Non-Fiction Critical Analysis
     The Upfront article "China's Cram Schools," by Brook Larmer is about the Maotanchang High School in China. The Maotanchang High School is one of China's cram schools where 20,000 students train for multiple hours to prepare themselves for China's national-college entrance exam also known as the Gaokao. For many, passing this test is the most important thing in their lives. I think that putting so much stakes on one test isn't right. I believe it should be based on interviews and past records, they should let the colleges decide who they want.
     Yang Wei was a former student as at Maotanchang High School. He spent 3 years getting to school at 6:20 and getting home at 10:50. At Maotanchang High School, all they do is study, study, study. Yang said "If you connected all the practice tests I've taken over the past 3 years," he said "they would wrap all the way around the world." This just shows how much they do and how much the students at Maotanchang care about this test. Many families spend most of their money sending their kids to this school so they can go to a good college. An example is "Cao's family was heartbroken. His father had worked 12 hour days, 50 weeks a year, building high rises in eastern China to pay the Maotanchang fees." This is the life that kids who don't get into a college can expect. A lot of manual labor in construction or factories. Cao said "It's a lot of pressure," said Cao. "My mother constantly reminds me that I have to study hard, because my father is out working construction far from home to pay my school fees." The students feel all this pressure because they're not the only ones who need this. Their parents need it too.
    I personally don't think it's right to put so much into one test. It puts too much pressure on students because it's all or nothing. If you don't pass it then you can only expect to be working in factories or construction for the rest of your life. They should let the colleges pick who they want, because you can't learn personality through a test, you need things like interviews to determine this.
     I think that China's school system is messed up. They make it all or nothing, there's too big a risk for many people. It's not only students who suffer if they don't do well on the test, the parents who work 12 hours a day to pay the school fees suffer too because they've just wasted 4 years of their lives and so much money putting it all on their child to do well.

Zachary Gee
Blog Post
     My book "Quarantine: the Saints," by Lex Thomas is about a boy named Will and how he's trapped inside a high school with hundreds of violent kids. He falls into a gang called the Saints and becomes best friends with their leader, Gates. Gates turns out to be crazy and Will tries to escape him, but Gates is obsessed and won't let him get away. The characters in my book have many different characteristics.
     Will is a leader. He chooses his own path and does what he wants. He isn't a follower. For example, he went on the Skaters PA system and challenged Sam to a fight in the quad. When he was fighting Sam he shouted that Varsitie's whole food supply was being left unprotected to the other gangs and varsitie's food supply was gone. Gates follows Will although Gates is the leader of the gang.
     Gates is crazy, a follower, and make decisions before thinking about the results. For example, Gates scalped one of his best friends because he confronted Gates about the fact that he killed his brother Colton and then tried to get Will to say that he loved him. Gates follows Will everywhere because he thinks that Will is a new version of his dead brother and that he'll protect him from the real Colton who he believes is real. Gates never thinks about he end result. He does what he feels is right even if it's totally wrong. He kidnapped Sam because he wanted control over the parents so he could get the kids in the school whatever they wanted.
     Will and Gates are the main characters in my book. At the end Will realizes that Gates is insane and that he should get away from him. When Will graduated Gates went insane. I think that Gates should really think about what he does and make his own decisions. I think Will should reconsider who he trusts because he always manages to choose the wrong people.

Zach Gee

Revised Blog Post

            In my book “Scat,” written by Carl Hiassen, Scat is about a panther in the swamp and trying to reunite it with it’s mother. On a field trip, Nick and Marta’s teacher, Ms. Starch disappears in a fire. She is saved by Twilly and agrees to help Twilly reunite the baby Panther Cub with its mother. Duane is framed for the fire and Nick and Marta try to find out what happened to Ms. Starch. Justice was served by many different people, even those who I didn’t expect to serve justice. As always, there were people who stood in the way of justice and caused injustice.    

The people who stand in the way of justice and serve injustice are the Red Diamond Oil Company. They are drilling oil illegally from state land and on the day of the school trip to the swamp they light a fire and try to frame Duane for it. During the fire, Ms. Starch disappears. When the fire department and police come to investigate, they find that it’s arson. Their first suspect is Duane because he has previously had an arson charge for lighting a billboard on fire. However, he lit the fire because it was advertising the flight that his mom took when she left him and his dad. The Red Diamond Oil Company stands in the way of justice by preventing Twilly and Ms. Starch from getting the cub back with it’s mother. They scared away the panther by trying to shoot it because they don’t want anyone to find their illegal drilling site.

Justice is served by Twilly, Marta, Nick, Ms. Starch, and Duane. At first Nick and Marta don’t know about the panther cub and Twilly’s mission of reuniting it with it’s mom, but on their way to finding out what happened to Ms. Starch, they stumble upon their operation . Twilly and Duane are the original two who try to help the cub, then Twilly saved Ms. Starch in the fire and she wanted to help. Twilly serves justice by messing with the Red Diamond Oil Companies illegal operation and helping the cub. Ms. Starch serves justice by taking care of the cub while Twilly tries to find the mother. Duane serves justice by using his tracking skill to help find the mother. Nick and Marta serve justice by helping the mother find it’s cub when the Red Diamond Oil Company tries to shoot it.  In the end they reunite the mother with it’s cub and shed light on the Red Diamond Oil Companies illegal operation.

I didn’t expect Duane and Ms. Starch to serve justice. This is because at the beginning of the book, Carl Hiassen depicts Ms. Starch as that mean teacher that no one likes. She the person who gives a lot of classwork and homework and you just don’t expect that person to be serving justice. I didn’t expect Duane to serve justice because at the beginning of the book I thought he was just a big kid who wanted to be left alone and never did his homework. Duane surprised me. Duane and Ms. Starch get into disagreements, and in one of these he eats her pencil. Ms. Starch helped take care of the cub and Duane was one of the main reasons for the reunion, so in the end they served justice.

The social injustice that this book brings to light is greed. The Red Diamond Oil Company was willing to kill a panther, drill illegally on state land, and to set a fire just to make a couple more bucks. I don’t this that this is right. There are more important things in the world than money. If you don’t have it, you don’t have it. This book did a good job showing that.

Blog Post
     My book, The power of Six, by Pittacus Lore is about these aliens from a planet named Lorien. They look like an everyday teenager, except they have special powers, such as fire resistance and invisibility.  In this book, John decides that he wants to split up with Six to go and get his chest back. I disagree with this decision because as a result his friend got captured and he almost died. I think that he should've went to Santa Maria with Six to find the others so that they could team up and come back for it later.
     I disagree with John's decision. I feel like he let his personal views get in front of doing what was right for getting back to Lorien and rebuilding it. If he went to Santa Maria with Six, then he would've met number 7, Marina and Ella number 10. Then he would've gone with them to Africa and found number 8. Also, by going into the cave, he knew it would be near impossible to get back back out of the cave because of all the traps. When they did get into the cave, it took them almost all the time to find the chest when it was in the most obvious place. It was where the monstrous beasts were. If they had found it sooner then I would've been ok with their decision because then they would have been able to get back out safely and meet up with Six at the designated location. John should have cleared his head and realized that this was a bad decision. It was his fault anyways, because he's the one who wanted to go back to Paradise and that's where they lost the chest.
     Another reason why I disagree with this decision is because in the process of finding his so important chest, he let Sam get captured by the mogs. Now they're gonna torture him for information about John and the others location when he has no idea where any of them are. He is going to torture that could've been prevented. And John didn't go back in for Sam, because 8 thought it would be too dangerous. It was an ill-advised decision and  now they might never see Sam again.
     They never should've gone into the cave, they should've gone with six to find Marina and Ella. Sam was captured in the process and they went in without a plan. They went in recklessy and as a result Sam is being tortured. John should think more about what he needs to do next time.

http://meganwatersblog.blogspot.com/

I read Megan's blog post about "Should Athletes Be Paid?" Veronica Majeral, and I thought it was great. I thought it really went into how the author felt about the topic, and how she showed it in her article. It was also informative and was clear about what the author thought. The article is about a debate on whether or not college athletes should be played for playing in college athletic programs such as basketball and football. Most people would have wrote about the two sides and which side they agreed with, but Megan told us about the author and which side she sided with.

I found it interesting how she found pieces of evidence that proved that the author sided with the side that says that they should be paid. She uses a piece of evidence that says "There are nights that I go to bed and I'm starving," and then she starts to talk about how this piece of evidence is surprising and is something that you wouldn’t expect a big time athlete’s life to be like. I agree with Megan, I do believe that this fact if life threatening and that if I heard this I would say that they should get paid because they spend their college careers bringing glory to their school and making them proud. Yet, they don’t have enough money to buy food so they’re not hungry.

Megan also writes a paragraph about how the author tries to persuade us to the side that college athletes should get paid. She comments on how popular athletes bring millions of dollars to the colleges along with new recruits and increase alumni donation. I like how she included this piece of evidence in her post because it makes the reader feel resentful of the colleges because the athletes go home starving, while the colleges get all the money and all the benefits of having a good athlete inside their athletic system.The least they could do is give the athletes some money to get food and other necessities.

Megan also puts in her own opinion on what colleges should do and how her point of view changed after reading this article. Her opinion is that they should get paid, but the money should go into trust funds made for the athletes. The players aren’t being treated fairly for all the benefits that they bring to school. I also agree with her thoughts about trust fund because the athletes might blow all their money in one night, this way they can’t.

Non-Fiction Critical Analysis #2
     The article "The Sixth Extinction," by Elizabeth Kolbert in the Upfront Magazine is about a possible extinction occurring now. The author gives a little background about the earlier extinctions such as the dinosaur extinction and then explains why a sixth extinction may be happening. She also adds a timeline showing all of the earlier extinctions. The author's purpose of writing this article was to inform the reader about animals that are facing extinction right now.
     Elizabeth Kolbert goes into some detail about earlier  extinctions. She talks about the oldest extinction saying "The first one took place 444 million years ago, when creatures like trilobites, which resembled horseshoe crabs, and conodonts, which looked like eels, roamed the ocean." This quote gives the reader a picture in their minds about something that lived before us and what the general idea of them was. She also explains the most recent one, the dinosaur extinction. She quotes "The most recent of the big five was caused 65 million years ago by a six mile wide asteroid that was traveling at 25,000 mile per hour when it hit earth in what is now the Gulf Of Mexico." This explains to the reader that extinction will happen more than once and that even the biggest of animals can become extinct. She explains why the sixth extinction may be possible. She says "This time, a giant asteroid isn't to blame. We are, most scientists agree. Because of human activity." She then goes on to explain what we are doing to cause this mass extinction. I think she wrote this article to bring attention to all the harm that we are doing  to the world without knowing it.
      I don't like that we are causing species to become extinct. We are developing too fast and because of this animals are dying. We need to find a better way to develop without harming the animals. We could make energy efficient cars, or stop using tree made paper and reuse the paper we've thrown out. There are many different solutions to stop this and I think we should take action.

     In my book Scat by Carl Hiaasen, justice is served by many people, some who i didn't expect and some whom I didn't expect to serve it. There were also two people who were blocking the way for justice to be served. Scat is about a boy named Duane getting framed for arson and a teacher disappearing and illegal mining in a state park.  The author's purpose of writing this book was to show injustices in the world and bring attention to it.
     The injustice in this book is the Red Diamond Oil company doing illegal oil drilling on state property. On the day of a school trip to the land which is also a state park, they light a fire to keep the kids away from their illegal operation. During the fire, Nick's teacher, Ms. Starch disappears. When the firemen launch an investigation they discover that the fire was arson. The cops suspect Duane of the arson because he previously lit a billboard on fire. However, I feel that lighting that billboard on fire was justified because it was the plane that his mom flew away on without telling him. And also, after the fire he turned himself in. The people who serve justice are Ms. Starch, Twilly, Duane, Nick, and Marta. The people who block justice is the Red Diamond Oil Company, they drill on state land and separate a mother panther with it's cub. Twilly's mission is to reunite the panther cub with it's mom and the Red Diamond oil company tries to shoot the panther. Twilly disrupts the Red Diamond Oil companies project by taking there pipes and messing with the drilling site. He reunites the panther with its cub and bring the Red Diamond Oil Companies operation to light and gets them arrested.
     I didn't expect Duane and Ms. Starch to serve justice because Carl Hiaasen depicted them as bad people in the beginning of the book. Duane gave the teacher attitude and Ms. Starch was a really strict teacher. However MS. Starch ended up helping Twilly save the cub. Duane was an expert tracker and he was the main cause for reuniting the cub with its mom.
     The social injustices that this book brings to light is hunting and the greed of our current world. The Red Diamond Oil Company was willing to kill a panther and its cub just make some money. They hunt the panther and try to get it out of the reserve. In real life the panther is an endangered animal and they are precious. This book brought light to this issue and taught valuable lessons.