Blog #5

This cartoon is by New Yorker cartoonist Bob Mankoff. I feel like I always have to write blogs about something I'm passionate about, and issues surrounding foreign labor (especially when it's underpaid foreign labor) are another of my hot-buttons.

This cartoon was originally directed at the reader base of the New Yorker, but through the magic of the internet found its way to me (I, admittingly, am not an avid reader of the New Yorker but have occasionally glanced through it). I believe that it is funny only to a certain percentage of the world's population, namely those that buy and read the New Yorker on a daily basis (or occasional one). If the context were to change, and this cartoon were to be shown to, say, an under-paid child laborer in Mexico working for Nike or Adidas (or any of the other huge companies that admit to foreign labor), I don't think laughs would ensue.

Additionally, the cartoon is comparing those labor countries to hell, and the companies as heaven. Perhaps the cartoon is comparing the action of expoiting foreign labor workers as hellish. Regardless, there is a negative connotation on the foreign labor that I feel is glanced over by the average reader of this cartoon. At first glance, the reader laughs simply because the cartoon appears funny. Not many go on to think about the countless factories in countless countries that actually do make goods and clothes and shoes for big companies all over the world, and don't get paid enough or respected in the least. Companies admit to creating these "hellish" conditions, but nothing changes. As far as I can remember in my short life, people have been battling for workers' rights in other countries...I particularly remember battles with Nike and Adidas, which is why I previously mentioned them. Sweat shops and factories all over the world exist, and when we try to bring out the issue with humor (as this article has done) I'm not sure it accomplishes anything. It's just like the discussion we had in class...the cartoon is probably only funny to those who read the New Yorker, and thus will mainly stay circulating with readers of the New Yorker, who largely are on the wealthier end of the wage spectrum, who probably do not stop to think about the sweat shops that made their shoes and clothes and handbags. For those of us who do read this cartoon and stop to think about it, do we do anything either? It's a classic example of a cartoon that was probably made for political action...which will largely accomplish nothing with its existence.

blog response #3

I picked this article because Teach For America is another one of my hot button issues (imagine that, another education article that I want to respond to!)

This article immediately plays to the reader's emotions by describing children as "just nasty animals trying to secure their share of the food supply." This is additonally shocking to the reader, creating a tension. This tension is relieved (release and relief theory) through the article's source, The Onion, which is known for its sarcasm and satire. Thus, the reader is uncomfortable with a statement like this, but the tension is relieved because it is supposed to be viewed as sarcastic.

To me, the interesting part of this article lies in the fact that one again, the Onion has written about an issue that has some truth in it. TFA does not supply its candidates with adequate enough teaching to handle inner-city districts, especially since many of the applicants are English or Ethnic Studies majors like in the article. The Onion writes from an extreme standpoint (one person saying the entire country is fucked and no one can do anything about it), but in reality this is what happens to many of TFA participants. They aren't prepared to handle everything that teaching in an urban disctrict throws at you (I'm in the education program, and after 4 semesters of education training and experience I'm not even sure I am well enough equipped to really make a difference to children in an inner city).

We additionally experience some of the ambivalence theory when reading this article. The points they are making are not only depressing ("In the end, you've gotta resign yourself to failure and move on with your life"), they are a conflict to what we want our own lives to be. As a future teacher, this article caused a huge conflict of emotions in me!!! People do get frustrated in this profession--that can't be disputed--but there are plenty of opportunities to change the world too. Even if you only influence one child in your entire year of teaching you are still not a failure. The problem with programs like TFA is that they never really communicate many of the important points about teaching that I've learned here at UW. A TFA teacher is better than no teacher, I suppose, but many of them will end up (although slightly less radically) like Cuellen in this article.

Before doing these blogs, I never really noticed how the Onion took issues that were basically true (like the pitfalls of TFA or the healthcare issue I responded to previously) and over-truthed them to make them humorous (I'm making up words again!). This article would be sort of factual if everything wasn't over-emphasized, but I think that steady readers of the Onion understand this.

Article #3

Teach For America Chews Up, Spits Out Another Ethnic-Studies Major
February 16, 2005 | Issue 41•07

NEW YORK—Teach For America, a national program that recruits recent college graduates to teach in low-income rural and urban communities, has devoured another ethnic-studies major, 24-year-old Andy Cuellen reported Tuesday.

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Cuellen stands in front of the elementary school where he used to teach.

"Look, the world is a miserable place," said Cuellen, a Dartmouth graduate who quit the TFA program Monday morning. "All people—even children—are just nasty animals trying to secure their share of the food supply. I don't care how poor or how rich you are, that's just a fact. I'm sorry, but I have better things to do than zoo-keep for peanuts."

Just one of the 12,000 young people TFA has burned through since 1990, Cuellen was given five weeks of training the summer before he took over a classroom at P.S. 83 in the South Bronx last September.

"I walked into that school actually thinking I could make a difference," said Cuellen, who taught an overflowing class of disadvantaged 8-year-olds. "It was trial by fire. But after five months spent in a stuffy, dark room where the chalkboard fell off the wall every two days, corralling screaming kids into broken desks, I'm burnt to a crisp."

Cuellen said his TFA experience "taught him a lot about hopelessness."

"The cities are fucked. The suburbs are fucked. The whole country is fucked," Cuellen said. "And there's not a goddamned thing you or anyone can do about it. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something. Or trying to get you to teach kids math."

According to Dartmouth literature, as a member of the ethnic-studies department, Cuellen learned "to empower students of color to move beyond being objects of study toward being subjects of their own social realities, with voices of their own."

Teach For America executive director Theo Anderson called ethnic-studies departments "a prime source of fodder."

"Oh, I'd say we burn through a hundred or so ethnic-studies majors each year," said Anderson, pointing to a series of charts showing the college-major breakdown of TFA corps members. "They tend to last a little longer than women's studies majors and art-therapy students, but Cuellen got mashed to a pulp pretty quickly. It usually takes ethnic-studies majors another year to realize that they're wasting their precious youth on a Sisyphean endeavor."

Continued Anderson: "Of course, we don't worry about it too much. Every year, there's a fresh crop to throw in the grinder. As we speak, scores of apple-cheeked students are hearing about TFA for the first time."

According to Anderson, a small portion of these students will lose interest after hearing horror stories from program alumni.

"But the majority of them will march on like cattle to the slaughter, thinking that pure determination and hope can change young lives," Anderson said. "I can hear their footsteps now, marching toward our offices like lemmings to a cliff. And believe me, we're ready for 'em."

Cuellen said he applied to TFA in search of a "character-building experience."

"I knew that teaching in a severely under-funded inner-city school would be challenging, but I wanted to get out into the real world," Cuellen said. "Well, breaking up fistfights between 8-year-olds all day long, I got a real ugly view of reality. Do you want to know reality? Look at a dog lying dead in the gutter. That's reality."

Although Cuellen quit the program early, his mother said he was with TFA long enough for it "to crack open his bones and suck out the marrow inside."

"Andy is a ghost," Beverly Cuellen said. "Those [TFA] people beat the idealism out of him, then they stomped on him while he lay there gasping for air."

TFA regional coordinator Sandra Richman said it is common to blame the TFA employees for the organization's high plow-through rate.

"Should I have said something to wake those kids up sooner?" Richman said, crushing out her seventh cigarette. "Probably. But listen, no one can tell you that you can't make a difference. It's something you have to figure out for yourself."

"You can only do so much," Richman added. "After a couple years of trying to teach our applicants about how difficult and depressing their lives will inevitably be—no matter what they choose to do for money—I just got burnt out. In the end, you've gotta resign yourself to failure and move on with your life."