9/24/19 Nouraldeen Ibrahim A very maturing lesson PD5

9/24/19

Sophomores 2020

Nouraldeen Ibrahim

Period 5

Blogger #10

Aim: How does the exposition of Lord of the Fliesset up the novel to question how society structures transition from childhood to adulthood?

• Today we began the lesson by filling out a worksheet called “Acting your Age” that required us to fill out our prediction of the legal ages of certain things in NY(https://www.dropbox.com/s/e0hquhymk1m7ak6/Legal%20Ages%20-%20New%20York%20Times%20-%20Lesson%201.pdf?dl=0). We were provided an allotted time to fill out the worksheet and discuss our answers with our group members. Then the class began saying their responses and they were similar but people were confused of the specifications. For instance, for the age a person can drive a car with a license, there was different exceptions that made the answer vary and made the class speculate. Many of the ages were underestimated because me and my peers did not recognize the responsibility all of these legal activities needed.

•  What I learned from this activity is that the responsibility a person is able to handle translates to the rights he could receive. Thus, for each legal age, the responsibility needed for the action was taken into accountability and was a main reason in deciding a legal age. For example, most of the class initially thought that the legal age for renting a car was from 17-20, but we found out it was actually 25 since renting a car requires responsibility and is costly. This could be related to theLord of the Flies since the boys were put into a very rough situation and had to quickly gain more maturity to survive in this jungle.

• We were then given a New York Times Article to read named “How Old is Old Enough?” by Catherine Rampell that discusses the difficulty of finding when the actual threshold between adulthood and childhood is (https://www.dropbox.com/s/42ff11fkx00xjsj/How%20Old%20Is%20Old%20Enough_%20-%20The%20New%20York%20Times.pdf?dl=0). It also describes the difficulty of deciding whether children should be accountable for things they are not mature enough to handle. The article said, “Professor Steinberg,…,has found through laboratory experiments that young teenagers seek out risk and have trouble controlling their impulses.”(Rampell 2009)
• This video explains the reason for the current age of adulthood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iYWgGs9UYs&feature=share
• Each group then made up a theoretical situation that discusses each group members jurisdiction on the consequences that should be given to a child who commits a crime. The theoretical situation that my group imposed was if a child was to purposely severely injure his sibling who is getting the attention he longs for. We came to a consensus that the child should be penalized with the ruling of the judge and not been forgiven since their should still be a small level of responsibility at any age.

• This website describes our situation above and how parents should react to a situation like it: https://www.aamft.org/Consumer_Updates/Sibling_Violence.aspx

• We then took a look at an excerpt from Lord of the Flies that deals with Jack struggling to stab a pig because of a lack of responsibility and an initial experience of something he never had to do before. This relates to the 2 previous activities we were doing since this experience is a transition from childhood to adulthood because of the great maturity the kids will gain from this experience. Even though, Jack struggled stabbing the pig he will soon get used to it and transition from his childish state.
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• Finally, during the end of the period we see the summary and analysis from this topic to the Lord of the Flies. Not only does it show a theme of maturity but also gaining masculinity since this was in the time of World War II.

• All in all, I learned the different legal ages in NY and the reason for the different legal ages(level of responsibility expected at that age). We learned this to relate it to the book we are reading, Lord of the Flies, and realize that they will need to hatch from the cocoons they are in and become responsible and mature people from the difficulties they will face on this jungle. I will use what I learned by making inferences from reading the book and noticing when the boys are learning, growing, and maturing from past mistakes.  

                                                                

Sources:

• Rampell, Catherine. “How Old Is Old Enough?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 14 Nov. 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/weekinreview/15ramp.html.
•  Advanced Solutions International, Inc. Sibling Violence, https://www.aamft.org/Consumer_Updates/Sibling_Violence.aspx