Education can save lives and empower individuals to have goals and to achieve success. This is especially true in low class communites stricken with poverty where the "indian children are expected to be stupid". (p. 13) The majority of Indians live in poor conditions and this is the expected norm which also becomes their comfort zone. Therefore, reaching beyond the expected norm is portrayed as becoming an outcast. Ridicule is the result of reaching out for education and success. In a sense, lives have the potential of becoming lost in to the realm of hardship and distress of poverty.
Alexie has strong conviction and determination to save the lives of as many of these Indian children as he can. He saves lives for those who learn to read and write which provides them with a gateway to knowledge and success. Education provides basic survival skills and opportunities to break them free from the norm. Unfortunately there are those who are arrogant and already defeated that may not heed the viable education presented in front of them. This does not stop Alexie in trying to break through their walls because his ultimate goal is to save their lives.
Alexie saved his own life by following and imitating his father's love for books. He learned to read on his own at an extremely young age. His love for books and education grew. He refused to fail or be influenced to settle for the norm. He stepped out from the expected behavior and read, ask questions and spoke up in class in an attempt to obtain success. By all of these efforts, he obtain success and thus saved his own life.
Hi Mandy,
ReplyDeleteI liked your first sentence that you wrote. Its so true! I think that Alexie saved his own like by following his father as well. If it was not for this father loving to read and having all of those books in the house, who knows who Alexie would be today?
Its crazy how a person that young can be influenced in the right direction. We usually always here about how a child was influenced in the wrong way. Like picking up bad habits for parents or other adults, so I think that this was a positive reading, and should be read to kids today in grade schools, to maybe give them hope.
Have a good night.
Emily
Hi Mandy,
ReplyDeleteThere is no remedy for stereotypic thoughts except to prove it wrong and Alexie did prove it wrong. Like Indian children form reservation who consider themselves to be less inferior in education, people living in poverty tends to ignore education. But as you said education saves life proper education will help people in life.
Sujan.
Hi Mandy,
ReplyDeleteI really like how you wrote education empower individuals to have goals and to achieve success that really does sum education up doesn’t. I was really shocked by the stereotypical thought that Indians were not smart, but I was even more shocked on how they themselves bought into it. Alexie wrote about how he learned to love books because of his father but really never went into any more detail than that. I suppose with his father working menial jobs that he really may not have had much time to teach his son to read. Of course that is an assumption on my part because the story never really went into detail about his father. I myself would have loved to know more.
Michelle M.