English 190

Tell me what you think of this!

Dorothy Behre

Dr. Beecher-Field

English 190

April 21, 2010

Parental Supervision with GPS Devices

With the invention of new technology, it is easier for parents to keep track of their children. GPS locators implanted in cell phones, cars, and wristwatches, home security systems that alert the parents in their office when their child arrives home from school, and even Facebook and MySpace monitoring are just a few examples of technological advancements that can reassure parents that their children are safe. But is this really helping the parents and their children, or is it just diminishing parents’ roles? I’m inclined to think that it is the latter. 

I recently saw a Verizon commercial on TV advertising about the new Family Locator feature of their cell phones. The commercial shows a mother and her daughter in a shopping mall. The daughter, who looks about 12 or 13, gets on the escalator to go shopping on her own for the first time. “On her own” turns out to mean with her two friends who are waiting for her at the bottom of the escalator. By the time the daughter meets her friends and waves goodbye, the mom, who is still watching her from the upper level, has already activated the “Family Locator” feature of her phone. This way, she can track her daughter’s every move for as long as they are apart.

The commercial boasts that the Family Locator is for “when you need it most.” To me, the situations in which you would need the locator would be if the daughter had gone missing or had run away from her oppressive mother. Instead the daughter is in a public space, in plain sight, with her friends, and it is crucial for the mom to know whether she is going into the Bath and Body Works or Icing by Claire’s.

Is this because shopping malls have become too dangerous to walk through, even with a group of friends? In this case, then maybe it is likely that all three girls will be kidnapped in plain sight. Or perhaps the mother suspects that the girls aren’t really going shopping at all, but are taking or selling drugs. Even if the mom’s tween was dealing drugs from the mall bathroom with her friends, would she see the signal that her daughter was in the restrooms and burst into the stall to see if her suspicions are confirmed? 

This being said, I can understand the rationale behind having a GPS locator in a cell phone. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, about 797,500 children younger than 18 were reported missing in one year in the United States. Sure, this statistic is enough to make any mother nervous about letting her child out of her sight, so adding the Family Locator seems like a practical reaction. After all, GPS locators are a great resource when trying to find missing children or vehicles. Of course, any good parent wants to protect their child, and the GPS locator would be useful in worst-case scenarios. 

However, it seems to me that these devices are not just being saved for emergency situations, but are often being used in everyday situations. They are used to send parents alerts that their children have arrived to and from school safely in case they forget to call and check in. I have to wonder what would happen if the GPS ran out of battery, or if some other kind of technical glitch happened, showing that their child hadn’t arrived at school. Imagine if a parent actually had to trust their child to complete everyday activities like driving to school or walking through the mall in such a dangerous world.

Because I’m not a parent, I have a limited understanding of the situation. In my perspective, the ultimate goal of a parent is to raise their children so that they can survive on their own someday. If the parent doesn’t trust their child, or the world around them, to be able to get to and from school safely, then this could impact the child in the long run. The use of GPS tracking systems seems to contradict the goal of making children self-reliant. I’m not saying that this technology seriously impairs children’s ability to live on their own, but I think that it could make it more difficult for the parents to part with them when the time comes.

 When is it appropriate for the parents to stop tracking their children with a GPS signal? If at first a mother slips a GPS device in her kindergartner’s backpack before getting on the bus, will she continue tracking him into middle school and high school, or even college? After all, college is a very dangerous place. I have a feeling that at first, the technology is appealing because it is comforting to have ‘just in case’, but then it can also be easy to start using it just out of curiosity. Why not track your husband, or even your friends as well, if you have the means to do so? This technology, like other resources such as the Internet, is able to provide an abundance of information. The difficult part is distinguishing between what information is valuable and what is not.

Having grown up with worrisome parents (though to my knowledge I was never tracked by a GPS), I always envied generations of the past that would go out on the weekends without cell phones – or even Family Locator devices. As a teenager, the idea of my parents tracking me with a GPS seems like an insulting lack of trust. The lack of technology seems like it would be much less of a burden on both the parents and the children in everyday situations. Parents will still worry about their children, and their children are still going to make mistakes no matter what time period it is. But now, thanks to technology, it is easier for parents to be aware of what their children are doing at all hours of the day.

While it is the parents who implement the technology so that they can better supervise their children, it is the technology that is ultimately doing the supervising, and not the parents. GPS tracking systems seem like a great way to supplement parenting, however there is also a risk that they are, in some ways, replacing the parents’ job. If GPS locators continue to grow in popularity, I believe that parents will continue to act lazily as far as raising their children goes. In the modern age, it is common for both parents to be working in the office, so someone can’t be home at all times to provide fresh baked cookies for an after school snack. But this has also been happening before the time of cell phones and GPS trackers, and those children still managed to fend for themselves somehow. 

The fact of life is that one day children will grow up into adults, and it will be up to them to get to and from work safely, let alone support themselves with that job and eventually build a family of their own. I have no doubt that in the future, advancements in technology will be able to provide even more accurate and convenient ways for parents to monitor their children’s whereabouts and activities. I just hope that as technology continues to advance, the distinction between parental supervision and computerized supervision will remain in tact.

Sources

http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=2810#1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6afyQ_OdwFc

The execution of Mary Eugenia Surratt in 1865 represents capital punishment at its worst, as it was the execution of an innocent woman. This sonnet by Jill McDonough forces the reader to acknowledge that our country’s prized system of justice is flawed enough to allow for Surratt’s capital punishment despite the lack of evidence proving her guilt. McDonough illustrates Surratt’s innocence by carefully choosing specific words that fit the rigid rhyme scheme and structure of the Shakespearian sonnet. In this form, every word contributes to the poem’s tone of disappointment and injustice. McDonough’s diction and use of quotations evoke a sense of sympathy for Surratt and ultimately make the reader question the power of the government to take human life.

The poem includes no background information on the crime Mary Surratt was charged with. It opens in the gallows, “unbearably hot,” just before her execution. In this aspect, what McDonough chooses not to include speaks as strongly as what is written on the page. By not including an explanation of Surratt’s crime, McDonough implies that there was no crime to discuss. Instead, there is only the faulty trial and undue punishment. Without a description of the crime, the reader is left to interpret Surratt’s guilt based off of the poem’s description of the trial and execution.

To demonstrate the inadequacy of her trial, McDonough includes a quote from Surratt’s priest: “There was not enough evidence to hang a cat.” Through the quotes, Surratt’s priest becomes a strong voice in the poem as they often speak in first person, giving a personal perspective on Surratt’s execution. The quotes, especially in the last six lines of the poem, evoke a strong sense of Surratt’s innocence and therefore magnify how her execution was undeserved: “I lifted her, not being willing that any hand should desecrate her”… “placed her in the box with my own hands, alone.” Through these quotes, the reader is allowed into the sorrowful mind of Mary Surratt’s priest, and feels the same sorrow and impulse to protect what was left of her purity by not allowing other hands to touch her. 

The imagery in the priest’s quotes portrays Mary Surratt as the classic image of an innocent female, a “bonnet on her head,” her “limp body bending.” These quotes, along with the use of words such as “sickening” and “heartless” to describe Surratt’s execution are the obvious signs that this instance of capital punishment was an abomination to the justice system. 

McDonough provides no explanation for Mary Surratt’s execution in the poem. There was no evidence proving that Surratt had anything to do with the assassination of President Lincoln, “but Lincoln was dead, the actor tracked and shot.” The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, had been given his punishment, but somehow it wasn’t enough. This line suggests that although the principal criminal had been caught, the fact remained that Lincoln was dead, leaving the people confused and insecure, with the need to see punishment in order to feel safe again.

This component of the poem is unfortunately reminiscent of other instances in American history in which innocent people were punished after a devastating event in order for the public to feel safe again. In this sense, the assassination of President Lincoln can be compared to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Both were threats to the security of the American people, and as a result, innocent citizens were punished to establish some sort of peace of mind. Just as Japanese-Americans were put into internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in an attempt to eliminate threats to security, Surratt, and a few others, were executed in order to eliminate threats to the security of the government. 

Suspicion towards Surratt was derived from the fact that she was the landlady of John Wilkes Booth. In the poem, McDonough emphasizes that this suspicion was just as good as guilt as “the landlady, traitress, walked between two priests.” In this line, it is clear that to Surratt’s executioners, being Booth’s landlady was the same thing as being a traitress. 

The images of Mary Surratt throughout the sonnet enhance the sense that her executioners were blind to the truth. The line, “She was dressed and veiled in black, her face unseen,” evokes a sense that her prosecutors were blind to whether she was guilty or innocent, or simply didn’t care. Her face was unseen, just as her innocence was unseen, or ignored, by those who were eagerly seeking some kind of justice for the murder of President Lincoln. This blind ignorance is synonymous for heartlessness according to Surratt’s priest in the final couplet of the sonnet. Separate from the rest of the poem, it seems to make a powerful closing statement: “When I untied her, taking her body down, some heartless man said she makes a good bow.” 

The final quote that observes how Surratt’s dead body ‘bowed’ after her hanging, was written in the Washington Intelligencer. This demonstrates the public attitude towards the execution. Many people may have wanted to see her hanged, but many also believed that the military court wouldn’t actually deliver the death sentence, due to the lack of evidence and also because she was a woman. 

The hangman, Christian Rath, didn’t believe that Surratt would actually be hanged, as the United States government had never executed a woman before. The night before Surratt’s hanging, Rath fashioned the nooses, only tying five knots in Mary Surratt rope instead of the standard seven. However, it turned out that a noose with five knots was just as effective. This sonnet makes the reader question how such an execution could be allowed to happen in the esteemed American legal system.

Even without the background knowledge that Mary Surratt was executed for being a conspirator in the assassination of Lincoln, and was later found innocent of the crime, it is clear in the poem that Surratt’s execution was a wrongful one. The sonnet does not answer the reader’s questions, but instead forces the reader to acknowledge that this execution occurred. 

In her series of fifty sonnets, McDonough invites the reader to examine specific instances of history that contradict the greatness of the American legal system. In this sonnet, McDonough shows an instance in which the government’s power to take human life was wrongly used. I believe that McDonough does not seek to answer the question of whether capital punishment is right or wrong through her fifty sonnets. Instead, she emphasizes that each situation of capital punishment is different from the next, and that each case should be treated as such.

I think this illustrates why Orwell was concerned with the use of “dying metaphors”, although I’m not sure if any of these metaphors had any life to begin with.

“She is an eagle that soars through the sky to another atmosphere. In short, she carries the play with her wonderful, classical, energetic, smooth performance. Miss Eccles’ mouth is a grand canyon of excellent speech. The voice is full of fire, pain, pleasure and love; yet natural. Her voice is full of raw emotion which is born within a person. It is not taught. Moreover, her voice is a shark which swims from its mother’s belly into the blue ocean. It is the bird which is tossed from the nest, and it flies.”

- Capital Currents newsletter, Sacramento CA

I tried ballet for a few years, but something wasn’t working. Maybe you could give me some tips to make it more fun?

ach190:

You should try ballet; it’s quite fun.

dbehre190:

Last Saturday night, I found myself standing outside a small wooden lodge glowing from the white Christmas lights strung across the front porch. I wasn’t exactly sure where I was, although I had driven; I had just let myself be navigated by a friend in the passenger’s seat. All that I was sure of was that I had passed through Pumpkintown, SC at some point, and that my GPS had lost a signal a good twenty twisty miles ago.

From within the lodge came the thud of feet stomping on the floor in rhythm with a pair of fiddles and an old, weary sounding man on the microphone calling out the steps. Once I stepped inside, I saw that the building was crammed full of people. While I’ve been contra dancing before, the energy on the dance floor of River Falls Lodge in Marietta, SC was more intense than I’ve ever seen.

What last Saturday taught me is that one of the quickest ways to get to know someone is by dancing with them. Choose whatever kind of dance you will, whether it’s hip-hop or ballet; I’ll stick with contra dancing.

I like to compare contra dancing with the balls they have in Pride and Prejudice, just a little countrified. The basic concept is the same – you can go into a crowded ballroom (or barn) full of strangers, and walk out having met a dozen new and interesting people. Although the conversation is limited on the dance floor, since most of the time you and your partner are spinning in circles around each other, I find it offers a rewarding lesson in nonverbal communication. As an English major, I cherish the value of words – but in some occasions I find that things are more fun without them, especially at a dance. Contra dancing is a nice vacation from words, and is the best medium for communicating without words because of the way it’s designed. At the beginning of each dance, you pair up with one partner. Throughout the course of the dance you end up dancing with everyone in your section of the room, giving you the opportunity to come face to face with everyone for at least a few seconds.

From my experience, I’ve found that you’ll find the largest concentration of friendly people in one room at a contra dance. In place of words, smiles are exchanged. If you haven’t been contra dancing before, even the most experienced people are very understanding when you bump into them or trod on their feet. Contra is not just about showing off your moves, but about having fun with large group of people. It’s an occasion for men to don the kilts they’ve been keeping in their closets, for women to kick off their shoes and for everyone to forget what other people think of them at least for one evening.

Last Saturday night, I found myself standing outside a small wooden lodge glowing from the white Christmas lights strung across the front porch. I wasn’t exactly sure where I was, although I had driven; I had just let myself be navigated by a friend in the passenger’s seat. All that I was sure of was that I had passed through Pumpkintown, SC at some point, and that my GPS had lost a signal a good twenty twisty miles ago.

From within the lodge came the thud of feet stomping on the floor in rhythm with a pair of fiddles and an old, weary sounding man on the microphone calling out the steps. Once I stepped inside, I saw that the building was crammed full of people. While I’ve been contra dancing before, the energy on the dance floor of River Falls Lodge in Marietta, SC was more intense than I’ve ever seen.

What last Saturday taught me is that one of the quickest ways to get to know someone is by dancing with them. Choose whatever kind of dance you will, whether it’s hip-hop or ballet; I’ll stick with contra dancing.

I like to compare contra dancing with the balls they have in Pride and Prejudice, just a little countrified. The basic concept is the same – you can go into a crowded ballroom (or barn) full of strangers, and walk out having met a dozen new and interesting people. Although the conversation is limited on the dance floor, since most of the time you and your partner are spinning in circles around each other, I find it offers a rewarding lesson in nonverbal communication. As an English major, I cherish the value of words – but in some occasions I find that things are more fun without them, especially at a dance. Contra dancing is a nice vacation from words, and is the best medium for communicating without words because of the way it’s designed. At the beginning of each dance, you pair up with one partner. Throughout the course of the dance you end up dancing with everyone in your section of the room, giving you the opportunity to come face to face with everyone for at least a few seconds.

From my experience, I’ve found that you’ll find the largest concentration of friendly people in one room at a contra dance. In place of words, smiles are exchanged. If you haven’t been contra dancing before, even the most experienced people are very understanding when you bump into them or trod on their feet. Contra is not just about showing off your moves, but about having fun with large group of people. It’s an occasion for men to don the kilts they’ve been keeping in their closets, for women to kick off their shoes and for everyone to forget what other people think of them at least for one evening.

Blue bottle trees are my favorite.

Name: Dorothy Behre

Major: English

Minor: Chinese

Hometown: Charleston, SC

Favorite Book: Omnibus by Roald Dahl

Favorite Movies: Amelie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Spirited Away

Favorite Band/Musician: Andrew Bird, The Shins, Regina Spektor, Johannes Brahms