Speech dot points:

 We briefly discussed in class why it is that some topics seem to be off-limits to satire (The Holocaust, 9/11, Islam etc), although that is not to say they are NEVER satirised. Choose a topic which you believe should not be satirised, and use it to write a speech to be given at a Public Speaking Competition. Your speech should last about 2 minutes when read – you do not have to give the speech, simply write it. (15 marks)  Convert your written speech to notes on palm cards and present it to the class. (10 marks)

• Child abuse off limits
• Can cause trauma
• E.gs – Michael Jackson, Kyle Sandilands, Jimmy ‘The rev’ Sullivan
• Affects people throughout adulthood
• Bad habits result to deal with pain
• Health affected
• Sad endings
• Also start and end badly
• Bad attention
• Too far for satirical jokes to be made
• Preventable
• Unforgivable
• Conclude
• If in the child’s situation, would be unhappy

Satirical poem

Write a satirical poem about school life.  A poem of up  to 12 lines is worth 10 marks; a poem up to 20 lines is worth 15 marks.

      School is for nerds,

      Teachers are pervs,

      There really isn't a lot to do.

      The sport is fun,

      I perform like a gun,

      For all the opposition to boo!


      My best subject is PASS,
      I'm never picked last,
      Though I'm sure you already knew.
      
      Music is bad,
      Theory makes me mad,
      The teachers make me work too.


       Chapel is a pain,
       We attend in vain,
       No one listens ever too. 


       Fieldwork is the best
       I boss my cadets
       In all the activities we go through


       To summarise the place
       It really is a waste 
       But I love it more than I can tell you

      

       

6.        We briefly discussed in class why it is that some topics seem to be off-limits to satire (The Holocaust, 9/11, Islam etc), although that is not to say they are NEVER satirised. Choose a topic which you believe should not be satirised, and use it to write a speech to be given at a Public Speaking Competition. Your speech should last about 2 minutes when read – you do not have to give the speech, simply write it. (15 marks)  Convert your written speech to notes on palm cards and present it to the class. (10 marks)

      I strongly believe that child abuse is off limits for satirical shows such as the Simpsons, South park and the Cleveland show to joke about as child abuse is far too serious a matter to mock as well as being a topic that gets all the wrong attention. 

      Child abuse can leave children traumatized for the rest of their lives, even throughout adulthood. People such as Michael Jackson, Kyle Sandilans and Jimmy 'The rev' Sullivan are examples of this. All these people's lives either ended tragically or continue to do so. Michael Jackson - pop-star - was a verbally abused child and had surgery to change his appearance and overdosed on Meds to deal with his feelings. Eventually the additional Meds killed him. Karl Sandilans - radio host - also had a rough childhood. At 15, he ran away from home and started taking drugs. He's now and overweight-alcoholic who smokes frequently. Doctors giving him only a few more years to live with his addictive and unhealthy lifestyle. Jimmy Sullivan - drummer for avenged sevenfold, a heavy metal rock band - turned to drugs and alcohol very early in life and died recently when he mixed meth with cocaine. 

      All these lifestyles follow a pattern - they have similar starts and finishes. Child abuse gets all the wrong attention - only being noticed when satirical jokes can be made about it  - and as a result, the children who suffer from it are often neglected and they turn to all the wrong habits. If such children received help for being so badly abused and traumatized from their childhood, these unfortunate habits resulting in casualties wouldn't be necessary. For these reasons, I strongly believe satirical jokes on child abuse are wrong and unforgivable. 

      To conclude, it is wrong for satirical shows to mock child abuse. You may not agree, but if you were the child being abused and you saw someone making a joke out of it on TV, don't you think that you would feel bad?  

      

Satirical Cartoon Analysis

Text Number	Why it made me laugh	Techniques Utilised
5	It's funny	Humor
4	As a person who is also a 'Wog,' it's good to see someone paradise what has been said about us	Exaggeration
14	It's another mock of John Howard again saying what a lot of people were thinking	Parody, Lampoon
8	Aussie slang always makes me laugh, i like the bathrooms in the background	Incongruity
31	It's a big mock of John Howard that says what we're all thinking	Exaggeration

Anh Do - Winner of Australian Literary Prize 2011

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http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2011/s3278641.htm1.     

  Who did Anh’s father rescue from the concentration camp?

a)      His eldest son who would later become Young Australian of the Year

b)      His wife’s two brothers who had worked for the Australian military

c)       Two of the armed guards at the camp who were really employees of the Australian military and were in disguise.

2.       What was the length of the fishing boat in which they escaped and how many people were on it?

a)      40 metres long with 9 people

b)      9 metres long with 40 people

c)       20 metres long with 20 people

3.       What honour was Anh’s brother given in 2005?

a)      Australian Refugee of the Year

b)      Australian of the Year

c)       Young Australian of the Year

4.       What was the main lesson which Anh’s parents insisted that he learn after coming to Australia?

To value the luxury of living in Australia and to know how lucky they were to be here

5.       Why was Anh able to attend a prestigious school like St Aloyisius?

a)      He worked in a sweatshop to earn enough money to pay his fees

b)      He won a half scholarship

c)       St Aloyisius always takes in a certain number of refugees as part of their charity work

6.       Explain how Anh tried to overcome the problem of having no text books for his lessons.

He borrowed his friends textbooks in between classes. e.g. If his mate at english 2nd period and he had it first, he'd borrow his mates book 1st period and give it back to him. 

7.       Describe what he wore instead of the official sports uniform.

Instead of his school's official sports uniform, which his family couldn't afford, he often didn't do sport but when he did, he wore very old, bleached sport gear

8.       True or false:

a)      His mother earned less than $7 an hour as a cleaner in a hotel.  T   or  F

b)      At school, Anh was the class clown and this was when he knew he had a future as a comedian.    T   or   F

c)       He was often punished at school with a strap.    T   or   F

d)      No-one at school knew at the time that Anh and his family were poor.  T   or   F

e)      Anh’s father left the family when Anh was growing up.   T   or  F

9.       What did Anh study at University?

a)      Fine Arts, majoring in Drama

b)      Law

c)       Pure Mathematics

10.   What did Anh do for his mother when he was only 23 years old?

a)      Gave her money for a holiday back in Vietnam

b)      Arranged for her to come and see his first public performance as a comedian

c)       Bought her a house

11.   How old was Anh at the time of this interview?

a)      30

b)      33

c)       40

12.   What was the motto which Anh’s father taught his children to live by?

Work hard so you can give back to Australia

13.   Was Anh the victim of racism as he grew up? No he wasn't

14.   Write ONE extra question which you would like Adam to have asked Anh, and what do you think the answer would have been?

"I the lead-up to footy legends, what training did you undergo to get the build of a footy player?"

Anh's answer: "I had to train hard for 6 months to look like a real rugby players. It was hard work!"

The relative advantages of learning my language

The author recounts a story of the significance of heritage and how it came to be so important to her.

The main factors of this story that make it so significant all revolve around heritage - Language, country, ancestors and culture. Their importance are significant because they signify who we are. That is generally lost with modern social circles. For example, in an orthadox family, the children will stop going to church on Sunday mornings to sleep in or hang out with their friends. In Jewish families, the children will eat all meats and poultry simply not to look bad and in this story, Amy Choi decides, "there is no point to learning Chinese. We live in Australia, we go to Australian schools so we should only speak English." This quote is demonstrative of how she doesn't care about her heritage.

When we start doing that, we lose sight of who we are. In this story, Amy Choi starts to lose sight of who she is, but by an unexpected turn of events, she finds that, like in any culture, you need to know who you are. That is why this story is so significant and how all the stories from, Growing up Asian in Australia, represent a lot more than just lives of people growing up in Australia, it represents their struggles, their triumphs and their heritage - who they are and how they got to were they ended up. Heritage is important to acknowledge how hard our ancestors worked to get us better lives. We are all born unique, but we die copies. If we don't acknowledge that, if we don't take into account who we are, we're simply copies. That holds immense significance in all immigrant's lives and that is why this story is so important.

To conclude, heritage is vastly important to the lives of all immigrants and in a way others too. Just the same as Australia has Australia to remember their heritage, it's just as important for immigrants to remember what their ancestors sacrificed to get them out of a third world country and how important it is for immigrants to remember who they are.

The water buffalo by Thao Nguyen - why does it matter?

Read any story that we haven't read yet and write a review of the story and explain why it matters. Why should anyone care about the story/read it?

Cavs example: 
Ginseng Tea and a Pair of Thongs  by Haitha Lee

The author presents a stark portrayal of an immigrant family from Vietnam surviving the slums in an attempt to transition into their new lives.

What is most confronting about the story is the raw objective style that the author employs. This description of Em suffering from allergies, a relatively minor difficulty, exemplifies the authors tendency to exaggerate the pain felt in this family. 'Her dull eyes, the white no longer white, the black with yellow...' This is a haunting description of a group of people suffering through their new life. This challenges the cliched version of the immigrant experience that usually include a narrative of hard work and perseverance triumphing.

Continuing with this stark writing style is the brutal honesty the author employs. The description of Youngest Con 'abnormally curious about sex' and possessing a brain hat 'thinks of being a lady' gives access deep into the psyche of the immigrant. This honesty is again confronting. It challenges the cliched representation of immigrants as quiet and reserved inside their new worlds. Here we have a family full of struggle both externally and internally.

The importance of this story is that it removes the veneer of the immigrant experience. It doesn't beg for sympathy or admiration but rather attempts to show the suffering that the immigrant transition often brings. The result is that the reader is left jaw agape wondering how people chose to live and made it through such experiences.

The water buffalo by Thao Nguyen

The author writes a dramatic, metaphoric impression of the difficulty of the life of an immigrant coming from overseas and setting up his/her children to a better life. 

The importance of the story is that it holds much relevance in society. For example, Doctor Victor Chan's parents would've had to work incredibly hard for him to get his medical degree and he saved many lives. The importance of his life and work was dictated by how hard his parents worked to get him to where he ended up. "He became a working man. He had children and they graduated from medicine, pharmacy and computer science." This quote is demonstrative of how by his working hard, the father was able to get his children important jobs that hold heavy places in society and effect our lives. 

In conclusion the importance of this story is that without our parents working hard, not nearly as much would be achieved without them. They raise us, pay for our school fees, etc. The harder our parents work, the better our education, lifestyle, etc. and so we deduce the better the parents, the better the life of the child will be.