You know when you wait at the checkout line at a supermarket? Sometimes the line is long, but so are all the others. While the person in front of you is handling their groceries, you go ahead and pick up one of the many magazines at the checkout. You usually pick up the one that has the most interesting cover, or a magazine brand you’re familiar with. As you flip through mindlessly, you see ads and articles about being skinny and losing weight. There are also ads that have models with seemingly flawless skin and no imperfections to count for. They’re tall, ageless, and always thin.

Mass media’s perception of perfect has changed over the years. About forty years ago, it was all about being thick and having curves. Now it’s about having a slim waist and being skinny. Young girls have always looked at magazines of television and compared themselves to the models. Am I too fat? Am I too skinny? Those are the questions running through heads constantly. Once females see the media’s perception of ‘beauty’ or ‘perfection’, they go out and try to become what they’ve just seen.

Usually, there is no problem with this. Yes, it’s fine if girls desire to be a healthy weight. But currently, media has made this view of beauty deadly. Many models are now digitally altered and ‘airbrushed’. This means that they are photographed with their original proportions and skin flaws. But then the photograph gets to the magazine editors; they send it over to the people who have exceptional skills in Photoshop and other photo editing applications. There, they manipulate the thickness of the model, like slimming their thighs and elongating their legs. They airbrush their skin to get rid of age flaws and to destroy blemishes. Their arms are thinned also. After all that, the photograph goes back to the magazine and is published.

Most girls see these types of images and think that their body is horrible, repulsive, and imperfect. As young as nine, girls start to diet to try to live up to the image on the television screen. They begin to develop eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. Some even go as far as to starve themselves to death.

All just to be perfect.

My question is: Why? Why would young girls do this to themselves just to try to live up to media’s version of ‘perfect’? What happened to the time where being thick and healthy was the way to be?  What kind of transition did the media take to end up like this? 

I am doing this project in English class about you and the world. It’s about problems around the world. So I have to find issues that happen in the world. My issue is bullying. Bullying is one of the things that happen a lot in the world and I want to tell you all about it. Then I would like to see if we can find a solution. If you asking yourself how is bullying an issue? Or what is bullying well today is your lucky day I’m going to tell you.

According to www.stopbullying.gov “Bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior among school aged children that involves a real or perceived power imbalance. The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated, over time. Bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose.”  To me bullying is when you are not repeating someone.

There is different type of bullying. There is bullying by saying something example are:

·      Teasing

·      Name-calling

·      Threatening to cause harm

After that there is Physical bullying:

·      Hitting/kicking/pinching

·      Spitting

·      Taking or breaking someone’s thing

Last but not less that there is social bullying:

·      Telling other children not to be friends with someone

·      Spreading rumors about someone

·      Embarrassing someone in public

These are just the beginning with bullying. Bullying can be even harmful.

Bullying happen at school, online, and even where you live (in that neighborhood). A lot of parents don’t even know that it happen in their neighborhoods.  Some bullying can happen at home. But most of it is happening online no because of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and many more. Your phone can even be one of the things that can help others bully you. Example by text message or e-mail, and more. There is way to find out if you that bully or not maybe you can take a test. If you a teacher you can make thing a class game.

Hello out there everyone. Today I am writing about the impending, possibly even hidden problems in the United States’ food culture. Let’s face it, America has some problems with the way it eats. Otherwise 33.9% or more of us would not be either overweight or obese. The facts are startling; not to mention the way they are treating the animals in the meat packing industry, and even more problems that I have not even found out about yet.

Why am I writing about this? A wise person once said “you are what you eat” and I care about what I eat. My English teacher gave us an assignment to chronicle an issue that is important to us, and I chose food. Though what got me thinking about the problems with American food? It all started with a documentary film called: Food Inc. It brought the issues out to the world in an emotional and devastatingly realistic way. It brought up issues that I had never even heard of and I thought never happened. I was intrigued and disgusted and I wanted to know more about the food culture in America.

I found on a 2010 government report, which you can see here that 33.9% of adults over 19 years old, were obese. And 18.1% of teenagers were obese as well. What is going on? Most of the problem lies in how and what Americans eat. A lot of people consume McDonalds or high fructose corn syrup, which has been linked as a cause of weight gain according to Princeton University. Cholesterol and heart problems are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to health issues caused by bad food.

In the course of these blog posts I would like to get to know this problem in a more in depth manner and try to really think of practical solutions that will help get Americans healthier.

Bibliography here.

In Ms. Dunn’s 9^th grade English class we had to choose a topic that was important to us. We would be making blog posts that keep our audience up to date with the headlines of today or bring awareness to the topic. When I heard that we had to choose a topic I immediately knew I wanted to blog about the topic of immigrant rights, but more specifically, the DREAM Act.

The American Dream, it is the title of the wish that many foreigners wish to obtain in the land of America, the land of opportunity.

Most families from all over the world come to the U.S to escape tension, war, or poverty in their own countries. Most immigrants come to the U.S seeking a better life. The ones, who come here illegally or even stay when their visa has expired, are often deported to back to their own countries. To a bigger dismay, excellent students who have come to the country when they were young, are denied education past that of high school, even when they are willing to pay tuition and have had numerous chances for scholarships.

            Immigration is a very important topic to me personally, for I myself am an immigrant. I was born in Mexico and was brought over to the U.S when I was nine months old. Like many other immigrant teenagers I was brought here before we could make our own decisions. We were brought here because our parents wanted us to become greater than what we could become in our native homes. It is also not just Latinos, but people from Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean islands, who come to the U.S for better opportunities. Most of the kids who come to America for the American dream either have the dream turned into a nightmare because of not being able to speak English. When they do begin to succeed they are sometime faced with the problem of having no education after high school. For this reason, an act is in the process of being approved. The DREAM Act bill needs to be supported by legislators and signed into law, but this can only be done with support from people of this country. This bill will allow foreign illegal immigrant students be able to apply for residency and get an education after high school, if they meet several requirements.

             The requirements for being eligible for the DREAM Act is fair enough for both the person applying and the country. The country will benefit from the talented young minds that will become our future. The next generation is what the country will soon depend on and enabling the leaders of tomorrow, rather than deporting them, will benefit the U.S greatly. Is it really fair to deny immigrant teens the right to study here? By giving them a right to education we are accepting people for what they want to become; true Americans.  

My name is Raekwon Smith and I’m doing a post on a world topic that interests me for school. It’s called You and The World and you pick a problem going on in the world that you want to talk about and then do a series of blog posts on it. My topic is about how the government and individual states spend more money on prisoners than kids and education. This topic is important to me because this could affect our education in the future because all the money we have is going towards funding prisons and prisoners that don’t deserve the care they receive. Prisons cost taxpayers more than $32 billion a year. Every year that an inmate spends in prison costs $22,000. An individual sentenced to five years for a $300 theft costs the public more than $100,000. The cost of a life term averages $1.5 million.One year at New Jersey State Prison cost more than one year at Princeton university.

According to heartsandminds.org, States are spending more money on prisons than education. Over the course of the last 20 years, the amount of money spent on prisons was increased by 570% while that spent on elementary and secondary education was increased by only 21%. They provide prisoners with free health care, internet access, weight room, cable television, access to libraries, free sports programs, computer lab, laundry services, funding to earn a degree, free housing, three square meals a day, clothing, and free dental care. Not all kids are provided with that type of care and attention that they give to prisoners. Our state of Pennsylvania is second on the list of most prisons.

Pennsylvania cut the budget for education to spend it on the growing rate of criminals in 2007. There are 46,000 inmates in Pennsylvania and $90 is spent on each inmate per day—which covers food, health care recreation, etc. The national average is only $63. $3.3 billion was spent last year on prison health care services.  Every inmate is guaranteed access to health care when they require it. It is stated in articlebase.com that if 30% of the prison population went to private facilities then it would save $100 million dollars annually but only 28 states allow that.

Private places could provide better care for prisoners while saving money (which would cost tax payers less) and preparing them for when they are released into the real world again to get along with everyone else. Every day 200 new cells are built. There could be private places instead to have a better outcome in the future. Her is picture of a prison cell in a Pennsylvania prison http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/prison-5.jpg. Here is my bibliography.

For our “ You and the World” project my topic is cancer. In the past years cancer has become a well known sickness. Could it be the environment that is causing this? In the past years the pollution levels have gone up, people smoke more and drink a lot of heavy alcohol. They never really think what kind of effects this can have on your body. Statistics show that over the past 10 years more people are diagnosed with different types of cancer such as, lung cancer, breast cancer, etc.

Here is the link to my resources. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xudY75BgLg1jWMxGISU4dtFSyZfTiu2QMbMkhTFk8RE/edit 

Below are pictures of damaged cells. ( cancer cells) 

In the last Quarter of school, our English teacher Ms.Dunn gave us a project called “You and the World”. In this project the issue I am going to bring up is school bullying. I think bullying is the big issue going on all over U.S. I am interested in this issue because I have been bullied in middle school, because I spoke different languages when other kids in my class did not. I moved here from Bangladesh when I was twelve years old. When I started school, I didn’t know much English and was shy to talk. Kids would push me, try to fight me and make fun of me because I was different.

I think bullying is the perfect reason why kids in middle school don’t like to be in school. Watch this video. It shows how unsafe some of our schools are in Philadelphia. After years of harassment and bullying, this video was taken by a 12 year old girl who wanted her mother to see what going on in her classroom everyday.

According to the New York Times, in Philadelphia seven teenagers were arrested for a bullying incident in which a 13-year-old student was kicked and beaten before being hung by his coat from a spiked fence post. This is what is happening in our School District schools and I don’t think those kids are safe in school. We as community members have to do something about this bullying and stop it as soon as possible.

To see my bibliography, click here. 

            Our wonderful teacher, Mrs. Dunn, has given this project to us. This project is all about worrying less about yourself, and more about different issues that are going on in the world, or in this country, or even in your own neighborhoods. So with that I am going to jump right into the issue at hand. Now my issue is on somewhat of a bigger scale than just my own neighborhood, this issue includes all of Philadelphia, and that issue is, the continuously growing homicide rate in Philadelphia, and that among teens towards each other.

            This is an increasingly troubling topic, and very interesting and alarming to me. Not only do I know people who have died due to useless teen violence, but also I have seen how these deaths can impact the family members of those diseased. For these reasons, teenage homicides, as well as all homicides in Philadelphia have a great personal, and interesting touch on me, and it should you as well.

            The Philadelphia homicide rate was the highest in 2010 throughout the entire country, with a 19.6% homicide rate. This is nothing compared to the fact that so far there has been 122 homicides in Philadelphia alone. Considering it is only May, this is a staggering total. You also see that since it is only about half way through the year, if this rate stays the same, we will have over 250 homicides by the end of the year. That is 250 people who died due to the selfishness of others, and who obviously died before their times. If that weren’t enough, here are more staggering statistics about the homicides in Philly over the past few years:

·      In 2011 there was a total of 324 homicides in Philadelphia with a 20.7% homicide rate, which was more than any other large city.

·      Philadelphia has had 1,654 homicides over the past 5 years, with 2007, being the worst year, with 391 homicides that year alone.

·      During 2006 and 2007, Philadelphia was the only city with a population of over 1,000,000 to be on the 10 most murderous cities list.

            So from this you can see that the homicide rate in Philadelphia is a serious issue. Although I am not yet an expert on this topic, I would like to try and become one by learning more about Philadelphia and its unbelievable murder rate. Some things that I still question and would like to learn are; where in Philadelphia is there the most murders? What nationality of people is doing the most murdering? What age group does the most murdering and how can we change this so that it doesn’t happen more often?

Here are all of my sources at this link.

For our English class we are doing a “you and the world” project, for my topic I chose abortion.  Now a day’s in the United States abortion is legal but it is still a topic that raises a lot of controversy. Over the years there have been many debates on whether or not a women should or should not be able to make the choice on whether they want an abortion. As a fourteen-year-old girl this issue becomes one that is close to home. Not because I have ever been pregnant nor have I ever had a need for an abortion, but it brings up an issue on a larger scale of civil rights for women. A mere century ago women gained their civil rights in America, what does it mean when the government starts deciding what we can do with our bodies? Have women taken three steps forward just to take four steps back? My blog will focus on what it means to have an abortion in America, and whether or not it should be legal for women to make the decision on their own. 

In every state in America it is legal to have an abortion. Whether or not it is accepted, or even accessible is a different story. However this wasn’t true 30 years ago, but it all changed with Roe V. Wade which was a Supreme Court case in 1973 that legalized early term abortions. Abortion was legalized but because of the cost it is still difficult for many to get it, it can cost any where between 350 to 1000 dollars. Only 17 states in America provide funding for poor women who want abortions. For many this still makes it difficult to go through with abortion because they are living in low-income households.

            Most women who have abortions get them because it isn’t the right time for them and because of situations that they don’t want to put a young child in. For this reason 52% of women who get abortions are under 25. Being 25 it is difficult to afford it and that’s why organizations like Planned Parenthood are important because most health insurance companies don’t cover abortion or contraception. Over the past years in a study done by the Washington Post an increase in the percent of people who think abortion should be legal has risen. However there still is an issue on the underlying issue of how the government feels about it.