison.
Perspective
No one thinks about something the exact same way. For example, you might think that your teacher is really nice while another student may think that the teacher is strict. In Miss Awful by Arthur Cavanaugh, a 3rd-grade class had a substitute teacher. At the beginning of the story, we see from the perspective of the students, thinking that the teacher, Ms. Orville(Awful), is really mean to them while we see more from her point of view towards the end of the story. The main theme of this story is to not judge a book by its cover, or that you should understand other’s perspectives before making assumptions.
When the main character, Roger, first saw the teacher, she was described as “tall and straight as a ruler … [her] rimless spectacles glinted on her bony nose. Her hair was gray, like a witch’s, skewered in a bun, and there was no question that she had witch’s eyes.” (Cavanaugh) Even before they properly met her, the students thought of her very negatively. This is an example of where you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. However, she began to be extremely strict to the students unlike their normal teacher, and even insulted them on their homework. By just reading the first part, we assume that Ms. Orville really is a bad person and mean to the students.
However, we find out from one of the parents that Ms. Orville was kicked out of the place she lived in and was basically forced to be homeless. From this, it shows that her real personality isn’t that awful. It also shows that she is being strict with the students because she wants to improve their behavior and stop them from being as violent.
Understanding what others are thinking before taking action is something that can prevent conflicts from happening. Your perspective doesn’t always include all the details. If the students knew Ms. Orville’s background, they would acknowledge that she isn’t actually a mean person and this would’ve stopped them wanting to take revenge, in this case, killing her plant that she cared about.
Miss Awful shows its reader not judge a book by its cover, and that understanding the other side’s perspective is very important. Next time you are about to interfere with a situation, be sure to recognize what others feel first.