How Media Provokes Stereotypical Sexist Thoughts

          Didn't it ever happen to you that between your favorite TV show or movie, they showed advertisements, where you thought:"Damn, that is pretty sexist."? Since the first sexist advertisement launched on TV, the idea and stereotype boomed in the media industry. Women and men, both genders, are victim of sexist stereotypical thoughts caused by media, Thoughts like women are supposed to be in the kitchen and men being hard working, ripped animals. As the video I posted here shows, the female gender suffers a lot in stereotypical sexist advertisements and movies in media..

          Every little girl's dream is to become a beautiful, wealthy disney princess at one part of its life. Though, the amazing disney princess role in the movies, covers up the most stereotypical sexist hints in between some scenes. As you can see from minute 00:00 to 00:20 in the video, the princess Snow White, is, while singing a beautiful song and harmonizing with the forest animals, cleaning the house for the 7 male dwarfs. Just to make it clear for everyone. One woman has to clean up for 7 healthy men that went to work to provide money for a living. It could be that the producers of this movie did not even have the intention to be sexist in some parts, though the image of women doing "women" stuff has burned itself in peoples heads over so many years, that it became kind of normal. From little on, children get introduced to sexist thoughts and behavior in their daily lives, which leads me to the next part of the video. Forwarding to 1:31 - 1:47, there is the perfect example of sexism in media represented by little children. You can see a little girl playing happily in a playhouse. In a playhouse that consists of a washing machine, changing table, cooker and a sink to wash dishes. I wonder, since when young girls do not like to watch TV in the living room or have a place in the house to craft things to play with. Instead of doing those things, the little girl sings:"I love when my laundry gets so clean". Hearing that, I had to chuckle because it is so ridiculously, stereotypical sexist. I worked in a kindergarten for a time and have a little sister, though I have never heard them saying such things as in the commercial. No wonder the society becomes more and more sexist if they get influenced by media since little on.

First Semester.. again.

     Welcome to the International School of Curitiba. Once again I start as a sophomore at ISC. The most of the students are happy to be there, because of all their friends. For the rest it is just one year closer too the end of school. Last year, 10th grade as well, I started the year with good grades but had to repeat the grade because of my lack of studying. This years semester is obviously more easy because I saw already everything we are studying. My grades are high and I realized that class is much more fun if you are good at the subject.

Talking more specifically about last semester. It was much better than my first semester in 2012. My English skills improved a lot and I finally, after all those years, learned how to study correctly. I never believed that class can make fun until I started to know what the whole subject is about. I can discuss with my classmates about different things and make my mother proud with good grades. Though I got some bad grades because there was still the lack of studying, which I changed really quick. Summed up: My last semester was one of the most productive and educational semester I ever had.

One of the most important things to study the right way is "Time Management". I remember back when my English teacher helped me a lot in school. She saw that I had the capacity of getting straight A's but she knew that I did not study at all. One time she called me to her room and started talking with me about time management. I listened carefully but my brain blocked those conversations about school automatically. She gave me a stack of papers with time management on it. I took it with me and left it in my locker for a few weeks. One day I found it again and thought about actually trying it out. I started to fill in the blanks with my activities. First I would come home from school and exercise. I would play basketball with my friends or go to the gym to free my brain from all the stress. Then I would start to do my homework because I am relaxed and  I have enough energy to concentrate. After that I would eat dinner and watch a bit TV or play some video games and after 3/4 hour I would study for the subjects I have the next day. Guess what happened... It worked perfectly. I realized that the new way of studying was really effective and helped a lot. I want to thank my English teacher Ms. Terrell a lot for helping me during those hard times.

To pay attention and take notes in class is the alpha and omega in the world of studying. You will do very bad if you only look in books and close them again without written anything. My first semester in 2013, I started to take notes in class. I did not have to be essays, only short bullet points about the most important things, the teacher said. It will help you so much when you are at home and you try to study but you forgot what the teacher said about a topic. But hey, you got your notes. You just have to open them and take a look at those little bullet points you have written in class and you immediately know what the teacher taught you. Most of the time i use the app Evernote or Google Drive to take my notes. It has a good overview and it is quick and simple to use. I only can recommend those apps for your improving in school.

Here is a video about the best apps about school and education

Stores: Apple     Google

   

Promises Blog Post

The most important key factor in the world to live in a world without war is communication. The current most known conflict in world, caused by misunderstanding and non communication, is the war between Israel and Palestine. The Israeli and Palestine people can not find a  way to share "their" land. That it why they are in a big war now, to decide who will get what. It is a very unnecessary way to share his opinion and many innocent people are caught in all this trouble. 

In the class of Academic Leadership we discussed and watched a documentary about the current most known conflict in the world: The war between Palestine and Israel. The documentary, Promises, analyzed the certain situation and thoughts of seven children in the two different religious groups. They only live a few minutes away from each other but have no option to meet each other. Few of them do not even want to see children from the other religion because they got raised like that. 

Israeli-American film makers went to Israel and Palestine to make a documentary about seven children: Faraj, Daniel, Yarko, Mahmoud, Sanabel, Shlomo and Moishe. The film makers talked to each kid and asked about its opinion over the whole war. From each kid came a different reaction which was very interesting. The children never thought about leaving their part where they were living and now the documentary group managed it to let the children meet each other and share the opinion. Some of them were very curious to see what was going to happen, other children like Shlomo, a Jewish kid, did not want to see children from Palestine and stayed in Israel.

When the children meet each other they were very excited and curious. They did not know what to say and what to do. After a little time they played, talked and ate with each other. They talked much about the war between their religions and communicated the right way. Without violence they made a conclusion together. They noticed that they have the same opinion about the whole war. "People on both sides die", was a very interesting sentence from Daniel. It is full of truth and wise. When you think about it, every human is equal, it does not matter in what religion we believe or what we do in live. We all were born and we all are going to die. That is why it is unnecessary to have a war over a land that sooner or later nobody is going to own anymore. 

As concluding thought, I think that the children have the right to have  the liberty of speech and different thoughts about the situation. Communication is the only way to correspond. There has to be no war to tell his opinion or get attention. Everybody should do it like those children. Meet each other and talk about each other problems so everybody can come to a concluding thought and live peacefully with each other. 

 

Plans for the future: IB and Career

We are going to go loose this time: Just simply express your thoughts on the guidance you have received in terms of your IB program and your career planning. 
What have you learned from the process? Especially anything that has surprised you. 
What worries you about what you have learned? What excites you? 
What is your plan of attack? How are you going to use what you have learned? 




I never heard about the IB, before I came to the International School of Curitiba. I moved to Brazil 1 1/2 years ago and began to understand, what IB really meant. I was excited when I heard that with this diploma, you can go to other countries and study there, after you graduated. In Europe there are many Universities that accept the International Baccalaureate. I did not want to move to Brazil and now I have the opportunity to finish my school here and move back to Germany, to study there. The last weeks we had presentations about the International Baccalaureate (IB), where teachers explained to our class, how the IB works, what it requires and the benefits from it. There are six sections what the IB requires, which the following picture will show: 

I am worried about the hard time that it will take me to study and organize myself in IB. I hear a lot of opinions about the IB and I have to work a lot on my self organization. The IB requires every single percent of your self organization and of your will to do it. Also it will be a hard choice about choosing the courses because you have to take them two years and if you do not like a course you took then you have to rethink everything again, how to start the course and how to work on it. However there are good things, too. I am excited about courses. It will be very interesting, to see how they look like and how they work.

I personally think I will do good in the IB program, because of the good support that I receive from my school. Our college counselor Ms. Benaci made with us a program, where she explained us how the International Baccalaureate works and how to manage yourself. She gave us exercises and tests to do. We could see our scores in an online test we did, called MBTI. The score showed us, who kind of person we are and our potential jobs in the future. She also gave us exercises called Holland Code. We had to fill out experience sheets and 

sheets, where we had to talk about our pride experience. 

I will start attacking the IB with working in my self organization. I am not good at managing my time and I have to improve my studying skills. It will be a hard time for me, but a lot of people get the IB diploma, so I can do it, too.

I want to do my IB diploma, because it is my goal to move back to Germany and continue studying there. The IB gives me that opportunity and I am not going to miss that chance. I have friends that took their International Baccalaureate tests already and friends, who are going to take it this year. I will ask them for help and explanation, how to get better prepared for the IB. It is very exciting for me, because it means a lot for me, moving back to Germany.  

Useful Resources: 

HumanMetrics

IB Website

IB Learner Profil

Career Planing

Career Planning Tips

Twitter

About.me

Response to Seattle Boycott Article

Response to Seattle Boycott Article

     After a few days of the year 2013, the teachers and students at the Garfield High School in Seattle, Washington, boycotted the MAP standardizes tests. Protesting against those standardaized test were relatively common, but this boycott gained a lot of attention. Many people supported this boycott, like the local PTSA, the Seattle Student Senate and the usual suspects like Diane Ravitch and Jonathan Kozol.

A history teacher,Jesse Hagopian, of the Garfield High School talks in an interview about the problems with the standardized testing. He says that the reason why they are boycotting is, that the MAP requires things in math for th gade, which they do not teach until 11th grade which aren't even in the curriculum. He also says that the worse thing is that there's no graduation requirement.

     In my opinion, the Garfield High School students and teachers and also all the other people who support   the boycott of the MAP standardized tests, are right. I totally support the protistation, because I do not see a point where there should be tests, in which are for example math tasks, which some schools dont't teach or which there is not even a graduation requirement. I mean, why shoud I take the test? I could miss every single question and it would not happen anything. It doesn't show up in my college record, it is a waste of time. Some kids want to work hard for those types of tests because they do not want a feeling of 

failure and because of the standardizing test, there is much pressure on them and really for no reason. It is normal to make standardized tests for the IB, SAT or ACT. There is a reason behind it because those tests will show up on your college record and you will need them to get into a good college. For those tests tere can not be any boycott or protest because  I think that it is obvious that you have to take those standardized tests to show your skills and knowledge. But if it is for something that does not even show up in your college record or is required for college, then I agree totally with the Garfield Highschool and  the other people, who are protesting and boycotting.       It is very interesting how people, which don't even know each other work together, when they protest against something. Garfield High School was given so much support from other schools that they won't give up, like other schools did.  The protest is very creative and thoughtful, not like protest in which there is violence or police. They have sentences  on their posters, which leave me with my mouth open. They have a very good message and talk exactly about the problem. Not like protest with posters on which are written "Stop MAP" or "MAP is bad" and I think with this support and the thoughtfull protest and boycott they will reach many things.      SEATTLE, Washington (February 6, 2013) -- National Education Association (NEA) members that teach at  Garfield High School, gathered with community activists, parents and students to hold a Measures of Academic  Progress (MAP) test boycott National Day of Action rally. Teacher refusal to administer the MAP test is motivated  by its lack of proper alignment with their school district's curriculum.

 

Blog Post #2

                   I never heard of that before, that there are college recruiters, who tell you about their colleges. It is very interesting to hear about different colleges and their benefits.I think that I will move back to Germany and I will go there to college but we never know what will happen in the future.

If I would go to a college in the States, I would expect that there are many tutors, who will help the new students to know the basics of this college and where the basic places are, where you have to go.

 My goals would be to begin to organize myself

 I’m much unorganized and need always the help of other students. Another goal would be,-I am pretty sure that is the goal of every college student- to graduate. The biggest goal is to have fun in college and have fun to study because if you don’t have fun in college, it will be the worst time.

A big fear would be, as I mentioned already, to stay unorganized. If I wouldn’t learn to organize myself, I wouldn’t pass the first semester. Another fear would be that, if I have problems with other students that I can’t find a person to talk to. The parents and friends are living in other places and they are far away. So you can’t just visit your friend or family and you can’t expect that they can help you with your problems, like they always did.

I think being an aware Academic Leader will help me a lot to deal with the interviews of the college. You know what to answer to specific questions that the colleges will ask you. Also you know how to act in front of the college recruiters.

"Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." --George Orwell

"In our first two weeks, you have read several articles, seen several videos and been engaged in several discussions related to the concept of academic leadership. At this point, and in your own words, what does the concept mean to you? What subjects or interests do you have a sophisticated, intellectual understanding of that you may want to turn into a major academic project in this class? How do people sometimes abuse academic knowledge to manipulate others? How would you feel if someone used your work to manipulate others (as Jared Diamond claims Mitt Romney has)? How can creating academically sophisticated, intellectual leaders help prevent such people from taking advantage of others the way they do? How can this create a stronger democratic society?"

The first two weeks of Academic Leadership were very interesting. First I didn't know  what this subject is about and I was a bit worried, that I couldn't understand it, but after the first two classes I began to understand it because there were explanations in many ways. We watched videos and read articles about it. Academic Leadership means to me, that it is a subject where we can learn to talk to each other in a group, for example discussing problems or discussing other things like our future. 

I am not sure yet, which topic I would like to talk about. There are many topics I would like to choose, but if I have to choose a topic now, I would take Hip - Hop. I'm listening to Hip - Hop since I was 8 years old. My older sister listend to it the whole time, so I began to listen to it, too. When I grew up, I was more and more interested in Hip - Hop. I didn't just listen to it, I began to research facts about it and began to dress me like that. So I know a lot about this topic and I would love to work with it. 

To answer the last questions it has to be an example that I think everybody mentioned. Religion. There are many 
people, who use their Academic knowledge to manipulate other people.  A good example is Scientology. They have a lot  of churches all over the world and the leaders have an academic knowledge, which they use to manipulate other people. They only talk to the people, but they have a strategy to convince them to do everything they want.
 If someone would use my knowledge to do something bad, I would feel very angry because this person is using your knowledge, which you could use for something good, for something that could hurt people.