[this is the final school version of To: All the Children Left Behind]

Hey there kiddo. You want to know, why are we so different? So, I’m going to tell you a story. It’s a story about my life. It is a story that is not un-common in this family and, though it may not be directly answer your question, you should know how this story has come to define our lives. Hopefully, then you will then be able to confront similar situations with a good perspective and knowledge that you, as my child, you are valuable, and you a smart.

At some point, in probably first or second grade, a teacher had stood tall over my shoulder growling at me that I shouldn’t read reading out loud and at the time, I didn’t care. My parents were soon informed that I wasn’t reading well and that I wasn’t paying attention in school; but more than likely, I only seemed behind because I wasn’t permitted to read out-loud, which is the best way, being an auditory learner (I learn best if I can hear it being said), for me to absorb what I was reading. The teachers then laid out a plan to assess and solve my problem. I had to be tested.

The first set of tests I remember well, even now. I was taken into one of the counselors offices where in the adjoining room the kids with speech impediments (or Herbie Samsss’es) were undergoing speech therapy. Though I don’t remember the first part very well, I’m sure that the motherly counselor, with whom I still have high regard, kindly told me about what we were going to do. Then she asked me to define a series of many words (I kind of liked doing that because I was good at it). That test revealed that I had a sixth grade vocabulary, which is good because I was in second grade. Then I took an IQ test (a test that attempts to measure how smart a person is). That test proved that I was very intelligent but, strangely, I wasn’t told the results of that test until I was sixteen (more on that later). Overall, the tests felt like a fun diversion from the school day. However, the next year I noticed that some kids took a test that I didn’t get to take, and they said it was the test to get into challenge classes. Because I didn’t know how smart I was, when I saw that take place, I knew at the time that that meant I wasn’t smart enough to be in those classes.

It’s important for you to know something. Adults aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. So, if you think an adult is telling you that you are stupid or less smart than the other students; then, I want you to tell that person how they made you feel. It is very important that you tell adults how they make you feel because they aren’t always able to understand how their actions affect you.

My test scores came back from the counselors, and I moved on in school, but my teachers still believed that there was a problem, and again my teachers told my parents that I should have tests taken. This time, however, I wasn’t going to be tested at the school; I went to see a psychiatrist. A psychiatrist is a Doctor for your mind with the ability to prescribe medication to solve a problem with the mind. But first, just like a normal doctor, she needed to diagnose the problem; she diagnosed me as having ADD (a learning disability that is characterized by having a low attention span). She then prescribed Ritalin as a solution to the problem.

It’s important for you to know what I eventually learned. You are perfect the way you are, and that means you should never take a drug, prescribed or not, on a permanent basis, unless it will save your life. This is especially true for drugs that affect the mind. However, there are times when is necessary to take a drug for a short time to enhance therapy or other things.

During this same time frame, when I was being medicated, I started to change in physical appearance. In fourth grade I had the most pull-ups in the P.E. testing, with nine-teen; then in fifth grade, it was less than five pull-ups. By sixth grade I couldn’t do a single pull-up, and I had to wear pants that were called “husky.” This was because I was eating too often, and the types of food I was eating weren’t good for me. Now that I have learned to eat high quality food, I understand why I gained body fat when I was young. It was because of the foods that I was eating.

It’s important for you to know why we eat differently than your friends. It is because most foods (in bright colorful boxes with bar-codes) have substances that taste extremely good to our bodies, but are terrible for them. Eating food like that is no different than taking drugs recreationally.

Being “husky” and, officially, “learning disabled” had the effect that I became very depressed. In sixth grade I was ridiculed and mocked by a group of students that had previously been my friends for being fat or any other flaw they could think of. A teacher attacked me too. She reduced me to tears in front of the class before she sent me into the hallway to wallow in my own shame.

You are likely to never face such horrendous treatment because you know how to communicate how you feel to adults, but I want you to know that making fun of your fellow students is as immoral as murder. If you make fun of one of your fellow students, it is as despicable as murdering them in cold blood. It is never acceptable because they don’t have the same advantages that you have. You should never condemn a person that you haven’t first walked in the shoes of.

Anyway, there is a lot more to my story, but for now, I think that you’ve heard enough. I want you to know that you are valuable, smart, and that I love you. I want you to know that taking drugs, even prescription drugs, is only acceptable if the treatment ends. Also, I want you to know that making fun of you fellow students is extremely hurtful and you should never join in, even if it’s the cool thing to do. Also, I hope I answered your question, a bit. We are different because I have learned that it’s okay to be different. The most important thing is that you’re healthy. Now go to sleep.

I’ve got many essays from my just passed semester of school. I’ll be posting them sporadically over the coming weeks.

I have many pressures in my life: money, food, health, my wife, school, its individual assignments, etc. Life for me is a constant struggle to meet the goals that have been set forth by the administrators of my life. On one particular day a couple of weeks ago I was scurrying down the hallway between classes on my way toward English 101. I needed to finish an opening to a reflection essay. As I got closer to the class room a question began to surface. It was a question that I have only recently asked myself. Are you a person who that does things late; or are you the kind of person that gets things done?
I can answer this question with pride, because I finished it and I was the only person to read the opening to their essay. I wrote that opening in maybe ten minutes and all the stuff that was in it was used in the final essay in some shape or form. It directly defined the true goals of the assignment’s purpose, audience, and subject. I had chosen the audience to be the professor of the class because the professor, being the grader, was really the only one that mattered. My subject was confined to a single question, “How does school affect a person’s identity?” The goal of all of this was to accurately reflect the truth of all papers written in an English class. In response, he said that I should be careful of reflecting on the very institution that assigned the essay because it could provide a challenge that would be too great to accomplish, especially if writing about writing. Also, I was told that I was trying to subvert the goal of the teacher, and if I was truly interested in appealing to my professor’s want that I should pick a different audience.
I have begun to realize that my stance on that essay, being reflexive, was more telling about who I was than anything else. A new question then entered my mind, “Who are you, Jordan Weimer, and why does that compel you to parody the education system?” So I began to think about my youth and the identities of the adults that formed it. What I found was a clear theme throughout most of my early schooling.
A bear is walking through the woods and stumbles upon another unknown animal. The bear is startled and then, trusting natures process of categorization, it growls loudly and stands up as the other animal then realizes the bears imposing presence (though we don’t know the inner thoughts of most animals I’m sure when a bear stands up and growls there is a constant among animal. That constant will henceforth be called the Oh Shit Factor). If the other animal runs, the bear realizes that he has nothing to fear and thinks that he should hurry and eat because this’ll be an easy meal (Fun Fact: Usain Bolt’s top speed 27.28mph vs. bear average top speed approx. 35mph). However, if the other animal stands its ground and acts big and not afraid, the bear will also act big to scare it away. Eventually if both sides establish they are pretty equal by acting big there will be an escalation, but this is when a smart animal decides to slowly back away to initiating a truce. Both animals decide that it’s not worth the fight and walk away; but the one that backed down last knows it is more powerful, however, it now has some respect for that other animal.
I had a tough time in school basically throughout elementary education and on into high school. Though, the most influential moments in my schooling didn’t involve me really at all, except for being a piece of expository detail. At some point a teacher stood tall over me growling about reading and I didn’t care. So, my parents were informed early on that I wasn’t reading well and that I wasn’t paying attention in class. The teachers suggested that I have tests done to better understand the problems they were seeing. My parents were trusting un-cynical people that thought teachers knew about these things because they deal with them daily. Most of my teachers assumed that I had ADD; reasoning, “Why else would a child not read a perfectly fine text book?” They were basically able to push off their feeble understanding of psychology as expertise, and my parents agreed to have me tested in the school. When those tests came back with discouraging results to their hypotheses they urged that my parents have me taken to a psychologist. My parents assumed the subordinate peers people and they gave my teachers power; the result? By the fifth grade I was and would never be tested for the possibility of being in advanced classes, I believed there was something wrong with me, and I was a medicated social maladroit.
Before fifth grade I was an outgoing, athletic, and good looking. Suddenly I was none of those things. I went from being able to do nineteen pull-ups in fourth grade to nine in fifth to zero in sixth. The Ritalin that I was prescribed had many side effects. Nightmares, and interrupted sleep patterns were standard but it also had the effect of completely changing my social behavior. I didn’t think and respond in the same ways that I had in the past (I lost my quickness of wit). Fortunately before sixth grade I still had my place among my fellow students that was arranged when the playing field was still level. But; my status was precariously placed near the edge of a deep valley as if it didn’t need much of a push to plummet, tumbling, screeching, and disintegrating all the way to the bottom.
In sixth grade the power hierarchy was in flux. Two major schools fed our local middle school and the two divided societies of children converged; vortexing, expanding, contracting, and reforming the social ladder. Early adolescence is a hot bed for awkward feelings and terrible insecurity. I had that to contend with and then I was being placed in a new situation surrounded by a power vacuum that was ready to collapse onto whomever it could. My obvious medication routine and insecurity about it became an easy target for fledgling power grabbers. I was ridiculed and laughed at. I felt worthless daily. I wept in class on too many occasions to remember; which only helped feed the depths of my anguish and fill other’s quivers with venomous arrows. I had let the world around me tell me who I was, and the world was telling me that I was worthless. I was completely weak; almost destroyed.
Luckily, I hit rock bottom. I found myself in a study hall for the mentally challenged kids. The advice of teachers who only saw my problems and not a person sent me there. That class was the place where I knew that my inkling, that my teachers were wrong, had to be true. “After all,” I thought, “I don’t drool unless I’m asleep.” I knew this wasn’t something that was for me. I was definitely not mentally handicapped, and if the teachers thought I was, then they were wrong.
I was only able to survive the rest of middle school warfare by hiding in trenches and occasionally eating another dying student, and I limped out of middle school up right, but grizzled.
As my freshmen year started the social structure fluxed again, but this time I was better adjusted to social activities, and so I began to make friends. However, lingering problems with school were peaking. Nearly every class for freshmen included behavioral modifying clauses to their syllabuses. 100% homework policies were standard. This was to establish the importance of homework through a sort of punishment; similar to corporal (“Do all of your homework… or else.”). Unfortunately for me, homework wasn’t actually necessary for learning the material that was presented in these classes. I argued to no avail that their homework was useless busy work (which I still don’t disagree with). Even more unfortunately for me, I was in a place where the authorities were genuinely wrong again and I was now ready to oppose them. I knew that I was right and so I refused to do my homework out of principle. I stated, “No man should ever be forced to do work that was wholly unnecessary.” To me doing that homework was like digging my own grave before they shot and dropped me into it. Most homework in high school, worksheets, is entirely useless in proving education scientifically, and every day in high school I witnessed that truth as students cheated by copying homework. I failed class after class, despite being the highest or a highly graded test taker in each class. Out of nine class periods during the day I passed only lunch, gym, Algebra, and Shop.
Interestingly, my relationship with my teachers was completely different from when I was in early schooling. My teachers all noticed that I was very intelligent and none of them guessed that I had any sort of learning disability. They often encouraged me, but were also confounded by why I wouldn’t, “just do [my] homework.” Actually, some of my teachers were angry with me because I wouldn’t do my homework, and I did have arguments with the one teacher about homework. They knew how simple it was to pass and actually to pass would have resulted in my excelling. But, I was still a child and I was extremely taxed after having fought adults and the systems that surround them. I still believed that the system should be in its ideal form; an institution that educates and verifies education.
As for me, how this applies to me; who am I, and why do I parody school? I see here that throughout my life there has been a struggle between me and a school system that was unjust, and filled with unjust simplistic people that aren’t too far descended from bears. I see today that I am finishing a paper that is being written for a writing class; an assignment and class, too, that could easily be replaced by well guided debates in any other subject. I see before me is a series of points that might as well be coming down a screen and toward a bar and I’m ready to him my sequence of buttons. The first notes of a string can psyche you out and cause you to miss them. Oh, here comes purpose: to-show-school-for-what-it-really-is [Swish]. Here comes the audience and this one is a bit tricky: it’s-the-professor-but-I’m-going-to-act-like-it’s-for-some-other-group-because-that’s-what-the-prof-wants [Heating Up!]. Here comes the subject, who-am-I-and-why-does-that-compel-me-to-parody-school [Ugly Shot! HE’S ON FIRE!]. I parody the school system because I was shown that the school system cares about verifying actual education about as much as its students do, and schools have told me repeatedly that I was stupid or wrong and many times both. Normally, I am not tremendously bitter about having the early part of my life effectively destroyed by the very institution that was charged to build me up. But from time to time, when I think about my school experiences, I feel that it is completely deserved to give it shit for being shit. What else should be expected? It made me who I am.
By now my mask as an academic has come completely off, and I guess that’s the way it should be… Right now when I think about the school system, I am a mad twenty-four year old with a GED, with one helluva chip on my shoulder; a child left behind standing proudly with at least one more essay to turn in [BOOM-SHA-KA-LA-KA].

P.S.: I like to play video games.

hit the hd button if the video isn’t loading.

Forward: Simple Conventions of Western Film Genre
The Western Genre is characterized by civilization having conflict with the uncivilized world. Civilization is always saved by an uncivilized hero. The film always opens and closes with the hero wandering out from and then back into the uncivilized world. Typically uncivilized forces are savages or wilderness.

ATypical Western Opinion Paper
The archetype seems to be at odds with Unforgiven’s status as a Western. The movie opens up with a short narrative statement as William Munney works on his farm; wilderness is nowhere in sight. The inciting incident was a when a whore got cut up by a white man; this is not an action caused by the wild or savages (savages aren’t typically white). Munney a man from a farm kills the sheriff, his posse, the bar owner, and the man who helped cut the whore; these are all people from civilization. Then Munney returns to his farm and later to San Francisco with the cut up whore; he moves right back into society. Unforgiven appears not to fit into the Western Genre.
As one inspects this film it is hard to discern who or what is civilized. Every character in the film that has been in the west has a vice; William Munney, Little Bill (sheriff), English Bob are killers; the whores are whores; the saloon owner is a pimp; the face cutters cut up a woman’s face; Ned was a killer; the Scofield Kid is a killer by the end of the movie; the posse is filled with a glutton, a coward, and a vain dude; the writer (his words will become the record of what happened) represents a liar that distorts the truth of what happened. Indeed, every character in the film has some vice, which begs the question “is civilization anywhere in this film?”
Civilization exists in Unforgiven as an ideal; something that must be protected even though it doesn’t exist in a real form. Each character embodies or tries to save a different part of civilization: William Munney, Ned, the Kid, and the whores are seeking justice for the cutting; Little Bill, and his posse seek law and order, the saloon owner would be with them too; English Bob embodies British class and uses a logical system (but he murdered a man because he had a bigger penis); the face cutter sought justice for a whore laughing at his small penis (See Freud or any man driving Hummer); the accomplice felt remorse and sought to make peace for what happened; the writer records the history. These are all coveted ideals of civility but none of the characters are civil.
As the movie starts, William Munney is working on his farm, the farm is just as wild as wilderness because civilization only exists as an ideal not attained. The whore gets cut up, and the whore’s ideal of civility is threatened, which ensnares English Bob, Scofield, Ned, and Munney to seek justice. These men are now assassins this causes Little Bob, and his pose’s ideal of civility to be violated which ensnares them to protect it. Munney and Scofield get the cutters, and then Little Bill and his pose get Ned. This causes a showdown between the two clearly uncivilized parties. Munney kills Little Bob and his pose and resolves the conflict. The movie closes on Munney returning back to his farm and later moving to San Francisco with the cut up whore. He moves back into the wilderness (a world without civility/purity).
Unforgiven fulfills the genre archetype for a western. The uncivilized tried to protect the civil. An uncivilized man comes from and leaves after the resolution to the uncivilized or wild world. All of the characters were uncivilized and, thus, savages. Though Unforgiven doesn’t seem like a typical Western, it fits the conventions of the typical Western in an atypical way.

I’m pretty sure that there is basically no one reading this but me.  However, I would like to inform my reader that I am now in school again, and that there will be papers published here.

I’m finally realizing and articulating what I’ve been doing okay at and want to do at a high level. Now it’s just an organizational issue to do things more efficiently.