Month: March 2015

Dear Mr Dastagir,

What is the number one problem facing our community today?

“Banter”.

Hi am Aniss Kadri, I’m writing to raise awareness about the word or phrase : banter. I know you’ve had an assembly about this, however people are still using this term inappropriately. I find this a nuisance because nothing is being done to change it. Hopefully if we stop using this word it could  spread to other schools around the country. Our standards could raise dramatically.

First of all banter hurts people, it offends them also it could destroy peoples lives and we don’t want that to happen. People start it as a joke but in the end it’s just horror. Lots of children end up fighting with other students because of racist banter and when people start cussing their families. People might leave the school and I don’t think you would like that. If you wanted to keep or increase the amount of students in London Nautical then do something about it now! People go home and cry because of their day in this school. It could happen to them every day but the teachers don’t realise what’s going around in a normal school day.

When people use the word “banter” on other children they don’t think it’s a joke but the bully does which makes the victim feel even worse than they already do. This is because somebody is tormenting them as a joke when it’s really serious. It makes the victims feelings not count. It’s like they don’t matter, their opinion does not count. At times that could feel like the worst thing when you’re being left out. When you’re just as important as everyone else and when people think you’re invisible just because of who you are.

People use “banter” as an excuse, an advantage to hurt other children (menataly and physicaly) such as when they take the racism and cussing just to far, when the teacher is being very observant they discern what they are doing the bully says “it’s JUST banter” to the teacher. As you can see from my quote I put the in capital letters/bold because it plays a very important part in that phrase. Just  isn’t there because it makes sense in the sentence it’s there to verify the it’s just that they overemphasize to make it more believable so the teacher would leave them of like that (however I know the teachers wouldn’t fall for it that easily. However some might). Furthermore most of the time they get away with it and they just carry on the banter “as a joke” but I don’t think this is a laughing matter it’s infact a very serious problem not just to the victim but to everyone involved!

When the bully says “sorry” they don’t mean it because they often do it again. So instead of lying they replace sorry with banter. After that, they normally do it again and the train of sadness happens all over again. So they don’t apologise and get it over and done with they want to get in to even more trouble. There is a very well known saying “treat people the way you would like to be treated” and that’s what everyone needs to do. This is not being respectful/kind to the victim (again) and your not being very responsible to your self. However something has been bogiling my mind there has to be a reason why someone would start something like that?

Well I’ve been saying how bad banter is but what’s the point of this letter if I don’t tell you how to resolve this? What I want  and what is right is very hard sanctions ,however I’ve noticed that hard sanctions wont really change much so I think you can start of with hard sanctions, if that doesn’t work you can give them some sort of lessons where they learn what they have done wrong and why they need to stop. I want this word banta to be stopped being used in the hallways of London Nautical school unless of course you’re in lessons and your doing this type of learning. School is a place for learning, fun, for making friends. When you older you should remember those times as the good times not the bad. I don’t really know anyone who’s been a victim of banter but that’s because normally they bottle it all up (because it could be embarrassing to some people.) This is because they don’t show that they’ve been bullied but if we show them that if you tell someone it will make it better I don’t really know how but you can figurethat out. “Banter” would not be a problem for most people if you listen to my ideas. So I hope this letter would convince you to change this and if their are any problems you can repily back. Ultimately I know this is going to be a very hard job however with the effort of all the teachers we may be able to solve this problem called “banter.” I hope this letter makes you see the light and change this problem?

Yours sincerely, Aniss Kadri.

Exaggerate

What is good about your thing

What is bad about over people

Stick to the point

Argue

Metaphor/simelie

Figurative language . you use this to compare to other thing

Hyperbable over exaggeration

Rhetorical questions

And so we’ve come here today to dramatise a shameful condition

This is using hyperbably for the rights of black people its a figurative vs literal

Salman Rushdie, the author of Haroun and the sea of stories prepares us in chapter 1 for the rest of the book by setting a mood, in this case its really sad and we found that out in the very first paragraph. “A city so ruinously sad it has forgotten its name” In this quote Rushdie is setting a mood by showing how sad the city really is by saying its forgotten its name. In my opinion if you forget your name you basically forget your personality because your name carries your personality.So if you forget your name your personality goes with it, so there in a town where they don’t know where they are. Also in that quote Rushdie is using personification because a town cant forget it name infact it cant forget anything at all. The main word in that quote is “ruinously” this is because it is a very strong word and this is emphasising how sad the city really is. it is  saying it is so sad it has forgotten its name. Rushdie is making the reader feel sad about them so we give sympathy for the town of Alifbay.

However it isn’t all devastating there is one family that still has hope, the khalifa family, and in the book it says “whose cheer fullness was famous through out the unhappy metropolis.” Which means them being the only happy people there known for it. However the happiness eventually lost against the sadness “Then something went wrong (maybe the sadness of the city finally crept through their window)” In this quote there is more personification because sadness is a felling and it cant creep through a window and it cant creep at all. Maybe Rushdie used personification to add effect to the book like he is giving the feelings and the sadness a body and a life of its own so it can take action. This also could make the reader more engaged with the fairy story.

In this story there is even subjects that are setting a mood , such as factories. “In the north of the sad stood mighty factories in which (so am told)sadness was actually manufactured, packaged and sent all over the world” once again Rushdie is using that old friend of mine personification . Its used here when the sadness is manufactured packaged  and sent around the world which it cant do because once again it is a feeling and it just cant do that, its like saying you can receive a mail full of sadness.

In this story even the character’s are setting a mood like when Haroun asks his father Rashid where he got his stories from. Rashid ‘s reply from that question was “from the great story sea, I drink the warm story water and then I feel full of stream” and “it comes out of an invisible tap from the water genie” I don’t know about but if I was haroun I wouldn’t have believed Rashid because it doesn’t really sound believable at all  it sounds like something from a fairy tale. However it wasn’t the first   Haroun asked that question and when Rashid kept on repeating the same answer so he got really annoyed when his mother, Soryia left because of Rashid kept telling  silly stories so at exactly 11:00 o’clock Haroun squawked “What’s the point of telling stories if there not even true” and that really sett the mood between them. Sooner enough they’ve got anxious to talk to each other and it became really awkward between the 2 of them. However  Haroun tries to fix things and soon enough the get better as a family. This is what keeps happening through out not only chapter 1 but probably the whole book.

FIN!