The Underdog

In the poem, The Underdog, I think that The Coup is referring to "the underdog" as the working class, the day-in day-outers, the grinders. They are the ones that work the hardest and yet receive the fewest; they are the ones that had the least amount of privilege and ended up with the most amount of responsibilities. Webster's dictionary defines the word "underdog" as "A less powerful person or thing that struggles against a more powerful person or thing (such as a corporation)." The Coup expresses his love, his respect and his empathy in this poem for those he would consider the underdog. A line that had really struck me was one that went, "Coming home don't never seem to be a celebration/Bills they piled up on the coffee table like they're decorations" this really made me feel lucky for the times of relaxation I get to experience daily. In this line, the coup expresses how a hard worker cannot escape the stress he gets from being in the workplace, but it also haunts him in his home life. Going home is often looked at as a certain 'celebration' of accomplishing another day of work and finally being able to unwind, however that does not happen among those considered 'underdogs'. Instead, they attend to their many responsibilities and/or family duties, making it seem as if their home lives serve as a whole other job on top of the one(s) they already have.

Passion Project

While watching the video, Recycling the Gift: Passion Project II, I felt a sense of resonation between myself and the students, past and present, who were testifying their disagreement with our current education system. I felt that I could relate to the guests being interviewed in the video because what they were saying had really made sense to me; it showed me that I wasn’t the only one who thought this way about how our current education system works. I feel that a lot of the time, poor unsuspecting students fall victim to the evil clutches of the Banking System, and that just totally derails them, leaving them feeling unmotivated to further any plans of pursuing education themselves. “It’s survival of the fittest; you adapt or you literally die, you won’t survive.”(Heltzel, 1) “It works in a Darwanian way already.”(DeWolf, 1) The video compares the current education system to being a sort of “Darwinism,” that students are put up to a survival-of-the-fittest type deal when it comes to succeeding in school. I believe that students should not feel left out, should not feel that they are lesser than any other student, but instead we should embrace every student into our community to give them a sense of involvement and a feeling of welcome. After all, the best way to learn is from eachother. If we all as students get to share our knowledge amongst our fellow students, we’re only spreading more knowledge. I feel there should be a learning environment prepared to where class discussion is enforced, setting up the student for information sharing, rather than a classroom set up for strictly listening to what your teacher tells you and memorizing answers in order to pass your test and forget about the topic as a whole. The only sharing that goes on in those types of classrooms is the sharing of answers, which is usually utilized for cheating. I’ve partaken in a Banking System classroom, and personally I could tell you that I can only recall a handful of information that I’ve retained. This, too, was also in the pretty recent future; within the past year, for sure. My teacher solely relied on disputing certain formulaic information and expected us to simply remember what she had said and write it down on her tests, so that she may give us points that go towards a letter grade. What she didn’t do, however, was stimulate our brains and leave us wanting to learn more; it did not put our brains in a state of oscillation whatsoever. It’s a shame, really, seeing how unmotivated and apathetic our class was towards the subject she was teaching, because of the way she was teaching us. It’s sad and somewhat ridiculous how what we learn depends on which teacher we get. For instance, a student could have a passionate teacher who’s good at teaching their subject, or you could get the opposite and merely retain answers to pass a test. Yes, a classroom should be set up for a type of Organic Learning as opposed to the Banking System, because students will definitely have better and more efficient time learning.