And another school essay which I got top grade on. I've been saying top grade a lot in my posts now (not to brag), so I might make a post about the Norwegian Grade System.
Brian Johnson is the brain among the five characters. His parents put a lot of pressure on him by expecting him to get top grades at school. Claire Standish is the popular beauty who is pampered by her parents, but they only do it to get at each other. Andrew Clark is the jock, and wrestling is his field of expertise. John Bender is the rebellious kid who commits felonious acts. He is treated badly by his father at home (e.g. he got a cigar burn for just spilling paint). Allison Reynolds is the crazy nut in the group. At one point in the movie she empties her purse for the others to see; it is revealed that she is a kleptomaniac and a compulsive liar.
To stereotype is to categorize somebody (or something) based on specific qualities and characteristics. So why do we stereotype? There might be several answers, but one of them is because it is easier. It is easier to categorize somebody by the first impression, rather than getting to know you better. We might be mentally lazy at that area or maybe it is something else. Even teachers stereotype their students, even though we usually just say that they have favorites. This is where we come to the question: is stereotyping good or bad? The truth is that it can be both. If we just look at teachers: some teachers give good grades to their favorite student even though they don’t deserve it and some give bad grades to students who deserve better. Here we see that for the student who does get good grades, stereotyping is good, while for the student who should have got better, stereotyping is bad. Another thing is that it is easier for us to decide who we want to associate with if we stereotype people. One thing that’s sure is that people will always stereotype others. It is like when watching a movie and you categorize people as jocks and nerds. Therefore, stereotyping is both good and bad. It depends on how we look at it.
I think most people would stereotype me as “a brain”. I myself don’t think I am “a brain”, because I would define “a brain” as a person who is academically strong on every subject, a person who gets top grades all the time. I do not get top grades in every subject (I almost do), and therefore I don’t define myself as “a brain”. Maybe I’m closest to that category, though, because I’m certainly not a jock or a basket case and there aren’t any other stereotypes I think I could fit as. Some may think of me as “a nerd”, but I think (and hope) that it is incorrect. People are good at mixing up “brains” from “nerds”. According to Wikipedia, a nerd is “a term that refers to a person who passionately pursues intellectual activities or esoteric knowledge rather than engaging in more social activities”. A brain does not need to be a person who pursues intellectual activities, rather than engaging in social activities. He or she may be very intelligent, but may also be very active socially. Therefore, I can live with people calling me a brain, but if they label me as a nerd “somebody will get hurt real bad”.
The two letters Brian wrote don’t have a big visual difference, but when they are interpreted you can see the development the five teenagers went through in the time they spent together. All of them are strangers to each other when they first turn up, coming from different cliques. As time pass on, they start opening up to each other, telling the others about their problems with their parents and how they ended up in detention. They find out that, even though they come from different groups, they do have some things in common, e.g. all of them have some kind of problem with their parents. This is illustrated as follows: In the first letter Brian writes: “That’s the way we saw each other…” (The students stereotyped each other). In the last letter Brian writes: “But what we found out is that each one of us is…” (The students get to know each other).
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