The Caste System of Flatland

I noticed an interesting connection between a book I have been reading for math, Flatland, and the aspects of the American Dream that we have been talking about in class. Flatland is a book about a two dimensional world where an aggressively enforced and restrictive caste system is put in place. Different people are different shapes (triangles, squares, pentagons, other polygons, and circles) and each shape represents a different caste. The isosceles triangles are the lowest, or "criminal" class, the equilateral triangles are the middle class, the squares are the upper middle class, and shapes with an increasing number of sides belong to an increasingly higher social class, until the shape has so many sides it is indiscernible from a circle and has reached the highest possible class. The catch is that, with the exception of isosceles triangles, the children of each shape gain one more side than their father had, so there is potential for upwards movement through classes by means of one's descendants. What I found interesting about this is that at one point in the book, all the shapes essentially have the option to abolish the caste system altogether, but because many of them "anticipated for their children a distinction they could not hope for themselves," meaning that their children would be born into a higher class, the majority ruled to keep the caste system in place. This is very similar to a concept we discussed in class relating to the American Dream, that some people live their lives in certain ways so as to give their children the opportunity to achieve the things they never could.

Vincent Chase: An American Dream

A few days ago we talked about the myth of the American Dream and how people like the story of coming from a humble background and ascending the social class ladder by making a lot of money. This reminded me of a scene in the TV Show Entourage, which follows Vincent Chase, a movie star, and his friends. Vince is talking to Eric, his manager and friend, about how they are going to make $500,000 for a days work by singing at a girl's birthday party. Vince says "You know my father didn't make that in in his whole life." Eric responds, "No, mine either. He owed it though." This scene shows how they both came from families without much money but pulled themselves out of the rut and rose to where they are now, making half a million dollars for a days work, an exemplary accomplishment of the American Dream. The writers of Entourage could have had Vincent Chase and Eric grow up in million dollar houses and merely follow in their parents footsteps by making a ton of money as well, but they decided to have him come from poor beginnings. They did this because people like to see characters living the American Dream, succeeding against all odds, not rich people making even more money.

The Wonders of the World Before Man

On the last page of The Great Gatsby I really liked the paragraph about long island when it was "a fresh, green breast of the new world," and I noticed that I had seen this theme of being awed by imagining the past in other places. For example, there is a Dave Matthews Band song that talks about the wonders of a world untouched by man. The line goes "Now the world is small, compared to how it used to be with mountains and oceans and winters and rivers and stars". This is similar to the way Nick describes his wonder with this land before the trees were cut down to make way for Gatsby's house. The most interesting part of this paragraph, in my opinion, is when he describes how a man must have "held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder." I can absolutely relate to this overwhelming wonder about the world's past, before humans settled in it. The beauty of this untouched nature, the "old, unknown world," is something we all like to imagine. From what Mr. Bolos and Doc Oc have mentioned about The Kentucky Cycle, that it follows the same piece of land throughout different sections of history, I imagine that the wonders of the unknown world before man will play a part in that book as well.

Be Specific

During Mr. Bolos's speech about asking teachers for college recommendations, he made a very good point about what makes a compelling recommendation or essay in general. Bolos said that the best teachers to ask for recommendations are those that know you best because they can use the most specific examples in their letter. This got me thinking about the power of using specifics rather than generalities when writing. Yesterday was the track and field banquet, and I noticed how this principle applied to the banquet as well as essay writing. The banquet consisted of many runners and coaches giving speeches and there was a consistent theme throughout the speeches. The ones with specific stories and details were much more interesting than those that used general statements. For example, one runner gave a speech in appreciation of one of the coaches that told a story about a time they talked with the coach and what it meant to them. This gave the audience a much better understanding of the relationship between that runner and their coach because they could see for themselves what kinds of interactions went on between the two. Because the audience contains a lot of parents that may not personally know the coaches or runners, it is hard for them to connect to speeches about the coaches if general statements are used rather than personal stories.

Indirect Victims of Terrorism

When we talked in class about the death of Osama Bin Laden and the feelings we had about the situation, I noticed a recurring theme of fear of retaliation. We talked about this in class a bit, and Mr. Bolos mentioned that Al Qaeda does not operate on a short timetable, so a retaliation attack is very unlikely. Personally, I was concerned with this recurring worry about retaliation because it shows the more long term effects of terrorism that persist after a bombing or attack; fear. I am not trying to blame those who feared retaliation for their feelings, but it is sad to see these feelings take place. Even when we are on the offensive and successfully execute an operation, the effects are the same, citizens experience fear just from the idea of conflict with terrorists. I recall reading a very interesting chapter in Freakonomics that addressed this point exactly. The section talks about Richard Reid, who attempted to detonate a shoe bomb on an airplane in an act of terrorism. Although he failed entirely to actually detonate the bomb, the attack prompted airport security around the world to require passengers to remove their shoes while passing through security, a process which I'm sure we are all familiar with. The authors, Levitt and Dubner, then calculate that if taking off, x-raying, and replacing one's shoes takes an average of 1 minute, then 1,065 years of security and passenger time are spent, per year, on this process, equivalent to the average life span of 14 people. In summary, although Reid failed to harm any people in his attack, he still "levied a tax that is the time equivalent of 14 lives per year." The chapter also talks about the actual risks of being involved in a terrorist attack, "roughly 1 in 5 million"and notes that, in fact, the average person is "575 times more likely to commit suicide." Again, this post is not trying to say that those who feared retaliation are being irrational, but merely that I saw an interesting connection between our classroom discussion and a Freakonomics section I read a while ago.

Financial Status and Test Scores

When researching PSAE scores for my last blog post, I came across a very interesting blog post which I believe was written by a concerned parent in the Proviso school district. The post explored PSAE test score data, looking for a connection between the amount of low income students at public Illinois schools and the test scores of that school. The post can be found here, and the post before it from which the data is here. Earlier in the year, as a class we discussed the clear correlation between income and test scores, and considering that both are on average very high at New Trier, it is definitely worth looking critically at this data. The first post contains data about the amount of low income students at each school, the percentage of passing PSAE scores at the school, and the amount of money spent per student at the school. In the second post, the author uses the data to find the percentage of non-low income students that meet or exceed PSAE standards. The first thing I noticed was that New Trier had both the highest test scores and least number of low income students in all of Illinois. I also noticed that at ETHS almost 100% of non-low income students pass the PSAE, while only about 66% of the whole school meets the standards. This huge difference in test scores between students of different financial status is even more alarming because the students attend the same school. This data definitely supports Doc Oc's point from when we discussed this earlier in the year, that standardized tests measure socioeconomic status rather than knowledge.

Illinois and the PSAE

In class we talked briefly about the ACT and PSAE that we all took last week. In many of my classes, students discussed their feelings about the PSAE, and the general consensus was that the non-ACT portion of the test was very simple. Students made fun of the basic addition questions (wedding photographer) on the math portion and the simple textual comprehension questions (is a hamper a bin or a washing machine?) in the reading section. My curiosity was peaked, however, when someone mentioned that the majority of students in Illinois do not pass the test. Unable to believe this, i did some searching to see what percentage of students passed and what a passing grade entailed. I was able to find an interesting statistic here, stating that 92% of New Trier students met or exceeded PSAE standards, a very impressive percentage, especially when you consider that it is likely that at least a small percentage of New Trier students make no effort to answer correctly because the test does not get sent to colleges and they are taking it the very next day after the very stressful ACT. As for the state average in illinois, according to data found here, last year 54% of Illinois passed PSAE reading, 52.7% passed math, and 52.4% passed science. While this data does not show that the majority of Illinois fails the PSAE, it does show that there is a great difference between the scores at New Trier and the state average.