Blog Prompt 19.1.11

I have been in the company of a group which was against a certain individual. The so-called leaders of the group were my friends and I did not want to disagree with them and end up making enemies. However, though I allowed my friends to be unkind to that individual, I did not join in myself and took great care not to agree with anything they said against that individual. I just stood there and never said anything. I think I was lucky to be treated as a member of the group. This is because my friends would then assume that I would agree with them and therefore would not ask of my opinion which would make me uneasy as I did not want to speak against that individual. However I still felt uneasy when among that group.

Cloony the Clown continued...

Now there were 2 questions for us to answer

1. Explain the irony in the poem
2. Does Shel Silverstein manage to convey some harsh realities in this poem?


Answer to Question 1:

The irony in this poem is that when Cloony the Clown attempts to be funny by performing all sorts of tricks, people think that he is not funny and even at scream at him to go back to bed. However on the other hand, when he tells them of his feelings, why he feels so sad because he is a unfunny clown and clowns are supposed to be funny, people actually think he was trying to be funny and succeeding, and laugh their front teeth off.

Answer to Question 2:

Yes. Through the poem, Shel Silverstein has managed to convey the harsh reality that sometimes, we don't understand others and therefore sometimes offend others unknowingly. Shel Silverstein also conveys the fact that when you laugh, the world laughs with you and when you cry, you cry alone.

Cloony the Clown

Ms Soh gave us a poem a few days ago. It was called Cloony the Clown by Shel Silverstein.

It goes like this:

I'll tell you the story of Cloony the Clown
Who worked in a circus that came through town.
His shoes were too big and his hat was too small,
But he wasn't, just wasn't funny at all.
He had a trombone to play loud silly tunes,
He had a green dog and a thousand balloons.
He was floppy and sloppy and skinny and tall,
But he was'nt, just wasn't funny at all.
And every time he did a trick,
Everyone felt a little sick.
And every time he told a joke,
Folks sighed as if their hearts were broke.
And everytime he lost a shoe,
Everyone looked awfully blue.
And everytime he stood on his head,
Everyone screamed "Go back to bed!"
And everytime he made a leap,
Everybody fell asleep.
And everytime he ate his tie,
Everyone began to cry.
And Cloony could not make any money,
Simply because he wasn't funny.
One day he said "I'll tell this town
How it feels to be an unfunny clown."
And he told them all why he looked so sad,
And he told them all why he felt so bad.
He told of Pain and Rain and Cold,
He told of Darkness in his soul,
And after he finished his tale of woe,
Did everyone cry? Oh no no no,
They laughed until they shook the trees
With "Hah-Hah-Hahs" and "Hee-Hee-Hees."
They laughed with howls and yowls and shrieks,
They laughed all day, they laughed all week,
They laughed until they had a fit,
They laughed until their jackets split.
The laughter spread for miles around
To every city, every town.
Over mountains, 'cross the sea,
From Saint Tropez to Mun San Nee.
And soon the whole world rang with laughter.
Lasting till forever after,
While Cloony stood in the circus tent,
With his head drooped low and his shoulders bent.
And he said," THAT IS NOT WHAT I HAD MEANT-
I'M FUNNY JUST BY ACCIDENT."
And while the world laughed outside.
Cloony the Clown sat downand cried.

Prejudice

Today we were discussing a very BIG word: Prejudice We were asked to list down as many acts of prejudice which we knew.


Here's what I know.


1. In World War 2, Adolf Hitler was prejudiced against Jews and wanted to wipe them out all the Jews in Germany


2. In early Singapore, the people in power were British, and they were prejudiced against Chinese. A very small amount of the school budget was given to Chinese. The remaining budget was then given to English or Malay schools.


3. The Bari, a Native American living on the border between Venezuela and Colombia were being prejudiced in the second half of the sixties and therefore suffered an ethnocide.


4. In some countries, Asians are barred from European bars


5. Smaller children are bullied in school



There are also quite a lot of words which we use interchangeably with prejudice. These words are stereo type, biased and discrimination. Also these words do not have the same meaning, they are all involved in a process.


First, people become a stereotype or stereotype a certain group of people. A stereotype is a commonly held popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. This can either be postive stereotyping or negative stereotyping.

Then, they become biased. Bias is an inclination to present or hold a partial perspective at the expense of other possibly equally valid alternatives. After they hold the belief about a certain group of people, they then incline either towards them or away from them. For example, a lot of whites are biased towards coloured folk, meaning that they will prefer whites over coloured folk no matter what the situation is.

After that comes prejudice. Prejudice means an unfavourable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought or reason. After people have had a certain inclination toward a certain group of people, they will then have an unfavourable opinion towards everybody of that group. An example is a white person seeing a group of negroes behave badly, and then having a bad impression of all negroes regardless of who they really are. Important to note, prejudice is ALWAYS negative.

Lastly is discrimination. After people are prejudiced against a certain group of people, they may or may not act against them. If they do, then they are discriminating that certain group of people. For example, if a white man is prejudiced against negroes, he is not discriminating them if he stays away from them. However, he is discriminating negroes, if he spits in their faces whenever he sees them.



This process is a vicious cycle, and we must take caution to take absoulutely no part in it!!!

Targets for LA 2011

Hi. I'm Benjamin, and this is going to be my blog for LA 2011.

For starters, LA means language arts.

Today, my teacher, Ms Susan Soh, asked us these questions which were supposed to determine our targets for LA 2011.

1. What went well last year?

As far as I can remember, nothing much went well last year and therefore I am looking for a change for the better in Secondary 2.

2. What went wrong?

For LA, loads of things went wrong. Mdm Sng, our first LA teacher, went suddenly on medical leave for 8 WEEKS and her replacement was Dr Carey, from Virginia. She did not know ANYTHING about what we were used to with Mdm Sng and threw us into such confusion. We also did not know ANYTHING about her, and were oblivious about what she was used to. Therefore, we angered her by constantly asking her whether we could go to the loo. For some reason, this angered her greatly, but she did not tell us anything about the problem (If she did not tell us the problem, how were supposed to even know the problem and eventually change?) and instead went and lodged a complaint against us to our then form teacher, Mr Lim Seow Yi and got us all into trouble.

3. What is my target MSG for 2011

2.25 and below

4. How do I intend to achieve this?

By aiming to be exempted. To do this, I have to pay attention and be hardworking every term to get good grades every term in order to get exempted.