Voting for Teens?

The upfront article on Voting restrictions for people under the age of 18 was an eye opener and really interesting for me because I am under 18. What is being proposed in many states is that 16 year olds should be aloud to vote in national elections. Supporters of this initiative reason argue that teens have a fresh and well developed opinion on their political views and if they begin voting at a younger age it will be more likely for them to keep participating in future elections. I think that this is actually quite a good idea to do because only about 30% of legal voters actual vote and adding this whole other sector of people who can vote will definitely help boost those numbers.

Although there are many positives to this idea there are many negatives. For example, many people who are against this idea believe that teens will still not come because many 18 year olds now, dont go to elections and it will be an unnecessary law to pass. This being said, there are still large majorities of people who want their opinions to be voiced and should still have the right to do that being under 18. Other nay-sayers of this law believe that teens do not have fully developed and mature opinions and therefore should not be able to vote because of this. The common belief that young people can’t be talking as seriously as adults is flawed and wrong in terms of political views and they should be taken as seriously as anyone else.

Overall I think that sixteen year olds should have the right to vote in important elections because they have a well developed and mature opinion as well as fresh new views on the world around them. Many teenagers take what they believe in seriously and appreciate that there are initiatives to get their voices heard. The vote in america is not truly the american people speaking if its only 30% of them voting. So why don’t we change that and get this law passed!

Romeo and Juliet

The classic Shakespearean story of Romeo and Juliet plays with themes of passion, desire, death, and overall forbidden love. These themes are portrayed through two teenagers from two feuding families that find themselves madly in love. Teenagers and people in our grade can learn from this story and about young love. It gives kids a sense of freedom and independence when reading and this is why I think many eighth graders like this.

Although teenagers do like the themes in this book, because it's told through old shakespearean language it creates a barrier that many teens are not willing to try and cross or attempt to understand the language. This is why I am very happy the teachers are helping to interpret this text with kids and teach it to them. It creates a basic foundation for the english language. Being able to interpret prefixes and suffixes and everything that makes up a word will help in the future when trying to understand more complicated modern text.

When reading this book I have found that I was neither scared by romeo and juliets love nor in love with it. It just fascinated me how far they would go for eachother. For kids these days they need guidance in terms of relationships but enough freedom to feel like they are making their own decisions. This play helps show some kids who do not have that guidance to see the possible consequences of their actions even if it is dramatized.

A Monster Calls- Revised Blog Post

“A Monster Calls” by Patrick Ness is about a teen boy named Conor who forms a bond with the mysterious monster that appears outside his window. The monster comes to tell stories of his fascinating past, and tries to help the boy apply them to his own life. Conor, the boy, has a mother who has cancer, no friends or acquaintances , and a father who abandoned his family for a new life in America. Overall these stories help Conor become a better person and resolve these conflicts in his life.

One lesson Conor learned that not being noticed by anybody was worse than only being known for his dying mother. Throughout the book, Conor is trying to find ways to be seen or to have any recognition among his peers. He even uses the fact that he is being bullied by a group of boys as an outlet for his attention. But when the bullies realize that they are making him happy by acknowledging him, they just start ignoring him. This isolates Conor further and makes him feel more useless. The monster teaches him how to cope with this by telling stories with the constant theme of characters not always having straight forward intentions. Looking further into these characters and their motivations shows that each character is both good and bad, evil and innocent, and has many different layers in their personalities. This shows conor that he doesn’t have to be completely ignored or completely acknowledged but can find a middle ground to get by.

Another lesson that the monster taught Conor was that sometimes people’s actions are not always clear but may have good reason behind them. The monster tells a story about a parson who cared so much about his daughters that he would disregard his whole religion the second they were in danger. The story also included and alchemist who punished the parson for ignoring his own religion in a time of crisis. This shows that although the alchemist may not have had good intentions, the parson deserved punishment for being disloyal to his own beliefs. For Conor, this applies to a dream he had the night before of letting his mother who was hanging of the side of a cliff go into the rocky depths below. He is scared and in denial of what the dream means, but knows in his heart what he was doing in the dream. He wanted his mother to die because he couldn’t deal with the constant false hope that she always gave him saying that she was going to get better.

The final observation I had while reading this book was that the monster actually represented total destruction in its purest form. The monster arrives as his mother begins her final stages towards death, his school life disintegrates to nothing, and his father shows Conor that he has let go of him. The monster ignites this fire in Conor which makes him break and bruise both his grandmother's home after they get in a fight, and his bullies face after the bully ignores him. The monster, while creating chaos in conors life, shows him that destruction isn’t always bad, and can even help you start and begin all over with a clean slate. Conor’s mother and grandmother both agree that destruction is a part of grief and acceptance and he learns that destruction is a way for him to accept his mothers death. This helps Conor accept that he was the one who called upon the monster and realises why he needed to learn this valuable lesson.

Overall, by telling conor stories the monster helps to not only teach conor how to overcome his struggles but to fix him as a person and help him continue on with life. The monster also replaces the lack of parenting is Conors life with a long since gone father and a dying mother. The monster helps him transition through major parts of his life when nobody else could.