Ben Franklin Gates: National Treasure

The iconic coming-of-age movie The Breakfast Club, focuses on the development of five, seemingly very different high school students. In the movie we are presented with the five main characters all with stereotypes that they identify with. Claire is the princess or the beauty queen, John, often referred to by his last name “Bender,” is the criminal, Brian is the brain or the nerd, Andrew, is the athlete, a wrestler , and finally Allison is the basket case or the weirdo. The story is set in saturday detention where they are forced to spend eight hours with people from other cliques that they would normally never interact with. The day progresses and the characters interact with one another, smoke, dance, break rules, and reveal very personal parts of themselves with the others. The story ends with some of the characters making an attempt to change their identity with the realization that even with the boxes they have been put into they are not that different from one another.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Director of the Hutchins Center for African American Research at Harvard University, and an esteemed Alphonse Fletcher University Professor. According to his Harvard University profile he is an “Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, institution builder…and the recipient of fifty-five honorary degrees and numerous prizes.” Professor Gates was also the first African American scholar to be awarded the National Humanities Medal. In 1973 he earned his Bachelors in English Language and Literature from Yale University, and in 1974-1979 he got his Master’s. and Ph.D. in English Literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge (Department of African and African American Studies). Throughout many of his texts Gates provides examples of the ambiguity of language and identity, and the oppressive role ideology plays in the black community; allowing readers to apply the idea of deconstruction to our own daily experiences

Just like in the movie, high schools form cliques that are based off of similar personalities. Spending time in detention

Horatio Lloyd Gates was born January 1st, 1727 in Essex, England to the house keeper and butler to the Duke of Leeds. Horatio joined the British army at age 22 and fought for 24 years until leaving to Virginia. Horatio Gates left England just after the war was finished and when he had his first son, Robert to which he wanted to move to Virginia and buy a plantation. Horatio later leaves to fight in an army once again but this time its the Revolutionary war and he fights for the Patriot cause.

To add on her greatest achievements follow, such as getting 100s on top 100s in her favorite subject Geometry. Always in school, she always relieves straight A’s on her report cards.

On September 1, 2012, I walked into my fifth grade teacher’s classroom for the first time in my life. Mrs.Cullen was standing in the front of the door with open arms ready to welcome her new fifth grade students. As I made my way to my desk and sat down next to Charlie Schutt and Quin Timmerman, I got the feeling that middle school would be a time of talking to some of my best friends and cruising through classes. As the school year progressed, and classroom seats changed, my thought of how Middle school would be changed as well. On the first day Mrs.Cullen explained our schedule, Homework detentions, and demerits. After about fifty questions, she sent us off to our first class, and the first step of our Middle School journey. The fifth grade

She is intelligent, hardworking, witty, charismatic, dedicated, loyal, and is an excellent speaker, reader, and writer. As a student, she read two or three grade levels above her grade level and was well read—reading most of the classics at a young age. I was quite impressed, but not surprised when she graduated at the top 10 percent of her high school class and graduated from The University of Texas in

High School has obviously changed since the 1985 movie, The Breakfast Club, which portrayed different school stereotypes through five students, and how this made them reflect on their identity. In a way, this theme of different High School Stereotypes proves to still be evident in High School today when students

William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28, 1955. William was the middle child of William H. Gates II, a very successful lawyer in Seattle, and Mary Gates, his mother, who worked as a teacher before she had kids. William had two siblings, A older sister, Kristi, and a younger sister, Libby. William loved to play games and was pretty competitive at most everything he did. William was a very intelligent child and made outstanding grades in elementary school, especially in math. William got very bored and distracted very easily and tended to get into some trouble. Williams parents kept him occupied by signing him up for activities like boy scouts and reading science fiction books. At the age of thirteen, Williams parents

Her Parents are her role models. Her mom works as maid and a babysitter, her dad works

assistance/support from the children’s daycare, all of which which help her make ends meet. She

She tried marijuana and soon quit, because she knew the consequences and saw that it was bad. Her mother is an alcoholic, but she tries to encourage her to be safe amongst her drinking when going out. This little girl lives in a home that is collapsing more every second, has mold and no heat. She says she sees TV stars and wants what they have, but at the same time, she loves and appreciates her culture and is proud of it.

One night, towards the end of November, three teenagers were out past their town 's curfew. The teenagers knew that if they were caught, they would be in more trouble than they had ever been in before. These three teenagers were the oddest group of friends, Ethan was the goody-two-shoes of the group- always following the rules, he was a skinny kid standing about six feet tall but there was not one ounce of muscle on his body; Jackson was the star of the lacrosse team- he never paid attention to what anyone told him, especially adults, he was only about 5’10”, but built of pure muscle; and then there was Brooke- she did not know much about anything and she did whatever her boyfriend Jackson told her to, she was blonde and strikingly

This seems to drive her throughout the whole story. One of the first ways we see her change is by quitting the soccer team. “I just don’t want to play anymore. I hate soccer. There.

Once this girl started with the drugs, she could not stop. As soon as she tried the first drug, it lead to all of the other drugs and things that she did. Her first time doing the drug was an accident, and she did not know, but she made the wrong choice in continuing to do them. She said it gave her a feeling of belonging and love that she had never felt before. If her parents or her close friends had paid more attention to her, then some of the events that happened would not have happened. Her heavy drug use lead to her runaway from home to the streets, involvement in crime, her prostitution, and her visit to the insane asylum. She found a "best friend" (Chris) - one that would give her drugs - and they decided to runaway and leave their family and friends to start their own shop in San Francisco. They thought they could not handle their parents telling them what is right and what is wrong, but that is what they needed to hear. They were naive in thinking they could live their lives alone without any rules or any authority.