The Power of Education
A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated. Have you ever walked into a classroom for a new class and didn’t know anything that was going on? That’s how I felt at the beginning of last semester. Everything we were doing felt out of my reach. One of the first assignments was to read a poem about woman’s struggle. I didn’t understand the language. The meaning behind the poem was unknown and I felt like I should have been in a lower English class, but as the year went on, everything fell in place. Through different methods, assignments and exercise, 113A and 113B help me turned on the part of my brain that makes people think critically which I lacked in previous years. It introduces a new way of trying to understand a piece of art through different methods. It helped me think deeply about everything I see and read rather than the obvious context and it helped me notice things that I didn’t notice before about society and the places that I frequently go to.
The first poem we had to read in English 113A was called “A Woman’s World”. It was a poem that was written in the 1980’s about women’s issues. It points out the limited role of women in history and the stereotypical standards set by men and society on what is the role of women which is holding women back from progressing in jobs and politics. The assignments that we did that had to do with this poem helped me become a critical thinker and made me think for myself. When I first read the poem, I didn’t understand the theme of the whole essay and I couldn’t understand the specificity of her arguments. Sentences such as “whetted a knife” didn’t make sense to me, as I was wondering in my head why would she talk about a knife when the essay is about women? The theme of the poem started becoming clear after applying a few techniques. We annotated the poem and looked up the definition of every word we had trouble comprehending and all the sentences began making sense. We had to come up with questions about what we didn’t understand from the poem and write it to the author. I had to read the poem over and over and think deeply and about the poem; as I was doing that, my understanding of the poem increased little by little. Through different techniques such as annotating the poem and coming up with questions by rereading the poem, I became a better critical thinker and grew to realize that nothing is out of my reach.
Understanding “A Woman’s World” poem made me guilty as it points out the expectations women have to deal with every day and helped me realize an aspect of my personality that I never noticed before. The poem emphasizes the absence of women in world history and the lack of equality between men and women. Women are expected stay home to cook, make babies and take care of the house while the men get to go out and chase their dreams. Women are limited to household duties and men have the choice to do whatever they want. It ties to me personally because, I feel like I am one of those people that set those standards and contribute to the limited roles of women. Every time I think about the woman I am going to marry, the first ideas that come to my mind are: is she going to be able to cook? Does she know to do laundry and take care of kids? I never think about if she’s going to be ambitious or if I have a preference in what profession I want my wife to be in. This poem made me aware of how I view women and in result I feel some guilt. It’s not fair for us men to dictate women’s lives. We have the freedom to chase our dreams and do whatever we want with our lives and yet we try to limit women to only do certain things. This poem makes me a better person because it makes me realize that we are not god to conclude what women should do or shouldn’t do. We are all equal.
Sometimes, things are not what they seem like from far away till we get closer, take our time and look at it from a different perspective. Defamiliarization is the art of looking at things with different eyes or different perspective. In our project space, we did different Defamiliarization exercises that enabled me to be able to notice things I never noticed before, and it gave me a boost on my decision making as I can see things that I couldn’t see before. We had to visualize our rooms in our head, draw it and determine what the drawing said about our room. I had to look at my room with eyes of a stranger that walked into my room accidently. I noticed that it upheld my prejudice on every other color besides red and blue. Almost everything I have in my room is red or blue. It brought up a side of me that I never knew before. The next exercise we had to do was to go to a place of our own choosing and look at it with different eyes and a different perspective in mind and analyze what we found different about the place. I went to the SRC which is the gym at CSUN. I go there almost every single day and always assumed that everyone always goes to the gym to actually work out or do some kind of exercise like me. Looking at the SRC more closely helped me see a lot of things that I never saw before. Not all people where there to workout. Some people watch T.V. and some are just mingling around. is a great tool to have to one’s arsenal. Teens usually have the same beliefs as their parents. As we grow up and become more responsible, we start thinking for ourselves and we make decisions on how we want to live. Such as if we agree with abortion, gay people’s rights or what political view we believe in. Defamiliarization could be a great tool in understanding how our society functions because you get to look at things more closely with a different perspective and eventually help you make a better decision on how you want to live.
As a kid who never spoke English in his life until high school, I didn’t know a lot about writing or reading in English. Throughout the whole semester in 113B, I learned different ways to comprehend a piece of art through methods such as annotation and writing my concerns about the poem to the author. It opened up a new door to my brain on how to think deeply and coherently. The message of “A Woman’s World” made me a better person as I can see the natural flaws that society implemented in me about what makes a good wife. I can see things that I never saw through my natural eyes because my thinking used to be based on my feelings rather than logic. Defamiliarization is a tool that gives me the ability to think outside the box about issues going on in our lives and society such as prochoice and religion. All these methods made me go from a C student to a B student in English because I can think critically. Life is full of obstacles. “A man does what he must in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures and that is the basis of all human morality” (Churchill), those obstacles are not impossible. I never spoke English a single day in my life until High school. If I can improve my English writing in two semesters then I can improve anything in life. Learning how to think critically made me realize that nothing is impossible if you put your mind and you heart into it.
