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Calibrated Peer Review Essay
I'm Roller Coaster
Project

This is the Rollercoaster,​

"Deep Sea Dive" that

Camila and I constructed.

Its theme is saving

the ocean and has facts

about pollution

throughout the ride.

 

      The working mother of four who laments being made to feel guilty about not being accessible all the time for her children addresses a great point about how today’s social norms are damaging childrens’ development. In order to succeed and develop, people need to hone their skills whether it be patience or problem solving. Society’s norm of instant gratification, where people gain satisfaction through impulsive behaviors, is greatly impairing peoples’ ability to mature. Although many could retort that parents should fulfill their duties and “be there” for their children, parents are not obligated to spoil their child. Even though people are entitled to their own opinions, parenting is every parents’ own discretion. Parenting is different for everyone. From personal experience, observations, and readings it is made evident that people need to diverge from today’s social norm in order to develop. My own personal experience of the social norm exemplifies the need to differentiate from the expectation of instant gratification.

      From my own personal experience, I have come to the conclusion that children should be made to wait, or ad lib, or turn to other people for help. In my freshman year of high school, I strongly believed that my parents were obligated to do everything for me and be accessible to me. If I needed a ride at night, it didn’t matter if they were getting ready to go to bed, I’d phone them and tell them to pick me up from my friend’s house. With my parents having smart phones, I expected even more from them; I expected instantaneous replies or calls back, even though I knew they did not know how their phones functioned properly. The working mother of four children notes, “now, with cell phones and pagers, we are also supposed to be instantly reachable and immediately responsive…” With modern technology and the social norm of instant gratification, we set high expectations for our parents and give them such a short break that they are constantly looking after us, babying us, when we need to take the initiative and mature. After my mother starting working, and my father flew down to Orange County for work, I learned the difficult way that I couldn’t always be the number one priority in my parents’ lives. I had bend my schedule around theirs so that I could get to school on time, or go to my college class on time, and it changed my character and positively affected my maturity level. Now, I’m more independent, more socially adept, and more able to solve my own problems. If my mother hadn’t gotten a job, or if my father hadn’t moved down to Orange County, I would still be the little fifteen-year-old complaining about how inaccessible or how slow my parents were. The working mom of four states, “There are times when they need to ad lib. There are times when they have to wait.” Without practicing our patience or our problem solving skills, we will not develop into a mature adult. We will not be able to succeed in the real world. Just because a parent is not able to pick up his or her phone all the time does not mean that he or she is not a fitting parent. Through my observations of people that I know in real life, the people that were made to wait developed in a different way than those of the people who were not made to wait.

      Observing people has given me an advantage in life, where I am able to compare the growth and development of one to another, and the people who became independent and those who became overly-dependent differed from the way their parents parented them. A scintillating example of this would be my friend whose parents rarely answer his phone calls yet still show unconditional love for him. After school when they did not pick up his phone calls, he had to leave a message and find some other way to get home, often by carpooling with his friends. Through this he flourished into someone more independent and more adept to problem solving. Whenever a problem would come his way, he often pondered on possible solutions and chose the one that best fit the situation. However, another friend whose parents always babied and “were there” for him did not break through his middle school personality. This friend would always complain about his parents being late even if they were only five to ten minutes late. Although it can be argued that not everyone reacts the same to this type of parenting, it can be counter argued that there still are a substantial amount of people, from my observations, that have evolved into mature young adults because their parents were not made available to them every second of the day. When parental figures submit themselves to their children by “being there” every second of every day, they are not giving their children enough room to grow into an independent young adult. In a literary example, a father of two shows how parenting doesn’t have to be always centered around the children.

     In the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the way Atticus parents Jem and Scout serves as an example of how not “being there” all the time does not mean that it is bad parenting. The book is about the Finch family and their lives as Atticus Finch defends a black man accused of raping a white woman, and as the children Jem and Scout go through school and their obsession with their neighbor Boo Radley. Atticus is not easily accessible, but still unconditionally loves and guides his two children. Although there is the argument that in the past there were no cell phones or high technology gadgets, it does not change the fact that Atticus was not always available to his children, and even so, his parenting helped them mature and develop. Scout, the narrator of the book, stands strongly about colored peoples’ rights because of the fact that Atticus taught his children that everyone should have equal rights. The feared Boo Radley became acquainted with Scout and Jem, and Scout would not have had an understanding of Boo Radley if not for Atticus’ lessons and talks. Atticus does not revolve his world around his children; however, that does not mean that he is an uninvolved parent. He knows what is going on with his children as he communicates with them and makes sure to “be there” most of the time when he is not working with his client. Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee serves as an example of a parent using a parenting technique that teaches children to mature and develop even at a young age. This is similar to the working mother of four. Just because she did not answer the phone from from the nurse does not indicate that she is an uninvolved mother. She states that she is expected to make sure her children are properly nourished, enriched, and safe, but she is not content with her children conforming to the norm of instant gratification. The similarity between Atticus Finch the the mother of four is that they both do not program their world to orbit their childrens’ world and this is the way that children will learn how to mature and evolve into an independent and problem solving adult.

      From my personal experiences to To Kill a Mockingbird, it is made evident that parents do not have to baby their children every second, every day. Although the social norm of today is instant gratification and people are satisfied through impulsive decisions, that does not mean that people will develop into a functioning member of society. If anything it will do the opposite because of the way people become so overly dependent on their parents or their peers. The working mother of four is correct when she states that children must be made to wait, to ad lib, and to solve their own problems because that is the way children will mature and be able to function in our society as adults.

Genly Ai, in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, is a human envoy on a different planet, the nations of Gethen, carrying a mission to convince the nations of Gethen to join the Ekumen. He has a meeting with King Argaven and tries to convince the King to join the Ekumen with numerous logical and well-supported points. Karhide would benefit from joining the Ekumen by advancing its technology, being able to better defend itself, and become politically and militarily stronger. If I were the King, I would join the Ekumen because Karhide would be able to technologically develop with the aid of the Ekumen, learn to mobilize and be able to defend its territory. Even though there is a chance that the I, as a King, would lose power after creating a peace alliance, Gethen would advance drastically and be a better nation with the alliance with the Ekumen. Genly Ai tries to develop trust between himself and the King of Karhide.

The alliance between Karhide and the Ekumen would result in Karhide advancing technologically. Genly Ai has nothing to hide from the King, Argaven, as he openly explains his mission and objective. Genly Ai informs the King, “Material profit, increase of knowledge. The augmentation of the...field of intelligent life…” (35). Genly explains to the King that the Ekumen want an alliance with Gethen for material profit, expansion of knowledge, the augmentation of the field of intelligent life, harmony, glory of God, curiosity, adventure, and delight (35). Genly states his mission to gain the trust of the King because he has nothing to hide from Argaven. If Gethen were to join the Ekumen then it would prosper with abundant knowledge, technology, and even material goods from the Ekumen. This is similar to how the United States and many other countries are in alliances with each other for the sake of profit and gain. For example, the United States imported around 362,767 goods from China from January 2013 to October 2013. Then the two move on to talk about the leading technology that is common on Genly’s planet. Genly introduces to the King that “time-jumping is a function of traveling nearly as fast as light...and I could start all over” (39). Genly talks about transportation that is extremely fast on a planet where transportation is extremely slow. It’s kind of ironic because technology of the two planets are on two different spectrums. This time jumping would help advance Gethen and its technology. Studying different cultures could help Karhide defend itself better.

Sharing information between the two worlds would result in a better understanding of many other cultures which would, in return, help Karhide better defend itself against those people. Genly shares with Argaven that he is not the first alien to come to Gethen; he was preceded by a team of investigators who came unannounced and came after studying their information (40). This is quite interesting because Genly is still trying to gain the trust of the King by comparing the difference of the team of investigators and himself. However the King states, “Now tell me why we…should have anything to do with all these nations…” (36). Currently, Gethen is having a border dispute and having an ally may be able to help Gethen gather information on the opponent to find out the strengths and the weakness so that Gethen can move about the new information. Although Gethen could acquire information on its own, its technology is too primitive and it cannot even mobilize, so it would take years. On the other hand, an alliance with a technologically developed planet would mean the trading of information which means that Gethen could acquire information as soon as possible. The stable military and politics of Gethen could easily become more substantial with an alliance with the Ekumen.

An alliance with the Ekumen would result in the ability to mobilize and strengthen politically and militarily. Genly mentions the weak military state of Gethen by mentioning to Argaven that “Three thousand nations on eighty-three worlds...the nearest to Gethen is seventeen year’s journey...if you’ve thought that Gethen might be involved in forays and harassments from such neighbors...forays are worth no one’s troubles, across space” (36).  Genly Ai then narrates that “I did not speak of war...there’s no word for it in Karhidish” (36).The nations of Gethen don’t have a word for war which is why they are an easy target when it comes to other countries. With the help of the Ekumen, the nations of Gethen would learn how to mobilize and how to defend themselves and attack their opponents. Without the affiliation with the Ekumen, none of the worlds in coalition of the alliance would be able to fly to Karhide in time if a neighbor were suddenly attack. In this situation, Karhide would be raided and be in ruins because they have no means of fighting in a war, especially because they have no word for it. A real life example of this would be the United States training the Philipines, Israel, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Nigeria, and Columbia, not necessarily because these countries did not know how to mobilize, but because they were lacking in certain aspects of combat and self-defense. In conclusion, Karhide should join the Ekumen.

By consenting to an alliance with the Ekumen, the nations of Gethen would be able to prosper with advanced technology, material goods, information, and a more developed political and military branch. This is important because the nations of Gethen could easily be taken over by groups of tenacious planets without this alliance. There is concrete evidence that Genly Ai is from a more progressive planet from his spaceship to his extensive knowledge of the country of Gethen. Although Gethen will develop over time, an alliance would shorten the time it would take to advance like other planets such as the Ekumen.

 

Works Cited

LeGuin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York [u.a.: Chelsea House Publ., 1987. Print.

"The US Military: Who, Where and What Are They Teaching." Amnesty International USA. Amnesty International USA, n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2013.

"Foreign Trade." - U.S. Trade with China. Census, n.d. Web. 14 Dec. 2013.

 

Left Hand of Darkness Essay

Four Artifacts from my high school years at Alameda Community Learning Center

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