Aim: How does the exposition of Lord of the Flies set up the novel to question how society structures the transition from childhood to adulthood?
Do Now: Legal Ages
As a group, we discussed the various actions and made guesses as to what the required legal age would be for each specific action. Below is an image of our guesses and the correct legal age for these actions. As can be seen, most of our guesses ranged around ages 17-18 being that 18 is usually the age where we can do things that we may have not been able to.
Note: pc in the second image is parental consent
WHOLE CLASS DISCUSSION:
Personally, what surprised me the most was that the actual legal age of renting a car was actually 25 since I thought the legal age was actually 18 considering that 16 is the age that you can get a driver license. A classmate that also had the same answer was Yanna. Mrs. Peterson explained that age 25 is the legal age for renting a car because after age of 25, incidences of auto accidents are dramatically lower than the accident rates of young drivers. Companies are trying to avoid these problems by upping the age requirement. My group member, Charith, shared that “The required age to watch R-Rated movies surprised me. I think it’s unfair and that it should be younger since 17 seems too old. Most kids watch horror movies or movies with blood and gore, the worst that can happen is a nightmare. I think kids ages 13-14 can handle R-Rated movies.” My other group member, Elizabeth, shared that “I was surprised to learn that the legal age for marriage with judicial consent could be as little as 14-15 years old and 16 years old with parental consent. And I think it is unfair that renting a car is 25 since people might need a vehicle at some point in their lives.” We concluded our discussion and proceeded onto the next activity.
How Old is Old Enough? - Rampell (2009)
Summary: The author, Catherine Rampell, brings up the question ‘How Old is Old Enough?’ or rather what age is truly considered an adult. She provides different situations of where adulthood really differs for each person. One of which is “In the 19th century, teenagers were expected to raise their own children and work in the fields.” She states that these rules are often determined by economics and those who are benefited in the long run. Catherine Rampell argues that everyone has different ages of adulthood and that there isn’t an exact age in which a person completely turns into an adult.
After reading the article individually, we moved onto the theoretical questions that followed after:
My response was that a person’s punishments should not be depending upon the individual’s age. While it does make sense in a way that minors should be given a lighter penalty, a crime is a crime. It doesn’t matter who, in terms of age or race, did it, it is only right that a person pays the price for their decisions.
Ahmad: Until someone reaches adulthood, they should be charged more leniently, put into juvie and given less harsh punishments
Joshua: Severity of a crime should dictate the appropriate consequences not the individual’s age
Elizabeth: Children should be charged as adults because at the end of the day blowing up a building of innocents regardless of one’s status, gender, age, etc. is a crime and should be punished as such. I do believe that the death penalty shouldn’t be allowed for minors.
Age or Something Else?
When Jack is confronted by these new acquaintances about not stabbing the pig, he feels embarrassed. This relates to his age because his actions show that he is still too young and immature to act out on these actions. It also shows that he was afraid of actually killing or stabbing a living thing.
Reflection:
Throughout this lesson, I was able to acquire a great deal of information. To start off, we learned about the legal ages of doing certain things such as marriage, military, and etc. We then proceeded onto reading the article “How Old is Old Enough?” which ties heavily into the legal ages activity we completed. Based on the legal ages document, we can practically say that the age 18 is when an individual is officially labeled as an adult. However, the article says otherwise. Catherine Rampell argues that there is no specific age of adulthood. Although age 18 is when most “become” an adult, we can never say that it is definitely the age when we are mature or the age where we can take on all of our responsibilities. In my judgement, a person’s adulthood varies from person to person. Then, we moved onto theoretical questions. This also connects to previous activities because it relates to age and how one's immature and reckless decisions affect an individual, with age as a factor. Lastly, we are provided with a portion from Lord of the Flies on the scene where Jack was unable to stab the piglet. The reason why we learned about legal ages and adulthood was because it is present in this specific chapter. Age is definitely a huge factor in this book. When Jack was unable to kill the piglet, it showed that he was immature and still has yet to reach adulthood. The exposition of Lord of the Flies set up the novel to question how society structures the transition from childhood to adulthood by demonstrating the sudden changes and how these boys react when met with these changes. They show somewhat signs of maturity compared to the very beginning. We learned this so we may make connections and have a better understanding when reading the novel. I will use what I have learned by making connections when reading Lord of the Flies and other novels. This knowledge may also be utilized in the real world because maturity, age, and adulthood is part of our everyday lives. Knowing the legal ages can teach us what to do and what not to do which may prevent a lot of future issues. Moreover, we can also recognize when we are maturing and learn as we go. Generally speaking, this was a very informative and educational lesson.
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