Author Archives: Sarah Campbell

I AM WOMAN: HEAR ME ROAR

Posted on by under Passion Blog

It is hard to believe that this series is coming to a close. I admittedly have been racking my brain for weeks to find the most perfect, show-stopping woman who would feel appropriate as the finale to this act. 

We have explored so many amazing women over the last several months, starting with an iconic silent film actress; Mary Pickford, then journeying across the seas and time to visit the pirate queen Ching Shih, learning of more iconic women, such as Rosa Parks and Lucille Ball, and discovering those whose greatness may have been kept in the dark, like Anita Garibaldi and Ada Lovelace. More recently, we ventured to foreign countries in a two-part exposé on “Lady Death,” which I know was a favorite amongst both the readers and myself. It was honestly a challenge to think of one woman who could encompass everything that each of these women represent. We have mathematicians, politicians, actresses, and pirates. How can one person possibly be above all of that as the “great exit” to this blog? 

I will tell you the answer: one woman cannot. In all of my research, while I did discover so many amazing females who could easily be featured on this stream, there was not one that stood above the rest as the “best woman”. Each one has done something equally incredible and badass in her own culture and time that I would feel that I am cheating every other woman by choosing one over the other. 

But then I realized, there is a woman who is a result of each of those before her. Someone who has been blessed by those before her and will continue to push the boundaries of femininity everyday until her time has passed as well. Someone who takes the lessons she has learned from those before her and changes the rules of the game instead of playing into the hand of opposition. A woman who, thanks to the voices that have come before her, is not afraid to raise her own: me. I, along with every other woman today and forever will continue the legacy that these women have built for us to stand on and take advantage of. Sure, keeping a blog on their lives is one way to honor their sacrifices, but the only way we can truly uphold their honor is by becoming the next generation of women that first-year RCL students will write about. 

No, I alone am not the greatest woman to ever walk the earth, and I will in no way shape or form be writing about myself for my final passion blog entry, but it is because of the woman who have come before me that I have the opportunity to sit in a college class and openly express my opinion. And in order to honor and respect those who honestly risked their lives to give us the equalities we have today, we must shout our thoughts from the rooftops. Because no matter the time, place, or audience, you can always be sure of one thing:

  I AM WOMAN: HEAR ME ROAR

Queen Nanny of the Windward Maroons

Posted on by under Passion Blog

Due to the popularity of last week’s post, I decided to continue the exploration of incredible women from foreign countries, as most of the women I have researched have been from America. This week we journey to the Maroons of Jamaica to visit Queen Nanny of the Windward Maroons, a largely ignored yet highly important figure in the Maroon’s history.

Queen Nanny of the Windward Maroons has a rather elusive and vague history as she has only been mentioned 4 times in written history, yet she serves as one of the most important historical figures in the Maroons. For those of you who don’t know, a Maroon is a settlement of African-descended people that formed away from slavery. Due to their unique mixes of people (African, indigenous, and various others) new cultures combining the traditions and history of each group of people were formed, along with new government systems. Queen Nanny of the Windward Maroons served as both the spiritual and military leader of her people, famously leading them into battle against the British in 1725.

Thought to be born around 1680 off the coast of Ghana, Queen Nanny was said to ​​belong to either the Ashanti or Akan tribe and came to Jamaica as a free woman. Some recording show that, as a possible descendant of royal African bloodlines, she brought slaves of her over with her, which was common practice for royals at the time. Along with slaves, she also brought her husband, Adou, with her to the Maroons of Jamaica. 

The legend of Queen Nanny of the Windward Maroons is far above the legend of even some of the greatest American and European generals. She was said to be a master of guerilla warfare and specially trained her military in the art of camouflage, dressing her soldiers and herself in branches and leaves to stand perfectly still for hours at a time. When British troops came marching into the Maroons in 1725, they were swiftly picked off by the “trees” they passed unsuspectingly. Queen Nanny was rumored to not only be a great leader, but also a version of a bloodthirsty superhero. Several legends exist around her ability to catch bullets mid-air, one version saying this was due to her high training in the “art of combat”, another saying she would catch them in her rear-end and “fart” them back out again. While the first explanation is actually highly possible (many Africans were trained for this at the time), the second explanation is most likely from a British report, of whom were obviously not fans of the Queen. While many more legends exist of Queen Nanny (using herbs to kill British soldiers, etc.) one first-hand account said that queen nanny wore “bracelets and anklets made of teeth from the British soldiers” and “The old hag had a girdle around her waist with nine or ten different knives hanging in sheaths to it, many of which I have no doubt have been plunged in human flesh and blood”. Needless to say, Queen Nanny was one for the ages. 

She was officially made a national hero of Jamaica in 1976, by Edward Braithwaite, someone who was instrumental in the telling of her story and how her involvement was crucial to the Maroons in securing liberty from the British. Queen Nanny of the Windward Maroons is a symbol of rebellion and survival, serving not only her people while she was alive, but also serving all of those who came after her with inspiration and a reminder that greatness can come from anywhere, anytime, no matter if you wear a necklace of pearl or teeth. 

Reference 

Jamaica’s True Queen: Nanny of the Maroons

https://www.britannica.com/topic/maroon-community

 

Including Music Education into the No Child Left Behind Act

Posted on by under RCL

The italicized parts are incomplete and will be filled in once I receive the rest of the information/ finish the paragraph. As before, nothing is properly cited yet but all the links are live to look at references if need be. The pie chart is self-created and has not been cited yet.

Introduction

It feels like the underfunding of Music Education has been a topic of discussion for the last twenty years; and as of last year, it is. In 2001, President George W. Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which was designed to close the “achievement gaps”1 between different races, gender, and wealth classes. This act set many things in motion, including, but not limited to,  standardized tests for middle schoolers and more flexibility for students in Title 1 schools2. Along with these new standards, the NCLB Act of 2001 allowed for more flexibility in how a school district chose to distribute their budget through each subject. Due to the fact that the standardized tests mentioned above focused on math, english, and eventually science, most school districts chose to direct their money towards those subjects, ultimately pulling that funding from the subjects that  students would not be tested on: the arts3.

The No Child Left Behind Act, with the intention of creating a more equal education for all the children of America, indirectly impacted a very large part of that very education it sought to protect. While math, science, and english are extremely important subjects to have an in-depth knowledge of, studies have shown that receiving an education in music has been proven to improve verbal and working memory, cognitive performance, attention span, speech response, linguistic development, and reading and writing skills4, all of which are necessary to create a successful student and eventually a functioning member of society.

However, music education has not -and has never been- deemed worthless by parents, teachers, or students. According to a Harris Poll administered in 2005, “93% of Americans agreed that the arts are essential for providing students with a well-rounded education”5. Although this is an old poll, it sparked a lot of interest in the topic of music education and its severe lack of funding within the last 17 years. Stars & Catz, an online music educator program, discovered that out of 200 studies done on the benefits of music education and its lack of adequate funding, 80% of these studies have been published, a 65% increase from 20056. In a more recent study conducted in 2015 by the NAMM Foundation, “Sixty-three percent of teachers and Fifty-seven percent of parents believe music education should be a required subject in middle school”7. People believe that music needs to be an integral part of student’s lives, and by cutting the funding for those programs, we are possibly cutting their creativity and ability to develop skills they will always have a use for. As the initial, yet unintentional, creator of this severe lack of funding for the education of music and the arts, including music education into the No Child Left Behind Act funding presents itself as a corrective measure for this matter. It will allow for adequate funding from both the government and individual school districts as it will be a part of the curriculum that is now expected to be learned by all.

Benefits of Music Education

As mentioned above, receiving an education in music can have many underlying benefits outside of learning how to read music or play an instrument. Besides some of the benefits that have already been discussed, such as improving verbal and working memory, cognitive performance, attention span, and speech response, music has also been proven to have a higher graduation rate in high school and a higher acceptance rate into college. According to Children’s Music Workshop, “Schools with music programs have an estimated 90.2% graduation rate and 93.9% attendance rate compared to schools without music education, which average 72.9% graduation and 84.9% attendance”8. Along with this, many other statics prove that music education provides students with better tools for the future more than any other one subject:

  • Students who participate in school band or orchestra have the lowest levels of current and lifelong use of alcohol, tobacco and illicit drugs among any group in our society9
  • High school music students have been shown to hold higher grade point averages (GPA) than non-musicians in the same school10.
  • A study of 7,500 university students revealed that music majors scored the highest reading scores among all majors including English, biology, chemistry and math11.
  • The schools that produced the highest academic achievement in the United States today are spending 20% to 30% of the day on the arts, with special emphasis on music12.
  • Music training helps under-achievers. Students lagging behind in scholastic performance caught up to their fellow students in reading and surpassed their classmates in math by 22% when given music instruction over seven months13.
  • Student involvement in extracurricular or co-curricular activities makes students resilient to current substance use among their peers, according to a recent statewide survey of Texas Schools. Secondary students who participated in band, orchestra or choir reported the lowest lifetime use of all substances14.

As you can see from these countless reports and studies, music education finish out section with something about statistics and/or why they prove it is a necessity.

Graphic (bar graph) on students with/without music ed

 

Cost of Music Education

It has now been well-established that a music education benefits students in countless ways, most of which are unconscious and irreplaceable by other subjects. However, an enriching program often comes with a high cost. In research funded by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation’s Sounds of Learning research initiative, a cost for music education averaged $187 per student annually in the sample school district15. In a 60-100 person marching band, the average size for Pennsylvania schools16, the total cost to run a program would be between $11,220 – $18,700 annually, which may not include marching band programs. In numbers provided by a local high school assistant band director, the average cost to run a marching band annually is $21,500 if staff is paid properly17. According to the same assistant director, all of this funding (besides the salaries for the directors) is provided through booster organizations and donations, with the school district only providing funds for inside programs18. 

However, even the funding provided by the school district for the more “classic” parts of music education can be inadequate in covering the costs. If a program spends as little as possible on equipment and only runs one ensemble, their average cost will average out to around $11,000. If the program spends more on equipment and runs two or three ensembles, their annual cost would be between $19,000 – $23,00019, Not including the cost of a marching band, which could bring the total cost for music education to $44,500 annually.

Comparison of two PA Schools

In the reports provided by two different school districts in eastern Pennsylvania, the support provided by the school district is between $9,600 – Waiting on other number.

School District A, which is located near a small city and has a high school student body of 2,67320 provides $9,600 to their music education program, which is split between the wind ensemble, orchestra, and choir program. The rest of the funds necessary to continue the program is paid out of pocket by either the directors or the students21.

School District B, while having more funding provided by the school, still largely relies on the booster organization to support their program. District B also provides the salaries for the 2 directors in addition to paying for the music and its copyrights for football games and halftime shows. However, both school districts are required to do major fundraising throughout the year in order to keep their programs afloat. Even with some funding provided by the school districts, the numbers have shown that a music program requires much more than they are allotted in order to continue to succeed.

Incorporating Music Ed into the NCLB Act

  • Small transition for why this needs to happen
  • How would It be possible
  • How it would benefit music programs
  • How it would benefit schools/students

Conclusion

  • Recap of benefits
  • Recap of costs
  • How incorporating music ed into the NCLBA will work and will be beneficial
  • Restatement of thesis

“Lady Death” Part 2

Posted on by under Passion Blog

Welcome Back! We pick up with Part Two in America, where Pavlichenko was sent off on a propaganda mission instead of returning to the front lines, becoming the first member of the Soviet Union to be welcomed to the White House. There, she met her lifetime friend Elenor Roosevelt. Fascinated with her life story, Mrs. Roosevelt asked Pavlichenko to join her on a tour of America to share her story of being a woman in combat.

As a young, decorated and injured war hero to her people, Pavlichenko set off on a national tour with the First Lady, but soon encountered a different type of battle than she was used to. Rather than asking her about her extensive list of accomplishments, the American press decided to ask her about her beauty routine, and why her skirt was “so long”. The media belittled her accomplishments, calling her “the Girl Sniper” in their stories and saying she “lacked a sense of fashion” due to her wardrobe which consisted of her decorated military uniform. If this wasn’t enough, one reporter even said that her long green skirt “made her look fat” and that American girls wore short skirts for that exact reason. They asked her about her makeup routine and if such things were allowed on the battlefield. Pavlichenko responded with “while there are no rules against it, who has time to think of her shiny nose when there is a battle going on”. But just as with a rifle, Pavlichenko quickly learned how to speak to such misogyny and sexism, saying in an interview in Chicago “Gentlemen, I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascist occupants by now. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?”, which caused a roar of support from the women in the audience.

 

As her tour continued, she began to speak of the lack of racial segregation in the Soviet Union’s frontlines, and became an inspiration to many young Americans. While she never returned to the front lines, she continued her tour into Canada and Great Britain, eventually returning to the Soviet Union to train new snipers and receiving the highest honor a military personnel can receive: Hero of the Soviet Union. She also was awarded the Order of Lenin twice, the highest civilian honor within the Union. 

After the war ended in 1945, Pavlichenko went back to Kiev University and completed her studies, becoming a historian following graduation. While the tensions of post-war didn’t allow Pavlichenko to visit First Lady Roosevelt, the two still managed to keep in touch and reconnected later when the First Lady visited Moscow. 

 

On October 10, 1974, Pavlichenko suffered a stroke and passed away. Following her death, two commemorative postage stamps were printed in her honor, both honoring her career in the military and as a civilian following the war. Regardless of the Horrors of WWII, Pavlichenko showed great strength through her life, both as a sniper and during her borderline abusive tour to the U.S. She taught us to rise above the hateful comments and to know your worth, no matter how much those around you dismiss it. Pavlichenko should serve as an idol to all women, but especially American women who sometimes struggle to see past their surface value. No Matter which side she fought for, Pavlichenko was truly fighting for women everywhere to be seen for more than just their looks. She was fighting for us to be able to prove to anyone that we are just as strong as the boys. 

Issue Brief Intro Draft

Posted on by under RCL

I tried to model this off of the example, and I know it still needs work. All of my references for this part are hyperlinked to the superscripted numbers, but are not yet in the proper citation form. If possible, I would particularly like feedback on my final paragraph.

 

It feels like the underfunding of Music Education has been a topic of discussion for the last twenty years; and as of last year, it is. In 2001, President George W. Bush passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which was designed to close the “achievement gaps”1 between different races, gender, and wealth classes. This act put many things into place, including but not limited to,  standardized tests for middle schoolers and more flexibility for students in Title I schools2. Along with these new standards, the NCLB Act of 2001 allowed for more flexibility in how a school district chose to distribute their budget through each subject. Due to the fact that the standardized tests mentioned above focused on math, english, and eventually science, most school districts chose to direct their money towards those subjects, ultimately pulling that funding from the subjects that would not be tested: the arts3.

This Act, with the intention of creating a more equal education for all the children of America, indirectly impacted a very large part of that very education they sought to protect. While math, science, and english are extremely important subjects to have an in-depth knowledge of, studies have shown that receiving an education in music has been proven to improve verbal and working memory, cognitive performance, attention span, speech response, linguistic development, reading and writing skills4, all of which are necessary to create a successful student and eventually a functioning member of society. 

However, music education has not been and has never been deemed worthless by parents, teachers, or students. According to a Harris Poll administered in 2005, “93% of Americans agreed that the arts are essential for providing students with a well-rounded education”5. Although this is an old poll, it sparked a lot of interest in the topic of music education and its severe lack of funding within the last 17 years. Stars & Catz, an online music music educator program, discovered that out of 200 studies done on the benefits of music education and its lack of adequate funding, 80% of these studies have been published, a 65% increase from 20056. In a more recent study conducted in 2015 by the NAMM Foundation, “Seventy-seven percent of teachers and Sixty-four percent of parents agree that music and arts education are “extremely important” or “very important. Sixty-three percent of teachers and Fifty-seven percent of parents believe music education should be a required subject in middle school.Eighty-seven percent of teachers and Eighty-one percent of parents believe children should have a chance to learn to play musical instruments as early as elementary school”7. People believe that music needs to be an integral part of student’s lives, and by cutting the funding for those programs, we are possibly cutting their creativity and ability to develop skills they will always have a use for. As the initial, yet unintentional, creator of this severe lack of funding for the education of music and the arts, including music education into the No Child Left Behind Act funding presents itself as a corrective measure for this matter. It will allow for adequate funding from both the government and individual school districts as it will be a part of the curriculum that is now expected to be learned by all. 

“Lady Death”

Posted on by under Passion Blog

This week I decided to dedicate my passion blog to the people of Ukraine as they struggle with the hardships of a war they did not declare. Inspired by their resilience, I began researching some of the incredible women of this country, and stumbled upon Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the most successful female sniper in the world with a total of 309 kills.

Born in 1916 in a Belaya Tserkov, a large city south of Kiev, Pavlichenko grew up as a tomboy, enjoying the competitive nature of sports and games, largely motivated to prove to the boys in her neighborhood that she was just as good, if not better, than they were at any activity they could think of. When she was 14, her family moved to the capital city of Kiev, where soon after she enrolled into a sharpshooter class, eventually earning a Voroshilov Sharpshooter Badge, both a certificate and a decoration of skilled civil marksman. In 1937 Pavlichenko enrolled at Kiev University with the dream of becoming a history teacher, continuing to improve her sniper skills on the School’s trap team and by taking classes at sniper school. 

During her final year at university, Hitler began his invasion into the Soviet Union. Upon learning this, Pavlichenko immediately went to the enlistment office in Odessa, where the enlistment officers pushed her to become a nurse. But Pavlichenko knew her strengths and quickly proved her marksman skills by snuffing out two Romanian Collaborators, officially joining the Red Army’s 25th Rifle division as a sniper, becoming 1 of 2,000 female snipers to join WWII and only 1 of 500 to survive it. 

Pavlichenko was stationed on the front lines of Odessa, recording 187 kills in the two months she spent there while receiving a promotion to sergeant. While her unit was in fighting Sevastopol starting in October 1941, Pavlichenko raised her kill count even higher, reaching 257 confirmed kills by May 1942 and receiving a second promotion to lieutenant. As she became more deadly, she was sent on more deadly missions, moving from simple sniper jobs to engaging in “sniper duels” with other snipers, one of which lasted 3 days. Pavlichenko famously said that these other snipers always made “one move to many”, and one by one, 36 enemy snipers were added to her confirmed kills list. 

In June 1942 Pavlichenko took shrapnel to the face and was pulled out of battle because the military felt she was too valuable of an asset to be left in and risk further injury or death. At this time, she had a list of bodies 309 names long, earning her the nickname “Lady Death” and several offers from the German Army to join them. At first these were just bribes, with German officers shouting over a loudspeaker, “Lyudmila Pavlichenko, come over to us. We will give you plenty of chocolate and make you a German officer.”. However, these bribes soon became threats, with those same officers saying “If we catch you, we will tear you into 309 pieces and scatter them to the winds!”. Pavlichenko  laughed upon hearing this, and said she was glad that the enemy knew her record with such accuracy. 

For now, this is where we end this blog post. Next week we will look further into her U.S. tour and the misogyny and sexism she faced upon her arrival into this country, something she had never needed to in Ukraine. Until then, remember that for every great shot a man has ever declared, every time they have said that women are incapable of such skill and violence, the person with the most recorded kills in history is a woman. 

 

Resource

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/lady-death-red-army-lyudmila-pavlichenko

Advanced Placement

Posted on by under Civic Issues

Have you ever felt like you weren’t living up to the expectations of  those around you? Maybe felt that you aren’t as advanced as your friends or family members? Perhaps you Were swapping stories at Thanksgiving dinner with your cousins and suddenly feared that you weren’t as smart as they are? Don’t worry, this post is not meant to give you PTSD or send you into an existential crisis. This test is all about America’s ego and FOMO : The Advanced Placement Tests.

The idea for the AP program rose in the 1950s right before the Cold War began when policymakers feared that current high school students were unprepared for college and graduate school. As each fresh crop of 18-21 year olds continued to graduate, the government was nervous that the educated young men whom had helped to defeat the soviet union may be the last of their kind, and with a possible war unfolding, lawmakers decided that a new type of program and test needed to be invented, one that assured them that teenagers were just as challenged and intelligent as their successors. And so, with the government’s support for a more rigorous schooling process before moving on to college, the Ford Foundation created the Fund for the Advancement of Education (FAE) in 1951.

In order to get a better understanding of where some of the best and brightest were on the scale of preparedness for college, 58 alumni of the three most prestigious prep schools (Andover, Lawrenceville, and Exeter) were all sent surveys by the FAE asking if they felt that their “high school” had prepared them enough for the universities they were currently attending (Yale, Harvard, and Princeton). To sum up most of their responses, they indicated that had they been able to take more advanced classes in prep school, they feel that they would have been able to learn more in college instead of essentially repeating the same information from their senior year. 

During this same time period, the FAE was already working on implementing more rigorous courses into high schools across the country, advertising them as “college-level curriculum” for high school students. After combining forces with the team which sent out the surveys, the FAE launched the Advanced Placement Program into 27 schools, giving the first AP tests in 1954. The guinea pig class scored extremely well on these tests compared to college students taking the same courses at university. With its success, AP began administering 10 tests annually in 1956 (Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English Composition, Literature, French, German, Spanish, and Latin).

In 1955, College Board, the master of standardized tests, took over the Advanced Placement Program. Initially under their direction, the tests were never longer than 3 hours and cost $10 to take as many as you would like (kinda like a buffet, but for knowledge). Even though $10 dollars sounds like an amazing deal today, keep in mind that this was in 1955, the equivalent today would be about $100. However, this was $10(0) dollars to take as many or as little of the AP tests as you wanted, you could take all 10 or just two, the cost was the same. Today, each test costs $126 to take individually, even with Financial aid it still hovers around $60. 

Unfortunately, the high cost of the test isn’t the only downside to the AP courses/exams. While 60% of American High Schools offer AP classes, the variety of these classes are inconsistent, not to mention that 40% of schools don’t offer any.  We as Schreyer’s students were asked about fairness in education for one of our entrance essays, and I wrote about this very subject. Here is a short excerpt of what I wrote then and what still still stands true today: “Fairness in education should not be measured by equal treatment; it should be measured by equal opportunity. In so many situations, people are not provided with the same opportunities as others simply because of where they live. For example, my cousin lives much closer to the nation’s capital and is provided additional educational opportunities that I am not. She has completed two AP classes as a sophomore and four as a junior in a school that offered 16 courses, classes that my school in rural Pennsylvania did not offer. As a senior, I have completed five AP classes because only six are offered from my high school. Both my cousin and I are extremely successful and are in the top ten of our classes. However, we may not be evaluated equally since we have not been offered the same number of AP courses in high school.” 

However, even though I mention that I, as a rural Pennsylvania student, do not have access to the same education as my cousin, I do realize that I am very lucky to have been even offered those 6 courses, unlike most African American and Latino high school students. In a study done by The Education Trust, it was discovered that while Black students make up 15% of high schoolers, only 9% of the total students enrolled in at least one AP class are African American. Similarly, Latino Students account for almost 25% of the nation’s high school students, with only 21% of Ap students being Latino. For comparison, white students account for 50% of AP students and 54% of scores of 3 or higher, with only 5% of Black Students earning a 3 or higher in the same subjects. 

Without getting too much into some of the unfortunate systematic racism still implemented into our education system today, AP courses have been proven to help advance the education of any student who scores a decent score on the exams, either as a college credit or if it just serves as a “practice run” for college courses these students may take in the future. Even though these classes and exams were designed to see if all advanced high school students were still “up to the challenge” set by the generations prior, these tests have not only exposed certain areas that we as a nation are rather lackluster in our understanding in, but also that our country still struggles to provide equal opportunity to people of all backgrounds. 

 

References

https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/02/11/more-students-earn-3-advanced-placement-exams-racial-gaps-remain#:~:text=Native%20Hawaiian%2Fother%20Pacific%20Islander,on%20at%20least%20one%20exam.

Black and Latino Students Shut Out of Advanced Coursework Opportunities

https://blog.prepscholar.com/history-of-ap-classes-exams

https://www.jstor.org/stable/494439?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

 

Lucille Ball

Posted on by under Passion Blog

As a five time Emmy award winning actress, producer and comedian, Lucille Ball is known today as an icon in American sitcoms and television. Born on August 6th, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. Her father was a telephone lineman for Bell telephone, often which moved their family around the country, eventually ending up in Wyandotte, Michigan, where Mr. Ball died of typhoid fever. Lucille Ball has credited this day as the reason behind her ornithophobia (Fear of birds) because a bird was supposedly trapped in the house at the time of his passing. 

Her career started in 1929 when she landed her first modeling gig as a cigarette girl for Carnegie hall, back then going by Dianne rather than Lucille. For the next two decades or so, Ball was cast as a chorus girl and background dancer for broadway shows and television specials, with the occasional B-pictures leading actress part or a support role in A-pictures.

 In the 1940’s she met her husband, Desi Arnez, Cuban bandleader (band member/ frontman). When the 50’s came around, she and her husband created the famous sitcom I Love Lucy, premiering on October 15th, 1951. Originally an extremely successful  radio show entitled “My Favorite Husband” in which Ball was cast as the wacky wife Liz Copper, she and her husband were asked by CBS to develop the show for television, thus becoming the icon in American television that I Love Lucy is today. 

However, the show wasn’t originally given a good outlook by producers, who were unconvinced that a Cuban man and a wacky redhead could make a believable couple for an audience. But Lucille pushed for the show, eventually convincing the executives at CBS to send the show on tour, where it gained the support it needed to take off on the network. I Love Lucy became one of the most watched television shows in it’s time period, having the highest ratings for four out of its six seasons. 

Even though She preferred Los Angeles, the timing logistics made it difficult, as Prime Time television in L. A. was too late for the east coast. Essentially, if a show premiered that late in L.A., it would re-run the next day on the east coast, which required a lot of extra money on the producer’s side. Instead of moving the show to New York, Ball and her husband agreed to take a pay cut in substitution for having the show continue to be based in L.A., along with their production company, Desilu, owning the rights to the show once it aired. CBS eventually bought back the rights to I Love Lucy for $1,000,000 (about $9 million in today’s money) which funded the down payment for the purchasing of RKO Picture studios, which would later become Desilu studios. 

The show and Ball had great success over the next few decades, setting and breaking records left and right both in television and from the perspective of a producer. But in 1989, Ball was admitted to the hospital with chest pains, dying of an aortic aneurysm at the age of 77. Even though she was known best for her acting and comedy. Lucille Ball fought hard for the entertainment she believed in, creating a better and more inclusive place in Hollywood. 

 

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucille_Ball

Bad Girls throughout history: Lucille Ball

PSSA

Posted on by under Civic Issues

PSSA’s 

If you attended middle school in Pennsylvania, the acronym “PSSA” is likely to bring up some sort of traumatic response. If you have never taken a PSSA, they are essentially the SAT for middle schoolers in Pennsylvania, but instead of the students receiving a score that potentially gets them into college, the school system they attended would receive more or less funding depending on how their overall student body performed on the test. I can remember being in 5th grade and asking my math teacher, “why do we need to know how to do it this way then?” after he explained that while there was an easier way to solve the problem we were doing, the PSSAs wanted us to complete the problem using this new technique. These same types of situations came up year after year in English class, science, and even history and social studies so we could practice our “response” skills.

As a scrawny 11 year-old, I didn’t truly understand the reason for the test, only that we were told to “get a good night’s sleep” that week, all of the fun posters in each of the classrooms were either taken down or covered up, and we received small cartons of juice and a greasy, pre-packaged muffin before heading to the testing rooms. But as we grew up, we got curious and soon found out that our scores determined the funding for the school that year; the better we did the more money we received. This became blatantly obvious when I was in 7th grade and our principal came into Honors English 7 and gave us all a speech on how “he believed in us” and that “we could make our school proud” by doing our very best on the upcoming test. As it turns out, the previous year had not gone as well as the administration had hoped and were trying everything they could to increase our funding for the upcoming year. 

Almost every sentence in the two paragraphs above is a major red flag for our education system. Teaching to the test? Practicing our “response” skills? “Making our school proud” by what, getting more answers right than wrong?  Even though I could just blame it on my school in particular, this is a state-wide issue. Rather than truly teaching us the skills we need to perform well on the test, teachers are being strongly encouraged to simply teach students to be good test-takers. This is leaving us underprepared for the true world and lacking certain skills and knowledge that we need to be able to successfully contribute to society. Students learn how to determine what is the “right” answer quickly instead of learning how to think through the issue. And this behavior is only rewarded. My school had a pizza and ice cream party for anyone who received an “advanced” score on their PSSAs, even though all we had really done was learn how to answer how we were “supposed” to. We learned how to quickly memorize the information we needed for that week and then immediately forget it in order to make room for the next one. 

In 2004, Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) led a series of studies on the Issues with the PSSAs and their recommendations on how to go about addressing some of them. Five main questions were addressed:

  1. Does the PSSA adequately measure the academic content specified by the State Standards contained in Chapter 4? 
  2. Are the PSSA tests internally consistent and replicable?
  3. Does the PSSA produce results that support decisions required by Chapter 4 regulations? These include a determination of whether a student has demonstrated proficiency in meeting State academic standards in reading, writing, and mathematics; the award of a State certificate of proficiency or distinction; etc. 
  4. Do the scores produced by PSSA correlate positively and significantly with pertinent scores produced on related tests such as Terra Nova, Stanford Achievement Test, etc.? 
  5. Were the methodologies used to determine performance levels (cut scores) reasonable and technically competent? 

 

In their findings, HumRRO essentially called out each individually problem with the test, mentioning problems with discrimination, degree of difficulty, and academic standards. Their recommendations are as follows:

  • A closer examination of testing materials and the degree of difficulty within each task, multiple-choice or performance based (essay/short answer)
  • Possible action if not every academic standard was tested 
  • Taking a closer look at whether or not the scores of a student accurately reflect them
  • Re-examining the relationships of certain companies and how they affect the test
  • Continuing to hold scorers accountable with a reliable system. 

 

If you are interested in reading the entire report, click here.

All of this essentially means that students and parents are in the right to believe that the PSSA’s and other tests alike are not fair, equal, or by any means an accurate evaluation of their child’s intelligence level or ability to do well in school or the outside world. Albert Einstein was one of the first people to accurately describe the American Education system with this quote: “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will spend the rest of its life thinking it’s stupid.”  The PSSAs teach middle school children that they are only worth the number they get back, and those with higher scores are those who will be successful.this is drastic on such an impressionable mind and had been proven to shape a student’s self-worth and image of themselves from as young as 5th grade. Educators spend so much time and energy on these tests that are only damaging to student’s mental state and confidence, teaching to the material on the test rather than teaching students how to learn, how to be engaged, and how to educate themselves on something that interests them. Instead, kids are learning that higher scores mean that you are worth more time, more energy and more effort. Even though we have addressed the possible benefits of the SAT, it is truly difficult to find any with the PSSA. Hopefully, these tests can either be improved or eradicated for future students and their ability to learn rather than memorize.

 

Resources 

https://thetartan.org/2013/4/15/forum/pssa

https://www.stateboard.education.pa.gov/Documents/Research%20Reports%20and%20Studies/PSSAIssues.pdf

Josephine Baker

Posted on by under Passion Blog

Never underestimate a woman, much less a woman in entertainment. That is what all of the high officers of the axis powers did when they laughed and clapped along to Josephine Baker’s while she was listening to each word they exchanged, waiting to relay it back to the Allies at  the next possible opportunity. 

Josephine Baker, born Freda Josephine McDonald, was born into poverty in St. Louis Missouri to an absent father and a mother working as a dancer for small performance groups. At 8 years old, she dropped out of school so she could begin working to support her family. While her parents had been unsuccessful in launching their careers into the entertainment industry, Baker found success at the early age of 15 when she was recruited into an African American theater group. After a few years, she moved to New York to participate in the Harlem Renaissance, a celebration of black art and culture. 

Her fame eventually took her to Paris, where she became one of the most famous dancers in the country, her most famous act involved a G-string decorated with bananas. Even though she performed for a mostly white audience, her shows were a celebration of black culture, including traditional African dancing and singing styles.

Never one to back down from a bully, Baker joined the fight against the Nazis and Adolf Hitler as WWII made its way to France. As she danced, wined, and dined high officials of both powers, Baker would listen to the conversations of the Axis leader and pass along what she had learned to the Allies in secret notes written on sheet music in invisible ink. 

When she returned to the States for a performance in a New York club, she was faced with an even greater enemy: segregation. She joined marches, became an activist for civil rights and even marched along Martin Luther King Jr. in the March on Washington. As one of the only female speakers that day, her address is both haunting and memorable. Baker speaks of the differences of how she was treated as a performer in Europe verses how she was treated as  Black women in the United States: “You know, friends, that I do not lie to you when I tell you I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.”After the sudden death of Mr. King Jr. his wife actually asked Baker to take over the movement, to which she replied “my children are too young to lose their mother”. 

As a way to fulfill her dream of showing the world that people of all ethnicities could live in harmony, Baker adopted 12 children from all different ethnicities, calling them her “rainbow tribe”. She raised her family in her French castle, Château des Milandes, where she also lived until her death in 1975. Baker not only did a great service to her country and people while she was alive, but also still serves as a reminder that no women should ever be dismissed or underestimated, you never really can know who may be your greatest threat. 

 

 

References

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/josephine-baker

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Josephine-Baker

Bad Girls Throughout History – Ann Shen (book)

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