Graduation Speech -- Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

I realize that, during these short minutes I have to address my fellow classmates, all I truly have to offer you are my own thoughts and a little bit of philosophy that I have picked up during my three years here at West High School. Throughout our high school careers, we have been presented with clichà ©s and catch-phrases that are meant to epitomize our entire school career into three or four words: Class of 2000, Bridge to the Millennium, and The Future is Now. As true as all of those phrases may be, I do not believe that any of them can define our entire education. The common tie between all of those themes is this: They all focus on what is to come. They tell us of how we should be years from now, as opposed to acknowledging how we are at this moment. What I want to focus on now i...

Early Childhood Education: Raising Children the Right Way Essay

In early Childhood Education; teaching a child to read and write at early ages can have positive results when showing them educational videos and programs. Early Childhood Education is a field that will never lose significance. It sheds light on the best parenting styles and other significant issues related to raising children. It also gives us a glimpse of how young children perceive the world and how we can put this new knowledge to use for the benefits of children, parents and society. Young children slowly develop a concept of gender through interaction with their environment. Children perception of gender and how they define differences between male and female gender roles would offer an excellent research topic in early childhood education. Particularly during the first three years are critical and influence the child for life. Learning is not confined to children of a certain age or to a formal school environment. Encouraging children to play and explore with other children helps them learn and develop socially, emotionally, physically and intellectually. Play is central to children’s learning, regardless of the actual content. The process play helps children get involved with exploration, language experimentation, cognition, and also the development of social skills. Being interactive with other children teaches them about who they are and about the people around them. Early Childhood education affects a child’s learning somewhat in a good way in somewhat not. When a child goes to a pre-school with teachers that will teach them what they will need to know for the upcoming year those students will have a better chance when they get to kindergarten, but if a child goes to a pre-school with little learning material or teaching style those students might have a hard time keeping up with the students that had a better learning experience. Recent study | Published in the Journal of Early Childhood Research | this study found the quality of a pre-school significantly predicts a child’s educational success. Not all early childhood education is created equal. Not only is it important for parents to do their research when choosing a pre-school for their child, but it’s also important for our child care professionals and teachers to be well trained. A teacher’s educational experience greatly affects the overall delivery of a child’s learning in many ways. According to the | National Association for the Education of Young Children’s | (NAEYC) Position statement on standards for programs to prepare early childhood professionals, the level of a teacher’s education directly affects any benefits the child may receive from the program. This includes early learning and development in cognitive, social, emotional and physical domains. High quality college courses will give the teacher specialized knowledge that will help to inform his decisions, teaching methods and curriculum creation. For example a teacher with extensive knowledge in child development will be able to assess each child’s abilities and identify potential developmental delays and/ or adapt curriculum to fit the child’s needs. It is important to understand child development and to recognize each child’s individual characteristics and cultural background when planning learning activities that enable children to â€Å"make sense of their world†. Children develop the skills necessary to solve real life problems and become better prepared to think for themselves when they are exposed to experiences that: 1) spark interest and curiosity, 2) integrate learning experiences, and 3) structure their thinking. These are some skills that are used in the process of childhood education: Symbolization- Students use symbols to represent an idea, Observation- students use senses to learn about something in detail, description- students verbally portray attributes of an object, person, scene, or event and it’s so many more skills that help a child in their childhood development. (www. uen. org) Benefits of early childhood education provide children with the skills that will help increase their vocabulary development and cognitive abilities. Children start learning from birth, early childhood education, whether it is in a local head-start program, a pre-school or at home, can help a child increase vocabulary development by familiarizing them with words and their meanings. According to | Rand Corporation Research | early education has lasting benefits, showing increases in IQ levels and cognitive abilities such as the ability to understand both concepts and abstract thoughts. Children exposed to early childhood education can be more prepared for social environments. A child becomes competent in learning to socially interact with adults and other children. With parental support, the child can learn not only what is socially appropriate in the classroom, but also in public places and in their home. Social competency is a key skill for a child to learn, as it will benefit them throughout their life time. Like clay, children are highly moldable in their preschool, kindergarten, and early elementary years. Between the ages of five and eight, children are actively engaged in making sense of the large, confusing world around them. In this stage, it is important that children receive the educational guidance that urges them to explore and enthusiastically interact with their setting as they develop socially, physically, intellectually, creatively and emotionally. In this early stage of development, much learning is cultivated by play or playful learning. With the world advancing technologically by the day, new and innovative methods to engage young children and accelerate their development are emerging. It is up to the early childhood educator to seize on these developments as they work to cultivate a life-long sense of curiosity and exploration in the future leaders of tomorrow. (Early Childhood Education. com) Conducting learning activities by applying the concepts of contemplative education is what to emphasize the personal transformation of first year students majoring in Early Childhood Education to meet the national standard on the required characteristics of citizens. The objectives of this research were to compare students’ mean score in each aspect of E. Q. with the norm of the Department of Mental Health; to compare students’ mean score of E. Q. before and after conducting the activities; and to study students’ opinions on the learning activities. (University Library) Although the number of children enrolled in early childhood education and care has risen dramatically over past decades, low-income children are less likely than their more affluent counterparts to participate. Public funding for early education can play an important role in increasing enrollment levels among low-income children. This study utilizes National Household Education Survey data for a 14-year period to examine the effects of public funding on the enrollment of low-income children in early childhood education and care. It also considers the effects of funding on the type of care they use. Results suggest that public funding, particularly child-care subsidies and prekindergarten funding, increases the likelihood that low-income children, even those under 3 years of age, will attend non-parental care, including center-based care. These findings indicate that public funding can help close the gap in enrollment between low- and higher-income children. (University Library) Early education can increase cognitive skills in children, according to |Katherine A. Magnuson and her colleagues who report in the February 2007 issue of â€Å"Economics of Education Review†| that children from under-served communities who attended preschool showed more cognitive improvement than their peers. Columbia University researchers confirm this connection through their study published in the July 2003 issue of â€Å"Developmental Psychology. † They found that prematurely born 8 year olds who attended 400 or more days of preschool at ages 2 and 3 years old scored higher on IQ tests than prematurely born 8 year olds of similar backgrounds who attended preschool less often. Children going through early education has great out comes like, improved cognitive skills can lead to improved academic results. Magnuson’s study indicated that children enrolled in prekindergarten performed better in reading and mathematics when they entered grade school. Children enrolled in early childhood education programs are less likely to be held back a grade in school, according to the Public Policy Forum. These children also have a decreased likelihood of being enrolled in special education remedial programs. The future of early childhood education school programs is bright. As more children are born in the United States and other developing countries, educational programs for children will always be needed to prepare them for careers that will help sustain our global society. There will always be a need for an early childhood education program in fields such as bilingual education, literacy, mathematics and science. According to the statistics provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States Department of Labor, employment demand for careers in secondary, middle and elementary schools are expected to show a significant increase. These positions will be available because of the increase in the population, but the demand will also increase due the retirement of teachers within urban areas of the United States. Therefore, there will be more than 244,000 additional jobs available by 2018 for those that have acquired an ECE degree. Additionally, teaching assistant positions are expected to have an increased demand by as much as 10 percent, while administrative positions in early childhood education school setting will have a demand growth by as much as 8 percent. Educational providers of ECE degree programs will need to prepare for these significant increases by training new educators now. Reference Page Table of Contents Early childhood Education- Authors: Ogletree Quinita, Larke, Patrica J Plarked National forum of Multicultural Issues Journal; Dec 2011, vol. 9 Issue, P1-9, 9P University of phoenix library1 Education and families: Authors: Greenberg, Joy Pastan Sep 2010, volume 84 issue 3, P490, 30 P,6 charts, 1 Graph University of phoenix libraby2 Author: M. Lavora Perry June 16, 2010 www.. livestrong. com Google lookup3 www. unicef. org Google lookup4

Hanging (Out) with the Masters

At first glance, it is easy to think that not much is happening in Mark Kostabi’s Hanging with the Masters. We get to simultaneously view works of art from various art movements as they dangle motionlessly from their taut strings. Everything is nonchalant and serene against the sky blue background, the threat of gravity underneath disappears, and even the anonymous human figure tied to a noose by the neck has surrendered. Whatever was supposed to happen in the painting has already happened. No action is caught. This is the state in which we find things because we have unfortunately arrived late.This apparent lack of motion is what makes Hanging with the Masters so busy. By kidnapping an assortment of works of arts, miniaturizing and tying them in place to become manageable spectacles (classic paintings within a present-day painting), Mark Kostabi has converged, or more appropriately eroded, time and space. There is no nostalgia for the kidnapped paintings at all; just a matter -of-factness. Very postmodern. Taken out of their contexts and arranged in a whole new landscape, the works of arts inside the painting call attention to themselves. Each one of them competes for our attention.Even if we recognize only one of the paintings/mobiles/cartoon character Hanging with the Masters blatantly references, we still get the feeling a kidnapping has happened. Something has been violated and celebrated at the same time. The verb hang takes on two meanings: Hang a picture, Hang a person. As if decoration and decoration are the same thing. And Mark Kostabi is unapologetic. DEAD MAN PERFORMING In the middle of it all, there is the faceless, sexless artist with the paintbrush pointing downwards, the hanged human,—all red (red-faced, red-bellied, and red-handed) from an unseen light source. It is as if he/she has failed a mission.In the essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin tells us that â€Å"[Mankind’s] self-alien ation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order† (681). After exhausting every possible medium and subject of art, from Campbell’s soup cans to elephant dung, we only have to turn to ourselves next, explore and defy the thresholds of our own body and mind, as if they are the next frontier to turn into art. True enough, the hanged artist in Hanging with the Masters is engrossed in his/her own performance art. He/she is both a subject and object.If in modernism the subject is a â€Å"rational, individualistic, responsible, unified self†, in postmodernism, that subject is dead (Chernus, â€Å"Fredric Jameson’s Interpretation of Postmodernism,† par. 7). What replaces is an â€Å"identity [that] must be conceived as an intersection of conflicting subject positions† (Collins 337). Kostabi’s hanged artist is neither male nor female. We can’t tell if he/she is just p laying dead. We are not sure if his/her execution was forced or self-willed. If this were punishment, we don’t know what the sin was. We aren’t even sure if he/she really is a painter, or just someone with a good grip on the paintbrush.Like a true postmodern subject, everything about the hanged artist is open to speculation. One thing we are sure of though is that now he/she has laid claim to being a work of art. And who doesn’t want to be a work of art, a shiny spectacle, in our YouTube generation? MEETING HALFWAY Hanging with the Masters instantly inherits timelessness just because it gathers samples of classic works of arts all in one place. What’s more is that these works of arts are tied in place. As if we are looking at a museum wall and the theme is A Very Short History of Art.Hanging with the Masters cleverly showcases cultural artifacts of the past (a nude, a cartoon character, a Warhol-style portrait, a mobile, an op-art painting), and at the sa me time it gives a commentary on those cultural artifacts. According to Jim Collins, â€Å"[†¦] the past is not just accessed but ‘hijacked’, given an entirely different cultural significance than the antecedent text had when it first appeared† (333). In postmodernism, such â€Å"highly self-conscious forms of appropriation and rearticulation have been used by postmodern painters, photographers and performance artists† (335).But because they have been hijacked, the works of art have lost their â€Å"aura† and â€Å"quality of presence†, terms which Walter Benjamin uses to describe the authority of the original work of art that is not yet reproduced or recopied (667). For Benjamin, this diminishing aura of the work of art every time it is reproduced or finds itself in a different context (Edvard Munch’s screaming man in a mousepad, for example) is okay because it â€Å"enables the original to meet the beholder halfway† (667) . Also, according to Benjamin, it is perfectly natural and okay for cultural artifacts to lose their original intentions and change into something else.His example is that of an ancient statue of Venus. For the Greeks, it was an â€Å"object of veneration†, but for people in the Middle Ages, it became an â€Å"ominous idol† (669). â€Å"Both of them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura† (Benjamin 669). What we see now in Kostabi’s painting are works of art that are classic examples of the art movements they are part of. They are works of arts that are exclusively tied to a genre, tied in place in the painting’s unseen ceiling, just like the hanged artist. If there is any aura left, it is only a memory of that aura as we try to identify each work of art.Yet, ironically enough, Hanging with the Masters’s style itself is tied to the surrealist art movement. The painting itself cannot escape the same bonds whi ch have taken the other paintings as captives. But of course, this is okay. Everything in postmodernism is okay, and things are not judged based on whether they are good or bad, but only whether they work for us. According to Chernus: †¦a cultural artifact is now just a random collection of signs momentarily existing side by side, ready to change at any moment into another random collection. So it cannot point beyond itself to any meaning.It cannot represent any reality outside itself. It cannot even raise the question of its relationship to any reality outside itself. It refers only to itself; it is its own referent. [†¦] Since the signs are not supposed to relate to anything beyond themselves, it makes no sense to ask what they mean. So the problem of meaning simply disappears. (Chernus, par. 19). THE MEANINGLESSNESS OF IT ALL The meaninglessness of postmodernism can be depressing but that’s what is happening right now. The millions of YouTube video clips uploaded every day don’t have to make sense at all, but we enjoy watching them all the same.The more stupid and the more disgusting, the better. YouTube has given us a platform where we can be our own celebrities, our own artists, our own works or arts, where we can be viewed by millions other simultaneously. And we all wish we’d get lots of hits every day. Just like the hanged paintings in Hanging with the Masters, we try to be amazing so we can be worthy of being looked at. Underneath it all, just like the paintings, we are all just competing for each other’s attention. Maybe we can call each YouTube clip a cultural artifact in its own right. They, after all, tell a narrative.They tell us a little something about the person who uploaded it. They tell us that at one point in time, somewhere in the world, this person took the trouble of recording a clip of himself/herself, never mind the ulterior motive. Sure, for a cultural artifact, it may be fleeting, and it is not e ven tangible, but as each footage weaves into the next one and a medley of voices occur and we are overwhelmed by the sheer number of people out there in the world, a whole community our parents’ parents never knew existed back then, we lose the urge to explain things or make sense of them.We simply turn on our curiosity and enjoy the fact that all these are happening right here right now. As Chernus has said above, there is no reliable meaning anymore and there is no point in finding the relationships of things. It is quite possible then that Hanging with the Masters is really, at the end of the day, meaningless. That, really, it is just a collection of images randomly picked. If the audience recognizes one or two paintings embedded in Hanging with the Masters, then they’re lucky and good for them.That will add a new layer to whatever meaning they decide to put into it. If not, then the painting is still nice, and deep, and mysterious, still very marketable. Which is the fate of cultural artifacts in late capitalism: to become commodities in an everything-is-for-sale world (Chernus, par. 7). It is okay to not find or force any connections among the images trapped inside Kostabi’s painting, or even reunite them with other images outside the realm of the painting.For Chernus, the postmodern way is to â€Å"accept the images living side by side in an ever-changing kaleidoscope† (Chernus, par 26). In this postmodern world where diversity is very much welcome, Hanging with the Masters, as a present-day cultural artifact, makes a strong statement about harmony. In the end, it’s not just about works of art with clashing differences in style and opinion and meanings being able to coexist peacefully in a single canvas. Substitute â€Å"people† for â€Å"works of art† in the sentence and you get the bigger picture.