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Guava Juice Animated | WHO AM I? - YouTube

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Guava Juice Animated | WHO AM I? - YouTube

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What Is Personal Identity? - Definition, Philosophy & Development - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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What Is Personal Identity? - Definition, Philosophy & Development - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Definition of Personal Identity

Personal identity is the concept you develop about yourself that evolves over the course of your life. This may include aspects of your life that you have no control over, such as where you grew up or the color of your skin, as well as choices you make in life, such as how you spend your time and what you believe. You demonstrate portions of your personal identity outwardly through what you wear and how you interact with other people. You may also keep some elements of your personal identity to yourself, even when these parts of yourself are very important.

Have you ever struggled with the question, 'Who am I?' or thought about who you might become in the future? These questions have been thought about and discussed throughout history, in particular by philosophers who have immersed themselves in the search for knowledge about the nature of being human. Such questions as, 'What does it mean to be a person?' and 'Do I matter?' have engaged key thinkers and created conversations that we still grapple with in our society. Most people feel they want to endure in some way, both in their lives and beyond death. The philosophy of personal identity aims to address these matters of existence and how we even know we exist through time.

The Philosophy of Personal Identity

How do you know you are the same person you were as a child? Is it because you remember yourself growing within the same body you have now? Or is it because you perceive that you have the same mind? What criteria can be used to confirm you are, in fact, a 'person'?

When you ask yourself how you know you are the same person you were as a baby, this is a question of persistence. In this context, persistence means our existence across time and how we can prove it. In other words, we perceive that our self 'persists' through our life as the same human being, but how do we know for sure? The philosophers Plato and René Descartes, as well as many religions, have proposed that we persist because we have a soul, a timeless essence that continues in some form even after the death of our living, breathing human body.

Descartes, in particular, aimed to provide a scientifically-oriented argument for this enduring inner self. He used rational arguments and examples to demonstrate that the mind and body are distinct. He promoted the view that the mind can exist and persist without the body. This distinction between a person's mind and body is known as mind-body dualism and has been an influential and powerful theory in our society. Here's an illustration of mind and body dualism by Descartes:

Even today, you may often hear the phrase, 'body and soul'. This way of thinking has evolved from the ideas of religious traditions as well as philosophical ways of viewing our personal identity.

Development of Personal Identity

Personal identity develops over time and can evolve, sometimes drastically, depending on what directions we take in our life. For instance, a person who at 25 identifies himself as part of a particular political party, of a particular faith, and who sees himself as upper-middle class, might discover that at 65, he's a very different person. Perhaps he's no longer interested in politics, he's changed his religion, and he's living on less money than when he was 25. Any variation is possible during a person's life span.

Children developing their sense of self may experiment with different ways of expressing personal identity. This can include various ways of dressing or wearing their hair, and it will also include a variety of ways of behaving and thinking. They might find that some ways of expressing themselves work well and feel right, while others do not last. Throughout life, we have a sense of who we are that continually changes.

According to the philosopher David Hume, living life as a human being leaves only impressions, rather than one stable identity or sense of self. These impressions are the changing, shifting elements of our existence. Think of the various ways you have looked at the world throughout your life. You've had a set of experiences and have changed because of them. Hume argued that due to the unstable nature of impressions, personal identity cannot be said to persist through time. We perceive a sense of self because of the way our mind put impressions together and makes sense of them as 'me.'

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philosophy & development - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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What Is Personal Identity? - Definition, Philosophy & Development - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Personal identity is the concept you develop about yourself that evolves over the course of your life. This may include aspects of your life that you have no control over, such as where you grew up or the color of your skin, as well as choices you make in life, such as how you spend your time and what you believe.

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The Science of Selfies: How Pictures Help Us Claim Our Identity - NBC News

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The Science of Selfies: How Pictures Help Us Claim Our Identity - NBC News

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This week's selfie at the Oscars was a record-breaker for Twitter, but just a drop in the bucket for the traffic in smartphone self-portraits.

A survey commissioned by PicMonkey suggests that nearly half of all U.S. adults have taken selfies - making enough of a cultural impact that "selfie" was crowned as Oxford Dictionaries' word of the year for 2013.

We may be in the midst of a golden age for selfies, but the phenomenon raises its head every time a pictorial form rises up, whether we're talking about mummy portraits from ancient Egypt, marble busts from the Roman Empire, pictures from the dawn of photography in the 19th century or an eerily modern-looking group shot from 1920.

Is there a reason why selfies have resonated so deeply throughout history? They could well feed a psychological need to extend a claim of personal identity into new territory, in real life or cyberspace. That's according to Jennifer Ouellette, a science writer whose latest book is "Me, Myself and Why: Searching for the Science of Self."

"Your Facebook page, for instance, is one gigantic identity claim," Ouellette told NBC News. "It's how you wish to be perceived. If you want to get artsy-fartsy, you could say it's a form of performance. ... I think the selfie phenomenon is a different version of that. It is definitely a way of saying, 'Here I am. This is me.' It's a mirror kind of thing, particularly since people often turn the camera on themselves.'"

So many selfies are being taken that it's become possible to do statistical analysis, as an international project called SelfieCity did for a study released last month. Researchers grabbed 656,000 photos from Instagram and winnowed them down to concentrate on 3,200 selfies from five cities. They found that women consistently posted more selfies than men did, and that Bangkok's selfies were significantly happier-looking than Moscow's.

Avatars and totems

Prolific selfie-makers may suffer from the same rap that applies to celebrities and reality-TV contestants - that they're narcissistic and focus too much on appearances. But such efforts to claim identity are, well, part of being human.

As Ouellette explains in "Me, Myself and Why," we all have a need to assert who we are, and understand who we are in the context of a wider world. That's why we create online avatars that may or may not reflect our real-life personality. (Ouellette admits that her avatar, Jen-Luc Piquant, is far more narcissistic than she is.)

It's also why we surround ourselves with "totems" that serve as external connections to our internal lives - items that can range from posters on the walls and pictures on our desks to trophy cases and custom-made bobbleheads.

Such objects can play multiple roles: Ouellette points to the fob on her key chain as an example: It's decorated with the astrological symbol for Taurus, which has earned her a little grief from some scientists. Sure, Ouellette was born under the sign of Taurus - but she puts absolutely no stock in astrology. In this case, she keeps the key chain instead to remind her of a close friend and fellow Taurean who died of AIDS. It serves as what psychologists call a "feeling regulator" rather than an identity claim.

Here's another example: Which way are the pictures on your office desk facing? If they're facing toward you, they're feeling regulators. If they're facing toward your visitors, they're identity claims. Either way, they serve an important role in defining the self.

"Without external props, even our personal identity fades and goes out of focus," Ouellette quotes cultural historian Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as saying. "The self is a fragile construction of the mind."

Ouellette delves into the entertaining experiments she went through to test the limits of the self. She took a battery of personality tests to find out where she landed on the Myers-Briggs and Big Five scales. (You can take a free online test to get an idea how it works ... bearing in mind that you may get what you pay for.) She had her genome analyzed by 23andMe to fill in the gaps in her family history. She underwent an MRI scan to trace the geography of her brain. And she took a closely supervised LSD trip that almost literally blew her mind.

"I now totally get the art from the 1960s," she joked. "I liked the feeling of being disembodied, and having my eye floating and merging with all the other molecules. ... What it does is, it messes with your boundaries between self and the other."

The future of the self

Technology may well turn tomorrow's selfies into immersive, interactive virtual snapshots that persist long after you've passed away - kind of like the portraits of long-dead headmasters that hung on Hogwarts' walls in the Harry Potter novels.

"My great-grandchildren can come and talk to me," virtual-world researcher Jacqueline Morie told Ouellette. "I may look like an eight-bit video game to them, but it will be charming, like looking at a black-and-white photo, except it will be interactive."

After all this self examination, what has Ouellette learned?

"I certainly have a much deeper, more nuanced notion of the self than I did before," she said. In her view, the self is not something that exists apart from the body, like the classical conception of the soul. But neither is it an illusion. Rather, it's a construct that emerges from experience.

"This notion of the self being rooted in mind and matter being intertwined makes perfect sense to me," she said. "But the brain does construct something that's far greater than the sum of the parts. It creates this amazing thing that can always be in flux, always changing and evolving and adapting to circumstances. ... I have tremendous respect for just how complex the self is."

For more about Ouellette's book and the science of self, tune in "Virtually Speaking Science," an hourlong online talk show that airs on Blog Talk Radio and in the Exploratorium's auditorium in the Second Life virtual world. The show, featuring NBC News science editor Alan Boyle as host and Ouellette (a.k.a. Jen-Luc Piquant) as his guest, starts at 8 p.m. ET Wednesday. If you miss the live program, never fear: You can download the podcast afterward from Blog Talk Radio or iTunes.

The 1920 pictures of that selfie moment on the roof of Marceau's Studio are republished with permission from the Museum of the City of New York. View more old photos from the Museum of the City of New York.

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The Science of Selfies: How Pictures Help Us Claim Our Identity

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This week's selfie at the Oscars was a record-breaker for Twitter, but just a drop in the bucket for the traffic in smartphone self-portraits. A survey commissioned by PicMonkey suggests that nearly half of all U.S. adults have taken selfies - making enough of a cultural impact that "selfie" was crowned as Oxford Dictionaries' word of the year for 2013.

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'It's Like You're Climbing Everest' - LA Times

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'It's Like You're Climbing Everest' - LA Times

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Isaac Castillo watched uneasily as a pack of 15 boys streamed out of a Van Nuys McDonald's. They paraded across Balboa Boulevard, ignoring four lanes of traffic.

Isaac and four of his friends headed toward their car in the Del Taco parking lot. The other boys closed in.

One faced Isaac. You wanna fight?

All year, Isaac, 17, had dodged confrontations with this group of teenagers. A rivalry over a girl had escalated into a bitter grudge. Now whenever Isaac passed one of them in a school hallway, on a street corner, at a fast-food restaurant, he clenched his fists.

Despite some failing grades, fights and suspensions, Isaac had made it into the home stretch at Birmingham High School. Graduation was just a few weeks away. If he was caught fighting on this breezy afternoon, in a parking lot two blocks from Birmingham, the school would kick him out and bar him from commencement.

His pulse quickened beneath his gray hooded sweater.

Suddenly, a boy rose to Isaac's defense.

My friend is trying to graduate, said David Parraz. So if you have any problems with him, take them up with me.

Isaac's challengers grudgingly backed down.

"He was gonna graduate," David said later, "and not all of us were."

We a family
the Outsiders will always be
remember who we are
we're making history
no one understands how we stay together
I tell them we're brothers
and life isn't the same without each other.
- Rap lyrics by Outsider Mark Cevallos

They called themselves the "Outsiders": a bunch of spiky-haired, barely teenage boys from Van Nuys whose families came from Mexico and other parts of Latin America.

Eleven of them entered Birmingham High as freshmen in the fall of 2001.

There was Isaac, a tough guy the girls adored; David, a gifted student and a baseball player; and Polo Morales, a fatherless boy who loved football. There were others: An eloquent rapper, a fearless skateboarder, a rock 'n' roll drummer. The boys break-danced together and spent hours writing lyrics to rock and rap songs.

Navigating the streets of their neighborhood, they had learned never to walk alone.

Belonging to a group meant they didn't have to. The Outsiders were not a gang. Gangs killed people. They simply watched one another's backs. If one needed a dollar, another spotted him. If one got punched, another punched back.

As students, none was exceptional. Half of the boys had earned too few credits to participate in graduation from junior high, but the Los Angeles Unified School District's social promotion policy allowed them to move on to high school anyway.

They expected to graduate together.

By late spring of 2005, only four of the 11 were left.

On the first day of their freshman year at Birmingham, the Outsiders gathered under a towering oak tree on the quad. From that day on, the tree was theirs.

Even though some of the boys already knew the lay of Birmingham, from days of sneaking on campus after hours to skateboard through its corridors, the sprawling Van Nuys high school seemed overwhelming.

"There were more people, older people. The classes were harder. It was such a different environment," Polo said. "It was a big change in our lives."

In the beginning, all the Outsiders attended classes and tried to do homework.

Polo, who stood 6-foot-2 and was nicknamed "Da Beast," joined the football team freshman year. He hoped it would be his ticket to Notre Dame.

David played second base on the baseball team. With test scores that classified him as gifted, he enrolled in four honors courses even though he didn't always get good grades.

Another Outsider, Andy Hurtarte, made a dangerous discovery. One lazy spring afternoon, he decided to hang out on the athletic field instead of attending sixth-period English. It was the first time he had ditched, and the simplicity of it surprised him.

His teacher did nothing. No one called home to inform his parents.

A few days later, he did it again. Another Outsider joined him. Then another.

Only David, whose classes were more demanding, expressed his disapproval. Dude, get to class, he would say when he spotted his friends cutting.

Isaac, a boy with a tough crust and a dimpled smile, didn't care if his friends ditched. But it wasn't an easy option for him. Isaac had a mild learning disability that caused him to get distracted easily, so school officials placed him in smaller classes with aides who provided one-on-one attention.

On his first day at Birmingham, Isaac met the teacher assigned to monitor him. He remembered her telling him: You're stuck with me for these four years, and I'm going to do whatever I can to help you graduate.

"She gave me all the attention I needed," Isaac said.

David was one of two Outsiders who passed all of his classes. For most of the others, Ds and Fs became routine.

Polo was one of the few who felt the consequences when he messed up.

After he missed algebra 27 times, his football coach threatened to cut his playing time. When his mother discovered he had failed algebra and English, she hired a tutor. No one in his family had graduated from high school. But his single mother was a little better off now, earning extra income from real estate investments. She was determined to see her son graduate.

Except for Isaac and David, the Outsiders say they had little contact with teachers and almost none with counselors.

One by one, they discovered how easy it was to fade into the background.

Had some good times
even though we got in trouble
just thinking about it makes my stomach want to bubble.
- Rap lyrics by Outsider Mark Cevallos

Sophomore year came and went like a fad.

The school listed all of the Outsiders as "active" 10th-graders even though they skipped to play video games, visit friends at another school or sleep. Two racked up more than 63 absences in first period. Nine failed math. Nine failed English.

"I never said 'hi.' I never said 'bye.' I never said 'can I see you?' " Andy said of his counselors. "They're not going to keep track of all those kids."

A Birmingham counselor, Ana Martinez, advised a couple of the Outsiders, including Andy. She vaguely remembers the soft-spoken Guatemalan boy. Martinez met with his mom at least once. Andy continued to struggle.

"There's only so much you can do," Martinez said.

Most of the parents had no idea what jeopardy their children were in. Few had graduated from high school themselves and the boys took pains to hide their failures.

One day after school, when Isaac knew report cards were coming, he snatched a butter knife from the kitchen, popped the lock on his mother's mailbox and retrieved his bad grades. He crumpled the report card and buried it in a trashcan.

Another Outsider arranged for his report cards to be sent to a friend's house. Some learned to block calls from the school by tying up the house phone.

By junior year, the boys' bad habits had been set. It was their most enjoyable year. It was also the year they did themselves the most damage.

As a freshman and sophomore, Isaac didn't skip classes. But one afternoon in 11th grade, he stopped worrying about who was watching. It was easier since the teacher who had pledged to see him graduate had left for another job. He hopped the campus fence to get pizza with some of the guys and didn't return for fifth or sixth period.

Isaac got used to ditching. He and other Outsiders brought food for the school's security guards from their off-campus forays.

Junior year, their group got bigger. Mark Cevallos, an old friend from middle school but a newcomer to Birmingham, became the 12th Outsider in the Class of 2005.

Mark and David came up with the idea of throwing an Outsiders Halloween party. Isaac served as a bouncer. David created fliers.

The party was a huge success. More followed. On campus, the group's popularity soared. The boys wore their official symbol - the letter O with a bolt of lightning through it - on their backpacks. One member had it tattooed on his arm. They created an Outsiders website.

Then, the big rumble happened.

On a cool morning toward the end of fall 2003, Mark, nicknamed "Bad Guy," noticed a backpack in the locker room during second-period P.E. class. He rummaged through it.

Seven African American students, including the owner of the backpack, accused him of theft, challenging him to a fight. A faculty member intervened.

After school that day, across the street from Birmingham, teachers weren't around to step in.

Fights erupted between a couple of the African American and white students who had also been feuding that day. The white students had attended the Outsiders' first Halloween party, so there was a loose bond. The Outsiders jumped in on their side.

Three African American students punched an Outsider.

Andy used to play basketball with some of the black students. They had been friends. But now they had crossed an Outsider, so Andy had to get involved.

So did Isaac, who took on three guys. Soon about 50 kids were fighting.

David also threw punches. In his honors classes, he was reserved and thoughtful. Outside of class, he was among the quickest to fight. He carried a baseball bat as a weapon and boasted that he owned guns. He had a faint scar on his forehead from one of his many scraps.

After about 15 minutes, cops arrived and helicopters hovered. Everyone ran.

Polo had missed everything: He was at football practice.

In school, confrontations became a daily distraction. Mark cut class more frequently because he knew that rival students lurked outside.

Once, when David took a bathroom break from one of his Advanced Placement classes, four students cornered him in a boys' bathroom. He was in a stall when he heard them enter. David came out swinging and held them off.

With three years of failures already stacked against them, this new source of stress became the tipping point for some of the boys. It was one more reason not to focus, one more excuse not to go to school.

"That's what school was all about back then," said Andy. "Just going and having beef. That's why we couldn't focus on work. All we thought about was what's going to happen at lunch."

Even David, still enrolled in honors courses, got mostly Ds that semester. His favorite counselor had left. The new counselor rarely had time to talk to him.

"It didn't seem like she wanted to help anyone," David recalled.

Although they didn't ask for it, help was what the Outsiders needed.

As I sit back and reminisce
visualizing the school, I saw a prison
so those days, I kept ditchin'
makin' money was my way of livin'
catch me broke you must be trippin'
I was hard headed, didn't listen
I was more focused on my own vision
- Rap lyrics by Outsider Edgar Landeros

One morning at the end of January in their junior year, David, Isaac, Mark and three others met at Birmingham. Hungry, they piled into Outsider Rene Rangel's Mustang and headed to Del Taco for breakfast burritos.

Police sirens blared. Patrol cars surrounded the Mustang. Police ordered the boys out of the car and scolded them for a broken taillight and truancy. One boy unexpectedly popped out of the trunk. Police pulled their guns on him. They hauled everyone back to school in handcuffs.

School officials had little patience. They saw students like the Outsiders as part of the problem.

Inside the dean's office, administrators found graffiti scrawled on Isaac's books and papers. They found rolling papers in one boy's pocket. Dean Matt Mowry - who was also the baseball coach - suspended four of the six boys.

Mowry turned to David. You hang out with these kind of kids?

The dean had warned David many times to improve his attendance. If a student failed three classes, he would no longer be eligible to play on the team. The dean looked up David's grades and discovered the four Ds from the previous semester.

He kicked David off the team.

And he told Rene Rangel, the driver, that he would be better off in an alternative school. He was the first Outsider to go.

In front of Mowry, Rene had called the cops "pigs" and cussed at the dean. Midway through his junior year, he had 64 absences in first-period algebra alone.

He had failed all six of his classes.

Until this point, the Outsiders had been skating through school.

That day, Rene took the first bruising tumble.

Andy was the second Outsider to go. Days before the end of school in June 2004, he dropped out. Edgar Landeros was the third. He wanted to earn money and make music.

The school year ended on a note of uncertainty. Life on campus had changed. The crowd at the oak tree dwindled.

It's the end of our high school career
I really wish we could go back
just a couple of years. It went from a tree full of people
to a bench full of dust
now I look back at our spot
and I see none of us.
- Rap lyrics by Outsider Mark Cevallos

In October 2004, Steve Larios became the fourth Outsider to drop out. His girlfriend was pregnant and he wanted to support her.

In January, Elias Fuentes left to earn a paycheck.

The sixth to go was James Moreno. He had only enough credits to be a sophomore.

David made a last-ditch effort to change his habits. He persuaded his coach to let him back on the baseball team in exchange for keeping up his grades.

But his efforts to improve didn't last. After his poor performance the previous semester, David's new counselor took him out of honors courses, placing him in leadership, service, ceramics, child development and dance.

"I swear to God, I was taking [classes] with people who didn't want to read anything," he said. "It was just boring to me. I just wanted to get out of there."

The coach cut his playing time. For months, he had faithfully watched his diet, jogged and lifted weights to stay in shape. Without baseball - and with six of his closest friends gone - David gave up.

"After that, I was like, what is the point of me going to school?" David said. "It's like, you're climbing Mt. Everest, and you're 10 feet from the top, then you fall. I was hurt. I'm not gonna lie, I cried."

By the end of first semester, he had three Fs and a D.

David's father, who had not finished high school himself, found out and blew up.

The two of them had always been alike: stubborn, temperamental, intensely competitive.

One spring day toward the end of the school year, fed up with his father's pressure to do better in school, David gathered his clothes and moved out. In exchange for places to stay, he gave other Outsiders money he earned from a job in a hat shop at the Northridge Mall.

David was named best looking in the 2005 Birmingham yearbook. By the time it was published, he had dropped out. He was the seventh Outsider to quit.

A few weeks later, Mark, "Bad Guy," gave up too.

To Isaac and Polo, it didn't even feel like Mark had dropped out. He still showed up between classes, wearing a book bag with an Outsiders logo, to slap hands with friends and flirt with girls. He attended the prom, the senior breakfast, the senior picnic.

As graduation grew close, only four were left. In addition to Isaac and Polo, there were Eric Monge and Javier "Pancakes" Vallejo. Eric didn't want to disappoint his hard-working parents who sacrificed for him.

"Pancakes" had many of the same bad habits as his friends. But his shy nature saved him from the social pressures that other Outsiders had succumbed to, and that made a difference.

Few would have predicted that Isaac, with his learning disability and quick temper, would have been among the last Outsiders left at Birmingham.

It had not been easy.

The same kids he had fought in the rumble confronted him over a girl, on campus and at Del Taco.

Isaac was a sweet boy who had embraced a tough-guy image, sporting baggy jeans and hooded sweatshirts to cover his shaved head. He tagged graffiti on his notebooks and flirted with joining a real gang.

One morning during the first semester of his senior year, Isaac glared at another student before class. Minutes later, that student returned with four members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang. They socked Isaac. He fell to the ground, his lip bleeding.

Later that day, Isaac said about 15 gang members cornered him again. One pulled a gun and pointed it at Isaac's face. They heard someone approaching and put it away.

School officials caught the gunman later that day without Isaac's help.

Isaac considered quitting school.

I'm alone here, he thought.

He failed one class, American democracy, but he pulled Bs and Cs in everything else.

Nevertheless, Isaac was behind. To graduate on time, he would have to pass every subject and make up two history classes. He enrolled in adult school at night to make up the lost credits.

Isaac knew that if he messed up in even one class, he wouldn't be allowed to walk across the stage to receive his diploma in front of family and friends.

There were many moments that I can't even remember
just chillin' at home getting ready for September
getting ready for the classes
that I thought I would hate
and now I'm walking the stage getting ready to graduate.
- Rap lyrics by Outsider Polo Morales

"High school is so easy," Polo "Da Beast" said one June morning at Birmingham, three weeks before graduation. The defensive tackle had just completed an outline for English class by cutting and pasting material from the Web.

"That's why I don't know why these guys all dropped out," he said in his deep mumble. "I got through all of high school without hardly ever having to read a book. They're just lazy."

Like the others, Polo had failed courses and skipped a lot of classes. But there were subtle differences that set him apart. Prodded by his mother and wanting to play football, he received tutoring in tough subjects. He made up failed classes by spending evenings and weekends in the Regional Occupational Program, where he earned school credits by working in an animal shelter.

Also, Polo enjoyed a kind of classic high school popularity that allowed him to straddle social cliques and ethnic groups. Around campus, he carried his status like a trophy.

In May, students chose Polo - one of four Outsiders still enrolled at Birmingham - as their prom king.

Isaac and Polo didn't hang out together on campus much anymore, because their mutual friends were not there to unite them. Isaac believed Polo thought he was better than everyone else, with his football trophies, his prom king status and, soon, his diploma.

"I'm not saying that the other guys are idiots," Polo said. "But they talk about weed or the Dodgers. I really don't care about any of those things. I'm the youngest one, the biggest one, probably one of the most mature ones."

In the weeks leading up to graduation, Polo's flippant comments about his friends grew more personal, as some of the Outsiders battled online with rap lyrics. In one song, Polo wrote about Mark:

Nineteen-year-old junior
man I think you a flake
is it me or you is dumb
call yourself a high class bum.

Mark wrote back to Polo online:

I guess I am a bum
but I work for a check
you work for credits bitch
so how broke is that?

On June 16, 2005, one week before graduation, Isaac stumbled.

He had been racing through assignments, trying to make up credits in time for graduation.

A teacher at the adult school caught him cheating in history. She refused to pass him.

Graduating with the class of 2005 was no longer an option.

One evening several days later, the Outsiders lounged in Isaac's bedroom, where his 1992 preschool perfect attendance certificate hung on the wall. He wore a tiny gold hoop in each ear. He laughed like a little boy with his buddies, shedding his tough-guy shell for the evening.

The group had gathered to celebrate Isaac's 18th birthday. David sat on the floor wearing a Dodger hat and talked about Metallica. "Da Beast" wore a Notre Dame tank top and watched a basketball game in the living room.

Isaac's mom, Julie Castillo, called everyone to the kitchen. She had cooked two big pots of pozole with corn and chicken.

She brought out a cake decorated with blue frosting flowers, 18 candles and a small toy handgun.

The cake was supposed to read: "Happy Birthday Isaac."

Instead, it read: "Congratulations Isaac."

"His uncle messed up on the cake," Isaac's mom said. He had thought it was for graduation.

Isaac blew out 18 candles.

Mark yelled: "Bite the gun!"

Isaac put the frosting-covered toy pistol in his mouth and clicked the trigger.

I know we're all not going to make it on stage
But don't close the book
This ain't the last page.
- Rap lyrics by Outsider Mark Cevallos

Isaac's cellphone rang around 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, June 23, graduation day.

Congratulations Isaac, you made it!

Then another message: They called your name at rehearsal!

Stunned, Isaac thought maybe his counselors had changed their minds.

He borrowed a car from Andy and rushed to Birmingham. When Isaac finally caught up with his counselor, she said: I'm sorry, it was a mistake.

He wanted to throw up.

Andy waited at Isaac's mom's apartment. In 2004, Andy had been the second Outsider to leave. But he knew how badly Isaac had wanted to walk across that stage. Andy had wanted the same.

Nearly two years after he dropped out, Andy was at Independence High School, an alternative campus near Birmingham, chipping away at the 80 credits he needed to graduate. There, he had finished classes in computers, English and algebra. He arrived on time each morning. He didn't get into fights. He rarely cut class.

But Andy was still ashamed. He lied to out-of-town family members, telling them he was graduating with the class of 2005.

On graduation day, Isaac and Andy ate a breakfast of chorizo and French fries together in silence.

Isaac's phone rang. The caller was with a program that helped people find jobs.

"I'm 18," he said. "Right now, any kind of job."

His mom listened. She didn't want him to get a job. She wanted him to go back to summer school and finish his last three classes.

Isaac hung up. His mother studied his defeated expression, searching for reassurance.

Isaac looked away.

Graduation for some
it's already here
I'm not emotional
but I'm about to break down in tears.
- Rap lyrics by Outsider Andy Hurtarte

The line of spectators outside Birmingham High School's football stadium curled like a long question mark. Mark and David cut the line to join Rene.

As they crawled toward the gate, James Dinielli, a Birmingham dean checking tickets, recognized them.

"At least you guys made it to graduation," Dinielli joked, taking their tickets.

Inside the stadium, joined by Isaac, Andy and James Moreno, they slid under a rail to find a private spot away from celebrating families: six Outsiders watching what was supposed to be their graduation ceremony from behind a metal fence.

The Birmingham graduates emerged on the field like bursts of royal blue confetti.

Adorned in his extra large cap and gown, Polo "Da Beast" spotted his friends. He grinned and flashed the Outsiders hand signal.

Isaac flipped through the program. Suddenly, he spotted his name: "Isaac Carlos Castillo." School officials had not removed it.

Isaac pinched his eyes with his fingers, trying to stifle tears. He shook his head and glanced at the field decorated with gold balloons.

He cried.

Mark rubbed Isaac's head and put an arm on his shoulder. Isaac wiped his tears on Mark's pinstriped blazer.

No one said a word.

Andy felt like crying too but held it inside.

Standing on the end and wearing a Dodger cap, David curved his neck to check on Isaac.

"I ain't crying, fool," Isaac said, forcing a smile. "Dust got in my eyes."

David turned away and muttered: "He should have been up there. They screwed him."

Isaac took a deep breath. Together the boys chanted: "1,2,3, Polo!"

The class president approached the podium and welcomed everyone. "Would we be graduating if our parents didn't encourage us to go and actually stay in school?" she said.

Mark stared at the ground.

She continued: "Dream as if you will live forever, and live as if you will die today."

Andy blinked fast, shook his head and said: "I like that quote."

James got chills. "I can't believe I'm not up there," he said. "It's crazy. This is my class."

David seemed unmoved. He tapped his hands against the fence as if he held drumsticks.

The seniors made their way across the field. The announcer called the names of Outsiders Eric Monge, Polo Morales and Javier "Pancakes" Vallejo, the only three to graduate.

The announcer also called Juan "Pepe" Diaz. An older Outsider, he was graduating a year late.

Polo strutted like a football all-star.

The class of 2005 tossed caps in the air. Polo spiked his into the ground as if he were scoring a touchdown and pointed to the six Outsiders on the other side of the fence.

A voice over the loudspeaker warned the audience: "Do not jump over the fence."

David, Mark and Isaac jumped.

They tackled and hugged Polo, until police officers pulled them away.

Outsiders got a story to tell
school is over
you heard the sound of that bell
gotta say goodbye
to everyone else
teachers tried to change me
but it didn't help.
- Rap lyrics by the Outsiders

In the months since the commencement, four of the eight Outsiders who dropped out have taken steps to get their diplomas or the equivalent.

Frustrated that her son was wasting his life, Isaac Castillo's mother briefly kicked him out of the house. Soon after, he returned to school. Now he and Rene Rangel are finishing their last courses at West Valley Occupational Center; they expect to graduate this year.

Andy Hurtarte is on track to graduate in June from Independence High.

Steve Larios, whose pregnant girlfriend miscarried after he dropped out, earned a diploma at Options for Youth, an independent study program. He is studying to be a medical assistant.

Andy, Mark Cevallos, James Moreno and David Parraz are working at a mortgage company. David still hopes to earn a diploma so he can join the Navy and play on its baseball team.

Three of the boys who graduated are enrolled in community college or trade schools.

Polo Morales is taking classes at Pierce College and will transfer in the spring to Glendale Community College, where he plans to play football. Three months after graduation, the tension that had been bubbling between him and the other Outsiders ruptured. One afternoon, after nearly getting into a fistfight with Isaac and Andy the night before, Polo declared: "I'm not an Outsider anymore. I don't belong."

He decided he had outgrown old habits and old friends.

"It's not the same," Polo said. "I doubt it ever will be."

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Isaac Castillo watched uneasily as a pack of 15 boys streamed out of a Van Nuys McDonald's. They paraded across Balboa Boulevard, ignoring four lanes of traffic. Isaac and four of his friends headed toward their car in the Del Taco parking lot. The other boys closed in. One faced Isaac.

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Amy Tan Interview -- Academy of Achievement

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Amy Tan Interview -- Academy of Achievement

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I remember to start with that day in Sacramento - a California now nearly thirty years past - when I first entered a classroom, able to understand some fifty stray English words.

The third of four children, I had been preceded to a neighborhood Roman Catholic school by an older brother and sister. But neither of them had revealed very much about their classroom experiences. Each afternoon they returned, as they left in the morning, always together, speaking in Spanish as they climbed the five steps of the porch. And their mysterious books, wrapped in shopping-bag paper, remained on the table next to the door, closed firmly behind them.

An accident of geography sent me to a school where all my classmates were white, many the children of doctors and lawyers and business executives. All my classmates certainly must have been uneasy on that first day of school - as most children are uneasy - to find themselves apart from their families in the first institution of their lives. But I was astonished.

The nun said, in a friendly but oddly impersonal voice, 'Boys and girls, this is Richard Rodriguez.' (I heard her sound out: Rich-heard Road-ree-guess.) It was the first time I had heard anyone name me in English. 'Richard,' the nun repeated more slowly, writing my name down in her black leather book. Quickly I turned to see my mother's face dissolve in a watery blur behind the pebbled glass door.

Many years later there is something called bilingual education - a scheme proposed in the late 1960s by Hispanic-American social activists, later endorsed by a congressional vote. It is a program that seeks to permitnon-English-speaking children, many from lower-class homes, to use their family language as the language of school. (Such is the goal its supporters announce.) I hear them and am forced to say no: It is not possible for a child - any child - ever to use his family's language in school. Not to understand this is to misunderstand the public uses of schooling and to trivialize the nature of intimate life - a family's 'language.'

Memory teaches me what I know of these matters; the boy reminds the adult. I was a bilingual child, a certain kind - socially disadvantaged - the son of working-class parents, both Mexican immigrants.

In the early years of my boyhood, my parents coped very well in America. My father had steady work. My mother managed at home. They were nobody's victims. Optimism and ambition led them to a house (our home) many blocks from the Mexican south side of town. We lived among gringos and only a block from the biggest, whitest houses. It never occurred to my parents that they couldn't live wherever they chose. Nor was the Sacramento of the fifties bent on teaching them a contrary lesson. My mother and father were more annoyed than intimidated by those two or three neighbors who tried initially to make us unwelcome. ('Keep your brats away from my sidewalk!') But despite all they achieved, perhaps because they had so much to achieve, any deep feeling of ease, the confidence of 'belonging' in public was withheld from them both. They regarded the people at work, the faces in crowds, as very distant from us. They were the others, los gringos. That term was interchangeable in their speech with another, even more telling, los americanos.

I grew up in a house where the only regular guests were my relations. For one day, enormous families of relatives would visit and there would be so many people that the noise and the bodies would spill out to the backyard and front porch. Then, for weeks, no one came by. (It was usually a salesman who rang the doorbell.) Our house stood apart. A gaudy yellow in a row of white bungalows. We were the people with the noisy dog. The people who raised pigeons and chickens. We were the foreigners on the block. A few neighbors smiled and waved. We waved back. But no one in the family knew the names of the old couple who lived next door; until I was seven years old, I did not know the names of the kids who lived across the street.

In public, my father and mother spoke a hesitant, accented, not always grammatical English. And they would have to strain - their bodies tense - to catch the sense of what was rapidly said by los gringos. At home they spoke Spanish. The language of their Mexican past sounded in counterpoint to the English of public society. The words would come quickly, with ease. Conveyed through those sounds was the pleasing, soothing, consoling reminder of being at home.

During those years when I was first conscious of hearing, my mother and father addressed me only in Spanish; in Spanish I learned to reply. By contrast, English (ingles), rarely heard in the house, was the language I came to associate with gringos. I learned my first words of English overhearing my parents speak to strangers. At five years of age, I knew just enough English for my mother to trust me on errands to stores one block away. No more.

I was a listening child, careful to hear the very different sounds of Spanish and English. Wide-eyed with hearing, I'd listen to sounds more than words. First, there were English (gringo) sounds. So many words were still unknown that when the butcher or the lady at the drugstore said something to me, exotic polysyllabic sounds would bloom in the midst of their sentences. Often, the speech of people in public seemed to me very loud, booming with confidence. The man behind the counter would literally ask, 'What can I do for you?' But by being so firm and so clear, the sound of his voice said that he was a gringo; he belonged in public society.

I would also hear then the high nasal notes of middle-class American speech. The air stirred with sound. Sometimes, even now, when I have been traveling abroad for several weeks, I will hear what I heard as a boy. In hotel lobbies or airports, in Turkey or Brazil, some Americans will pass, and suddenly I will hear it again - the high sound of American voices. For a few seconds I will hear it with pleasure, for it is now the sound of my society - a reminder of home. But inevitably - already on the flight headed for home - the sound fades with repetition. I will be unable to hear it anymore.

When I was a boy, things were different. The accent of los gringos was never pleasing nor was it hard to hear. Crowds at Safeway or at bus stops would be noisy with sound. And I would be forced to edge away from the chirping chatter above me.

I was unable to hear my own sounds, but I knew very well that I spoke English poorly. My words could not stretch far enough to form complete thoughts. And the words I did speak I didn't know well enough to make into distinct sounds. (Listeners would usually lower their heads, better to hear what I was trying to say.) But it was one thing for me to speak English with difficulty. It was more troubling for me to hear my parents speak in public: their high-whining vowels and guttural consonants; their sentences that got stuck with 'eh' and 'ah' sounds; the confused syntax; the hesitant rhythm of sounds so different from the way gringos spoke. I'd notice, moreover, that my parents' voices were softer than those of gringos we'd meet.

I am tempted now to say that none of this mattered. In adulthood I am embarrassed by childhood fears. And, in a way, it didn't matter very much that my parents could not speak English with ease. Their linguistic difficulties had no serious consequences. My mother and father made themselves understood at the county hospital clinic and at government offices. And yet, in another way, it mattered very much - it was unsettling to hear my parents struggle with English. Hearing them, I'd grow nervous, my clutching trust in their protection and power weakened.

There were many times like the night at a brightly lit gasoline station (a blaring white memory) when I stood uneasily, hearing my father. He was talking to a teenaged attendant. I do not recall what they were saying, but I cannot forget the sounds my father made as he spoke. At one point his words slid together to form one word - sounds as confused as the threads of blue and green oil in the puddle next to my shoes. His voice rushed through what he had left to say. And, toward the end, reached falsetto notes, appealing to his listener's understanding. I looked away to the lights of passing automobiles. I tried not to hear anymore. But I heard only too well the calm, easy tones in the attendant's reply. Shortly afterward, walking toward home with my father, I shivered when he put his hand on my shoulder. The very first chance that I got, I evaded his grasp and ran on ahead into the dark, skipping with feigned boyish exuberance.

But then there was Spanish. Espa-ol: my family's language. Espa-ol: the language that seemed to me a private language. I'd hear strangers on the radio and in the Mexican Catholic church across town speaking in Spanish, but I couldn't really believe that Spanish was a public language, like English. Spanish speakers, rather, seemed related to me, for I sensed that we shared - through our language - the experience of feeling apart from los gringos. It was thus a ghetto Spanish that I heard and I spoke. Like those whose lives are bound by a barrio, I was reminded by Spanish of my separateness from los otros, los gringos in power. But more intensely than for most barrio children - because I did not live in a barrio - Spanish seemed to me the language of home. (Most days it was only at home that I'd hear it.) It became the language of joyful return.

A family member would say something to me and I would feel myself specially recognized. My parents would say something to me and I would feel embraced by the sounds of their words. Those sounds said: I am speaking with ease in Spanish. I am addressing you in words I never use with los gringos. I recognize you as someone special, close, like no one outside. You belong with us. In the family.

(Ricardo.)

At the age of five, six, well past the time when most other children no longer easily notice the difference between sounds uttered at home and words spoken in public, I had a different experience. I lived in a world magically compounded of sounds. I remained a child longer than most; I lingered too long, poised at the edge of language - often frightened by the sounds of los gringos, delighted by the sounds of Spanish at home. I shared with my family a language that was startlingly different from that used in the great city around us.

For me there were none of the gradations between public and private society so normal to a maturing child. Outside the house was public society; inside the house was private. Just opening or closing the screen door behind me was an important experience. I'd rarely leave home all alone or without reluctance. Walking down the sidewalk, under the canopy of tall trees, I'd warily notice the - suddenly - silent neighborhood kids who stood warily watching me. Nervously, I'd arrive at the grocery store to hear there the sounds of the gringo - foreign to me - reminding me that in this world so big, I was a foreigner. But then I'd return. Walking back toward our house, climbing the steps from the sidewalk, when the front door was open in summer, I'd hear voices beyond the screen door talking in Spanish. For a second or two, I'd stay, linger there, listening. Smiling, I'd hear my mother call out, saying in Spanish (words): 'Is that you, Richard?' All the while her sounds would assure me: You are home now; come closer; inside. With us.

'S',' I'd reply.

Once more inside the house I would resume (assume) my place in the family. The sounds would dim, grow harder to hear. Once more at home, I would grow less aware of that fact. It required, however, no more than the blurt of the doorbell to alert me to listen to sounds all over again. The house would turn instantly still while my mother went to the door. I'd hear her hard English sounds. I'd wait to hear her voice return to soft-sounding Spanish, which assured me, as surely as did the clicking tongue of the lock on the door, that the stranger was gone.

Plainly, it is not healthy to hear such sounds so often. It is not healthy to distinguish public words from private sounds so easily. I remained cloistered by sounds, timid and shy in public, too dependent on voices at home. And yet it needs to be emphasized: I was an extremely happy child at home. I remember many nights when my father would come back from work, and I'd hear him call out to my mother in Spanish, sounding relieved. In Spanish, he'd sound light and free notes he never could manage in English. Some nights I'd jump up just at hearing his voice. With mis hermanos I would come running into the room where he was with my mother. Our laughing (so deep was the pleasure!) became screaming. Like others who know the pain of public alienation, we transformed the knowledge of our public separateness and made it consoling - the reminder of intimacy. Excited, we joined our voices in a celebration of sounds. We are speaking now the way we never speak out in public. We are alone - together, voices sounded, surrounded to tell me. Some nights, no one seemed willing to loosen the hold sounds had on us. At dinner, we invented new words. (Ours sounded Spanish, but made sense only to us.) We pieced together new words by taking, say, an English verb and giving it Spanish endings. My mother's instructions at bedtime would be lacquered with mock-urgent tones. Or a word like s' would become, in several notes, able to convey added measures of feeling. Tongues explored the edges of words, especially the fat vowels. And we happily sounded that military drum roll, the twirling roar of the Spanish r. Family language: my family's sounds. The voices of my parents and sisters and brother. Their voices insisting: You belong here. We are family members. Related. Special to one another. Listen! Voices singing and sighing, rising, straining, then surging, teeming with pleasure that burst syllables into fragments of laughter. At times it seemed there was steady quiet only when, from another room, the rustling whispers of my parents faded and I moved closer to sleep.
Excerpted from Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez by Richard Rodriguez. Copyright © 2008 by Richard Rodriguez. Excerpted by permission of Bantam Books. All rights reserved.

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I remember to start with that day in Sacramento - a California now nearly thirty years past - when I first entered a classroom, able to understand some fifty stray English words. The third of four children, I had been preceded to a neighborhood Roman Catholic school by an older brother and sister.

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This Peruvian girl’s Michael Jackson cover will make you want to learn the dying language of Quechua | Fusion

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This Peruvian girl’s Michael Jackson cover will make you want to learn the dying language of Quechua | Fusion

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In the middle of ancient Incan ruins in the foot hills of the Peruvian Andes, 14-year-old Renata Flores Rivera brings together two things dear to her heart: the ancient Indigenous language of South America, Quechua, and Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel." The result is gorgeous:

Flores spoke to Fusion from home on Monday afternoon after a full day at school.

"It's a project called 'Las juventudes tambien hablamos Quechua' (the youth, we speak Quechua too)," she said. She said it's important for her "to be able to appreciate this language again, because we are losing it here in Peru."

Flores's mother, Patricia Rivera Canchanya, kicked off the campaign this year through a cultural association, la Asociación Cultural Surca, which she founded 11 years ago to promote arts and Peruvian culture in their home city of Huamanga (also known as Ayacucho). Rivera is also a musician, and set up a music school through the association. She said she saw an urgent need to pass on Quechua to younger generations, before the language is forgotten in Peru.

"I speak Quechua, but not very fluently anymore because we don't use it," she said. "They teach a lot here, English, which is also really important because it's the global language, but we can't abandon our roots because this is ours, it's a heritage that we shouldn't allow ourselves to lose."

Though it's one of Peru's two official languages (along with Spanish), Quechua is not taught in schools and is spoken by just around 13 percent of the population, Rivera said.

Dialects of Quechua are spoken in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Brazil by a total of about 8.3 million people, according to 1987 data cited by UCLA's Center for World Languages, with about 4.4 million of those in Peru. The number of speakers has likely declined since then.

Flores said she's received messages praising the song. She's planning a concert this September in Huamanga to keep up the momentum. That's the next step. But ultimately, she said, she'd like to study music professionally after high school. In her spare time right now, she plays the guitar, dances and sings-she's also learning Quechua. She was on The Voice Kids during her most recent summer holidays.

Asked why she chose a Michael Jackson song for this special treatment in Quechua, she said, "When I was five years old I listened to a lot of Michael Jackson, I liked and admired him a lot ... as for this particular song, I think I had sung it before in English and then my mom had the idea that I could record it in Quechua," she said.
Interviews were conducted in Spanish and translated to English.

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This Peruvian girl's Michael Jackson cover will make you want to learn the dying language of Quechua

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In the middle of ancient Incan ruins in the foot hills of the Peruvian Andes, 14-year-old Renata Flores Rivera brings together two things dear to her heart: the ancient Indigenous language of South America, Quechua, and Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel." The result is gorgeous:

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Bon Jovi - It's My Life (Official Music Video)