Harlem shake.

This has been a hot topic around my school. Which I do not appreciate. Harlem Shake.

What is ‘Harlem Shake’? As stated here, Harlem Shake is a dance that began at Harlem, New York, in 1981. It has quite a long history, judging from the year. At first it was called “Albee”, but it later became popular by the name “Harlem Shake”.

Al B is quoted saying that the dance is “a drunken shake anyway, it’s an alcoholic shake, but it’s fantastic, everybody appreciates it.”

As stated above, it is just a drunk shake, without any means of art or choreography (although the people originated from Harlem said otherwise–I will get to this below).

Different religions have different views on alcohol and alcoholic beverages. Muslims, or Islam, strictly prohibit alcohol, whilst for Christians, they have different, lots of views about this (if you have an input, please do so by commenting); The Bible is ambivalent toward alcohol, considering it both a blessing from God that brings merriment and a potential danger that can be unwisely and sinfully abused.

The Harlem Shake is a nearly perfect internet meme because it almost perfectly erases its origins. If every imitation of “Gangnam Style” inevitably leads you back to the deceptively subtle, near-perfect original, the Harlem Shake does the opposite. Every imitation leads you to another imitation, the lower its fidelity the better. (Source)

Enough with the meaning thingies.

Next,

I’m talking about my school here. It is a religious school, in fact, it is a branch to the biggest religious organization in this country. Now, why, why, for god’s sake, do our student record themselves doing Harlem Shake?

The seniors already recorded about nine videos. The juniors have four videos. The freshmen? I do not know for sure, however, they surely have more than one video.

One of the teachers saw the freshmen preparing for the recording of ‘their’ Harlem Shake. One of them even brought a tripod and a special video camera just for the sake of recording this.

And believe it or not, few of them also brought costumes. Super Woman costume, and other superheroes and the likes.

I cannot bring myself to believe this, but this is the fact.

Now, I’m going to bring up a few points.

1) What is so appealing about the Harlem Shake / Why are people doing it?

The ‘Harlem Shake’ starts off as fun and games, until the original dance became distorted, and people continuing uploading videos of ‘their own style’.

This is the first point. For people out there (mostly uneducated in moral, probably, but I digress), Harlem Shake may be a form of entertainment, or a fun way to express themselves. This is one of the most common way of thinking. However, there are also others who doesn’t like the song, but likes the ‘set of rules’ behind it and its meaning.

For (most) students at my school, this is the minor reason as to why they are recording their own style of Harlem Shake. The major reason is because of their own upperclassmen. Now, you may ask, what is the relevance between Harlem Shake, and upperclassmen?

The counselling teachers informed us that most of the freshmen are recording because of their upperclassmen’s persuasion, or dare. Hence why the upperclassmen are mostly blamed, although I’m fairly sure most of us are innocent.

Our counselling teacher told us to not communicate with the freshmen because mostly it will only bring up conflicts because of small things; impertinence, impoliteness, and a little slip of the tongue.

But even so, it is noted by them that, most of the upperclassmen who communicates with the freshmen are those that could be said as ‘bad’ and ‘naughty’, those who likes to mislead the freshmen into doing things they shouldn’t.

I’ve never been aware of these going on, although I had a feeling already that even though discreetly, some of my own mates does this.

There are also a lot of other reasons, as stated by this person, a Harlem Shake addict/craze, what ever the term is [cut because of the length]:

1. the EDM (electronic dance music) beat by Baaur perfectly encapsulates the music that American taste-makers are listening to right now.
2. the videos are short (most between 30-50 seconds) making them relatively easy to watch and produce.
3. the Harlem Shake can be done in any setting (at work, at school, under water, in the air, etc) and while wearing anything, two factors that when taken together make each video so unique.

Then, it is because of Harlem Shake’s short length, flexible setting, and music taste. I can accept these reasons, but they are certainly not counting the fact that this misled a lot of youngsters.

2) What drives people to do the Harlem Shake?

For now, I can only say that people does this because:

1. They wanted to gain popularity;
2. Pressure from other people;
3. Just for the fun of it;
4. Because of the ‘Harlem Shake Competitions.’

At the second point, the pressure could be from other people, or their seniors and things.

To gain popularity? Of course. Every Youtube video of Harlem Shake have about 100k views.

3) Why is Harlem Shake bad/negative?

There are a lot of examples I could give on this. People gets fired because of this life-ruining meme. Students are suspended.

And a lot of other things happened.

But most of all, it is the moral of the society that gets the most hit in the face. For example, the students in my school.

Not to mention that most Harlem Shake videos are graphic, vulgar, and the likes. Some have nudes in there, or even girls using only their lingerie. This is beyond unacceptable.

4) How Harlem Citizens View Harlem Shake Vids

As shown here, the Harlem Citizen said themselves that the Harlem vids created by the other people is really distorted, much less close to the original ones. They also stated that these vids are like trying to disrespect them an their original Harlem.

“Any time people are dancing, especially in this day and age when everybody’s trying to be so cool, and people are letting loose, letting off some steam, I agree with it,” Diddy told MTV News, though he did admit that people should “get educated on the real Harlem Shake, it’s something that’s an art form.”

5) Conclusion.

Harlem Shake, doing it is okay, as long as you do not cross the lines, be it religious lines or socially-acceptable norms. That said, I still do not support Harlem Shake, not at all, and would never in my life.

And this link has a lot of extreme Harlem Shake examples. I have mentioned this link before, here.

(I mean, how do they convince an airline to let them do the Harlem Shake inside a PLANE? Note that the plane is midair, moving.)

“You know japan (currently used by Indonesia) school program isn’t that good right? We don’t get a chance to choose what we do best in, but we do a minimum in general. But at least it made us smarter than the independent school program other countries may use.” -Submission by a friend.

held back a year.

I had a classmate whose name was… Ah, let’s just call him John.

So, John had Acute Gastritis. He rarely went to school, and when he does, he went home earlier than us, usually skipping a subject. John was supposed to be in 9th grade, but his sickness held him back a year, that’s why he’s in our class, 8-A (John had a little brother that’s also in 8th grade, but different classrooms.)

John was, honestly, a smart guy. He did the tests at school, and ranked eleven out of thirty eight (on the best class, 8-A), despite his sickness. Even some of my classmates who were completely healthy dropped classes to 8-B or 8-C. He, on the other hand, stayed on class 8-A.

And although from outside he seems like a cool guy, I can somehow see that he’s kind of sad, as if he doesn’t feel like he’s fit into our class.

He’s also very sensitive, in my honest opinion.

One day (I’m not really sure about the chronology), when John walked inside the classroom, one of (or maybe two, I’m not sure) my friends yelled, “The adult’s here!” or (“The old man’s here!”, take your pick.)

It sounds like it’s no big deal, but apparently to him it is. He stopped coming to school, as if his confidence went down the drain.

I never had (and hopefully never will) a sickness so bad, so I can’t really connect with him. He’s a male, so I’d imagine that he’d be stronger, but alas I was wrong.

And really, this became like an international incident between the counselling teachers and our homeroom teacher. Some of the students, too, but you could exclude me.

I’m getting bored with how the teachers ALWAYS making such a huge fuss about him around us, almost like they’re blaming us. Plus this invisible war between the counselling teacher and homeroom teacher (<- this person doesn’t notice I guess).

Our homeroom teacher is frankly ANNOYING. She likes to brag. A lot. If not about a) herself, b) it’s about her kids, or c) her other classes’ students (whom she had taught before).

But our counselling teacher is pretty good. Nobody dared to say a word (mostly because her stories are always so interesting) when she’s talking. But their opinions differ like water and fire.

The thing is, all of them likes to say

“When John came back, act normally, okay?”

Don’t you know that if you drill those words to our head, it will come out as a chore? Naturally, we won’t be able to act normal around him. (Because of self-consciousness)

We’ve had enough of the talks about normal, John, and John.

Just bring him back to class (the counselling teacher are currently in the middle of texting and talking to John/his mother in hopes of being able to bring him/his confidence back.), and we’ll do the rest. Seriously, kids makes mistake, but we learn from it.

I hope that he’ll come back soon so we can be friends.

The flaws of (some) teaching methods.

As you can see, school is an everyday occurrence to students, young females and males all the same. However, right now I will not write about how corrupt my school is, but rather the teaching methods (some of) the teachers use.

Teaching, as you have all seen (or experience, for some), is a really stressful job, depending on the teaching subject. I’d say that teaching polite young adults are easier than teaching pubescent thirteen years old.

Anyway,

Take my school, for example. There are roughly fifty two teachers, including staffs. I could safely say that all of them has different, colorful personalities of their own.

My Javanese teacher. He was an outgoing, cheerful and funny teacher (he’s pretty old by the way), contrasting to my old math teacher (she’s pretty young),  who were so uptight and strict.

Majority of the students liked the Javanese teacher more, and preferred him over the math teacher.

Students does not like to get chained to work, yelled at, or getting scorned at. That being said, teachers should lighten up a little.

The problem is, most of the teachers doesn’t know (or doesn’t care, take your pick), about children psychology, children’s way of thinking, and children’s feelings. Their minds are far too occupied with other things. Either that, or they just doesn’t bother.

Take my Indonesian Language teacher for example. She behaves like pre-pubescent teenage, although I’m quite sure she’s well over fifty.

This, of course, clashes with the rest of the class.

Teacher, in my opinion, should be a person that students could rely on. Teachers should be a person that students could talk to.

You know how she (Indonesian language teacher) behaves in class?

“Uuh! -insert whatever anime-girl gesture here* Why won’t you all listen!”

—honestly, I cracked up a little. But of course I didn’t laugh because she’d get madder if I do.

You think that’s stupid? Well, think again. There are a lot of things stupider than that. You haven’t seen her seriously mad.

She slams her desk HARD a few times, and shouts, “I’VE ALREADY TOLD YOU HOW TO ANSWER THIS QUESTION, YET YOU ALL NEVER SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME!!”

…Not enough?

She DIRECTLY insulted us. She’s not implying, but she said it clearly, clearly to our face. Today, yes, today.

“IDIOTS!” no shit sherlock considering you’re not even teaching us anything

The way I write it here isn’t sounds like it’s a big deal, but truly it is. I wish I could get it on cam but whatever. (Plus she threw a book [not thick but…] to my friend, she was only one meter away [Her desk is right in front of my friend’s]. So I’d imagine it to hurt. A lot.)

All I wanted to say is that teachers should understand kids better than kids understand them.

At my school kids understands teachers better though.

“Oh it’s that teacher be prepared for an angry blast of yells for nothing.”

I’m not saying that being strict is bad or horrible, but at least try to lighten up. Try to joke, try to connect with the students, rather than teach us on and on, and occasionally yelling at us (for nothing).

It’s not in our nature to like strict and uptight teachers, just my two cents.