One last blog to post, about the book The Corporation.
Joel Bakan states how the corporations began to gain its power in the mid-1500s and even started to govern society. My general image of corporations are just evil beings, as Rab mentioned in the class. When I heard the story about car corporations comparing the cost of compensation and recall, I was astonished. For the large corporations, the profit is everything. People's lives can be even converted to money. In Ch3, Bakan mentions how the corporation has a psychopathic character and a negative effect on the environment due to their externalities. But do they make effort to deal with the issue by using money? No. He also explains the difference between companies and corporations. Unlike companies, corporations must act in the interest of shareholders or otherwise, the executives can get sued. So, the real culprits are shareholders. Another interesting point is how he warns this book is not an academic study.
Due to my lack of knowledge I could only understand the general idea, but there is a need to prevent the corporations from dominating the society, contaminating the environment and "pathologically pursuing profits and power."
2013年6月18日火曜日
6/17 ARW Response
Yesterday was the last day of ARW.
First I would like to mention about presentation. Doing good presentation has been a hard task since middle school that I have never achieved. I did my best, but got stuck in the middle of the presentation and had to reconsider what to say. I want to be a good presenter like Rab. Out of all presentations, I especially liked Yusuke's. It is hard to compare the quality of contents but in terms of how he delivered information, his manner, gesture and flow of words grabbed the audience's attention. I think his smooth flow of speech did not stop for a single time. Being a good presenter obviously enhances credibility of my opinion or bias, so I would consider taking Rab's presentation course in winter.
First I would like to mention about presentation. Doing good presentation has been a hard task since middle school that I have never achieved. I did my best, but got stuck in the middle of the presentation and had to reconsider what to say. I want to be a good presenter like Rab. Out of all presentations, I especially liked Yusuke's. It is hard to compare the quality of contents but in terms of how he delivered information, his manner, gesture and flow of words grabbed the audience's attention. I think his smooth flow of speech did not stop for a single time. Being a good presenter obviously enhances credibility of my opinion or bias, so I would consider taking Rab's presentation course in winter.
Lastly, I really want to say thank you to my section mates for being nice to me and appreciate Rab for teaching me so many things. He overturned all my knowledge from high school and I learned that is what liberal arts is all about.
6/7 ARW Response
This day's lecture was given by Paul Wadden. The first time we met him was at Bakayama and I only knew him as a editor of Meiland's article. So I learned that he is a professional of Hemingway's literature for the first time. One thing that made me uneasy was how he told us to put away our electronic devices; Rab actually told us that other ELA teachers are not tolerant as much as he is, but still we felt very puzzled. Other teachers are too sensitive with the use of electronic devices. Well, some students actually use them for purposes other than note taking or looking up information, so that is understandable.
My first impression of reading Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea was quite confusing. Not the content, but rather the purpose of writing such a story. However, Paul's lecture taught various perspectives to interpret this story. This story includes many themes and symbols. Two important backgrounds for this story are his own life and Christianity. Since he could not build a good relationship with his father or son, he made two men in this book an ideal relationship. There were many symbols that represent Christianity as well. I did not know that fish represents sacred object in Christianity. Looking at a literature from different perspectives taught us to how important the critical thinking is.
My first impression of reading Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea was quite confusing. Not the content, but rather the purpose of writing such a story. However, Paul's lecture taught various perspectives to interpret this story. This story includes many themes and symbols. Two important backgrounds for this story are his own life and Christianity. Since he could not build a good relationship with his father or son, he made two men in this book an ideal relationship. There were many symbols that represent Christianity as well. I did not know that fish represents sacred object in Christianity. Looking at a literature from different perspectives taught us to how important the critical thinking is.
6/4 LLA Response
The lecture was given by Mr. Ken Enochs. The future of technology! I have been always wondering what is going to happen or to be invented in the future. When I hear the phrase "invention in the future", I always think of the movie Back to the Future Part II. The film was produced in 1985 and included various illustrations of what are expected to be invented in 2015. There were flying cars, video games that can be played handless, televisions that display 10+ channels at once, microwaves that defrost pizza in 3 seconds and many other inventions. Are we going to have these technologies only 2 year from now? That sounds too unrealistic, but according to Enochs, prediction in 1940's came true today, such as computers, internet, cellphones, moving sidewalks or Skype. If Moore's Law, which states that processing speed doubles every 2 year, is accurate, it might be possible to witness fantastic inventions in 2015.
Enochs explained four future technologies that we are likely to see: GRIN. Genetic engineering, Robotics, Intelligence and Nanotechnology are expected to develop radically. He then explained Weak and Strong points, but I personally thought a robot playing a violin was amazing because I could hear vibrato from its performance.
Three visionaries on the future technological developments were Ray Kurzweil, Francis Fukuyama and Bill Joy. RK is the only techno-optimist and other two are techno-pessimists or Luddites. They all support their points with details and evidences, but it is also true that technological developments have both pros and cons.
Enochs explained four future technologies that we are likely to see: GRIN. Genetic engineering, Robotics, Intelligence and Nanotechnology are expected to develop radically. He then explained Weak and Strong points, but I personally thought a robot playing a violin was amazing because I could hear vibrato from its performance.
Three visionaries on the future technological developments were Ray Kurzweil, Francis Fukuyama and Bill Joy. RK is the only techno-optimist and other two are techno-pessimists or Luddites. They all support their points with details and evidences, but it is also true that technological developments have both pros and cons.
2013年6月17日月曜日
6/3 ARW Response
I have not been able to write blog posts from last week because of the research paper and other events such as lives for UNBRAND, an A Capella group or taking Eiken. Therefore, I will catch up as soon as possible.
On June 3rd, we had two classes of ARW. In the first class, Rab gave us his brief biography and we learned that his bias, or strong opinions rather, is originated from his profound experience and career. He mentioned how having bias is not a bad thing. The important thing is to have an opinion and to listen to a counterargument that stimulates and impacts your idea and then to sharpen my opinion based on that counterargument. In order to do this as proficient as possible, I have to read all the time, as Rab did and still does. Connecting knowledge from several different subjects: this is the purpose of liberal arts and significance of attending ICU. However, having bias without any evidences or reasons is same as not having an opinion at all. "I think this car is good because I just feel so" is not convincing at all.
We also watched several videos. The first one was the press conference taken place few weeks after Fukushima radiation. I was astonished to watch the content. The person who is answering the questions from reporters not only equivocates but also states that he cannot guarantee people in Fukushima to evacuate. I wondered why he says something very risky and controversial. He could have just said they will do their best. More surprisingly, this press conference was never reported on the media. Another video was on the perception of risk. I would never try out any of those, especially one with a bicycle.
The second class of the day was interesting too. I never knew there is a test that people take to avoid being drafted to war. The score George W. Bush got was hilarious: 26/100! It is one point away from being too dumb. I knew that he got into Yale with legacy system, but did not expect him to be that unintelligent. I also learned that "unfairness of the profit calls for another war."
The Young Turks is an interesting and funny program that mentions various topics: political, economic to something completely irrelevant. I don't think it is reasonable to fire a teacher for his or her appearance and to consider children's catfight a big issue.
On June 3rd, we had two classes of ARW. In the first class, Rab gave us his brief biography and we learned that his bias, or strong opinions rather, is originated from his profound experience and career. He mentioned how having bias is not a bad thing. The important thing is to have an opinion and to listen to a counterargument that stimulates and impacts your idea and then to sharpen my opinion based on that counterargument. In order to do this as proficient as possible, I have to read all the time, as Rab did and still does. Connecting knowledge from several different subjects: this is the purpose of liberal arts and significance of attending ICU. However, having bias without any evidences or reasons is same as not having an opinion at all. "I think this car is good because I just feel so" is not convincing at all.
We also watched several videos. The first one was the press conference taken place few weeks after Fukushima radiation. I was astonished to watch the content. The person who is answering the questions from reporters not only equivocates but also states that he cannot guarantee people in Fukushima to evacuate. I wondered why he says something very risky and controversial. He could have just said they will do their best. More surprisingly, this press conference was never reported on the media. Another video was on the perception of risk. I would never try out any of those, especially one with a bicycle.
The second class of the day was interesting too. I never knew there is a test that people take to avoid being drafted to war. The score George W. Bush got was hilarious: 26/100! It is one point away from being too dumb. I knew that he got into Yale with legacy system, but did not expect him to be that unintelligent. I also learned that "unfairness of the profit calls for another war."
The Young Turks is an interesting and funny program that mentions various topics: political, economic to something completely irrelevant. I don't think it is reasonable to fire a teacher for his or her appearance and to consider children's catfight a big issue.
2013年6月2日日曜日
ARW 5/31 Response
It is nice to have class in macs room; I can concentrate and understand the topic better. The first discussion theme was whether everyone has a bias in some way. I think so, because in this case, a bias can be replaced by terms like "preference", "favorite", "interest", "tendency", "opinion" or many other words. As Rab taught us in the beginning of the year, having bias is not necessarily a bad thing. It is rather better to have it to some extent than to be indecisive. It is a human nature. However, whether having a strong bias is allowed depends on the situation.
It was "Funky Friday" so we watched several video clips. The first one was "Say no to blood diamonds." Its background music got stuck in my head and it conveyed its message very well. However, I personally thought the other two videos are more interesting and impressive. "The Mouth Revolution" was filled with humor of video recording up side down chins and pretending mouths are staging their revolution. It actually conveyed the message against the use of pesticide and production of non-organic foods. The other video was "Meatrix". The title already sounds humorous but it shows hostility against livestock abuse. It not only suffers animals' environment but also ours. This video was actually a part of the website "The Meatrix" which explains about sustainable food and the problems with factory farming. Last two videos contain humor so I consider them effective and especially the website can indirectly deliver its website with a small risk rather than writing a letter to the Congress.
After watching several Free Range Studios videos, I found "The Story of Electronics" most interesting. All of these videos give us a sense that environmentalists and economists might have opposite views. In this video, a concept "designed for the dump" is introduced. I never knew that electronics are manufactured to be fragile for a economical reason but I could guess why one phone charger is not compatible to many different phones. Then a consumer will have to buy a new one. It is the key strategy for a company that makes our electronics. The simple rule of production "Toxics in, Toxics out" alarmed me to be more careful using electronics. Otherwise, we are going to pollute the environment even more. However, it makes more sense if CEO of the company deals with all scraps of electronics that the company made. I do not know this is realistically possible, so the best solution is to have the company produce longer lasting, less toxic and more recyclable electronics.
By the way, I have been careful when writing an e-mail to teachers or professors. I always put a proper title, started with Dear or To Mr/Mrs.______, and ended the message with 'Sincerely". So I think I have not offended any professors in the past. I think.
It was "Funky Friday" so we watched several video clips. The first one was "Say no to blood diamonds." Its background music got stuck in my head and it conveyed its message very well. However, I personally thought the other two videos are more interesting and impressive. "The Mouth Revolution" was filled with humor of video recording up side down chins and pretending mouths are staging their revolution. It actually conveyed the message against the use of pesticide and production of non-organic foods. The other video was "Meatrix". The title already sounds humorous but it shows hostility against livestock abuse. It not only suffers animals' environment but also ours. This video was actually a part of the website "The Meatrix" which explains about sustainable food and the problems with factory farming. Last two videos contain humor so I consider them effective and especially the website can indirectly deliver its website with a small risk rather than writing a letter to the Congress.
After watching several Free Range Studios videos, I found "The Story of Electronics" most interesting. All of these videos give us a sense that environmentalists and economists might have opposite views. In this video, a concept "designed for the dump" is introduced. I never knew that electronics are manufactured to be fragile for a economical reason but I could guess why one phone charger is not compatible to many different phones. Then a consumer will have to buy a new one. It is the key strategy for a company that makes our electronics. The simple rule of production "Toxics in, Toxics out" alarmed me to be more careful using electronics. Otherwise, we are going to pollute the environment even more. However, it makes more sense if CEO of the company deals with all scraps of electronics that the company made. I do not know this is realistically possible, so the best solution is to have the company produce longer lasting, less toxic and more recyclable electronics.
By the way, I have been careful when writing an e-mail to teachers or professors. I always put a proper title, started with Dear or To Mr/Mrs.______, and ended the message with 'Sincerely". So I think I have not offended any professors in the past. I think.
5/29 ARW Response
In this class, I learned the difference between companies and corporations for the first time. A company can be any business that can be owned by an individual, but a corporation is owned by several people, such as business partners, stockholders, or any collection of people. Today, corporations are known to be evil in general for becoming the world's dominant economic institution. Rab told us about a car corporation refused to recall its products to repair because the price of compensation would be less than the cost for repair, according to their calculation. What they cares about is not safety or morality. It is all about a number. This decision that workers thought "smart" was actually the most ridiculous decision. Jury got so outrageous and sentenced their compensation to be a billion of dollars. However, democracy does not work; the judge had a close connection with the corporation, and decreased the amount to a quarter of this because he "thought" it is too much. This is what power can do. This is what we should consider when we start applying for companies or corporations for job. We should be careful if they are doing anything immoral. Probably today, it is harder to find those that are not.
The topic we discussed in this class was a little bit overwhelming for me, due to lacking knowledge in economy, business, history and sociology. I should be more familiar with these issues; otherwise, I won't be able to catch up to everyone else.
The topic we discussed in this class was a little bit overwhelming for me, due to lacking knowledge in economy, business, history and sociology. I should be more familiar with these issues; otherwise, I won't be able to catch up to everyone else.
2013年6月1日土曜日
LLA 5/28 Response
This day's topic was democracy. According to the dictionary, it says democracy "is a form of government in which all eligible citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives." If this definition is correct, would the U.S. be considered democratic? First of all, I was surprised to know that the concept of democracy was born in Athens a long time ago. Its root words are demo, meaning "people" and kratos, meaning "government." So democracy is literally SUPPOSED to mean the government of people. There are some contradictions, however.
Voting is often used to illustrate unfairness. According to Rab, UK, for example, citizens are allowed to add a certain name on the ballot by paying corresponding amount of money. I agree that this is a richmen's game because their financial power directly means political power. In the U.S. it does not work this easily. Not only the candidate has to convince certain regions for approval to put his or her name, but also people in U.S. have no interests with the 3rd challenger. However in the U.S., there is a voting limitation not only for ages, but also for race, nationality and gender until recently. Voting shows anti-democracy. The simulation of Odious Debt made me easy to understand what it is. It was funny because I ended up receiving Maki's laptop but that might happen in the real situation. This is basically a flow of wealth from the poor to the rich, so rich companies or countries can exploit resources and the poor end up not having anything original.
I had been doubting if the U.S. is really democratic. Representative democracy is an extremely contradicting term. The voting system in the states, Electoral College, is basically a number game. Some states, such as Texas or California, own much more votes than any others so the candidate who wins these two states already gain more than 100 electoral votes out of 332. I am so bad at memorizing political stuff and cannot find it on the internet but I think there was one election in the past in which the candidate who lost was actually winning in terms of total individual votes by the citizens. In this case, the term representative democracy even loses its credibility as a form of democracy.
Voting is often used to illustrate unfairness. According to Rab, UK, for example, citizens are allowed to add a certain name on the ballot by paying corresponding amount of money. I agree that this is a richmen's game because their financial power directly means political power. In the U.S. it does not work this easily. Not only the candidate has to convince certain regions for approval to put his or her name, but also people in U.S. have no interests with the 3rd challenger. However in the U.S., there is a voting limitation not only for ages, but also for race, nationality and gender until recently. Voting shows anti-democracy. The simulation of Odious Debt made me easy to understand what it is. It was funny because I ended up receiving Maki's laptop but that might happen in the real situation. This is basically a flow of wealth from the poor to the rich, so rich companies or countries can exploit resources and the poor end up not having anything original.
I had been doubting if the U.S. is really democratic. Representative democracy is an extremely contradicting term. The voting system in the states, Electoral College, is basically a number game. Some states, such as Texas or California, own much more votes than any others so the candidate who wins these two states already gain more than 100 electoral votes out of 332. I am so bad at memorizing political stuff and cannot find it on the internet but I think there was one election in the past in which the candidate who lost was actually winning in terms of total individual votes by the citizens. In this case, the term representative democracy even loses its credibility as a form of democracy.
2013年5月30日木曜日
Lies My Teacher Told me (Chapter 12)
This chapter responds to a question that has been unanswered for eleven chapters: Why is history taught like this? My hypothesis was that textbook authors do their best to avoid including anything controversial or extreme to satisfy any readers. In fact, it states that "publishers produce textbooks with several audiences in mind." Loewen has been also stating that textbooks tend to be biased since the majority of the authors are usually whites and conceal painful illustrations of slavery or unjust discrimination against African Americans. Other chapters include description of how certain historical figures get more attention than others, what Columbus and other settlers did to Native Indians, or the truths of the Vietnam War. As Loewen says, history textbooks failed to grab my attention and made me become a passive learner of American history. My high school history teachers must have done their best to make the topic interesting but my interest toward American history was unmoved. In comparison, this book uncovers many censored information that made this book intriguing.
This chapter was relatively harder to write a blog post about because it is a sum-up of previous eleven chapters, but there were still some details I had reactions to. Loewen acknowledges that textbook authors cannot include every event but it does not take much space and time to explain that Helen Keller was a social activist. Yet we have been only told that she was a deaf and blind woman. Probably no one can reject what George Orwell stated in his book 1984, "Who controls the present controls the past." This phrase reminds me of LLA lecture on MSM censorship Rab has given us; media controls the present and controls what information we get about the recent past. Next interesting point was how An Inconvenient Truth involves with this. I wrote a book report on this but never knew that it was initially refused by NSTA for its "unnecessary risk upon the capital campaign." An educational association like NSTA is responsible for censoring academic writings or reports that possible have harmful effects on the national economy or politics, or themselves. In this case, NSTA was receiving $6 million from Exxon Mobil.
Additionally, regardless of living in the U.S. for 14 years, I have never known the existence of textbook adoption boards in many states. The level of censorship, types of textbook used at school and criteria for length, coverage and reading level all vary depending on the states. The state I lived in, New Jersey, has an adoption board apparently, so I am curious how much information was censored compared any other states without adoption boards. I am interested to ask this question to my history teacher at high school, if she lets me ask it. The last thing I found interesting in this chapter is the correspondence of parents about their children getting taught by these textbooks. There was a survey conducted in the late 1970s that asked parents whether they believe authorities and want children to believe them. Surprisingly, more than half the parents do not want their children to doubt the authority while they themselves do. All adults are hindrance for children to learn. Is there any solution, and do children need to keep learning American history mostly composed of lies? Apparently, next chapter would explain why they don't.
This chapter was relatively harder to write a blog post about because it is a sum-up of previous eleven chapters, but there were still some details I had reactions to. Loewen acknowledges that textbook authors cannot include every event but it does not take much space and time to explain that Helen Keller was a social activist. Yet we have been only told that she was a deaf and blind woman. Probably no one can reject what George Orwell stated in his book 1984, "Who controls the present controls the past." This phrase reminds me of LLA lecture on MSM censorship Rab has given us; media controls the present and controls what information we get about the recent past. Next interesting point was how An Inconvenient Truth involves with this. I wrote a book report on this but never knew that it was initially refused by NSTA for its "unnecessary risk upon the capital campaign." An educational association like NSTA is responsible for censoring academic writings or reports that possible have harmful effects on the national economy or politics, or themselves. In this case, NSTA was receiving $6 million from Exxon Mobil.
Additionally, regardless of living in the U.S. for 14 years, I have never known the existence of textbook adoption boards in many states. The level of censorship, types of textbook used at school and criteria for length, coverage and reading level all vary depending on the states. The state I lived in, New Jersey, has an adoption board apparently, so I am curious how much information was censored compared any other states without adoption boards. I am interested to ask this question to my history teacher at high school, if she lets me ask it. The last thing I found interesting in this chapter is the correspondence of parents about their children getting taught by these textbooks. There was a survey conducted in the late 1970s that asked parents whether they believe authorities and want children to believe them. Surprisingly, more than half the parents do not want their children to doubt the authority while they themselves do. All adults are hindrance for children to learn. Is there any solution, and do children need to keep learning American history mostly composed of lies? Apparently, next chapter would explain why they don't.
2013年5月28日火曜日
5/27 ARW Response
Today's lecture was about making our own websites using Google Sites. Google realizes anything we want to make. In high school, I have learned to make own websites using Microsoft Publisher or Wix but procedures were so complicated and exhausting. How about this Google Sites? Well, as usual, whatever Google provides is awesome. It is easy to deal with and has a variety of options to make an website creative. If we click "Manage Site", we can change the font, background color, background image, or any other settings.We can even add calendars, docs, charts or maps on the web page. At last, Rab came up with a fantastic idea: we individually made a test web page and shared with a classmate for him or her to mess around with the page as much as possible. I tried out with Megumi (Kii)'s page but it was harder than I thought. I have learned that I need to be creating even when I am trying to destroying someone's work. Finally, I made the web page for psychology group with Narumi. She was the one who showed a high level of creativity in "messing around" exercise so I will learn from her creativity.
I am just curious about one thing. Google tends to push away programs that they do no prefer much because of producing less profits than other major programs like Gmail, Map, News or Drives. Google Sites does not even appear on "even more" section. Is Google going to shut down Google Sites as well?
I am just curious about one thing. Google tends to push away programs that they do no prefer much because of producing less profits than other major programs like Gmail, Map, News or Drives. Google Sites does not even appear on "even more" section. Is Google going to shut down Google Sites as well?
2013年5月26日日曜日
ARW 5/24 Response
I do not know why but on this day, I felt like we are having a class in H-159, although Rab officially told us that we have Friday classes in macs room more than a month ago. I finally arrived at macs room. I later realized there is no way we could have Funky Fridays in a room without any computers. I often make this kind of strange mistakes.
Anyway, more things to learn regarding computers! The first topic was internet security. We are usually not aware of our computers being tracked. But if we do not violate certain laws, such as illegal downloading or hacking, we can be easily tracked and arrested. Even emails we send back and forth everyday can be supervised. These are due to IP address. This is why we should be careful sending an email from computers in ICU since "emails are like postcards", according to Rab. Additionally, I learned about VPN for the first time. This allows me to pretend that I am accessing from certain regions so I can use websites that limit the locations of access. When I used to live in U.S., I often used a video website called Youku, which only allows an access from U.S. and China but now I cannot watch anything on this website. If I wish, I can watch anything I like for 1000 yen per month. I am not going to do that, but it is a powerful tool.
In order to make presentation slides, PowerPoint was the only option for me before Rab introduced a new tool: Keynote. I have seen this desk-looking icon every time I used macs, but I have not expected its high performance. It has much more useful and exciting tools, 3D graphs or Alpha for example, than PowerPoint. I asked Rab if this only works on macs, and his answer was "Of course!" Yeah, I should probably admit that Macs are better than Windows. So every time I need to use Keynote, I should come to ILC. I might have to stick with PowerPoint but I would like to use this if I have a chance in the future.
Anyway, more things to learn regarding computers! The first topic was internet security. We are usually not aware of our computers being tracked. But if we do not violate certain laws, such as illegal downloading or hacking, we can be easily tracked and arrested. Even emails we send back and forth everyday can be supervised. These are due to IP address. This is why we should be careful sending an email from computers in ICU since "emails are like postcards", according to Rab. Additionally, I learned about VPN for the first time. This allows me to pretend that I am accessing from certain regions so I can use websites that limit the locations of access. When I used to live in U.S., I often used a video website called Youku, which only allows an access from U.S. and China but now I cannot watch anything on this website. If I wish, I can watch anything I like for 1000 yen per month. I am not going to do that, but it is a powerful tool.
In order to make presentation slides, PowerPoint was the only option for me before Rab introduced a new tool: Keynote. I have seen this desk-looking icon every time I used macs, but I have not expected its high performance. It has much more useful and exciting tools, 3D graphs or Alpha for example, than PowerPoint. I asked Rab if this only works on macs, and his answer was "Of course!" Yeah, I should probably admit that Macs are better than Windows. So every time I need to use Keynote, I should come to ILC. I might have to stick with PowerPoint but I would like to use this if I have a chance in the future.
2013年5月23日木曜日
ARW 5/22 Response
ARW 5/22 Response
We had our class at Bakayama. The first thing we heard from Rab was stupidity of the ELA Director. I can accept the fact we are not able to observe other ELA classes, although I was interested in this idea and have already signed up for Miguel's class, as long as an appropriate and convincing reason was given. Her answer was that students in Stream 3 and 4 could be possibly demotivated from our higher levels of English. This is not so convincing. When I heard this, I thought her opinion symbolizes currently popular "Yutori Kyoiku", or relaxed, overprotective education. I believed that professors at ICU know this policy is ineffective, but there was one who does not. I might not be able to be objective about this issue because I am the one who gets to observe them, but still I don't understand why she has a right to make this decision by herself. I mean, she is the director but isn't she supposed to pay attention to all other people's opinions? In fact, many ELA teachers were willing to carry this out, and what she really should have done is conducting a survey on students in other sections. It does not have to be anything official; each teacher could just ask his or her students if they allow us to observe them. Before considering any of these solutions, the director shut this opportunity down. I personally think she does not deserve to call herself a professor. According to Rab, it's been only 5 weeks since she got her position. She might know what ELA stands for, but definitely does not know what "liberal" signifies.
What is even more upsetting is that Rab does not get to teach Stream 1 next year. I would like to question this to all other ELA teachers too, but I do not understand why they do not prefer the way Rab teaches. Since I got into Stream 1, I've learned a lot: a bunch of Google programs, Zotero, iMovie, flaws of MSM, Web 2.0...I can't even recall everything. His segmentation method always made the class interesting and intriguing. It was the first time for me to take English class that does not involve any grammar rules or boring repetition of readings and writings. And they are not letting him teach next year and replacing with someone less enjoyable. This is a complete nonsense.
We had our class at Bakayama. The first thing we heard from Rab was stupidity of the ELA Director. I can accept the fact we are not able to observe other ELA classes, although I was interested in this idea and have already signed up for Miguel's class, as long as an appropriate and convincing reason was given. Her answer was that students in Stream 3 and 4 could be possibly demotivated from our higher levels of English. This is not so convincing. When I heard this, I thought her opinion symbolizes currently popular "Yutori Kyoiku", or relaxed, overprotective education. I believed that professors at ICU know this policy is ineffective, but there was one who does not. I might not be able to be objective about this issue because I am the one who gets to observe them, but still I don't understand why she has a right to make this decision by herself. I mean, she is the director but isn't she supposed to pay attention to all other people's opinions? In fact, many ELA teachers were willing to carry this out, and what she really should have done is conducting a survey on students in other sections. It does not have to be anything official; each teacher could just ask his or her students if they allow us to observe them. Before considering any of these solutions, the director shut this opportunity down. I personally think she does not deserve to call herself a professor. According to Rab, it's been only 5 weeks since she got her position. She might know what ELA stands for, but definitely does not know what "liberal" signifies.
What is even more upsetting is that Rab does not get to teach Stream 1 next year. I would like to question this to all other ELA teachers too, but I do not understand why they do not prefer the way Rab teaches. Since I got into Stream 1, I've learned a lot: a bunch of Google programs, Zotero, iMovie, flaws of MSM, Web 2.0...I can't even recall everything. His segmentation method always made the class interesting and intriguing. It was the first time for me to take English class that does not involve any grammar rules or boring repetition of readings and writings. And they are not letting him teach next year and replacing with someone less enjoyable. This is a complete nonsense.
LLA 5/21 Response
LLA 5/21 Response
I was looking forward to take today's lecture by Gavin Whitelaw on konbini. Prior to this lecture, we were assigned to visit the Hachiro Yuasa Museum and look through the exhibits. It was a good opportunity because I was probably not motivated to walk to the museum unless it is mandatory. I highly enjoyed the exhibit, Konbini: Is this a mingei? Every time I come back to Japan from U.S., one of the first things I feel envious of people in Japan was the existence of konbini. As Gavin said, U.S. convenient stores are described as 4D's: dirty, dangerous, dull, depressing. I've been to Seven Eleven in U.S. several times but there aren't anything special to buy and I kept avoiding to visit after 10 P.M. In comparison, Japanese konbinis should be described as 5D's: clean, comforting, cool, couteous and finally, convenient. I admire Gavin's effort of working at several konbinis in order to practically collect data from his own experience as an anthropologist.
I learned the precise definition of culture for the first time. It is defined as "the contingent and courteous emergence of meaningful conventions." It should be something we are proud of. I personally think konbini is a representative of Japanese culture. It represents Japanese polite manner, high standard of food, meticulously planned system, and endurance of opening 24hrs everyday. Every time I come back to Japan, konbini is like a treasure island for me.
Some of the interesting facts I learned in this lecture were that a cashier functions as a data collection machine and konbini staffs endeavor creating food friendly to seniors. Every time a new customer arrives, a cashier presses a button with a demographic that best matches to that customer. In this way, they are collecting data. Additionally, staffs repeat trial and error to pursue more softness and less size for easily-eaten food. Back to the first question, Konbini: Is this a mingei? I would claim, it definitely is!
I was looking forward to take today's lecture by Gavin Whitelaw on konbini. Prior to this lecture, we were assigned to visit the Hachiro Yuasa Museum and look through the exhibits. It was a good opportunity because I was probably not motivated to walk to the museum unless it is mandatory. I highly enjoyed the exhibit, Konbini: Is this a mingei? Every time I come back to Japan from U.S., one of the first things I feel envious of people in Japan was the existence of konbini. As Gavin said, U.S. convenient stores are described as 4D's: dirty, dangerous, dull, depressing. I've been to Seven Eleven in U.S. several times but there aren't anything special to buy and I kept avoiding to visit after 10 P.M. In comparison, Japanese konbinis should be described as 5D's: clean, comforting, cool, couteous and finally, convenient. I admire Gavin's effort of working at several konbinis in order to practically collect data from his own experience as an anthropologist.
I learned the precise definition of culture for the first time. It is defined as "the contingent and courteous emergence of meaningful conventions." It should be something we are proud of. I personally think konbini is a representative of Japanese culture. It represents Japanese polite manner, high standard of food, meticulously planned system, and endurance of opening 24hrs everyday. Every time I come back to Japan, konbini is like a treasure island for me.
Some of the interesting facts I learned in this lecture were that a cashier functions as a data collection machine and konbini staffs endeavor creating food friendly to seniors. Every time a new customer arrives, a cashier presses a button with a demographic that best matches to that customer. In this way, they are collecting data. Additionally, staffs repeat trial and error to pursue more softness and less size for easily-eaten food. Back to the first question, Konbini: Is this a mingei? I would claim, it definitely is!
2013年5月21日火曜日
Lies My Teacher Told Me (Chapter 9&10)
Chapters 9 and 10 were discoveries of new American history for me as usual. However, as I was reading the first few paragraphs, I was not so confident if I can have a proper reaction since I did not know much about the Vietnam War (I should be ashamed). In the prior chapters, it was easier to react because I already knew how the topic is typically taught by textbooks used at school and I was able to see the difference by reading how it is SUPPOSED to be taught. But the way Loewen writes highlights both how it is taught and what actually happened so it was relatively easy to follow even without much prior knowledge. Still, I would not ever think that the combatants of the war in Vietnam were North and South Korea. I wonder how this knowledge twist occurred.
Chapter 9 elucidates an interesting phenomenon that how much information people know about the Vietnam War depends on their ages. Older they are, more accurate the information is. This is because authors of more recent textbooks are more likely to conceal some facts disgraceful to U.S. This chapter also introduces the significance of photos taken during the war. Pictures of the little girl running naked down Highway 1, fleeing a napalm attack or a Buddhist monk sitting at an intersection setting himself on fire to protest the South Vietnamese government clearly show how cruel and horrendous the war was. When people can see or recall these photos, none of them would think that the Vietnam War does not deserve to get much coverage on textbooks. This is why authors avoid these photos to be on textbooks. By now, I see a tendency; authors simply try their best to hide any facts disadvantageous to U.S. or its government. I was also shocked when I read the line "in Vietnam the United States dropped three times as many explosives as it dropped in all theaters of WWII, even including our nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.(248)" I knew how disastrous WWII was, but the Vietnam War was equally catastrophic or even worse. I also remembered the discussion we had last week that U.S. has demanded the Vietnamese for money it spent on supporting because U.S. army lost the war. I do not know if Loewen was not able to find this information, but textbooks obviously do not contain this fact.
Chapter 10 introduces an interesting division of humans: those alive on earth, the sasha, and the zamani. Apparently the borderline between the sasha and the zamani is relatively hard to locate because not all historical figures recalled by name are simply living dead. So far, most historical figures appeared in this book that we thought are the sasha, were actually the zamani since most of us had been deceived by textbook authors and we did not realize that we were being taught lies. It says "the less said about the recent past, the better. (260)" From authors' perspectives, it is easier to deceive us, current students, than elderly people since they have better knowledge about the past. The world of the sasha is controversial because readers with better knowledge may not agree with what is written on a textbook. Loewen also brings up 9/11 incident occurred in New York, U.S. For the first time, I slightly understood why textbook authors avoid answering "why" questions. President George W. Bush gave his answer to the question "why were we attacked?" by stating that they hate our freedoms and peace. This is nonsense and not only fails to calm us down but also even provokes us. We all know that there are some kinds of political and economical reasons behind the incident. It is better not to touch a bomb if they cannot defuse it. Authors are presumably having a hard time dealing with this issue since 9/11 is the sasha for most students who are learning history right now.
I liked the quote by William Faulkner, "The past is never dead, It's not even past." The past is living-dead. If authors determine to teach us what exactly happened few decades, centuries or millennia ago, three categories of humans or historical events will not be necessary.
Chapter 9 elucidates an interesting phenomenon that how much information people know about the Vietnam War depends on their ages. Older they are, more accurate the information is. This is because authors of more recent textbooks are more likely to conceal some facts disgraceful to U.S. This chapter also introduces the significance of photos taken during the war. Pictures of the little girl running naked down Highway 1, fleeing a napalm attack or a Buddhist monk sitting at an intersection setting himself on fire to protest the South Vietnamese government clearly show how cruel and horrendous the war was. When people can see or recall these photos, none of them would think that the Vietnam War does not deserve to get much coverage on textbooks. This is why authors avoid these photos to be on textbooks. By now, I see a tendency; authors simply try their best to hide any facts disadvantageous to U.S. or its government. I was also shocked when I read the line "in Vietnam the United States dropped three times as many explosives as it dropped in all theaters of WWII, even including our nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.(248)" I knew how disastrous WWII was, but the Vietnam War was equally catastrophic or even worse. I also remembered the discussion we had last week that U.S. has demanded the Vietnamese for money it spent on supporting because U.S. army lost the war. I do not know if Loewen was not able to find this information, but textbooks obviously do not contain this fact.
Chapter 10 introduces an interesting division of humans: those alive on earth, the sasha, and the zamani. Apparently the borderline between the sasha and the zamani is relatively hard to locate because not all historical figures recalled by name are simply living dead. So far, most historical figures appeared in this book that we thought are the sasha, were actually the zamani since most of us had been deceived by textbook authors and we did not realize that we were being taught lies. It says "the less said about the recent past, the better. (260)" From authors' perspectives, it is easier to deceive us, current students, than elderly people since they have better knowledge about the past. The world of the sasha is controversial because readers with better knowledge may not agree with what is written on a textbook. Loewen also brings up 9/11 incident occurred in New York, U.S. For the first time, I slightly understood why textbook authors avoid answering "why" questions. President George W. Bush gave his answer to the question "why were we attacked?" by stating that they hate our freedoms and peace. This is nonsense and not only fails to calm us down but also even provokes us. We all know that there are some kinds of political and economical reasons behind the incident. It is better not to touch a bomb if they cannot defuse it. Authors are presumably having a hard time dealing with this issue since 9/11 is the sasha for most students who are learning history right now.
I liked the quote by William Faulkner, "The past is never dead, It's not even past." The past is living-dead. If authors determine to teach us what exactly happened few decades, centuries or millennia ago, three categories of humans or historical events will not be necessary.
2013年5月20日月曜日
ARW 5/20 Response
ARW 5/20 Response
It was our first ELA class since we came back from Retreat. It was a lot more fun than I expected! It was shocking how that huge was reserved just for us! Time I spent with friends I never met before was exciting, but moreover, I got to hang out with my section mates overnight. It will be my one of the most memorable moments at this university. Anyway, today's ARW class took place at macs room. First Rab showed us presentation slides describing our class. He first introduced the book "One cubic feet" which illustrates biodiversity that can be found in one cubic feet of land at several different places. I knew that he is going to connect this to ELA 1A class somehow. In fact, this was a metaphor to our diversity, countries we've been to. When we make a presentation, we should avoid being boring and try to be as creative as possible.
Afterward, we were taught various programs related to videos. The first thing he taught us was very eye-opening because I was thinking that any kinds of free downloading are banned in this country. However, by using Flash video downloader located under Add-ons of Firefox, we are able to download any Youtube videos!! I mean, I know that I should be using this program mainly for educational purpose, but I can also download some music videos and import to my iPad. I am very excited to use this. Two other programs he taught us are Quick Time Players's screen recording and movie recording and iMovie. By using the former, I can create a narration of any websites or a Webcam video recording. The latter allows me to edit the video in various ways. It is much more powerful and useful than Windows Movie Maker, the program I used to use when editting videos.
At last, we did a birthday surprise to Yuca. Happy Birthday Yuca!!
It was our first ELA class since we came back from Retreat. It was a lot more fun than I expected! It was shocking how that huge was reserved just for us! Time I spent with friends I never met before was exciting, but moreover, I got to hang out with my section mates overnight. It will be my one of the most memorable moments at this university. Anyway, today's ARW class took place at macs room. First Rab showed us presentation slides describing our class. He first introduced the book "One cubic feet" which illustrates biodiversity that can be found in one cubic feet of land at several different places. I knew that he is going to connect this to ELA 1A class somehow. In fact, this was a metaphor to our diversity, countries we've been to. When we make a presentation, we should avoid being boring and try to be as creative as possible.
Afterward, we were taught various programs related to videos. The first thing he taught us was very eye-opening because I was thinking that any kinds of free downloading are banned in this country. However, by using Flash video downloader located under Add-ons of Firefox, we are able to download any Youtube videos!! I mean, I know that I should be using this program mainly for educational purpose, but I can also download some music videos and import to my iPad. I am very excited to use this. Two other programs he taught us are Quick Time Players's screen recording and movie recording and iMovie. By using the former, I can create a narration of any websites or a Webcam video recording. The latter allows me to edit the video in various ways. It is much more powerful and useful than Windows Movie Maker, the program I used to use when editting videos.
At last, we did a birthday surprise to Yuca. Happy Birthday Yuca!!
2013年5月16日木曜日
ARW 5/15 Response
ARW 5/15 Response
It was exciting to have class at Bakayama again. It was very hot yesterday, but having class under tree shades made us feel comfortable. At the beginning of class, we met Paul Wadden, the editor of the first reading in ELA Reader. Apparently there are students from U.S. coming to our university today! Unfortunately I cannot meet them due to schedule issue, but I am glad that the Japanese government has chosen our school for one of destinations for them to visit. Mr. Wadden smiling at girls was a awkward yet funny moment but it was the introduction to our first discussion topic. The first question was whether Barna's article is still applicable to today. In fact, that article was written a long time ago so the answer is supposed to be no. I wrote as if it is still up-to-date on a previous blog so I changed my idea. Still, I partially believe in differences in perception of greetings depending on the nationalities.
It was shocking to hear that Rab's children were not permitted to wear LEGO Starwars hoodies to elementary school. Moreover, it was a hoodie that caused the problem. I personally like hoodies so much, so I can't stand school keeping this restriction. What is so bad about hoodies? Masamune mentioned how Japanese schools tend to require uniformity in the class, so that can be the reason. I agreed that it is a possible answer. In order to find another possible answer, I looked up why hoodies got banned in UK originally. Apparently, it is because criminals tend to wear hoodies to hide their faces and disguise so they give a bad impression...what? Then every single cloth worn by typical criminals should be banned. This reason is not so quite convincing.
Another interesting issue to discuss was the age limit for certain actions, such as smoking, drinking, gambling, marrying, going to war, or voting. The question was whether there should be a different range of age limit or they should be all unified. Our group came up with an interesting answer that there is no point setting the age limit for drinking or smoking because it is just individuals' responsibilities to do it or not. But for marrying, going to war and voting, they all require official documents and involve more responsibilities to others; therefore, they should have certain age limits. We did not have enough time to come up with an actual number.
Tomorrow is Retreat!!
It was exciting to have class at Bakayama again. It was very hot yesterday, but having class under tree shades made us feel comfortable. At the beginning of class, we met Paul Wadden, the editor of the first reading in ELA Reader. Apparently there are students from U.S. coming to our university today! Unfortunately I cannot meet them due to schedule issue, but I am glad that the Japanese government has chosen our school for one of destinations for them to visit. Mr. Wadden smiling at girls was a awkward yet funny moment but it was the introduction to our first discussion topic. The first question was whether Barna's article is still applicable to today. In fact, that article was written a long time ago so the answer is supposed to be no. I wrote as if it is still up-to-date on a previous blog so I changed my idea. Still, I partially believe in differences in perception of greetings depending on the nationalities.
It was shocking to hear that Rab's children were not permitted to wear LEGO Starwars hoodies to elementary school. Moreover, it was a hoodie that caused the problem. I personally like hoodies so much, so I can't stand school keeping this restriction. What is so bad about hoodies? Masamune mentioned how Japanese schools tend to require uniformity in the class, so that can be the reason. I agreed that it is a possible answer. In order to find another possible answer, I looked up why hoodies got banned in UK originally. Apparently, it is because criminals tend to wear hoodies to hide their faces and disguise so they give a bad impression...what? Then every single cloth worn by typical criminals should be banned. This reason is not so quite convincing.
Another interesting issue to discuss was the age limit for certain actions, such as smoking, drinking, gambling, marrying, going to war, or voting. The question was whether there should be a different range of age limit or they should be all unified. Our group came up with an interesting answer that there is no point setting the age limit for drinking or smoking because it is just individuals' responsibilities to do it or not. But for marrying, going to war and voting, they all require official documents and involve more responsibilities to others; therefore, they should have certain age limits. We did not have enough time to come up with an actual number.
Tomorrow is Retreat!!
2013年5月15日水曜日
LLA 5/14 Response
LLA 5/14 Response
Even though the title says LLA, today's lesson was different from normal LLA class and took place at macs room! Before I went to the class, I saw some Stream 1 people taking pictures with our Section 1A sweatshirts on! It finally came! It is all thanks to Haruka and Moe. I am so glad that there are people who come up with these fantastic ideas and actively carry them out in my section. Even after we graduate, we won't forget being not only a student at ICU but also a member of Section 1A or "Patterson Children". Moreover, I was even more glad to know that Rab loved our sweatshirts. We will definitely wear them at the section yearbook photo.
So at macs room, we had a lecture on several topics in addition to technology stuffs. Rab's lesson on the effective method of teaching was intriguing. He introduced "segmentation" which considers the students' concentration levels as the class runs. According to him, students tend to lose their focus after 7-10 min of constant teaching. Basically, when a professor keeps talking and talking forever in front of blackboard, many people start to get sleepy or distracted. Honestly, I experience this almost every time in any other classes I am taking: math, physics and music. Well for music class, the professor Ito plays several pieces composed by famous composers but for the most part he verbally explains the historical background of musical composition. Anyway, from my experience, I agree with what Rab said. In order to deal with this brain mechanism, under segmentation, teachers try to get out of mannerism every 7-10 min to keep grabbing students' attentions. In fact, when Rab does a lecture in ARW class, he constantly changes the teaching methods, such as showing us video clips, making us get into groups and have discussion, teaching us some useful techniques on the computer or telling us an interesting story related to the theme and so on. I finally knew why I never get bored in his class while I often do in other classes. Segmentation is highly effective and grabbing our minds.
Afterward we learned even further techniques on Zotero. One inconvenient fact about citing books using Zotero was that we had to manually type in the place where they were published. But we no longer have to do that by finding ISBN codes from actual books, amazon or Google Books. Zotero has a million of possibilities. Even Microsoft Word has surprised us; by clicking a Zotero button, we can set up the entire paper into any citation format we like and Word automatically does in-text citation. I remember this process was one of the most tedious tasks when writing an academic paper in high school. Now it's all gone!
Tomorrow, we are going to have the class at Bakayama again!
P.S. I have actually bought an iPad mini today, and could download iTunes U so now I can access to your documents all in one place!
Even though the title says LLA, today's lesson was different from normal LLA class and took place at macs room! Before I went to the class, I saw some Stream 1 people taking pictures with our Section 1A sweatshirts on! It finally came! It is all thanks to Haruka and Moe. I am so glad that there are people who come up with these fantastic ideas and actively carry them out in my section. Even after we graduate, we won't forget being not only a student at ICU but also a member of Section 1A or "Patterson Children". Moreover, I was even more glad to know that Rab loved our sweatshirts. We will definitely wear them at the section yearbook photo.
So at macs room, we had a lecture on several topics in addition to technology stuffs. Rab's lesson on the effective method of teaching was intriguing. He introduced "segmentation" which considers the students' concentration levels as the class runs. According to him, students tend to lose their focus after 7-10 min of constant teaching. Basically, when a professor keeps talking and talking forever in front of blackboard, many people start to get sleepy or distracted. Honestly, I experience this almost every time in any other classes I am taking: math, physics and music. Well for music class, the professor Ito plays several pieces composed by famous composers but for the most part he verbally explains the historical background of musical composition. Anyway, from my experience, I agree with what Rab said. In order to deal with this brain mechanism, under segmentation, teachers try to get out of mannerism every 7-10 min to keep grabbing students' attentions. In fact, when Rab does a lecture in ARW class, he constantly changes the teaching methods, such as showing us video clips, making us get into groups and have discussion, teaching us some useful techniques on the computer or telling us an interesting story related to the theme and so on. I finally knew why I never get bored in his class while I often do in other classes. Segmentation is highly effective and grabbing our minds.
Afterward we learned even further techniques on Zotero. One inconvenient fact about citing books using Zotero was that we had to manually type in the place where they were published. But we no longer have to do that by finding ISBN codes from actual books, amazon or Google Books. Zotero has a million of possibilities. Even Microsoft Word has surprised us; by clicking a Zotero button, we can set up the entire paper into any citation format we like and Word automatically does in-text citation. I remember this process was one of the most tedious tasks when writing an academic paper in high school. Now it's all gone!
Tomorrow, we are going to have the class at Bakayama again!
P.S. I have actually bought an iPad mini today, and could download iTunes U so now I can access to your documents all in one place!
2013年5月14日火曜日
ARW 5/13 Response
ARW 5/13 Response
It was so coincidental how I was telling Rab that I am thinking of conducting a survey for my research paper and today's lecture started with how to make a survey on Google Drive. I remember making one in high school; what I did was typing up questions, letters from A-D and four choices, printing out hundreds of copy and giving out to people. It was a waste of time and paper. I wish I knew this program, Google Forms before. Procedures are so easy and smooth. I can send out the survey through Gmail and Google Forms will collect responses for me as well. I would seriously consider using this program for my paper. Afterward, we made groups for research paper based on categories of the topic. Since Narumi and I were only ones going to write about psychology-related issue, we formed a Google Group by ourselves. First, we decided to do individual research for a week, while sharing any sources that we think are beneficial for both of us. Tomorrow, we will be in macs room again for further lecture on technology. I do not have any particular problems about the use of any programs Rab taught us so far, but I would like to review how to use Zotero appropriately.
It was so coincidental how I was telling Rab that I am thinking of conducting a survey for my research paper and today's lecture started with how to make a survey on Google Drive. I remember making one in high school; what I did was typing up questions, letters from A-D and four choices, printing out hundreds of copy and giving out to people. It was a waste of time and paper. I wish I knew this program, Google Forms before. Procedures are so easy and smooth. I can send out the survey through Gmail and Google Forms will collect responses for me as well. I would seriously consider using this program for my paper. Afterward, we made groups for research paper based on categories of the topic. Since Narumi and I were only ones going to write about psychology-related issue, we formed a Google Group by ourselves. First, we decided to do individual research for a week, while sharing any sources that we think are beneficial for both of us. Tomorrow, we will be in macs room again for further lecture on technology. I do not have any particular problems about the use of any programs Rab taught us so far, but I would like to review how to use Zotero appropriately.
Lies My Teacher Told Me (Chapter 4 and 5)
Lies My Teacher Told Me (Chapter 4 and 5)
Chapter 2 and 3 have been bringing up Native Americans and chapter 4 talks about them even further. According to Loewen, the way textbook describes Native Americans has improved recently but textbook authors still need to relearn this part of the history because some textbooks still elucidate Native people using terms like "half-breed", "primitive" or "savage". Loewen's logic is that if they prefer to use such aggressive terms for Natives, then whites deserve to be described as "invaders", not "civilized."
The term "civilized" is quite hard to define, but is usually used as an antonym of indigenous, primitive or tribal and signifies more advanced human cultures. If the textbook authors really want to use this term to describe the European culture, they need to have some evidences. However, how was the reality? After contact with Europeans, American Indian societies certainly changed; they took new weapons, foods, languages, construction methods and religious ideas into their cultures. The thing is, Europeans also had a lot to learn from Indians and even relied on Natives' trades because it became easier to trade for food than grow it. These two groups were definitely in mutual or even syncretistic relationships. This is not fair to call just whites "civilized", and conceal this mutual accommodation on textbooks. Even more unforgivable fact is that in return for the support from Natives, Europeans moved on to enslavement of Natives. Most textbooks do not even mention Native Americans slave trade. This is simply returning evil for good. Their tendency of obliterating the existence and accomplishments of Indians is distinct; for example, we've never learned that American Indians were directly or indirectly responsible for the public-meeting tradition, freedom of speech, or even democracy, which are the basis of the American government today. Moreover, most textbooks do not mention contributions of Native Americans to American culture, such as regional cuisines. I was surprised that even in describing the French and Indian War, some textbooks leave out the Indians. And today, European textbook authors leave out the multicultural nature and don't give any credits to Natives as if they do want to exclude the existence of Natives from American history.
Chapter 5 is closely related to chapter 4 in terms of racism, but focuses more on another race, African Americans. My reaction for this chapter was a bit different from other chapters since I was surprised with how this topic is generally taught in U.S., not what actually happened. In other words, when I learned about slavery and slave trades, the lecture also focused on the harsh conditions and treatments of slaves. We even watched a video on a documentary with painful depiction of slaves being whipped and abused. Even about the Civil War in 1860's, many people might be thinking it was the confrontation between the South, who were supporting slavery, and the North, who were against the slavery. My history teacher in sophomore year taught us in the first lesson that this is a wrong interpretation. The North was never against slavery, but did not want it to be expanded into their territories. As I recall, I could learn these accurate historical facts probably because my high school was in the town where a lot of African Americans resided. We also had the Black History Month, so our school might've intended to teach "true" history about black people as much as possible. My high school had probably provided a good environment. However, I was taught that Lincoln was a hero for freeing slaves, but his Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves only in states in rebellion against the United States. It was not a universal declaration. Lincoln did not even have an intention to do that.
These two chapters focused on how racism influenced the content of textbook. Although this might be a hindrance for European authors, but they have to deal with that dilemma for students who have both responsibilities and rights to learn accurately.
Chapter 2 and 3 have been bringing up Native Americans and chapter 4 talks about them even further. According to Loewen, the way textbook describes Native Americans has improved recently but textbook authors still need to relearn this part of the history because some textbooks still elucidate Native people using terms like "half-breed", "primitive" or "savage". Loewen's logic is that if they prefer to use such aggressive terms for Natives, then whites deserve to be described as "invaders", not "civilized."
The term "civilized" is quite hard to define, but is usually used as an antonym of indigenous, primitive or tribal and signifies more advanced human cultures. If the textbook authors really want to use this term to describe the European culture, they need to have some evidences. However, how was the reality? After contact with Europeans, American Indian societies certainly changed; they took new weapons, foods, languages, construction methods and religious ideas into their cultures. The thing is, Europeans also had a lot to learn from Indians and even relied on Natives' trades because it became easier to trade for food than grow it. These two groups were definitely in mutual or even syncretistic relationships. This is not fair to call just whites "civilized", and conceal this mutual accommodation on textbooks. Even more unforgivable fact is that in return for the support from Natives, Europeans moved on to enslavement of Natives. Most textbooks do not even mention Native Americans slave trade. This is simply returning evil for good. Their tendency of obliterating the existence and accomplishments of Indians is distinct; for example, we've never learned that American Indians were directly or indirectly responsible for the public-meeting tradition, freedom of speech, or even democracy, which are the basis of the American government today. Moreover, most textbooks do not mention contributions of Native Americans to American culture, such as regional cuisines. I was surprised that even in describing the French and Indian War, some textbooks leave out the Indians. And today, European textbook authors leave out the multicultural nature and don't give any credits to Natives as if they do want to exclude the existence of Natives from American history.
Chapter 5 is closely related to chapter 4 in terms of racism, but focuses more on another race, African Americans. My reaction for this chapter was a bit different from other chapters since I was surprised with how this topic is generally taught in U.S., not what actually happened. In other words, when I learned about slavery and slave trades, the lecture also focused on the harsh conditions and treatments of slaves. We even watched a video on a documentary with painful depiction of slaves being whipped and abused. Even about the Civil War in 1860's, many people might be thinking it was the confrontation between the South, who were supporting slavery, and the North, who were against the slavery. My history teacher in sophomore year taught us in the first lesson that this is a wrong interpretation. The North was never against slavery, but did not want it to be expanded into their territories. As I recall, I could learn these accurate historical facts probably because my high school was in the town where a lot of African Americans resided. We also had the Black History Month, so our school might've intended to teach "true" history about black people as much as possible. My high school had probably provided a good environment. However, I was taught that Lincoln was a hero for freeing slaves, but his Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves only in states in rebellion against the United States. It was not a universal declaration. Lincoln did not even have an intention to do that.
These two chapters focused on how racism influenced the content of textbook. Although this might be a hindrance for European authors, but they have to deal with that dilemma for students who have both responsibilities and rights to learn accurately.
2013年5月12日日曜日
ARW 5/10 Response
ARW 5/10 Response
5/10's Funky Friday was fun yet meaningful lesson. First, Rab gave us instructions about the research paper project by using e-portfolio. Although I have ideas for the topic I am going to write about (either music or psychology) I have not determined. I better decide it as quickly as possible and start writing the first draft of the introduction.
Barna's article was a good introduction for this day's lesson. As the title states, "stumbling blocks" often appear when we think intercultural communication is easy. People from different nationalities have different cultures, thus have different knowledge. One quick example is whether taking off shoes inside the house or not. The example Barna used, which is the comparison of nonverbal behavior, illustrates the difference among students from four respective nations. Although they are all Asian countries, the difference is clear. Barna also gives detailed explanations on language differences and nonverbal misinterpretations; the sense of humor is another interesting topic to bring up.
So the theme of the lesson was how the sense of humor is related to perception of different cultures. First, we watched a video clip about sushi. I've watched this before and found this funny for two reasons. One reason is that we know that we follow certain rules when eating certain foods. Although I think there is barely anyone who follows those rules, they sound possible to exist. The second reason is that two of the actors in this video were one pair of my favorite comedians, "Ramens." Their contes are meticulously created and "foreshadowing and collection" strategy always amazes the audience. The second clip, Sea Shepherd's commercial, effectively conveys the message of anti-whaling but it is quite hard to consider this funny because of bloody scene. The purpose of this commercial is to make viewers feel pathetic to whales by replacing that position with a human being. This also shows sarcasm by shooting this video clip at a sushi restaurant, which is also meaningful. I would like to comment the same thing on the third and fourth video: Dirty Sanchez and Endurance clips. The first impression that most viewers have when watching these videos may be crazy or ridiculous. I felt slightly obnoxious to watch the fourth video because not only it was painful to watch but also there were people who considered this funny few decades ago (and even now probably).
In fact, I am a big fan of Japanese comedy, but not something like this. Modern Japanese comedy is more meticulously planned. Rakugo is a Japanese verbal entertainment. A storyteller sits on stage and tells funny story using only a paper fan and a small cloth as props. This requires high qualities of talking skill and acting skill. After this, manzai, a traditional style of stand-up comedy, became popular in Japan (first made in the Heian period) This usually involves two performers and they tell a story with funny jokes in between, within a time limit of 3-4 minutes. They usually spend a lot of time thinking of the best scenario (called Neta) because the standard of laughing is getting higher and higher and jokes should be logically and intelligent funny in order to be successful comedians. There are even competitions for manzai. There is another type of comedy called conte, which involves more acting. Although there are still some TV programs similar to Endurance aired today, I believe that Japanese comedy has been evolving. Certainly, time is another factor that changes our interpretation or perception.
5/10's Funky Friday was fun yet meaningful lesson. First, Rab gave us instructions about the research paper project by using e-portfolio. Although I have ideas for the topic I am going to write about (either music or psychology) I have not determined. I better decide it as quickly as possible and start writing the first draft of the introduction.
Barna's article was a good introduction for this day's lesson. As the title states, "stumbling blocks" often appear when we think intercultural communication is easy. People from different nationalities have different cultures, thus have different knowledge. One quick example is whether taking off shoes inside the house or not. The example Barna used, which is the comparison of nonverbal behavior, illustrates the difference among students from four respective nations. Although they are all Asian countries, the difference is clear. Barna also gives detailed explanations on language differences and nonverbal misinterpretations; the sense of humor is another interesting topic to bring up.
So the theme of the lesson was how the sense of humor is related to perception of different cultures. First, we watched a video clip about sushi. I've watched this before and found this funny for two reasons. One reason is that we know that we follow certain rules when eating certain foods. Although I think there is barely anyone who follows those rules, they sound possible to exist. The second reason is that two of the actors in this video were one pair of my favorite comedians, "Ramens." Their contes are meticulously created and "foreshadowing and collection" strategy always amazes the audience. The second clip, Sea Shepherd's commercial, effectively conveys the message of anti-whaling but it is quite hard to consider this funny because of bloody scene. The purpose of this commercial is to make viewers feel pathetic to whales by replacing that position with a human being. This also shows sarcasm by shooting this video clip at a sushi restaurant, which is also meaningful. I would like to comment the same thing on the third and fourth video: Dirty Sanchez and Endurance clips. The first impression that most viewers have when watching these videos may be crazy or ridiculous. I felt slightly obnoxious to watch the fourth video because not only it was painful to watch but also there were people who considered this funny few decades ago (and even now probably).
In fact, I am a big fan of Japanese comedy, but not something like this. Modern Japanese comedy is more meticulously planned. Rakugo is a Japanese verbal entertainment. A storyteller sits on stage and tells funny story using only a paper fan and a small cloth as props. This requires high qualities of talking skill and acting skill. After this, manzai, a traditional style of stand-up comedy, became popular in Japan (first made in the Heian period) This usually involves two performers and they tell a story with funny jokes in between, within a time limit of 3-4 minutes. They usually spend a lot of time thinking of the best scenario (called Neta) because the standard of laughing is getting higher and higher and jokes should be logically and intelligent funny in order to be successful comedians. There are even competitions for manzai. There is another type of comedy called conte, which involves more acting. Although there are still some TV programs similar to Endurance aired today, I believe that Japanese comedy has been evolving. Certainly, time is another factor that changes our interpretation or perception.
2013年5月10日金曜日
ARW 5/8 Response
ARW 5/8 Response
On 5/8, we had a ARW class on Bakayama for the first time. It is one of the interesting features of ICU!
We had group discussions on several topics that are closely related to the LLA lecture we had the day before: power of people and media's interaction. The first topic was the most interesting point; why Japanese people appear not to be as enthusiastic as people in other countries in terms of demonstrations. The first reason is excessively contradictory; citizens need to get a permission from the police to protest. For this restriction, most protests won't work. Well, they can even ignore that rule in the first place, but they can't. This is for another reason; Japanese are traditionally and culturally humbler than people from any other nationalities. When I used to go to an American school, people frequently asked me, "is it true that Japanese bow to each other before they start a conversation?" The answer is generally yes because we are taught to do so. We tend to believe that is the beauty of modesty; moreover, we also believe in the beauty of ambiguity. These two factors had actually made Japanese well-mannered from a hundreds of years ago, but at the same time, they made us weak, unenthusiastic, and fragile. As a result, Japanese became not be able to take an aggressive action so easily and not so many people join protests or demonstrations today.
I was also surprised that we are not allowed to make students union in our campus although we signed an oath that guarantees our freedom of speech. There are some parts in our educational system that is not "liberal." Topics we discussed in the later part of the class were much harder in my opinion. The first question was, "what kind of freedom of speech do we have here at ICU?" Well, students union is not an option, so the only things left are school newspaper or the use of Web 2.0, such as Youtube or Facebook. We also talked about NHK; we did not know much evidences to support that NHK is biased and censoring information as well. However, Takumi and I were arguing that it does not make sense how everyone who owns a television is obliged to pay fees to NHK because we can never choose not to receive a signal from NHK. Since Shinzo Abe, the current prime minister of Japan, is for the nuclear plants, NHK may censor any opinions that is against it. This "mass media and the society" is a big theme for ELA this term. I assume we will continue discussion on this theme in the class.
On 5/8, we had a ARW class on Bakayama for the first time. It is one of the interesting features of ICU!
We had group discussions on several topics that are closely related to the LLA lecture we had the day before: power of people and media's interaction. The first topic was the most interesting point; why Japanese people appear not to be as enthusiastic as people in other countries in terms of demonstrations. The first reason is excessively contradictory; citizens need to get a permission from the police to protest. For this restriction, most protests won't work. Well, they can even ignore that rule in the first place, but they can't. This is for another reason; Japanese are traditionally and culturally humbler than people from any other nationalities. When I used to go to an American school, people frequently asked me, "is it true that Japanese bow to each other before they start a conversation?" The answer is generally yes because we are taught to do so. We tend to believe that is the beauty of modesty; moreover, we also believe in the beauty of ambiguity. These two factors had actually made Japanese well-mannered from a hundreds of years ago, but at the same time, they made us weak, unenthusiastic, and fragile. As a result, Japanese became not be able to take an aggressive action so easily and not so many people join protests or demonstrations today.
I was also surprised that we are not allowed to make students union in our campus although we signed an oath that guarantees our freedom of speech. There are some parts in our educational system that is not "liberal." Topics we discussed in the later part of the class were much harder in my opinion. The first question was, "what kind of freedom of speech do we have here at ICU?" Well, students union is not an option, so the only things left are school newspaper or the use of Web 2.0, such as Youtube or Facebook. We also talked about NHK; we did not know much evidences to support that NHK is biased and censoring information as well. However, Takumi and I were arguing that it does not make sense how everyone who owns a television is obliged to pay fees to NHK because we can never choose not to receive a signal from NHK. Since Shinzo Abe, the current prime minister of Japan, is for the nuclear plants, NHK may censor any opinions that is against it. This "mass media and the society" is a big theme for ELA this term. I assume we will continue discussion on this theme in the class.
2013年5月8日水曜日
LLA 5/7 Response
LLA 5/7 Response
Today's LLA was a full of shocking facts. We learned about Web 2.0 and the correlation between mass media and societies. First of all, we subconsciously knew the definition of Web 2.0 by our daily experiences: use of SNS (social networking service). Some major examples are Facebook, Twitter, tumblr or yelp. Compared to Web 1.0, which we are only allowed to visit and view the websites, Web 2.0 allows citizens to post, share, or upload their information freely. We are right in the generation of Web 2.0 and are benefited in many ways. However, the development of Web 2.0 meant something bigger; it gave power to the people.
Rab then showed us several video clips of people protesting against WTO meeting taken place at downtown Seattle in November 1999 and police's correspondence. Police was not expecting the protest to be so successful; therefore, they forcibly suppressed the movement, by spraying pepper spray directly at their faces. That was just simply unbelievable; I probably had a dubious expression on my face throughout the clips. How was it reported by mass media? Well, what they are supposed to do is to defend the police, so most reports started with the phrase, "Police said." They even answered at the interview that injury was less than 20.
Similar kinds of disasters occurred at Wall Street protest. Police used a tactic called kettling, and again one of the officers sprayed pepper spray on females' faces. However, Web 2.0 gave people power. Someone was video-recording that incident and uploaded on a video website and from the information gathered by everyone else who found out his identity, he was brought to the court. Web 2.0 became a strong weapon for people by sharing information. Afterward we watched a clip on UK police attacking a man on a wheelchair, and it was as horrendous as other videos.
I learned that "collaboration is everything." At the same time, I questioned "what is justice? what is freedom of speech?" Strong bond between mass media and police keeps censoring any information that is harmful to them. So what should we do to cope with this? We should be the one to create the media.
Today's LLA was a full of shocking facts. We learned about Web 2.0 and the correlation between mass media and societies. First of all, we subconsciously knew the definition of Web 2.0 by our daily experiences: use of SNS (social networking service). Some major examples are Facebook, Twitter, tumblr or yelp. Compared to Web 1.0, which we are only allowed to visit and view the websites, Web 2.0 allows citizens to post, share, or upload their information freely. We are right in the generation of Web 2.0 and are benefited in many ways. However, the development of Web 2.0 meant something bigger; it gave power to the people.
Rab then showed us several video clips of people protesting against WTO meeting taken place at downtown Seattle in November 1999 and police's correspondence. Police was not expecting the protest to be so successful; therefore, they forcibly suppressed the movement, by spraying pepper spray directly at their faces. That was just simply unbelievable; I probably had a dubious expression on my face throughout the clips. How was it reported by mass media? Well, what they are supposed to do is to defend the police, so most reports started with the phrase, "Police said." They even answered at the interview that injury was less than 20.
Similar kinds of disasters occurred at Wall Street protest. Police used a tactic called kettling, and again one of the officers sprayed pepper spray on females' faces. However, Web 2.0 gave people power. Someone was video-recording that incident and uploaded on a video website and from the information gathered by everyone else who found out his identity, he was brought to the court. Web 2.0 became a strong weapon for people by sharing information. Afterward we watched a clip on UK police attacking a man on a wheelchair, and it was as horrendous as other videos.
I learned that "collaboration is everything." At the same time, I questioned "what is justice? what is freedom of speech?" Strong bond between mass media and police keeps censoring any information that is harmful to them. So what should we do to cope with this? We should be the one to create the media.
"Don't Hate the Media, Become the Media" should be our motto.
2013年5月6日月曜日
Lies My Teacher Told Me (Chapter 3)
Lies My Teacher Told Me (Chapter 3)
The first two pages of this chapter already grabbed my attention; I wondered, why do most of us consider white people who came to America "settlers" and Indians "the indigenous"? Indians obviously settled too, but our stereotypical categorization makes us think and memorize this way. The word "settle" is hard to define. So this chapter is about Thanksgiving; what I think of when I hear this term is pretty much the same as everyone else, a roasted turkey with gravy sauce on top, served with mashed potato. This term always reminds me of a feast, or something joyful. Basically, I did not know much about the historical background of Thanksgiving, but at least I believed its origin was the celebration of harvest. This chapter overturned my prior impression.
I had the same reaction as the Loewen's students when I read the word "plague". It is shocking to know that the Europeans suffered the plague and brought diseases to the Americas which caused the Indians to suffer too. Since the plague was considered a punishment by God for human sins, everyone in that medieval time had presumably sickened for repetitive epidemics. If I were one of them, I would question, "what did we do to deserve THIS?" But they were helpless because their religion even provides no solution. This is a long history of epidemics in the early seventeenth century and is something textbook authors determined to include just recently. It does not make any sense.
Another interesting point the author brings up is how textbook authors do not urge students to question, think, share ideas with other individuals, and come to their own conclusions. What they do is simply presenting facts, including some "lies" according to this book, and forcibly put into students' memories. This is why, although unreasonable, they decide to conceal vices of Wilson or Columbus, and disastrous plagues or Pilgrims' hijacking hypothesis from this chapter. This method of picking one statement or reason and presenting it as a fact would deprive the ability of critical thinking from students.
It took very long to get to the explanation of the first Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims were not friendly to Native Americans at all; they were rather harmful to the indigenous. So how was this tradition even created? The wire-puller was Abraham Lincoln. He proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday in order to enhance the patriotism during the Civil War. I had never imagined that Pilgrim settlement and Civil War had a connection and that the Pilgrims had nothing to do with this tradition. We have found another embarrassing holiday that we have been celebrating for years without knowing its root, following the last chapter about Columbus.
The first two pages of this chapter already grabbed my attention; I wondered, why do most of us consider white people who came to America "settlers" and Indians "the indigenous"? Indians obviously settled too, but our stereotypical categorization makes us think and memorize this way. The word "settle" is hard to define. So this chapter is about Thanksgiving; what I think of when I hear this term is pretty much the same as everyone else, a roasted turkey with gravy sauce on top, served with mashed potato. This term always reminds me of a feast, or something joyful. Basically, I did not know much about the historical background of Thanksgiving, but at least I believed its origin was the celebration of harvest. This chapter overturned my prior impression.
I had the same reaction as the Loewen's students when I read the word "plague". It is shocking to know that the Europeans suffered the plague and brought diseases to the Americas which caused the Indians to suffer too. Since the plague was considered a punishment by God for human sins, everyone in that medieval time had presumably sickened for repetitive epidemics. If I were one of them, I would question, "what did we do to deserve THIS?" But they were helpless because their religion even provides no solution. This is a long history of epidemics in the early seventeenth century and is something textbook authors determined to include just recently. It does not make any sense.
Another interesting point the author brings up is how textbook authors do not urge students to question, think, share ideas with other individuals, and come to their own conclusions. What they do is simply presenting facts, including some "lies" according to this book, and forcibly put into students' memories. This is why, although unreasonable, they decide to conceal vices of Wilson or Columbus, and disastrous plagues or Pilgrims' hijacking hypothesis from this chapter. This method of picking one statement or reason and presenting it as a fact would deprive the ability of critical thinking from students.
It took very long to get to the explanation of the first Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims were not friendly to Native Americans at all; they were rather harmful to the indigenous. So how was this tradition even created? The wire-puller was Abraham Lincoln. He proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday in order to enhance the patriotism during the Civil War. I had never imagined that Pilgrim settlement and Civil War had a connection and that the Pilgrims had nothing to do with this tradition. We have found another embarrassing holiday that we have been celebrating for years without knowing its root, following the last chapter about Columbus.
2013年5月2日木曜日
ARW 5/1 Response
ARW 5/1 Response
Today's ARW class took place at H-405, a room without any computers so before the class started Rab told us that this lecture is going to be boring. No Way! It was as interesting as usual. First he announced about an upcoming test, which I am being nervous about, but apparently it is going to be not so hard since it will be an open-book test and we can have access to the internet, too. Still, before the test I will read two chapters of Lies over again just in case.
Today's main theme was how to write a good essay. For the most part, I've learned already at schools in U.S. but his lecture got to deeper parts. I've been always wondering how to write an "attention-grabber" because none of my previous teachers have ever taught me examples. He explained four effective ones: Shock, Quotes, Humor and Stats. Another technique I learned for the first time is 5A's, since I was not at the startup program. 5A's stands for: Academic, Argumentative, Achievable, Access, and Attractive. We are going to choose a topic for research paper that can pass through all these five filters. I am interested in writing a paper about music, but I should come up with a topic that can be quantitatively compared. After all, my understanding of how to write a strong five paragraphs essay, or five sections essay rather.
At last, here are my answers for the psychology tests. Although I wrote "obedient" for the second question, I don't intend to have an obedient partner in the future...maybe. Anyway it was very interesting and I think this test would be 60% accurate. I am looking forward to the visual version of psychology test that we are going to take in the near future.
Green (Myself): eco-friendly, refreshing, relieving, fresh, healthful
Dolphin (Partner): intelligent, athletic, obedient, therapeutic, adorable
Ocean (Love): huge, indispensable (in terms of providing food for us), strong, blue, smooth
White Room (Death): nervous, confused, exhausting, anxious, sparkling (to eyes)
Today's ARW class took place at H-405, a room without any computers so before the class started Rab told us that this lecture is going to be boring. No Way! It was as interesting as usual. First he announced about an upcoming test, which I am being nervous about, but apparently it is going to be not so hard since it will be an open-book test and we can have access to the internet, too. Still, before the test I will read two chapters of Lies over again just in case.
Today's main theme was how to write a good essay. For the most part, I've learned already at schools in U.S. but his lecture got to deeper parts. I've been always wondering how to write an "attention-grabber" because none of my previous teachers have ever taught me examples. He explained four effective ones: Shock, Quotes, Humor and Stats. Another technique I learned for the first time is 5A's, since I was not at the startup program. 5A's stands for: Academic, Argumentative, Achievable, Access, and Attractive. We are going to choose a topic for research paper that can pass through all these five filters. I am interested in writing a paper about music, but I should come up with a topic that can be quantitatively compared. After all, my understanding of how to write a strong five paragraphs essay, or five sections essay rather.
At last, here are my answers for the psychology tests. Although I wrote "obedient" for the second question, I don't intend to have an obedient partner in the future...maybe. Anyway it was very interesting and I think this test would be 60% accurate. I am looking forward to the visual version of psychology test that we are going to take in the near future.
Green (Myself): eco-friendly, refreshing, relieving, fresh, healthful
Dolphin (Partner): intelligent, athletic, obedient, therapeutic, adorable
Ocean (Love): huge, indispensable (in terms of providing food for us), strong, blue, smooth
White Room (Death): nervous, confused, exhausting, anxious, sparkling (to eyes)
2013年5月1日水曜日
LLA 4/30 Response
LLA 4/30 Response
Today, at H-367, we had a LLA lecture taught by Rab with Stream 2. The lecture was on propaganda and Managing the Machiavellian MSM, basically how information we get is controlled by mass media. The first thing Rab mentioned is "effects of time." Books, articles or any documents that talk about this issue can easily go out of date. So instead of reading the article on ELA Reader, he recommended us to read the first chapter of Larson's "Persuasion: Reception and Responsibility." How new that source is influences its reliability.
In this lecture, we learned 5 major problems of mass media: Ownership, Advertising, Access, Flak and Ideology. Each of them is a big issue, but I thought the first two are more evil than the others. Ownership, on the one hand, is basically described as "owning the media means controlling the media." Every mass media has somewhat of a bias with every topic; the example Rab gave us is, supposedly Rab establishes a newspaper company, he would order his journalists to write articles that praise Macs and degrade Windows. No one can disobey because Rab owns the company and journalists work for him. This is how information is dominated by power. Advertising, on the other hand, is all about money. There is an inequality, "money > fact." Mass media get advertising rates from companies that want to advertise their merchandises, but at this point, there is an unspoken contract. That media promise not to criticize anything about those companies; otherwise, they lose money. We later watched a video on Monsanto's rBGH incident, which exemplified this problem. I was surprised when I learned that lying in a news in not a crime.
The way we stay informed is to find the alternative media solution, one without an access to big companies or money. When we look up something and think it sounds trustworthy, we should carefully examine that information because it might be censored by these 5 filters listed above, especially when we are using outside sources to support our thesis in a writing.
Today, at H-367, we had a LLA lecture taught by Rab with Stream 2. The lecture was on propaganda and Managing the Machiavellian MSM, basically how information we get is controlled by mass media. The first thing Rab mentioned is "effects of time." Books, articles or any documents that talk about this issue can easily go out of date. So instead of reading the article on ELA Reader, he recommended us to read the first chapter of Larson's "Persuasion: Reception and Responsibility." How new that source is influences its reliability.
In this lecture, we learned 5 major problems of mass media: Ownership, Advertising, Access, Flak and Ideology. Each of them is a big issue, but I thought the first two are more evil than the others. Ownership, on the one hand, is basically described as "owning the media means controlling the media." Every mass media has somewhat of a bias with every topic; the example Rab gave us is, supposedly Rab establishes a newspaper company, he would order his journalists to write articles that praise Macs and degrade Windows. No one can disobey because Rab owns the company and journalists work for him. This is how information is dominated by power. Advertising, on the other hand, is all about money. There is an inequality, "money > fact." Mass media get advertising rates from companies that want to advertise their merchandises, but at this point, there is an unspoken contract. That media promise not to criticize anything about those companies; otherwise, they lose money. We later watched a video on Monsanto's rBGH incident, which exemplified this problem. I was surprised when I learned that lying in a news in not a crime.
The way we stay informed is to find the alternative media solution, one without an access to big companies or money. When we look up something and think it sounds trustworthy, we should carefully examine that information because it might be censored by these 5 filters listed above, especially when we are using outside sources to support our thesis in a writing.
2013年4月30日火曜日
ARW 4/29 Response
ARW 4/29 Response
Today, we covered so many topics related to the second chapter of Lies in ARW class. In the first lecture, we learned how standards or common sense change from time to time. George Washington is known as a first great president of the United States, but when people know the fact he had slaves, most of them may change the impression toward him. In fact, I did, too. However, that is only because we use the standard today to judge this fact. Back in Washington's time, this habit might have been normal for rich whites. This is an interesting point to think about because Loewen is revealing untold truths about Wilson in Chapter 1 and Columbus in Chapter 2 but it doesn't necessarily mean he wants us to change the impression but he wants us to have critical eyes to identify what happened in the past. It links to another point Rab brought up, having bias is not necessarily bad thing. Loewen just keeps showing heroes' negative sides in order to let readers know that there are many historical facts censored by textbook authors.Then the next question is, when should we consider that the author is overly biased and his or her opinion is skewed to the extreme?
We also learned how to sign up for Rab's tutorial session. This will be extremely helpful when the deadline for a writing assignment is approaching. This is done through Google Sites. How useful you are, Google.
Then we divided into groups for discussion. The first topic was how we change our previous views on Columbus after reading Chapter 2.We basically had the same idea; first we thought he was a great explorer who is known for discovering the Americas (although we knew that he found it by mistake and that was why the indigenous were called Indians) and his tale about making an egg stand. We were all surprised with his exploiting of the Americas. The second question, which was unexpected, was why textbooks even bother mentioning that the fact "world is round" was discovered by explorers, no matter who they were. People around this time period already knew this fact as a common knowledge, apparently. I thought this is because authors probably wanted to insert the turning point of knowledge, as people changed their ideas from geocentricism to heliocentricism. It would be their efforts to make textbooks little more appealing.
At last, we watched a video called "How to speal fluent Japanese without saying a word." This is to learn how a culture is viewed from the perspectives of other cultures. The video showed how Japaneses are ambiguous with their answers, and I thought it was fairly accurate. Stream 1 is an interesting group of people because we all have more than one culture. Therefore, how to interpret this video also differs among individuals.
Today, we covered so many topics related to the second chapter of Lies in ARW class. In the first lecture, we learned how standards or common sense change from time to time. George Washington is known as a first great president of the United States, but when people know the fact he had slaves, most of them may change the impression toward him. In fact, I did, too. However, that is only because we use the standard today to judge this fact. Back in Washington's time, this habit might have been normal for rich whites. This is an interesting point to think about because Loewen is revealing untold truths about Wilson in Chapter 1 and Columbus in Chapter 2 but it doesn't necessarily mean he wants us to change the impression but he wants us to have critical eyes to identify what happened in the past. It links to another point Rab brought up, having bias is not necessarily bad thing. Loewen just keeps showing heroes' negative sides in order to let readers know that there are many historical facts censored by textbook authors.Then the next question is, when should we consider that the author is overly biased and his or her opinion is skewed to the extreme?
We also learned how to sign up for Rab's tutorial session. This will be extremely helpful when the deadline for a writing assignment is approaching. This is done through Google Sites. How useful you are, Google.
Then we divided into groups for discussion. The first topic was how we change our previous views on Columbus after reading Chapter 2.We basically had the same idea; first we thought he was a great explorer who is known for discovering the Americas (although we knew that he found it by mistake and that was why the indigenous were called Indians) and his tale about making an egg stand. We were all surprised with his exploiting of the Americas. The second question, which was unexpected, was why textbooks even bother mentioning that the fact "world is round" was discovered by explorers, no matter who they were. People around this time period already knew this fact as a common knowledge, apparently. I thought this is because authors probably wanted to insert the turning point of knowledge, as people changed their ideas from geocentricism to heliocentricism. It would be their efforts to make textbooks little more appealing.
At last, we watched a video called "How to speal fluent Japanese without saying a word." This is to learn how a culture is viewed from the perspectives of other cultures. The video showed how Japaneses are ambiguous with their answers, and I thought it was fairly accurate. Stream 1 is an interesting group of people because we all have more than one culture. Therefore, how to interpret this video also differs among individuals.
2013年4月28日日曜日
Lies My Teacher Told Me (Chapter 2)
Lies My Teacher Told Me (Chapter 2)
"In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety-Two, Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue." This is what most students, including me, must have heard of. I had no doubt about what he accomplished until I read the title of this chapter, "1493." This is the year after Columbus discovered the Americas, so I sensed that something that is not told in most textbooks will be unveiled in this chapter. I was ready to hear something shocking.
My conjecture was right. The first eyeopening fact was that "Columbus's voyage was not the first but the last 'discovery' of the Americas." (33) This raised a question, why do most textbooks not give attention to previous explorers who found the Americans, and decide to praise this particular man? Table I on pg. 40-41 clearly shows that there were a number of explorations that may have reached the Americas taken place before Columbus's. There was a possible exploration to the Americas even 70,000 B.C.! It is simply astonishing how authors conceal this amount of information. It is also chaotic how they describe the changes in Europe that led to the Age of Exploration with a delusive phrase like "people grew more curious." How do they know? They fail to explain the significant part, motivation. Loewen is doing this part of job for them in this chapter. He explained to us for the first time that the significant factors that led Europe to advances in exploration are developments in military technology and social technology, wealth, and Christianity, etc. I really wonder how textbook authors felt when this book first came out and was read by them. Moreover, I actually knew a little about the mystery of why Native Americans are often referred as "Indians." However, I gained that knowledge from a book about random miscellaneous facts, obviously not from history textbook because this type of information is easily censored. However, I didn't expect that even bad weather in the journey was invented.
However, these are just some shallow parts of which authors wanted to hide. What they wanted to conceal so badly was Columbus's vice. In fact, it was predictable that Columbus might have figured out some ways to negotiate with indigenous people in order to open up his land. I did not know that he did in an extremely aggressive way. It is no longer a negotiation, but a domination. He kidnapped American Indians and demanded all goods the natives at Haiti had; if they refuse the offer, they were punished. He even started a slave trade. I looked up "slavery in U.S." and the time in the U.S. history when slavery was the most intense was 1790-1860. However, the major slave trade actually took place 300 years ago. Within a year since he discovered the Americas, he became a dictator. He definitely reminds me of Adolf Hitler.
Reading this chapter made me realize one thing. When I was at high school in U.S., Columbus Day was not written on the school calendar and "Staff Developments" was the reason for school off. I was wondering why, but I discovered the answer. Christopher Columbus is considered an invader rather than an explorer and what he has done does not deserve to be celebrated at my school. Now I realized it is ironic and morally wrong to celebrate someone's genocide.
Having read class mates' blogs, I realized that some of them mention that Loewen is too biased on his statement. I am always surprised with this opinion but as I read their supportive evidences, I feel like I should not take in what the book says so easily, especially when sources talk about only positives or negatives. I should carefully examine if his opinions are reliable from now on. However, so far I think all references and citations on the back of the book justify and support what Loewen claims. This chapter at least succeeded to undermine the common portrayal of Great Columbus, in my opinion.
"In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety-Two, Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue." This is what most students, including me, must have heard of. I had no doubt about what he accomplished until I read the title of this chapter, "1493." This is the year after Columbus discovered the Americas, so I sensed that something that is not told in most textbooks will be unveiled in this chapter. I was ready to hear something shocking.
My conjecture was right. The first eyeopening fact was that "Columbus's voyage was not the first but the last 'discovery' of the Americas." (33) This raised a question, why do most textbooks not give attention to previous explorers who found the Americans, and decide to praise this particular man? Table I on pg. 40-41 clearly shows that there were a number of explorations that may have reached the Americas taken place before Columbus's. There was a possible exploration to the Americas even 70,000 B.C.! It is simply astonishing how authors conceal this amount of information. It is also chaotic how they describe the changes in Europe that led to the Age of Exploration with a delusive phrase like "people grew more curious." How do they know? They fail to explain the significant part, motivation. Loewen is doing this part of job for them in this chapter. He explained to us for the first time that the significant factors that led Europe to advances in exploration are developments in military technology and social technology, wealth, and Christianity, etc. I really wonder how textbook authors felt when this book first came out and was read by them. Moreover, I actually knew a little about the mystery of why Native Americans are often referred as "Indians." However, I gained that knowledge from a book about random miscellaneous facts, obviously not from history textbook because this type of information is easily censored. However, I didn't expect that even bad weather in the journey was invented.
However, these are just some shallow parts of which authors wanted to hide. What they wanted to conceal so badly was Columbus's vice. In fact, it was predictable that Columbus might have figured out some ways to negotiate with indigenous people in order to open up his land. I did not know that he did in an extremely aggressive way. It is no longer a negotiation, but a domination. He kidnapped American Indians and demanded all goods the natives at Haiti had; if they refuse the offer, they were punished. He even started a slave trade. I looked up "slavery in U.S." and the time in the U.S. history when slavery was the most intense was 1790-1860. However, the major slave trade actually took place 300 years ago. Within a year since he discovered the Americas, he became a dictator. He definitely reminds me of Adolf Hitler.
Reading this chapter made me realize one thing. When I was at high school in U.S., Columbus Day was not written on the school calendar and "Staff Developments" was the reason for school off. I was wondering why, but I discovered the answer. Christopher Columbus is considered an invader rather than an explorer and what he has done does not deserve to be celebrated at my school. Now I realized it is ironic and morally wrong to celebrate someone's genocide.
Having read class mates' blogs, I realized that some of them mention that Loewen is too biased on his statement. I am always surprised with this opinion but as I read their supportive evidences, I feel like I should not take in what the book says so easily, especially when sources talk about only positives or negatives. I should carefully examine if his opinions are reliable from now on. However, so far I think all references and citations on the back of the book justify and support what Loewen claims. This chapter at least succeeded to undermine the common portrayal of Great Columbus, in my opinion.
2013年4月27日土曜日
ARW 4/26 Response
Yesterday, ARW took place at Macs room and we had a lecture on how to use the Google Reader and Feedly properly. I really wonder how many powerful tools Google has, because I have not been familiar with most of them before Rab taught us. By using the Google Reader, we could easily access to other section mates' blogs. There are three advantages to this. First, we can see if anyone uploaded his or her blog by checking a number next to their names, so we can remind ourselves even if we were forgetting to write one. Second, by reading blogs reciprocally, we can look for different answers, perspectives or ways of thinking. Especially for responses to chapters of a book, as we are now doing for Lies My Teacher Told Me, this method of learning is very effective since we all think and comprehend differently. Third, even if anyone is absent, he or she can catch up to class by knowing what lecture or class activity took place on that day. We can even add websites we visit often into this program and search pages that have a certain keywords. For example, if I want to look for the articles about the Global Warming in The New York Times, I can just type in "Global Warming" and it will look for all articles about this topic.
One thing I cannot understand is why Google is going to remove this program; it is understandable that it is unprofitable, but Google is already a big company, and as Rab said, many other programs function based on this program (ex. Feedly). The Google Reader will shut down on July 1st, 2013, so we should learn and use this program wisely before the deadline approaches. Google should reconsider its decision.
I truly enjoy Rab's psychology-related lectures that also link to essay writing tips. His metaphors are always amusing and interesting. One I enjoyed the most yesterday is the lesson about two musical composition videos. The first video was "Mother of All Funk Chords", made by Kutiman. This music was composed from several different songs performed by several talented musicians who all play different instruments. Therefore, each segment of music does not mean much, but the process of combining all of them makes one great music. This is the type of music we have to aim for. However, he showed us another example as a metaphor for the writing we should avoid. The second example was "Thriving Ivory's Angels on the Moon". This music was composed from many different people singing the same song, but since the level of singing varies in a big range, this did not give much good impression to listeners. Thus, the lesson is that we should not just search for opinions that match to ours, without caring their qualities. We should look for high quality opinions and statements, no matter what the position is. It is important to blend many sources together to create a high quality piece of writing, as people blend several kinds of coffee beans for a delicious cup of coffee.
2013年4月24日水曜日
ARW 4/24 Response
Today, we had a class discussion on the first chapter of Lies. Before we get into it, Rab first taught us the difference among communism, socialism and capitalism. Although I had some ideas about how each type of government runs, I have never learned in details even at high school in U.S. It was a good opportunity for me to learn.
It was also interesting to think about the real meaning of democracy. I learned that none of the "democratic" nations are really considered democratic, which is very ironic but definitely true. One example was several types of limitation for voting. Only those with certain ages, nationalities, and without any criminal records are able to vote. Democracy is supposed to reflect opinions from all citizens to ameliorate the government, but not all of them obtain the opportunity to join.
And we divided into groups and started discussing about Lies, and what Rab told us about the relationship between depth and range of the content in textbook, article, essay, or any written document, was interesting. It is impossible to cover wide range of topics in depth in any kinds of academic document, so the choice will be explaining short range of topics in depth, wide range of topics shallowly, or both in the middle. This is why, on the entry for this chapter, I wrote every historical character should get an equal amount of attention because it is impossible to describe all figures' biographies on one textbook.
In a group discussion, we discussed two things: what was our reaction and is Loewen so far successful with claiming his point? My reaction was basically astonishment about how Helen Keller is not known much and Woodrow Wilson is overly "heroified." Edgar had an interesting point. Before mentioning anything stated by Loewen, he explained his judgment on whether what Loewen says is reliable or extremely biased. Since we looked up 3B's about Loewen we knew that he has enough knowledge about sociology, but it is still important to doubt the obvious things.
It was also interesting to think about the real meaning of democracy. I learned that none of the "democratic" nations are really considered democratic, which is very ironic but definitely true. One example was several types of limitation for voting. Only those with certain ages, nationalities, and without any criminal records are able to vote. Democracy is supposed to reflect opinions from all citizens to ameliorate the government, but not all of them obtain the opportunity to join.
And we divided into groups and started discussing about Lies, and what Rab told us about the relationship between depth and range of the content in textbook, article, essay, or any written document, was interesting. It is impossible to cover wide range of topics in depth in any kinds of academic document, so the choice will be explaining short range of topics in depth, wide range of topics shallowly, or both in the middle. This is why, on the entry for this chapter, I wrote every historical character should get an equal amount of attention because it is impossible to describe all figures' biographies on one textbook.
In a group discussion, we discussed two things: what was our reaction and is Loewen so far successful with claiming his point? My reaction was basically astonishment about how Helen Keller is not known much and Woodrow Wilson is overly "heroified." Edgar had an interesting point. Before mentioning anything stated by Loewen, he explained his judgment on whether what Loewen says is reliable or extremely biased. Since we looked up 3B's about Loewen we knew that he has enough knowledge about sociology, but it is still important to doubt the obvious things.
LLA 4/23 Response
LLA 4/23 Response
We had a LLA class taught by Rab. Unlike the first lecture, the class consisted of only section 1A students, so the mood of the class wasn't any different from ARW class. However, the topic of the lecture was very special. It was about the most important thing to know when writing a paper, how to support a thesis with evidences. The lecture started with Rab's favorite phrase, "Macs is great but Windows is a crap." This is certainly a controversial opinion that needs supporting evidences. Using this example, we learned six main evidence types we can use:
His lesson on a view of ethics was very interesting. A "killing 5 or 1" question really made me think. By changing the situation in many ways, answers can easily change depending on individual viewpoints. It reminded me of Kuleshov Effect, an effect dealing with cognitive psychology.
Another interesting thing to learn was "a pyramid of memory", which illustrates the system of our memorization. Rab drew a pyramid with scales from 10 to 100 from top to bottom and explained to us that humans can memorize only 10% from vision and most effectively through feeling and experience.
Today's lecture was a full of excitement because although I want to be major in science (either mathematics or physics), I also have a strong interest in psychology. Not only that I could learn the effective methods to write, but also I could learn a lot about how human's cognition works.
We had a LLA class taught by Rab. Unlike the first lecture, the class consisted of only section 1A students, so the mood of the class wasn't any different from ARW class. However, the topic of the lecture was very special. It was about the most important thing to know when writing a paper, how to support a thesis with evidences. The lecture started with Rab's favorite phrase, "Macs is great but Windows is a crap." This is certainly a controversial opinion that needs supporting evidences. Using this example, we learned six main evidence types we can use:
- facts
- examples
- statistics (samplings)
- expert opinions
- appeals-emotional, ethical, rational
- logic-induction, deduction
His lesson on a view of ethics was very interesting. A "killing 5 or 1" question really made me think. By changing the situation in many ways, answers can easily change depending on individual viewpoints. It reminded me of Kuleshov Effect, an effect dealing with cognitive psychology.
Another interesting thing to learn was "a pyramid of memory", which illustrates the system of our memorization. Rab drew a pyramid with scales from 10 to 100 from top to bottom and explained to us that humans can memorize only 10% from vision and most effectively through feeling and experience.
Today's lecture was a full of excitement because although I want to be major in science (either mathematics or physics), I also have a strong interest in psychology. Not only that I could learn the effective methods to write, but also I could learn a lot about how human's cognition works.
2013年4月23日火曜日
ARW 4/22 Response
ARW 4/22 Response
On 4/22, we had a detailed lecture on how to use a citation program called Zotero. I had a mixed feeling of excitement and anxiety because I had never used this program before at high school in U.S. My teachers have always told us to use Easybib or manually type in information to create citation page, which was tedious for all students. Rab first told us to open up Firefox because Zotero is particularly compatible to Firefox.
He showed us how to make citations for a variety of sources, such as books, journals, newspaper articles, websites, movies, Youtube videos, or even an interview with someone else. For citing any of these sources, there was one thing in common; I could find a little icon next to URL and by clicking it, I got to choose which sources I would like to add to the list of references. One thing Rab told us to be careful with is that some citations are missing an information on where that resource was published so we have to add it manually, which is not a big deal, considering how much revision was required for Easybib. At last, we learned how to export those citations on google doc.
I thought this lecture was very helpful and taught me significance of using this program. As soon as I got home afterschool, I downloaded the program into my laptop. I am excited to use this program for research paper assignment.
2013年4月21日日曜日
ARW 4/19 Response
ARW 4/19 Response
In ARW class on April 19th, we spent most of our class period discussing about Jack W. Meiland's "College Thinking: How To Get the Best Out of College". We formed groups of 5-7 and Rab, our ARW professor, told us to do group discussion on certain topics or questions. We mainly talked about four topics listed below:
First, my group agreed that the content of this book is applicable to Japanese education today. This article is revised in 2009 so is relatively up-to-date; in fact, some examples used were replaced to new ones, according to Michaell J. Kleindl. We discussed that there is a difference between high school and college even in Japanese universities because most high schools in Japan teach how to get into top universities. As a result, high school teachers mostly teach what to memorize and how to memorize a considerable amount of information in order to pass the entrance test. As the book says, college is very different. College professors teach us to question every knowledge we gained at high school or in the process of studying for college. It has been almost three weeks since the spring term at ICU started, and I am experiencing this difference. In my physics class taught by Professor Yuri Ishimaru, I was surprised when she told us that we do not have to memorize any formulas or theorems because it is more important to know the background of them.
The second topic was interesting to think about; religious belief and academics seem to be two separate fields, but Meiland states "Do not accept anything in this book unless you have thought it through for yourself." (1-3) It is contradictory how he believes in Christianity, a belief without a proof that it is completely true. However, I personally thought that every academic is also like a religious belief in terms of its uncertainty. Many scientists believe that a global warming is going on but some claim it is rather a global cooling. For 2000 years, no one could explain why an arrow keeps moving forward even few seconds after applying force to it. Many scientific facts that people know as common sense might not be true. So how is "fact" made? As Meiland states, when we are exposed to a belief, we first need to examine reasons why that belief is considered true before taking it in. Fact is not something that is already there but rather something we build up. On that view, I thought religions and academics are similar.
Discussions we had on 19th were certainly profound and enjoyable. I would like to do this activity for every type of academic reading we will read in order to share ideas and deepen our understanding of the topic.
In ARW class on April 19th, we spent most of our class period discussing about Jack W. Meiland's "College Thinking: How To Get the Best Out of College". We formed groups of 5-7 and Rab, our ARW professor, told us to do group discussion on certain topics or questions. We mainly talked about four topics listed below:
- Are ideas in this book applicable to education at Japanese universities today?
- Meiland was a Christian; doesn't this fact cause a contradiction?
- Authors are all American; doesn't that make this book biased?
- Is ICU subversive?
First, my group agreed that the content of this book is applicable to Japanese education today. This article is revised in 2009 so is relatively up-to-date; in fact, some examples used were replaced to new ones, according to Michaell J. Kleindl. We discussed that there is a difference between high school and college even in Japanese universities because most high schools in Japan teach how to get into top universities. As a result, high school teachers mostly teach what to memorize and how to memorize a considerable amount of information in order to pass the entrance test. As the book says, college is very different. College professors teach us to question every knowledge we gained at high school or in the process of studying for college. It has been almost three weeks since the spring term at ICU started, and I am experiencing this difference. In my physics class taught by Professor Yuri Ishimaru, I was surprised when she told us that we do not have to memorize any formulas or theorems because it is more important to know the background of them.
The second topic was interesting to think about; religious belief and academics seem to be two separate fields, but Meiland states "Do not accept anything in this book unless you have thought it through for yourself." (1-3) It is contradictory how he believes in Christianity, a belief without a proof that it is completely true. However, I personally thought that every academic is also like a religious belief in terms of its uncertainty. Many scientists believe that a global warming is going on but some claim it is rather a global cooling. For 2000 years, no one could explain why an arrow keeps moving forward even few seconds after applying force to it. Many scientific facts that people know as common sense might not be true. So how is "fact" made? As Meiland states, when we are exposed to a belief, we first need to examine reasons why that belief is considered true before taking it in. Fact is not something that is already there but rather something we build up. On that view, I thought religions and academics are similar.
Discussions we had on 19th were certainly profound and enjoyable. I would like to do this activity for every type of academic reading we will read in order to share ideas and deepen our understanding of the topic.
Lies My Teacher Told Me (Chapter 1)
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Chapter 1 Response
To start off, I thought authors of American history textbooks do not know the mechanism of interests of students who are forced to learn history. As Loewen repeatedly explains, they tend to hide disadvantageous facts that give students bad impressions about certain historical figures and exaggerate their beneficence. Does this heroification, "a degenerative process that makes people over into heroes"(11), as Loewen himself defines, actually entertain readers? I do not believe so. Humans tend to have twisted personality; we do not show much interest to flawless people, but tend to favor people who show a little flaws to see a gap. History is a type of anthropology; therefore, it is more interesting to learn history from the figures' personalities, their interaction with others, and how that influenced the course of events. In order to do so, it is necessary to reveal every part of figures to readers. In the first chapter, Loewen gives an additional reason of why revision of history textbook is necessary. Some historical figures obviously get much more attention in good ways than others. Loewen used Helen Keller and Woodrow Wilson to illustrate this.
Helen Keller, on the one hand, was certainly a victim of history twist done by the authors. As I was reading this chapter, I was surprised to know that she was a radical socialist because I only knew that she was a blind and deaf girl who fought physical disabilities, as most readers probably did. Keller joined the Socialist Party of Massachusetts and always fought for rights of the handicaps. She learned the connection between social class system and people's opportunities in life and how that applies to distribution of blindness in population. She also wrote letters to NAACP or Elizabeth Flynn and composed essays on the women's movement, on politics and on economics. It is much harder than it sounds, especially for a blind and deaf like her; I wonder how she did it in the first place. There are many other female socialists in American history, and they are known for their social achievements; I wonder why Helen Keller, who has done laudable jobs, is only known for her disabilities to most people, including me. She should have known for her accomplishments as a socialist more, and her disabilities as a supporting fact that explains her anguish.
Woodrow Wilson, on the other hand, is overly praised by the authors of textbook. He was actually much more egoistic and antidemocratic than most readers would have thought. First, it was shocking to know that he had suffragists arrested before he reformed women's suffrage. This background that explains the interrelationship between the figure and the people changes our impression on him 180 degrees: whether he was supportive of giving women rights to vote. Moreover, his racial segregation of the federal government, in which he appointed whites to offices reserved for blacks also shows his anti democracy. Second, I was surprised with not only Wilson's military interventions in other countries but also how textbooks make excuses. It is shocking to know that he intervened in Latin America and Russia's civil war, but textbooks even defend him by stating Wilson was just willing to build friendship with Latin America but he reluctantly ordered troops because negotiation did not go smoothly. He was the one who ordered, and even by his own decision. This act of blaming countries intervened should not be considered patriotic, but rather hypocritical.
After reading this chapter, I realized that perspectives are important. In fact, textbooks that illustrate Wilson as a hero are written from a white perspective. In order to publish an unbiased textbook, it should be written and edited by as many perspectives as possible. Otherwise, it is obvious that the authors try to give attention to their favorite historical figures. There are two choices; one is to give equal amount of attention to all, and another one is to reveal all historical facts. This "hide and seek" of historical facts should not be done on academic documents like textbooks. Next chapter is apparently about Christopher Columbus. I am curious to know what kinds of veiled truths will be revealed.
Woodrow Wilson, on the other hand, is overly praised by the authors of textbook. He was actually much more egoistic and antidemocratic than most readers would have thought. First, it was shocking to know that he had suffragists arrested before he reformed women's suffrage. This background that explains the interrelationship between the figure and the people changes our impression on him 180 degrees: whether he was supportive of giving women rights to vote. Moreover, his racial segregation of the federal government, in which he appointed whites to offices reserved for blacks also shows his anti democracy. Second, I was surprised with not only Wilson's military interventions in other countries but also how textbooks make excuses. It is shocking to know that he intervened in Latin America and Russia's civil war, but textbooks even defend him by stating Wilson was just willing to build friendship with Latin America but he reluctantly ordered troops because negotiation did not go smoothly. He was the one who ordered, and even by his own decision. This act of blaming countries intervened should not be considered patriotic, but rather hypocritical.
After reading this chapter, I realized that perspectives are important. In fact, textbooks that illustrate Wilson as a hero are written from a white perspective. In order to publish an unbiased textbook, it should be written and edited by as many perspectives as possible. Otherwise, it is obvious that the authors try to give attention to their favorite historical figures. There are two choices; one is to give equal amount of attention to all, and another one is to reveal all historical facts. This "hide and seek" of historical facts should not be done on academic documents like textbooks. Next chapter is apparently about Christopher Columbus. I am curious to know what kinds of veiled truths will be revealed.
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