“What I Learned”

Part 1: Educated Intro Questions

Directions: Answer these questions THOUGHTFULLY. Each will require a thorough explanation.
Take the first 15 mins to write your answers and the next 15 to discuss in groups.

1.What does it mean to be educated?

Educated has many different meanings and has different implications as well with the context.
If you are to say with no context that someone is educated, you usually mean that they are
smart, whether naturally or through schooling and covers a broad spectrum of a subject or
subject. But if in a single subject (context based) that they are successful in what they do and in
the given context is able to make well informed decisions.

2. What responsibility do parents have in educating their children?

Parents have the responsibility to give their children a politically neutral education with
understanding of current day events and issues still being brought up. To give an education, all
sides of a subject must be taught, like talked about in TOK, there are many lenses for people to
look at a single object.

3. How important is it to have an understanding of the world around you (street smarts), or is it
important to have formal or informal (learning from family, friends, experiences, etc.)
education?
It is important to have a mix of both as you need to be able to think fast as well as in depth. The
meaning of being able to understand real life situations (street smart) and come up with your
own reactions is just as important as book smart or taught knowledge. Especially in certain
situations the difference between safety and not being able to protect yourself or care for
yourself in the real world is based mostly on the street smart aspect.

4. How much of what you believe is influenced by your parents? What beliefs/values have you
inherited from your family?
My political beliefs were affected by my parents and my view toward the educated world as
well has been shaped by them. What I want to be when I grow up and the morals I want to
have as well were taken from them. My political views have now changed drastically from what
they were even 2 years ago and about the only thing that has stayed the same is my liking of
the free market economic structure and other economic ideas. From my parents I have learned
who I can be, what I can do, and learning directly from them I know how to and how not to
treat people I love.

5. Should family values and beliefs go unquestioned or be accepted at face value?

No, Far from that, I know personally that just because a family does it does not make it okay, if
there is a husband who talks about how he abuses his wife and how he thought it was okay
because his father did it to his mother, does not make it right just because it is how his family
was run. This ideology (not the beating part but more or less the deserting part) does run in my
father’s side of the family. The idea of “it is old so don't question it” is what has us repeat
mistakes over and over again. Every part of a family’s time, relationships, and values should
always be under review or change, because nothing is ever the same twice, so you encounter a
new situation every time because of your prior experiences.

Part 2: “What I Learned”

Directions: Use the cartoon linked on the canvas page for the following questions. Be sure to
read the context information on the first page.

1.Identify one part of this cartoon, a single frame or several, that you find to be an especially
effective synergy of written and visual text. Why do you think the section you chose works so
well?

I like the largest panel in the “sentimental education” page, as it has the most on what she has
learned and the different applications of them, how not one of them is art or the profession she
has gone into (other than the spelling for the english portion of it. It is so chaotic

2. On the second page, the middle frame is a large one with a whole list of what Roz Chast
learned “Up through sixth grade.” Is she suggesting that all these things are foolish or
worthless? Explain your response.

None of them were engaging for her and they were all very tangential and specific studies that
did not end up contributing to her job. Unless she was trying to depict a space themed novel,
then she has no specific need to study astronomy. She is suggesting that the things she learned
in school are mostly useless to her now, but that there are still applications of the other topics.

3. The three-page cartoon presents a narrative, a story. Discuss the extent to which Chast uses
the techniques of a fiction writer, such as plot, character, and setting.

The character's features change throughout the comic as her buck teeth go away and she starts
to wear glasses. The colors and the school setting shows the topic of being just towards school
and trying to just show how bored and out she felt from the rest of the schooling world. As well
as the meaning of school to her as the color heightens in the

4. Chast subtitles her cartoon “A Sentimental Education…,” which is a reference to a French

novel of that title written by Gustave Flaubert in 1869. The American writer Henry James
described Sentimental Education as far inferior to Flaubert’s earlier and more successful novel
Madame Bovary; in fact, he characterized the 1869 work as “elaborately and massively dreary.”
Why do you think Chast uses this reference to Flaubert’s novel? Or do you think that she is not
specifically alluding to Flaubert but, rather, to more generalized “sentimental” notions of
education? Consider her audience as you respond to these questions.
Having the page called “sentimental education” is a direct reference to the book especially with
the cursive lettering and the deep criticism towards how her school started to teach her the
non-important things. It is also called “elaborately and massively dreary” as the different
subjects seen in the main panel are tangential to everything she needs in life and displays them
in a confusing layout for the

5. What, ultimately, is Chast’s critique? What is the relationship she sees among learning, K-12
school, and education?

Chast’s critique is