“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?

Being educated means not how much information you know, but how well you can inform
yourself of things to make an opinion about situations in life. I definitely wouldn’t base how
educated someone is on the amount of education that they’ve gotten because not everyone
has access to the same recourses. Being educated can come from life experiences because I
would define “education” as simply learning new information and being able to apply them to
other situations. It doesn’t have to be school information like math or science, it just has to be a
valuable education. I would say that the education system being called the “education” system,
comes from the word education meaning learning of some sort, not the other way around
where being “educated” comes from the education system, because it doesn’t have to. As long
as someone can understand how to get the information that they need to form opinions, then I
would say they are educated in some sort.

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

I think that parents have a pretty big responsibility in educating their children, but I don’t think
that every situation needs to be like that. Some parents may want their kids to learn from their
own experiences, while others may prefer giving advice from their life to their kids in order for
them to navigate the world. Both ways have different pros and cons, and I think that both work.
I think that a mix of both is a good way for someone to go, but in general, I think that yes
parents do have a responsibility to educate their children as they are the ones who take care of
them, and oftentimes a child won’t have anyone else to learn from for a long time.

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?

I think that street smarts are so so so very important and oftentimes more important than
formal education. Learning from informal situations is great and the reason behind that is it
caters to everyone. Formal education, at least in the US, is almost always a set standard with
one way of teaching a large number of people, so it is hard for the content to strike everyone in
the same way. Informal education, however, is literally catered to a specific person because they
are the ones that experience it, and even more, they will interpret it in a way that makes sense
to them. Everyone might have a different takeaway from a same situation, but that’s what
makes people people. In today’s world, unfortunately, everything is based around getting a job
and making money, so in that case, most of the important things you are going to want are
going to come from formal education. However at this stage of my life, since I don’t have a
career, informal education is so much more important to me because I take a lot of interest in
social situations and interactions, and learning from my everyday life is something I value a lot.

4. How much of what you believe is influenced by your parents? What beliefs/values have you
inherited from your family?

I think that a ton of my base values definitely came from my mom, but my personality was
formed from other places I think and my judgment of the world. When I look at my personality
and compare it to both my mom’s and my dad’s, I see much more in common with my mom,
and I often am even glad that I am not like my dad. This makes a lot of sense because I live with
her, and I spend more time with her. This relates to the more general part of the question
because I think that many people would relate to this in the way that if they spend more time
with their parents as children, they will inherit more, and if they don’t, then they won’t inherit
as much. For myself personally, I think that my overall kind nature probably comes from my
mom, but with this along with other traits, I observe that I am very different from my parents so
I think that a lot of my believes are inherited from my own personal experiences, not from my
parents.

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

I think that you in society, family values shouldn’t go completely unquestioned because
oftentimes those values can be hurtful to other people. It is important to understand that
everyone will have their own opinion, but both parties willing to be open minded and sensitive
when discussing beliefs established from a previous situation is important to being a good
human. As long as people can take a step back and see how their thoughts and values are
affecting others, then for the most part it would be fine. But this doesn’t mean that someones
beliefs should just always be dismissed because “it was they way they were raised.” Everyone
has potential for growth and change and it shouldn’t be something people are reluctant to do
out of fear of being wrong. It is good to get a base of values and morals from your family, but to
truly thrive as a person, having an open mind with those values and being willing to have them
be critiqued by others whom it affects is important.

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?
The second frame of the entire comic is very effective because of the relatability of the
situation, and the way it sets up what she is going to talk about later in the comic. This frame is
the same idea as the relatable moment when millions of teenagers see a video on TikTok, and
they can somehow all relate to it and have this big collective moment. This panel achieves this
same effect and brings many different readers of this comic together to a mutual
understanding, because we’ve all had that one person telling us that what we thought was
normal, isn’t.

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.

On this page, she is not saying that these things are worthless in general, they just don’t have
any relevance to her. If someone wants to be a math teacher when they grow up, then of course
they aren’t going to see the material they learn in math as worthless. However, to Chast, this
information just has no relevance to her future as she sees it, and this type of education just
isn’t for her. This highlights the fact that not everyone learns the same way, and not everyone is
going to take the same path to get to the place they want to be because everyone for the most
part will want to go somewhere different in their life. So no, she is not saying that these things
are foolish and worthless, she is only saying that they have no relevance to her future so
therefore she has no reason to care about it if she doesn’t see any point in it.

*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 cartoon shifts through many different settings like the bus, classrooms, and outdoors, but it
all follows a school learning setting and the character’s experience throughout it. Different
characters are introduced like in a book or short story, but they don’t need super in-depth
explanations and background to still be understood. There is also dialogue and things that a
fiction writer would almost definitely include in their story. The characters and art style are also
relatable to a children’s book instead of just showing her story. Her story about her experiences
also has a beginning, middle, and end, with the process shown across the three sections.

*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.
The title of the cartoon being similar to the story shows how although her descriptions of what
she went through are general to her thoughts, everyone can still apply themselves to it in a
more specific sense to their experiences. The fact that the novel was “massively dreary” reflects
how she spoke about her experiences through her school education, and those words may very
well describe how she felt in those situations. I think that it is very much possible that she
named her comic this on purpose, as this seems like it wouldn’t be a very common name that
people came up with, so I think the connection is definately there and it works well for the
subject of her cartoon.

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

Chast is saying that education through school is set to kind of a standard and from the moment
you enter the environment, you are expected to uphold to a set bar of behavior. The education
system is unfair because not everyone is going to be able to intake information in the same way,
but everything is taught the same way. She also highlights the fact that she learned lots of
information that she didn’t care about, and it was also not that important as she was still able to
get through school fine without actually paying attention to it all fully. It’s almost like all of the
material information was just filler for the school to make her a “good” student, but you have to
question if the reason they are teaching people to follow rules and be “good,” is to just have a
person in society that will conform to the situation with no questions. Overall, it seems like her
view on school is that it can be hard to find the point in schooling when it is not relevant to ones
interests.