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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

1. facts
2. examples
3. statistics (samplings)
4. expert opinions
5. appeals-emotional, ethical, rational
6. logic-induction, deduction

He taught us few things to remember when dealing with number 3 and 4. When collecting data to make statistics, people, including experts, whom we ask for opinions should not be biased or skewed. For example, in terms of "Macs or Windows" question, it is obviously wrong to ask workers at Apple or Microsoft. Although it sounds obvious, it is extremely important thing to remember in order to make an accurate sampling.

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.

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.

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:

1. Are ideas in this book applicable to education at Japanese universities today?
2. Meiland was a Christian; doesn't this fact cause a contradiction?
3. Authors are all American; doesn't that make this book biased?
4. Is ICU subversive?

I would like to explain some of these topics I was especially interested in.

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.