Sexual education

The world is full of discrimination, people will judge you because of the way you dress, the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you think in fact the presence if difference and absence of tolerance are the main triggers of this social problem that affect an elevated number of persons in different magnitude. Sex is considered a taboo in most cultures now in the 21^st century is when we are first experiencing the first symptoms of social evolution and acceptance. Most people consider sex as something intimate, something special, sacred pure that you should not be willing to talk with nobody. There is something that most people forgot. What about the biological need for sex? What about the part that humans are animals and animals are guided by natural selection? What about the principal dogma of all animals that live to reproduce? These are the three basic questions that most people forgot to ask themselves when they started pointing fingers at the act of sex. The act of sex has two sides, the biological and the cultural one that will vary depending on where you are and how you were raised and it is very important no to aisle them and instead treat them as a whole.

Sex should not be left as something obscure, as something mysterious, as something that you should not talk about, maybe and just maybe that is one of the main reasons because we have so many STD’s (Sexually Transmitted Diseases). The starting point would the fact of poor education, if something is culturally prohibited there would be lack of education, and that would lead to a larger spread of them. This year we have seen an increment of over a 30% of STD’s including HIV, Chlamydia, Gonorrhea and Syphilis and we should ask ourselves: Why is this happening?. The theory of many is precisely the fact that most people do not want to talk about sex, which leads to parents ignoring the fact that most of the kids now a day’s start they sexually active life’s at about 16 years old and who’s going to teach those kids about STD’s and protection?

A testimony of someone who has been living with one of this condition is essential when analyzing the possible social and cultural triggers of the continuous increment of these diseases. “My name is Sandra (fictitious name) I got HIV when I was 16 from who was my current boyfriend”. She told us her story and of lack of sexual education was definitely a factor that could have diminished her probability of getting infected. She started having sex when she was really young and ignorant, neither his mom nor her school teachers ever explained to her what the consequences of having sex were and the prevention that she could have had. There are many cases like Sandra’s that could have been avoided if sexual education were provided during early stages of sexual maturation so it is important that people start being more open minded and the statistics of STD’s incidence could be lowered.

Oral Presentation

Not always is easy talking about your self or trying to see the way other people looks at you. Sometimes the way other people sees you, your people or your country could be very shocking and sometimes it could be pretty pleasant. Talking about the perception of other about you can be challenging if that opinion is not the one you were hoping for. On the presentation about the perception of outsiders over Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans was really easy because the opinion about us on the rest of the world is close to how I see myself, but people don't know even half of what really goes inside the island and there is where perception comes in play.

Being Puerto Rican is about being happy, being loud, hard working, and proud. The perception of outsiders over us can be sometimes a little far from reality, generally Puerto Ricans are associated with music, party, rum, and dancing. It is true we have one of the best rums in the world, is true that we are the party people dancing and playing music, but there is more to that. Our culture is a rich mixture of every men that passed through here, spanish, african, and Taino. As a country we are seen as a privileged place with beautiful beaches, beautiful mountains, great weather all year round and a very versatile landscape. The perception only goes over what tourist sees and television present, but inside the island there is more beauty to see than a magnificent beach. Inside our beautiful island there is rich beautiful culture, people sticking together on the country to make a better living out of it but we also have violent people killing each other in the streets. This last one is the one that worries me the most, the perception of our island is changing because of a minority that decided to solve problems with violence instead of using words. These people are the one making the news on a daily basis and those news are reaching outside of our coast. Perception can be changed easily all you need is one wrongful act to change a million good acts.

When you present somebody else perception about things you need to be careful and have an iron skin because not always we are aware of our reality and how the world sees us. In Puerto Rico we are lucky that the perception the world has on us is almost intact. It might be because we are a tiny island or it might be because we are doing more right than wrong. No matter which one it is we still need to work hard to keep a good perception under the world after all is what identify us. 

Jim Cooper "Helping"

The Puertorrican people are persons who live to help out whoever they can, it doesn't matter what it is if you need help you will always find someone to help you. Since little kinds we are told to share with our friends and help them out. The educational system does the same for kids when they are starting to get used to learning and testing. In the school I studied students from the first grade through the third grade will be sitting on a collective table. Every activity you do in the classroom is with that group including the test for the material that way instead of having failures you have kids that share knowledge and help each other to succeed.

The term helping a friend out is just an excuse on collage and university levels for cheating. By that time the students should be mature enough to know that it is your effort what is going to give you a grade and not the effort of the “friend” on your side. Is normal that some students learn slower than others or the levels of education during high school were no the ones to set him for success. This is the reason why I think that we should have teachers that dominate both, English and Spanish, so the when a student finds himself stuck on some learning the teacher can be able to help in a more precise way because if trouble is with language there is never going to be good communication between teacher and student, and learning will never be achieved. One important point discussed by Copper is the relations between students and teachers, teachers are meant to be educators and not friends I think the the relation between the students and teachers should be limited to the classroom only and not to bars. By becoming friend with a student the credibility of the teacher can be jeopardized.

I think is a good idea to encourage kids to help out each other but in order to be prepared for the world they need to learn about competition. Cooperative programs should be limited to the first grade of school that way the student looses fear to the teachers and test. Competition should be encouraged from there on for students to challenge themselves to achieve their goals. Competition is also the only way to prepare people for the real world after school, in the university you will be competing with hundreds of students that will take your place on graduated school or on the job that you wanted simply because you did not compete hard enough. Competition is a fine line we should do it to the point the it is morally correct for our benefit but without hurting your opponents. Competition is the key to success combined with a good education mainly in the private school system will guarantee a successful experience during collage or university.

Journal experience

As part of the course  INGLS 3135 -that requires this blog- we were assigned an activity that consist on making a journal in which you would write five days a week until you complete forty entries. There was five essential rules to follow while you were writing on the journal which included: don’t crossover, don’t worry about spelling or grammatical errors, go for the jugular, keep your hand moving at all times for ten minutes and the most important don’t think or get logical. After the first 30 entries another task were added to the writing process on the journal, we were asked to draw a spiral inside a circle and on the outsides using a rank from one to three we were supposed to measure our physical, mental, spiritual and emotional feelings. After that we would write a small paragraph in which we would analyze those numbers, why we were feeling that way and how we could improve those numbers.

This activity was really difficult for me because I am not really used to write since my major doesn’t really require much of it. Of all the five rules the most difficult one for me to follow was the don’t think or get logical one because I don’t really understand how could you possibly write without thinking. I think that as the time passed my writing skills were getting worst. The first week I worried about punctuations and grammar in general and my handwriting was pretty and neat but as the weeks passed by I can barely understand what I wrote, and I worried less about grammar –which was in accordance with the rules-. Sometimes I started writing nonsense stuff that I don’t even understand and that’s because it was kind of a torture for me to sit down and start writing. I tried writing during the mornings, daytime and late night before going to bed but I had the same feeling of obligation and lack of motivation no matter what time I try to write. The last two weeks I try using the journal to organize my thoughts but I always ended up planning my day or writing stuff to study for my other classes. I can say that I never got to achieve the goal of writing without thinking that just doesn’t fit into my mind.

I don’t consider myself very creative in the sense of imagining myself doing or living different stuff that I am actually doing so the phrase “internal journey” is very alien for me. I did understand the concept and purpose of it but I couldn’t apply it to myself but I do admire the people that have that ability. I really think that it’s wonderful being able to see yourself in a introspective way and travel inside you, but I do realize that as everything in life it’s not for everyone.  One of the most pleasant journal writing for me was the last one, I set my phone chronometer at 10 minutes and start writing as usual in my notebook. I felt so excited that it was the last entry, it was the first time that I wrote without pushing myself to do it, when I re-read what I wrote it was really coherent and the central theme was about physiology I wrote some thoughts that pop into my mind combining them with theories and it was a really interesting entry.

Jim Cooper "Teaching English"

The key to be successful in life academically is set on the basis of education. If a children don’t learn the basic stuff in a successful way they would have trouble later on their life. For a good education we need trained teachers capable of delivering the tools necessary for learning during the elementary years of school which are the ones that shape the educational base of every human being. In Puerto Rico for example, the only way to successfully educate a child on public schools is with external aid paid by the parents or with the help of parents themselves. The education program for public schools is sadly poor for the needs of our country.

In order for freshmen students from public schools to be successful in collage the government has to start training public school teachers in english as a first language and not as a second one, this way the teacher will have complete knowledge  about what he is teaching to the student and at the same time will be able to dominate the student’s first language to clear any doubts in the process of learning. In my case I was educated in a private school where I had the opportunity to get comfortable with the English language. The majority of my text books throughout middle and high school where in English and that gives the student the opportunity to work with the language on a daily basis and prepare you for college where you really see a text book in Spanish. On the other hand in public schools the educational programs are so behind our times that it is almost impossible to keep up with the needs of a student to be prepared for the future. University’s curriculum shouldn't be the ones adapting to the lack of knowledge of the students, the school programs should be the ones changing to send totally prepared and successful young adults to the world.

At the end of the chain it all falls on the government hands. Corruption, is one of the main causes of the failing educational program on the the island. The lack of founds for teachers drains out any motivation for the teacher to go to school, instead we have teachers wasting days by no going to work. The physical installations are in so bad conditions that is nearly even possible to give a class without any interruption from failing equipment. Parents on the other hand just don’t care anymore in the majority of public schools in Puerto Rico, just a handful of them are responsible enough to take action and help out the children with school issues. If teaching is a passion for someone it should be a pleasant experience to do it. The only way to make it that way is to prepare better our students and sustain our educational system the way it is suppose to be. I’m sure that with better physical installations and prepared teachers, students will be successful in any matter and language they get teach. 

"Daisy Miller"

Daisy Miller is a young lady who enjoys living on the outside, who enjoys adventure and traveling. Daisy Miller is a traveler by nature she spends all of her time in the search of a new place, like she said to Mr. Winterbourne, “we are in the cars about half the time.” That part right there lets us know that the family spent their days traveling across Europe. When you are a tourist you just go to a place or series of places for a short amount of time and then after that go back home where you belong. When you are a traveler you make your home in a new place every other night or week living in hotels and spending your days in a car. Randolph was clearly tired of that lifestyle, he just wanted to go back to New York for candy, friends or go back with his dad who he seems to admire very much. Daisy was a very decided person "See here, Eugenio!"  "I'm going to that old castle, anyway.” when she wanted to visit any place she would go no matter what because her life was a vacation, because she is a traveler.

People some times feel the need to act like others or show another personality that isn’t theirs. Daisy Miller for example was back in the United States Annie Miller. Maybe she didn’t feel comfortable with who she was before becoming a traveler so when she arrived to Europe she adopted a new personality to reach out for who she really wanted to be, an adventurous young and beautiful woman. Winterbourne on the other hand had been so much time in Europe that he got confused by a German. This is not his fault but it is just how the society and the years living in another culture shape you. He admitted to have seen Germans acting and talking like Americans but never an American talking like a German. Mr Giovanelli an Italian young man was centered on the american culture, he learned the language to the point he master it. His goal was to meet more Americans to get to know better the people and their way of acting. This qualities of being so close to be an american give him the opportunity to spend some time with a young and beautiful American woman.

The society, the generations and the time where you live in is what in the most part shapes who you are. The society plays the biggest role on shaping people, the richer you are the more cultivated person you become and start to reject the actions of the lower class society. Mrs. Costello was a person of high distinction in her circles and was a very strong critique on other peoples actions. For her the fact that her nephew was going out with Daisy was almost a sin, Daisy on her eyes was the perfect example of what lust looked like. For her she was a woman having wrongful relationships with the man that they were suppose to treat like a complete stranger, but was treated like one of the family. The way of acting between the generations is always different, this generation right now is more liberal than our grandparents generation and the trend of this tells us that the newer the generation the more liberty they demand.

A small Place-Chapter 2

A colonized territory has no word on what they want and what they don’t want for themselves. This is the story of many of the islands of the caribbean. Pretty much every single island on the caribbean was colonized by one of the major Countries like Spain, England, France or Portugal. The majority of them are by this day free but still have colonies. Puerto Rico was first colonized by the spaniards in the 16 century and then by the United States in 1898. The Spanish bring a huge change to the island, they bring with them slaves, new agricultural products and introduce new methods of transportation like the horse. These changes might seem like progression for some people but what they really were doing was killing the native Taino culture.

The mix of new cultures set a new future through the years and a new culture arose. From a native Taino culture we went to a African oriented culture. Many of today’s typical dressing, food and music came from the African. The industrialization of the island on sugar cane and human labor resource made people in the United States set eyes on our island. These changes brought by Spain made us attractive to an even bigger colonizer. In 1898 Puerto Rico fought a war on the United States to keep them from invading us but at the end they win and made us their colony. During the beginning of this time  changes were radical, schools had english as a first language, a language that the majority of people didn’t know. We didn’t had the right to vote for our own governor. We were living a dictatorship by the country that fight for democracy and freedom. Today more than a hundred years after our island still is under the same oppression as a hundred years ago, yes we have the right to elect our own governance, and legislation but honestly we have been so brain-washed that it is worthless because politics are just hungry for power and money and they do anything to shadow the great nation.

Democracy made us slaves, we have a flag but no space in the world’s affairs, we have a flag but no nationality, we have a flag and we don’t belong here o there. This democracy have kept us slave giving away money to keep our mouths shut but at the end we still have no vote in their politics, the politics that at the end have the higher power on us. Progression might have come with the colonization but at the same time we lost our identity when we sold our souls to the devil, our vocabulary became a non-sense mixture of spanish and english with words that are not present either on the spanish or the english dictionary, the modernization of the island came with big food chains that make us fat and unhealthy just like them, all the good they think they gave us is just some more of their poison in the world.