Post high school: Your education seems to have a strong influence on you for the rest of your life, how has the American education affected your character?
Once again, Rosenblatt doesn’t give explicit details on his post high school education, but he does mention a few times he went to Harvard, and it seems that not the education, but the people he met or life lessons he was given through education stuck with him more. There’s one section where Rosenblatt discusses his time at Harvard, but what he talks about is one of his professors, Professor Kelleher. He remembered Kelleher because “he knew life.” Roger enjoyed his company and his lessons on Irish literature and poetry, but Kelleher himself, not his lessons, inspired Roger’s writing. In another section Rosenblatt talks about going to a bookstore, not because he wanted to read the books, but simply because he like the atmosphere and wanted to see what he could discover. Maybe it’s those discoveries that continued to pull him into a life of literature. Despite the fact that Rosenblatt doesn’t say how his schooling affected him, it can clearly be seen through his writing and persona that it made him into the writer he became. Everything he writes about relates back to a book he read or a movie he saw or some sort of history fact he remembers. Someone doesn’t remember those things if they don’t have a passion for some sort of learning. And at the time he was in the education system, reading for pleasure was much more highly encouraged and may have led him to have such a desire to read at such great lengths, not because he had to, or it was required, but the experience of reading struck him. There are many instances where Rosenblatt’s style of writing is sophisticated, the grammar, structure, and literary devices he incorporates are ones that come from a strong educated background. Another main idea throughout the memoir is what he tells his class on memoir writing at SUNY Stonybrook and how it connected to what he was writing in his own. A man simply does not teach a class on how to write without having a strong background in it. Again, although he never outright talks about his involvement in education and how schooling affected him, Rosenblatt’s writing shows he’s a man of learning experiences. Even if he remembers the people and not the lessons from school, it still turned him into the man who loved learning about the mysteries of life and what life had to offer. It impacted him on a more personal, emotional level, or at least that’s what we see in his stories.
Ambramsky specifically states that anyone can fall victim to poverty. In one part of the book, he says, ”There are people with no high school education who are poor, but there are also university graduates on food bank lines.” Clearly, poverty can affect all types of people, with all types of educations. However, it is a known fact that the less educated are more likely to be less affluent. In the second part of Ambramsky's book, he does say that we need some educational reforms to allow our citizens to become more educated. He also talks about decreasing student debt-- which is a very large problem for young people in America today. There are so many young, ambitious people that want to go find work, but cannot right out of college. These young people still carrying the heavy burden of tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars from their education. Some people are deterred from even getting a college degree because of the outrageously high costs. We also know that if you are part of a lower income family, you may or may not live in a lower income neighborhood, and attached to that neighborhood is a low income school. Honestly, this is even a large part of our lives today. In the past, I have heard so many parents talking about how “they came to Niskayuna because of the great education system.” They all knew that taxes were high, but they were willing to put up with the high taxes (just an inconvenience, really, which caused less disposable income, but nothing that they couldn't deal with). People in lower income areas, like Schenectady, however, don't always have that luxury. Some people are forced to live in lower income areas and send their kids to lower income schools because they just don't have the money to send their kids elsewhere. Unfortunately, sometimes people fall victim to a vicious circle of poverty and bad education, because they cannot pay for a good education so their kids grow up to be relatively less educated, which means that they may make less money, etc. etc.
When Julius was still a young boy in Nigeria, he had a music teacher who one day canned him on his bare bottom in front of all his classmates. The teacher called him a thief and spoiled brat, but Julius never told his mother. He ended up graduating and given the chance to head to college in America. Education was the ticket in for Julius. It had forever changed his life but also paved a successful path for him. He did a research stint at cold Spring Harbor, and then medical school in Madison. He’s now doing his residency in New York at St. Lucia, but it can be very exhausting. His work was in a field that to him “was a regimen of perfection and competence, and it neither allowed improvisation nor tolerated mistakes.” The walks he began on gave him life, room to breathe, and the streets welcomed him. His research project was very interesting; he was conducting a clinical study of affective disorders in the elderly. But it was exhausting; the level of detail it demanded was to such a high level of intricacy, it had exceeded anything else he had done so far. His education started at Maxwell, where Professor Saito taught at and brought Julius under his wing when he was Junior. He was like a grandfather figure to Julius. There are multiple encounters with Saito but he was among the early encounters in the book, when Julius just decides to go visit him on Central Park South. Professor was a man who was full of life, often having many visitors but when introduced, had prostate cancer and his visitors dwindled to nurses or home health aides, and it pained him that they had been curtailed to that degree. Teju Cole’s writing style was instrumental in showing the relationship between the Professor and Julius. The history of Saito really did affect Julius to a large degree. He learned the art of listening from him, and the ability to trace out a story from what was omitted. Rarely d Saito would talk about his family, but his life as a scholar because “catching up” even in person or on the phone was not how their relationship worked. They would just talk and drink coffee, talk about interpretations of Beowulf, classics, endless labor of scholarship, consolations of academia, and his studies before the Second World War Julius was really interested of Saito’s previous life, before he became a professor. Saito was finishing his D.Phill, a PhD, and was forced to leave England and return to his family in the Pacific Northwest. Shortly after, he was taken to internment in the Minidoka Camp in Idaho. Hearing about Saito’s life, has had a long term effect on Julius. Especially hearing about when he committed many poems to memory during the war as even later on in his life, memorization was a helpful skill. Julius tells Saito that he has just been reading medical books and Saito follows it up later on with memorization of the Prelude and Shakespeare’s sonnets. The effect on Julius is seen when he later goes to the record store and just enjoys the music, the many vinyls, the older crowd among them, and sits in a nook to just read as he admits his work is time consuming and he hasn’t been able to finish anything once he starts.
Once again, Rosenblatt doesn’t give explicit details on his post high school education, but he does mention a few times he went to Harvard, and it seems that not the education, but the people he met or life lessons he was given through education stuck with him more.
ReplyDeleteThere’s one section where Rosenblatt discusses his time at Harvard, but what he talks about is one of his professors, Professor Kelleher. He remembered Kelleher because “he knew life.” Roger enjoyed his company and his lessons on Irish literature and poetry, but Kelleher himself, not his lessons, inspired Roger’s writing.
In another section Rosenblatt talks about going to a bookstore, not because he wanted to read the books, but simply because he like the atmosphere and wanted to see what he could discover. Maybe it’s those discoveries that continued to pull him into a life of literature. Despite the fact that Rosenblatt doesn’t say how his schooling affected him, it can clearly be seen through his writing and persona that it made him into the writer he became.
Everything he writes about relates back to a book he read or a movie he saw or some sort of history fact he remembers. Someone doesn’t remember those things if they don’t have a passion for some sort of learning. And at the time he was in the education system, reading for pleasure was much more highly encouraged and may have led him to have such a desire to read at such great lengths, not because he had to, or it was required, but the experience of reading struck him.
There are many instances where Rosenblatt’s style of writing is sophisticated, the grammar, structure, and literary devices he incorporates are ones that come from a strong educated background. Another main idea throughout the memoir is what he tells his class on memoir writing at SUNY Stonybrook and how it connected to what he was writing in his own. A man simply does not teach a class on how to write without having a strong background in it.
Again, although he never outright talks about his involvement in education and how schooling affected him, Rosenblatt’s writing shows he’s a man of learning experiences. Even if he remembers the people and not the lessons from school, it still turned him into the man who loved learning about the mysteries of life and what life had to offer. It impacted him on a more personal, emotional level, or at least that’s what we see in his stories.
Ambramsky specifically states that anyone can fall victim to poverty. In one part of the book, he says, ”There are people with no high school education who are poor, but there are also university graduates on food bank lines.” Clearly, poverty can affect all types of people, with all types of educations. However, it is a known fact that the less educated are more likely to be less affluent. In the second part of Ambramsky's book, he does say that we need some educational reforms to allow our citizens to become more educated. He also talks about decreasing student debt-- which is a very large problem for young people in America today. There are so many young, ambitious people that want to go find work, but cannot right out of college. These young people still carrying the heavy burden of tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars from their education. Some people are deterred from even getting a college degree because of the outrageously high costs.
ReplyDeleteWe also know that if you are part of a lower income family, you may or may not live in a lower income neighborhood, and attached to that neighborhood is a low income school. Honestly, this is even a large part of our lives today. In the past, I have heard so many parents talking about how “they came to Niskayuna because of the great education system.” They all knew that taxes were high, but they were willing to put up with the high taxes (just an inconvenience, really, which caused less disposable income, but nothing that they couldn't deal with). People in lower income areas, like Schenectady, however, don't always have that luxury. Some people are forced to live in lower income areas and send their kids to lower income schools because they just don't have the money to send their kids elsewhere. Unfortunately, sometimes people fall victim to a vicious circle of poverty and bad education, because they cannot pay for a good education so their kids grow up to be relatively less educated, which means that they may make less money, etc. etc.
When Julius was still a young boy in Nigeria, he had a music teacher who one day canned him on his bare bottom in front of all his classmates. The teacher called him a thief and spoiled brat, but Julius never told his mother. He ended up graduating and given the chance to head to college in America. Education was the ticket in for Julius. It had forever changed his life but also paved a successful path for him. He did a research stint at cold Spring Harbor, and then medical school in Madison. He’s now doing his residency in New York at St. Lucia, but it can be very exhausting. His work was in a field that to him “was a regimen of perfection and competence, and it neither allowed improvisation nor tolerated mistakes.” The walks he began on gave him life, room to breathe, and the streets welcomed him. His research project was very interesting; he was conducting a clinical study of affective disorders in the elderly. But it was exhausting; the level of detail it demanded was to such a high level of intricacy, it had exceeded anything else he had done so far.
ReplyDeleteHis education started at Maxwell, where Professor Saito taught at and brought Julius under his wing when he was Junior. He was like a grandfather figure to Julius. There are multiple encounters with Saito but he was among the early encounters in the book, when Julius just decides to go visit him on Central Park South. Professor was a man who was full of life, often having many visitors but when introduced, had prostate cancer and his visitors dwindled to nurses or home health aides, and it pained him that they had been curtailed to that degree. Teju Cole’s writing style was instrumental in showing the relationship between the Professor and Julius. The history of Saito really did affect Julius to a large degree. He learned the art of listening from him, and the ability to trace out a story from what was omitted. Rarely d Saito would talk about his family, but his life as a scholar because “catching up” even in person or on the phone was not how their relationship worked. They would just talk and drink coffee, talk about interpretations of Beowulf, classics, endless labor of scholarship, consolations of academia, and his studies before the Second World War Julius was really interested of Saito’s previous life, before he became a professor. Saito was finishing his D.Phill, a PhD, and was forced to leave England and return to his family in the Pacific Northwest. Shortly after, he was taken to internment in the Minidoka Camp in Idaho. Hearing about Saito’s life, has had a long term effect on Julius. Especially hearing about when he committed many poems to memory during the war as even later on in his life, memorization was a helpful skill. Julius tells Saito that he has just been reading medical books and Saito follows it up later on with memorization of the Prelude and Shakespeare’s sonnets. The effect on Julius is seen when he later goes to the record store and just enjoys the music, the many vinyls, the older crowd among them, and sits in a nook to just read as he admits his work is time consuming and he hasn’t been able to finish anything once he starts.