Another issue with the SAT

My Soapbox

While I was at swim practice tonight it occurred to me that I have important things to say and it is not fair of me to deprive the public of my brilliance  so then i thought to my self, "self, where can you post these profound views that you have of the world?" To which I replied, "Well strange voice in my head, I have a blog, and if I'm not mistaken part of having a blog is indiscriminately posting every thought that pops into your head with no regard to possible consequences." with that in mind I would like to use this as a platform to discuss two topics about which I am providing pure emotional speculation with complete disregard for facts/reality. You could call it a modernist view of our society: I am presenting you with what i perceive to be the truth and keep in mind that it may be different from your truth (but I think my truth is the most true).

The first thing I want to talk about is a new experience i had tonight: detention (Spoiler alert I LOVED it!). When I first saw the email saying I had detention i thought this must be a mistake; but apparently coming late to davening every day for a week is grounds for having a half hour of the little precious time you have on this earth stolen from you. But i accepted my punishment with valor, dutifully reporting to the beit midrash after school to be detained. Unrelatedly I'm surprised that parents even allow it to be called detention and not "reflection time", "independent growth", or something fluffy and sensitive that woud be better perceived in this Barney raised feel-goodery we call America where every child,  no matter how mediocre, is special.

Going into the room I had no idea what to expect, the only reference point of detention I had was from Harry Potter and for some reason I didn't think that we would go into the "forbidden parking-lot", searching for the unicorn blood that is the spilled Starbucks of students who ignore the no driving off campus rule. My fear was abated when i realized that a majority of the senior class also would be serving time.Then the mifakedet walked in:

"No talking!"
The room immediately erupted in conversation
"Here are the rules: you talk I add time, no computers,no cell phones, do not ask how much time you have left, you will leave when I tell you, you can do school work or read"
"Ken Hamifakedet"

And so we began our detainment. I took out my math book and began to do my homework, I don't think I've ever had a more productive study session in my life! After a few minutes I looked around the room to see what my fellow delinquents were up to. About half of the room was talking to their neighbors, a quarter were texting their neighbors, a few kids were playing x-box in the corner, and another group of kids broke out a guitar and started having a kumzitz around the campfire they started (don't worry we had a fire drill so we are no longer in danger of a real fire- shoutout White Noise!). All in all the room was more subdue than the average Frisch classroom so we have something to be proud of.

After completing my tahara process, cleansing myself from the impurity contracted from coming late to davening, it dawned on me that I had a FANTASTIC time in detention! I got more work done than I would have at home and I had wonderful entertainment. I don't think I'll ever come to davening on time again! I can't wait for my next detention, in fact even when I get to davening on time I think I'll wait a few minutes so that i can go back to my favorite new extra-curricular.

On a more serious note I am disturbed by the number of people -myself included- who are missing enough tiffila to warrant detention. There is something very wrong with the way we structure prayer in school if it doesn't even phase thirty or forty people to miss it on a regular basis (keep in mind there is another group who will be serving tomorrow night so that number is really doubled). Maybe its just that we start school to early and kids simply cannot get out of bed on time, but I think we as a community need to come together to try and formulate some way of making davening sexyer so we do not need to hold detentions over kids to get them to go, especially considering that a detention is not a very effective punishment. I think one of the underlying factors behind the general apathy towards prayer is a lack of understanding of the importance and meaning of the davening. As a school I think we need to invest more time in both the Halachic and emotional nature of tiffila to hopefully inspire student to WANT to be in shul on time. And pushing the start time ten minutes later wouldn't hurt.

Seeing as though I've rambled on about this for quite some time i will save my next opinion ("Can I call myself a Zionist?) for another time. Happy Thanksgiving!

Blog on Blogging

Dear Osh-Cat, I love your topic! I am a big fan of Israeli food (the little of it I can actually eat given my plethora of food allergies). My favorite food is shwarma- but its not an Israeli food as much as a middle eastern food. When I was in Israel I went with my friend Orel to a bunch of shwarma places, i think the best one was on Ben Yehuda Street. There was also a lovely woman who worked in a shwarma who my friend wanted to marry, he claimed it was because of her beautiful Neshama but i think it was her beautiful face. Maybe it would be fun for you to write a cook book or make Israeli foods as part of your project; we can eat them as we watch an Israeli movie!!

I know nothing about Israeli movies; are they any good? How can you understand them? I went to an Israeli movie with an Israeli girl named Orel but I couldn't understand it (I had a great time anyway). Dr. Weiss and Mrs. Besser are contemplating showing footnote to our Tikva class (Tikva the fund not the Mrs.) It looks really interesting!!

Good luck with the blog!

-Eddie

Just another example of the short comings of US schools

Documentary

I found this interesting documentary about the perpetuation of poverty in America and the corruption of the ultra wealthy. There are many interesting facts about the nature of poverty in America that can be taken from this film regardless of your political views. Park Avenue. Money Power & the American Dream

Here's an interesting article about the existence and negative effects of segregation in schools

Well, here it is, my topic choice is educational disparity relative to affluence. My driving question is how can we bridge the gap between students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds? I am going to read "The Shame of a Nation" and "Fire in the Ashes" by Jonathan Kozol. In November we will be visiting a school in PA to see alternate forms of education.

Post 3

Hello blog world it's me again, although I guess that's implied by the fact that its my blog. I still think that my project "Ramp it Up" is a brilliant idea, even though I didn't think of it myself. I need to get started reading. Mrs Wiener got us some books about the issue and found an organization that is already working to help alleviate the problem.

Blog #2

In our society there is tremendous disparity of educational resources between students on high an low income backgrounds. While students at private schools, or public schools in affluent areas, have access to tutors and adequate learning environments, students at schools with less financial stability are left to fend for themselves and are set behind simply due to a lack of resources and support. With the help of Mrs. Wiener and Penina I would like to develop a system of support to help level the playing field for the students who are not receiving adequate support from their schools and communities. We are not the first people to realize this issue and a couple of organizations have been created to help and books have been written on the inequality in education. I plan to either work with existing organizations- or even start a new one- to help be a part of the solution, but will first have to learn more about the issues. I anticipate that this will be a difficult undertaking but thankfully I have been blessed with the resources to make it happen; now I want to give that opportunity to others.

Response to Project

Frisch leads sounds like it is going to be a unique opportunity to develop my knowledge in a new and interesting area of study; that being said, I am not thrilled about the prospect of writing a substantial research paper during my senior year of high school. This is my first time writing a blog, and I am by no means a Bloggist- I could barely figue out how to log into the blog making website. You would think that as editor-in-chief of an online newspaper -FrischOffthePress- I would know a thing about blogs, but you would be mistaken. I know nothing about blogs or internet klans but I am committing to improving my blogginess and I think this project will be an excellent opportunity to do that. I think the best place to start when learning a new thing is to see what that thing actually is, so I went to Dictionary.com and looked up blog. "a Web site containing the writer's or group of writers' own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other Web sites." Going through this definition I think I'm on the right path. 1. I am the writer (hence I am writing this blog) 2. I have told you of one of my experiences while describing my experiance logging on (or trying to) 3. I gave an observation about educational disparity 4. My oppinion is that I really don't want to do work my senior year but if I have to I'm going to make it count 5. here's an image (It's a city made of toothpick)

6. I linked to FrischOffthePress which is another FANTASTIC website I think I've really covered all of the bases of a classic blog and look forward to updating you on my project's progress.