Tom Johnson Special Assignment

Don't Let Them Take Pencils Home

Wow. I started laughing at the beginning when I caught on to the metaphor, slightly because it's funny and slightly because it's really obvious. For reasons unknown I didn't even read this part (yes, honesty is the best policy), and that's dissapointing, because I missed out. However, reading this post I find it hard to believe that students missed the metaphor about pencils being computers instead. It's... blatant. It's satire, literature's punch line. It speaks of parents making a big deal that their children are coming home with 'pencils' (a direct corolation with parents' reactions to their child using the internet), and it also speaks of how people fear that students will use 'pencils' as only a form of entertainment (again, computers are applicable here).

Some of the metaphors that come to mind that I've encountered recently was this past Sunday, Easter Sunday to be in fact, after my family and I witnessed my cousin getting injured by a wooden board, which had unfortunately came loose after holding up a swing in which he was sitting. After a bit of blood (don't worry; head injuries bleed a lot regardless) and a trip to the hospital, my cousin was fine with simply a few stitches and a headache, for which he was administered pain relievers. Now, the metaphor in this was the following day when my mother said "he's fine; his head's just killing him." The metaphor is the phrase 'killing him.' The very next day, in fact, he went on to play a game of baseball. Had his head been literally 'killing him,' he definitely wouldn't be playing baseball the following day.

We as educators, in order to help students learn metaphors, need to instruct them to not take things too seriously. Dr. Strange pointed this out, how he thinks some students may have missed the metaphor because they were being too serious, which I see often in our world. There's a lot of defiance I believe that goes along with this. Some people just think that, if someone means to say soomething, why not just say it? The answer, I believe, is because metaphors are meant to challenge us. They challenge us to read between the lines and not just take things for face-value. It calls for a better understanding and appreciation of things.