Introduction
When you first asked us to define power, my definition was fairly simple; confidence in yourself and being charge of a situation. I was told to look for images and to possibly use a common theme. I'm an education major so I chose to look for images that show power and its relationship to education, whether its the power of education, power over education, and pretty much any way you can put a preposition around the words power and education. I faced the general paranoia most students face when starting a project; I was terrified I was picking the "wrong" images or the "wrong" theme or "wrong" definition of power. I found twelve images I thought displayed power in education and used day in class to glean the two who did not fit the theme as strongly as the others.
Doing the rhetoric forms on each image caused me to deeply think about each one and form my own opinions on the more controversial ones. The political cartoon that angered me the most was the one entitled "Fiscal Responsibility", the community of adults says they must all work together to solve the financial crisis and their solution is cutting funds to education. The complete unfairness of the situation angers me since it happens all the time. Children have absolutely nothing to do with how their parents and the adults spend their money or what they spend it on. They have no control over the present economy and by cutting funds to education, it cuts the resources teachers can use to further educate children, hindering the future economy and the intelligence of the future leaders of America. Before doing the Trace on this political cartoon, I hadn't thought that deeply on why I thought it was unfair to cut funds to education. I knew the negative effects of cutting funds and why it was bad for teachers but I never took the time to really think about what was so inherently wrong about it.
The second image I chose to focus on was a political cartoon that has parents in the 1960's fussing at their child for poor grades and parents and child in 2012 fussing at the parent for poor grades. This image stuck out to me because as an education major, I hear a lot about how to deal with parents and how some parents act like their kid can do no wrong. I researched the cartoonist a little bit and found out his name is Daryl Cagel and he was born in 1956 which would have put him in primary school in the 60's. That shows a definite bias because I think everyone is naturally inclined to feel their childhood was harder than the childhoods of generations after them. I was born in the 90s and I always act like it was so much tougher than my sister who was born in 2002. I got lots of questions out of this like were previous generations of parents really that much tougher or is it just the bias? I think in every generation there are parents who think the sun shines out of their kids behind. I had a few classmates who could never fail a test, it was that the teacher failed at teaching the material. However, I had many more classmates who were grounded and punished for poor grades without a teacher being called. I don't really see that being an occurrence only in our day and time but that could just be my bias of wanting to stick up for the younger generations. Technology and new parenting styles have definitely changed childhood and what activities children do, what games they play, and what they do in school but how do you decide which generation is better? I guess the main point I'm trying to get at my wondering if whether things really have changed that much or if this is just another example of an older generation saying how spoiled and rotten the younger one is?
After seeing these images and thinking about what each of these mean and how they affect both my life and my future profession, my definition of power has definitely changed but I can't see to find the words to describe it. I think everything has power or someone could find a way to give it power. Every new development or ideal makes a change to the world, even if it's the tiniest change. Power isn't so concrete to me now; it's much more fluid and very ambiguous.
Doing the rhetoric forms on each image caused me to deeply think about each one and form my own opinions on the more controversial ones. The political cartoon that angered me the most was the one entitled "Fiscal Responsibility", the community of adults says they must all work together to solve the financial crisis and their solution is cutting funds to education. The complete unfairness of the situation angers me since it happens all the time. Children have absolutely nothing to do with how their parents and the adults spend their money or what they spend it on. They have no control over the present economy and by cutting funds to education, it cuts the resources teachers can use to further educate children, hindering the future economy and the intelligence of the future leaders of America. Before doing the Trace on this political cartoon, I hadn't thought that deeply on why I thought it was unfair to cut funds to education. I knew the negative effects of cutting funds and why it was bad for teachers but I never took the time to really think about what was so inherently wrong about it.
The second image I chose to focus on was a political cartoon that has parents in the 1960's fussing at their child for poor grades and parents and child in 2012 fussing at the parent for poor grades. This image stuck out to me because as an education major, I hear a lot about how to deal with parents and how some parents act like their kid can do no wrong. I researched the cartoonist a little bit and found out his name is Daryl Cagel and he was born in 1956 which would have put him in primary school in the 60's. That shows a definite bias because I think everyone is naturally inclined to feel their childhood was harder than the childhoods of generations after them. I was born in the 90s and I always act like it was so much tougher than my sister who was born in 2002. I got lots of questions out of this like were previous generations of parents really that much tougher or is it just the bias? I think in every generation there are parents who think the sun shines out of their kids behind. I had a few classmates who could never fail a test, it was that the teacher failed at teaching the material. However, I had many more classmates who were grounded and punished for poor grades without a teacher being called. I don't really see that being an occurrence only in our day and time but that could just be my bias of wanting to stick up for the younger generations. Technology and new parenting styles have definitely changed childhood and what activities children do, what games they play, and what they do in school but how do you decide which generation is better? I guess the main point I'm trying to get at my wondering if whether things really have changed that much or if this is just another example of an older generation saying how spoiled and rotten the younger one is?
After seeing these images and thinking about what each of these mean and how they affect both my life and my future profession, my definition of power has definitely changed but I can't see to find the words to describe it. I think everything has power or someone could find a way to give it power. Every new development or ideal makes a change to the world, even if it's the tiniest change. Power isn't so concrete to me now; it's much more fluid and very ambiguous.