For the past decade, schools, teachers, parents and students have disputed over the issue of regulating student attire. The school uniform debate is a polarizing matter, usually with the school educators and officials on one end and the students on the other. Parents on the other hand are usually stuck in the middle of the crossfire, most pushing for their children to be allowed to express themselves and a minority group on the school’s end. At the end of the day, there should not be any debate in the first place; it is evident that the benefits of school uniform far outweigh the benefits of not having them.Benefits such as safety come into play. Parents would want their children to be in a safe and conducive environment for studying, and by having school uniforms, it would help to decrease or eliminate gang activity. Since most gangs are recognized by what they wear, school uniforms would definitely eliminate gang colors and logos, removing some of the intimidations and prevent the fophasize more on inner beauty and de-emphasizing outer appearances. It facilitates in instilling morals such as modesty and help students to understand and know that a person’s unique personality traits and gifts are the real beauty in a person and that apparel or outer appearance is only skin deep.School uniforms also takes away some of the dreaded pressures of social conformity that each and every student goes through. It “levels the playing field” by giving students who cannot afford the latest fad or expensive apparel a way out of those peer pressures, diminishing social and economic barriers between students. At the same time, putting a cap on the parent-child cost, making it financially easier to raise a child.With all that being stated, those who disagree suggest removing the gang members from schools and placing them in an alternative learning environment such as a boot camp, allowing students the freedom of expression and still ensuring safety. Ironically, safety of the studentmpelling students to wear school uniform, it sends a subjective concise early-life message to students that conformity to rules is important and that creativity and freedom of expression are not and that at the end of the day, authority is allowed to run riot and abuse its power, constraining our right and freedom to express ourselves.Students also learn that their individuality, political opinions and religious rights are trivial, as is their education, where students are regularly suspended for not complying to uniform code even if their school works are excellent.However as mentioned before, the advantages of school uniform are vast compared to the disadvantages of it. By sending the gang members to somewhere like a boot camp, it is clearly not cost-effective as more resources would be used in order to tend to the difficult students coupled with the fact that it also encourages discrimination by singling out individuals that comes from rough backgrounds or simply those who made the nts will be in risk of making the wrong decisions time and time again. That is when having school uniforms would lay the very basic foundation of respecting a simple rule.School is also where the next lawyers, bankers, doctors are trained; it is where they are given the fundamentals of working in this society, where rules and boundaries are to be strictly followed. The school uniform would send a message to the students that they are in the “business of learning”, which in turn would help them learn to respect limits.Yet one might argue that the end result of school uniforms would nurture out apathetic human robots, people who are incapable of expressing themselves, people who lack creativity. It is a known fact that fashion is important in creating one’s own identity, and that the industry has created a need in obtaining the latest article of clothing or accessory so that people strutting it will appear “cool”.Advertising contributed to this phenomenon by attaching certain specific cht in anyway restrict creativity. On contrary, it encourages students to think outside of the box even more as they only have so much to work with.Even when you have identical twins, they both have different personalities so it is no excuse that students cannot express their personality. They can express themselves with different accessories such as how the way they wear their hair, and for girls, how they wear their makeup. School uniform helps students focus on the importance on personality and internal characteristics and at the same time putting less emphasis on appearance, which actually might help students bring out those qualities that make them even more unique than they ever will be. Ultimately, it is teaching our future leaders to be creative and expressive within boundaries.Having said all that, phasing out school uniforms would bring more harm upon society than it actually seems and by giving students too much freedom, it would only encourage them to run riot with the power oom.
Memoirs of a GeishaBy Author GoldenAuthor Golen’s Memoirs of a Geisha takes place in Japan during the mid-1900,a time period when western culture and technology were installing into the nation.The story is a fiction which aims to unravel the lives of geishas and the culturesurrounding them.It begins when a strikingly pretty girl of an impoverished fishing family, Chiyo,is taken and sold to a geisha house in Kyoto, where she was later renamed as Sayuri.Initially, Sayuri was reluctant to beome a geisha. However, that was before she metthe man who changed her life. One day, she finds herself fallen in love with aprestigious man, the chairman of a renowned company, as he takes notice of thedevastated her and offers her a handkerchief to cheer her up. From then on, to catchhis attention again, she swears to be the prime geisha of Kyoto to serve him. Thatbecame her goal and only desire in her seemingly futureless life. Despite her firmdetermination, it wasn’t so easy to become a geisha. Sayuri has to go through aseries of great challenges and difficult vicissitudes to be qualified to become a geisha.Luckily, Mameha, the most prestigious geisha in the district, willingly asks to becomeSayuri’s sister to teach her. To become Sayuri’s sister, Mameha makes a bet with themother of the okiya; and to win means that Sayuri has to win the mother’s will toappoint her as the daughter. So, Sayuri’s lessons begin. As an apprentice, Sayuridiscovers that she has to invent and work out an image of herself as a decent,call, a complicated game. From Mameha, She learns how to attract men by givingthem only one glance, and please them to gain their fondness of her. Gradually,Sayuri becomes more and more popular. Later, she even sells out her virginity (alsoknown as the mitsuage in the story.) for the highest amount ever bid in the history,topping Mameha’s original record. In the end, mother appointed Sayuri as thedaughter, marking the downfall of Hatsumomo, who has always hated Mameha andbossed Sayuri around, and the breakup of the friendship between Sayuri and Pumpkin,who was Sayuri’s only friend and apprentice to Hatsumomo.After Sayuri takes over the Kyoto geisha house, the World War II breaks out andthe economy quickly drops into an abyss within a year. Businessmen like thechairman lose all their properties and money and eventually go bankrupt. Likewise,the geisha houses lose their customers. Gradually, everything starts to come back ontrack. Finally, Sayuri even decides to go to a trip with the chairman and his partnerNobu, who has always been particularly interested in Sayuri. During the trip, Sayurimakes a risky decision to stop Nobu from closing in to her so she’d get a chance withthe chairman. She wants to make him crestfallen. To proceed this selfish plan, sheasks for Pumpkin’s favor to take Nobu to her room at certain time. However Sayuriis having sex with a man, it isn’t Nobu who opened the door to discern the disgrace, itis the chairman. Betrayed by her best friend, Sayuri thought her goal in life isbasically over. But later on, the chairman shows that he understands Sayuri’sreasons in doing this. More to that, he even asks to become Sayuri’s dana, tellingher that he likes her too, and he only steps down because he knows Nobu liked her too.Now with Nobu out of the picture, he isn’t going to wait anymore.From this novel, we can see the hardships geishas have to go through behind their superficial beauty. We realize that their lives are not always as pretty as theirappearances. In fact, Memoirs of a Geisha isn’t just merely about the life of ageisha, there are many themes hidden between the lines. We see the fragility of thebond between friends, the oppression of desire, the agony that follows it, the tenacityin chasing a dream, and the fight between free will and fate. These themes areshown in melancholy manners, thus enhancing the messages the author encoded.For example, although the story has a happy ending, it is still somewhat sad. In theend, Sayuri finds out the lost friendship with Pumpkin when she is betrayed. It isdepressing to lose a friend because one succeeds in an all-or-nothing competition. Ithink the story is great because it explicitly shows many feelings and difficultiespeople encounter in lives. Especially the bitter-sweet ending, it really makes meponder many themes discussed above. Overall, I really like the story.In conclusion, we readers can see that the story “Memoirs of a Geisha” is writtenas a biography. Through the story of Sayuri, we readers are given an insight ofthe ancient culture and lives of geishas, women artists who entertain menthrough artistic means. They have to go through many difficulties and acceptnumerous restrictions like we do, or sometimes perhaps even more. Anyway, thenovel does a successful job of revealing this ancient tradition in Japan whileshowing the readers that life may be permeated with miseries, but there certainlyare ways to find the beauty and innocence within it.
Who Moved My Cheese?I read Who moved my Cheese? by Spencer Johnson back in elementary school for fun,but I also received a lot of knowledge unknowingly. This book taught me how peoplereact to significant changes in their lives, and how to deal with them.Sniff, one of the main characters of this book, finds cheese by his sense of smell. Scurry,not only uses deliberate thoroughness but also efficiency and speed to find his cheese. Sniffand Scurry are common mice in a maze where cheese is hidden in various places.Like these two mice, two “little people”, Hem and Haw also try to find the elusive cheese. Butunlike Scurry and Sniff, Hem and Haw use their complex thinking ability to develop moresophisticated and efficient methods to find cheese.One day, the mice and the little people each find their own cheese at the end of thecorridors in Cheese Station C. There were many kinds of cheeses in Cheese Station C. Butlater they discovered that there were none left. The situation at Cheese Station C had changed.The mice were willing to make change and leave Cheese Station C for a new supply,but Hem and Haw were afraid of change and unwilling to leave.While Hem and Haw were still stuck in making their decision, Sniff and Scurry were doing finein their pursuit of new cheese. Finally, they had found what they wanted, while Hemand Haw were still deciding. Finally, Hem decided to adapt to change but Haw stillwanted to stay, so in the end Hem just left Haw there to find new cheese by himself.This book taught me many ideas and lessons. Hem wrote on the walls of the maze lessons of his adventure. “When you move beyond your fears, you feel free”“Old beliefs do not lead you to new cheese”“Changes happens, anticipate change, monitor change, adapt to change quickly,change, enjoy change, be ready to change quickly and enjoy it again.” Of course,the mice and cheese are just a metaphor for us humans in modern times. Thecheese to us can be wealth, prosperity, romance, family, etc.. Hem andHaw dealt with the lack of cheese in two different ways, and we can learn alesson on that. We should all adapt to change, and allow ourselves to break oldhabits.Normally I don’t enjoy reading books, but this one was very memorable to me. I didn’texpect this book to teach me so many different lessons, I was very impressed. I feltlike I learned more from this book than a whole semester in school.END