Usually in society, people make the assumption that a person with a formal education is superior to a person without one. This is a social construct that does not hold any truth. In the book Great Expectations, we see the stark difference between formally educated and informally educated people. Pip becomes a gentleman and learns in a formal way. He has plenty of money but yet he is unsatisfied with his life. In contrast, there’s Joe who was informally educated to be a blacksmith. He can't read or write and only makes enough to live a humble life. However, Joe is happy with the life he has. People often assume that Joe is not smart, but they overlook the fact that he is very street smart, good at his trade, and has a heart of gold. In the …show more content…
However, she was smarter than most kids her age and is more independent as well. Jeanette’s mother taught at various schools, and had a very informal teaching style. Her students are still learning, but yet they are having fun and feel loved by their teacher Eventually, when Jeanette gets older she goes to college. Before she went to college, Jeanette had prior experience in the journalism field, but she needs a degree to get hired. In Great Expectations by Charles Dickens and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, a formal education provides the characters with more financial security and a higher social class, while a non traditional education provides more happiness and freedom but less societal acceptance. Both Jeanette and Pip benefit from the non traditional education because they develop a greater sense of empathy and “street …show more content…
Ever since Jeanette was little, her parents stressed independence and self sufficiency. The lessons they taught Jeanette were full of life lessons and practicality. Jeanette was smarter because her parents style of teaching showed how fun learning could be. Also, Jeanette had so much independence growing up that she had to learn to fend for herself. This was a successful way of teaching because Jeanette and her siblings were:“all reading books without pictures by the time we were five, and [their] dad taught [them] math. He also taught [them] the things that were really important and useful, like how to tap out Morse code.”(Walls ). An informal education taught Jeannette more than a textbook would. She learned life lessons while she was learning math. Furthermore, Jeanette's mother is a teacher who insists on breaking the rules to teach her students. She doesn't make kids do their homework or make them do anything they don't want to do. She believed that “rules and discipline held people back and felt that the best way to let children fulfill their potential was by providing freedom.”(Walls ). This way of teaching made school fun for the children. It made the health and well being of the student a top priority. Unfortunatly, this method of teaching was frowned upon by the rest of the teachers at the school. They criticized Jeanette's
“The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls is an extremely captivating novel that really kept my attention throughout the entire story. It’s a fascinating story of growing up in circumstances that kept me shaking my head as I turned the pages. The Walls family is unquestionably one unlike any I’ve ever come across. The lessons and experiences that the children learned and endured were ones that molded their lives and established who they are today. Jeanette Walls goes through many descriptions of situations that she faced that people normally should not face. For most of her childhood, her family traveled from town to town because her parents always thought that they would hit it big, unfortunately her father was never ever to find a
In a social context, it can be observed that children will follow the direction of other children (Harris) and will learn how to act in a society (Harris). They also tend to stay within the same peer group and that is why moving a lot can cause problems in different aspects (Harris). Theses example help Judith prove her point that peers have a much larger influence on a child’s development then
Throughout the Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls reveals every intricacy of her childhood. She spares little to no element from the judgment of the reader, especially the shortcomings of her father. Rex Walls is a highly intelligent man. At first, he is continually encouraging himself and his children to dream. He believes in himself and aspires to be better than he is; which you can tell by the contraptions he continues to spend time building in order to get rich. His major shortfall is his dependence on alcohol. This dependence leads to him lose jobs and subsequently their home, eventually forcing them to move in with his parents. After moving his family to his hometown, Rex is driven to drink more and new revelations have a major impact on his family. Ultimately, his past abuse and troubled childhood leads him into alcoholism, making him incapable of upholding his ideals of autonomy. Despite his ideals of masculinity and fatherhood, he always comes up short due to his alcoholism, which conversely drives him deeper into depression and more drinking.
Jeannette Walls is an American writer in journalist who found success in New York City, most notably writing a gossip column for MSNBC in which she details the effects of gossip in politics. She published her memoir, The Glass Castle, in 2005. The book spent 261 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. In it, Walls recounts her childhood while growing up in an unstable family with her father and mother, Rex and Rose Mary Walls, her older sister Lori, and her younger brother and sister, Brian and Maureen. Rex and Rose Mary could not settle down and constantly uprooted their family of six to different locations in the southwest region of America. Neither parent could keep a job and struggled to feed and put a roof over their heads. In the novel, Walls views her parents as irresponsible because it rarely seems as though Rex and Rose Mary genuinely want to work and make money to support the family. They thrive off their sense of adventure, as they drive all over the country in a rundown car, looking for their latest shack to pile their family into, usually without running water, heat, or indoor plumbing. Walls will tell the story of her childhood through a series of pivotal moments that ultimately shape her opinion of her parents and lead her to a successful career in New York City.
As human beings, we live by our morals, outlining our ethical principles in distinguishing what is right from what is wrong. Our morals define who we are as a person, how we behave, how we communicate, and how we manage challenging situations. As stated by President John F. Kennedy, “a man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality” (225). In order to achieve and portray one’s morals and ethical principles regardless of the circumstances, a person must portray courage. As Ernest Hemingway defined it, “Grace under pressure (Kennedy 1).” According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, courage is the “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear or difficulty.” In the Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage, written on 1957 by John F. Kennedy, some of the greatest deeds of political courage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are discussed through the accounts of the historical events that inspired such acts and the consequences of those brave enough to carry them out. The author of the award winning memoir The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls, could not be considered a candidate for John F. Kennedy’s Profile in Courage Award because of the failure to fulfill of the requirements of the award, the type of courage portrayed, and the limited sphere of influence.
In the memoir, The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls the author depicts her poverty-stricken past along with her eccentric morals, and dysfunctional parents as they traveled around the country avoiding debt-collectors, while handling unruly situations. The author lives with her three siblings: Brian, Lori, and Maureen Walls; and her two parents: Rex, and Mary Walls. The mother a struggling artist, and the father a jack-of-all-trades with an alcohol addiction. Together they move from town to town, and state to state avoiding the clutches of the ‘FBI’ a nickname Jeannette 's father gave to the debt collectors that were constantly chasing after them. Along the way they struggle with cases of sexual harassment, bullying, and
American journalist, writer, and magazine editor David Remnick once said, “The world is a crazy, beautiful, ugly complicated place, and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy.” In the memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls the main character and author of the book tells of her crazy and adventurous life she experienced with her not so ordinary family. This quote relates to The Glass Castle, because like it states, life is full of both tragedies and beauty which is exactly what Jeannette experienced growing up with her free spirited and non-conformative parents. Walls is able to express her main purpose of the book that life is a mix of good and bad times through imagery, tone, and pathos.
Usually in society parents are to be blamed for failing to raise their children in the right way. It is very easy for the society to criticize parents when they mistreat their child or not take care of his/her needs and wants. It is easy for a parent to get judged in society comparing to a child because parents are role models for children’s. Even when a child has been mistreated by her/his parent, it is easy for the child to forgive their parents. The reason behind that situation would be a parent’s unconditional love that a child sees, despite what he/she has been through. In the book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, she portraits a situation like that where the character spends her childhood memories with her father. Even though Jeannette’s father Rex Walls was an irresponsible father and failed to protect his children, Jeannette still loved her father dearly.
Miss Caroline is a brand new teacher and has been trained to teach in a certain way. When she finds that Scout’s premature reading ability disrupts her teaching plan she has no idea what to do with her, and tells Scout not to read at home anymore. ‘Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me anymore, it would interfere with my reading.’ This shows how society is oblivious to individual situations and this can cause achievements to be frowned upon.
In the vivid, personal memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, she painstakingly recalls her “story” and how it affected and made her who she is today. She grew up in an environment that most children typically do not. Her father was an alcoholic, and her mother was a selfish woman who put herself first. You could say their way of parenting was not your average “cookie cutter” household. One main social issue in The Glass Castle, is the impact on child neglect in a family and how that affects the way the child turns out. Although, Jeannette Walls ended up as a successful writer along with her siblings Lori and Brian, her other sister Maureen took a route which many neglected children face. What set apart these siblings and how the
The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, describes the unfortunate struggles of Jeanette and her family throughout her childhood. Often times, the hardships in one 's life can shape their future and how they develop as a person. Jeanette went through so many hardships that seem unbelievable to me. Her struggles and life experiences are much more extreme than mine will ever be. Her hardships have helped shape her personality and her career. She has made the best out of her childhood, and everyone should take a tip from Jeanette, including myself. I have not had many giant hardships in my life to this date. Jeanette is a role model to people everywhere. She showed that it doesn’t matter where or how you grow up, the only thing that matters is
She does this by building their self-esteem and helping them become contributing members of the community, while Grant — as evidenced by his ever-present Westcott ruler — is primarily concerned with control and discipline. A classic example that illustrates their divergent approach to teaching is their method of teaching students to write a simple sentence: While Grant ridicules and humiliates his student who can’t write her simple sentence in a straight line; Vivian encourages her students, who are learning to write simple sentences in French. By teaching her students French, Vivian is embracing her Creole heritage. By helping her students transcend their cultural boundaries by learning a foreign language, she is also teaching them to transcend their geographic boundaries and their perceived personal limits. As she points out to Grant, “We’re teachers and we have a commitment.”
Colson Whitehead once said, “Let the broken glass be broken glass, let it splinter into smaller pieces and dust and scatter. Let the cracks between things widen until they are no longer cracks but the new places for things”. In the memoir “The Glass Castle,” author Jeannette Walls faces despair and turmoil as a result of her impoverished and dysfunctional upbringing. As Jeannette grows up, she watches her father Rex fail to reach his full potential and his dream to build a Glass Castle shatter as his alcoholism takes control. Aware of the devastation her father was causing, she begins to slowly lose faith in him but doesn’t fail to escape her destructive household and pursue her dreams of becoming a journalist. Due to her parent’s lack of parenting and being forced to fend for herself, Jeannette developed a sense of responsibility to care for others and make amends to improve the family’s lifestyle. Despite the turbulence and destruction her parents had caused over the years, unlike her father, Jeannette was able to find the strength to overcome obstacles, developing characteristics that ultimately lead her to achieving her dream, thus illustrating that adversity has the power to shape one’s identity.
A wide variety of theories and methods attempt to explain early childhood learning and development. Erickson and Maslow both have theories that focus on social and personality development, as well as a person’s motivation to learn throughout their lives. Their theories are helpful in understanding Jeannette Walls’ development of self. Erickson and Maslow also help clarify why her mother, father, and living in New York City were such influential factors in the development of Jeanette’s sense of self.
Social classes can change with hard work. In Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Pip is portrayed wealthy in his lifestyle compared to when he used to work as a poor blacksmith with common clothes. In the courtyard “I took the opportunity of being alone in the courtyard to look at my course hands and my common boots” (Dickens, 781). This shows how Pip is becoming aware that his clothes were the same as any other poor person and how he wanted to change his lifestyle to become a gentleman. While Estella is next to Pip he, we “folded all my bills up uniformly, docketed each on the back, and tied the whole into a symmetrical bundle” (Dickens, 861). This is suggesting that Pip has accomplished his goal of changing his social status and becoming a real gentleman with his hard work showing that social classes do not limit characters that they could move up or down the ranks. Dickens portrays how characters are not limited and held back due to the social level they had and how hard work helps achieve goals.