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Post by Mr. Vitale on Jul 7, 2015 16:47:08 GMT
Write your responses to the essay "How Mr. Dewey Decimal Saved my Life" by responding to this thread.
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catea
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Post by catea on Jul 27, 2015 17:11:46 GMT
Barbara Kingsolver made a point to address the unsung heroes of many student/young adult lives in her essay “How Mr. Dewey Decimal Saved My Life”. Kingsolver goes into detail about her high school librarian and how grateful she was that this librarian made her sort the books in the library, which led her to her love for books and career as an author. These select few special human beings that go out of their way to help and encourage someone they see potential in are rarely acknowledged or thanked for the impact they have made on that someone’s life. Kingsolver states in the opening paragraph of her essay, “ Salvation is such a heady thing the temptation is to dance gasping on the shore, shouting that we are alive, till our forgotten savior has long since gone under.” People have a tendency for selfishness and self-preservation, a need to survive and excel when given the chance. For example, when drowning swimmers are rescued they often drown their rescuers in an attempt to get their heads above water. Not because they want to drown their rescuer, but because they have been given the opportunity and means to stop the panic and breathe again. So they take the quickest way out, with little to no thought for the person acting as their life raft. We tend to take the little pushes and suggestions for granted when our lives are a compilation of small interactions and unrecognized life rafts. Unfortunately, such heroes usually receive little more than a sentence in the back of a novel or a small mentioning in an acceptance speech. Yet, these wonderfully dedicated people opened the door to the opportunities given to the success stories we hear about. The best thing about them is that they expect nothing in return for the lives they have saved or turned around. People that are content in knowing that they have been a good influence and furthered someone else are those that I value most in my life and believe we should all aspire to be like them. Our ultimate goal should be to hope everyone makes it, to help everyone achieve whatever he or she wants and we should accept that sometimes we have to be the one behind the curtain. As Kingsolver continues her essay, she lists the things she was able to discover through literature that were completely new to her or frowned upon by her family. Her librarian was able to show her that there was an entire world and many different cultures she was completely unaware of, whole genres that she had no idea existed. This essay shows the importance of leaving the familiar in order to supplement one’s knowledge, which not everyone can come to on his or her own. The unsung heroes that push those who cannot branch out themselves are vital to our world today, for they touch a small number of people that would otherwise remain ignorant.
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Post by marissakane on Jul 31, 2015 0:14:48 GMT
In this essay the author Barbara Kingsolver talks of her highschool experience beginning with a very slow start because she is regretful that she used all her academic classes and has to sit through two boring years of study halls. She seems to hate school and compares herself to other popular kids. Just when she seems to know it all, her librarian that watches over her study hall changes her world for the better. Her librarian keeps her busy by showing her the Dewey Decimal system. It seems like a silly thing to be taught, but it exposed her to more books by all the organizing she was doing and interested her way more than the other classes she would have been in. It shows that just when you think you can give up and feel like there is nothing left for you to do, you can discover more in the world. Reading showed her things about herself she did not even realize, it made her use bigger words and showed her opinions she had never considered. I can relate to this because whether I am reading an article online or in a book; I find things that surprise me and can change my opinion on this. Barbara Kingslover said this as well. The passage of this essay that stood out most to me was when she compared her relationship with her mother to her relationship with her child. She said , "The world rolls on and you can't step in the same river twice". I liked this because she was saying that you can not expect times to be the same as they once were. Things are changing in this world and you can not try to make them how they once were or else you will just be stuck in that time. As the world changes your ideas and opinions should change with it. She also mentioned how science was always changing and theories were ready to be remodeled whenever a better idea came; while religion never changes. I think this is why typically there are two different types of people in this world; scientific thinking people who are logical and religious people who use their instinct and faith.
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Post by eeinhaus17 on Jul 31, 2015 0:30:38 GMT
Barbara Kingsolver in her essay "How Mr. Dewey Decimal Saved My Life" expresses the gratitude of her high school librarian and how her librarian introduced her to the Dewey Decimal system and books in general. Kingsolver, who is the narrator telling the story of her high school years in the essay, explains how her school had a lack of funding which led to most of her fellow classmates being less educated compared to the national average. In her quote on page 135, she states that, "We've created for ourselves a culture that undervalues education, breadth of experience, discourages critical thinking, and distrusts foreign ideas." She is basically saying that this lack of education created a hole in society that puts down librarians and encourages the choice of being well educated or foolish, not just one. Life goals are more optional than vital, and the effort required to be successful can be considered more unforced than beneficial.
Kingsolver heavily writes in her essay about many of the types of books that she has read, which has opened up her pathway to today be a writer. She has learned about humanity, new cultures, and society from these books and how it has changed over the years. Her discoveries of this fascinating literature made her question why education is discouraged, since there is so much importance in these books that no one bothers to read. This discouragement makes people not realize that the library even exists anymore, the heart of learning new things and generating questions to come in mind.
We see something similar happening today in libraries and schools, There is less traffic in libraries compared to years ago, as the rise of technology makes the effort easier when it comes to going school work. Not just the rise of technology, but the lack of school funding is taking place. Happening to many public schools, cuts in the education system make learning harder and harder for students. The cut of school clubs, sports programs, and classes useful for succeeding in life makes students unable to learn about teamwork, social skills, and learning about the world in the financially bitten society. Kingsolver covers the same idea in her high school years in a low-ranked district when it comes to education funding. Teenagers can make poor choices and wrong paths in life if not taught these underrated skills affected by cuts in the education system.
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Post by Tyler Dodd on Jul 31, 2015 22:02:39 GMT
In Barbara Kingsolver's essay, "How Mr. Dewey Decimal Saved My Life" She brings up some interesting and very valid points about American education and government sponsored censorship. Kingsolver feels that begining to read books that her parents thought of as trashy and inappropriate for people her age was a turning point in her life which steered her towards maturity and understanding the world in a more adult way. Barbara sees this as a blessing but today, many parents would not agree. I think that youths will learn the ways of the world at one point or another, how they learn about it is up to their parents. Children, by nature, are adventurous and curious. If they are not given the answers tho the questions they ask then they will simply go another place for answers. It is the education system's job to well, educate. Shying away from sensitive topics in an effort to avoid offending people is a ridiculous and unrealistic approach to teaching.
An issue that this essay reminds me of is public sex education. Many schools across the nation are restricted to teaching abstinence only, and any other mention of protection from sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancies is forbidden. Refusing to teach youths of how to properly protect themselves if they are to have intercourse results in uneducated people engaging in unsafe sex. It is shown that schools that teach abstinence only have higher numbers of teenagers with STD's and teenage pregnancies.
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Post by carriestango on Jul 31, 2015 23:40:43 GMT
"How Mr. Dewey Decimal Saved My Life" is an intriguing essay written by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver begins by writing "A librarian named Miss Truman Richey snatched me from the jaws of ruin, and it's too late now to thank her." (130, Kingsolver) Kingsolver's high school librarian, Miss Truman Richey, introduced her to the Dewey decimal system, exposing her to a world of books to discover and read that have been neglected and untouched for years. These books played an important role in her upcoming future becoming a writer, as well as provide her with a greater insight of the world around her, making her less ignorant. "When I read Doris Lessing at seventeen, I was shocked to wake up from my placid color-blind coma into the racially segregated town I call my home. I saw I had been a fatuous participant in a horrible thing. I bit my nails to the quick, cast nets of rage over all I loved for a time, and quaked to think of all I had -still have- to learn. But if I hadn't made that reckoning, I would have lived a smaller, meaner life." (136, Kingsolver) This demonstrates the important impact books can have on people; it made an impact on Kingsolver's future becoming a writer as well as allowed her to notice the racial issues in her town, and enlighten her to the fact that there was much more she still had to learn about the world she was growing up in. Kingsolver goes on to write how her life would have been chaotic wreck if Miss Richey had not shown her the wonders of the Dewey decimal system. At first Kingsolver admitted to have filed the Dewey decimal system under the useless skills to have, alongside how to upholster and how to color-coordinate a table setting. But as the librarian's concealed plan began working Kingsolver began gradually discovering and reading books that some found "trashy", scared her witless, or took her to a new world. All of the reading also forced her to learn new words, expanding her vocabulary and making her a more intelligent speaker/reader. During Kingsolver's reading rampage she wrote "The most important thing about the books I read in my rebellion is that they were not what I expected." (133, Kingsolver) I took this two ways; One way was that she did what all humans do when looking for a book - judging it by its cover. We try not to judge but it is in our human nature. We judge if the weather is nice enough to go outside, if a person is innocent or guilty, and even when picking out which apples look the best when grocery shopping. She (could have) assumed that the books she was going to read were going to be boring or monotonous based solely on the cover, when in reality they were an exciting and interesting read. The second way I took it was that she figured that the books she was going to be reading in her rebellion were going to be abysmal, trashy, and just insulting, as everyone described them to be, when they were not even close. The books turned out to be an exaggeration of those words, created by the parents/teachers, in fear of giving the children too much information about historical wars, racial segregation, or even the art books at school containing nudity. Granted, parents can tell their children about Jesus Christ and all he has done to save humanity or try and keep them away from funerals/death, but they cannot keep the future generation away from finding out the truths of this world forever. They will eventually break out of their ignorant shell and discover what Kingsolver had; racial segregation, wars, and much more.
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Post by Zoe Lambert on Aug 22, 2015 0:03:57 GMT
In Barbara Kingslover's essay " How Mr. Dewey Decimal Saved My Life" she tells the story of how she came to have the career she has today by explaining a story from her early teenage years. By her second year of high school Kingslover already had all of her academic courses finished which forced her to have study halls for her whole junior and senior years. While in study hall at the school library, the librarian noticed her potential and took her by the arm and taught her the dewey decimal system. Little did Kingslover know, but that that very day she started the rest of her future. By exploring the library and learning about books the author discovered a whole new world waiting for her. Kingslover then goes on to explain her gratitude towards the librarian for opening up so many doors for her just by introducing her to the library. The author expresses that you never get to give credit to the mentor who inadvertently inspires you. If she knew back then that Miss Richey, the librarian was going to introduce her to her true calling she would have expressed her gratitude much more often. Kingslover even said, " I see the wreck that could have been without Miss Richey." She wishes she would have thanked her when she had the chance because she changed the course of her life. In life sometimes we don't ever get the chance to say something that we want to tell someone and its a shame because the person really deserves the gratitude. Much like Kingslover many people miss the chance to thank their educators and sometimes they are the ones most responsible for your success. The writer discloses that oblivious students need to pay more attention to the actions done by their instructors because one day you may realize that it may have swayed the course of your life.
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Post by amandamoustafa127 on Aug 30, 2015 1:24:05 GMT
Barbara Kingsolver is just another one of the authors in this book that has taught me some valuable lessons. We see in the beginning that she is a struggling teenager without an identity and that is a prominent issue in today's world. Most teenagers are forced to adapt to the lifestyle that they were born into, even if that is the last place they want to be. This causes us teens to give up and rebel which is exactly what Kingsolver did. When we only see the future as "pumping gas" for the rest of our lives we get discouraged and don't feel like trying to reach any sort of goal if it doesn't seem worth it. Each individual has to find their outlet, their inspiration, and Kingsolver did. Reading opens our eyes to more than just what is on out T.V screens, broadening our horizons. In Kingsolver's essay she conveys a hopeful and optimistic tone for what reading can do for the young minds of the future and I agree. Kingsolver talked about how you can't protect your child from everything and make them re-live the good parts of your life. I think every parent should take a moment and think about this. If we paint an image in our minds for our children's future, they will never develop their own individuality and won't reach their full potential. The mistakes that we have made in the past will be repeated and the country can not grow. Each generation brings new, fresh ideas, and we can't conform them to our old traditions. I agree with Kingsolver in the fact that "education is undervalued." This remains a pressing issue and isn't taken near seriously enough. We are all guilty of not wanting to go to school and resenting that fact that we have to learn 180 days of the year and that is just sad. We should cherish each moment that our brain is flourishing, but instead we take it for granted and bury 90% of the information that we learn in the "trash bin" in the back of our minds. I think this has gone even rather downhill since Kingsolver wrote this essay and that is terrifying to me. One good thing is that our libraries do not censor as much as Kingsolver wrote they used to. We have matured as a whole and don't cringe when we see or read profanity, witchcraft, and racism. Instead we take it in stride and learn from it. Kids are being more exposed to some issues that in the past were forbidden, making us a less close-minded society. Kingsolver brings up the issue of distrusting foreign ideas. We continue to have the attitude of our way is the right way and the only way. Most Americans are hard-headed and refuse to see things through another persons eyes especially if it's someone that does not look the same as them. Racism is definitely not at terrible as it was back in Kingsolver's time, we have grown since then, but it still pops up here and there and restrains us from working as one country. This is a serious dilemma and I think Kingsolver discovered that at an early age due to her reading. We have to pull our children off the coach and throw them into the reading world. We have to discuss with them that education is what will get them far in life, an we must respect the people teaching it to us. We learn from things such as the holocaust and slavey and if these next few generations aren't listening, history will repeat itself. I believe that this is the message Kingsolver was trying to portray. She never got to thank her librarian because at that time she didn't even appreciate what she had done for her. Kids nowadays think that phones and computers are what really matter, not educatiin and literature, and that is going to drag our country into a deep hole that's going to be hard to come out of. This is what Kingsolver was trying to warn us about, she didn't know what was going to cause it but she knew that it was only going to go downhill from her time if we didn't do something about it, and we haven't.
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Post by marissamcgaffney on Aug 30, 2015 18:15:38 GMT
Barbara Kingsolver tells her story by presenting her rewarding high school experience beginning with her librarian teacher, Miss Truman Richey. Barbara explains how she feared where her fate would take her. "There is no way on earth I really would have ended up a Violator Girlfriend - I could only dream of such a thrilling fate." Her librarian, who became her mentor, had a better future in mind for her. She expressed these feelings to Barbara by introducing her to the Dewey Decimal system. Barbara started to appreciate books and had a whole new outlook on reading. She mentions the censorship in her literature life, including how the local library censored what the community children read. Barbara began to read things she knew her parents would not approve of or appreciate. "I hardly noticed the words that mothers worried about. I noticed words bar, spelled "colour" the way Doris Lessing wrote it, and eventually I figured out it meant racism." She adds that her county was segregated and this word was actually very relevant in her life, yet she was never supposed to find out what it meant. Barbara understands her parents efforts in controlling what she read, watched, and did. She also knows that in the future her own children should not live in the world she grew up in. She is very thankful for Miss Truman Richey, and is grateful that she had someone to guide her down a different path.
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Post by mishellsanchez on Aug 31, 2015 23:58:20 GMT
"I'm not the first person to notice that we rarely get around to thanking those who've helped us most. Salvation is such a heady thing the temptation is to dance gasping on the shore, shouting that we are alive, till our forgotten savior has ling since gone under." This section taken from How Mr. Dewey Decimal Saved My Life, written by Barbara Kingslover, accurately points out that many people absentmindedly forget to recognize those in their lives who have helped them become who they are. In this essay, Kingsolver goes on to tell the reader how education was not heavily valued in her community when she was in high school. She continues to tell the reader that one unsung hero, her school librarian, guided her to amount to better things in life .She was introduced to different cultures, people, places, and all through the different genres of books that she read. She discovered these books with the help of her "savior" while she was organizing books, using the Dewey Decimal system that Miss Truman Richey, her librarian, taught her. This essay puts into perspective all the people in our lives that help us achieve what it is we want to achieve in life, whether it be going on to learning a new skill such as riding a bike, or preparing to make a career with the help of those who educate us in the everyday life. I believe that those unsung heroes are all around us, our parents, coaches, teachers, even those who we would never imagine such as librarians, it is simply a matter of opening up and letting them guide us into great things. "Now that I am a parent myself, I'm sympathetic to the longing for some control over what children read, watch, or do. Our protectiveness is a deeply loving and deeply misguided effort to keep our kids inside the bounds of what we know is safe and right." Several times, even in the case of Barbara Kingslover herself, teenagers especially want to rebel against what their authorities have to say. It causes a sense of a powerless feeling over what they may have to say, and what we as teenagers don't realize, or are afraid to realize, is that they only have the best interest for their children, all they want is for them to be happy in the life they live everyday, but what the children often see and something that some parents/adults fail to see is that the things that prepared them for life are not the same things that will move us teenagers into adulthood, as Kingston wrote. Since people are different, and since times change, the same things will not always be compatible. Human beings are selfish by nature, but also give in return unknowingly. Kingsolver would sit alone in the library, wanting more to life, rather than growing up to be like those in her community, and Miss Richey unconsciously gave her that itch that sparked her future, which happened to be the future of a fiction writer. We all have those people in our lives, we graciously run into them, and once we find them we should be thankful for their impact in out lives, for one day those unsung heros could very well be us.
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Post by Tom on Sept 1, 2015 0:27:14 GMT
In "How Mr. Dewey Saved my Life" Barbara Kingsolver talks about her experience in high school and how the librarian saved her and led her into the career she has now. The librarian would make her sort the books in the library and this is where her love for books began, before she wanted nothing to do with them. The librarian was able to teach her the wonders of books, the different cultures, different ways authors write, and different genres of book she had no idea of. She begins to realize how important books are and in todays age with the advancements in technology not many people would bother to go down to the library for a book they would rather just do other things.
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