A Journey Through My College Papers: Undergraduate Series

A Journey through My College Papers Undergraduate Series Deborah K. Barry Published by: Debbie Barry 2500 Mann Road, #248 Clarkston, Michigan 48346 USA Copyright © 2013 by Deborah K. Barry. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author. ISBN-13: ISBN-10: 2 978-1484870280 148487028X A Journey Through My College Papers Introduction I began my college career in the fall of 2008 at Olney Central College in Olney, Illinois. OCC is part of the Illinois Eastern Community Colleges system. I spent two semesters at OCC, until I moved in the summer of 2009. I transferred in the fall of 2009 to Ashford University in Clinton, Iowa. I took advantage of the online education offered by Ashford, which allowed me to study at my home in Clarkston, Michigan. I had two concurrent majors with Ashford: first: social sciences with an education concentration; and second: English. The papers in this book are the collected written assignments of my undergraduate career at Olney Central College and Ashford University. They are presented in chronological order within each course, and the courses, aside from the first semester, are given in consecutive order. The papers in the first two semesters were written using MLA format, with subsequent papers being written in APA format, as required by the individual schools. I completed by undergraduate studies in April of 2013 and graduated from Ashford University in the spring. A complete list of sources for all of the papers in this volume is provided at the end of the book for the reader’s convenience. Undergraduate Series 3 (Word Cloud created using Tagxedo.com, 2013 April 27) DISCLAIMER: References to members of my family, my friends, and places where I have lived, studied, or worked are included in my writings as examples of the topics being discussed and do not represent my actual family or friends or actual places and/or situations. Although they may resemble real people, places, or events, they are to be taken as no more than creations of my imagination. 4 A Journey Through My College Papers Contents INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................ 3 FALL SEMESTER, 2008 ................................................................................................................ 17 ENG 1111: COMPOSITION 1 ........................................................................................................ 17 Writing Competition .......................................................................................................... 17 Friday Evening ................................................................................................................... 19 Storm ................................................................................................................................ 20 Media Violence .................................................................................................................. 21 MTH 1121: MATH FOR ELEMENTARY MAJORS ................................................................................ 23 Experiences ....................................................................................................................... 23 SPRING SEMESTER, 2009 ............................................................................................................ 24 ENG 1121: COMPOSITION AND ANALYSIS ....................................................................................... 24 The Tragic Emily Grierson .................................................................................................. 24 Arnold Friend ..................................................................................................................... 26 White Elephants ................................................................................................................ 29 On Marriage Forms ........................................................................................................... 31 FALL SEMESTER, 2009 ................................................................................................................ 49 EDU 108: INTRODUCTION TO POLICY & EDUCATION .......................................................................... 49 Examining a Racial Policy .................................................................................................. 49 Altering Power Relationships ............................................................................................. 50 The NEA Opposes School Vouchers .................................................................................... 51 Charges Dropped Against Teacher Accused of Forcing Student to Eat From Garbage ........ 52 Defining Education Ideology .............................................................................................. 53 Freedom and Equality ........................................................................................................ 54 The College Cost Reduction and Access Act ........................................................................ 55 Stop the Bullies .................................................................................................................. 57 Interconnected Policy Agendas .......................................................................................... 58 Implementation Barriers to NCLB....................................................................................... 59 Michigan Legislative Process ............................................................................................. 60 Theoretical Frameworks .................................................................................................... 61 Policy Evaluation ............................................................................................................... 62 PSY 202: ADULT DEVELOPMENT AND LIFE ASSESSMENT ..................................................................... 63 Response to the RALI exercise ............................................................................................ 63 Skinner's Operant Conditioning.......................................................................................... 63 Holland's Hypothesis on Personalities ................................................................................ 64 The Endless Change Rule ................................................................................................... 65 Undergraduate Series 5 Family and Work Changes ..................................................................................................66 Reaction to Writing a Paper ...............................................................................................66 With Six Months to Live ......................................................................................................67 The Life Maps .....................................................................................................................67 Institutional Outcomes .......................................................................................................68 SPRING SEMESTER, 2010 ............................................................................................................ 69 HIS 324: HISTORY OF AMERICAN EDUCATION ................................................................................... 69 Forces in Education ............................................................................................................69 Learning Stages ..................................................................................................................70 Colonial Education .............................................................................................................71 American Leaders...............................................................................................................73 National Standards in Education ........................................................................................ 74 Progressive Education ........................................................................................................76 Gifted and Talented............................................................................................................78 Technology in the Classroom ..............................................................................................80 Education Topics in the Courts ............................................................................................ 80 Impact of the Internet ........................................................................................................81 HIS 303: THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION .........................................................................................83 Affecting Presidential Power ..............................................................................................83 Anti-Federalist Papers ........................................................................................................84 Benefits of the Articles of Confederation ............................................................................86 Checks and Balances ..........................................................................................................87 Chisholm v. Georgia ...........................................................................................................88 Gridlock..............................................................................................................................90 Hobbes and Locke ..............................................................................................................91 Supreme Court Docket........................................................................................................93 Unitary, Federal, or Confederal ..........................................................................................94 Justice Sonia Sotomayor .....................................................................................................95 Senate and House Sites ......................................................................................................96 Speech Codes in Education .................................................................................................98 INF 103: COMPUTER LITERACY .................................................................................................... 102 Air Travel Database .......................................................................................................... 102 Artificial Intelligence......................................................................................................... 103 Electronic Monitoring ....................................................................................................... 107 Smart Cards ..................................................................................................................... 110 PHI 103: INFORMAL LOGIC ......................................................................................................... 111 Addressing Stereotypes .................................................................................................... 111 Thinking Critically ............................................................................................................. 113 Moral Reasoning .............................................................................................................. 114 6 A Journey Through My College Papers Homosexual Marriage ..................................................................................................... 115 SOC 101: INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY ...................................................................................... 119 Social Settings ................................................................................................................. 119 Sociological Perspective ................................................................................................... 120 Shrinking Middle Class ..................................................................................................... 120 Life Chances..................................................................................................................... 121 Death Penalty .................................................................................................................. 122 Social Norms.................................................................................................................... 124 McDonald's Goes East ..................................................................................................... 125 Human Rights .................................................................................................................. 127 Social Interactions ........................................................................................................... 128 Social Movements ........................................................................................................... 129 Impact of Sociological Theories on the Institution of Family ............................................. 131 FALL SEMESTER, 2010 .............................................................................................................. 134 PHI 107: PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN CONDUCT ................................................................................. 134 Principle of Charity .......................................................................................................... 134 Conflict Between Reason and Feelings ............................................................................. 134 Veil of Ignorance ............................................................................................................. 135 Cultural Relativism .......................................................................................................... 136 Just Desserts .................................................................................................................... 136 Virtuous Behavior ............................................................................................................ 138 Intent in Moral Acts ......................................................................................................... 139 Moral Consensus ............................................................................................................. 139 Taoism............................................................................................................................. 139 Susan Wolf ...................................................................................................................... 140 Posner and Singer ............................................................................................................ 140 Stay-at-Home Mothers Deserve Respect .......................................................................... 141 SOC 315: CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES.................................................................................... 145 Social Cleavages .............................................................................................................. 145 Quarrels of the Britons..................................................................................................... 147 Right Amount of Welfare ................................................................................................. 147 Democratic Deficit ........................................................................................................... 148 Japanese Spirit, Western Things ...................................................................................... 149 Middle Way ..................................................................................................................... 152 The Quiet Revolution ....................................................................................................... 153 Caste System ................................................................................................................... 153 Muslim Modernization .................................................................................................... 154 Political Diversity in the Developing World ....................................................................... 155 Major Trends, Issues and Prospects ................................................................................. 156 Undergraduate Series 7 The British Disease ........................................................................................................... 158 ENG 125: INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE...................................................................................... 162 Creating Art ..................................................................................................................... 162 Literature and Life ............................................................................................................ 163 Shared Values .................................................................................................................. 165 Reflecting on your Reading ............................................................................................... 166 Literature in Community................................................................................................... 166 Poems and Feelings .......................................................................................................... 168 Reading Poems................................................................................................................. 169 Langston Hughes and Alice Walker .................................................................................. 170 Reading Drama and Plays ................................................................................................ 171 Imagery in Literature ........................................................................................................ 172 My Reading Experience .................................................................................................... 176 LIB 320: GLOBAL SOCIOECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES ........................................................................... 176 Historical Perspectives ...................................................................................................... 176 Technology and Globalization .......................................................................................... 177 International Organizations ............................................................................................. 179 Transnational Crime ......................................................................................................... 180 Criteria for Armed Intervention ........................................................................................ 181 Global Civil Society ........................................................................................................... 183 GNP.................................................................................................................................. 184 India and China ................................................................................................................ 185 Maintaining Peace ........................................................................................................... 186 Universal Human Rights ................................................................................................... 187 Convention against Torture .............................................................................................. 188 Responsibility to a Broader Humanity............................................................................... 189 SPRING SEMESTER, 2011 .......................................................................................................... 194 PSY 104: CHILD AND ADOLESCENT DEVELOPMENT ........................................................................... 194 Experiential Learning ........................................................................................................ 194 Theoretical Perspectives: Cognitive .................................................................................. 194 Child Development ........................................................................................................... 195 Early Child Care ................................................................................................................ 196 Infant Mortality................................................................................................................ 197 Infant and Toddler Nutrition ............................................................................................. 198 Parenting Styles ............................................................................................................... 200 Gender Information .......................................................................................................... 201 Information Processing .................................................................................................... 202 Cognitive Development .................................................................................................... 203 Psychosocial Development ............................................................................................... 205 8 A Journey Through My College Papers Psychotherapy ................................................................................................................. 206 Key Learning .................................................................................................................... 208 Article Review .................................................................................................................. 208 Developmental Theories .................................................................................................. 209 PSY 370: LEARNING & THE BRAIN ............................................................................................... 212 Fundamentals of Brain-based Learning ............................................................................ 212 Brain Dominance ............................................................................................................. 213 Physiological Effects on Learning ..................................................................................... 214 Physical Movement and the Brain.................................................................................... 215 Brain-based Learning Strategies Benefit Students ............................................................ 216 Memory Strategies .......................................................................................................... 218 In the Classroom .............................................................................................................. 220 Sensory Contributions to Learning ................................................................................... 221 The Role of Emotion in Learning ...................................................................................... 223 Advantages of Brain-Based Learning Environments ......................................................... 224 Brain-based Compatible Classrooms ................................................................................ 229 EDU 321: INTRODUCTION TO SERVING ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS ................................................ 231 Sara ................................................................................................................................. 231 Lupe ................................................................................................................................ 231 Theories........................................................................................................................... 232 Teaching Strategies ......................................................................................................... 233 Bianca ............................................................................................................................. 234 Mini-lesson: "I before E" .................................................................................................. 235 Cultural and Linguistic Differences ................................................................................... 236 HIS 204: AMERICAN HISTORY SINCE 1865 .................................................................................... 237 American Slave Narratives ............................................................................................... 237 Corporations and Big Business ......................................................................................... 238 Elections of 1912 ............................................................................................................. 239 World War I Propaganda ................................................................................................. 240 American Imperialism ...................................................................................................... 242 Automobile and America ................................................................................................. 244 WWII-Related Events ....................................................................................................... 245 Summer of Hate .............................................................................................................. 246 Hollywood/Fiction - Hollywood Blacklists ......................................................................... 247 Iran Hostage Crisis ........................................................................................................... 248 Sit-Coms .......................................................................................................................... 249 African Americans in Post-Civil War America ................................................................... 252 ENG 341: STUDIES IN LITERARY GENRES ....................................................................................... 258 Parables, Fables, and Tales .............................................................................................. 258 The Short Story ................................................................................................................ 259 Undergraduate Series 9 FALL SEMESTER, 2011 ............................................................................................................... 260 ENG 201: AMERICAN LITERATURE TO 1865 ................................................................................... 260 Iroquois ............................................................................................................................ 260 Sinners ............................................................................................................................. 261 Letters .............................................................................................................................. 262 Franklin ............................................................................................................................ 264 Fiction .............................................................................................................................. 265 Oppressions...................................................................................................................... 266 Commentary in Fiction ..................................................................................................... 267 Douglass/Autobiography.................................................................................................. 268 Rhetorical Analysis ........................................................................................................... 270 American Poetry............................................................................................................... 271 Racial Tensions ................................................................................................................. 272 Nature in Early American Literature ................................................................................. 273 ENG 202: AMERICAN LITERATURE AFTER 1865 .............................................................................. 277 Narrative Writing ............................................................................................................. 277 The Essay ......................................................................................................................... 278 The Wrong Race ............................................................................................................... 279 Modernist American Literature by Women ....................................................................... 281 The Harlem Renaissance 1900 – 1940 .............................................................................. 282 Modern American Writers ................................................................................................ 283 Modern American Fiction ................................................................................................. 284 Literature in the Postmodern Era ...................................................................................... 285 Language and Rhetoric..................................................................................................... 285 The Immigrant Experience ................................................................................................ 287 Indifferent Universe .......................................................................................................... 288 ENG 345: BRITISH LITERATURE I .................................................................................................. 292 Beowulf: Reading for Theme ............................................................................................ 292 Christian Content in Beowulf ............................................................................................ 293 Chaucer: Reading for Imagery .......................................................................................... 295 Chaucer: Reading for Lexicon ........................................................................................... 296 Satire in “The Wife of Bath”.............................................................................................. 297 The Bible: Reading for Context ......................................................................................... 299 Paradise Lost: Reading for Character and Imagery ........................................................... 300 Renaissance Love Poetry: Reading for Lyricism ................................................................. 301 Early 17th Century Elegy, Epigraph , and Friendship ......................................................... 302 Swift’s A Modest Proposal ................................................................................................ 303 Reading for Global Significance ........................................................................................ 304 The Evil of Grendel ........................................................................................................... 305 10 A Journey Through My College Papers ENG 346: BRITISH LITERATURE II ................................................................................................ 310 Innocence/Experience ...................................................................................................... 310 Conversations in Poems ................................................................................................... 311 Religion and Myth in Romantic Poetry ............................................................................. 312 Romantics into Victorians ................................................................................................ 314 Victorian Science ............................................................................................................. 315 Heart of Darkness ............................................................................................................ 316 Poetry of the Great War .................................................................................................. 317 Themes in Romantic and Victorian Poetry........................................................................ 318 Feminist Manifesto and Woolf ......................................................................................... 320 Tradition.......................................................................................................................... 321 The Kind Aspect of Leopold Bloom ................................................................................... 321 English Poetry from Around the World............................................................................. 323 Process ............................................................................................................................ 324 Religion and Myth in English Poetry ................................................................................. 325 ENG 325: INTERMEDIATE COMPOSITION....................................................................................... 330 Writing Competition ........................................................................................................ 330 Writing a Final Paper ....................................................................................................... 332 Tipping the Tank .............................................................................................................. 333 Explaining Concepts......................................................................................................... 335 Defining Family................................................................................................................ 336 Tipping the Tank .............................................................................................................. 337 Defining Family................................................................................................................ 339 Evaluation ....................................................................................................................... 340 Defining Family................................................................................................................ 341 Our School’s Behavior Code ............................................................................................. 343 Oral Argument................................................................................................................. 344 Evaluating a School’s Behavior Rule ................................................................................. 346 Taking a Position Online .................................................................................................. 348 Position Papers ................................................................................................................ 349 American Students Are Crippled By Cultural Diversity Education ...................................... 349 SPRING SEMESTER, 2012 .......................................................................................................... 354 ENG 321: INTRODUCTORY LINGUISTICS ........................................................................................ 354 Animal Communication versus Human Speech................................................................. 354 The Lateralization of Language in the Brain ..................................................................... 355 Morphology and Creativity .............................................................................................. 355 Semantic and Pragmatic Meanings in a Cultural Context ................................................. 356 The Prosodic Qualities of Language ................................................................................. 357 Phonetics and the International Phonetic Alphabet ......................................................... 358 Undergraduate Series 11 A Critical Period for Language Acquisition ........................................................................ 359 Computers That Talk and Listen ....................................................................................... 360 Disappearing Languages .................................................................................................. 360 Reconstructing Proto-Indo-European................................................................................ 361 Picturing the First Writing ................................................................................................ 362 ENG 317: INTERNATIONAL VOICES ............................................................................................... 367 Reflection on Artistic Expression in Your Everyday Life ...................................................... 367 Reflection on Artistic Expression in Your Everyday Life: Food ............................................ 368 Artistic Expression and Culture ......................................................................................... 369 Rebellion and Personal Identity ........................................................................................ 370 Language, Perception, and Artistic Creation ..................................................................... 372 The Meanings of Words ................................................................................................... 373 Language and Personal Identity ....................................................................................... 374 The Past’s Presence Today:............................................................................................... 376 Historical Representations in Art and Literature ............................................................... 376 Audience Reception and the Influences of History and Culture.......................................... 377 Identity Within and Without ............................................................................................. 378 Research on an Aesthetic Movement................................................................................ 382 Analyzing a Literary Work in Relation to Sociopolitical Contexts and Movements ............. 383 Comparing Satrapi and Nafisi ........................................................................................... 384 Identity Within and Without ............................................................................................. 385 Personal Reflection on Global Culture ............................................................................... 390 Artistic Representations of the Effects of Intersecting Cultures ......................................... 391 ENG 318: CREATIVE WRITING ..................................................................................................... 392 Sharing and Writing Events from Our Lives ....................................................................... 392 Reading and Critiquing Creative Writing........................................................................... 393 Sheltered .......................................................................................................................... 394 Thinking About Plots, Tension, and Conclusions ................................................................ 395 Maypole in Vermont......................................................................................................... 397 Analyzing Poetic Structure ................................................................................................ 400 Three Poems by Debbie .................................................................................................... 401 Understanding Dialogue and Character............................................................................ 403 Sheltered – Revised .......................................................................................................... 404 Maypole in Vermont – Revised ......................................................................................... 406 Tommy – Revised ............................................................................................................. 410 Escaping the Famine – Revised ......................................................................................... 411 The Child‘s Sonnet – Revised............................................................................................. 411 Reflection on Creative Writing .......................................................................................... 412 Finding Stories and Poems – Mining for Ideas by Reading Literature ................................ 413 Peer Review and Revision Process .................................................................................... 414 12 A Journey Through My College Papers ENG 438: LITERARY THEORY ...................................................................................................... 415 Introduction to Literary Analysis ...................................................................................... 415 Analysis of Here at “The New Yorker” .............................................................................. 416 New Criticism and Unification .......................................................................................... 416 Reader-Response and Rhetorical Tradition ...................................................................... 417 Forgiving My Father ........................................................................................................ 418 Structuralist Theory ......................................................................................................... 419 Deconstructing The New Yorker Cartoon ......................................................................... 420 Something Is Wrong In London ........................................................................................ 421 Distinguishing Between Historical and Biographical Theories .......................................... 424 Marxism versus Postcolonial Theory ................................................................................ 425 Celebrating Ecstatic Life................................................................................................... 425 Psychological Analysis ..................................................................................................... 428 Gender Based Theories and Stereotypes .......................................................................... 429 Symbolic Serpents............................................................................................................ 430 ENG 380: LITERARY RESEARCH ................................................................................................... 434 Literary Experiences ......................................................................................................... 434 Experience with Library Resources ................................................................................... 435 Psychoanalytical Theory in Literary Criticism ................................................................... 436 Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper .................................................................................... 438 Exploring the Ashford University Library Databases ......................................................... 439 Critical Analysis of Gilman’s Gothic Allegory .................................................................... 440 Doing More with Google.................................................................................................. 442 Research and Response ................................................................................................... 443 Poetry Analysis "ABC" ...................................................................................................... 444 The Value of Critical Theory in Literary Analysis ............................................................... 445 Analyzing The Yellow Wallpaper ...................................................................................... 446 FALL SEMESTER, 2012 .............................................................................................................. 450 ENG 341: STUDIES IN LITERARY GENRES ....................................................................................... 450 Parables, Fables, and Tales .............................................................................................. 450 The Short Story ................................................................................................................ 451 Short Stories .................................................................................................................... 452 Literary Terms ................................................................................................................. 453 Elements of Poetry – Part One ......................................................................................... 454 Elements of Poetry – Part Two ......................................................................................... 456 Images of Brotherhood and Death ................................................................................... 458 Elements of Drama: Characterization .............................................................................. 463 Elements of Drama: Imagery, Symbolism, and Allusion .................................................... 464 Elements of Drama: Plot and Character ........................................................................... 465 Undergraduate Series 13 Thinking Critically about Drama: the Contemporary Significance of Ibsen ........................ 466 PSY 372: EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY .......................................................................................... 467 Week 1 Journal................................................................................................................. 467 Effective Teachers ............................................................................................................ 468 Educational Psychology .................................................................................................... 469 Intelligence....................................................................................................................... 470 Intellectual Exceptionality ................................................................................................ 470 Intelligences, Correlations, and A.D.H.D. .......................................................................... 471 Reinforcement and Conditioning ...................................................................................... 473 Reciprocal Teaching ......................................................................................................... 474 IDEAL Problem-Solving ..................................................................................................... 475 Memory ........................................................................................................................... 477 Preferred Learning Style ................................................................................................... 478 Week 4 Journal................................................................................................................. 479 Corporal Punishment Debate............................................................................................ 480 To Test or Not to Test? ..................................................................................................... 480 Intelligence Tests and Student Placement......................................................................... 481 ENG 497: ENGLISH CAPSTONE .................................................................................................... 487 Literary Periods ................................................................................................................ 487 The Canon Wars ............................................................................................................... 488 The Making of the Canon ................................................................................................. 489 Considering Gender in A Doll House.................................................................................. 490 Writing an Annotated Bibliography .................................................................................. 491 Literary Research.............................................................................................................. 492 Literary Analysis of “Who’s Irish”...................................................................................... 493 Examining Gender in A Doll House .................................................................................... 494 Final Paper Progress ......................................................................................................... 498 Language and Literary Studies ......................................................................................... 499 Reflecting on the Course ................................................................................................... 500 Examining Gender in A Doll House .................................................................................... 501 SPRING SEMESTER, 2013 .......................................................................................................... 506 EDU371: PHONICS BASED READING & DECODING ........................................................................... 506 Literacy Statistics ............................................................................................................. 506 Reading and Writing Instruction ....................................................................................... 507 Literacy Standards............................................................................................................ 508 Reading Instruction Theory............................................................................................... 509 Week 2 Assignment .......................................................................................................... 510 Decoding Skill Teaching Methods ..................................................................................... 512 Instructional Techniques................................................................................................... 513 14 A Journey Through My College Papers Week Three Assignment .................................................................................................. 514 Systemic Phonics Curriculum............................................................................................ 515 Principles for Reading Success ......................................................................................... 517 Week Four Assignment .................................................................................................... 518 Diagnosis and Assessment Principles ............................................................................... 520 Practicum Experience ...................................................................................................... 521 Reflections on Teaching Action Reading........................................................................... 522 EDU360: PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION ......................................................................................... 527 The Faculty Debate .......................................................................................................... 527 The Functions of Schools .................................................................................................. 528 Motivation to Learn ......................................................................................................... 529 Where Do You Stand? ...................................................................................................... 530 Performance Pay versus Tenure ....................................................................................... 531 Effective Teachers............................................................................................................ 532 Why I Wish to Become a Teacher..................................................................................... 533 Historical Foundations of Education in America ............................................................... 534 Case Study: Evolution of Theories of Learning .................................................................. 538 Case Study: Assessment ................................................................................................... 539 The Social and Cultural Contexts of Education ................................................................. 541 Aligning a Personal Philosophy of Education with Curriculum .......................................... 543 The Impact of Educational Philosophies and Theories ...................................................... 544 Curriculum Change .......................................................................................................... 546 Issues Surrounding Curriculum Development ................................................................... 548 Elements of Curriculum Content and Delivery .................................................................. 549 Facing the Future of Education ........................................................................................ 550 Why Do We Teach? ......................................................................................................... 553 A Personal Philosophy of Education ................................................................................. 554 EDU 490 INTERDISCIPLINARY CAPSTONE ....................................................................................... 559 Critical Thinking ............................................................................................................... 559 Mr. Rodriguez .................................................................................................................. 560 Chapter One Synthesis ..................................................................................................... 562 Ms. Valdera ..................................................................................................................... 562 Teaching Challenges ........................................................................................................ 565 Chapter Two Case Study Scenarios .................................................................................. 566 Chapter Two Synthesis ..................................................................................................... 570 Michael Alvarez ............................................................................................................... 570 Scenario .......................................................................................................................... 572 Chapter Three Case Study Scenarios ................................................................................ 573 Chapter Three Synthesis .................................................................................................. 576 Scenario and Strategies ................................................................................................... 577 Undergraduate Series 15 Anna Martin ..................................................................................................................... 578 Chapter Four Synthesis ..................................................................................................... 580 Chapter Four Case Study Scenarios ................................................................................... 581 Joseph Hanson ................................................................................................................. 584 Case Study Scenarios ........................................................................................................ 586 Critical Reflection ............................................................................................................. 588 Week Five Capstone Essay ................................................................................................ 589 COMPLETE LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................... 594 INDEX........................................................................................................................................ 627 16 A Journey Through My College Papers Fall Semester, 2008 ENG 1111: Composition 1 Writing Competition September 10, 2008 One of the most significant events in my high school career was my participation in the Vermont Honors Competition for Excellence in Writing. The competition was sponsored by the University of Vermont, and was held for the first time when I was a sophomore at Mount Anthony Union High School. The competition consisted of three levels: local, regional, and state. The first level was held in the fall. Each student had to write an impromptu essay in class. We were not told at that point that we were participating in a competition, so I thought nothing of it. We were given the subject for the essays just moments before we began to write. I don’t remember what the subject was for that essay. At the end of the class, we were told that our essays would be entered in the state writing competition. I was a little bit nervous upon hearing that, and worried whether I had written well enough, but I was used to getting A’s on my papers, so it was only a slight bit of anxiety, and it didn’t last long. We didn’t hear anything more about the essays or the competition for several weeks. With everything else I had to think about, I forgot about it entirely during that time. Then, one morning, the winner for each of the four grades was announced over the public address system. I knew I was a competent writer, but I did not have a lot of confidence in myself. As a result, I was very surprised to hear my name announced. I sat in home room, staring at the public address speaker for several moments, unable to think or speak, until the bell shattered the moment. It only took a few minutes for surprise to be replaced by pride and satisfaction. Although I would have denied it if I had been asked, I knew that I would have been very disappointed if anyone else had won the competition in my grade. I have always been a perfectionist, and it would have crushed me if I had not won. In February, I went to the high school in Randolph for the regional level of the competition. There were five schools in our region. It was a bit unsettling to be in an unfamiliar school, surrounded by students I didn’t know. I didn’t even know the other participants from my own school. I had been calm and confident up until that point, but now my stomach began churning, and there was not quite enough air. The students from the other schools seemed to be larger than life. I was sure they were all smarter than I was. I’m sure we only had to wait a few minutes for the competition to begin, but those minutes passed like hours. I was sure that I would fail miserably. I concentrated on taking each new breath, hoping I would not embarrass myself by being sick there in the hall. We were finally ushered into a classroom with twenty empty desks. It was time to begin. Small, blue composition books and sharpened pencils were handed out, and we were each given a sealed envelope containing the subject for our essay. My hands trembled as I tore open my envelope. The sophomore topic was the person in history we admired the most, and why we admired him or her. I thought about it for several minutes, near panic as no good candidates came to mind. I considered and discarded several possibilities. I finally decided to write about Abraham Lincoln. I had one hour to complete my essay, beginning with the moment I had opened my envelope. Once I started writing, all of my nervousness and insecurity melted away, and I wrote Undergraduate Series 17 steadily and confidently. I finished my essay about forty-five minutes into the allotted time, and turned in my booklet. Once again, there was a wait of several weeks between the writing and the announcement of the winners. This time, however, I never forgot about the competition. Each morning, I listened carefully to the announcements, hoping to hear the results, yet dreading that I would hear a name other than my own. One morning, the announcement finally came. I had won the regional level, and would be going on to the final competition at the state level. My fear that I would embarrass myself by not winning the regional level of the competition evaporated as relief at learning that I had won washed over me. I released the breath I had not realized I was holding. My relief was quickly replaced by pride and happiness as I received congratulations from nearly everyone I passed, with the feeling that I deserved nothing less. I had succeeded, and everyone around me knew it. The local and regional competitions were just a foretaste of the real competition. The final level of the competition was held on May 9, 1985, at the University of Vermont. I was a bundle of nerves as my English teacher, Ms. Woodard, drove me more than three hours north to face the four other top sophomore writers in Vermont. I knew it was a very important day, no matter how the competition ended. In consideration of the day’s importance, I dressed in my most mature outfit: a peach linen skirt suit, a white blouse with a ruffled front and ruffled cuffs, and high-heeled pumps. Although I looked very grown-up on the outside, I felt very young and unsure of myself inside. The final level of the competition was held in the morning, and consisted of two essays, with a very brief break between them. Once again, we each received a blue composition book, several sharpened pencils, and a sealed envelope. We were given one hour in which to write. I tore open the envelope and read my first topic. I had to write an essay comparing the views of teenagers with those of adults. My essay, which I titled “Teenagers Versus Adults,” took me about forty minutes to write. As I began writing, all of my doubts vanished. As I had done in Randolph, I wrote quickly and steadily. When I turned in my booklet, I was confident that I had given my best effort. I sat quietly, watching other students finish their essays as I waited for the break. The second half of the morning was very much like the first half. My second topic was to decide whether or not fantasy or imagination was important, and to support my position. I wrote “The Importance of Fantasy” in just over thirty minutes. When I sat down after turning in my booklet, a senior boy whispered to me to ask why I had rushed through without trying. I just smiled and sat quietly until the time was up. Ms. Woodard and I had lunch and walked around the town during the afternoon. I was very, very worried, but I tried to act like I was relaxed. I couldn’t concentrate on my conversation with my teacher, or on my surroundings. Evening finally came. There was an elegant banquet before the awards ceremony. The lights were low, and the tables were draped with real tablecloths. I hardly tasted the food that was served, and have no memory of anything that I ate. The air crackled with expectancy and anxiety. Conversations seemed stiff and unnatural, and laughter seemed just a bit too loud. By the time the dessert dishes were cleared, and the competition officials stepped up to the podium, the air practically sang with tension. I could hardly breathe when they started announcing the winners. They started with the fourth runner up in the twelfth grade. There were cheers and applause as each name was called, and each student made his or her way through the crowd of tables up to the podium. Finally, they reached the tenth grade, and I listened anxiously for my name. I was relieved when I was not the fourth runner up. I felt dizzy after I was not called for the third runner up. My stomach clenched into knots when I was not the second runner up. I was paralyzed as the official opened the card 18 A Journey Through My College Papers with the name of the first runner up. I strained forward, sure it would be me, but hoping it would not be. I screamed out loud when my name was not called. I felt like my entire body had just been released from suffocating bonds. Ms. Woodard and I hugged each other with tears on our cheeks. When my name was called as the tenth grade winner a few moments later, my joy and triumph were dizzying. I hardly felt the floor under my feet as I went up to receive my certificate and a check for $1,500.00. I heard the applause as no more than a dim murmur in my ears. I was trembling as I shook hands with the president of the university. A reporter for the Burlington Free Press took my picture, and I was sure life couldn’t possibly be any better. I don’t remember hearing the ninth grade winners announced. Nothing else mattered, now that I had won. I bounced in my seat as I waited for the ceremony to end so I could call my mother with the news. Ms. Woodard drove me home that night, and I got there in time to watch myself on the late news with my mother and grandmother. It had been an amazing day, and sharing it with my family was the perfect ending. Friday Evening September 17, 2008 The silence is not silent at all. The sibilant humming of the cicadas echoes outside my window, their noise almost deafening. As I hold my pen poised to begin writing, the cicadas’ murmuring rises and falls, distracting me from the words which clamor to be written. Vague, childhood memories of the waves cresting and crashing on the pebbly shores in New Hampshire drift behind my eyes. The music of the cicadas is punctuated intermittently by the strident chirruping of a cricket. Each time the cricket pauses between his chirps, I am lulled by the susurration of the cicadas, only to be startled again each time the cricket rejoins the song. Twilight is falling outside the window. The sky is a smooth, even blue, the color of wellhoned steel. The brilliant colors of the day fade into muted greys. As evening comes, I feel the encroaching shadows deepening in the room around me. It is strange how darkness feels. Sometimes it is a warm, soft blanket, enfolding me in safety and comfort. When I am alone, though, as I am now, the darkness is a looming beast, stealthily stalking me as the shadows deepen. I huddle closer to the safe, familiar refuge of a sheet of bright, white, notebook paper. It is a beacon of safety in a sea of dark uncertainty. The single 40-watt bulb next to my desk casts a buttery-yellow pool of light across the paper, holding back the darkness. The clock ticks in the corner behind me. Its steady heartbeat adds to the menacing gloom. I take a deep breath of the thick, heavy air to settle my nerves. It pours into my lungs, oppressively warm, leaving me sluggish instead of refreshed. My arm sticks to the satiny wood of my desktop as I move to turn the page. A fine film of perspiration clings to my flesh as beads of moisture form on my forehead. The humidity drenches the fine hairs at the back of my neck. I listen to the scratch of the cheap, ballpoint pen on my paper, savoring the familiar and dearly loved sound of words being woven into a tapestry for the imagination. My attention shifts suddenly away from my writing, and the darkness is momentarily forgotten. The scent of fried chicken wafts on the breeze from the shop in front of my home, and my mouth waters at the savory aroma. My tongue remembers the peppery tingle of the crisp, golden crust, and the juicy tenderness of chicken fresh from the fryer. My stomach rumbles Undergraduate Series 19 emptily, and I remember that lunch was many hours ago. For a few moments, I imagine biting into a thick piece of fried chicken breast. In my mind the golden juice trickles down my chin as the subtly blended flavors of the delicate meat and the crisp, spicy crust burst into my mouth. It is only a memory, though, swept away as the wind shifts, and carries the smell of fried chicken away from my window. The darkness feels deeper and darker with the warm aroma gone. The oppressive shadows press threateningly close against my back. I hunch my shoulders against the force of the darkness, leaning further into the light falling across my desk. In just these few minutes, the sky has gone from steely blue to a heavy, leaden grey. All color has been leached from the world outside my tiny sphere of lamplight. Soon, the day will yield to the dark of night. I jump, startled, as a wash of Arctic air pours over my feet from the vent under my desk. My heart thuds in my chest as the air conditioning renews its battle with the sultry autumn weather. A shiver runs up my legs as the welcome cool billows into the room. Beads of perspiration on my forehead and neck yet disbelieve the coming cool, as the dense, humid air resists being dispelled by the cool draft. I write on, the pen and paper my steadfast companions. Line by line, page by page, my words fill the paper, my pointed scrawl pouring out my feelings in the way my words know best. The outer darkness is complete now. At least, it is as complete as it can be in a busy, modern town. From my refuge in the pool of incandescent light, the outer night is a black void of unseen dangers. The cool air continues to push back the heat of the evening. The air becomes clear and light, and fills my lungs, giving me strength to face the darkness. The cicadas are still now. The cricket is silent. The only sounds in the surrounding darkness are the steady ticking of the clock and the frenetic scratching of my pen. I am alone in the cool and the dark, surrounded by the monsters of my imagination, sheltered by the lamplight. The light reflects warmly from the dark surface of my desk, picking out the bright, russet lines of the grain between the wider bands of chocolate richness. I continue to write, unwilling to stop, the words filling the pages, the writing my shield against the loneliness of a silent, empty house. Such is the way of a Friday night, when my children are visiting their father, and the silent darkness threatens to consume me. Storm September 24, 2008 The sharply metallic tang in the air tingles on my tongue, leaving a coppery aftertaste. On the distant horizon, flickering tongues of blue arc between the low, scudding mass of clouds and the darkly shadowed earth. I nervously tug the sleeves of my favorite, worn, purple cardigan down over my hands as the wind soughs mournfully among the waving green and golden cornstalks. My heart misses a beat and a sob catches in my throat for a moment as the deep rumble rolls across the plain. Five seconds. I take a steadying breath and wrap my arms across my chest, holding my sweater close against the chill wind that whips my hair across my face. Another flash of electric blue crackles between heaven and earth as the first drop splashes coldly on my face and runs down my cheek. The inky, blue shadows between the cornstalks deepen as the indigo clouds race across the lemon yellow sky, blotting out the watery afternoon light. My shoulders hunched against the rain, I search the horizon. The patter and splash of fat, heavy raindrops is overtaken by a deep crash and boom. Three seconds. The image on my snug, warm kitchen, just a few feet away beyond the closed door, beckons me in from the mounting tempest. No windows face the west, though, and I must 20 A Journey Through My College Papers vigilantly scan the farthest edge of the growing storm. Water trickles down through my hair and into my face. The quickly saturated sweater is scant protection from the icy needles as the rising wind drives across the field and batters against me. I jump as the sky is lit as bright as noontime by a huge, branching bolt of lightning. “One one-thou…” I don’t get to finish counting. The porch trembles, the weathered boards creaking in protest, as the thunder cracks over my head, followed instantly by another searing flash and a roaring crash. My eyes dart to the horizon one last time, and my heart pounds frantically in my chest, urging me to escape. My mind barely registers the empty sky between corn and clouds, but it is enough. I turn and flee before the wild onslaught, into the safety on the dry, cozy house, as the deluge beats relentlessly against the sturdy walls and tightly locked door. Media Violence November 25, 2008 Although media violence is certainly a contributing factor in the spread of violence in today’s world, it is not the sole cause of world violence. As Marilyn Manson noted in his article: “Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised,” (Manson, pars. 3). Interpersonal violence has existed in the world since humans first existed, and violence does not depend on television, films, video games, or any other modern media for its continued existence. Violence existed when the only medium available to capture and report it was primitive cave painting and stories passed from tribal storyteller to tribal storyteller. If the Bible is to be believed – as a history of the Jews, even if not as a holy text – the first violence between humans was the murder of Abel by Cain, the first human offspring in the world. Certainly, there can be no reasonable argument that the numerous and almost innumerable wars throughout history were not violent, and neither were they caused by violent television and films. The Spanish Inquisition was a time of atrocious violence, but it was not predicated on children playing violent video games. To paraphrase Manson, the Civil War was hardly civil (Manson, pars. 3). It is not unusual for us as a society to use modern media as scapegoats for the violence which surrounds us, especially when that violence is perpetrated on or by children. We blame the most heinous acts of violence on television and video games, because we do not want to accept that it is our fault that the violence has occurred. I say “we,” and include myself in this condemnation, because it is necessary to acknowledge that every person is responsible to some extent for the prevalence of violent behavior. It is not enough for the person who perpetrates violent behavior to take on this responsibility alone; those who stood back and watched the violence, those who encouraged the violence, and those who did nothing to prevent or to stop the violence bear equal responsibility for the violence. Manson expressed it well when he said: “When it comes down to who’s to blame …, throw a rock and you’ll hit someone who’s guilty,” (Manson, pars. 4). He was referring to the high school murders in Littleton, Colorado, but he could just as easily have been speaking of any violent act, anywhere in the world. Psychologists and sociologists use studies and statistics to try to prove that exposure to media violence causes children to grow up to be violent adults, but they fail to consider the children who are not exposed to a lot of violent television or video games, or to consider the home and social environments of the children who are included in the studies. A fifteen-year longitudinal study of 557 children from the Chicago area, which began in 1977, is one such study: Psychologists L. Rowell Huesmann, Ph.D., Jessica Moise-Titus, Ph.D., Cheryl-Lynn Podolski, M.A., and Leonard D. Eron, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan undertook the study as a follow-up of a 1977 longitudinal study of 557 children, ages 6 – 10, Undergraduate Series 21 growing up in the Chicago area. In that study, children identified which violent TV shows they watched most, whether they identified with the aggressive characters and whether they thought the violent situations were realistic. Some examples of shows rated as very violent were Starsky and Hutch, The Six Million Dollar Man and Roadrunner cartoons. (“Childhood Exposure”, pars. 2). The report on the study identified the children as being from the Chicago area, but did not identify the children’s home neighborhoods. Neighborhoods in Chicago range widely from affluent, safe neighborhoods to impoverished, dangerous neighborhoods, in a relatively compact geographical area. In addition, the study made no mention of the family dynamics of the children who were studied, to identify whether the children came from stable, loving homes, from abusive or neglectful homes, or from some style of home-life between those extremes. Finally, the study dealt with only 557 children, which seems to be too small a sampling to be representative of children in Illinois, much less a representative sampling of children in the United States or in the world. I would not attempt to argue that media violence is not a contributing factor in the spread of violent behavior in the world. To do so would be foolish to the point of being delusional. No one can reasonably argue that modern media does not glorify violence, when almost every news broadcast shows images of bombings, murders, riots, road rage, child abuse, and an almost endless catalog of vicious, violent activity. It is possible, however, to reduce the influence of media violence on children: Research has shown that parental co-viewing of and commenting on the programs seems to reduce the effects of TV violence on children, probably because it reduces the child’s identification with the person committing the violent act, reduces the child’s perception that the violence is real and reduces the likelihood that the child will act out the violent act in fantasy or play immediately after seeing it on TV. (“Childhood Exposure”, pars. 7). What the research does not tell us is what effect a lack of violent television has on the developing behavior of children. It does not tell us how many children who do not watch violent programming grow up to be non-violent adults or, conversely, how many children who do not watch violent programming grow up to be aggressive or violent adults. The research also does not tell us how many children grow up identifying with violent characters in their real lives, such as abusive relatives and friends. It does not tell us how many children grow up not just perceiving the violence in their homes, schools, and neighborhoods as real, but knowing that it is real and immediate in their lives. It does not tell us for how many children violence is neither fantasy nor play, or how many of those children carry that violence into their adult lives regardless of the type or amount of television and other electronic entertainment they experienced as children. It is wise and necessary to recognize that violence is a growing problem in the world. It is important to identify those experiences and activities which may increase children’s likelihood of growing up to be violent adults, and to reduce children’s exposure to those harmful influences. It is reasonable to include media violence – both real and fictional – in the list of experiences which increase that likelihood. However, it is foolish and dangerous to choose one harmful influence and make it the scapegoat for all of the violence in the world. It is necessary to recognize and acknowledge that the violence has always been there, in the human psyche, and will always be there, and that we are all equally responsible for perpetuating violence in our societies. Media violence does contribute to violence in the world, but it is certainly not the one, ultimate cause of that violence. The ultimate cause is the human condition, from which no amount of rationalizing and blaming will ever let us escape. 22 A Journey Through My College Papers Works Cited “Childhood Exposure to Media Violence Predicts Young Adult Aggressive Behavior, According to a New 15-Year Study.” 3 Nov. 2005. <http://www.apa.org/releases/media_violence.html>. Manson, Marilyn. “Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?” 28 May 1999. Rolling Stone. 3 Nov. 2005. <http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/5923915>. MTH 1121: Math for Elementary Majors Experiences September 12, 2008 Experiences as students, both good and bad, influence a future teacher’s decision to teach, and the way he or she approaches teaching. A particular bad experience I had in school occurred at the very outset of my public school education. I had already attended an academic preschool eight hours a day, five days a week, for three years at Bennington College, in Vermont. My mother took me for my kindergarten entrance test at North Bennington Graded School. In the course of the test, I gave a number of responses which caused the teachers to tell my mother I was mentally retarded. She made them go over the test with me again, with my mother present, so she could see where they had got that impression of me. One test item that had concerned the school was about a stick figure. I was given a partial drawing, and told to finish it. The initial drawing had a body, a head, one arm with three fingers, one leg, one eye, and a mouth. I added a second arm with five fingers, a second leg, and a second eye, and I added two fingers to the original three. The school objected to the two extra fingers on each hand, saying I was only supposed to have copied the existing half of the figure. Another part of the test which had caused concern was about identifying shapes. I was given a picture of assorted shapes. I correctly pointed out the triangles, circles, and squares. When asked to pick out the rectangles, I chose all of the rectangles, including the squares. I did know that a square was a kind of rectangle, but my mother was told that a child my age couldn’t know that. A third part of the test that caused concern was about my parents’ jobs. I said my mother was a teacher, and that was fine. I then said my father was an MTMTSE. The teacher told my mother I didn’t know what my father’s job was. My mother told them to ask me what MTMTSE meant, and I told them Daddy was a method time management time study engineer. That was the most accurate name for the job he did as an industrial engineer for Stanley Tools. I have always resented the fact that knowing more than was usual for my age group almost got me labeled as learning impaired. It was that experience that made me swear never to allow my own children to be held down to an educational standard if they were ready to know more. In the same vein, that experience will make me more aware of the struggles faced by children who learn differently from other children. In particular, it will help me be sensitive to the needs of unusually advanced students, who are often under stimulated by the curricula of our public schools. There were also many good experiences in my education. There were so many, in fact, that it is difficult to choose one. Nearly every good experience I remember was in English, though a few were in science. Undergraduate Series 23 My eleventh grade English teacher, most of all my teachers, had a positive impact on me. I also had him for the twelfth grade English elective. He was a teacher who pushed me to be my very best, while allowing my creativity very free rein in interpreting his assignments. He always treated all of us with respect, and encouraged every student to find the strengths within himself or herself. It’s hard to define a single moment, but I think my experience over those two years with this teacher may be considered one experience. It was because of him that I had several stories, essays, and poems published before I graduated from high school. My positive experiences with this teacher affect me to this day. I believe that, largely because of him, I will be able to see each student as an individual deserving of respect and needing encouragement. It will help me to remember that a unique approach to an assignment need not be a wrong approach. From my educational experiences, both good and bad, I have developed an appreciation for creative learning, and for individual differences, which I hope to carry into my future classroom. Spring Semester, 2009 ENG 1121: Composition and Analysis The Tragic Emily Grierson 26 January 2009 Emily Grierson is the tragic heroine of “A Rose for Emily.” Through the somewhat convoluted timeline of the story, the reader sees Emily live through a series of personal tragedies, which need to be explored in order to clearly see the real tragedy of Emily Grierson, and which are more easily considered according to the chronology of her life than according to the order of the narrative. Although Emily’s family has a history of mental illness, Emily’s own mental state would not have become as strange as the reader sees it in this story if her life had unfolded differently. The mental illness the reader observes in Emily is greatly increased by her reactions to the emotional traumas of her early life. The tragedies which form the framework of Emily’s life appear to begin with the death of her father in 1894, which leaves her as one of the last orphaned remnants of the South’s impoverished nobility. Faulkner gives a hint of her genteel poverty when he writes, “Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris – he who fathered the edict that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron – remitted her taxes, the dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity” (Faulkner 700-701). As Emily had been a duty and a care for the town, the reader may surmise that she is not entirely able to care for herself. It would have been an embarrassment to the town to allow Emily to live according to her poverty after having been part of one of the neighborhood’s elite families, so the town feels an obligation to maintain her in her accustomed lifestyle. The fact that Colonel Sartoris saw a need to ease Emily’s financial burden by remitting her taxes into perpetuity also indicates her level of poverty. In this, the reader sees that Emily’s tragedy at the death of her father is two-fold: she loses her primary caregiver, on whom she has depended for everything throughout her life, and she becomes 24 A Journey Through My College Papers a charity case for the town to support for the rest of her life. To add to the tragedy of Emily’s situation, it appears that she is never aware of how pathetic her life has become. The reader’s next view of Emily appears late in the story, though it is less than a year ahead in her personal chronology. Emily’s tragic circumstances have continued with an extended illness after her father’s death. “She was sick for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows – sort of tragic and serene” (Faulkner 704). This image of Emily as a lost, young girl struggling to live without her father, who has been her buffer from the rest of the world for her entire life, instead of the woman she is, makes the townspeople and the reader alike feel a bit sorry for Emily. In this time immediately after her father’s death, the town is still able to feel sympathy for Emily, and to dismiss her oddness as a result of her grief: “We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to that which had robbed her, as people will” (Faulkner 704). Two years after her father’s death, Emily experiences yet another tragedy when her sweetheart, who is expected to be her future husband, deserts her (Faulkner 702). Faulkner doesn’t tell the reader much of anything about the sweetheart, except for his existence and his disappearance, but the reader may note the tragic pattern of the important men in Emily’s life leaving her by one means or another. In the summer of 1894 or 1895, the neighborhood around Emily’s house sees improvements in the form of sidewalks, bringing to the neighborhood an array of common laborers. It appears that the project took some time to complete, because the reader may note that the improvement began in the summer after Emily’s father died, and appears to have continued until after her sweetheart leaves her. For a short time, then, Emily’s life appears to become less tragic and more hopeful, as she finds a romantic relationship with a Yankee day laborer named Homer Barron, a man decidedly below Emily’s social position, but who appears to make her happy. Even that happiness has a tragic overtone, though, in that the community – and especially the women – think Emily’s behavior with Homer is “a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the young people” (Faulkner 706). The pattern of tragedy in Emily’s life continues when Homer, who was supposed by some in the town to have become her husband, such beliefs being based on her purchases of intimate, personal items for him, but whom the reader knows was not interested in marriage because of Faulkner’s comment that “Homer himself had remarked – he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elk’s Club – that he was not a marrying man” (Faulkner 706), disappears shortly after he returns to Emily’s house after the two female cousins leave, as the reader knows from the comment that “that was the last we saw of Homer Barron” (Faulkner 707). It is easy for the reader to see that the pattern of men leaving Emily’s life continued with Homer’s disappearance, even though she was the reason for his disappearance, but the reader discovers the scope of Emily’s tragedy with Homer only in the final paragraphs of the story, where Emily’s need for arsenic appears to be explained by the decayed remains of a man’s body in a bed in an upstairs bedroom of Emily’s house. The man appears to have died while embracing someone – presumably Emily (Faulkner 709). The tragedy becomes truly macabre when the reader realizes that Emily’s hair, a strand of which was found on the pillow next to the corpse, did not achieve its iron-gray color until several years after Homer was last admitted to the house by the Negro manservant. “A Rose for Emily” begins with the tragedy of Emily Grierson’s death and funeral, it ends with the grim tragedy of her apparent murder of Homer and continued occupation of the marriage bed, and it meanders through a series of tragic vignettes of Emily’s life. Throughout the story, Emily does not appear to change a great deal from one stage of her life to another. She is Undergraduate Series 25 steadfastly set in her own ways of living, and appears to care little about what her neighbors think of her or want her to do. She is almost tragic enough to be pitied by the reader, except that it is quite plain that Emily Grierson would never “have accepted charity” or anyone pitying her (Faulkner 701). Throughout the story, there are physical descriptions of Emily which also contribute to a description of her as tragic. One, shortly after her father’s death, is given earlier in this discussion. Later, when Emily is keeping company with Homer, Faulkner describes her: “She was over thirty then, still a slight woman, though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained across the temples and about the eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper’s face ought to look” (Faulkner 705). This strained look about the eyes suggests a life of tragedy, which has drained much of the vigor of life from Emily’s countenance. A generation later, when the new aldermen attempt to collect Emily’s taxes, the reader has another view of her: They rose as she entered – a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand. (Faulkner 701) It would be easy to see only the fat woman in this description, but a closer reading reveals to the reader that she is entirely in black, even to her cane. The gold head of the cane is tarnished, indicating not only disuse or neglect, which would keep it from being well-polished, but also the poor quality of the cane head, which appears to be gold – which cannot tarnish – but is clearly made of a lesser metal. Looking at Emily herself, the reader sees that she has ceased to be unusually thin, as she was in her thirties. Tragically, she has not attained a healthy weight, but has become so obese that her eyes are lost in the fat of her face. Emily’s appearance as “bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water” (Faulkner 701) gives the impression that she is existing in a mental and emotional vacuum. She is stagnant, like the water, and is unable to go back in time to recapture what she has lost, but she is also unable to move forward in time and allow her losses to slip into the past. On the surface, Emily Grierson might appear to be a strange, even crazy woman. She might even appear to be evil, for the premeditation of Homer’s murder. If the reader looks more deeply into her life, however, as this discussion has attempted to do, all of Emily’s oddities and behaviors may be attributed to the pall of tragedy which lay over the whole of her life, from the loss of her father to her own death. Arnold Friend 22 February 2009 Arnold Friend represents one of the greatest dangers in our society: an element of evil disguised by a thin veneer of good. Arnold is no friend to Connie as the reader discovers in the course of the Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” In fact, he embodies the destruction of her world. Arnold attempts three methods of approaching Connie: first by relating to her as another teenager, then by coaxing and cajoling her as a man who wants her to be with him, and finally by revealing his true nature of evil by threatening and terrorizing her. 26 A Journey Through My College Papers When the reader first encounters Arnold, there are already signs that he is not all that he seems to be. Connie sees Arnold at the drive-in restaurant where she and her friends gather to escape the parentally-determined bounds of life and to explore the new experiences of adolescence. Arnold appears to be just another teenager “with shaggy black hair, in a convertible jalopy painted gold,” but he does not blend in with the other young people as well as he might hope to do as the reader sees when Connie tries not to look at him but “she couldn’t help glancing back and there he was still watching her. He wagged a finger and laughed and said, ‘Gonna get you, baby,’ and Connie turned away again…” (Oates 332). Because of Arnold’s appearance as a teenager, Connie does not hear his comment as any more than the macho braggadocio that is common in many teenage boys on the threshold of manhood. The reader, however, sees this scene as a foreshadowing of the evil that overcomes Connie’s life. When Arnold next appears in Connie’s life, she is at home alone on a Sunday afternoon. At first, Connie’s only concern on finding Arnold and his companion in her driveway is her appearance and she “whispered ‘Christ, Christ,’ wondering how bad she looked” (Oates 334). It is a reflection of the shallowness of Connie’s personality, which the reader sees as she wanders the mall with her friends, and Arnold is ready to capitalize on the defect in her character. Connie does not recognize the car, but she does recognize Arnold, and she gives no indication that she is pleased to see him, nor does she do anything to encourage him. The reader sees new clues to Arnold’s artifice and to the evil beneath Arnold’s surface as Connie sees him in the sunlight: “he had shaggy, shabby black hair that looked crazy as a wig and he was grinning at her… the driver’s glasses were metallic and mirrored everything in miniature” (Oates 335). The appearance of Arnold’s hair as a wig indicates the falseness that surrounds him, and its shabbiness gives the impression of something undesirable about him. The mirrored glasses hide Arnold’s eyes, preventing Connie from seeing that his smile does not reach his eyes and thus keeping her from recognizing the dishonesty in the grin he displays to put Connie at ease. From the time Arnold arrives at Connie’s house, his true essence and identity quickly become clear. He is the embodiment of evil, even Satan himself, and his one goal is to lure Connie to him. He shows Connie that he knows a great deal about her, suggesting a degree of omniscience, as he tells her, “’He ain’t coming. He’s at the barbecue’…‘Aunt Tillie’s. Right now they’re…drinking. Sitting around,’ he said vaguely, squinting as if he were staring all the way to town and over to Aunt Tillie’s backyard…‘Sitting around. There’s your sister in a blue dress…and high heels, the poor sad bitch…And your mother’s helping some fat woman with the corn…I know all about you’” (Oates 340). It is clear that Connie believes in what Arnold is telling her, and believes that he does see and know these things, as she answers him: “’What fat woman?’ Connie cried…‘Oh, that’s Mrs. Hornby…Who invited her?’” (Oates 340). The reader can see at this point that, although Connie has not yet yielded to Arnold, she is beginning to fall under his influence. Where she would normally question how Arnold knows these things, Connie now accepts his knowledge as a matter of course. Arnold makes his immediate plan for Connie quite clear once he has her attention. He still maintains his friendly appearance, but his words hold menace for Connie as he tells her what he plans to do to her: ‘I’ll tell you how it is, I’m always nice at first, the first time. I’ll hold you so tight you won’t think you have to try to get away…because you’ll know you can’t. And I’ll come inside you where it’s all secret and you’ll give in to me…Don’t you know who I am?’ (Oates 340, 342). Arnold’s words hold two meanings for Connie: physical and spiritual. When he says he will come inside her, he is telling her about the rape he has planned for her, and about the sexual activity he intends to engage in. Even if she gives in and goes to him willingly, she is a child, and sex between them will be rape. His words have spiritual meaning, as well, in his role as Satan, as he says he will come inside her. He is telling her that his evil will come into her soul and take over her spirit, becoming a spiritual rape of the childish innocence that she works hard to hide in Undergraduate Series 27 her daily life by her flirtations with boys, her confrontations with her mother, and her disdain for her sister. Throughout Arnold’s conversation with Connie, he works to make her feel at ease so she will go to him of her own accord. He seduces her with attention she doesn’t get from her family, tempting her to leave the security of her home and enter his world. Ironically, his world is bright and sunny while the inside of the house is darker, as houses tend to be when compared with sunny, summer days. As Arnold coaxes Connie toward his spiritual darkness – and toward the physical evil of rape that he suggests in his promise that ‘I’ll come inside you where it’s all secret’ (Oates 340) – and away from the spiritual light of the innocence of childhood, he appears to be encouraging her to leave the darkness of her home and step into the light with him. Connie resists Arnold at first, responding with ‘Like hell I am’ when he tells her ‘We ain’t leaving until you come with us’ (Oates 339). She continues to resist, even threatening ‘If I call the police they’ll get you, they’ll arrest you…You’re crazy,’ she whispered” (Oates 342), as he pushes her more and more compellingly, and Arnold’s façade crumbles. She looked out to see Arnold Friend pause and then take a step toward the porch lurching. He almost fell. But, like a clever drunken man, he managed to catch his balance. He wobbled in his high boots…out of the side of his mouth came a fast spat curse, an aside not meant for her to hear. But even this “Christ!” sounded forced…She watched this smile come, awkward as if he were smiling from inside a mask. His whole face was a mask, she thought wildly, tanned down onto his throat but then running out as if he had plastered makeup on his face…Evidently his feet did not go all the way down; the boots must have been stuffed with something so that he would seem taller. (Oates 341-342) Arnold is losing control of his disguise as his evil, which was well-concealed under the artificial nighttime lights of the drive-in restaurant, is now revealed in the bright sunlight of daytime at Connie’s home. He is unable to walk properly, and is unable to keep his words banteringly light and friendly as they have been up to this point. Connie recognizes the mask that incompletely covers Arnold’s wickedness, and which is a darker version of the mask she wears when she makes herself up to go out with her friends. Arnold’s mask of innocence covers a core of evil, whereas Connie’s mask of indifferent sophistication covers a core of teenage innocence and insecurity. When Connie recognizes her own reflection in Arnold’s subterfuge, she is afraid of him, and wants to get away from him: “’What – what are you doing? What do you want?’ Connie said. She backed away from the door but did not want to go into another part of the house, as if this would give him permission to come through the door…’Leave me alone,’ Connie whispered” (Oates 342-343). Connie’s fear is new for her as she begins to recognize the evil that has come to her life. Her family life, with its dysfunctional relationships, has not prepared her for the vileness that exists in the world, and her assumed maturity and sophistication fall away as she realizes that this boy – whom she now sees is not a boy at all – is very far out of her league, and poses a distinct threat to the equilibrium of her life. When Arnold sees that appealing to Connie’s need for attention and affection is not working, he drops the pretense of friendliness and his true character becomes visible. ‘It’s all over for you here, so come on out. You don’t want your people in any trouble, do you?’ (Oates 343). He abandons his attempt to charm Connie, and instead threatens her family, appealing now to her innate goodness and to her love for her family to lure her into his plans. Fear for her family is the most effective weapon Arnold uses against Connie; she does love her family, even though she doesn’t like her parents and sister most of the time, and the threat against her family sends Connie into a panic. She ran into the back room and picked up the telephone. Something roared in her ear, a tiny roaring, and she was so sick with fear that she could do nothing but listen to it – the telephone was clammy and very heavy and her fingers groped down to the dial but were too weak to touch it. 28 A Journey Through My College Papers She began to scream into the phone, into the roaring. She cried out, she cried for her mother, she felt her breath start jerking back and forth in her lungs as if it were something Arnold Friend were stabbing her with again and again with no tenderness. A noisy sorrowful wailing rose all about her and she was locked inside it the way she was locked inside the house. (Oates 344) Where Connie sees the door as a barrier to keep Arnold out when he first arrives at her house, she now sees it as a barrier that holds her in the trap that her home has become. She cries for help, but she has distanced herself – physically and emotionally – from her family, and there is no one to hear her pleas for help now that she has recognized the darkness in her life and wants to escape from it. Arnold embodies all that is wrong in Connie’s life, and in him she recognizes her own doom. She is powerless to call for help when she is surrounded by evil and most needs to be rescued. In the end, Arnold’s darkness drives Connie to do the best, brightest, and noblest thing she has done in her life. She has a decision to make and “She thought, I have got to think. I have to know what to do” (Oates 344). In this moment, when she has recognized Arnold as the Devil and has passed through fear and panic, Connie becomes calm and detached. “She felt her pounding heart…it was nothing that was hers” (Oates 345). She yields to him and gives herself over to evil not because she is an evil person, but because beneath her shallow, self-centered exterior she is truly good and filled with love for the family she really doesn’t like. She goes to Arnold coolly to protect her family from being harmed. “She brushed her hair back out of her eyes…she watched herself push the door slowly open as if she were safe back somewhere…watching this body and this head of long hair moving out into the sunlight where Arnold Friend waited” (Oates 345). Connie has already left her body behind. In her final moments, as her physical form steps into the “limp…embarrassed embrace” of evil (Oates 345), her spirit rises above the fear and the danger as she sacrifices herself for her family. Arnold Friend destroys Connie’s physical world. He terrorizes her and threatens to harm the only people Connie truly cares about. He shows her the evil behind his friendly mask, and forces her to look behind her own mask. Ironically, as he seeks to draw her into his darkness, he instead reveals to Connie the light that is inside her, and so is unable to capture her spirit when he captures her body. In the title of the story, Oates asks “Where are you going? Where have you been?” By her sacrifice, Connie goes from where she has been in the darkness and desolation of her unfulfilling teenage life to where she is going in the safety of light and goodness. White Elephants 23 March 2009 The setting for Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” is the Ebro Valley of Spain in the 1920s. The story takes place outside a train station which is set between two very different geographical areas, which come to represent the different ways Jig and the American each view their situation and the unnamed, but readily inferred, “it”. On one side of the station where the majority of the story takes place, “there was no shade and no trees… in the sun” (Hemingway 172). This is a hot, barren stretch, marked by one of the two railroad tracks which flank the station. Little grows on this side of the station. This is a place of lifelessness and hopelessness, and there is little promise in the hard, hot earth. On the other side of the station, where the story ends, “were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and…the river through the trees” (Hemingway 175). This is a lush, fertile landscape, marked by the second of the two railroad tracks, which stretches into the far distance. Life grows abundantly on this side of the station, and the fertile land holds the promise of future life to come. The station, positioned Undergraduate Series 29 directly between the two diverse landscapes, and between the two railroad tracks with different destinations, represents a turning point at which a decision must be made whether to go forward into a new life or to go back into the life which is familiar. The two sides of the station have very different meanings for Jig and the American, the two main characters of the story. For Jig, the barren, empty landscape represents the emptiness that will become her life if she has the ‘awfully simple operation’ that is ‘not really an operation at all’ (Hemingway 174). The emptiness represents the loss of a family she could have had, and the loss of a future as a wife and mother. Although Hemingway never tells whether Jig is Spanish, American, or something else, in the 1920s it is expected that a woman, regardless of ethnic background, will marry and raise a family, and it is reasonable to believe that Jig harbors a secret belief that having the American’s baby will bind him to her and cause him to follow the social conventions of the period and marry her. For Jig, the lush, fertile landscape on the other side of the station represents the fullness and abundance that will become her life if she does not have the operation and in which she and the American ‘can have the whole world’ (Hemingway 175). This side represents having her dreams fulfilled, and living the life that is the proper destiny of a young woman of the 1920s. The lushness represents Jig’s role as a wife and mother, and her being completed by having a family. It represents success for her as a woman of her time. For the American, on the other hand, the barren landscape represents the end of his carefree, casual life and a future of commitment and responsibility. As a bachelor, the American has few responsibilities, and is free to travel as he wishes. In the 1920s it is not unusual for young men of good families – or even middle-aged men, if they have the means – to take a long, unfettered tour of Europe; it is, in fact, a desirable way for a young man to get his adventurous spirit under control before he settles down to the serious business of having a career, marrying, and raising a family. When the American tells Jig, ‘We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before … That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy’ (Hemingway 174), it is clear that he has not yet reached the point in his life where he is willing to give up the freedom and flexibility of bachelorhood for the responsibilities of adult life. The barren plain is symbolic of stepping out of his youthful irresponsibility and taking on the yoke of a wife, a family, and all of the responsibilities which are expected of him by both American and European society. For the American, the lush, fertile landscape signifies the freedom that will continue to be his life if he and Jig are not encumbered by the need to nurture another life. It is a sign of continuing his youth, even if he may actually be a bit older than many of the young men touring Europe. The lushness indicates continued frivolity and fun, without a firm schedule or a clear set of responsibilities. Losing his freedom and responsibility to the need to marry Jig and raise her baby is not something the American wants to have happen, as becomes clear when he says, ‘We can have everything … We can have the whole world’ (Hemingway 175). By saying this, the American is attempting to make Jig see the world the way he does; he wants her to see that they live by their own rules, not those imposed on them by society. He wants her to want the life he wants, with nothing holding them back and with the world as their home, instead of just a little house somewhere where they will be confined and constrained to the dictates of society. He knows that the prevailing Western culture of his time will require him to give up his idle pastimes and become a sensible, responsible, adult husband and father, and will require him to settle down and provide a stable, decent life for his new family. He believes that they cannot have the whole world if they have to settle down and raise a family, but that they can have everything if Jig has the operation. The two sides of the station represent the two sides of the decision which Jig has to make before the train from Barcelona arrives. Despite all of the American’s prodding and cajoling, only Jig can make the decision which will define both of their lives, possibly forever. Jig tells the American, ‘Once they take it away, you never get it back’ (Hemingway 175). Although Jig 30 A Journey Through My College Papers appears hopelessly young and naïve through much of the story, she exhibits wisdom when she expresses that her decision regarding the ‘awfully simple operation’ (Hemingway 174) will have permanent repercussions. On the one side, the dry, barren plain represents the masculine side of life. It is a strong, rugged area, with sharp, clear lines, unsoftened by the curves of growing plants. The plain is simple and uncluttered, as a treeless plain in Spain will be, and is reminiscent of the clean, spare, unyielding lines and forms which were associated with men in the 1920s. Looking out over this plain represents seeing the American’s side of the situation, and remaining on this side of the station, and taking the train which stops on this side of the station on its way to Madrid, represents accepting his choice to have the operation and go on with life as they have been going all along. On the other side of the station, the lush, fertile, green land, with the rising swells of the hills, represents the feminine side of life. The fields of grain and the trees are burgeoning with life, saturated with the constant renewal of life and creation. “The hills across the valley of the Ebro were long and white” (Hemingway 172), and the rounded, rolling hills evoke an image of the primordial shape of the mother goddess that still shadows mankind’s image of woman: the roundness of the ancient goddess’s belly, pregnant with the creation of life; the roundness of the maternal hips which allow life to come forth, the roundness of the breasts by which the goddess nurtures life. The gentle swelling of the hills carries a promise of life. The river represents the waters of life, and more specifically, the rushing waters of birth, which bring life into the world. The water of the Ebro gives life to the grains, grasses, and trees, and promises the continuation of life. Looking out on the lushness and vitality of this side of the station clearly represents seeing Jig’s view of the situation, and choosing to board the train which will pick up on this side of the station represents accepting the choice to forgo the operation and keep the baby. At the end of the story, Jig and the American appear to come to a decision to not have the operation. The American acquiesces to Jig’s desire to choose life as he says, ‘I’d better take the bags over to the other side of the station’ (Hemingway 176). In moving the bags to the lush, verdant, living side of the station, he indicates that he is no longer fighting Jig’s inclination to have the baby. He tells her, ‘I don’t want you to do it if you don’t want to. I’m perfectly willing to go through with it’ (Hemingway 176). By “it”, the American means the operation they have spoken of so obliquely throughout the story, and which is clearly a veiled reference to an abortion. The American gives in to the fact that having the baby will make Jig happy. When he moves the bags to the green side of the station, turning his back on the dry, barren side, he frees Jig to make the decision to have the life she wants and to ‘have everything’ (Hemingway 175). When “She smiled at him … she said … ‘I feel fine’” (Hemingway 176), the stress of the decision is relieved, and she is able to relax and be happy in the abundant, thriving, luxuriant promise of creation, new life, and a future that stretches out before them. On Marriage Forms 31 March 2009 Donna is a middle-aged, white woman living in a small town in the mountains of western Virginia in the first half of the twenty-first century. She and her two sons attend a popular Christian church on Sundays and several times during the week. Her sons do well in the local public school, and she is active in both of their classes. To all appearances, Donna is a very ordinary mom, but there is more to her story. Donna shares household responsibilities with Bobbi. Donna and Bobbi are co-wives, and their husband, Lucas, is the father of all of their children. Because they live in the United States, where monogamy is mandated by law, Lucas is legally married only to Donna, but they all three share an agreement that Bobbi is also his wife. This Undergraduate Series 31 arrangement works well for Donna and Bobbi, who share child rearing responsibilities and divide household responsibilities, and they present an appearance of solidarity. It is not an ideal situation, however, as Bobbi is sometimes jealous of the benefits Donna accrues from her legal marital status, and as Donna is sometimes jealous of Lucas’s clear favoritism towards Bobbi’s children, but the co-wives have learned to talk through their differences in the interests of maintaining the family’s economic stability. Donna, Bobbi, and Lucas live in the United States, where their family structure is looked on with scorn and disgust, and where Donna is often pitied by those who perceive Lucas as an unfaithful husband and Bobbi as an immoral mistress. They are judged by the prevailing JudeoChristian view of marriage in this country. However, although monogamy is the most common, and the best-favored, marriage form in the United States, and is the norm against which our culture measures the marriage forms of other cultures, it is not the only correct marriage form for humans worldwide. 1 Roberta Lenkeit notes that “monogamy, the form of marriage in which one woman is married to one man, is the most common form of marriage around the world. It is not, however, the most preferred; monogamy is the ideal and preferred form of marriage in only eighty-one cultures out of a sample of four hundred cultures, according to a 1967 survey” (Lenkeit 152). In fact, a 1967 study by the anthropologist Murdock shows that “among the 849 human societies examined … the vast majority (83%) practiced polygyny, men having more than one wife; monogamy was characteristic of only 16% of the societies” (Hughes para. 13). With almost four times as many societies favoring polygyny as those that favor monogamy, it is clear that polygamy is the most viable marriage form for a very large part of the world’s population, not monogamy. Unfortunately, the United States takes a more narrow-minded view of relationships than its international neighbors and attempts to force others to do the same by attaching negative connotations to any lifestyle choice that is more accepted than monogamy. Many forms of marriage are practiced throughout the world, and they are generally divided into two categories: monogamy2 and polygamy3. Monogamy is further divided into loose, patriarchal monogamy, which excuses or even condones men having extramarital relationships with other women, and strict monogamy, where there is no sexual concourse by either spouse with any other partner. In various parts of the world, very specific forms of monogamy are also practiced: levirate, or brother-in-law marriage4; sororate, or sister-in-law marriage5; same-sex marriage; and ghost marriage, which will be addressed later. Polygamy is divided into three categories: polygyny6, polyandry7, and group marriage, with two or more husbands and two or more wives in one marital group. In almost every culture there may be found examples of both monogamy and polygamy, regardless of the prevalent form for a particular culture, and even regardless of the laws, customs, and taboos of the culture. The only reason for this is that there is no one, absolutely correct form of marriage that works for every family in every culture, and each different marriage form is “correct” for those who choose to practice it. Marriage, in its many forms, is an important factor in human relationships. Every society has some form of marriage (Lenkeit 151), which may confer status to one or more of the spouses, establish inheritance rights, create bonds between and among families and other social groups, provide for the economic security of the spouses, legitimize the children of a married couple, and fulfill religious or ceremonial requirements. Some marriages only fill some of these roles, other marriages fill other roles, but it is clear that marriage is important. It is dangerously myopic for Americans to view every marriage that is anything other than the exclusive, monogamous union of one man and one woman as wrong, and yet that is often what happens, resulting in stigmatization and ostracism of not only the parties involved, but also the children in the family. Rather than force everyone to conform to one standard, Americans need to recognize the diversity of cultures 32 A Journey Through My College Papers in the world, and to accept and value the uniqueness of other cultures, both inside and outside the borders of the United States. In the United States, it is generally accepted that marriage is a sacred institution and that a marriage consists of one man and one woman who promise to be faithful to each other. This view of marriage continues to be held in American society despite the prevalence of divorce and cohabitation without marriage. Although “there is no constitutional requirement that marriage exist solely between a man and a woman” (Hamilton para. 20), “in order to preserve marriage as that of ‘one man with one woman’… in 1890…the US government systematically led a criminal and economic assault on a religion and essentially at a point of a gun, forced its religious leaders to recant a core part of their religious beliefs” (Newman para. 8). This action on the part of the United States government underscores how strongly people feel about marriage, and to what lengths society is willing to go to preserve what it believes to be the best – indeed the only – way for families to exist. What the United States government fails to realize, however, is that monogamy is not the only form of marriage in the world. Polygamy is common in cultures in Africa, India, and even North America. In many cultures, polygamy is the preferred way of life, and monogamy is seen as being unusual. Even in North America, polygamy is more common than most people realize, despite the laws which have been passed to prevent it. “Indeed, studies have found polygamy present in 78% of the world's cultures, including some Native American tribes. (While most are polygynists — with one man and multiple women — there are polyandrists in Nepal and Tibet in which one woman has multiple male spouses.) As many as 50,000 polygamists live in the United States” (Turley para. 9). The estimates of how many polygamists actually live in North America vary from source to source because polygamy is a crime and polygamous families usually prefer not to be identified too openly. Many families do continue to practice polygamy in the United States and Canada, however, indicating that monogamy is not as universally accepted as most politicians and religious leaders wish people to believe: “Polygyny is widely practiced in certain areas of the U.S. states of Utah and Arizona and the Canadian province of British Columbia among Fundamentalist Mormon denominations. Various individuals and groups estimate that many tens of thousands of adults -- up to 100,000 spouses -- are involved in polygynous relationships” (Robinson para. 11). Clearly, if so many individuals are willing to risk having legal action taken against them because they engage in polygamous marriages, there must be some merit in polygamy as a marriage form. Unfortunately, the United States government has a long history of causing difficulties for families which practice polygamy, dating back to 1862 (Selick para. 9). The Morrill Act and the Edmunds Act, which were both enacted in the nineteenth century to suppress and eliminate polygamy in the Mormon Church, are examples of the United States government’s attempt to mandate monogamy within its borders. In 1862, Congress enacted the Morrill Act, making bigamy a felony in order to stop Mormons from practicing polygamy. The Supreme Court upheld the law in Reynolds v. United States in 1879…In 1882 Congress passed the Edmunds Act making “bigamous cohabitation” a misdemeanor which, along with a jail sentence, would bar a person from serving on a jury, voting, or holding public office. This led to 1,300 Mormon men being jailed and disenfranchised under the law in the 1880’s. (Newman para. 6) In the Supreme Court’s 1879 decision, the court refused to recognize polygamy as a legitimate religious practice, dismissing it…as “almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and African people.”…the court declared polygamy to be “a blot on our civilization” and compared it to human sacrifice and “a return to barbarism.”…the court found Undergraduate Series 33 that the practice is “contrary to the spirit of Christianity and of the civilization which Christianity has produced in the Western World.” (Turley para. 6) These laws worked in opposition to the United States Bill of Rights, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (Jordan 45). The Mormons, against whom the Morrill and Edmunds Acts were enacted, are a well-recognized religious group, and they are unable to openly practice polygamy, which is a part of their faith, because of the United States Supreme Court’s insistence that Western civilization is based on Christianity. If one recalls the scenario that opened this study, under the Edmunds Act of 1882, although Lucas is only legally married to Donna, it is necessary to note that Donna, Bobbi, and Lucas are a bigamous family, and bigamy is a form of polygamy. Donna, Bobbi, and Lucas are not Mormons; they live together because each woman is the mother of two of Lucas’s four children and it is economically practical for Lucas to support one household instead of trying to support two separate households. Donna, Bobbi, and Lucas are not criminals, and they are not seeking to harm anyone by their way of life, but their behavior “is in their case a victimless crime—a mere offence against state fiat” (Selick para. 6), and is classified as criminal; they are in constant danger of being arrested for their attempts to provide a safe, stable, loving home for their children. Although the laws of the United States forbid polygamy, “many people take the attitude that … polygamy should just be left alone as a matter between consenting adults” (“Polygamy a factor” para. 3). The Supreme Court’s 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas, in which the United States Supreme Court “ruled that governments cannot criminalize private activities by adults just because the majority considers them to be immoral” (Robinson para. 11), and “that extends to private, consensual sex acts - including sodomy8, whether homosexual9 or heterosexual10 - that ensures that such acts cannot be criminally prosecuted” (Hamilton para. 14), “has probably given a boost to those favoring polygamous and polyamory living arrangements” (Robinson para. 11), and may be a step toward easing or eradicating the current marriage laws, which are established by the individual states, but which universally prohibit polygamy in the United States. In a time when personal freedoms are on the wane, this is a promising development for families. If the Supreme Court’s ruling is interpreted correctly, it will overturn the Morrill and Edmunds Acts and reestablish a safe environment for American families to arrange themselves in whatever configurations work best for the individual families, without fear of government repercussions. If one is willing to stop looking at marriages in the United States through prejudiced eyes and to consider the evidence that polygamous marriages are the successful, accepted norm in a number of other cultures worldwide, one will see that the United States does not set the standard for marriage practices, and even that polygamy continues to exist in the United States despite the laws against it. Examining several of these other cultures which allow and even encourage polygamy will illustrate the social and economic advantages which polygamous families enjoy when they are free to live according to family structures which best serve their individual needs. Before discussing the advantages of non-monogamous marriages, it is necessary to address the arguments against them. As stated earlier, the loudest and most common arguments against polygamy and in favor of traditional monogamy – marriage between one man and one woman -- are based on religious convictions that monogamy is the only way two people can be married in the eyes of God, and an investigation of these beliefs will show that they are not universally held and that the arguments based on these beliefs lack rational, objective support, no matter how popular they may be, and that the sacred texts which are cited as proof that polygamy is wrong actually offer numerous examples of polygyny in the history of their faith. These convictions are most often Christian, and they are based on the teachings of the Holy Bible. 34 A Journey Through My College Papers The first argument is that “God created Adam, and provided for him a single wife. He did not provide multiple wives for him, nor do we have any evidence that Adam ever had another wife. This original marriage relationship powerfully exposes God's intent for mankind's marriage relationships” ("Polygamy: What the Bible says" para. 14). The problem with this is that the Holy Bible is the only source for the argument, and there are no historical records other than the Holy Bible that record mankind’s history back to Adam, nor any that definitively state that Adam never had any other wife. This argument also assumes that everyone else in the world accepts the Holy Bible in the same way that Christians do, as the perfect and uncontestable word of God. Based on the vast number of different religions in the world, and on the variety of holy texts in print, it is clear that this assumption is untrue, and that the Holy Bible is no more than a work of mythology literature to many people around the world, having no authority over their thoughts, words, or actions. Another argument offered by Christians against polygamy is: “Once a man has left his father and mother's authority and household to marry, he cannot leave that household again! This means that when a man first marries a woman, he does so upon leaving his parent's authority. If he were to subsequently marry another woman, he would not be leaving his parent's authority again, and thus would not fulfill the definition of marriage as outlined in Matthew 19 and Genesis 2:2411” (“Polygamy: What the Bible says” para. 13). This argument is also based solely on the Holy Bible, with the same difficulties that were mentioned for the first argument. This argument does not leave any option available for the widower or the widow to remarry, as the widower would not be leaving his parents’ authority to do so, even though in I Corinthians 7:8-9 of the Holy Bible the Apostle Paul gives permission for the widow to marry: “I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn” (I Corinthians 7:8-9). When the source of an argument contradicts itself, as this source does, the argument itself cannot stand, and must be dismissed until a stronger support for the argument is found. Continued study reveals that the Old Testament of the Holy Bible offers many examples of patriarchs of the Judeo-Christian faith practicing polygyny, which is ironic, since many of the patriarchs are celebrated and praised throughout Scripture as being faithful to God and living according to His will. However, in the eyes of modern society, these faithful, godly men would be looked upon with scorn and derision. Among the patriarchs are Elkanah12, Jehoiada13, Lamech14, Esau15, Jacob16, Ashur17, Gideon18, King David19, King Solomon20, Rehoboam21, and Abijah22. “Deuteronomy contains a rule for the division of property in polygamist marriages. Old Testament figures such as Abraham, David, Jacob and Solomon were all favored by God and were all polygamists. Solomon truly put the ‘poly’ to polygamy with 700 wives and 300 concubines” (Turley para. 8). Another argument against polygamy, which is refuted by the Holy Bible, is: “Rampant polygamy (and possibly all polygamy) was prohibited for kings, because it would cause them to turn from God... The Israelites should have reasoned that if this were true for kings, it would be true for others, hence polygamy was something they ought to avoid” (“Does God approve” para. 5). King Solomon is generally recognized as one of the most powerful kings of his period, and he is known best for his great wisdom. As noted above and described clearly in the Holy Bible, he also had seven hundred wives (1 Kings 11:3). King David is acclaimed as a great king who started out as a simple shepherd, saved his people when he slew Goliath with a sling and stone, and was later heralded as the head of the genealogical line from which Jesus Christ of Nazareth was born. In addition, the Holy Bible supports a man’s right to take multiple wives when it says: “If he take him another [wife]; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish” (Exodus 21:10) and “Those that remain of him shall be buried in death: and his widows shall not weep” (Job 27:15). Clearly, if a woman’s food, clothing, and status (duty of marriage) are not diminished by being taken as a man’s additional wife, then their marriage is to be Undergraduate Series 35 considered right and appropriate, because if their marriage was considered adulterous then the woman would be stoned for adultery. Similarly, if having multiple wives is considered to be wrong, then the women associated with a man are not his widows after his death; instead, they are his concubines, as concubinage23 is common in Old Testament times. Religiously-accepted polygamy continues to exist in mainstream religions of the West today: “Martin Luther at one time accepted polygamy as a practical necessity. Polygamy is still present among Jews in Israel, Yemen and the Mediterranean” (Turley para. 8). In addition to Judeo-Christian examples of polygamy, “Mohammed had 10 wives, though the Koran limits multiple wives to four” (Turley para. 8). There are arguments against polygamy which are not based on religious beliefs or sacred texts. One of these is the argument that “polygyny … is a violation of women’s rights” (Anyolo para. 6). Against this is Celestine Obi’s research among the Igbo in Nigeria and other tribes around the world. “Igbo women, do not detest the husband's marrying other wives. As for the Igbo, so also the Kaggirs, the Ashanti, the New Guineans, and the Eskimos. An Akikuyu East African woman gave the following message to the women of Europe: ‘Tell them two things, one is that we never marry anyone we do not want to, and the other is that we like our husband to have as many wives as possible’" (Obi para. 39). The Akikuyu woman’s opinion is quite clear: she does not feel that her rights are being violated, nor that she is in any way being exploited or mistreated. In fact, in some cultures, including that of the Igbo, “polygyny is widely regarded as a moral virtue; to support as many fellow human beings as possible is not only a mark of wealth but a form of philanthropy” (Obi para. 39). In these cultures, polygyny is seen as saving women from loneliness and misery by giving the women husbands and the opportunity to have social and economic stability and to produce babies. An additional argument against polygamy is that “underage girls have been coerced into polygamist marriages” (Turley para. 12). This arises from the polygynous cults which have appeared in the news from time to time, in which a single charismatic male leader takes a large number of very young wives and keeps all of them, with their resultant children, in a fortified compound with nearly Draconian rules for the women and children. Turley goes on to say that “There are indeed such cases. However, banning polygamy is no more a solution to child abuse than banning marriage would be a solution to spousal abuse. The country has laws to punish pedophiles and there is no religious exception to those laws” (Turley para. 12). Child abuse occurs throughout the United States, and around the world, but it is not caused by monogamy, polygamy, or any other marriage form. Polygamy has become a scapegoat for heinous acts against young girls, but that is not the basis of polygamy, and so should not be the basis for laws which are enacted out of fear or ignorance. One last argument against polygamy which needs to be addressed is the idea that monogamous marriage favors natural selection among humans. “In fact, out of all mating systems, monogamy is arguably the one most conducive to natural selection, since it curbs ‘marrying up’ and condemns most low-status individuals to eventual genetic death (their places being taken by downwardly mobile descendants of higher-status individuals)” (P. Frost para. 3). What Frost fails to recognize is that low-status individuals all over the world marry and produce offspring every day of every year. There is no shortage of such individuals and families in the world, and they may be seen in every major city, small town, and tribal village. In past times in Europe, these were the peasantry. In every age they represent the bulk of the workforce for lowlevel jobs that higher-status individuals will not lower themselves to perform. These are the people who fill our public aid offices, who occupy our shelters and low-income housing, and whose children grow up to study technical trades and follow in their parents’ footsteps. Monogamy does not keep the poor or the disadvantaged from marrying; rather, monogamy prevents some low-status individuals from moving up in the world as second or third spouses to higher-status men and women. 36 A Journey Through My College Papers Far from interfering with natural selection, polygamy has been shown to have health benefits for individuals who practice it. “New research suggests that men from polygamous cultures outlive those from monogamous ones” (Callaway para. 1) and “it seems that fathering more kids with more wives leads to increased male longevity” (Callaway para. 17). If polygamy increases longevity, then it appears that polygamy, not monogamy, favors natural selection by allowing polygamous men to survive longer than monogamous men. Additionally, since “the male is programmed to fertilize as many females as possible, while the female aims to seduce as many males as possible so that she may choose the best of all” (M. Frost para. 2), it is only reasonable that polygamous men and women should enjoy better health as they act with the natural urges and impulses of their bodies, instead of expending a great deal of mental, emotional, and physical energy fighting against nature. Chris Wilson, an evolutionary anthropologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, says: ‘It doesn't surprise me that men in those societies live longer than men in monogamous societies, where they become widowed and have nobody to care for them’ (Callaway para. 19). Rather than cutting low-status individuals out of the breeding pool through monogamy, “polygamy was a way by which the carriers of the best ‘genetic material’ could sooner or later couple and procreate better offspring after a number of trials and errors” (M. Frost para. 7). With more opportunities to create strong, healthy children to continue the race, polygamous cultures allow natural selection, instead of human selection, to do its work. While it might seem that the arguments against polygamy are many and persuasive, it is important to look at each one carefully, and not to get caught up in an emotional whirlwind of rhetoric. As has been shown above, each argument against polygamy has a clear, rational answer which shows that polygamy is not the evil that Americans imagine and fear. Polygamy is instead a natural response to mankind’s need for personal status, security of family life, a clear pattern for the accumulation of wealth and its inheritance, personal and societal health, and a reduction in societal violence, as will be shown below. In many cultures, polygamy – specifically, polygyny – confers status on the husband who is able to attract, win, and support multiple wives. At the same time, being married confers status on the wives, who are often defined in their cultures by their roles as wives and mothers. Polygyny dignifies a woman, and marriage is a status symbol. It prevents immorality in the community and controls diseases. Polygyny is a strategy to ensure that almost all women get married in order to wipe out all evils that accompany the existence of a large population of eligible but unmarried women. It also reduces the large number of men’s extramarital affairs. Polygyny offers more children for the security of family life without the stigma of being born out of wedlock. (Anyolo para. 14) This description from a study of the Ovambadja in the Okalongo area of Namibia indicates that polygyny represents many positive things for the people who practice it. For the Ovambadja, polygyny creates a stable, workable family structure, in which the women are protected, the men have no reason to seek companionship outside of marriage, and the children have a secure future with clear rules of inheritance. Many other cultures have the same experiences of polygyny and polyandry: their marriage practices give status to the men (or the women, in the case of polyandry), dignify the women, and ensure the legitimacy and security of the children and the future. Polygyny grants status to the husband because it tells his society that he is important or powerful enough to attract multiple wives, strong enough to keep them with him, and wealthy enough to provide for his wives and their children. In many cultures, the man also has to pay a bride price to the woman’s family for each of his wives, and his ability to do so increases his status. This feature of polygyny is found in cultures around the world: “Among Alaskan Eskimos, among New Guinea mountain Papuans, and among relatively untouched South American Indians, polygamy is widespread, and it is the individual with leadership qualities who Undergraduate Series 37 has the greatest chance to have several wives” (P. Frost para. 1). Among the North American Eskimos, as well, “it has observed that whereas each husband married one wife, a man of fair means could marry two or more to make himself socially important” (Obi para. 31). This also carries over to segments of the monogamous culture of the United States, in which strong, powerful, wealthy men often support mistresses as a way of displaying their power to their associates. In other cultures, this is called concubinage, and has been an accepted practice since before the Christian era, but in the United States, with its requirements of monogamy, this practice is viewed as immoral, decadent, and wrong. If polygyny was an accepted practice in the United States, men like these could marry their women and accrue legitimate social status, instead of the illicit status they now bear among their peers. As observed among the Ovambadja, polygyny is recognized as helping to reduce immoral behavior among those who adopt this family structure. As Newman notes in his discussion of polygamy and same-sex marriages, “equating polygamy with degeneracy24 raises a few issues” (Newman para. 2). Newman discusses the legal actions that were taken against the Mormons in the nineteenth century and states that “however you feel about polygamy, the historical assault on it within the United States should shame everyone” (Newman para. 5). In many cultures outside the United States, polygamy in its various forms is seen not as degeneracy, but as a legitimate means of preventing immoral behavior. “Polygyny well understood and as it exists among Igbos is as distinct from promiscuity25 as darkness is from daylight” (Obi para. 36). While polygyny is, by the strictest definition of the word, a form of promiscuity, in that the husband does have multiple sexual partners, it is not promiscuity in the moral sense, in which it is understood to be illicitly having more than one sexual partner. In polygyny, the man’s wives are his legitimate, licit sexual partners. In cultures which practice polygamy, the marital form ensures the stability of the family. Again recalling the scenario referenced at the start this paper, Donna, Bobbi, and Lucas live as they do so that all of their children will grow up with their father, so that Donna and Bobbi will each have less work to do by sharing household responsibilities, and so that Lucas can afford to provide a better standard of life for his family by not having to support two separate households. In British Columbia, Canada, there is a community called Bountiful in which this same family stability is the norm. In Bountiful, “a group of breakaways from the Mormon church are practicing polygamy” (Selick para. 4). It does not surprise too many people to hear about polygamy in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, as Americans tend to think of those places as primitive and backward, despite the fact that mankind had its start in the Middle East and the cultures of Africa and Asia were ancient and thriving before the European Middle Ages. However, despite this historical fact, it is more troubling for many Americans to learn that polygamous families are flourishing in North America, because American prejudices say that polygamy is counter to the ways of Western civilization, but families such as Donna, Bobbi, and Lucas’s and communities such as Bountiful indicate that polygamy can be a viable way of life for North American families. In her article in the August 2005 issue of Canadian Lawyer, Selick says: Although sharing a husband with another woman wouldn’t be my cup of tea, I don’t understand why our lawmakers insists that polygamy be outlawed. Some of the Bountiful women declare unambiguously that they enjoy their way of life, that they are there voluntarily, and that they don’t want their “plural marriages” broken up by criminal charges. They cite the sharing of household chores and the caring relationship with their co-wives as among the advantages. (Selick para. 5) As in the United States, it is illegal in Canada for three or more adults to live together and have sexual activity between any one adult and any two or more other adults, singly or otherwise, and that behavior is considered to be polygamous, regardless of marriage or its absence. However, 38 A Journey Through My College Papers these laws fail to consider that the women of Bountiful are content with their life, and are there of their own free will. Their polygynous marriages provide them with advantages which contribute to the stability of their personal and family lives. The stability associated with polygamy is not limited to North America. In Nepal, “polyandrous households appear to have more continuity and stability than extended families made up of monogamous couples” (“Nepali Marriage and Family” para. 2). In Nepal, monogamous husbands, with or without their wives, often have to seek employment outside the village or even outside the country in order to earn enough money to support their families. Although polygyny is practiced in Nepal, “a number of Tibetan-speaking people, such as the Nyinba, Sherpa, and Baragaonli, practice variant forms of fraternal polyandry” (“Nepali Marriage and Family” para. 1). In those families, where one woman has two or more husbands who are brothers to each other, there are fewer tensions regarding status and inheritance, and the husbands are more likely to be able to support their families without having to leave their village, so the family structure is more stable than for the monogamous families of Nepal. Among the Igbo of Nigeria, polygyny is also important to the social status of women. “Inu nwunye (marriage) states Dr. Basden, ‘has a foremost place in Igbo social economy…a childless woman is regarded as a monstrosity…in fact the birth of the child gives her the title of wife, before this time she may be said to be a wife only in anticipation’” (Obi paras. 1-3). A woman of the Igbo must marry in order to have children and to fulfill her proper role in her society. In order that every woman may have a husband and family, “just as it is the custom that among the Lango people of Uganda, there is no limit, so also among the Igbos there is none either. It is not uncommon to find a man with 5 to 10 wives or sometimes even more…where it is difficult to obtain a husband, polygyny creates a situation that will make it possible for many more women to be absorbed into the married state” (Obi paras. 35-36). A man with five, ten, or more wives also accrues increased status from his ability to provide for so many wives and children, although the wives and children also contribute to the family’s economic success, as discussed below. Along with conferring status on the men and dignity on the women who practice it, polygamy strengthens a family’s economic status and provides clear lines of inheritance. Brian Schwimmer defines marriage as: “a relationship established between a woman and one or more other persons, which provides that a child born to the woman under circumstances not prohibited by the rules of the relationship, is accorded full birth-status rights common to normal members of his society or social stratum” (Schwimmer, “Defining Marriage” para. 5). The other persons may be a husband and co-wives, or they may be two or more co-husbands, but the goal is the same: to provide full birth-status rights, or legitimacy, to the woman’s children. “Polygyny produces wealth not only for the man, but for the whole family – which is one of the reasons why there is no poverty in societies that practise polygyny” (Anyolo para. 15). When there are no unwed mothers and illegitimate children to draw on a society’s resources, everyone experiences improved economic stability. In a polygynous society, every woman is able to marry, even if there are fewer men than women, and her children are recognized as being legitimate. When more individuals are contributing to a family’s income, or to its production of food and other goods, the entire family profits from the increase. In addition, polygamy may be practiced if a spouse is unable to produce or raise children or if a spouse becomes incapacitated and cannot continue to perform the functions of a spouse, so that the remaining spouse does not have to shoulder all of the responsibilities of the family alone. Polygamy exists in the United States for more than just religious or economic reasons. Sometimes, when a spouse becomes incapacitated due to trauma or illness, the healthy spouse will seek a new partner to fill the void the impaired spouse leaves in the family. Often, the new partner not only takes the original spouse’s place in the family, but also provides care for the co-spouse. Undergraduate Series 39 An example of this sort of family arrangement is the family of Dennis and Julie, who live in central Vermont in the last decade of the twentieth century. They have been married for fifteen years, and Julie has been raising Dennis’s son from a previous marriage. Thirteen years ago, Julie developed brain cancer which had to be surgically removed, taking with it a small portion of her frontal lobe. Three years ago, when Dennis’s son was 16 years old and Julie had regressed to a mental and emotional age of 6 years old, Dennis met Diane and asked her to move in with the family. Diane was aware that Dennis and Julie were married, but she was also aware that Julie was no longer capable of fulfilling even the most basic roles of a wife and mother because of her condition. Also because of Julie’s condition, Dennis felt that he could not in good conscience divorce her or cease to provide for her. Diane is now the de facto wife in Dennis’s household. She takes care of Dennis, his son, and Julie. Diane has taken on the role of step-mother to Dennis’s son, and has seen him through his formative teen years. Because Dennis and his family live in the United States, he and Diane are unable to marry, but they share physical and financial responsibility for their home and family. By becoming Julie’s caregiver and co-wife, Diane has eased the burden of living with a handicapped spouse for Dennis. Her presence in the home has allowed Dennis to work without having to worry about Julie’s welfare while he is away from home each day. She has obviated the need for Dennis to spend a significant portion of his earnings on hiring outside caregivers for Julie and a housekeeper to take Julie’s place in the daily upkeep of the home. The family structure has secured the family’s economic stability. 26 Just as Dennis, Julie, and Diane experience improved domestic conditions in their home from the interaction of co-spouses who can share the burdens of life, families throughout the world, such as the Dongria Kondh of India, enjoy the benefits of shared responsibilities and experiences, as well as increased economic security, through their practice of polygyny. “The Dongria family is normally simple nuclear family consisting of father, mother and their unmarried children… is patrilocal27 and patrilineal28…and polygynous…the woman is more diligent and hard working in comparison to their male counterparts. She does all sorts of household work…she is treated as an economic asset to the family” (Kanungo paras. 3-4). Among the Dongria Kondh, the more wives a man has, the more economic stability and wealth his family has. His wives represent a labor force for the family, as do their children as they become old enough to do work in the home and the fields. In addition, a “girl child is preferred over boy child” (Kanungo para. 4) because a man will collect a bride price from the family of each daughter’s husband before she is allowed to marry, so a man with many daughters will accrue a large amount of money from their marriages, but a man with many sons will have to pay a bride price for each of his sons to marry. This is the reverse of the practice in monogamous cultures of Europe and North America, where a man had to pay a dowry for each of his daughters to marry, but was paid a dowry by the parents of each of his sons’ wives. The Nayar of India is a matrilineal29 society which practices an unusual form of polyandry. Among the Nayar, “sambandan involved a man having a ‘visiting husband’ relationship with a woman. While such relationships were considered to be marriages by the woman's family, especially when they occurred with males of higher subcastes or castes, the males tended to view the relationships as concubinage. Traditionally Nayar women were allowed to have more than one ‘visiting husband’ either simultaneously or serially” (“Nayar Marriage and Family” para. 1). To properly understand and discuss this visiting husband arrangement, it is necessary to include a more detailed account of Nayar marriage practices: Before puberty a Nayar woman was formally married to a man from a family with whom her family had a special relationship. The two were together for a few days, and then the marriage ended. The woman usually never saw this husband again, though she and her future children might mourn when this man died. After this marriage the woman was considered an adult and 40 A Journey Through My College Papers was free to take up to a dozen lovers. Each lover was part of a formal relationship approved by her family, and the man was required to give the woman gifts three times a year until the relationship ended. The “visiting husbands” as they were called, spent the night with a woman, leaving a shield or sword outside of her door so that other men with whom she had a similar relationship knew that another “husband” was visiting that night. The visiting husbands never resided with a woman, did not have any economic obligation to her, and came and went as their military duties dictated. When a child was conceived, one of the visiting husbands established the child’s legitimacy by claiming paternity and presenting gifts to the woman and to the midwife who delivered the child. He had no further economic responsibilities for this child, though he might take a social interest in it. The child lived with and was the economic responsibility of the mother’s group. (Lenkeit 151-152) The Nayar system exists because of the warlike nature of the Nayar. It is usual for all of the men to be away from their villages for the majority of their adult lives in military service. Since Nayar men are not available to settle in villages and establish families in any of the usual patterns – monogamous, polygynous, or polyandrous – the Nayar contrived the system of visiting husbands. In this system, it is not important which man genetically fathers which child, but only that one of the mother’s husbands claims paternity for each child; the children’s inheritance is through the maternal line, from mother to daughter, and the mother’s maternal female relatives ensure economic provision and cultural security for all of the children born to their group. Although “the ‘visiting husband’ had…no responsibility for any children he might sire” (“Nayar Marriage and Family” para. 2) the men of the Nayar are not excused from providing economic support for the women. “His main responsibilities were for his sister's children” (“Nayar Marriage and Family” para. 2). Thus, the men of the Nayar provide for their mothers and sisters, and not for their wives and children, who are in turn provided for by the wives’ brothers and sons. In certain patrilineal cultures special arrangements have been made to provide for the inheritance of men who have no male heirs. Among these arrangements are woman-to-woman marriage, ghost marriage, Nwunye Nhachi or “wife of the village”, and Nwunye Nkuchi or “inherited wife”. Woman-to-woman marriage is not lesbian marriage, and the women do not engage in sexual activities with each other. It is practiced by the Zulu women of the Neur and the Nandi in Africa. Among the Neur, “a rich and influential Zulu woman may marry another woman by giving marriage cattle for her, and she is the pater of her wife's children begotten by some male kinsman of the female husband” (Obi para. 26). By having the wife mate with the brothers and male cousins of the female husband, the children born of the marriage do, indeed, carry the female husband’s genes, and the children are true heirs of the female husband. Woman-to-woman marriage for the purpose of producing heirs and securing inheritances is also important to the Nandi of Africa who “practice patrilineal descent…the most common option for a woman without an heir is woman-to-woman marriage, in which the woman with no male heir becomes a husband to another woman…children born to this couple are considered heirs of the female husband. In other words, when the ‘wife’ has a child, that child is considered to be the heir of the female husband” (Lenkeit 203-204). When the Nandi practice woman-to-woman marriage, the female husband takes on the male gender roles in the family, and the wife continues to perform the female gender roles. The spouses do not live together, however, so that the wife is able to take male lovers in an effort to become pregnant. It is understood that, regardless of who biologically fathers the wife’s children, they are the heirs of the female husband. The female husband typically does not take lovers of either gender while in a woman-to-woman marriage. Ghost marriage is practiced among the Igbo of Nigeria and among tribes in East and Central Africa. “'Ghost marriage'…consists in a woman being married to the name of a man who died unmarried so that his line need not die out. Consequently, children born of this marriage Undergraduate Series 41 should bear the name of this unmarried dead man” (Obi paras. 27-28). The wife of the dead man takes male lovers in an effort to provide heirs for her husband, and, as with woman-to-woman marriage, it is understood that any children born to the wife are the heirs of her dead husband, regardless of who actually fathers the children. Nwunye Nhachi or “wife of the village” is another marriage form used by the Igbo of Nigeria to secure lines of inheritance for men who die without male heirs. “When a man dies without a male issue, one of his daughters stays back, selects lovers with whom she cohabits to beget children on behalf of her dead father” (Obi para. 29). In this case, the daughter is theoretically married to her father after his death, and does not marry another man. Any children born to this daughter-wife are her heirs – and by extension, her siblings. Nwunye Nkuchi or “inherited wife” is also practiced by the Igbo, and is something of the reverse of Nwunye Nhachi. “A man by this practice takes over his dead father's wife or dead brother's wife where there is no heir, or male issue or if the heir is a minor” (Obi para. 27). In this case, the husband provides economic support for the widows, and future heirs born to the widowwives are the heirs of their dead husbands because their marriages continue after their husbands’ deaths. In many societies where polygamy is the prevalent form of marriage, not only does polygamy provide economic stability and secure inheritances but there is a reduction in the occurrences of domestic violence as compared to societies where monogamy is the prevalent form of marriage. In her study of the Ovambadja of Namibia, Prisca Anyolo notes that “at present, violence against women in Namibia is more prevalent through domestic violence, followed by rape and the killing of women…but none of the cases of violence has so far been attributed to the practice of polygyny…such violence and social discrimination against women is prevalent in almost all 13 Regions of the country, and even more so in Regions where polygyny does not exist” (Anyolo paras. 8, 13). Although violence against women does exist in areas where polygyny is practiced, it is clear that there is less violence in these areas, and as with the counter-argument about child abuse which is presented earlier in this discussion, one cannot assume or expect that violence against women will summarily stop if any relationship other than monogamy was allowed, any more than one may assume that violence against women will summarily increase if all relationships other than monogamy are prohibited. Violence is not limited to the atrocities of beatings, rape, and murder. Violence in a family also includes jealousies among family members and drawing distinctions between and among individuals to establish the relative value of the individuals. In these cases, as well, the occurrence of violence is reduced in polygynous families. “As a rule, the jealousy of co-wives is not the characteristic of Igbo polygyny” (Obi para. 36). Like Donna and Bobbi, Igbo co-wives are able to work out the small differences which inevitably exist between and among people who live and work in close contact with one another, so any jealousies which arise are quickly disposed of. Unlike monogamous wives whose husbands conduct extramarital affairs without the approval of their wives, Igbo wives do not need to be jealous of their co-wives, because they all live together by their own will and share equally in their husband’s time, attention, and resources. Culture exists in part to create systems for living which promote the best interests of the members of the group and which secure the orderly existence of the society. Marriage forms a part of this system of orderly existence. “At the time polygyny was established as the legal form of marriage” in Liberia, “the ratio of women to men in Africa was about 10 to 1” (Nyanseor para. 8). An African woman’s role is to marry and to produce children, not unlike the traditional expectation for Western women, who are still seen primarily as wives and mothers despite the ‘women’s movement’ and ‘equal rights’. An African woman’s secondary role is to keep the house and to help her husband produce a living for her family. With a ratio of ten women to each man, polygyny is the only way most women are able to fulfill their role in their society. The Liberian 42 A Journey Through My College Papers leaders recognize this concern and the “elders, including women, decided to come up with a marriage system that would address this problem. Their aim at the time was to provide a balance and equal distribution of social, material, security and economic benefits to both women and men” (Nyanseor para. 8). Polygyny is the solution the Liberian elders devised, and it fulfills the aim of providing that balance. When Christian settlers from America arrive in Liberia, they bring the idea of monogamy with them, but the Christian settlers do not practice true monogamy. Instead, they practice a new form of marriage, which becomes known as Chrismonopoly. “Chrismonopoly…is an arrangement in which a male settler is married to his monogamous or Christian wife and at the same time is engaged in polygynous relationship with ‘native African Liberian women’” (Nyanseor para. 14). The settlers do not view their own behavior as polygyny, although that is what it is. They do not treat their Liberian wives and children equally with the way they treat their American wives and children, unlike the polygynous Liberian husbands, who treat their wives and children equally. In the settlers’ families, “a distinction was made as to who were ‘inside or outside children’” (Nyanseor para. 18), which causes dissention and strife for the settlers, but “this was never the case in a polygynous relationship” (Nyanseor para. 18). By treating his wives and children equally, a polygynous Liberian husband avoids the family violence which his monogamous Christian neighbor creates in his own family. Among the Eskimo of North America, jealousy among co-wives is nearly non-existent. A wife who is unable to bear children “pays for a new life on behalf of her husband, or she provides him with the necessary funds for a new marriage, with a view to raising children for her husband by proxy as we may put it” (Obi para. 25). The first wife welcomes the new co-wife and accepts the co-wife’s children as part of the family. In an interview about why her husband takes another wife, an Eskimo woman reports that 'I asked him myself, for I am tired of bearing children' (Obi para. 36). For this woman, having a co-wife means she is relieved of some of the pressure and stress of her wifely duties; the first wife benefits from her polygynous lifestyle, as does the co-wife, who can fulfill her role of wife and mother, but also has stability and protection because of the family structure. A form of polygamy which is less familiar than polygyny and polyandry is group marriage. Most Americans associate group marriage with the communes of the 1960’s, and some of those were, in fact, group marriages. Group marriage is not about orgies30 or sexual free-foralls, however, and it is not polyamorous31 wife-swapping; it is true marriage involving at least two husbands and at least two wives. A notable occurrence of group marriage is “the Kaingang in Brazil, where 8 percent of the population practiced this marriage form during historic times. The remainder of the population practiced monogamy (60 percent), polygyny (18 percent), or polyandry (14 percent). Obviously there are diverse ideas about marriage among the Kaingang” (Lenkeit 155). Although group marriage is not the most prevalent marriage form among the Kaingang, eight percent of the population represents a significant number of people engaged in group marriage. An additional example of group marriage is the Gilyak tribe of the island of Sakhalin, in which “every Gilyak has the rights of a husband in regard to the wives of his brothers and to the sisters of his wife; at any rate, the exercise of these rights is not regarded as impermissible” (Engels, "Appendix. A Recently Discovered Case of Group Marriage" para. 3). Among the Gilyak, the entire tribe is one large, group marriage, with each adult the parent of each child, regardless of which two adults produced the child. This arrangement is very similar to the punaluan marriage custom of Hawaii, in which a number of sisters, own or collateral (first, second or more remote cousins) were the common wives of their common husbands, from among whom, however, their own brothers were excluded; these husbands now no longer called themselves brothers, for they were no longer necessarily brothers, but punalua -- that is, intimate companion, or partner. Similarly, a line of own or Undergraduate Series 43 collateral brothers had a number of women, not their sisters, as common wives, and these wives called one another punalua. (Engels, "The Punaluan Family" para. 2) Among the Hawaiians, unlike the Gilyaks, a spouse’s siblings of the opposite sex could not be included in the spouse’s group marriage. Siblings, in this case, refer to cousins as well as to conventional siblings. One additional marriage form exists which is not a form of polygamy, but is also not traditional monogamy. This is same-sex marriages other than those discussed above as means of securing inheritances. This is, instead, homosexual marriage between two men or two women who love each other and who wish to bind themselves together with a formal commitment of marriage. Same-sex marriage is not a new concept, despite its frequent appearance in the media in the last decade. “Data demonstrate that same-sex unions, including marriage, have been recognized in the histories of many cultures – Greek, Roman, and pre-Columbian Native American cultures, as well as various African cultures and numerous cultures in Asia and the Pacific” (Lenkeit 156). Same-sex marriage is not often spoken of openly in Western society because it is alien to people who believe in strict monogamy, and who have grown up being taught that the Bible forbids homosexuality32. Many cultures, however, do not recognize the Holy Bible as the true law, or even as anything more than a work of mythological fiction, and so those cultures are not guided by the Holy Bible. In the United States, only Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont allow same-sex marriages; each of the other 43 states has a law which bans same-sex marriage, although New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Oregon allow same-sex civil unions distinct from marriage, and Alaska, California, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, and Washington allow certain protections for same-sex couples (Stritof). While marriage should be a matter between and among the spouses, in the United States marriage has become a sore point of politics. For almost a century and a half, the United States government has legislated what constitutes a marriage and who may marry whom. Many fear that the increased tolerance for same-sex marriage in the United States may open the way for polygamous marriage to become a legally accepted fact of American life and fear the collapse of their own systems of morals and ethics if monogamy ceases to be the only legal and accepted marriage form in the United States. What these people fail to recognize is that, with the legalization – or at least tacit legalization by not banning – same-sex marriages in seven states, and with an estimated 100,000 individuals living polygamous lifestyles in the United States, monogamy has already ceased to be the only accepted form of marriage in the United States. “Just as it is said that no system of government, is necessarily the best, so also it can be said that all things being equal, no system of marriage is necessarily the best” (Obi para. 37). Throughout the world, and even within the cultural bastion of the United States, this comparison has proven to be true; no one system of marriage emerges from the fray as the one, single, definitive best form of marriage for every family and every situation. Each form has its merits, and each form has its drawbacks, and each individual, couple, and group needs to have the freedom to openly choose which form is best for that particular situation. With the many personal and social benefits experienced by polygamous families, group families, same-sex families, and monogamous families, it behooves Americans to learn tolerance for ways of life which are different from mainstream American culture. As editorial columnist Jonathan Turley writes in the October 3, 2004, issue of USA Today, I personally detest polygamy. Yet if we yield to our impulse and single out one hated minority, the First Amendment becomes little more than hype and we become little more than hypocrites. For my part, I would rather have a neighbor with different spouses than a country with different standards for its citizens. 44 A Journey Through My College Papers I know I can educate my three sons about the importance of monogamy, but hypocrisy can leave a more lasting impression. (Turley paras. 16-17) Each person is capable of living a full, satisfying life without needing to control what is going on in the bedrooms next door, down the street, across the state, or on the other side of the world. It is up to each parent or parental group to raise its children with a set of values which allow the children not only to make good choices for their own relationships, but also to respect and honor the relationship choices which are made by others. Far from monogamy being the only correct marriage form in the world, it is only one of many forms, each of which is “correct” for those who choose it as their way of life. End Notes: . Donna, Bobbi, and Lucas are real people, and the situation described is real. Their names have been changed to protect their privacy. 2 . “The state or custom of being married to one person at a time” ("Monogamy"). 3 . “Marriage in which a spouse of either sex may have more than one mate at the same time” ("Polygamy"). 4 . “A marriage custom in which a widow marries her deceased husband’s brother” (Lenkeit G-5). 5 . A marriage custom in which a widower marries a sister of his deceased wife” (Lenkeit G-8). 6 . “The state or practice of having more than one wife or female mate at a time” ("Polygyny"). 7 . “The state or practice of having more than one husband or male mate at one time” ("Polyandry"). 8 . “Anal or oral copulation with a member of the same or opposite sex; also: copulation with an animal” ("Sodomy"). 9 . “Of, relating to, or involving sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex” ("Homosexual"). 10 . “Of, relating to, or involving sexual intercourse between individuals of opposite sex” ("Heterosexual"). 11 . “And he answered and said unto them, ‘Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder’” (Matthew 20:4-6). “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). 12 . “And he had two wives; the name of the one [was] Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah: and Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children” (1 Samuel 1:2). 13 . “And Jehoiada took for him two wives; and he begat sons and daughters” (2 Chronicles 24:3). 14 . “And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one [was] Adah, and the name of the other Zillah” (Genesis 4:19). 15 . “And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite” (Genesis 26:34). “Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham's son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife” (Genesis 28:9). 16 . “And he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years” (Genesis 29:30). 17 . “And Ashur the father of Tekoa had two wives, Helah and Naarah” (1 Chronicles 4:5). 18 . “And Gideon had threescore and ten sons of his body begotten: for he had many wives” (Judges 8:30). 1 Undergraduate Series 45 19 . “And when David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, Blessed be the Lord, that hath pleaded the cause of my reproach from the hand of Nabal, and hath kept his servant from evil: for the Lord hath returned the wickedness of Nabal upon his own head. And David sent and communed with Abigail, to take her to him to wife. And when the servants of David were come to Abigail to Carmel, they spake unto her, saying, David sent us unto thee, to take thee to him to wife. And she arose, and bowed herself on her face to the earth, and said, Behold, let thine handmaid be a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord. And Abigail hasted, and arose, and rode upon an ass, with five damsels of hers that went after her; and she went after the messengers of David, and became his wife. David also took Ahinoam of Jezreel; and they were also both of them his wives. But Saul had given Michal his daughter, David’s wife, to Phalti the son of Laish, which was of Galim” (1 Samuel 25:39-44). “And unto David were born sons in Hebron: and his firstborn was Amnon, of Ahinoam the Jezreelitess; and his second, Chileab, of Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite; and the third, Absolom the son of Maacah the daughter of Talmai king of Geshur; and the fourth, Adonijah the son of Haggith; and the fifth, Shephatiah the son of Abital; and the sixth, Ithream, by Eglah David’s wife. These were born to David in Hebron” (2 Samuel 3:2-5). “And David took him more concubines and wives out of Jerusalem, after he was come from Hebron: and there were yet sons and daughters born to David” (2 Samuel 5:13). “And David took more wives at Jerusalem: and David begat more sons and daughters” (1 Chronicles 14:3). 20 . “But king Solomon loved many strange women, together with the daughter of Pharaoh, women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, [and] Hittites; of the nations [concerning] which the LORD said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: [for] surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart. For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, [that] his wives turned away his heart after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as [was] the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. And Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD, and went not fully after the LORD, as [did] David his father. Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that [is] before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon. And likewise did he for all his strange wives, which burnt incense and sacrificed unto their gods” (1 Kings 11:1-8). 21 . “And Rehoboam took him Mahalath the daughter of Jerimoth the son of David to wife, [and] Abihail the daughter of Eliab the son of Jesse; which bare him children; Jeush, and Shamariah, and Zaham. And after her he took Maachah the daughter of Absalom; which bare him Abijah, and Attai, and Ziza, and Shelomith. And Rehoboam loved Maachah the daughter of Absalom above all his wives and his concubines: (for he took eighteen wives, and threescore concubines; and begat twenty and eight sons, and threescore daughters.) And Rehoboam made Abijah the son of Maachah the chief, [to be] ruler among his brethren: for [he thought] to make him king. And he dealt wisely, and dispersed of all his children throughout all the countries of Judah and Benjamin, unto every fenced city: and he gave them victual in abundance. And he desired many wives” (2 Chronicles 11:18-23). 22 . “But Abijah waxed mighty, and married fourteen wives, and begat twenty and two sons, and sixteen daughters” (2 Chronicles 13:21). 23 . “Cohabitation of persons not legally married” ("Concubinage"). 24 . “Sexual perversion” (“Degeneracy”) 25 . “Promiscuous sexual behavior” ("Promiscuity"). “Promiscuous - not restricted to one sexual partner” ("Promiscuous"). 46 A Journey Through My College Papers 26 . Dennis, Julie, and Diane are real people, and the situation described is real. Their names have been changed to protect their privacy. 27 . “Of or relating to residence with a husband's kin group or clan” ("Patrilocal"). 28 . “Relating to, based on, or tracing ancestral descent through the paternal line” ("Patrilineal"). 29 . “Tracing descent through the maternal line” ("Matrilineal"). 30 . “A sexual encounter involving many people; also: an excessive sexual indulgence” ("Orgy"). 31 . “The state or practice of having more than one open romantic relationship at a time” ("Polyamory"). 32 . "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination" (Leviticus 18:22). Works Cited: Anyolo, Prisca. "Polygyny among the Ovambadja: A female perspective." 4 Feb 2009 <http://www.kas.de/upload/auslandshomepages/namibia/Women_Custom/anyolo.p df>. Callaway, Ewen. "Polygamy is the key to a long life." 19 Aug 2008. New Scientist. 5 Feb 2009 <http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14564-polygamy-is-the-key-to-a-longlife.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news2_head_dn14564>. “Concubinage". 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 13 Mar 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/concubinage>. “Degeneracy". 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 13 Mar 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/degeneracy>. "Does God approve of polygamy?" Rational Christianity: Christian Apologetics. 20 Feb 2009 <http://www.rationalchristianity.net/polygamy.html>. Engels, Frederick. "Appendix. A Recently Discovered Case of Group Marriage." Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State. 17 Mar 2009 <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/appen.htm>. —. "The Punaluan Family.” Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State. 17 Mar 2009 <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/originfamily/ch02b.htm>. Frost, Martin. "Monogamous marriage ceases to be acceptable form of sexual and family relations." 8 Dec 2006. 5 Feb 2009 <http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/dec2006/mono_poly.html>. Frost, Peter. "Polygyny and human evolution." 18 Feb 2008. Evo and Proud. 4 Feb 2009 <http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2008/02/polygyny-and-human-evolution.html>. Hamilton, Marci. "The Marriage Debate and Polygamy." 29 Jul 2004. 20 Feb 2009 <http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20040729.html>. “Heterosexual". 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 13 Mar 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/heterosexual>. Holy Bible, The. Trans. King James Version. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 1979. “Homosexual". 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 13 Mar 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homosexual>. Hughes, James J., Ph.D. "Monogamy as a Prisoners Dilemma: Non-Monogamy as a Collective Action Problem." Dec 1990. 4 Feb 2009 <http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/Monogamy/Mono.html>. Jordan, Terry L. U.S. Constitution and Fascinating Facts About It, The. Naperville: Oak Hill Publishing Company, 2008. Kanungo, Akshaya K., M.A., M.Phil. "Problems In Educating Tribal Children: The Dongria Kondh Experience." 23 Sep 2005. 4 Feb 2009 Undergraduate Series 47 <http://www.anthroglobe.info/docs/EDUCATING-TRIBAL-CHILDRENDONGRIA-KONDH.htm>. Lenkeit, Roberta Edwards. Introducing Cultural Anthropology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009. “Matrilineal". 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 5 Feb 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/matrilineal>. “Monogamy". 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 5 Feb 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monogamy>. "Nayar Marriage and Family." 2008. World Culture Encyclopedia. 4 Feb 2009 <http://www.everyculture.com/South-Asia/Nayar-Marriage-and-Family.html>. "Nepali Marriage and Family." 2008. World Culture Encyclopedia. 4 Feb 2009 <http://www.everyculture.com/South-Asia/Nepali-Marriage-and-Family.html>. Newman, Nathan. "Why Gay Marriage is Like Polygamy." 15 Mar 2004. Progressive Populist. 20 Feb 2009 <http://www.nathannewman.org/archives/003169.shtml>. Nyanseor, Siahyonkron. "Polygyny (Polygamy) Is Already A Practice." 4 Feb 2009 <http://www.theperspective.org/polygyny.html>. Obi, Celestine A. "Marriage Among The Igbo Of Nigeria." ATR Special Topics. 4 Feb 2009 <http://www.afrikaworld.net/afrel/igbo-marriage.htm>. “Orgy." 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 13 Mar 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/orgy>. “Patrilineal." 2009. Dictionary.com. Merriam-Webster Online. 21 Feb 2009 <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/patrilineal>. “Patrilocal." 2009. Dictionary.com. 21 Feb 2009 <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/patrilocal>. “Polyamory." 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 13 Mar 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polyamory>. “Polyandry". 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 5 Feb 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polyandry>. “Polygamy". 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 5 Feb 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polygamy>. "Polygamy a factor in marriage debates." 13 Mar 2006. Religion Newswriters Foundation. 20 Feb 2009 <http://www.religionlink.org/tip_040329b.php>. “Polygamy: What the Bible says". 19 Jul 2006. 20 Feb 2009 <http://www.eadshome.com/polygamy.htm>. “Polygyny". 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 5 Feb 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polygyny>. “Promiscuity". 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 13 Mar 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/promiscuity>. “Promiscuous". 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 13 Mar 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/promiscuous>. Robinson, B.A. "SAME-SEX MARRIAGE AND POLYGAMY." 22 Feb 2005. Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. 20 Feb 2009 <http://www.religioustolerance.org/ssmpoly.htm>. Schwimmer, Brian. "Defining Marriage." Sep 2003. 4 Feb 2009 <http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/tutor/marriage/defining.html>. Selick, Karen. "Polygamy--Two Rights Shouldn't Make a Wrong." 2005. 20 Feb 2009 <http://www.karenselick.com/CL0508.html>. Stritof, Sheri and Bob. "Same Sex Marriage License Laws." 2009. About.com: Marriage. 17 Mar 2009 <http://marriage.about.com/cs/marriagelicenses/a/samesexcomp.htm>. 48 A Journey Through My College Papers “Sodomy". 2009. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Merriam-Webster Online. 13 Mar 2009 <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sodomy>. Turley, Jonathan. "Polygamy laws expose our own hypocrisy." 3 Oct 2004. USA Today. 20 Feb 2009 <http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/2004-10-03- turley_x.htm>. Fall Semester, 2009 EDU 108: Introduction to Policy & Education Examining a Racial Policy November 17, 2009 The question asks for an issue from the past 5-20 years, but I would like to examine a policy that was implemented in my school when I was in 11th grade, in 1985-86. I attended a relatively large high school (grades 9-12) in a predominantly white community in southern Vermont. Near the middle of 11th grade, a policy was implemented in the supervisory union that required that all students of color must be referred to as "AfricanAmericans." At that time, there was a very popular student in my class who was intensely darkcomplected, verging on literally black skin. His parents were from upper-class families in India, and he and his sisters were the first members of the family to be born in the United States. My classmate was not of African extraction, and was certainly not African-American. In response to the implementation of this policy, nearly every student in the top 25% of the student body united to stage a strike. We protested that the policy was racist against nonAfrican people of color, and that it too narrowly defined a segment of our society. Students and parents sent letters to the local newspaper and to the supervisory union and local school districts to complain about the policy. Within a matter of days, the policy was withdrawn. It was replaced with a policy that was generally well-received as being more appropriate for local needs, which prohibited the use of the word "nigger" in the schools. The original policy was intended to address concerns about racial diversity in response to "pressures for multicultural curricula ... [and] the complexity resulting from diversity" (Fowler, 2009, 10). The issue in this case was defined as a need to establish a school environment in which "African-American children [who] were consistently disadvantaged [by] 'separate and unequal' education" (Fowler, 2009, 6) would be able to receive an equal education without the stresses of racial slurs and stereotypes. As students, we were not aware of the agenda setting or policy formulation stages for this issue. I do know, however, that the policy was passed for the Southwest Vermont Supervisory Union, which oversaw a number of local school districts, but which was below the state level, so it was addressed at this intermediate level. The policy was adopted by the supervisory union. The implementation of this policy took place first in the high school, which served all of the districts in the supervisory union. In chapter 1, Fowler (2009) states that "[r]esearch suggests that often new policies are ... substantially modified during implementation" (17). This is what happened when we, as a community, protested the new policy. Policy makers were forced to evaluate the policy very quickly and to take it back to an earlier stage in the policy process for reconsideration (Fowler, 2009, 15, Figure 1.1). Undergraduate Series 49 Altering Power Relationships November 18, 2009 The case study presented by Fowler (2009) at the end of chapter 2 begins with a dangerous misassessment by Bob Mathews of the power wielded by Clyde Ruggles based on Bob's class bias and assumption that Clyde was a "harmless crackpot" (48). That should never be allowed to happen, but it does happen over and over again in our supposedly class-less society. Bob and his board need to overcome several problems in order to resolve this problem in a positive, ethical manner(Fowler, 2009): 1) Clyde's people are using emotionally charged language such as "devil [,]... Satanism, ... and witchcraft" (Fowler, 2009, 48) to build popular support for their position; 2) The press is using Clyde's charged language to report the story in a sensationalized way, which also builds support for Clyde's position; 3) Clyde is asserting that the school district is teaching a particular religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause, which is likely to stir a sense of patriotism in the local population, thus adding to Clyde's position; and 4) There are also additional, related problems, most of which will be solved by a successful resolution of these three problems. Bob and the school board need to defuse the language which Clyde and his group are using. They need to remain calm and to present a strong, united front to the community as they explain that "Satanism, magic, and witchcraft" (Fowler, 2009, 48) are not accurate words to describe what is in the language arts books. Unfortunately, this is not the time for a discussion of comparative religion, and it would probably be pointless for Bob to point out that Satanism and witchcraft are ideologically and religiously mutually exclusive, as the mob mentality has already taken effect and few people will care about the distinction, if they are even able to understand it at this stage of the problem. Still, it is necessary for Bob and the school board to educate the local population about what is really contained in the books. In order to alter the power relationships in this situation, Bob and the board first need to establish that they are not the "[c]owards" (Fowler, 2009, 49) that they have been accused of being. The board needs to work from a position of strength, asserting the legitimacy of its authority (Fowler, 2009, 29) by demonstrating "competent authority" (Fowler, 2009, 30) and to show the community that it is confident of a positive, peaceful solution. The board needs to draft a letter to the REA, reassuring the teachers that the school district is not practicing censorship even if it decides to stop using the current textbooks in favor of newer, less emotionally charged textbooks. It should be stressed that any changes that may be made will be in the best interests of the students. A similar letter should be sent to each of the school principals. Mr. Brook and Mr. Trotwood need to be reassured that the board is looking into the complaint about the textbooks, and that it will address the situation in a rational manner. It is important that both men know that the board has not lost control of the situation. Charged words like "kooks" (Fowler, 2009, 49) should be avoided by Bob and by the board. Pastor Powers and Pastor Bachfeld need to be reassured that the schools are not teaching Satanism, nor are they endorsing any religion. It should be made clear that the separation of church and state is being preserved in the schools. Both pastors should be assured that the board is taking Clyde's complaint seriously, and that it will investigate and deal with the complaint in a prompt, rational, and respectful manner. 50 A Journey Through My College Papers Ms. Brouilette should get a statement from Bob that echoes the messages of reassurance to each of the groups above. Under no circumstances should Bob or the school board tackle the subject of Satanism with the press. Once all of the telephone messages -- including the inevitable flurry of similar messages in the following week -- have been addressed in a calm, rational, confident manner, the board must follow through by conducting an investigation of the material that was identified in the complaint. This might be a very good time for the school board to examine potential new curricula, and to select a new language arts series that could be introduced in the schools in the next one to two years. In a case like this, it is more important to preserve the public's confidence in the school's ability to address the problem and to provide sound educational leadership in the community than it is to defend the existing curriculum. Curricula change frequently, for many reasons, and such a change could be presented to the community as a routine move. Yielding to public opinion while maintaining the outward appearance of calmly conducting business as usual preserves the integrity of the school board. In the future, Bob should be more careful when he assesses the power (Fowler, 2009, 42) of an individual or group, to avoid being caught unaware by his personal biases. References: Fowler, F.C. (2009). Policy Studies for Educational Leaders: An Introduction (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. The NEA Opposes School Vouchers 11/20/2009 The National Education Association (NEA), which is recognized as “the voice of education professionals” ("NEA's Vision, Mission,…," n.d., para. 1), advocates against the adoption of school vouchers because the voucher system is effective only for higher income students and because it uses money to provide those students with school choice at the expense of the many children from lower income households whose public schools receive reduced funding due to vouchers (“NEA on Vouchers: Opposed,” n.d.). With the declining quality of public schools in many regions of the United States, parents, educators, and administrators are seeking options to “prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world” ("NEA's Vision, Mission,…," n.d., para. 3). School vouchers “redirect the flow of education funding, channeling it directly to individual families rather than to school districts” (Coulson, 1998, para. 1) in an effort to provide greater school choice to the families that receive them. While the need to improve education in the United States is widely acknowledged, “[t]he school choice movement is divided over tactics and faces enormous establishment resistance” (“Teachnology,” n.d., para. 3), including the opposition of the NEA. By opposing school vouchers, the NEA maintains the balance of theory, practice, and power in its position. The NEA’s position maintains the balance of theory and practice by supporting equality in education and by rejecting a policy that would reinforce the stratification of American society by enhancing the privileges of the elite and undermining the education of the disadvantaged. The NEA maintains the balance of power in its position because it wields its “competent authority” (Fowler, 2009, 30) to “advance the goals of a group … [not] to enhance [the] group’s power” (Fowler, 2009, 46), to benefit the majority of students in the United States. Undergraduate Series 51 The NEA supports the equal education of all students by opposing the school voucher issue and instead supporting “improving the quality of teaching, increasing student achievement and making schools safer, better places to learn” ("NEA's Vision, Mission,…," n.d., para. 11). References Coulson, A. (1998). School vouchers. Retrieved November 20, 2009, from http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/vouchers.htm Fowler, F.C. (2009). Policy Studies for Educational Leaders: An Introduction (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Nea's vision, mission, and values. (n.d.). Retrieved November 18, 2009, from the National Education Association Web site: http://www.nea.org/home/19583.htm Teachnology. (n.d.). Retrieved November 20, 2009, from http://www.teachnology.com/edleadership/school_vouchers/pro/ Charges Dropped Against Teacher Accused of Forcing Student to Eat From Garbage November 21, 2009 My initial reaction as a parent would be shock and disgust that a child was made to eat food from a garbage can. There may have been nothing wrong with the food, but there is no way of knowing what the food came in contact with after it was thrown away. No doubt there was food waste from other students which could have carried any number of germs and bacteria. Also, the inside of a garbage can is just not usually a clean place. If this had been done to my child, I know I would have been all over the school and the school board about it. My initial reaction from the viewpoint of the student would be humiliation at being made to eat garbage, even if it was only in the garbage can for a matter of seconds or minutes. By the time a child is in kindergarten, he or she usually knows that people do NOT eat out of the garbage, and that it is yucky, nasty, etc.. The child might have had good reason to not eat his food. For starters, a kindergartener's stomach is very small, and he might simply have been full, especially if, as happens in many kindergartens, he ate a snack at mid-morning. The child might not have been feeling well that day. He might have reached a growth plateau and didn't need as much food that day. Typically, kindergarten students aren't allowed to choose or refuse food in the lunch line, but are given a tray exactly like the trays the other children get. There is going to be waste in such a system. Oops. You didn't ask for the student. My statements remain, however, as I think the child's perspective is important. As the teacher, I can understand being frustrated with seeing food wasted day after day. The teacher was aged 67, meaning she was part of a generation where children were required to clear their plates, no matter what. She wanted the child to eat his food and to learn not to waste, but I believe she went too far. I doubt she thought so, however. As the principal, I would have to look at all sides of the situation, including its impact on the child. I would assure the parent that I would talk to the teacher about the matter, and that the situation would not be repeated. I would try to calm the parent to avoid legal action, which either didn't happen or didn't work in the actual case. I would talk to the teacher, but knowing the teacher was about to retire, I doubt any disciplinary action would have been particularly effective. In response to the final disposition of the matter: As the teacher, I would be relieved that the charges were dropped. I would probably feel vindicated. 52 A Journey Through My College Papers As the teacher, I would be relieved, as well, because charges against a teacher reflect badly on the school. I would also be relieved that the teacher in question had retired. As the parent, I would be irate that the charges were dropped and that the teacher was not punished for her treatment of my child. Defining Education Ideology November 24, 2009 Based on the results of Activity 1 on page 128 of the text (Fowler, 2009), I have no clear image of exactly which one ideology I most agree with, but i have a good idea of which ideologies I do not agree with and which three ideologies I believe I agree with. I ranked the eight values listed in the activity thus: Liberty Quality Fraternity Order Individualism Equality Efficiency Economic growth. The activity directed me to group my first four qualities, and to use those to determine which ideology I lean toward. Interestingly, the only one of the eight ideologies which favors two of my top four values is Right-Wing Extremism, of which Fowler (2009) says: “they are likely to blame social problems on racial, religious, or ethnic minority groups, often believing that these groups are conspiring to destroy the way of life they hold dear” (127). I hesitate to align myself with an ideology that includes “Timothy McVeigh… [,] the Ku Klux Klan… [,] the Aryan Nation, the Posse Comitatus, and various militias” (Fowler, 2009, 127), but I cannot deny that I do support some of the positions described in the text, such as: “severely controlling immigration… and reducing the power of the government” (Fowler, 2009, 127). My recent concerns about and dislike for public schools is also in alignment with Right-Wing Extremism. In analyzing the results of the activity, I decided to reject Right-Wing Extremism because of its strong and well-known association with violent action, and because, although I have serious issues with the government at this point, I do not hate the government. Instead, I identified Religious Conservatism, New Politics Liberalism, and Christian Democracy as the major components of my personal ideology. Religious Conservatism “most emphasize[s] … order” (Fowler, 2009, 124), which is the fourth value in my list. Fowler (2009) states that “Christians must work through the political system to restore traditional values” (124). I feel strongly that traditional family values are important, and that a return to traditional values would be beneficial to our nation, but I stop short of believing that the government should legislate values. I also support “parents’ right to raise their children without interference … and oppose most sex- and drug-education programs” (Fowler, 2009, 124), which are identified as features of Religious Conservatism. New Politics Liberalism “tend[s] to believe that many, perhaps most, of the problems in U.S. society result from a history of discrimination and oppression based on factors beyond individual control” (Fowler, 2009, 125). Where Religious Conservatism emphasizes order, New Politics Liberalism emphasizes equality and Fraternity (Fowler, 2009, 124-125). Fraternity is among the top four values on my list, but I do not subscribe to the victim attitude inherent in this ideology. “In education policy, new politics liberals advocate equal access to quality education for Undergraduate Series 53 all children” (Fowler, 2009, 125), which I strongly agree with. However, while I do support equal educational opportunity, I do not support the sort of educational equality in which all children are expected to obtain equal results in education. Instead, I support ability grouping in education in an effort to provide every student an equal opportunity to reach his or her highest potential. Christian Democracy, which emphasizes fraternity and equality, just like New Politics Liberalism, object[s] to business conservatism on the grounds that it is based on a cynical view of human nature … believe[s] that democratic leaders should seek to build a humane and just society in which everyone’s basic needs are met, yet people are free to develop their full potential without undue interference from either government or employees … [and] advocate[s] full political democracy, a mixed economy, a moderate welfare state, and participative governance structures in both the private and public sectors. (Fowler, 2009, 128) This is the one ideology with which I most identify, although it is not quite a full representation of my own education ideology. My personal education ideology is a mixture of the traditional values of Religious Conservatism, the equal educational opportunity of New Politics Liberalism, and the “humane and just society [and] moderate welfare state” (Fowler, 2009, 128) of Christian Democracy. It appears that this makes me generally liberalist and strongly religious with an emphasis on Christianity. I agree with this assessment, although there is certainly a conservative sub-stratum to my personal ideology. References: Fowler, F.C. (2009). Policy Studies for Educational Leaders: An Introduction (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Freedom and Equality November 28, 2009 The values for freedom and for equality are important factors in education policy, and are both 'fundamental principle[s] of democracy" (Fowler, 2009, 110). Freedom in education includes "the constitutional right to speak out, to form organizations, and to assemble peacefully ... [and advocates] the adoption of school choice policies, arguing that such policies are an inherent aspect of parents' freedom to raise their children and also of freedom of religion" (Viteritti, 1999, cited in Fowler, 2009. 110). Equality in education "provid[es] every child with access to a public elementary school ... [and] secondary education ... [and] policies were adopted to improve the access of minority children, girls, and the handicapped to various portions of the school system" (Fowler, 2009, 112). As in every aspect of life, educational freedoms are limited by the need for educational equality. Educational freedom ensures teachers' and students' Constitutional freedoms of speech, press, association, and assembly, while educational equality assures that those freedoms do not interfere with the rights of marginalized groups such as racial minorities, girls and women, lowincome and working-class families, people with disabilities, English as a Second Language (ESL) students and teachers, and members of religious minority groups. Freedom of thought provides "access to knowledge, encouragement of open debate, and presentation of a range of ideas" (Fowler, 2009, 111, Fig. 5.3) to students and faculty, and equality in education provides "equality of opportunity ... [and] economic equality ... [to] racial minorities ... girls and women ... people ... with disabilities ... people whose native language is not English ... 54 A Journey Through My College Papers [and] members of religious minority groups" (Fowler, 2009, 113, Fig. 5.4). If a value for freedom is balanced with a value for equality, then education can serve students, parents, and teachers and help them all reach their greatest potential. If a value for freedom is significantly greater than a value for equality, then students, parents, and teachers have the freedom to achieve greatly, but those who are disadvantaged have no protections to ensure that they reach their full potential. If a value for equality is significantly greater than a value for freedom, then each student, parent, and teacher is given the same opportunity to achieve, but their intrinsic human rights and Constitutional rights are not protected and one person's rights may be violated so that another person may reach his or her potential. References: Fowler, F.C. (2009). Policy Studies for Educational Leaders: An Introduction (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. The College Cost Reduction and Access Act 11/28/2009 The College Cost Reduction and Access Act combines the values of equality of opportunity, efficiency, and quality. As such, it appears to fit the new politics liberalism ideology, the social democracy ideology, or a combination of the two. In a summary of the act by the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) (n.d.), published at http://help.senate.gov/HR2669_summary.pdf, it states that the act “will increase access to higher education and ensure our scarce federal dollars are going where they are most needed – to students” (HELP, n.d., para. 1). This mission statement clearly illustrates the three values that have been identified. In Policy Studies for Educational Leaders, Fowler (2009) states that “[e]qual opportunity exists when everyone has a similar chance to get a good education or find a decent job, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, handicapping condition, age, or national origin” (111-112). The College Cost Reduction and Access Act fulfills that definition by “[i]ncreasing access for lowincome students… protecting working students… increase[ing] access to and preparation for college… [and] [p]rotecting students” (HELP, n.d., paras. 2-3, 7). By improving and ensuring educational access to disadvantaged students, the act provides more students with the opportunity to get the best education possible. According to HELP’s summary, then, if the College Cost Reduction and Access Act works as it designed to work, more students from marginalized groups will be able to obtain quality educations in the future than have been able to do so in the past. No student will be discriminated against based on his or her skin color, gender, or almost any other factor outside of academic performance and school or criminal behavior, so that the education system will benefit from increased diversification of students, teachers, and administrators. Also in Policy Studies, Fowler (2009) identifies efficiency as “obtaining the best possible return on an expenditure or investment” (114). HELP’s act accomplishes this by [e]asing the burden on borrowers by cutting student loan interest rates in half… directing unnecessary lender subsidies to student aid… [and] [h]olding colleges accountable for rising costs” (HELP, n.d., paras. 2-7). By reducing student loan interest rates and redirecting funds into student aid, the College Cost Reduction and Access Act increases the number of students who are able to obtain a quality education by making it easier for students who might not otherwise have the opportunity to afford an education. By reducing or removing economic barriers to education, the act will ensure that students of disadvantaged groups may have a realistic opportunity to break out of the mold and move into a world of greater social, economic, and professional advantage. Undergraduate Series 55 Fowler (2009) states that “quality of education usually takes the form of seeking higher, more intellectually demanding standards in school” (117). The College Cost Reduction and Access Act fosters a value of quality in education by “creat[ing] incentives for good teachers to teach in high-need schools by establishing new TEACH Grants… [and] serving many of our nation’s minority students who would not otherwise obtain a degree” (HELP, n.d., paras. 4-6). By placing better teachers in the schools that need them, the act provides schools with the opportunity to provide a higher quality education to their students. Historically, the highest quality educational experiences have only been available to students in middle- to upper-class communities, where students, parents, and teachers feel safe and have access to more resources. The best teachers have traditionally gone to safe, pleasant communities, leaving schools in more dangerous, usually poorer communities to make do with less skilled, less enthusiastic, more stressed teachers to face the additional social challenges inherent in those communities. The College Cost Reduction and Access Act would level the playing field by enticing good teachers to work in communities that need to improve. According to Fowler (2009), “[t]he major values of new politics liberals are equality and fraternity, understood as solidarity within an oppressed group” (125). /based on the College Cost Reduction and Access Act’s value of equality of opportunity, then, the act might fit within the new politics liberalism ideology. In HELP’s summary of the act (n.d.), solidarity among students from minority and other marginalized groups appears to be served in several ways, including “increase[ing] access to and preparation for college by both restoring funding for Upward Bound, a key college access program, and creating College Access Challenge Grants to increase college outreach activities in every state” (HELP, n.d., para. 3). In addition, “[t]he College Cost Reduction and Access Act would invest an additional $500 million in [minority serving] institutions” (HELP, n.d., para. 6), which would improve equality of educational opportunity for minority students. Like new politics liberalism, “[e]quality and fraternity… are the key values for social democrats” (Fowler, 2009, 128), so the College Cost Reduction and Access Act fits into the social democracy ideology in just the same way that it appears to fit into the new politics liberalism ideology. In addition, “social democrats… advocate economic growth” (Fowler, 2009, 128), which meshes well with the act’s commitment to financial improvements, including “increasing the maximum Pell Grant by $500 next year and to $5,400 by 2012, and… increasing the income level at which a student is automatically eligible for the maximum Pell” (HELP, n.d., para. 2), and also by “ensur[ing] the system works for students and sav[ing] taxpayer dollars” (HELP, n.d., para. 5). With these economic considerations, the College Cost Reduction and Access Act may then fit better into social democracy than it fits into new politics liberalism. It is possible that, like most other aspects of life, the College Cost Reduction and Access Act does not actually fit just one ideology, but that it fits a blending of two compatible ideologies. With its three identified social values of equality, efficiency, and quality, the generally liberal College Cost Reduction and Access Act embraces a combined ideology of new politics liberalism and social democracy. References College cost reduction and access act, the: a new commitment to students and families (n.d.). Retrieved November 27, 2009, from the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Web site: http://help.senate.gov/HR2669_summary.pdf Fowler, F.C. (2009). Policy studies for educational leaders: an introduction (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. 56 A Journey Through My College Papers Stop the Bullies December 2, 2009 In the case study "Stop the Bullies" (Fowler, 2009, 164-165), I identified nine separate policy stakeholders that fit descriptions in our text. I initially identified parents and teachers as stakeholders, since they do have a stake in the policies that are enacted, but I did not find appropriate labels for non-organized parents and teachers, as such, in the text, so I did not include them in my final list. I identified one stakeholder from the legislative branch, about which Fowler (2009) says: "[f]ifty-one legislatures exist in the United States: the U.S. Congress and the fifty state legislatures ... A major function of every legislature is, of course, the development and passage of statutes ... [and] legislatures often hold hearings where experts provide testimony on public issues" (142). In the case study, I indentified the Ohio General assembly as being a policy stakeholder from the legislative branch because the Ohio General Assembly is Ohio's legislative body. Fowler (2009) states that "the legislature as a whole [is] quite influential in relation to education policy" (145146). In the case study, I identified two stakeholders from the executive branch. Fowler (2009) tells us that "[a]lthough Marshall et al. (1989) found that governors have considerably less influence on education policy than the legislature, their influence is nonetheless substantial" (146). I identified Governor Taft as one policy stakeholder from the executive branch. "Governor Taft appointed a Commission for Student Success to study the issue and make recommendations" (Fowler, 2009, 164). In doing so, he interacted strongly with the policy process in this case. I also identified the State Board of Education as a policy stakeholder from the executive branch. Fowler (2009) states that "State Boards of Education (SBEs) ... have an important administrative role and ... SBEs are second only to legislatures in exercising direct authority over education policy at the state level" (147). Under the local government heading, I identified "[a]dministrators and their organizations" (Fowler, 2009, 164). "[M]ore superintendents are becoming active in the statelevel policy-making process and seeking to give state officials advice about policy development and evaluation" (Fowler, 2009, 151). The case study identifies two specific superintendents who complained about the situation that was created by the excessive testing and reporting requirements, and also states that "[a]dministrators and their organizations began to criticize both the tests and the district report cards publicly" (Fowler, 2009, 164). I identified three interest groups in the case study: the grassroots group "Stop Ohio Proficiency Tests," the Commission for Student Success, and the Ohio School Board Association. Thomas and Hrebenar (2004) identified an interest group as "an association of individuals or organizations ... that, on the basis of one or more shared concerns, attempts to influence public policy in its favor" (Thomas and Hrebenar, 2004, cited in Fowler, 2009, 152). Of these, the Commission for Student Success and the Ohio School Board Association are education interest groups, and "Stop Ohio Proficiency Tests" is a type of noneducation interest group called a singleissue ideological group. Fowler (2009) tells us that "in recent years, single-issue ideological groups ... have grown in influence in many states" (154). In the case study, we see that members of "Stop Ohio Proficiency Tests" "wrote numerous letters to newspaper editors, appeared on television, gave testimony before the State Board of Education, and held noisy demonstrations on the lawn of the state capitol" (Fowler, 2009, 164). By doing these things, and thus engaging other policy stakeholders in their concerns, the members of "Stop Ohio Proficiency Tests" exercised a great deal of influence on the policy process. Undergraduate Series 57 Under policy planning organizations, which Weiss (1992) says "gather empirical data about public policy issues and then communicate those findings to governments" (Weiss, 1992, cited in Fowler, 2009, 155), I identified the Commission for Student Success, which was set up by Governor Taft. "[Policy-planning organizations] are arguably the most important actors in the policy process" (Fowler, 2009, 155), so the Commission was certainly an important stakeholder in the case study. Finally, I identified the media as a policy stakeholder in the case study. "The mass media ... not only report on policy issues and some stages of the policy process, but are also important actors in it ... Often, such media attention leads the general public and political figures to become so concerned about a problem that they insist it be addressed" (Fowler, 2009, 156). When the members of "Stop Ohio Proficiency Tests" "wrote numerous letters to newspaper editors, [and] appeared on television" (Fowler, 2009, 164), they utilized the media to have a strong impact on the policy process. References: Fowler, F.C. (2009). Policy Studies for Educational Leaders: An Introduction (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Interconnected Policy Agendas December 3, 2009 Figure 7.8 (Fowler, 2009, p. 182) shows how policy agendas relate to one another. At the center of the figure is the stage at which problems are defined. No matter what the policy issue may be, it must begin as a problem that needs to be defined. Problems may be defined by any number of stakeholders, including special interest groups and think tanks, but they are usually defined by research groups. "In the United States, almost all education policy issues are defined within a loosely linked set of institutions that some call the education policy planning and research community (EPPRC)" (Fowler, 2009, p. 170). Once problems are defined, some move to the professional agenda, which "consists of those issues under discussion within various interest groups, education policy networks, and education associations as well as among informed professional educators" (Fowler, 2009, pp. 180181). Although Figure 7.8 (Fowler, 2009, p. 182) shows professional agendas as a smaller circle than the other agendas, the reality is that "far more education policy issues are on the professional agenda than the other agendas can accommodate" (Fowler, 2009, p. 182). Issues on the professional agenda may move directly to the governmental agenda, but some make a concurrent or an interim move to the media agenda or the public agenda, which can include social interest groups or nongovernmental organizations. Because of the nature of the mass media, policy issues that make it to the media agenda are disseminated to the public through television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and over the internet. As the arrows in the figure indicate, when the public becomes aware of policy issues on the media agenda, the issues can become part of a public agenda, which can put pressure on government agencies to move issues to the governmental agenda. Also, when an issue moves from the professional agenda to the public agenda, it is not unusual for special interest groups and private individuals to bring the issue to the media, which also puts pressure on the government to move issues to the governmental agenda. References: Fowler, F.C. (2009). Policy Studies for Educational Leaders: An Introduction (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. 58 A Journey Through My College Papers Implementation Barriers to NCLB December 9, 2009 The major challenge for implementation of NCLB at the federal and state level is "how federal funds are distributed and used" (U.S. Department of Education, Title I School Choice and Supplemental Education Services: Final Report, n.d., para. 1). As Fowler (2009) notes in the text, "[a]nother common mistake is adopting a policy that does not match the resource level of a school or district" (p. 287). A large number of schools that have difficulty meeting the adequate yearly progress (AYP) requirements are in economically disadvantaged districts in urban areas, but "federal funds were more targeted to high-poverty districts than state and local funds but did not close the funding gap between high- and low-poverty districts" (U.S. Department of Education, Accountability Under NCLB: Interim Report, n.d., para. 3). The schools in the high-poverty districts remain disadvantaged despite receiving federal funds, so their students are less able to achieve AYP. Additional challenges are often related to the economic status of a school district. As Kerstin Carlson LeFloch et al. (2007) reported in an article for the U.S. Department of Education, "[h]igh-poverty, high-minority, and urban schools were less likely to make AYP, and many of the schools that were identified for improvement reported needing technical assistance, especially to serve students with special needs, such as those with disabilities or limited English proficiency" (cited in U.S. Department of Education, Accountability Under NCLB: Interim Report, n.d., para. 1). As noted in the news article by J. Anderson (2005), "[i]f one group of students -- white, black, Hispanic, special education, Limited English Proficiency or low-income -- fails to meet all its goals, the school or district is put on a 'school improvement list'" (cited in Fowler, 2009, p. 307). Without adequate resources, many students in these categories cannot reach AYP. Another barrier to the implementation of NCLB is the appropriateness of the policy itself. Fowler (2009) states that policy makers should consider whether "this policy [is] appropriate for our school or district" (p. 286). While it is generally accepted that it is appropriate for every school and district to have high expectations for its students, and for every child to receive support and encouragement to reach his or her fullest potential, it is not appropriate for any school or district to expect every student to achieve the same level of academic performance across all socio-economic groups. Implementing NCLB as it currently exists ignores individuality, uniqueness, talents, and needs in America's students. It punishes schools and districts that work with disadvantaged students, and ultimately punishes the students when schools are closed due to a perennial inability to meet AYP, forcing students to be moved to other schools, which are often already overcrowded and overtaxed by their existing student populations. As Superintendent Williams stated in the article in our text, "[t]o assume that we can assure that every child will be proficient in a system that serves children of a broad spectrum of ability would be similar to saying that we can make every child a proficient athlete, artist,, musician or actor" (Fowler, 2009, p. 307). References: Fowler, F.C. (2009). Policy Studies for Educational Leaders: An Introduction (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Development, Policy and Program Studies Service. (n.d.). State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act: Volume III — Accountability Under NCLB: Interim Report. Retrieved December 8, 2009, from http://www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/RP1303/ Undergraduate Series 59 U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Development, Policy and Program Studies Service. (n.d.). State and Local Implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act: Volume VII — Title I School Choice and Supplemental Education Services: Final Report. Retrieved December 8, 2009, from http://www.rand.org/pubs/reprints/RP1383/ Michigan Legislative Process December 10, 2009 A summary of the Michigan legislative process is available online on a page titled How does a Bill become a Law? at http://www.michigan.gov/som/0,1607,7-192-29701_29704-2836-,00.html . In Michigan, a bill is introduced in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, or jointly by both. "At the beginning of each biennial session, House bills are numbered consecutively starting with House Bill No. 4001 and Senate bills are numbered starting with Senate Bill No. 1. In both houses, joint resolutions are assigned a letter" (State of Michigan, 2004, para. 2). A bill must be introduced twice in the Senate and once in the House, for a total of three times, with at least the title read each time. This corresponds with the top level of the California legislative process shown in Figure 8.2 (Fowler, 2009, p. 201). The bill is then printed and must be "in the possession of each house for at least five days" (State of Michigan, 2004, para. 3). A bill is then referred to a standing committee, where it is discussed and debated. There are eight actions a committee may take on a bill: a. Report the bill with favorable recommendation. b. Report the bill with amendments with favorable recommendation. c. Report a substitute bill in place of the original bill. d. Report the bill without recommendation. e. Report the bill with amendments but without recommendation. f. Report the bill with the recommendation that the bill be referred to another committee. g. Take no action on a bill. h. Vote to not report a bill out of committee. (State of Michigan, 2004, para. 6). “In both houses, a majority vote of the members serving on a committee is necessary to report a bill” (State of Michigan, 2004, para. 8). In some cases, a bill is not reported, which then requires further action. Once a bill is favorably reported, the bill is moved to General Orders or to a Second Reading, depending on in which house it originated. A House bill that advances then receives a Third Reading. At this point, a bill is either passed or defeated by a roll call vote of the majority of the members elected and serving … or one of the following four options is exercised to delay final action on the bill: (a) the bill is returned to committee for further consideration; (b) consideration of the bill is postponed indefinitely; (c) consideration is postponed until a certain date; or (d) the bill is tabled. (State of Michigan, 2004, para. 11) The vote may still be reconsidered if a legislator questions it, with reconsideration in the Senate within the next two days of the session and reconsideration in the House within the next day of the session. 60 A Journey Through My College Papers In Michigan, a bill must be printed and be “in the possession of each house for at least five days” (Constitution, Art. IV, Sec. 26, cited in State of Michigan, 2004, para. 13) before it can become a law, and it cannot take effect until at least 90 days after the end of the session. In order for a bill to be enacted into law by the Michigan legislature, once it passes in one house it must be sent to the other house and go through the same process in the other house, just as it is stated in the Schoolhouse Rock video I’m Just a Bill (McCall, 1975). Once a bill passes through both houses in an identical form, the bill is enrolled in the originating house, printed again, and sent to the Governor. If it is not in an identical form, any amendments must be accepted in the house of origin before it can go on, or it has to go to a committee to work out a compromise between the houses concerning the changes. Once a bill finally reaches the Governor, the Governor must act on the bill in one of three ways within 14 days. The Governor may sign the bill into law; the Governor may veto the bill, which causes the bill to be returned to the house of origin; or the Governor may choose to neither sign nor veto the bill. If the Legislature has not adjourned, bills that are neither signed nor vetoes become law after the 14 days. If the Legislature has adjourned before the 14 days end, bills that are neither signed nor vetoed do not become laws. “The Legislature may override the veto by a two-thirds vote of the members elected to and serving in each house. The bill then becomes law” (State of Michigan, 2004, para. 19). If the Legislature does not vote to override a veto, the bill may fail, it may be tabled for future consideration, or it may be returned to a committee to try again to pass it. References: Fowler, F.C. (2009). Policy Studies for Educational Leaders: An Introduction (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. McCall, D. (1975). I'm just a bill. [Video]. Retrieved December 9, 2009, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuI2oa5Stk State of Michigan. (2004, March 29). How does a bill become a law? Retrieved December 9, 2009, from the State of Michigan Web site at http://www.michigan.gov/som/0,1607,7-192-29701_29704-2836--,00.html Theoretical Frameworks December 16, 2009 After reviewing Fowler's (2009) four theoretical frameworks to evaluate education policy historically (pp. 334-336), I believe the current turbulence in education policy is caused by an ongoing shift from basic, localized education to globalized education. The world has become much smaller because of rapid advances in electronic and digital communications, and as world markets become more homogeneous, so do "the school systems around the world ... becom[e] more like each other" (Fowler, 2009, p. 336). This fits with the theoretical framework of international convergence described by Fowler (2009, p. 336). At the same time, there appears to be a shift from bureaucratic and professional structures in America's education system to more of a market structure. This shift, described by Fowler (2009) as institutional choice (p. 335) produces turbulence as American students transition from having "clearly defined role[s]" (Fowler, 2009, p. 335) in an ordered hierarchy to being consumers in a competitive atmosphere. Education in the United States has been largely bureaucratic for much of its history, with parents, students, teachers, and administrators knowing how education worked, what to expect, and how to interact with one another. Although a shift to an educational market will ultimately bring about "efficient operations and high-quality products" (Fowler, 2009, Undergraduate Series 61 p. 336), meaning improved educations for students, the transitional period is, by necessity, more turbulent than earlier times have been, as the parents, students, teachers, and administrators adjust to a world where choice replaces routines and where schools and districts adjust their educational, social, and other products to attract student-consumers and to provide more consumer satisfaction to America's society. It is to be hoped that this transition will be able to progress smoothly so that the resulting turbulence can be reduced, and eventually eliminated, as quickly as possible. It is reasonable to expect that, once the turbulence of transition has passed, education in the United States will be better than it has been in a very long time. References: Fowler, F.C. (2009). Policy Studies for Educational Leaders: An Introduction (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Policy Evaluation December 17, 2009 It is essential for education leaders to understand policy evaluation because the results of evaluations can affect what policies are and are not adopted in a district or state. By understanding policy evaluation, education leaders can prepare for the results of evaluations and can avoid being blindsided when a policy fails because it does not take important factors into account, as happened in "The Middle school Proposal Goes Down in Flames" (Fowler, 2009, pp. 329-330), or when an undesirable policy is passed. It is necessary for education leaders to not only understand policy evaluation in general, but also to understand the differences among the several types of evaluations. It is one thing to go through a summative evaluation of a long-standing policy, to maintain funding or authorization; it is another thing entirely to go through a politically controlled study to determine whether it is politically expedient to continue a policy, or to go through a public relations evaluation, in which the results "must be positive, [and] must add luster to the public image that has already been created" (Fowler, 2009, p. 317). If an education leader is undergoing a public relations evaluation but believes he or she is actually going through a summative evaluation, the leader might easily cause the evaluation to go in a way other than the way the commissioner of the evaluation wants it to go. An education leader who knows and understands the several types of evaluations will be better able to facilitate the creation of the type of results that are needed for the particular policy evaluation. In addition, if an education leader understands policy evaluation, he or she may guard against "the standard approaches to derailing a successful study" (Fowler, 2009, p. 322). This vigilance is necessary due to "the inherently political nature of policy evaluation" (Fowler, 2009, p. 321). In our case study, the panel that recommended the switch to a middle school organization failed to address the needs of certain stakeholders, thus failing in the area of feasibility (Fowler, 2009, pp. 315-316), when it did not address the "leadership ... [of the] sixth-grade students" (Fowler, 2009, p. 329) that the elementary school would lose, or the "potential over-crowding" (Fowler, 2009, p. 329) of the high school if the proposed policy was adopted. If the education leaders who made up the panel had been more familiar with policy evaluation, they might have considered the concerns and addressed both the concerns and possible responses to the concerns in their recommendations. 62 A Journey Through My College Papers References: Fowler, F.C. (2009). Policy Studies for Educational Leaders: An Introduction (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. PSY 202: Adult Development and Life Assessment Response to the RALI exercise September 28, 2009 I did the RALI exercise before reading the assigned chapters of Boyd and Bee's Adult Development in order to see what preconceived ideas I might have about adult learners. I had three errors on the RALI exercise: 14. Compared with youth, adults usually require a longer time to perform learning tasks. 16. Age in itself does little to affect an individual's power to learn. 31. A major change in distance acuity occurs between 50 and 60 years of age. I believed that the first two of these were false and that the third was true. Numbers 14 and 16 deal with mental abilities. I based my answers on my own experiences with learning new skills at the same time my two sons, now ages 9 and 8, were learning them. In almost every case, I have performed the learning tasks more quickly than my sons have performed them, and my elder son has performed the learning tasks more quickly than his younger brother has performed them. I believed that any perception that adults take longer to learn things than younger people take was due to ageism (Boyd and Bee, 10). Similarly, I read number 16 as meaning a negative effect, and I felt that a belief that increased age has a negative effect on a person's power to learn would be a result of ageism. After reading the text, I understand that age does appear to have a negative correlation to memory functions. Figure 1.2 clearly illustrates this negative correlation if one allows for a slight aberration in the 30s (Boyd and Bee, 13). Number 31 deals with physiological factors. I believed that a major change in distance acuity does occur between 50 and 60 years of age. According to the grading key at the end of the RALI exercise, there is a sharp decline in vision from age 40 to 55, which is somewhat younger than what I believed it would be. The assigned text dealt with development in children. Although I did read about memory abilities in older adults, and there was some mention of the different roles of older adults in Western cultures as contrasted with other cultures, I did not see any discussion or research which would suggest an age at which an adult's vision would be expected to decline. I found the text interesting and engaging, although I covered most of it in my general psychology class last fall. The RALI exercise was also interesting, and I was somewhat surprised to find that the majority of my ideas about adult development were supported by the exercise. Skinner's Operant Conditioning September 29, 2009 B. F. Skinner's theory of operant conditioning, which is discussed in the Boyd and Bee text Adult Development, says that learning occurs in response to desirable and undesirable stimuli. Skinner divided the stimuli in operant conditioning into two groups: reinforcements and punishments. Reinforcements cause the learner to continue behaviors which produce pleasant or desirable experiences. Punishments cause the learner to cease behaviors which produce unpleasant or desirable experiences (Boyd and Bee, 30-31). Undergraduate Series 63 As a parent of two children in elementary school, I deal with reinforcements and punishments every day. When my sons behave as I wish them to behave, such as by cleaning their bedroom, eating sensible meals, and going to bed without a fuss, they are reinforced in these behaviors by being allowed to play on the internet, by being allowed to eat dessert, and by having me read to them, respectively. When my sons behave in ways they are not supposed to behave, on the other hand, such as by fighting with others, by telling lies, and by not coming home when they are expected to come home, they are punished by being sent to bed early, by being spanked, and by being grounded from playing at their friends' houses, also respectively. Through consistent use of these and other reinforcements and punishments, I have been able to begin conditioning my sons so that they are much more likely to exhibit the desired behaviors than they are likely to exhibit the undesired behaviors. It is my personal experience that reinforcement is more effective in the long term than punishment, but that it is sometimes necessary to employ punishments to stop undesirable behaviors in order to keep people safe. It is necessary to consider what behaviors have been reinforced and what behaviors have been punished during a person's life, especially during childhood and adolescence, when dealing with an adult who exhibits unexpected or undesirable behaviors. Often, such an adult was rewarded for aggressive or otherwise negative behavior as a child, or that adult witnessed another person who was or appeared to be rewarded for such behavior. It is very difficult to overcome childhood conditioning as an adult, but it is my experience that reinforcing an adult's acceptable or desirable behaviors is more effective than punishing the adult's undesirable behaviors in trying to override and replace the adult's conditioning with conditioning that will help the adult function in society. It is also necessary to keep in mind that, although we tend to think of reinforcements and punishments as responses which come from people, every action or behavior also has natural reinforcements and punishments, some of which may be at odds with those that come from people. Eating a piece of milk chocolate is reinforced by the sweet, pleasant flavor of the candy, while eating a raw chili pepper is punished by the harsh, burning flavor of the pepper. In society, however, eating chocolate is often punished by negative comments about indulgence or about eating excess calories, while eating peppers is rewarded by positive comments about their nutritional value or about eating "grown up" foods. Of course, not all natural reinforcements and punishments are in conflict with social reinforcements and punishments. Touching a thorn is punished by the pain of a prick to stop a behavior which can cause harm, for example. Holland's Hypothesis on Personalities October 5, 2009 John Holland hypothesized that an individual will fit into one of six predictable personality types, and that he or she will usually choose a vocation that matches his or her personality (Boyd and Bee, 105-106). Table 4.1 lists the six personality types as realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional, and gives a brief description of each type (Boyd and Bee, 106). From my experience in dealing with friends, family, and coworkers over the last two decades or so, I agree with Holland's hypothesis. I have seen that the people who are the most successful and productive are those who work in fields which most closely match their personalities. While anyone can do any job of which he or she is physically and mentally capable, he or she will tend to do substantially better at a job for which he or she is also suited by personality, or by temperament. 64 A Journey Through My College Papers I have taken numerous personality tests through the years, usually associated with employment applications, with beginning volunteer activities, or with beginning educational activities. Almost every test I have taken has had almost exactly the same result, placing me in Holland's artistic personality type with a lesser tendency toward Holland's investigative personality type. I have found that these results are accurate, and that I do my best work in "unstructured, highly individual activity" (Boyd and Bee, 106), and that, to a lesser extent, I "prefer ambiguous, challenging tasks, but [am] low in social skills" (Boyd and Bee, 106). References Boyd, D., and Bee, H. (2006). Adult Development. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. The Endless Change Rule October 8, 2009 In LifeLaunch, Hudson and McLean (2006) report that the Endless Change Rule states: "Conducting the journey is more important than the destinations, since all arrivals are temporary. There are no steady-state resting places, only continuous change throughout all the years of our life" (39-40). Simply put, life is about changes. The strengths of this rule are:  that it discourages a person from becoming complacent in life, thus reducing the likelihood that life will stagnate;  that it reflects observable conditions in the natural world, of which humans are still a part, despite the trappings of civilization; and  that living by this rule prepares a person for the inevitable changes of life -- growing up, getting married, having children, letting adult children go, retiring, and dying -- so that those changes may be faced more calmly, and may be assimilated into the person's life. The weaknesses of this rule are:  that accepting a life of changes may cause a person to seek change more often than is natural for life, thus creating instability in the person's life;  that it fails to take into account the possibility that some things in life, such as basic, moral values, may not change significantly once maturity is reached; and  that it provides the opportunity for a person to have an excuse for not making lasting commitments in life. The Endless Change Rule reflects Levinson's model of adult development, illustrated in Adult Development, in which "[e]ach stable life structure is followed by a period of transition in which that structure is re-examined" (Boyd and Bee, 2006, 89). Hudson and McLean (2006) state that "competent persons need to know how to renew themselves, over and over" (40). This echoes Levinson's theory, which says that "individuals respond psychologically to these tasks and conflicts by creating new life structures" (Boyd and Bee, 2006, 89). The Endless Change Rule is a stage rule, as each period of change represents a stage in a person's life. I don't believe the rule represents any one level of moral reasoning, as change begins with conception and occurs repeatedly throughout every age of life. In fact, each level of moral reasoning could be seen as a change in a person's life. Each of the major psychoanalytic theories fits into the Endless Change Rule. Freud's three personality parts (Boyd and Bee, 2006, 24) -- id, ego, and superego -- each represent a change in a person's personality and consciousness. Erikson's psychosocial stages (Boyd and Bee, 2006, 27) represent eight specific periods of personality changes in a person's life. Each of the major Undergraduate Series 65 behaviorists, such as Pavlov, Skinner, and Bandura, describes how changes in behavior occur through various forms of learning (Boyd and Bee, 2006, 29-32). In the online article "Rules For Life: The 12 New Rules" (http://www.lightconnection.org/libraryofinformation/articles/rulesforlife.htm) by Frederic Hudson and Pam McLean (2000), authors of LifeLaunch, it states that "[g]lobal change is the major force in your life, and in the lives of everyone on earth" (para. 2). The article further says that "[y]our life is an adventure, a journey through time. There are no lasting arrival points and few lasting endings" (para. 4). For me, this is a good description of the Endless Change Rule. Family and Work Changes October 14, 2009 The most challenging family-related change in this period of my life is a positive challenge, not a negative one. I am engaged to be married, and I am helping my children adjust to living with my fiancé and accepting him as part of their parent group. I am very happy and excited as I go through this change, but I am also apprehensive because I have a very bad track record with relationships in general and with romantic relationships in particular, and I am afraid this happy, harmonious, stable period will not last. My most challenging work-related change is my enrollment in college, which i hope will be a precursor to beginning meaningful employment. I have only worked for a handful of months in the last dozen or more years, having been a stay-at-home wife and mother for most of that time. I think I have been stuck in an area between Erikson's identity-versus-role confusion stage and his intimacy-versus-isolation stage (Boyd and Bee, 2006, 27) for a good deal longer than many adults, partly because of the effects of clinical depression and partly because of a pervading social awkwardness that began in early childhood and was exacerbated by the combined shocks of my parents' divorce and my best friend's suicide in my early teens. I think I need to move through Erikson's stages into his generativity-versus-stagnation stage (Boyd and Bee, 2006, 141), as "generativity is positively related to satisfaction in life and work and to emotional well-being" (Ackerman, Zuroff, & Moskowitz, 2000, cited in Boyd and Bee, 2006, 141). I will need that satisfaction and well-being to succeed in this change in my life. Reaction to Writing a Paper October 14, 2009 Writing a paper feels very familiar and comfortable to me. I was in a face-to-face college setting last year, where I took composition in the fall semester and composition and analysis in the spring semester, generating about a dozen planned papers, several impromptu papers, and a 30page thesis paper between the two semesters. I greatly enjoy writing most of the time, and also write for pleasure. I have some concerns about adjusting to the APA formatting, as all of my educational experiences to date have included MLA, but keeping Ashford Guide for Academic and Career Success at hand so I can refer to the APA examples will help me adjust to the differences. My other concern is the need to contain my writing in a maximum number of pages, but practicing succinct writing and minimizing descriptive and explanatory elements in my writing will help me overcome that concern. 66 A Journey Through My College Papers With Six Months to Live October 15, 2009 If I knew that I was going to die in six months, my primary concern would be my two sons. I would spend every possible minute with them, building as many strong, happy memories for them as possible. I would teach them things they have been asking me to teach them, such as cooking and sewing, and I would take them to the zoo, to the science museum, and to pretty much anywhere they wanted to go, as often as possible. I would spend lots of time reading books to them and playing their favorite board and card games with them. Most importantly, I would tell them, and Pat, how much I love them all as often as possible, and tell them how proud I am of them, and how much I believe it them. I would spend the time when the boys were in school securing their future. I would move up our wedding so that Pat would have a stronger legal claim to raise the boys. I would push to settle the custody issues with my ex-husband so that Lewis would not get custody of the boys once I was gone. I would write my will, giving Pat and my mother joint custody of my sons, and I would verify with CitiCorp that my sons would eventually receive my share of the family trust when my father died. I would spend any unaccounted-for time printing and binding two copies of the book of memories that I wrote over the last ten years, and that is waiting on my computer, so that my sons would each get a copy. I would gather all of my remaining artwork and photos and give them, along with my grandmother's pearls and our mementos box, to Pat, so that he would already have control of those things and could preserve them for the boys without having to worry about possible difficulties in probate. I would prepare a third copy of my memories book, with special annotations, and give all three copies to Pat so he could give the first two copies to my sons and the annotated copy to my mother. That would accomplish not only sharing my memories, but also clearing my conscience by providing my mother with complete explanations of certain facets of my life that I have kept from her up to now, and by providing my children less explicit accounts of those same events. I would also take the precaution of leaving Pat a letter so that he would know to give the annotated copy of the book to my sister, Patty, if my mother was not alive or was not mentally capable of receiving the book, and to save it until my sons were adults and give it to them if neither my mom nor my sister could receive it. I would write love letters and apology letters to several dozen people from my past for a range of unfinished issues, and leave the letters with Pat, to be delivered after I was gone. I would not try to gather a lot of material goods, to travel to exotic locations, or to binge on food, alcohol, or drugs, as I have heard others say they would do in such a circumstance. None of these things is truly important to me. I would continue taking my medications so as not to reduce my time any more than it was already reduced. I feel secure in my relationship with God, and with the condition of my soul. With the letters I mentioned, my conscience would be clear on any remaining concerns, and I would be prepared to move on. The Life Maps October 27, 2009 In creating the five maps, I considered aspects of adult life that I had not considered or that I had taken for granted before this point. I have known for some time that life is a series of changes or cycles, but working on Map 1 showed me a clear pattern for these changes, and Undergraduate Series 67 presented me with a phase called cocooning which I had not previously recognized in the changes which make up my life (Hudson and McLean, 2006). Map 2 challenged me to identify the passions that are important at this stage of my life, and to consider which passions I may expect to embrace as I move through middle age into my elder years. In this process, I realized that my development has been retarded in some ways, and that I am experiencing in my middle years some passions that I think most adults experience much earlier in life. Map 3 made me look at the five major adult roles, and how I distribute my time and energy among those roles. I realized that I spend far more time and energy between family and work/school roles than I spend on personal or couple roles, and also that this discrepancy has been reducing over the past year. Map 3 also made me consider how my commitments to the various roles in my life are likely to change in the future. Examining the adult life cycle in Map 4 reinforced for me the fact that "[t]rue maturity is based upon... experience, not... your chronological age" (Hudson and McLean, 2006, 88-89). It made me look back at the cycle of changes from map 1, and to consider that the stages of adult life that are illustrated in Hudson and McLean (2006, 89) are a series of transitions. It also made me consider anew the reality that "dying is the final stage of living" (Hudson and McLean, 2006, 104), rather than something apart from life. Map 5 was particularly pertinent to my current life, since I returned to formal schooling in my middle years, when "[a]dult learning is most frequently related to experiential concerns, not to formal instruction" (Hudson and McLean, 2006, 109). I have always believed that learning is a lifelong activity, and it was no surprise to me to read about experiential learning, nor was it a surprise to read about the need to unlearn previous knowledge in order to learn new information. Creating the five life maps did not help me in writing my paper, as I had already written my paper before I created them. I did, however, go back to my rough draft before I submitted it and added some thoughts from map 1 to my paper, which focused on life as a series of changes. Institutional Outcomes October 27, 2009 The Ashford Institutional Outcomes set out the most basic, minimum expectations that the faculty and staff of Ashford University have for each and every student who graduates from Ashford. As a future teacher, each of the outcomes applies directly to my chosen program of study. As a teacher, I will be required to read, think, and communicate effectively. In our rapidly changing world, it will be necessary to communicate through technology, some of which we may only imagine at this point. In order to deal with students, I will certainly need to possess a strong sense of self-worth, and to respect diversity and to recognize the interdependence of all life. The rest of the institutional outcomes should be equally applicable to students in all programs of study, particularly the ability to demonstrate competence in the student's field of study, as that is the purpose of obtaining an education. It is important for an institution to identify institutional outcomes and learning outcomes to establish a benchmark for evaluating the success of the institution's programs. Ashford's institutional outcomes are worded fairly loosely, so that application of the outcomes can be subjective, and so that most students can reasonably achieve the outcomes. Search the Web to determine how the first three presidents (or any groups of presidents) affected the powers of the presidency. Respond to at least two of your classmates’ postings. 68 A Journey Through My College Papers Spring Semester, 2010 HIS 324: History of American Education Forces in Education 1/5/2010 The medieval tradition in education was based largely on religion, in the form of the Catholic Church, and was not available to most people in the early part of the period. As Robert Guisepi (n.d.) reports in his History of Education, "[i]n the early Middle Ages the elaborate Roman school system had disappeared. Mankind in 5th-century Europe might well have reverted almost to the level of primitive education had it not been for the medieval church, which preserved what little Western learning had survived the collapse of the Roman Empire" (para. 22). This religious orientation in education impacted early American education, which relied heavily on the Bible and religious teaching, as illustrated by Pulliam and VanPatten (2007) in our text: "[a]t the dawn of the eighteenth century ... [l]earning ... is considered a serious matter and a duty for every child. Today the opening exercise is a lecture on the behavior God expects from good children and the consequences of failure to meet those expectations" (p. 7). The greatest impact of the European Renaissance on education was the invention in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg of the printing press. As reported in our text by Pulliam and VanPatten (2007), "the most salient invention [of the past 1,000 years] in terms of its impact on human life and culture originated as educational technology" (p. 2). The Renaissance is known as the "rebirth of learning" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 21). It spanned about three centuries, and turned the emphasis of education away from religion and toward human concerns, "art, literature, and the government" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 21). According to Steven Kreis (2000), "Renaissance culture adapted itself to conditions unknown in Italy, such as the growth of the monarchical state and the strength of lay piety ... Intensely Christian and at the same time anticlerical (shades of what was to come!), the people ... found in Renaissance culture the tools for sharpening their wits against the clergy -- not to undermine faith, but restore its ancient apostolic purity" (para. 1). This rise in secular education was enabled by the growing "availability of books at a low cost" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 21) that was made possible by Gutenberg's printing press. Along with the ready availability of the written word and the associated rapid dissemination of information, the effect of the European Renaissance on modern education may be seen in the secularization of public education. Scientific thinking in the 16th to 18th Centuries grew out of the "classical humanism of the Renaissance period ... [as] commercial interests and cultural diversity gave rise to the growth of scientific facts and methods" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 21). These centuries exploded with the discoveries of men whose names are household words in modern America: daVinci, Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Boyle, Newton, Descartes, among others. Although the scientific methods that were developed during this period were not embraced in American education until the period was ending in the 18th Century, the impact of the period of scientific thought may be seen in almost every modern American classroom. The scientific method is a common feature in our public schools today, and is taught from kindergarten through high school and college. The Protestant Reformation gave rise to "universal education for all children, regardless of wealth ... [and] Protestants also provided secondary education of higher quality for the elite destined to enter positions in the government or the Church" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 22). Undergraduate Series 69 The impact of this educational movement is felt today as universal public education for all children, and is echoed in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which provides equal education for all American children. Separatism, which came out of the religious reformation period, also impacts modern education in our policy of the separation of church and state, and in the subsequent removal of religion from most public classrooms. Separatism "denied the establishment of religion and held that each man must be free to worship as he thought fit" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 23). References Guisepi, R. (n.d.). The history of education. Retrieved January 5, 2010, from http://historyworld.org/history_of_education.htm Kreis, S. (2000). The printing press. Lectures on modern European intellectual history. Retrieved January 5, 2010, from http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/press.html Pulliam. J.D. and VanPatten, J.J. (2007). History of education in America. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. Learning Stages 1/7/2010 Gagné and Piaget both espoused theories of learning stages in the development of a learner. Their theories are similar, in that each theory begins with learning very basic skills and progresses by adding more complex concepts in a clear sequence. Gagné and Piaget differed, however, in the way they believed learning was determined. Gagné believed that "developmental stages of learning ... are determined by what is to be learned" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 70). He did not believe that a learner's age or maturity was as important to learning as making sure that learning occurred in the right order. He stressed the sequence of learning, stating that "no learning stage can be skipped" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 70). Piaget differed from Gagné in that Piaget believed that the stages of learning are regulated by the learner's age and maturity, with specific types of learning taking place at each given age range. Piaget's "stages or levels are related, but they are determined by a combination of age and experience" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 71). Taken together, Gagné's and Piaget's theories are useful in the organization of curriculum to optimize learning in today's classrooms. It is already a common practice to organize curricula so that simpler concepts are taught before more complex concepts. By the nature of linear time, then, the simpler concepts of Gagné's theory are taught during the earlier age ranges of Piaget's theory. For example, with the exception of children with special needs, who must be considered apart from children with normal development, children in the United States usually learn to recite the alphabet by age 3 or 4, after which they learn to recognize and identify the letters of the alphabet and to arrange them in order. The vast majority of children then learn to recognize simple words before learning to put words together to form written sentences. This building concept upon concept continues as students learn progressively more complex words, sentences, and, eventually, literary forms. Problems arise when educators try to take either Gagné or Piaget without the other. In general, Piaget was correct in his assessment of what kind of learning takes place at what age, but there is a wide range of learning abilities in American students, and some students learn much faster or much more slowly than the norm. It is an unfortunate habit, in my experience with public 70 A Journey Through My College Papers schools over the last ten years, for educators to require all students to learn at the speed of the average student, leaving faster students frustrated with boredom and slower students floundering and struggling to catch up. Although Maria Montessori, founder of the Montessori method, did not agree with Piaget in regard to the specific ages at which children learn specific material, Piaget "was heavily influenced by Montessori and her method" (Enright, 1997, para. 6). Thus, although Montessori predated Piaget, a similar concept to Piaget's theory of developmental learning continues in the popular Montessori schools, which "cover infant education through matriculation from high school" (Kennedy, 2010, para. 3). The combined theories of learning stages contribute to education in that students build up their knowledge and are better able to retain and use the information they have acquired at earlier stages as they use that earlier learning to accomplish later learning. This is particularly useful in teaching math concepts, in which Gagné's idea that "[s]kills should be learned on [sic] at a time and each new skill should build on previously acquired skills" (Dahlen and Kumrow, 1999, para. 6) allows students to learn simple concepts first, and to use those as a foundation on which to build more complex concepts. Gagné's learning stages, which are not age-dependent, are also useful for teaching students with learning delays, including Autism. According to Equidel's (2007) Web site, Theoretical Foundations, "children with Autism are more attentive and motivated, are less resistant to learning, and exhibit a reduction of nonproductive learning behaviors" (para. 2) when presented with computer assisted instruction (CAI) that is "developed on the tenets of Gagné's (1970) instructional design. In Gagné's theory, a specified list of building blocks is called a learning hierarchy. To teach a specific skill, a teacher must first identify its prerequisite skills and make sure that the student possesses them" (Equidel, 2007, para. 5). Thus, using learning stages in a special education environment can enable students who are not able to learn at a normal pace to learn at their own pace, and to build on what they have already learned. References Dahlen, B. and Kumrow, D. (1999). Learning theory. Retrieved January 7, 2010, from http://www.csulb.edu/dkumrow/conference/learning_theory.html Enright, M. (1997, August). Foundations study guide: Montessori education. Retrieved January 7, 2010, from http://www.objectivistcenter.org/showcontent.aspx?ct=48&h=44 Equidel. (2007). Theoretical foundations. Retrieved January 7, 2010, from http://www.computhera.com/theo.html Kennedy, R. (2010). What is a Montessori school? Retrieved January 7, 2010, from http://privateschool.about.com/od/privateschoolfaqs/f/montessori.htm Pulliam. J.D. and VanPatten, J.J. (2007). History of education in America. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. Colonial Education 1/12/2010 Early education in the American colonies, particularly the Massachusetts Bay Colony, "ranked as a high priority" (Zellner, 2003, para. 1). Colonial schools were controlled by Puritans, and children's education included reading, writing, simple math, poems, and prayers ... [t]he boys studied higher math, Greek, Latin, science, celestial navigation ..., geography, history, fencing, social etiquette, and plantation management ... [g]irls learned enough Undergraduate Series 71 reading, writing, and arithmetic to read their Bibles and be able to record household expenses. (Colonial Education, n.d., paras. 1-3). These were the earliest public schools in America, and "the first 'public school' was established in 1635" (Massachusetts Bay Colony, n.d., para. 15). These schools were the free Latin schools, and "[a]ll the students in the Latin grammar school hoped to be admitted to a college" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 98). These public schools were funded by taxes, and attendance was free for all students. The first of these schools evolved into Harvard College. Schools in the Middle Colonies were "sponsored by many different kinds of religious denominations, rather than just the Puritan Church" (Colonial Education, n.d., para. 5). During the Revolutionary period in the Middle Colonies, particularly in Pennsylvania, "parents taught their children to read and write at home using a bible and a hornbook" (Early National Education, n.d., para. 1). The population of the Middle Colonies was more diverse than the population in New England, and "they tended to develop many kinds of schools" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 92). This era and region saw the Quaker schools, which "were excellent in quality ... [and] taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and probably bookkeeping as well as religion" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 93). These schools were not only for affluent boys, but also for poor students and for girls. The academy also appeared in the Middle Colonies, although "[t]he academy, a terminal secondary school that prepared students for a vocation, did not become highly significant until the national period" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 94). Where the early educational focus in New England had been on religion and theology, the educational focus in the Middle Colonies was on a "practical education" (Colonial Education, n.d., para. 5). Southern society "emphasized the enjoyment of the cultured life, which included gambling, dancing, literature, music, art, books, and the breeding of fine horses" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 87). Religion did not direct education as it did in the North, and "Governor Sir William Berkeley of Virginia held that every man should instruct his own children according to his means" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 88). A wide variety of educational forms existed in the South, largely due to the social inequalities of the region. While Dame schools, which "involved parents leaving their children with a neighborhood lady ... who would teach the children their letters ..., numbers, and prayers while she went about her daily tasks" (Colonial Education, n.d., para. 6), are among the best known of the educational forms of the South, an interesting school of this area was the old field school. This type of elementary school was "built by members of a community on one of the fallow 'old' fields that had lost its productivity through overuse" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 90). These schools were community controlled, and they generally included "provision[s] for impoverished scholars" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, pp. 90-91). Contrasted with early education in New England and with education in the Middle Colonies, education in the South was more secularized and more utilitarian. References History of education in America, The. (n.d.). "Colonial education." Retrieved January 12, 2010, from http://www.chesapeake.edu/library/EDU_101/eduhist_colonial.asp -- "Early national education." Retrieved January 12, 2010, from http://www.chesapeake.edu/library/EDU_101/eduhist_earlynat.asp Massachusetts Bay Colony. (n.d.). Retrieved January 12, 2010, from http://www.quaqua.org/pilgrim.htm Pulliam. J.D. and VanPatten, J.J. (2007). History of education in America. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. Zellner, C. (2003). The schools in Charlestown: An historical sketch. Retrieved January 12, 2010, from http://www.charlestownonline.net/schools.htm 72 A Journey Through My College Papers American Leaders 1/13/2010 Noah Webster quite literally defined education in early America. In his first dictionary, which gave rise to a series of dictionaries in America that are still in use today, Webster (1828) defined education as The bringing up, as a child, instruction; formation of manners. Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline, which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts and science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties. (Webster, 1828, cited in Shenandoah, 2002, para. 2). Webster espoused the importance of education for girls as well as for boys, and he believed that "all American children could learn the virtues of liberty, just laws, morality, hard work, and patriotism" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 117). To that end, Webster supported the government's formation of free, public schools, and he wrote numerous textbooks that contained "a strong patriotic and nationalistic flavor" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 117). Where Webster was the dictionary for early American education, Thomas Jefferson's approach to understanding the entirety of the intelligible world, natural and human, and each in relation to each other was encyclopedic in the original meaning of the word; that is it aimed at the development of an all inclusive knowledge of facts related to each other within a continuum of natural historical life. (Sparagana, 2002, para. 10). Jefferson believed that literacy was the key to a successful life, and "[h]e embraced education as the equalizer for all children" (Sparagana, 2002, para. 4). Jefferson saw education and learning as a life-long endeavor, and he divided formal schooling into three parts, which correspond to our modern system of education. His elementary schools, which taught "Grecian, Roman, English and American history as well as reading, writing and arithmetic" (Brulatour, n.d., para. 3), corresponded to our modern elementary schools, although he believed that "three years of public schooling" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 117) was sufficient for "the average citizen who belonged to the 'laboring' class" (Sparagana, 2002, para. 3). Jefferson's male-only grammar schools, which taught "Greek, Latin, and English grammar, advanced arithmetic, geometry, navigation, and geography" (Brulatour, n.d., para. 3), corresponded to our modern middle and high schools. Girls were excluded from this advanced education, and Jefferson is quoted as saying: "A plan of female education has never been a subject of systematic contemplation with me. It has occupied my attention only so far only as the education of my own daughters occasionally required" (Jefferson, n.d., cited in Brulatour, n.d., para. 4). Finally, Jefferson's structure of formal schooling included the university, in which "requirements were limited to a proficiency in Latin and Greek—a graduate had to be able to read and understand the classics with ease; although scientific studies were encouraged students were free to attend any class and 'listen to whatever he thinks may improve the condition of his mind'" (Brulatour, n.d., para. 3), and which corresponded to our modern colleges and universities. In addition, Jefferson set the stage for the exclusion of religion from schools, believing that "histories, not bibles, should be put in the ands [sic] of children, so that 'their memory may be stored with the most useful facts' from ancient and modern times" (Sparagana, 2002, para. 13). He also "dividing the states into small districts ... [which Undergraduate Series 73 would] supervis[e] and support ... the schools" (Brulatour, n.d., para. 2), which eventually gave rise to our modern school districts. References Brulatour, M. (n.d.). Background for the state of education in New England: postRevolutionary War to mid-19th century. Retrieved January 12, 2010, from http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/ideas/edhistory.html Pulliam. J.D. and VanPatten, J.J. (2007). History of education in America. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. Shenandoah, A. (2002, March 4). History of America's education: Noah Webster & education in early America, second of three parts. Retrieved January 12, 2010, from http://www.american-partisan.com/cols/2002/shenandoah/qtr1/0304.htm Sparagana, J. (2002, May 13). The educational theory of Thomas Jefferson. Retrieved January 12, 2010, from http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Jefferson.html National Standards in Education 1/15/2010 Since the beginning of our country, there has been a struggle between those who would have education controlled by a national government and those who believed that education should be controlled on a local or, at most, by each state. This conflict continues today as the United States government seeks to impose national academic standards on education and opponents of national standards argue that “[t]he absence of any specific mention of education [in the U.S. Constitution], coupled with the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, renders education a state function” (Guthrie, 2010, para. 3). Although it is true that the U.S. Constitution, in containing no specific provision for education, gives control of education to the states by default, the challenges of the current global community demand that American education become standardized so that the United States may be able to keep up and compete with the other advanced nations of the world. An examination of recent reports on American education will support the claim that the time has come for the adoption of national educational standards, and that the majority of Americans agree with this view. The U.S. Constitution is the ultimate law in the United States, and it defines what may and may not be legislated by the federal government. In so doing, it also limits the power of the federal government to enact national legislation in any area not specifically designated as the province of the federal government. Over the course of America’s history, the Constitution has been amended numerous times to add national laws that were not foreseen by the framers of the Constitution. In this way, freedom of speech was guaranteed to all citizens, along with the freedom of religion, and the freedom from illegal search and seizure. Later amendments provided for suffrage for women, for Blacks, and for citizens over the age of 18. Although the argument has been made that “Supreme Court rulings … find no constitutional mandates for federal control of education; therefore, education is a responsibility of the individual states” (Yudof, et. Al., 1992, cited in Rhoads, Sieber & Slayton, 1999, para. 1), it is possible for the Constitution to be amended yet again to require “national academic expectations and standards for students in all states” (Idea of the Day, 2008, para. 1). Despite the resistance of Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman, who “insisted that the process [of improving standards] shouldn’t ‘federalize education’” (Hoff, 2009, para. 6), in 2009, 46 states and the District of Columbia united in “an effort to craft a single vision for what children should learn each year from kindergarten through high school graduation” (Glod, 2009, para. 1), and an August, 2007, survey funded by the Gates and Broad Foundation 74 A Journey Through My College Papers reported that “63 percent of Americans” (Idea of the Day, 2008, para. 1) support national standards for all American students. One of the greatest problems in American education is the disparity among the various states’ standards and curricula. As Melissa Kelly (2010) writes in an article targeted to secondary school teachers, “[e]ach state develops its own standards according to their own system. This creates a system whereby a tenth-grader who moves from Texas to Florida halfway through the school year will be faced with quite a different curriculum and standards that need to be met” (para. 2). Families in the United States are more mobile now than they have been since settlers fanned out across the continent to establish this country over a century ago. National control of education and national education standards would improve education by ensuring that a student could receive a relatively seamless and consistent education, no matter whither or whence he or she moved or how many schools he or she attended. In an article for the Atlantic Monthly, Paul Gagnon (1995) reports that “[p]olls showed overwhelming public support, even for a national curriculum” (p. 68). Even [m]any of the founding fathers of the United States feared that leaving education in the hands of private families, churches, local communities, or philanthropic societies would not guarantee the survival of a democracy … [and] [c]onsiderable effort was made to obtain a national university. (Pulliam and Van Patten, 2007, p. 122). How much more important, then, are national education standards now that our country has grown to such proportions? It is important to keep in mind that “school leaders, teachers, parents and citizens need to understand what they are up against, what has to be done differently, and how much is at stake” (Gagnon, 1995, p. 65). Efforts have been made at various times in America’s history to establish national control of education, although “[a]t the time of the nation’s founding, transportation and communication were primitive by twenty-first-century century [sic] standards … [and] states generally saw fit to delegate authority for school operation to local school districts” (Guthrie, 2010, para. 4). Transportation and communication are no longer primitive, and a student may walk out of a California classroom one day and enroll in a New York classroom the next day. Students in Oregon, Texas, Maine, and on a U.S. military base in Europe, Asia, or the South Pacific may all share a single virtual classroom online. In order for these students to have equal opportunities to succeed in school, they must have access to the same curricula, and their schools must all be held to the same academic standards. “Instituting such standards implies that students will learn the same content regardless of where they reside” (Rhoads, Sieber & Slayton, 1999, para. 2). A beginning was made in this regard with the Lanham Act of 1946, “which evolved into the Federal Impact Aid program” (Guthrie, 2010, para. 21), by which the federal government began to be involved in the operation of schools. More recent, and better known, efforts include the controversial No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, which attempts to ensure an equal education to every American student. Although the United States does not yet have nationally mandated academic standards, NCLB brings the future reality of national standards closer. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is quoted as saying that “today’s patchwork system amounts to ‘lying to children and their parents, because states have dumbed down their standards’” (Glod, 2009, para. 7). Under the present system of local controls, on a reading exam in 2007 in Mississippi, “only 51 percent had at least ‘basic’ or ‘partial mastery’ on the test known as the Nation’s Report Card” (Glod, 2009, para. 8). On the same test, 69 percent of students in Maryland and 74 percent of students in Virginia “reached at least a basic score” (Glod, 2009, para. 9). With national curricula and national standards, states could expect higher percentages of students to achieve at least basic mastery of reading, and scores from state to state could be expected to be more uniform. “Gene Wilhoit, Undergraduate Series 75 executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said the new expectations would be ‘higher, clearer and fewer’” (Glod, 2009, para. 10). National standards would improve education in the United States in several ways. Along with making it easier for students to move from one state to another without disrupting their education, national standards would allow all schools to use the same textbooks, which would reduce the confusion that can arise when different schools, or even different teachers in a single school, use different textbooks. Additionally, national standards would allow schools to hire teachers regardless of where the teachers were educated and certified. This would allow greater mobility for teachers, and would allow teachers from areas with more teachers to move and teach in areas where certified teachers are scarce, with less need to adjust to a new school system. At present, although initiatives like NCLB are a step toward national education standards, educational control still rests with local school districts and with the states. However, the time has come when the United States needs national education standards in order to compete in the global community. It is time for a new constitutional amendment to guarantee an equal education to every American student. References Gagnon, P. (1995, December). What should children learn? [Electronic version]. The Atlantic Monthly, 276 (6), 65-74. Glod, M. (2009, June 1). 46 states, D.C. plan to draft common education standards. The Washington Post. Retrieved January 14, 2010, from http://www.wahingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/05/31/AR2009053102339_pf.html Guthrie, J.W. (2010). State educational systems – the legal basis for state control of education, school organization models, the school district consolidation movement. Retrieved January 14, 2010, from http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2448/State-Educational-Systems.html Hoff, D.J. (2009, February 24). Governors endorse ‘common core’ of standards, leave debate for later. Retrieved January 14, 2010, from http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/NCLBActII/2009/02/governors_endorse_common_core.html?print=1 Idea of the day: establish national standards for schools. (2008, May 28). Retrieved January 14, 2010, from http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/ideas/2008/05/052808.html/print.html Kelly, M. (2010). State versus national standards. Retrieved January 14, 2010, from http://712educators.about.com/od/curriculumandlessonplans/a/standards.htm?p=1 Pulliam. J.D. and VanPatten, J.J. (2007). History of education in America. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. Rhoads, M., Sieber, R. & Slayton, S. (1999, February 25). Examining national standards. Retrieved January 14, 2010, from http://horizon.unc.edu/projects/issues/papers/National_Standards.html Progressive Education 1/19/2010 Progressive education, which is sometimes called organic education because it is "highly innovative and flexible" (Osborn, 2005, para. 7), gained prominence from the very end of the nineteenth century into the twentieth century, under the guidance of Marietta Johnson, Junius Meriam, John Dewey, and other like-minded, innovative educators. In progressive education, 76 A Journey Through My College Papers educators focus on "the importance of the emotional, artistic, and creative aspects of human development" (Brief overview, 2002, para. 3). The purpose of the start of progressive education was to oppose "a growing national movement that sought to separate academic education for the few and narrow vocational training for the masses" (Brief overview, 2002, para. 3), and to create an educational model that would reflect the observation that "children move through distinct stages as they grow and that parents and teachers should key their educational efforts to the developmental process" (Marietta Pierce Johnson, 2010, para. 2). Educators associated with this experimental program believed that by allowing children to learn at their own pace and to be driven in learning by their own interests, educators could produce students who were more confident in themselves and in their knowledge, and who were socially engaged, as well as who were adept at critical thinking. Progressive education was targeted at children in the elementary grades of school, particularly the lower elementary grades. The thought was that children were being exposed to too much structured, institutionalized instruction too soon in their educational careers. An early progressive educator, Marietta Johnson "steered students away from books until the age of nine. Younger children, she maintained, were not ready for print" (Marietta Pierce Johnson, 2010, para. 5). Progressive high schools also served the needs of older students, and a report by the Progressive Education Association in 1942 "showed that students in the progressive high schools did at least as well in college as their counterparts in traditional secondary schools and that they were better oriented to adult life" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, p. 219). Although progressive education did not become the norm for education in the United States, aspects of progressive education found their way into modern education in a number of different ways. Flexible scheduling and individualized instruction are examples of practices that came out of progressive education, as are open classrooms, team teaching, and nongraded schools (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, pp. 222-223). A modern application of progressive, or organic, education is Bright IDEA, a North Carolina educational initiative that teaches teachers to "use organic principles with ... K-2 Title 1 children" (Osborn, 2005, para. 13). Bright IDEA students show strong self-motivation, self-organization and selfdiscipline and plenty of imagination and initiative. They internalize a metacognitive vocabulary of learning — skills like listening with empathy, thinking flexibly, solving problems, persisting, metacognition ... — and enthusiastically identify these concepts in other people and apply them to their own learning. (Osborn, 2005, para. 17). Bright IDEA and similar programs bear little outward resemblance to Marietta Johnson's School of Organic Education, but they successfully carry the concepts of progressive education into the twenty-first century. References Brief overview of progressive education, A. (2002, January 30). Retrieved January 19, 2010, from http://www.uvm.edu/dewey/articles/proged.html Marietta Pierce Johnson (1864-1938) -- Organic education, new trends in education. (2010). Retrieved January 19, 2010, from http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2138/Johnson-Marietta-Pierce-18641938.html Osborn, H. (2005). Organic education: update 2005. Retrieved January 19, 2010, from http://www.newhorizons.org/trans/osborn.htm Pulliam. J.D. and VanPatten, J.J. (2007). History of education in America. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. Undergraduate Series 77 Gifted and Talented 1/20/2010 Researching the topic for this discussion took me back to my own elementary school years, as I saw myself in nearly every article I read. It is profoundly difficult for me to even imagine a good reason to not support separate programs for gifted and talented students in public schools, because I attended school in a district that did not "believe in acceleration" (Kearney, 1996, para. 21). Still, I made an honest effort to find research that did not support separate programs for gifted and talented students. There were remarkably few sources in that final group, as the majority of sources I read were overwhelmingly in support of separate programs. Even those that offered arguments against separate programs did so only in passing, and were generally in favor of separate programs for gifted students. Holly Hertberg-Davis (2009), writing for The Gifted Child Quarterly, observes that "gifted students are regarded as a diverse lot whose individual talents and needs cannot be met with a single 'gifted' curriculum" (para. 2). From this observation, it may be construed that placing gifted students in a dedicated gifted program may retard the development of their individual gifts. It might me argued that such students could find greater scope to excel in a differentiated inclusionary classroom than they could find in a separate gifted classroom. Another consideration in support of placing gifted students in inclusionary classrooms is the idea of fairness, and of improving a student's self esteem by avoiding the stigma of being segregated from the student population for being different from the student's age-mates. Glenn Hartz (2000), in an article for the Christian Science Monitor, notes that "the idea behind [the inclusion] movement is the notion, popular in the realm of politics, that fairness means equality. Exclusion of any kind somehow means we value certain students more or less than others" (para. 6). In our age of "everyone wins" sports programs and non-traditional grading practices (such as replacing the A-F grading scale with E, S, and N, for "exceeds expectations," "satisfactory progress," and "needs improvement"), it has become more important than ever before to shelter every child from ever being better, worse, or different from any child, and to ensure that no child's ego is ever bruised. One argument in support of separate programs for gifted students is that teachers in inclusionary classrooms are not appropriately trained to meet the needs of gifted students. In a 1994 study by Reis, Renzulli, and Westberg, it was reported that "61% of public school teachers and 54% of private school teachers at the elementary level reported that they had never had any training in teaching gifted students" (cited in Culcross, 1997, para. 10). As a result of this lack of teacher training, "[m]ost regular classroom teachers make few, if any, provisions for talented students" (U.S. Department of Education, 1993, cited in Kearney, 1996, para. 23). Hertberg-Davis (2009), sums up the problem of insufficient teacher training: For all these reasons - lack of sustained teacher training in the specific philosophy and methods of differentiation, underlying beliefs prevalent in our school culture that gifted students do fine without any adaptations to curriculum, lack of general education teacher training in the needs and nature of gifted students, and the difficulty of differentiating instruction without a great depth of content knowledge - it does not seem that we are yet at a place where differentiation within the regular classroom is a particularly effective method of challenging our most able learners. (para. 11). As supporters of inclusion argue the need to consider the emotional needs of gifted students, so do supporters of separate programs also offer arguments in favor of protecting the emotional needs of gifted students. Rachel Mendleson (2009), writing for Maclean's, in reporting 78 A Journey Through My College Papers on the reduction in the number of gifted programs in recent years, notes that "[s]tudies have shown that gifted students, who make up about two per cent of the population, risk social alienation and boredom, which can give way to underachievement and behaviour problems" (para. 4). M.J. Morelock (1992) reports that "[t]oo many extremely gifted children do not feel included [in full inclusion]; out-of-sync with other children developmentally, and with the cognitive capacity to know they are different ... they often find themselves in one-size-fits-all schools" (cited in Kearney, 1996, para. 30), and Ian Warwick and Matt Dickenson (2009) agree that "[a] 'one-sized' view of G&T cannot be inclusive of all students" (para. 8). It is important for administrators to consider the emotional and social needs of gifted students when planning educational requirements for this group. As we see in our text, "[f]ollowing the NDEA ... [i]t was found that gifted and talented students often felt socially isolated and sometimes had difficulty in adjusting to group norms" (Pulliam and VanPatten, 2007, pp. 323-324). As a gifted child who was hopelessly bored throughout elementary and secondary school because I was forced to participate in an inclusionary classroom setting, I strongly support special programs for gifted and talented students, to allow these students to be challenged at their own levels so that they may achieve their full academic potential. As Richard Thompkins and Pat Deloney (2010) state in their article for Social/Emotional Development and Learning (SEDL), "gifted students are better served when they are able to work with other gifted students ... in a 'pull-out' program" (para. 11) References Culross, R.R. (1997, January/February). Concepts of inclusion in gifted education. Teaching Exceptional Children, 29(3), 24-26. Retrieved January 20, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals database. Hartz, G. (2000, January 11). Inclusion or exclusion? It all depends; [ALL Edition]. The Christian Science Monitor, 13. Retrieved January 20, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals database. Hertberg-Davis, H. (2009, Fall). Myth 7: Differentiation in the regular classroom is equivalent to gifted programs and is sufficient: classroom teachers have the time, the skill, and the will to differentiate adequately. The Gifted Child Quarterly, 53(4), 251253. Retrieved January 20, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals database. Kearney, K. (1996). Highly gifted children in full inclusion classrooms. Retrieved January 19, 2010, from http://www.hollingworth.org/fullincl.html Mendleson, R. (2009, March 2). No room for gifted kids. Maclean's, 122(7), 40-41. Retrieved January 20, 2010, from ProQuest Education Journals database. Pulliam. J.D. and VanPatten, J.J. (2007). History of education in America. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc. Thompkins, R. and Deloney, P. (2010). Concerns about and arguments against inclusion and/or full inclusion. Retrieved January 19, 2010, from http://www.sedl.org/change/issues/issues43/concerns.html Warwick, I. and Dickenson, M. (2009, December). Gifted and talented education -- the case for inclusion: part 1. Retrieved January 19, 2010, from http://www.teachingexpertise.com/e-bulletins/gifted-and-talented-education-caseinclusion-7708 Undergraduate Series 79 Technology in the Classroom 1/27/2010 Introducing technology in the classroom was an important movement for education reform. Jeff Utecht (2008) discusses how to evaluate the use of technology in the classroom using questions based on Marc Prensky's (n.d.) "process of technical adoption" (cited in Utecht, 2008, para. 4). Technology in the classroom is an educational reform that has not only survived the passage of time, but that has also flourished and expanded with the development of new technologies. From the early introduction of adding machines and typewriters, we have advanced to "[p]ublishing a piece of writing in Word ... using an LCD projector instead of a white/black board ... researching on the Internet ... [and] visiting a battle site via Google Earth" (Utecht, 2008, paras. 8-12). Technology in the classroom, when it is used appropriately, can significantly improve and enhance the educational experience. Utecht (2008) cautions, however, that if "a teacher is only ever 'dabbling' or doing 'Old things in Old ways'" (para. 23), then technology may not be contributing to that teacher's classroom in an optimal way. In order for technology in the classroom to continue to grow from a movement in education reform to an integral part of modern education, teachers need to understand the available technologies and to teach students to take advantage of the full educational potential of the technologies. References Utecht, J. (2008, January 23). Evaluating technology use in the classroom. Retrieved January 26, 2010, from http://www.thethinkingstick.com/evaluating-technology-use-in-the-classroom Education Topics in the Courts 1/27/2010 Although many cases in America's courts have had significant impact on the state of education today, there are a few that have made such an impact on American education and society that their titles have become household phrases, even if not everyone remembers why they reached the courts in the first place. Two of the most significant, in my opinion, are the 1954 case of Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which began the racial desegregation of American schools, and the 1925 case of Tennessee versus John Scopes, which is commonly known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, and which brought to the public eye the need to teach American children about science topics that might not agree with Biblical teachings. In Brown v. Board of Education, "Oliver Brown ... sued the Board of Education for not letting Linda Brown, his daughter, attend Summer Elementary School, an all-white school" (Brown v. Board of Education, n.d., para. 10). The case was in court over a period of 18 months, during which time the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) argued in favor of equal education for all children, regardless of race. A major argument in the case was that "[s]egregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race deprives children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities, even though the physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal" (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954, para. 1.d), however, "[a]lthough the facilities were supposedly equal, the fact was that the facilities were, by far, unequal. The tar-paper shacks, which were used as the school buildings for blacks, could be mistaken for chicken farms" (Brown v. Board of Education, n.d., para. 10). There were two rulings in Brown v. Board of Education. The first "declared racial segregation in public school illegal" (Brown v. Board of Education, n.d., para. 15). The second, coming a year later, "ruled that students must be admitted to schools without discrimination" (Brown v. Board of 80 A Journey Through My College Papers Education, n.d., para. 17). In the end, it took nearly two decades for racial integration of public schools to become the norm in America. There are those who would argue that racial discrimination still exists in some American schools where de facto segregation still occurs, even though de jure integration is practiced in theory. The integration of American schools needed to occur in order for the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees "citizens of the United States ... equal protection of the laws" (cited in Brown v. Board of Education, n.d., para. 13) to be upheld. The Scopes Monkey Trial opened a debate that continues to this day. The case began because of a 1925 law in Tennessee "making it unlawful 'to teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that man was descended from a lower order of animals'" (Linder, 2000, para. 3). When John Scopes "assigned readings on evolution from the [state-approved textbook] for review purposes" (Linder, 2000, para. 5), he was accused of breaking the new law. The case brought out hundreds of spectators and a "carnival atmosphere" (Linder, 2000, para. 7). The defense team argued not that Scopes was innocent, but that the law was unconstitutional. The trial grew to amazing proportions, and near the end of the single week of arguments, "[b]efore a crowd that had swelled to about 5,000, the defense read into the record, for purpose of appellate review, excerpts from the prepared statements of eight scientists and four experts on religion who had been prepared to testify" (Linder, 2000, para. 15). William Jennings Bryan stated on the stand that "the words of the Bible should not always be taken literally" (Linder, 2000, para. 17). Scopes was found guilty, but the decision was reversed by the Tennessee Supreme Court a year later. Although there was no clear resolution to the Scopes trial, and debate continues about whether science or the Bible is right, the Scopes Monkey Trial was important to education because it opened the door for people to think, and to discuss and debate opposing views about science and religion. The promotion of thinking is the single most important thing this case could give to education, as the freedom and ability to think are the keys to a good education References Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483. (1954). Retrieved January 26, 2010, from http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=347 &invol=483 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. (n.d.). Retrieved January 26, 2010, from http://library.thinkquest.org/10718/body.htm Linder, D. (2000). State v. John Scopes ("The Monkey Trial"). Retrieved January 26, 2010, from http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/evolut.htm Impact of the Internet 2/3/2010 The internet has had, and continues to have, both positive and negative impacts on education and educational instruction. As with any technology, it is important to remember that the internet is a tool which may be used or misused, and one of the greatest challenges for the future will be ensuring that students use the internet for its educational benefits and do not misuse the internet for harmful purposes. A great positive impact the internet has had on education instruction is the emergence of online education, both for college and university students and for K-12 students. This class that we are taking together is an outstanding example of the success of online education. As CoillegeUniversity-Directory.com states, with online education, "barriers to learning [have] been removed Undergraduate Series 81 ... [and] [t]he flexibility of the internet is perhaps the greatest advantage for online education" (Internet's Significant Impact, 2006, paras. 1-6). A feature of the internet that has had both a positive impact and a negative impact on educational instruction is that the internet gives users almost instantaneous access to almost any information about almost any subjects they can think of. In addition, the internet provides realtime and reduced time communications options and multimedia access, which make "collaboration about numerous kinds of educational activities" (Hardin and Ziebarth, 2000, para. 7) possible for nearly everyone who has access to a computer and an internet connection. Access to information and the ability to collaborate have had a positive impact on educational instruction because students and educators have access to more information, more upto-date information, and more dynamic information than has been possible at any previous point in history. Students are able to learn about discoveries as they are being made, and are able to be well-informed learners. Access to information on the internet also has a negative impact on educational instruction in that it has never before been so easy for students to commit plagiarism. According to Paula Laurita (2009), "[m]any parents stated that their young-adult students didn't know that it was wrong to copy information from the Internet" (para. 4). Many colleges and universities, including Ashford University, use programs to scan for this sort of plagiarism in papers, but not every school or teacher is able to scan every assignment from every student at every level of education. It is necessary to stress the teaching of educational ethics, and to adopt a zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism to combat this problem. Stressing the importance of correctly punctuating and citing references to outside sources, as we do in this course, will also help. Related to the plagiarism issue is the negative impact of homework help sites on the internet. While online homework help sounds like a good thing, "[s]ome online services provide specific areas to assist with assignments, including the ability to send questions or homework problems via e-mail to experts in a subject area and receive responses in as little as three hours ... [w]ould the ... student simply plug into one of these services and wait for answers to homework problems?" (Laurita, 2009, paras. 3-4). It is one thing to have a student get help for how to do an assignment; it is another thing entirely for a student's homework to be done by an online service. The internet offers the opportunity for many positive aspects on education, from video conferencing to virtual field trips and virtual dissections to expanded language and cultural education, to truly individualized, progressive education. The dangers of the internet cannot be overlooked, however, if the students and educators of the future are to enjoy the internet's benefits. References Hardin, J. and Ziebarth, J. (2000, January 2). Digital technology and its impact on education. Retrieved January 31, 2010, from http://www2.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/hardin.html Internet's significant impact on education, The. (2006). Retrieved January 31, 2010, from http://www.college-university-directory.com/internet_1.html Laurita, P. (2009). Education lite -- the impact of the internet on education. Retrieved January 31, 2010, from http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art3019.asp 82 A Journey Through My College Papers HIS 303: The American Constitution Affecting Presidential Power 3/4/2010 The first three presidents of the United States, George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, affected the powers of the presidency, first, by creating the presidency in the first place. Before George Washington became the first President of the United States, no government system like the U.S. presidency existed. Before Washington became President, though, Jefferson set the stage by writing the Declaration of Independence, with contributions from Adams and from Benjamin Franklin, thus ending the official power of the British monarchy in the new United States. Of the first three presidents, Washington made the most impact on the power of the presidency while serving. Adams was actually considered to be a weak president with "poor leadership skills" (O'Connor and Sabato, 2008, 13.4.1, para. 3), and Jefferson's greatest impact on the power of the presidency was before he became President. George Washington, as the first President, had no precedents on which to base his actions, so each act and decision of his presidency became the original precedent for future American presidents. Washington "established precedents that would last for generations and did more to flesh out the skeleton of the presidential office than anyone could have expected or predicted" (Impact and Legacy, n.d., para. 3). Among these precedents, the most famous is that he "set the standard for two presidential terms" (Impact and Legacy, n.d., para. 4). Among his other precedents, Washington "took every opportunity to establish the primacy of the national government" (O'Connor and Sabato, 2008, 13.4.1, para. 2); he set precedents for "including the cabinet as part of the President's office ... [and] allow[ing] the President to choose his or her own cabinet" (Impact and Legacy, n.d., para. 4). He extended the power of the President in regard to the judicial branch by setting a precedent that would allow "future Presidents to draw from a diverse pool of talent beyond the [Supreme] Court's aging incumbents" (Impact and Legacy, n.d., para. 4) when appointing the chief justice. In addition, Washington set a precedent "for presidents to claim the right to determine foreign policy unilaterally" (DeConde, 2010, para. 12). After the French Revolution in 1792, Washington established precedent for "prompt de facto recognition of a government when it demonstrated effective control of a nation" (DeConde, 2010, para. 11), when he acknowledged the new government of France. John Adams, the second President of the United States, was not considered to be a strong leader, and did not make a truly great impact on the power of the presidency while he was President. Adams' greatest contribution in that regard was the success of his effort to get Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence, which set the stage for the creation of the presidency. Adams made two other significant contributions to the presidency when he signed the Alien and Sedition Acts. According to John S. Cooper (2004), "[t]he Alien Act gave the President the power to deport dangerous aliens ... without a trial ... [and] [t]he Sedition Act made it illegal to criticize or ridicule the President or Congress" (paras. 3-4). In accordance with the law, "on the evening of November 1, 1800, John Adams moved into the White House" (Cooper, 2004, para. 11). Although this last did not directly affect the powers of the presidency, it did establish the permanent residence of the President of the United States. As I have stated earlier, Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, made his greatest contribution to the power of the presidency long before he became President. O'Connor and Sabato (2008) tell us that, during his presidency, "Jefferson took critical steps to expand the role of the president in the legislative process" (13.4.1, para. 3). Jefferson was an Undergraduate Series 83 expansionist president, making the Louisiana Purchase "without consent of congress" (Stroupe, n.d., para. 67), which set a precedent for presidents to bypass the Congress as they see fit. In addition, "Jefferson determined that the United States also had a claim over west Florida" (Stroupe, n.d., para. 67), and arranged the now-famous expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark "to explore the country between the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean" (Stroupe, n.d., para. 63). References Cooper, J.S. (2004, November 28). John Adams: Administration and Events (Part II). Retrieved March 1, 2010, from http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/presidents_and_first_ladies/111856 DeConde, A. (2010). "Presidential Power." Encyclopedia of the New American Nation. Retrieved March 1, 2010, from http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/OW/Presidential-Power.html "Impact and Legacy." (n.d.). American President: George Washington. Retrieved March 1, 2010, from http://millercenter.org/academic/americanpresident/washington/essays/biography/9 O'Connor, K. and Sabato, L.J. (2008). American government: Continuity and change, [Electronic version]. New York: Pearson-Longman. Stroupe, F. (n.d.). Jefferson, Thomas. Retrieved March 1, 2010, from http://www.freeinfosociety.com/article.php?id=271 Anti-Federalist Papers 2/11/2010 The Anti-Federalist Papers were a response to the Federalist Papers, which were "explanations of the Framers' intentions as they drafted the new Constitution" (O'Connor and Sabato, 2008, p. 55). There are many Anti-Federalist papers, most of which are essays masquerading as letters. The three I chose, each of which was written in 1787, six years after the writing of the Articles of Confederation, a matter of weeks after the writing of the United States Constitution, and two years before the creation of the first ten Amendments to the Constitution, are The Address and Reasons of Dissent of the Minority of the Convention of Pennsylvania to their Constituents, by Samuel Bryan; the Speech of James Wilson, by James Wilson; and the unattributed Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican. Each of these papers discusses perceived dangers in the wording of the U.S. Constitution, and each outlines the changes that would need to be made to remove the dangers. I will address a few of these dangers in this discussion. Before proceeding with the dangers of the U.S. Constitution, it is necessary to note that the current United States reflects the concerns of the Anti-Federalists, because many of the concerns of the Anti-Federalists were addressed by the first ten Amendments, which are commonly known as the Bill of Rights. Thus, although the U.S. Constitution itself is a Federalist document, the United States as we know it today is largely Anti-Federalist. One of the greatest concerns of the Anti-Federalists was that "the powers vested in Congress by this constitution, must necessarily annihilate and absorb the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the several states" (Bryan, 1787, para. 26). Wilson (1787) wrote in his speech at the Pennsylvania State House, later known as Independence Hall, "the federal constitution, as not only calculated, but designedly framed, to reduce the State governments to mere corporations and eventually to annihilate them" (para. 7). The unnamed Federal Farmer 84 A Journey Through My College Papers (1787) held the same view: "unless the people shall make some great exertions to restore to the state governments their powers ... the state governments must be annihilated, or continue to exist for no purpose" (para. 8). This was a serious concern for the Anti-Federalists, who saw the government under the U.S. Constitution as becoming a despotism, and as stripping the individual rights from the states. Had the Federalists got their way, and had the Constitution stood as it was originally drafted, this might have been a fair concern. Instead, the tenth Amendment to the Constitution states that "[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people" (U.S. Constitution, cited in O'Connor and Sabato, 2008, p. 84). Another serious concern of the Anti-Federalists was for the in-born, human rights of the citizens of the new country. Bryan (1787) stated that "[t]he first consideration ... is the omission of a BILL OF RIGHTS [capitalization and italics his], ascertaining and fundamentally establishing those unalienable and personal rights of men, without the full, free, and secure enjoyment of which there can be no liberty" (para. 45). Similarly, Wilson (1787) wrote that "the omission of a bill of rights [is] a defect in the proposed constitution" (para. 3), and the Federal Farmer (1787) stated that "[t]here are certain unalienable and fundamental rights, which in forming the social compact, ought to be explicitly ascertained and fixed" (para. 5). Had the Anti-Federalists not had their way, the United States would not be a nation of civil rights as it is today. As it is, the Anti-Federalists did, in time, prevail, and the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution i 1789, and ratified in 1791. The first Amendment in the Bill of Rights reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (Cited in O'Connor and Sabato, 2008, p. 80) There are some Anti-Federalist ideas that were not included in the amendments to the Constitution. At the time the Anti-Federalist papers were written, there were thirteen states in the United States. The Federal Farmer (1787) wrote: "We have about 200 state senators in the United States, and a less number than that of federal representatives cannot, clearly, be a full representation of this people" (para. 1). A body of 200 senators for 13 states averages 15 or 16 senators per state, as opposed to the two senators per state that we have today. Had the AntiFederalists prevailed in this area, the Senate would now consist of 750 to 800 Senators for 50 states, instead of the 100 Senators currently serving. This would make the government even larger and more unwieldy than it is today. Wilson (1787) wrote that "[t]his constitution ... is of a pernicious tendency, because it tolerates a standing army in the time of peace" (para. 5). Had the Anti-Federalists succeeded in removing the possibility of a standing army, as provided for in Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution (1787), "[t]o raise and support Armies ... provide and maintain a Navy ... provide for calling forth the Militia" (cited in O'Connor and Sabato, 2008, p. 71), we would not have been able to mount an immediate response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, and we would not be able to live with a feeling of relative safety, knowing that our armed forces stand ready to defend the United States. Bryan (1787) was concerned that "[a] standing army in the hands of a government placed so independent of the people may be made a fatal instrument to overturn the public liberties" (para. 71), but history has proven the opposite to be true as the United States military has defended public liberties in the United States and abroad. Undergraduate Series 85 References Bryan, S. (1787, December 12). The address and reasons of dissent of the minority of the convention of Pennsylvania to their constituents. Retrieved February 9, 2010, from http://www.constitution.org/afp/pennmi00.htm Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican. (1787, October 9). Retrieved February 9, 2010, from http://www.constitution.org/afp/fedfar02.htm O'Connor, K. and Sabato, L.J. (2008). American government: Continuity and change, 2008 Edition. New York: Pearson-Longman. Wilson, J. (1787, October 6). Speech of James Wilson. Retrieved February 9, 2010, from http://www.constitution.org/afp/jwilson0.htm Benefits of the Articles of Confederation 2/11/2010 "The Articles [of Confederation] created a type of government called a confederation ... [which] derives all of its powers directly from the states" (O'Connor and Sabato, 2008, p. 39). The Articles paved the way for the later creation of the United States Constitution, and gave structure to the early government of the United States. Although it is common to hear about the drawbacks of the Articles, there were a few benefits for the new country in the provisions of the Articles. One of the most significant benefits was that "[i]t allowed a large number of people of divergent backgrounds and circumstances to live together with a minimum of internal strife for eleven years of transition from being subjects of a monarch to becoming self-governing free men" (Emory, 1993, para. 1). The Articles set down a system of rules for the interaction, governance, and defense of the new states, while at the same time maintaining the sovereignty of each state. They provided for the states to work together [F]or their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever. (Articles of Confederation, 1781, Article II) This gave the new country the chance it needed to grow and develop the more lasting set of rules, the U.S. Constitution, under which we live today. The Articles "required a supermajority for action ... [which] made it harder for Congress to trample citizens' rights" (Emory, 1993, para, 4). Article IX of the Articles set up a "Committee of the States" (Articles of Confederation, 1781, Article IX), which functioned much like a Senate, with the committee members having limited terms, so that the members of Congress did not have to be permanent, professional politicians, and could "thereby remain citizen legislators" (Emory, 1993, para. 5). The Articles provided for legal actions in any of the States to be equally binding in all of the States, so a person could not escape the law by moving to another State, and marriages, inheritances, etc., would remain valid if a citizen moved between States. Had this not been so, a man might have been able to have a wife under the laws of one state, and to have a different wife under the laws of another State. The Articles also required that no delegate to Congress "be capable of holding any office under the United States, for which he, or another for his benefit, receives any salary, fees or emolument of any kind" (Articles of Confederation, 1781, Article V). This requirement reduced the possibility of delegates having special interests in particular areas of government that might affect their decisions in Congress. 86 A Journey Through My College Papers Article VIII provided for all taxes to be "laid and levied by the authority and direction of the legislatures of the several States" (Articles of Confederation, 1781, Article VIII), so that the government was not able to directly tax the populace. After the excessive taxation the Colonists had experienced under British rule, this was certainly a reassuring measure of law for the citizens of the new United States. References Articles of Confederation. (1781, March 1). Retrieved February 9, 2010, from http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/artconf.asp Emory, B.Y. (1993, October). An analysis of the Articles of Confederation as a model for the institutions of freedom. Retrieved February 9, 2010, from http://libertariannation.org/a/ppe1.html O'Connor, K. and Sabato, L.J. (2008). American government: Continuity and change, 2008 Edition. New York: Pearson-Longman. Checks and Balances 3/11/2010 Each of the three branches of the United States government is checked and balanced by each of the other two branches. The legislative branch of the government is charged with creating the laws of this country, while the executive branch is responsible for carrying out those laws. It falls to the judicial branch to interpret the law, making me picture the popular recycling icon of three arrows in a circle when I think of the branches of government. The executive branch checks and balances the judicial branch only in that the President of the United States "appoints Supreme Court and other federal judges" (Kelly, 2010, para. 5). The executive branch's checks and balances of the legislative branch are the President's power to veto bills that are passed by Congress, the ability of the President to call special sessions of Congress, the ability of the President to recommend legislation to be considered by Congress, and the power of the President to appeal to the people to seek support for or resistance to pending legislation, upcoming elections, and other issues. The legislative branch checks and balances the executive branch in that it holds the power to overturn a presidential veto by a two-thirds vote. In addition, Congress controls funding for the actions of the executive branch, and also holds the power to "remove the president through impeachment" (Kelly, 2010, para. 2). The Senate, which is one of the two houses of Congress, has special checks and balances of the executive branch, in that the Senate must approve all treaties, and must also approve all presidential appointments. The legislative branch checks and balances the judicial branch by creating lower courts, by approving the appointment of judges, and by removing judges through impeachment. The judicial branch checks and balances the executive branch in that, once a judge has been appointed for life, the judge is "free from controls from the executive branch" (Kelly, 2010, para. 6). Also, through application of the judicial review, the courts can examine executive actions and judge them unconstitutional. The judicial branch checks and balances the legislative branch only through the judicial branch's ability to "judge legislative acts to be unconstitutional" (Kelly, 2010, para. 7). The power of the President to veto legislation, and of Congress to overturn a veto are both very effective checks and balances between the executive and the legislative branches, because neither branch can pass a new law until both branches have considered it. Although Congress can overturn the President's veto, it takes a two-thirds vote, instead of simple majority Undergraduate Series 87 vote, to do so. The judicial branch ruling on the constitutionality of laws is also effective, as it effectively checks not only the legislative branch, but also, to some extent, the executive branch. References Kelly, M. (2010). Checks and Balances: Defining Government Authority. Retrieved March 9. 2010, from http://americanhistory.about.com/od/usconstitution/a/checks_balances.htm?p=1 Chisholm v. Georgia 2/18/2010 The U.S. Supreme Court case of Alexander Chisholm of South Carolina against the State of Georgia, which took place in 1793, was significant to the history of Constitutional law both in its original decision, and in the constitutional amendment that was created in response to the case. The case under consideration was that of Alexander Chisholm, the executor for the estate of the late Robert Farquhar. Chisholm had filed suit in the U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Georgia for “100,000 pounds in sterling silver for payment of the debt plus interest” (Chisholm v. Georgia, 2005, para. 2). The cause of the debt is contested, but is not necessarily relevant to the case, with one version saying that it was restitution for “lands Georgia had confiscated during the Revolution” (Levy, 1986, para. 2), and the other version saying that “[i]n 1777, the Executive Council of Georgia authorized the purchase of needed supplies … [and] [a]fter receiving the supplies, Georgia did not deliver payments as promised” (Chisholm v. Georgia, n.d., para. 1). Justice James Iredell, serving as a circuit judge, “dismissed the suit for want of jurisdiction” (Levy, 1986, para. 3). Chisholm appealed to the Supreme Court under the Judiciary Act of 1789, which “gave [the Supreme Court] original jurisdiction in cases regarding suits between states and citizens of other states” (O’Connor and Sabado, 2008, [Electronic version], section 9.3.1.1, para. 2). The Supreme Court entered a default judgment in favor of Chisholm because “officials [of Georgia] refused to appear in court and vigorously denied the Court’s jurisdiction” (Chisholm v. Georgia, 1999, para. 1). This case raised questions about the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution only two years after the Constitution was ratified. The first question was whether or not the Constitution gives the Supreme Court jurisdiction in a case in which a State is named as the defendant. Article III, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution (1791) reads: The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority … to Controversies between two or more States; -- between a State and Citizens of another State; -- between Citizens of different States. (Cited in O’Connor and Sabado, 2008, p. 77) The second question raised by this case is related to the first, and asks whether or not the sovereignty of a State gives the State immunity from being sued in federal court, regardless of Article III of the U.S. Constitution. Chief Justice John Jay (1793), who was a member of the Supreme Court that heard Chisholm v. Georgia, stated in his opinion on the case that [A]ny one State in the Union may sue another State in this [Supreme] court, that is, all the people of one State may sue all the people of another State. It is plain, then, that a State may be sued, and hence it plainly follows that suability and state sovereignty are not incompatible. (Cited in Chisholm v. Georgia, 1999, para. 3) 88 A Journey Through My College Papers Jay (1793) further states that “I am clearly of opinion that a State is suable by citizens of another State” (Cited in Chisholm v. Georgia, 1999, para 12). The original decision in the case of Chisholm v. Georgia was that “final sovereignty resided in the people of the United States, and at least for the purposes of this lawsuit Georgia was not a sovereign state” (Chisholm v. Georgia, 2005, para. 6). In effect, this decision extended the interpretation of Article III, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution to say that a private citizen in one state was equally as entitled as a State to sue another State, and to say that a State that was sued by a citizen could not claim immunity from the provisions of Article III based on the sovereignty of the State. That decision was highly significant, because the States at that time maintained their sovereignty and believed that “no sovereign state could be sued without its consent unless Congress so authorized” (Levy, 1986, para. 2). Four out of the five Supreme Court Justices, in seriatim opinions [1 Seriatim – in a series. (Seriatim, 2010)], decided in favor of Chisholm. The fifth, Justice Iredell, who was the same Justice who had dismissed the case in Circuit Court, dissented from his fellow Justices. Iredell contended that [T]he states enjoyed the same sovereign immunity as the English King at the time of the American settlement. Article III did not alter the states' immunity from being sued without their consent … [and] even if the Constitution would admit of the exercise of such a power, a new law is necessary for the purpose, since no part of the existing law applies. (Chisholm v. Georgia, 2005, para. 7) The original decision in this case set a powerful, and potentially dangerous, precedent for the interpretation of Article III of the U.S. Constitution. It set the stage for citizens to sue the States at will, and “seemed to open the treasuries of the states to suits by Tories and other creditors” (Levy, 1986, para. 3). It established that “the people of the United States, rather than the states or people thereof, had formed the Union and were the ultimate sovereigns” (Levy, 1986, para. 2). This situation caused a great deal of consternation among the several States, as “[e]ach state understood the implications of being forced to pay Revolutionary War debt at a time when the state treasuries were struggling to avoid insolvency” (Chisholm v. Georgia, 2005, para. 8). The States rightly assumed that this decision not only opened the States to being sued, and to being forced to pay debts the States could not afford to pay, but also that the decision was “an untenable intrusion on state authority … [and] was also considered a confirmation of AntiFederalist fears that such a reading of Article III would ‘prove most pernicious and destructive’ to states’ rights” (O’Connor and Sabado, 2008, [Electronic version], section 9.3.1.1, para. 2). Of equal significance to the original decision in the case of Chisholm v. Georgia is Congress’ response to the decision. “The Court’s decision provoked widespread criticism, and two days later the Eleventh Amendment was proposed in Congress” (Chisholm v. Georgia, 1999, para. 1). The Eleventh Amendment, which was ratified on February 7, 1795, reads: The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State. (Cited in O’Connor and Sabado, 2008, p. 85) The Eleventh Amendment was drafted to supersede any precedence established by Chisholm v. Georgia, and to protect the sovereignty of the states. As O’Connor and Sabado (2008) state: The Eleventh Amendment nullified the result in Chisolm [sic] but did not completely bar a citizen from bringing suit against a state in federal court. Citizens may bring lawsuits against state officials in federal court if they can satisfy the requirement that their rights under federal constitutional or statutory law have been violated. (p. 85) Undergraduate Series 89 As the first case of Constitutional law to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Chisholm v. Georgia is greatly significant. It “forced the Court to grapple with contentious debates over federalism or the proper balance of power between the state and federal governments” (Chisholm v. Georgia, 2005, para. 10). The case itself established that the citizens of the United States held the sovereign power in the United States. When the case was superseded by the Eleventh Amendment, the sovereign power of the States was re-established. References Chisholm v. Georgia. (1999, August 18). Retrieved February 15, 2010, from http://www.cornellcollege.edu/politics/courses/allin/365366/documents/chisholm_v_georgia.html “Chisholm v. Georgia.” (2005) West’s Encyclopedia of American Law. Retrieved February 15, 2010, from http://www.encyclopedia.com/printable.aspx?id=1G2:3437700826 Chisholm v. Georgia. (n.d.). Retrieved February 18, 2010, from the Oyez Project Web site at http://www.oyez.org/cases/1792-1850/1793/1793_0 Levy, L.W. (1986). Chisholm v. Georgia 2 Dallas 419 (1793). Retrieved February 15, 2010, from http://www.novelguide.com/a/discover/eamc_01/eamc_01_00430.html O'Connor, K. and Sabato, L.J. (2008). American government: Continuity and change, 2008 Edition. New York: Pearson-Longman. O'Connor, K. and Sabato, L.J. (2008). American government: Continuity and change, [Electronic version]. New York: Pearson-Longman. “Seriatim”. (2010). Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved February 18, 2010, from http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/seriatim Gridlock 2/18/2010 I believe that gridlock, "the natural result of those 'checks and balances' we all learned about in government class" (Neuendorf, 1994, para. 5), is essential to the preservation of personal, local, and state rights and liberties in the United States. Without the slow and cumbersome structure of legislation, Americans would likely fall victim to "overly passionate legislation ... [and] knee-jerk mistakes" (Deck, 2009, paras. 1-2) in the creation of laws to govern this country. The Framers of our country instituted a system of checks and balances among the three branches of government "to prevent either branch from gaining too much power" (Williams, 2009, para. 2), because they were only too aware of the abuses of power that could happen when the Executive held too much power, as they had experienced with Great Britain. The system was nor designed to make life difficult for the lawmakers, but to preserve the quality of life for the people. As O'Connor and Sabado (2008) tell us, "[t]he Framers, fearing tyranny, divided powers between the state and the national governments" (section 8.1, para. 10). Over time, gridlock "actually helped Americans to avoid certain nutty laws being enacted" (Deck, 2009, para. 7). Deck (2009) goes on to list a few of the constitutional amendments that were proposed, but that never became law because the system of checks and balances worked, including a 1914 proposal to make divorce illegal in the United States, a 1916 proposal "that all acts of war be put to a national vote. Anyone who voted to go to war -- had to join The Army" (Deck, 2009, para. 9), and a 1938 proposal to make drunkenness illegal in the United States. 90 A Journey Through My College Papers If the gridlock of checks and balances was removed from our government, then it might make the government function more efficiently, but it would do so at the expense of the rights of the states and the liberties of the people. Allan Bevere (2006) writes that [W]hen one party holds both Congress and the White House, after time, especially if it is more than one term, such power tends to lead to corruption ... [but] when there is gridlock, both parties are able to hold each other accountable. (paras. 4-6) Checks and balances keep one leader, one branch of government, or one party from riding roughshod over the liberties of the governed. "[I]n the end [gridlock] safeguards the people from corruption of power and abuse of authority -- by either side" (Hamilton, 2004, para. 10). References Bevere, A.R. (2006, November 9). In Praise of Gridlock. Retrieved February 15, 2010, from http://arbevere.blogspot.com/2006/11/in-praise-of-gridlock.html Deck, L. (2009). America LOVES Gridlock!. Retrieved February 15, 2010, from http://www.thecheers.org/Entertainment/article_1428_America-LOVESGridlock.html Hamilton, L. (2004). Congress and the President. Retrieved February 15, 2010, from http://congress.indiana.edu/radio_commentaries/congress_president.php Neuendorf, D.W. (1994). Motherhood, Apple Pie and Gridlock. Retrieved February 15, 2010, from http://www.neusysinc.com/columnarchive/colm0001.html O'Connor, K. and Sabato, L.J. (2008). American government: Continuity and change, [Electronic version]. New York: Pearson-Longman. Hobbes and Locke 2/10/2010 Thomas Hobbes and John Locke were both strong influences on the Framers of the United States government, even though Hobbes and Locke did not fully agree on how government should work. In fact, it appears that Hobbes' greatest influence on the Framers was in showing them what they did not want for the government of the new republic. Dr. Ozodi Osuji (2008) tells us that "[Hobbes] believed that the people needed an absolute monarch to make them do the right thing and punish them if they stepped out of line" (Thomas Hobbes, para. 6). Rather than follow this belief, the Framers composed Article II, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution (1787), which states that "[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America" (cited in O'Connor and Sabato, 2008, p. 73), and which goes on to detail who may serve as President and how said person shall be chosen. It appears that John Locke had a more direct influence on the Framers than that of Hobbes. Locke's influence may be seen clearly in a comparison of his words and those used by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson's (1776) famous words: "[w]hen in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them" (cited in Constitutional Underpinnings, n.d., table 1), echoes Locke's (1690) words, from his Second Treatise of Civil Government: "[w]hen any one, or more, shall take upon them to make laws whom the people have not appointed so to do, they make laws without authority, which the people are not therefore bound to obey; by which means they come again to be out of subjection, and may constitute to themselves a new legislature" (cited in Constitutional Underpinnings, n.d., table 1). Undergraduate Series 91 In essence, both men were saying that, when a government is intolerable and unlawful, the people should separate themselves from the old government and form a new government. The parallels between Locke's Second Treatise and Jefferson's Declaration of Independence occur over and over, demonstrating that Jefferson was strongly influenced by Locke. According to our text, "[Hobbes and Locke] argued that all individuals were free and equal by natural right" (O'Connor and Sabato, 2008, p. 9). This was echoed by Jefferson (1776) in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" (cited in O'Connor and Sabato, 2008, p.38). In addition, the fourth Amendment (1789) to the Constitution echoes this natural equality and freedom when it guarantees "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons" (cited in O'Connor and Sabato, 2008, p. 81). According to Cox (2008), "Locke thought everyone needed to form a society together where there is a system of checks and balances" (para. 5), which is echoed clearly in the Framers' creation of our three branches of government, as laid out in the first three articles of the Constitution: the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Each of these branches is checked and balanced by the other two branches, so that no one branch may dominate the government. Even today, the system of checks and balances may be seen in the United States government, despite complaints during the last two presidencies about abuses of government power in the declaring of war in the Middle East without Congressional action, or the perceived appointment of a United States President by the Supreme Court. Even though some governmental actions may be misunderstood by some people, the system of checks and balances espoused by John Locke and adopted by the Framers continues to work. Locke believed that "political society and government are established by mutual consent forming 'one body politic under one government'" (Dillbeck, n.d., para. 9). When Jefferson (1776) drafted the Declaration of Independence, he included the concept of mutual consent in the words We, therefore, the Representatives on the united States of America ... do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent States ... we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. (cited in "Declaration of Independence," 1964, p. 67). In addition, Locke believed that "[i]n the best circumstances the people desire that government which provides them with security but also is limited in its scope of power" (Osuji, John Locke, 2008, para. 4). Today, there is much discussion in many venues about the people's desire for the government to see to the security of the people, whether through the War on Terror, or through social welfare programs, or through government bailouts of banks and corporations. At the same time, there is a similar level of discussion about the need to prevent the government becoming too powerful or restricting too many of the people's rights. References Constitutional underpinnings. (n.d.). Retrieved February 9, 2010, from http://www.runningromans.com/Academics/Government/Review%20Notes/01.htm Cox, S. (2008, September 14). Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau: Great political philosophers lay foundation for today's politics. Retrieved February 9, 2010, from http://greatphilosophers.suite101.com/article.cfm/hobbes_locke_and_rousseau "Declaration of Independence." (1964). In The World Book Encyclopedia, 5 (pp. 66-69). Chicago: Field Enterprises Educational Corporation. 92 A Journey Through My College Papers Dillbeck, B. (n.d.). Social contract, The. Retrieved February 9, 2010, from http://learningtogive.org/papers/paper222.html O'Connor, K. and Sabato, L.J. (2008). American government: Continuity and change, 2008 Edition. New York: Pearson-Longman. Osuji, O.T. (2008, April 14). John Locke. Retrieved February 9, 2010, from http://www.chatafrikarticles.com/articles/1315/1/JohnLocke/Page1.html/print/1315 --. (2008, April 11). Thomas Hobbes. Retrieved February 9, 2010, from http://www.chatafrikarticles.com/articles/1314/1/ThomasHobbes/Page1.html/print/1314 Supreme Court Docket 2/25/2010 In examining the civil rights section of the Supreme Court docket on Oyez.com, I found only eleven civil rights cases listed since the beginning of 2005, and no civil rights cases listed after June of 2006. Of these eleven cases, only two cases came close to dealing with the U.S. Constitution and the Amendments. Three cases dealt with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Two cases dealt with the Reconstruction Civil Rights Acts. Of the four remaining cases, one dealt with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one dealt with Immigration and Naturalization, one dealt with Medicaid and provisions of the Social Security Act, and one dealt with Education of the Handicapped and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Acts (IDEA). Of the two cases with Constitutional applications, one dealt with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and with the Eleventh and Fourteenth Amendments; the other dealt with Equal Protection under the Fourteenth Amendment (Cases -- Civil Rights, n.d.). For my discussion, I have chosen the case of the United States v Georgia, which was unanimously decided in favor of the United States on January 10, 2006. The facts of the case are that a paraplegic inmate in a Georgia prison, Tony Goodman, sued the state of Georgia "for maintaining prison conditions that allegedly discriminated against disabled people and violated Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)" (United States v Georgia, 2006, para. 1). Georgia claimed sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment. The Supreme Court found that "Title II abrogates sovereign immunity ... [and] Congress can enforce the 14th Amendment against the states ... which can involve abrogating state sovereign immunity" (United States v Georgia, 2006, para. 4). In his opinion on the case, Justice Antonin Scalia referred to Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections v Yeskey, 524 U.S. 206, 210 (1998), when he stated that "[w]e have previously held that [public entity] includes state prisons" (United States v Georgia et. al., 2006, para. 4), while explaining how the provisions of the ADA applied to Goodman's case. The Constitutional issues in this case are:  The sovereign immunity of the state of Georgia, provided by the Eleventh Amendment; and  Goodman's right to equal protection, provided by Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. A reading of Chapter 6 of the text by O'Connor and Sabato (2008) shows that the major civil rights cases of the 1950s and the 1960s addresses matters of racial discrimination. Brown v Board of Education occurred in 1954, and was revisited in 1955. This famous case resulted in the racial desegregation of public schools in the United States. In 1955, "Rosa Parks made history when she refused to leave her seat on a bus to move to the back to make room for a white male passenger" Undergraduate Series 93 (O'Connor and Sabato, 2008, 11.4.2), and her case made it to federal court in 1956. The Civil Rights Act was passed by Congress in 1964, and the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965. The arguments of United States v Georgia differ from the cases of the 1950's and 1960's in that Goodman's case was not based on issues of race or gender. However, the case is similar to the cases of the 1950's and 1960's because the original case of Goodman v Georgia et. al. was based on an issue of discrimination, just as the cases of the 1950's and 1960's were based on issues of discrimination. Goodman claimed that he was discriminated against for his disability, while the discrimination in the cases of the 1950's and 1960's was generally based on race or gender. The differences are actually fairly minor, and may be attributed to the laws that were passed in the 1960's. We still hear about cases of racial discrimination and gender discrimination in today's world, especially in relation to employment equality; those cases just didn't happen to be on the Supreme Court docket when I accessed it. The similarities among the cases may be attributed, at least in part, to human nature, and also to ingrained social habits. Many people feel better about themselves when they feel that they are superior to people who are different from them, so people often discriminate against groups of people who are different. Also, people get used to treating others, or being treated, in certain ways, and it is often very difficult for society to learn new habits. Individuals may be able to learn to be accepting and affirming of people who are different from them, but it is much more difficult for society to change. References Cases -- Civil Rights. (n.d.). Retrieved February 24, 2010, from http://www.oyez.org/issues/Civil%20Rights O'Connor, K. and Sabato, L.J. (2008). American government: Continuity and change, [Electronic version]. New York: Pearson-Longman. United States v Georgia. (2006, January 10). Retrieved February 22, 2010, from http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2005/2005_04_1203 United States v Georgia et. al.. (2006, January 10). Retrieved February 24, 2010, from http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/05pdf/04-1203.pdf Unitary, Federal, or Confederal 2/18/2010 It is first necessary to understand what unitary, federal, and confederal governments are, before discussing why a political system should adopt one or another of these. A unitary government is one that "is governed constitutionally as one single unit, with one constitutionally created legislature" (Unitary State, n.d., para. 1). In this form of government, all power originates at the top, and any power that is held by local governments comes from the national government. This is the type of government that the American Colonists had left behind in Great Britain, and that they did not wish to have for the United States. In a federal government system, "[p]ower is shared by a powerful central government and states or provinces that are given considerable self-rule, usually through their own legislatures" (Thomson, n.d., para. 2). In this form of government, powers "derive ... from the people" (O'Connor and Sabado, 2008, section 8.2, para. 2). This is the form of government that currently exists in the United States, and that was established by the U.S. Constitution. A confederal, or confederate, government is a "weak or loose organization of states [that] agrees to follow a ... weak central government" (Thomson, n.d., para. 5). As the Framers discovered under the Articles of Confederation, the central government, which gets all of its power from the states, may have very little power at all. 94 A Journey Through My College Papers The Framers of government for the United States chose a federal government after freeing the United States from a unitary government, and after a failed experiment in confederal government. They did this so that the central government would have the power to govern and to defend the nation, and to raise the funds needed to operate the government and to provide for defense. At the same time, the states retained most of the power to govern within their borders, and the people retained their personal liberties. It is my opinion that the Framers made a wise, well-informed choice, as evidenced by the fact that we continue to live under the federal system that they devised. As E. Wood (n.d.) states: The framers at the Constitutional Convention tried to balance the perceived tyranny of the unitary system with the chaos created by the confederal system by outlining a hybrid federal system in the Constitution. Federalism, then, became a major building block for preserving freedoms while still maintaining order in the new nation. (para. 4) If the United States was to hold another Constitutional Convention, I believe we would still retain the federal form of government in the end. There are those who would argue in favor of a unitary government, or of a socialist government, because some would like the government to be able to make quick, unilateral decisions, and because others would like the government to provide for every material need of the people, but, in the end, cooler heads would remind such a Convention of the excesses and abuses the United States has fought against in the past century, and reason would prevail. The federal government has enough power to defend and protect its people while allowing its people to make their own choices and to craft their own successes. References O'Connor, K. and Sabato, L.J. (2008). American government: Continuity and change, [Electronic version]. New York: Pearson-Longman. Thomson, G. (n.d.). Federal, Confederate and Unitary Governments. Retrieved February 15, 2010, from http://www.nusd.k12.az.us/nhs/gthomson.class/assignments/uni.fed.confed/uni.fed. confed.html Unitary State. (n.d.). Retrieved February 15, 2010, from http://www.spiritustemporis.com/unitary-state/ Wood, E. (n.d.). Chapter Two: Federalism. Retrieved February 15, 2010, from http://phs.prs.k12.nj.us/ewood/amergov/USGov5th/chaptertwo.htm Justice Sonia Sotomayor 3/11/2010 Justice Sonia Sotomayor grew up in a poor family in New York, with one brother, Juan (Lewis, 2010). Both of her parents worked at low-paying jobs until her father died, when she was nine years old, after which her mother "worked hard to raise the children as a single parent" (Sonia Sotomayor Biography, 2009, para. 3). Sotomayor "excelled in school" (Lewis, 2010, para. 9), "graduat[ing] as valedictorian of her class at Blessed Sacrament and Cardinal Spellman High School in New York" (Judge Sonia Sotomayor, 2009, para. 7), and "graduat[ing] summa cum laude from Princeton in 1976" (Sonia Sotomayor Biography, 2009, para. 5), then "earn[ing] a law degree from Yale Law School in 1979" (Lewis, 2010, para. 9). Sotomayor's mother stressed the importance of reading and education, and worked hard to provide her children the materials they needed for a good education. Undergraduate Series 95 Justice Sotomayor served as a trial lawyer in the district attorney's office in Manhattan, New York, after passing the bar in 1980, and later went into private practice of law, where she did pro bono work for several agencies (Sonia Sotomayor Biography, 2009). Sotomayor was [N]ominated by George H.W. Bush on November 27, 1991, to serve as a federal judge, and she was confirmed by the Senate on August 11 of 1992. She was nominated on June 25, 1997, for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, by President William J. Clinton, and was confirmed by the Senate on October 2, 1998. (Lewis, 2010, para. 11) "President Barack Obama nominated [Sotomayor] as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court on May 26, 2009, and she assumed this role on August 8, 2009" (Justices of the Supreme Court, n.d., para. 9). Justice Sotomayor is known as "a sharp and fearless jurist who does not let powerful interests bully her into departing from the rule of law" (Judge Sonia Sotomayor, 2009, para. 12). In addition, Justice Sotomayor "understands that upholding the rule of law means going beyond legal theory to ensure consistent, fair, common-sense application of the law to real-world facts" (Judge Sonia Sotomayor, 2009, para. 14). Justice Sotomayor is firm in her support of the Constitution, and in her refusal to bypass constitutional law in her interpretation of the law. She continues to emphasize the importance of education, operating a summer youth program for students in inner city high schools to learn about the practice of law. She has a strong commitment to family. She believes in giving back to her community, and has served with several organizations, including the second Circuit Task Force on Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts, and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (Judge Sonia Sotomayor, 2009). In a White House press release on May 26, 2009, the day she was appointed by President Obama, Justice Sotomayor was identified as "the only Justice with experience as a trial judge" (Judge Sonia Sotomayor, 2009, para. 3), and the press release goes on to emphasize the importance of the fact that "[s]ince joining the Second Circuit, Sotomayor has honored the Constitution, the rule of law, and justice, often forging consensus and winning conservative colleagues to her point of view" (Judge Sonia Sotomayor, 2009, para. 140. References Judge Sonia Sotomayor. (2009, May 26). Retrieved March 9, 2010, from the White House Web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/background-on-judge-SoniaSotomayor/ Justices of the Supreme Court, The. (n.d.). Retrieved March 9, 2010, from http://www.supremecourtus.gov/about/biographiescurrent.pdf Lewis, J.J. (2010). Sonia Sotomayor Biography. Retrieved March 9, 2010, from http://womenshistory.about.com/od/publicofficials/p/sotomayor.htm?p=1 Sonia Sotomayor Biography. (2009). Retrieved March 9, 2010, from http://www.biography.com/articles/Sonia-Sotomayor-453906?print Senate and House Sites 3/4/2010 I first visited the opening page of the U.S. Senate Web site and the opening page of the U.S. House of Representatives Web site. Even those opening pages show some differences. The Senate site discusses the way voting occurs in the Senate, as well as a bit of Senate history, on the first page, and the page is decorated with a piece of a classical painting. The page is inviting, 96 A Journey Through My College Papers accented in royal blue and red, and it appears to favor educating visitors. In addition, the bar of navigation links is easy to find, and it includes a link for "Art & History" (U.S. Senate, n.d., header). The first page of the House Web site, in contrast to the Senate site, is stark and utilitarian, accented in dark grey. It contains simple, vertical lists of links, with minimal pictorial buttons and with no historical information. Featured on the page are a search tool for locating one's Representative, as well as a section for information about the H1N1 flu. Where the Senate site appears to be intended for the upper class visitor, the House site appears to be designed for the common man, echoing the historical makeup of the two houses of Congress, in which the senate has often been seen as the house of the aristocrats and the House has often been seen as the house of the common people. Seeking to find content differences or similarities between the two sites, as well as the initial aesthetic differences, I then went to the schedule of activities on each site. The Senate site lists the schedule of committee meetings and hearings for March, 2010. The Senate schedule for March includes many entries for appropriations and finance issues, several entries for judiciary issues, several entries for armed forces and veterans' affairs issues, energy and natural resources issues, and a scattering of other topics. Reading beyond the titles of the issues, many of the meetings and hearings that are not overtly financial in nature also deal with budget concerns. In contrast with the senate's schedule of upcoming business, the House site provides a recap of the previous day's business, reading very much like the minutes of a meeting, listed in reverse chronological order. Similar to business in the Senate, the House activities for February 26, 2010, includes several matters involving appropriations and budgets. In the minutiae of the House day, I was struck by an entry reading: "The Clerk was authorized to correct section numbers, punctuation, and cross references, and to make other necessary technical and conforming corrections ... [a]greed to by the Yeas and Nays: (2/3 required)" (Legislative Activities, n.d., para. 6). I can see that this is important to the accurate record keeping of the House, but the time stamps indicate that authorizing technical corrections to a single bill took ten minutes, whereas a matter involving appropriations for intelligence activities took only nine minutes. With both the entry pages of the Web sites for the Senate and the House, and the activities pages of the sites, I have the impression that the Senate puts more effort into being inviting and accessible to the people than the House does. It seems that the difference goes back to the impression, which I mentioned earlier, that the Senate is more associated with a sort of American aristocracy, while the House is more associated with the common, working class in America. References Daily Didest Committee Meetings/Hearings Schedule. (n.d.). Retrieved March 1, 2010, from the U.S. Senate Web site at http://senate.gov/pagelayout/committees/b_three_sections_with_teasers/committee _hearings.htm Legislative Activities. (n.d.). Retrieved March 1, 2010, from the U.S. House of Representatives Web site at http://clerk.house.gov/floorsummary/floor.html United States House of Representatives, 111th Congress, 2nd Session. (n.d.). Retrieved March 1, 2010, from the U.S. House of Representatives Web site at http://www.house.gov United States Senate. (n.d.). Retrieved March 1, 2010, from the U.S. Senate web site at http://www.senate.gov Undergraduate Series 97 Speech Codes in Education 3/15/2010 Although it is well known that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is often treated as the crown jewel in the Bill of Rights, protects the freedoms of speech and expression for Americans, that constitutional protection is frequently not extended to the speech and expression of students in America’s schools, colleges, and universities. This seeming inconsistency not only stands up to scrutiny under the law, but is popularly accepted in the spirit of political correctness, but legality and acceptance do not make the practice right. American students deserve to be protected by the same rule of law that applies to Americans who are enrolled in school. The erosion of students’ rights to free speech and expression has been progressing over the last two decades or longer, with “federal courts … erod[ing] the First Amendment protection of students' speech in the public schools” (LoMonte, 2009, para. 3). It is noteworthy that the restriction of students’ rights is not happening only within the schools, but that it has been fed by the actions of the federal courts. It is also important to note that “private colleges are generally not bound by the First Amendment” (Gould, 2001, para. 24). The Constitution only limits restrictions imposed by the federal government, and, by extension, those schools that operate with federal funds; the government has no power to influence speech rules in private. Therefore, this discussion will only deal with those public educational institutions that are subject to constitutional law. Not all schools have restrictive speech codes, nor should they have such codes if they truly intend to educate, inform, and shape students, but many schools, even public schools that are subject to constitutional law, not only have speech codes but have added such codes in recent decades. Jon B. Gould (2001) reports “[b]y 1997 the percentage of schools with speech policies had jumped 11% [since 1987], and … offensive speech codes had tripled” (para. 44). One explanation for this increase is that “high-level administrators … instigated hate speech regulation … [because they] sought to diffuse racial unrest on campus and deliver ‘symbolic, perhaps even cynical’ gestures to appease marginalized groups and keep pace with … [a] ‘mainstream’ academic administration” (King, 2006, para. 3). It is one thing to restrict hate speech that is directed at a particular person or group, or that represents or incites violence and, in fact, it is reasonable that “public entities may prohibit words ‘which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace’” (Gould, 2001, para. 21), however; it is quite another thing to restrict all speech that might be perceived as offensive to anyone, and many schools that enacted the former restrictions went too far and enacted the latter restrictions. As Bryan R. Warnick (2009) writes in the Educational Researcher, “people do not have a right to live forever unoffended” (para. 31). In educating students, schools at all levels prepare students for life in the real world of adult life, and being protected from any possibility of offense does not prepare students to face the world; rather, students need to be taught to face potentially offensive speech and other forms of expression with grace and dignity, and to be taught how to glean what is good and useful from that speech that might tend to offend. The censorship inherent in institutional speech codes does not allow such teaching and learning to occur. In his article for the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, Frank D. LoMonte (2009), tells us that “[f]orty years ago the Supreme Court resoundingly affirmed that young people attending public schools do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate’" (para. 1). He goes on to tell us that “the Supreme Court recognized … that … administrators may restrict student speech only if such speech ‘materially and substantially disrupts the work and discipline of the school’" (LoMonte, 2009, para. 8). By these reports, 98 A Journey Through My College Papers students should enjoy the same protections of their speech and expression that are enjoyed by anyone who is not enrolled in school, and that is the way it ought to be. Every student attending a public institution, from the youngest preschooler to the eldest college or university student, deserves to be able to express his or her ideas and opinions, barring only those expressions that are almost universally rejected as “fighting words,” and those that are hate speech directed toward a particular person or group, or that represent or incite violence, as discussed earlier. Any other restriction also restricts the free exchange of ideas, the free flow of discussion and academic inquiry, and the free development of the personalities and social skills of the students who are thus restricted. As Patrick Tucker (2006) writes, “speech codes … not only prohibit students from practicing their constitutionally protected rights, but they also undermine the very mission of higher education. (para. 8). Sadly, this is not the case in many of America’s schools, and LoMonte (2009) reports that “courts are increasingly willing to tolerate school punishment … [for] speech that would enjoy full First Amendment protection if written by anyone not enrolled in school (para. 2), and that “students never … have First Amendment rights coextensive with those of adults. (para. 22). In fact, Patrick Tucker (2006), writing for The Futurist, reports that “students and faculty have been punished for engaging in what would be protected speech off campus … [including] eviction from housing, suspension, mandatory psychological counseling, and threats of expulsion” (para. 5). An atmosphere of fear, especially the fear of exploring and expressing ideas and concepts that come out of academic study, will retard students’ ability and motivation to take part in discussion with their peers, and even their ability to learn. This brings out two specific concerns about the control of speech in schools: that there is a distinct disparity between speech by students and speech by non-students; and that there is an apparent assumption that all students are children, to be treated differently than adults are treated. The first concern suggests that, by being enrolled in school, students become less valuable citizens than people who are not students. First Amendment rights are stripped from students as they are not stripped from any other class of citizens. Making the problem worse is the fact that attendance in school is mandatory for students through secondary school, so students are unable to avoid the circumstance that strips away their rights. In a country in which so many have fought and died to protect the freedoms of the citizens, it borders on criminal for the federal government, through its agents in the education system, to limit or to deny the full freedom of speech and expression to any of its citizens based on their status as students. The second concern may be viewed in two ways. Either the government fails to recognize that many students, in fact, the majority of students, attending colleges and universities, as well as a number of high school students, are adults, having reached the age of majority at age 18; or the government finds that it is acceptable to treat adult students as though they were children, further stripping away their constitutional rights based solely on their role as students. Regardless of which interpretation is correct, or whether the truth is some combination of the two options, it is an untenable situation. An adult student, by the simple definition of being an adult, must “have First Amendment rights coextensive with those of [other] adults. (LoMonte, 2009, para. 22), just as an adult doctor, an adult laborer, and adult stay-at-home mother, an adult welfare client, or even an adult felon has such rights. The operative word in each of these designations is “adult.” It might be true that a child does not have the same rights as an adult, but it is a gross oversimplification to assume that a student is the same as a child. Aside from the simple, and supposedly unalienable, rights of students to have their freedom of speech protected within the venue of the public school, there are additional reasons that such protection must be assured for students. One very simple reason, which is often overlooked, is that “[c]hildren and adolescents can know more than adults about specific issues” (Warnick, 2009, para. 18). Students, including those who are children, have knowledge, ideas, viewpoints, opinions, and dreams that deserve to be heard. Often, such speech goes beyond Undergraduate Series 99 deserving to be heard and needs to be heard by parents, by administrators, and by society. Unfortunately, under the rule of speech codes in the schools, students who attempt to inform society are often silenced and punished for their speech. In one case in which students wrote articles for a school newspaper, a “high school principal ordered the removal of [the articles in] … which teenagers discussed their perspective on divorce, pregnancy, and other social issues” (LoMonte, 2009, para. 11). In a time in which parents are urged to encourage their children to talk about their lives and their thoughts, it is unconscionable to quash a student’s attempt to express his or her perspective on a difficult topic of development and family life. Instead, teachers, administrators, and legislators need to encourage students to express themselves honestly, thoughtfully, and creatively, so that students may have a safe outlet for such expressions, and so that school and government authorities may better understand what interests, motivates, and concerns students. Similarly, rigid speech codes prevent students expressing their emotions, including potentially violent emotions, through non-violent, creative media. LoMonte (2009) writes that “the Fifth Circuit found no constitutional violation in a … decision to remove a high school sophomore from school and transfer him to a disciplinary alternative school in response to a violent fantasy story written in a notebook the student was carrying in his school backpack” (para. 18). Students need safe outlets to express their emotions, and creative writing is an excellent vehicle for self-expression, just as painting, sculpture, music, and dance are creative options that should be encouraged and nurtured in students, not repressed and punished. In this instance, the student might have benefitted from talking to a mental health worker about the emotions behind his fantasy story, but moving him to a school that would leave a permanent stain on his academic record and future résumé was an extreme response to the situation. The student in question should have been protected by the First Amendment in his writing of a fantasy story, but he was denied this constitutional right because of his status as a student. Had this student not been a student, a story written in a notebook that he kept in his backpack would have been protected speech. Instead, since “[c]hildren outside school environments … have rights that children within school environments do not … [and] even adults who are students might have their free expression limited in school contexts” (Warnick, 2009, para. 22), this student’s private expression was not allowed to be protected speech. When students’ speech and, by extension, writing and art, is not protected by the First Amendment, even when that speech is private, as in a story in a notebook, an email message, or a text message, students are held to a different standard than other Americans are held to. Even though the speech is intended to be private, if it originates with a student, then “the speaker is charged with anticipating that his message will be shown, without his authorization, to people with whom he never intended to communicate (LoMonte, 2009, para. 22). In the case of electronic speech, such as email, text messages, and messages on social networking sites, as well as blogs and Web sites, that are produced by students, “online speech is punishable as on-campus speech because the effects of the speech will be felt on campus … [and is] even more perilous … [because it] can apply equally to all speech, online or not” (LoMonte, 2009, para. 22). This is dangerous to students’ free expression, as it can reasonably be argued that any speech or writing by anyone, whether or not a student, may be felt on campus. News reports about the race, gender, past experiences, or approach to the issues of a presidential candidate should be expected to be felt on campus. News of the Challenger disaster, of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, of the World Trade Center disaster, of the sexual indiscretions of the President of the United States, and of various school shootings have all reached school campuses over the past several decades, but the writers of these examples of speech and expression have been protected because the originators were not students. On a smaller level, LoMonte’s quote, above, makes it risky for a high school student to tell his friends at the local pizza parlor that he and his girlfriend broke up, because the 100 A Journey Through My College Papers effects of his off-campus speech are likely to be felt on campus. If a student posts on her blog that her boyfriend proposed to her at the prom that night, the effects of her off-campus speech are likely to be felt on campus. It is even intimidating for a student to consider addressing a school board meeting about his knowledge of the deplorable conditions in the school’s bathrooms, or about her observations about on-campus drug use, because the effects of that off-campus speech is certain to be felt on campus. As Mary McCarthy (2009) writes in the Journal of Law and Education, “schools are not required to show that speech will cause disorder, disturbance, or material disruption of class work or school discipline for it to be curtailed” (para. 16), and LoMonte (2009) writes that “Tinker permits not merely preemptive action to stop a potential disruption, but after-the-fact punishment of a potential disruption that never came to pass” (para. 32). In the face of this, students are vulnerable to punishment in the schools for any and all speech, whether it is hate speech, offensive speech, or merely speech that might have an effect at school, no matter where the speech takes place, or in what context. Such restrictions are potentially dangerously repressive of students, and may be expected to impede the work of educating students as they live in fear of what will happen based on anything the students say. In order to protect students, and to promote education and learning, it is necessary to protect student speech. In fact, “the compulsory nature of schooling seems to require some heightened protection of student speech rights” (Warnick, 2009, para. 32). Those who support rigid speech codes in schools sometimes argue that “[c]hildren … lack the rational ability that is a prerequisite to the meaningful application of traditional free speech theories" (Hafen, 1987, cited in Warnick, 2009, para. 16). However, Warnick (2009) goes on to point out that “[i]f we assume that all adults have the intellectual faculties necessary for free speech, we should … grant that children, too, may … possess such capacities and may … deserve access to speech rights” (para. 19). I disagree with Hafen that all children inherently lack the rational ability that is possessed by all adults, or even that all adults possess this rational ability. It should not matter, in the end, how much rational ability a child possesses, when protecting First Amendment rights. The Framers did not selectively protect the speech of only the most rational citizens. The Framers did not stipulate that the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights applied only to those persons who were not enrolled in school. The Framers did not even state that speech would be protected only for adults and not for children. Instead, the Framers designed the supreme law of the United States to protect the rights of every United States citizen. Although the protection of the First Amendment over speech and expression is not presently extended to students in many of the public schools, colleges, and universities in the United States, the language and the spirit of the First Amendment include these students in its protection. Speech codes at private educational institutions stand up to scrutiny under constitutional law, but speech codes at public educational institutions must collapse under such scrutiny. In order to guard education, students must be free to speak without fear. Students’ speech rights must be protected under the First Amendment. References Gould, J.B. (2001). “The precedent that wasn’t: College hate speech codes and the two faces of legal compliance.” Law & Society Review, 35(2), 345-353. Retrieved February 24, 2010, from ProQuest database. King, R.D. (2006, September). “Speak no evil: The triumph of hate speech regulation.” Law & Society Review, 40 (3), 734-736. Retrieved February 24, 2010, from ProQuest database. LoMonte, F.D. (2009, May). “Reaching through the schoolhouse gate: students’ eroding First Amendment rights in a cyber-speech world.” Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, 58 (3), 73-83. Retrieved February 24, 2010, from ProQuest database. Undergraduate Series 101 McCarthy, M. (2009, October). “Curtailing degrading student expression: Is a link to a disruption required?” Journal of Law and Education, 38 (4), 607-621. Retrieved February 24, 2010, from ProQuest database. Tucker, P. (2006, March/April). “Speech codes and the future of education.” The Futurist, 40 (2), 1. Retrieved February 24, 2010, from ProQuest database. Warnick, B.R. (2009, April). “Student speech rights and the special characteristics of the school environment.” Educational Researcher, 38 (3), 200-215. Retrieved February 24, 2010, from ProQuest database. INF 103: Computer Literacy Air Travel Database 4/7/2010 The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS) was developed to allow air carriers to determine which passengers are unknown or high security risks. CAPPS takes basic identification information and runs it through "commercial data providers" (Subcommittee on Aviation, 2005, para. 3.1) to create a "risk assessment 'score' [for] each passenger: green for minimal, yellow to spark heightened security procedures, and red for those judged to pose an acute danger, who would be referred to law enforcement for possible arrest" (EPIC, 2008, para. 7). One example of this process is CAPPS "conduct[ing] risk assessments using government databases, including classified and intelligence data, to generate a risk score" (Subcommittee on Aviation, 2005, para. 3.3). Another example is CAPPS "us[ing] information from the passenger’s itinerary to search for certain behavioral characteristics determined by the FAA ... to indicate a higher security risk" (Subcommittee on Aviation, 2005, para. 2). CAPPS collects several kinds of personal information, "including full name, date of birth, home address and home telephone number" (Fiorino, 2004, para. 2). In addition, CAPPS collects "'financial and transactional data,' which could include credit card and other consumer-purchase data, housing information, communications records, health records and ... public source information such as law enforcement and legal records" (CAPPS II Data-Mining, 2003, para. 8). The first group of data -- name, data of birth, address, and phone number -- is provided by the passenger, and the rest of the data is accessed based on those basic data. CAPPS has the potential to seriously infringe on personal privacy. "[T]he basic information of name, address, telephone number and date of birth could be easily obtained by a terrorist intent on assuming a less risky identity" (Subcommittee on Aviation, 2005, para. 16). Along with the risk of damage to personal privacy from identity theft, "there is a risk that a CAPPS-II system might be deployed for the government to control access to all forms of transportation, including ships, trains, and buses, and might also encompass government buildings and public spaces" (EPIC, 2008, para. 8). Additionally, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) "indicated ... that many private and public entities might gain access to the personal information used in the passenger screening database" (EPIC, 2008, para. 9). The January Federal Register (2003) states that "a yellow code in a person's file could be shared with other government agencies at the federal, state and local level, with intelligence agencies such as the CIA and with foreign governments and international agencies" (cited in CAPPS II DataMining, 2003, para. 6). With all of these agencies and entities having access to passengers' personal information, there is a serious risk that the information could be held against individuals when they apply for employment or for government benefits. Barry Steinhardt, Director of the 102 A Journey Through My College Papers ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, warns that "CAPPS II threatens our liberty, but its security benefits are far from clear" (CAPPS II Data-Mining, 2003, para. 11). Although I recognize that CAPPS II is intended to make air travel safer, and, by extension, to make America safer, I would prefer to travel without the CAPPS. Like all rules and laws, it will work to keep law-abiding citizens in order, but it is unlikely to be an effective deterrent for those who are intent on circumventing the law. As a traveler, my privacy is at risk from too many agencies without my clear knowledge of which agency has what information, but anyone who wants to wreak havoc on a flight can just use a false identity to get on a flight. As a result, I actually feel less safe with CAPPS than I would feel without it. References CAPPS II Data-Mining System Will Invade Privacy and Create Government Blacklist of Americans, ACLU Warns. (2003, February 27). Retrieved April 6, 2010, from http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/capps-ii-data-mining-system-will-invadeprivacy-and-create-government-blackli EPIC -- Electronic Privacy Information Center. (2008). Retrieved April 6, 2010, from http://epic.org/privacy/airtravel/profiling.html Fiorino, L. (2004, June 25). Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System to make skies safer. Retrieved April 6, 2010, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4183/is_20040625/ai_n10061646/ Subcommittee on Aviation Hearing on The Status Of The Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II). (2005, April 27). Retrieved April 6, 2010, from http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/congress/2004_h/040317-memo.htm Artificial Intelligence 4/19/2010 In the not-so-distant past, artificial intelligence, or AI, was the stuff of science fiction books and movies. One of the most famous examples of AI is the HAL 9000 computer, which was a major character in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL interacted with the human character, Dave, on an almost human level. Today, however, AI has ceased to be the sole property of science fiction and has become, instead, a very real and practical reality in our modern world. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online (2010) defines artificial intelligence as “a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers … [and] the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior” (para. 1). The scientific effort to develop AI got its start in the 1950’s, when “a group of scientists decided to try to provide the computer with intelligence. Their goal seemed attainable due to a common metaphorical identification of the computer with a brain” (Gozzi, 1997, para. 2). In the early 1960’s, AI received attention from the government, with “funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Office of Naval Research (ONR)” (Waltz, 1996, para. 6). Government interest in AI continued into the 1970’s, with the U.S. Army, NASA, and other government agencies adding their support to AI research (Waltz, 1996). AI did not remain only in the U.S., of course, and “[b]y the early 1980's an "expert systems" industry had emerged, and Japan and Europe dramatically increased their funding of AI research” (Waltz, 1996, para. 7). In 1970, Darrach predicted: In from three to eight years we will have a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being … [and] [i]n a few months it will be at genius level Undergraduate Series 103 and a few months after that its powers will be incalculable. (cited in Gozzi, 1997, para. 5) While that prediction has not come true, the Chinook checkers program, developed by Jonathan Schaeffer of the University of Alberta, has advanced to the point where “[t]here isn’t a human alive today that can ever win a game anymore against the full program” (Grayson, 2007, para. 2) because it has been programmed to learn and to adapt. AI affects many aspects of modern life, with Amtrak, Wells Fargo, Land's End, and many other organizations … replacing keypadmenu call centers with speech-recognition systems … [,] General Motors OnStar driver assistance system rel[ying] primarily on voice commands, … [t]he Lexus DVD Navigation System respond[ing] to over 100 commands and guid[ing] the driver with voice and visual directions … [, and] avatars … becoming common” (Halal, 2004, paras. 15-33). Figure 1 Figure 2 104 A Journey Through My College Papers With traditional, digital computers, it requires “the output of an entire power station” (Watson, 1997, para. 6) to perform 1016 operations per second, while the human brain can do the same amount of work “while consuming less power than an electric light bulb” (Watson, 1997, para. 6). (See Figure 1.) Newer, analog computers, on the other hand, can “run at a computational speed a million times faster than the human brain” (Berne, 2001, para. 6). (See Figure 2.) With this increase in computational power, it is now possible to build “absolutely creative computers whose probably-useful output is unpredictable even in principle effectively creative computers whose probablyuseful output is unpredictable in practice” (Caulfield, 1995, para. 3). In other words, it is now possible to build a computer that will behave like a human brain. As a result, “[i]n the second decade of this century … it will be increasingly difficult to draw any clear distinction between the capabilities of human and machine intelligence” (Berne, 2001, para. 5). It is estimated that, by the end of this century, “humans will be able to use scanning technology for the purpose of … downloading the brains contents into another receptacle” (Berne, 2001, para. 8). Ultimately, some researchers believe, this downloading of the brain’s contents will “mak[e] a form of immortality “ (Markoff, 2009, para. 11). Authorizing Financial Transactions Configuring Hardware and Software Credit card providers Custom computer systems Telephone companies Communications systems Mortgage lenders Manufacturing systems Banks Track the rapid technological evolution of U.S. Government system components and specifications. AI systems detect fraud and expedite financial Systems currently deployed process billions of transactions, with daily transaction volumes in dollars of orders annually. the billions. Diagnosing and Treating Problems Scheduling for Manufacturing Medical: Manufacturing operations Diagnosis Job shop scheduling Prescribing treatment Assigning airport gates Monitoring patient response Assigning railway crews Technological: Military settings Photocopiers AI technology has shown itself superior to less Computer systems adaptable systems based on older technology. Office automation Monitor and control operations in factories and office buildings Table 1 While AI-assisted immortality is still a thing of the future, AI is in common use in four areas of life now: in authorizing financial transactions, in configuring hardware and software, in diagnosing and treating both medical and technological problems, and in scheduling for manufacturing (Waltz, 1996). (See Table 1.) Anyone who has ever called a business or a government agency and has talked to a voice-recognition program to navigate through the menu to reach a particular department has interacted with artificial intelligence. Anyone who has instructed a hands-free cell phone to “call home” has interacted with artificial intelligence. The popular Tom-Tom navigation system, which tells drivers where to turn, and which helps drivers find the correct route when they miss a turn, uses artificial intelligence. “[F]or the most part, AI does not produce stand-alone systems, but instead adds knowledge and reasoning to existing applications, databases, and environments, to make them friendlier, smarter, and more sensitive to user behavior and changes in their environments” (Waltz, 1996, para. 2). These examples of AI do not yet fully imitate humans, as they are not yet self-aware, nor do computers yet exhibit beliefs, desires, or emotions, but they are a major step toward the future that was embodied in “the HAL 9000 computer from Arthur Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey or the superhuman android, Lieutenant Commander Data, of the television program ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’” (High-performance artificial intelligence, 1997, para. 5). It is expected that computers will continue to learn human traits, however, including “beliefs and desires, even emotions” (Sparrow, 2004, para. 1), and “they will become fully fledged self-conscious ‘artificial intelligences’” (Sparrow, 2004, para. 1). While the AI devices that are used today are merely what is known as “weak AI,” the latter sort of AI, which works “towards the creation of genuine artificial intelligence – a project known as ‘Strong AI’” (Sparrow, 2004, para. 5). The development of strong AI may one day lead to the creation of artificial intelligence not unlike “the sort made popular by speculative fiction and films such as ‘Blade Runner’, ‘The Terminator’, ‘Alien’, ‘Aliens’ and ‘AI’” (Sparrow, 2004, para. 46). In the pursuit of strong AI, “researchers [using neuromorphics] are capturing in silicon … the ‘essence’ of biological subsystems” Undergraduate Series 105 (Watson, 1997, para. 2). This concept harks back to another famous Arthur C. Clarke story: “Dial F for Frankenstein,” as well as a 1993 paper by Vernor Vinge: “The Singularity” (Markoff, 2009). Following the work of British mathematician Alan Turing, Daniel Dennett of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab has created an intelligent robot called Cog (Proudfoot, 1999). Cog has been designed to resemble a human in form as well as intelligence, having “’hips’ and a ‘waist,’ and … hav[ing] skin and a face” (Proudfoot, 1999, para. 1). Cog will be able to learn, and it will “delight in learning, abhor error, strive for novelty, [and] recognize progress" (Proudfoot, 1999, para. 1). As we move through the 21st Century, it is not unreasonable to expect “a modest version of the talking computer made famous in 2001: A Space Odyssey” (Halal, 2004, para. 40) to become a reality, although Halal’s (2004) prediction that such a computer would be available in 2010 fell a bit short of the mark. It will be important, as research and development of AI advances, to guard against the creation of anything like "’Terminator Salvation’ [, which] comes complete with a malevolent artificial intelligence dubbed Skynet, a military R.&D. project that gained self-awareness and concluded that humans were an irritant … to be dispatched forthwith” (Markoff, 2009, para. 1). While “[t]he history of artificial intelligence is littered with the wrecks of fantastical predictions of machine “ (Proudfoot, 1999, para. 3), AI continues to advance, and to become entrenched in more and more aspects of daily life, and “it is dangerously presumptuous to claim that science will never progress to the point at which the question of the moral status of intelligent computers arises” (Sparrow, 2004, para. 5). Instead, it may be wiser to accept the probability that AI will advance to this point in time, and to consider “whether such machines might be the ‘machines of loving grace,’ of the Richard Brautigan poem, or something far darker, of the ‘Terminator’ ilk” (Markoff, 2009, para. 17). While the world waits for “a personal computer … to simulate the brain-power of a trillion human brains” (Berne, 2001, para. 6), “[s]cientific advances are making it possible for people to talk to smart computers … [and to] exploit … the commercial potential of the Internet” (Halal, 2004, para. 1). Rollo Carpenter has developed a program called Cleverbot, which is designed to learn conversational language. Cleverbot “chats” with human users on the Internet “to learn how to generate better dialogue over time” (Saenz, 2010, para. 1). Cleverbot does not, yet, interact with its human users on the level of the HAL 9000, but it “uses a growing database of 20+ million online conversations to talk with anyone who goes to its website” (Saenz, 2010, para. 1), which is located at http://www.cleverbot.com. From cell phones to navigation systems to medical diagnostics, AI has moved out of the realm of science fiction and has become a very present, practical reality of modern life. As chatterbox programs like Cleverbot advance, the future of AI appears bright, and almost limitless. For now, we can all contribute to the development of AI by logging on to chat with Cleverbot while we wait on hold for voice-recognition customer service answering systems on our Smart Phones. References “Artificial Intelligence”. (2010). Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved April 13, 2010, from http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/artificial+intelligence Berne, R. (2001, Fall). “Robosapiens, Transhumanism, and the Kurzweilian Utopia: Why the Trans In Transhumanism?” Iris, 43, 36. Retrieved March 16, 2010, from ProQuest database. Caulfield, H.J. (1995). “The computer subconscious.” Kybernetes, 24 (4), 46-52. Retrieved March 16, 2010, from ProQuest database. Gozzi, R. (1997, Summer). “Artificial Intelligence – Metaphor or oxymoron?” Et Cetera, 54 (2), 219-224, Retrieved March 16, 2010, from ProQuest database. 106 A Journey Through My College Papers Grayson, B. (2007, July 19). The Next Jump in Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved March 16, 2010, from http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/the-next-jump-in-artificialintelligence/article_print Halal, W.E. (2004, March/April). “The Intelligent Internet: The Promise of Smart Computers and E-Commerce.” The Futurist, 38 (2), 27-32. Retrieved March 16, 2010, from ProQuest database. “High-performance artificial intelligence.” (1997, August 12). Science, 265 (5174), 891- 892. Retrieved March 16, 2010, from ProQuest database. Markoff, J. (2009, May 24). “The Coming Superbrain.” The New York Times. Retrieved March 16, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/weekinreview/24markoff.html Proudfoot, D. (1999, April 30). “How human can they get?” Science, 284 (5415), 745. Retrieved March 16, 2010, from ProQuest database. Saenz, A. (2010, January 13). Cleverbot Chat Engine Is Learning From The Internet To Talk Like A Human. Retrieved April 13, 2010, from http://singularityhub.com/2010/01/13/cleverbot-chat-engine-is-learning-from-theinternet-to-talk-like-a-human/ Sparrow, R. (2004). “The Turing Triage Test.” Ethics and Information Technology, 6, 203-213. Retrieved March 16, 2010, from ProQuest database. Waltz, D.L. (1996). Artificial Intelligence: Realizing the Ultimate Promises of Computing. Retrieved March 16, 2010, from http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/lazowska/cra/ai.html Watson, A. (1997, September 26). “Why can’t a computer be more like a brain?” Science, 277 (5334), 1934-1936. Retrieved March 16, 2010, from ProQuest database. Electronic Monitoring 3/31/2010 There are many types of electronic monitoring and electronic surveillance. Generally, one is likely to be aware of monitoring measures, but one may be entirely unaware of surveillance measures. Electronic monitoring and surveillance devices include those used in corrections, those used by businesses to monitor employees and customers, and those used by the government to monitor possible seditious or terrorist activities. "The following are types of electronic monitoring devices utilized by Oakland County [, Michigan,] Community Corrections Division: Global Positioning System (GPS)[,] Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitoring (SCRAM)[,] Breathalyzer Monitor[, and] Ignition Interlock " (Electronic Monitoring Devices, 2010, para. 2). With GPS, "[t]he offender's movements are tracked via satellites and reported at regular intervals, in the event of a violation, the offender's movement is reported in as close to real time as possible" (Electronic Monitoring Devices, 2010, para. 3). The SCRAM system "uses transdermal ... analysis to determine the offender's Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) every hour at least 24 times per day" (Electronic Monitoring Devices, 2010, para. 5). The breathalyzer monitor "randomly monitors and screens the defendant for alcohol while he/she is at home" (Electronic Monitoring Devices, 2010, para. 6). Finally, the ignition interlock "is a breath analyzer installed into a vehicle to prevent a person from starting the engine if alcohol is detected in their system" (Electronic Monitoring Devices, 2010, para. 7). These measures make me feel more secure, as I live in Oakland County, Michigan, and these measures help keep offenders from being dangerous to society. Monitoring measures used in businesses include card scanners, which "detect ... the proximity of a portable ... security card that may contain a coded magnetic strip or embedded Undergraduate Series 107 electronic circuitry that identifies the holder as an authorized visitor" (Definition of Card scanner, 2010, para. 1); fingerprint scanners, which "can scan a fingerprint and compare the digitized image/data with fingerprints in a database of authorized visitors" (Definition of Fingerprint scanner, 2010, para. 1); keypad entry devices, which "require ... the user to depress keys in a predetermined order, either sequentially or simultaneously" (Definition of Keypad entry device, 2010, para. 1); retinal scanners, which "can scan a retinal image and compare the digitized image/data with retinal scans in a database of authorized visitors" (Definition of Retinal scanner, 2010, para. 1); and voice recognition devices, which "can accurately distinguish voice characteristics and compare the digitized voice data with voice prints in a database of authorized visitors" (Definition of Voice recognition, 2010, para. 1). Businesses may also use security cameras and magnetic security devices inside or attached to products, or metal detectors, to improve security. Monitoring and surveillance measures used by the government include metal detectors, xray devices, and security cameras, as well as the FBI's Carnivore Program. The Carnivore program "is a packet 'sniffer' diagnostic tool that the FBI's Engineering Research Facility (ERF) in Quantico, Va. developed to covertly search for e-mails and other computer messages from criminal suspects" (Telecommunications Industry Association, 2010, para. 2). Knowing that electronic security devices are in place sometimes makes me feel more secure, as I stated in the first paragraph, above, but it sometimes makes me feel that my privacy is being compromised, as with certain surveillance cameras that are placed in restrooms or in changing rooms. I recognize the need for security measures, but I don't always enjoy experiencing those measures. Electronic surveillance equipment in public places, or in places where individuals do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy, do not constitute an invasion of privacy, but surveillance equipment that enters individuals' homes, personal communications, or rest room facilities, or that cause a violation of privileged communications, such as with a doctor, with legal representation, or with clergy, is an invasion of privacy. In an article in Smart Computing, it was reported that "the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reported on its Freedom Network in several 1998 and 1999 articles that 50 million Americans are being electronically monitored at work" (At-Work Privacy, 2010, para. 1). In addition, "[m]any employers have installed hidden video cameras in locker rooms and bathrooms, sometimes inside the stalls. Many of these devices are specifically targeted against women" (Workplace Voyeurism, n.d., para. 1). The AFL-CIO, as reported in AtWork Privacy (2010), states that "electronic surveillance invades workers' privacy, erodes their sense of dignity, and frustrates their efforts to do high-quality work by a single-minded emphasis on speed and other purely quantitative measurements" (para. 10). There have been a number of court cases that involve privacy issues associated with electronic monitoring and surveillance. In a five-year case that began in 1993, "Frank Etienne and Brad Fair, employees of the Sheraton in Boston ... discovered their employer was secretly videotaping them in the men's dressing room ... it was settled for $200,000" (At-Work Privacy, 2010, para. 13). Several cases in which the employers prevailed include Bourke vs. Nissan Motor Corp (1993), Flanagan vs. Epson America, Inc (1991), and Smyth vs. Pillsbury Co (1996), all of which involved monitoring of e-mail communications (At-Work Privacy, 2010). Cases involving monitoring of bathrooms and locker rooms include Florida's Smith v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., and Liberti v. Walt Disney World Co; Illinois' Brazinski v. Amoco Petroleum Additives Co. and Benitez v. KFC Natl. Mgt. Co; Kansas' Thompson v. Johnson County Community College; Maine's Delledonne v. Dugrenier; Michigan's Lewis v. Dayton Hudson Corp; and Wisconsin's Gallun v. Soccer U.S.A, Inc. A case involving electronic monitoring, rather than surveillance, is People v. McNair, 87 N.Y.2D 772 (1996), in which the "defendant -- an admitted alcoholic -- received a sentence of six 108 A Journey Through My College Papers months of incarceration, five years probation, and a one year period of electronic monitoring" (People v. McNair, 1996, para. 1). McNair appealed the sentence of monitoring, and "[b]ecause the court deemed the electronic monitoring imposed on Defendant to be fundamentally deterrent or punitive and without express legislative authority, the court rejected its force as a condition on Defendant's probation" (People v. McNair, 1996, para. 7). Privacy is a fundamental human right, and in most cases I would say that privacy in an individual's home or in his or her personal communications should be of paramount importance. However, individual privacy cannot supersede the need for security in government or in business, nor can privacy supersede issues of national security. Businesses have a right to protect their interests, and employees and customers of businesses have no reasonable expectation of privacy while on the premises of a business. "No matter how small your business might be, security should be high on your priority list" (Electronic Security Devices, 2010, para. 1). Businesses use electronic surveillance to improve employee productivity, to reduce losses due to theft, and to reduce industrial espionage (At-Work Privacy, 2010). Employees need to be careful about using employers' equipment and resources for personal communications, such as phone conversations and e-mails, as "[t]he courts have exploited the doctrine of implied consent to find that employees and applicants have consented to workplace surveillance wherever employers gave advance notice of such monitoring" (At-Work Privacy, 2010, para. 15). References At-Work Privacy. (2010). Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/archive/g0804 /20g04/20g04.asp Definition of Card scanner. (2010, March 11). Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://www.apt.gc.ca/ap11140E.asp?pId=514 Definition of Fingerprint scanner. (2010, March 11). Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://www.apt.gc.ca/ap11140E.asp?pId=515 Definition of Keypad entry device. (2010, March 11). Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://www.apt.gc.ca/ap11140E.asp?pId=516 Definition of Retinal scanner. (2010, March 11). Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://www.apt.gc.ca/ap11140E.asp?pId=517 Definition of Voice recognition. (2010, March 11). Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://www.apt.gc.ca/ap11140E.asp?pId=518 Electronic Monitoring Devices. (2010). Retrieved March 29, 2010, from the Oakland County, Michigan, Community Corrections Division Web site at http://www.oakgov.com/commcorr/program_service/electronic_monitor.html Electronic Security Devices for Businesses: Security System Tips. (2010). Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://www.morebusiness.com/running_your_business/management/ d924556083.brc People v. McNair, 87 N.Y.2D 772. (1996, April 4). Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://www.law.cornell.edu/nyctap/comments/i96_0075.htm Telecommunications Industry Association. (2010). Surveillance Technology. Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://www.tiaonline.org/standards/technology/calea/surveillance_technology.cfm Workplace Voyeurism. (n.d.). Retrieved March 29, 2010, from http://www.workrights.org/issue_electronic/em_videomonitoring.html Undergraduate Series 109 Smart Cards 3/25/2010 Smart cards are identification cards that contain more personal information than conventional identification cards because smart cards include electronic chips that contain special information such as "fingerprints or retina scans" (Gross, 2005, para. 10), as well as "credit card accounts, your check card account, and possibly even your health records" (Gross, 2005, para. 1). They are commonly in use in school IDs now, as well as some key cards and bank cards, but we don't usually call these limited-use cards smart cards. Smart cards "use single cards ... to bundle different services and with them authentication systems created to support them" (Schwartz, 1998, para. 6). Smart cards have economic and privacy benefits. Economic benefits include being able to digitally sign documents and to "automate payment functions" (Ham and Atkinson, 2002, para. 3). An advantage to this would be "the reduction in fraud that leads to the 'hidden tax' we all pay through higher credit card interest rates" (Ham and Atkinson, 2002, para. 3), because the smart card would improve the identification of card users. Some privacy benefits of smart cards include using thumb prints, instead of passwords, to access information, because thumb prints cannot be stolen as easily as passwords. "Smart cards also make it easier to create a digital paper trail on government employees who access your data" (Ham and Atkinson, 2002, para. 4). In addition, smart cards can reduce identity fraud because "[e]ven if a thief were able to copy the information on a passport's smart card, he wouldn't be able to change it because the information will be encrypted ... [t]he encrypted photograph on the smart card wouldn't match the thief's face if he tried to use it to cross a border" (Gross, 2006, para. 5). Some smart cards combine economic and privacy benefits, "such as a student ID on a university campus which allows access into buildings, pays for meals and serves as a library card" (Schwartz, 1998, para. 3). "[S]mart ID cards may even reduce racial profiling. Airlines, for instance, could have expedited security procedures for frequent fliers that rely on smart ID cards; an individual who might otherwise be singled out for additional security screening due to race could avoid that with a smart ID card" (Ham and Atkinson, 2002, para. 9). This has both economic benefits for the airlines and personal benefits for the card holder. There are also privacy concerns surrounding smart cards. One of the prime concerns is that "giving someone the key to your car ... would be in effect giving them the key to your life" (Schwartz, 1998, para. 10). Once a person gains access to another person's smart card, the concern is that the new person gains access to the card owner's personal information, financial data, and keys to any vehicles or buildings the card owner has access to. The answer to this concern, however, is that "[w]hile smart cards, by themselves, are privacy-neutral, their on-card intelligence uniquely enables systems that use them to comply with many of the recommended privacy guidelines" (Privacy and Secure Identification Systems, 2003, para. 7). According to Nancy Libin of the Center for Democracy and Technology, "smart cards are not foolproof. For example, fingerprints could be digitally copied and duplicated ... [and] [u]nlike passwords, biometrics aren't secret, and they cannot be easily modified ... [o]nce that biometric has been ... compromised, it's done. It cannot be reissued, it's finished" (Gross, 2005, paras. 19-20). I am in favor of the use of smart card technology. When my sons were in an elementary school in southern Illinois last year, they were required to wear smart ID badges with their photographs and fingerprints, which were used for attendance records, breakfast and lunch accounts in the school cafeteria, and for library and computer lab usage. Having all of my information in one card, which would be "accepted as federal ID, required for activities such as boarding commercial airplanes" (Gross, 2005, para. 9) would be very convenient. If a smart card 110 A Journey Through My College Papers could replace a house key, a car key, a driver's license, a bank card, and a library card, I would not have to carry several keys and cards that are easy to misplace; I could keep one card that would be much easier to keep track of. Recently, I took my children to an identification clinic where their personal information, details of custody, digital fingerprints, still photographs, and audio and video recordings were placed on computer CDs. They also received traditional photo ID cards. If we were able to use smart cards, all of the information could be placed on the cards, which would make it more efficient for the police to find the children if anything should happen. References Gross, G. (2005, September 14). Smart ID Cards Debated. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from http://www.pcworld.com/article/122537/smart_id_cards_debated.html --. (2006, August 16). Privacy not a problem, say smart-card vendors. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9002508/ Privacy_not_a_problem_say_smart_card_vendors Ham, S. and Atkinson, R.D. (2002, January 18). Frequently Asked Questions about Smart ID Cards. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=140&subsecid=290&contentid= 250075 Privacy and Secure Identification Systems White Paper. (2003, February). Retrieved March 21, 2010, from http://www.smartcardalliance.org/pages/publications-privacy-report Schwartz, A. (2007, March 21). Smart Cards at the Crossroads: Authenticator or Privacy Invader?. Retrieved March 21, 2010, from http://optout.cdt.org/digsig/idandsmartcards.shtml PHI 103: Informal Logic Addressing Stereotypes 6/4/2010 Although it is extremely common for people from every walk of life to judge other people according to stereotypes that are based on appearances, roles in society, age, religion, and many other factors, it is inappropriate to judge any individual based on stereotypes of the group to which that individual belongs. Some groups that are commonly subjected to stereotyping include politicians, tattooed persons, feminists, and senior citizens. A common stereotype regarding politicians is that politicians cannot be trusted. In the past, politicians were often accorded increased respect based on their roles in society, but that is rarely the case in modern society. Jayaprakash Narayan (2006) writes that “[a]ll democracies view their politicians with some derision” (para. 2). To be sure, politicians are not viewed in the same terms by all segments of society. Members of the wealthy upper-class tend to view politicians as sophisticated peers. Members of the working class tend to view politicians with distrust, and to have as little to do with politics as they can manage. Members of the poorer lowerclass tend to view politicians as evil, self-serving criminals, whose sole purpose is to destroy the country and make life as difficult as bureaucratically possible. The stereotype arises somewhere between the middle and lower classes, since these groups constitute the majority of the population. There is some truth to the stereotypes about politicians. Some politicians are dishonest, despite presenting a façade of high integrity. The various peccadilloes of politicians receive a lot of air time on television, on the radio, and on the internet, as well as a lot of space in print, such Undergraduate Series 111 that it is often difficult for the public to see the honest, diligent politicians who keep society working. Tattooed persons tend to be stereotyped as “being unsuccessful in school, coming from broken homes, having an unhappy childhood, rarely attending church, having poor decisionmaking skills, usually obtaining body modifications while inebriated, and being easy victim to peer pressure” (Martin and Dula, 2010, para. 5). Persons with tattoos are often referred to as “freaks,” and it can be very difficult for them to secure employment or to be accepted as credible witnesses or sources of information. Exceptions to this impression occur when the tattooed persons are artists or musicians who have achieved national or international acclaim, at which point the tattoos may be viewed as appropriate symbols of their success. Some tattooed persons, who belong to urban gangs, or who are employed in occupations that are commonly viewed as belonging to the undereducated, the lazy, and the violent members of society, give the truth to the stereotypes about tattooed persons. As in the case of politicians, the examples that prove the stereotypes are often more visible than the persons who go about normal, industrious lives, making positive contributions to society, and who just happen to have tattoos. Feminists form several different groups within society, but the word “feminist” tends to evoke images of women who are militantly opposed to any instance of masculine power or privilege. The stereotype feminist “"is unapologetically sexual [and] understands that good pleasures make good politics, ...[and] knows that making social change does not contradict the principle that girls just want to have fun” (Showden, 2009, para. 21). Feminists are often portrayed as verbally, emotionally, or socially emasculating men. Typically, this stereotype is perpetuated by men and by women who prefer the earlier “stereotypes of women as gentler, fairer, more believable, less violent, more victimized, etc., than men” (Showden, 2009, para. 10). As with the groups discussed above, there are feminists who illustrate the truth of the stereotypes. Entertainment media has provided many examples in this group, with dominating, forceful female characters in many movies and television programs. Again, as with the other groups, the very visible feminists who prove the stereotypes make it hard to notice the many elegant, successful feminists who live well-balanced lives. Senior citizens are often referred to as “old” or as “elderly,” each of which evokes an image of obsoletion. Senior citizens are typically stereotyped as slow, frail, forgetful, sickly, and a bit eccentric. In the past, senior citizens were revered as the wise men and women of society, and were accorded exceptional respect, but it the modern world, senior citizens are often tucked away in nursing homes and retirement communities to save their progeny the trouble of having to care for the senior citizens. Narina Nunez, et al. (1999) writes that: Studies examining the perceptions of the elderly in the courtroom ... have yielded mixed results... asked participants to consider a witness who was a typical 6-, 8-, 21-, or 74-year-old and rate the hypothetical witness on his or her probable accuracy, suggestibility, honesty, and the weight they would give to each testimony. They found that only on the dimension of honesty was the elderly witness rated the same as the younger adult. On all other dimensions they were viewed more negatively. (para 3) This study indicates that senior citizens are viewed as being generally inaccurate and suggestible. Even senior citizens themselves seem to have accepted the stereotypes, and to have internalized the stereotypes, thus causing the stereotypes to become true. Nearly everyone knows at least one senior citizen who proves the truth of the elderly stereotypes. There are many, many senior citizens who truly are slower than they used to be, who are losing their memories and cognitive powers, and who are relegated to care facilities to await the end of their lives. It can be hard to recognize the senior citizens who give the lie to the stereotypes, because these individuals often have physical appearances that look much younger 112 A Journey Through My College Papers than their actual ages. Many senior citizens spend many quality years employed in volunteer activities, travelling around the country and around the world, and raising generations of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. There is a degree of truth to any stereotype, and living examples may be found that appear to prove the veracity of the stereotype claims. As I have indicated above, it is entirely possible to find a number of dishonest politicians, a group of shiftless and unreliable persons with tattoos, many militantly overbearing feminists, and senior citizens who have become slow, frail, and forgetful. It is also possible to find pedophiliac Catholic priests and undereducated AfricanAmerican basketball players, as well as examples of every common or obscure stereotype that exists. However, it is, arguably, easier to find honest, diligent politicians; responsible, stable persons with tattoos; charming, independent feminists; active senior citizens, devoutly celibate priests; and well-educated African-Americans of many professions. It is unwise and irresponsible to judge each and every member of any stereotyped group according to the stereotype, whether the particular stereotype has positive of negative connotations for the members of the group. In reading about rhetoric and stereotypes, as well as the many other fallacies of logic that we have considered during the past week, I have come to realize that I am guilty of thinking in stereotypes, and of giving in to rhetorical arguments. I do tend to avoid persons with tattoos, particularly if a person has a lot of tattoos, or if the tattoos contain particular images that my mind connects with violent activity or with truck drivers. I know that this is an irrational reaction, particularly since my husband, who is one of the most responsible, reliable, decent people I know, has a tattoo on his arm. Similarly, I know that I tend to lump politicians together under the stereotype of being untrustworthy, despite having grown up knowing a number of state and federal politicians, and despite being quite proud of the political figures in my ancestry. Stereotypes are easy to accept, because they make it unnecessary for people to think and to discern for themselves. The easy way is not always the best way, however, and this is one of those cases. No matter how easy a stereotype may be, it is inappropriate to judge any individual based on stereotypes of the group to which that individual belongs. It is a much better thing to consider each individual on his or her own merits, as a unique person. If each person will take the time to do this, he or she may be pleasantly surprised by the gifts and talents of people he or she might have overlooked, avoided, or dismissed if he or she had based impressions on stereotypes. References Martin, B., and Dula, C.. (2010). “More Than Skin Deep: Perceptions Of, and Stigma Against, Tattoos.” College Student Journal, 44(1), 200-206. Retrieved June 4, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Narayan, J. (2006). “Bridging the Gap Between People and Politicians.” Fellowship, 72(9-12), 37. Retrieved June 4, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Nunez, N., McCoy, M.L., Clark, H.L., and Shaw, L.A.. (1999, August). “The Testimony of Elderly Victim/Witnesses and Their Impact on Juror Decisions.” Law and Human Behavior; 23, 4. Retrieved June 4, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Showden, C.. (2009). “What's Political about the New Feminisms?” Frontiers, 30(2), 166198,200. Retrieved June 4, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Thinking Critically 6/24/2010 I believe the most important thing I have learned about critical thinking during the course of this class is how to recognize fallacious arguments. Being able to recognize a fallacy of logic Undergraduate Series 113 allows me to better respond to an argument, and to seek the true focus of the argument. It also allows me to recognize if there is no actual point to an argument. This skill is particularly useful when one is faced with the constant flood of advertising in today's world. By recognizing and identifying the fallacy in an advertisement, I am better able to judge whether or not I really want or need a given product or service. It also helps me decide what to believe and what to discount in the claims of political advertisements. Being able to make these distinctions reduces my stress by making me able to dismiss many ads that are designed to promote a feeling of urgency in viewers. Being able to recognize and to identify fallacious logic in editorial writing is also a benefit in my life. It allows me to decide whether or not to accept or to reject a writer's opinions on a given topic. Recognizing fallacies helps me avoid falling prey to the fallacies, and leaves me free to make up my own mind about a given subject. In addition, being able to recognize and to identify fallacies in another's argument helps me to filter my own speech and writing to avoid making fallacious arguments. Conversely, it helps me to use certain kinds of fallacious logic in a constructive manner. Since most people do use fallacious logic from time to time, it is useful to understand the fallacies and to avoid them whenever possible. It is also useful to use them with deliberation, rather than by accident, when the circumstances indicate that judicious use of a fallacious argument is in order. Last, understanding and recognizing fallacious logic myself allows me to better educate my sons about the world. Teaching my children to recognize fallacies in advertising helps them to discern which claims they should believe and which claims they can dismiss as gimmicks. Developing this skill early in life will help them to be more responsible consumers in the future. Moral Reasoning 6/24/2010 After reading and considering the five major perspectives on moral reasoning, I see that the virtue ethics perspective is most in line with my personal views. I was brought up with the idea that it was necessary to be a person of good character. I was taught that it is not only necessary to avoid doing wrong and causing wrong, but that it is also necessary to avoid doing things which give the impression of wrongdoing. In virtue ethics, which comes from the ancient Greeks, the important thing is being, not doing. It is about maintaining a middle ground between the extremes in every situation, and about making choices that maintain a constant, even balance in life. By knowing their own limits and abilities, people are able to make the right choices in situations. A person who follows virtual ethics chooses to be a person of good character, rather than concentrating on each single action. My parents stressed the idea that Moore and Parker (2006) state in the text, that "virtue is a matter of habit ... a way of living" (p. 430). Although I sometimes fall short of the goal, I do try to make virtue, or good character, I believe that keeping a calm, steady line in life is the best way to live. By trying to maintain a good character, which includes personal integrity, dependability, and faith, I am more likely to make the right decisions when I am faced with choices. There is a certain element of utilitarianism in my approach to moral reasoning, as well. This involves "duties and obligations" (Moore and Parker, 2006, p. 426), which are part of integrity and of dependability. It is necessary for a person to be true to his or her word, and to keep promises and commitments, if one is to have integrity. When a person consistently keeps promises, that person is also dependable, and may be expected to make right choices in life. 114 A Journey Through My College Papers References: Moore, B. N. and Parker, R. (2006). Critical Thinking (Custom 8th ed.). New York : McGraw-Hill. Homosexual Marriage 6/25/2010 Thesis: Homosexual couples should be allowed to marry in the United States, and around the world. Marriage, even for heterosexual couples, is more intimate and binding than non-marital cohabitation. Homosexual couples should have the same right to that increased intimacy that heterosexual couples have had since the beginning of human history. In addition to being more personally binding than cohabitation, marriage is more legally binding. Homosexual couples deserve to have the same legal rights as heterosexual couples. Marriage is about a great deal more than having unlimited access to sexual intercourse with one’s partner. It is about more than sharing a physical address. Marriage is also more than sharing finances with a partner, or even about raising children with a partner. All of these things are available to any couple, whether homosexual or heterosexual. “The purpose of marriage, as a form of heavily obligated cohabitation[is] to protect the economically weaker cohabitant from a form of exploitation that would reflect opportunistic behavior emanating from an asymmetry in the life cycle of men compared with women” (Dnes, 2007, para. 12). What this means is that marriage is a legal construct that keeps a financially stronger partner from taking advantage of a weaker partner. Traditionally, that has meant that a dependent wife has been protected from certain kinds of abuse by a husband who controls the family’s financial and material resources. Practically, it has meant that a widowed wife was legally guaranteed an inheritance, and that a divorced wife was legally provided with an income or a financial settlement to support her and any children the couple had. In today’s world, the final phrase, “of men compared with women” (Dnes, 2007, para. 12), is rendered relatively obsolete by the fact that many women earn as much as, or more than, their husbands earn. It is not so unusual, today, to find a dependent husband with a supporting wife. Still, regardless of which spouse is supporting and which is dependent, the simple fact that a couple is married provides legal, financial protections for the spouses. Homosexual couples deserve to have the same protections that are enjoyed by their heterosexual counterparts. If a homosexual partner dies, his or her surviving partner deserves to inherit. If a homosexual couple separates, the dependent partner deserves to have legally provided support. To this end, homosexual couples should be allowed to be legally married, with all of the legal protections associated with marriage. To be sure, not every homosexual couple desires marriage, just as not every heterosexual couple desires marriage. That does not negate homosexual couples’ right to have the same opportunity as heterosexual couples to make the choice about whether or not to marry. It is wrong to grant one group of humans protection under the law while denying that same protection to another group of humans. Each and every person deserves to have exactly the same protection under the law. A couple’s sexual preference should have no bearing on that couple’s right to enter into a legal marriage. Antithesis: Many people, particularly members of various Christian faiths, hold that homosexual couples should not, under any circumstances, be allowed to marry. This belief has found its way into the laws of the United States. In 1996, “Congress pass[ed] the Defense of Marriage Act … Undergraduate Series 115 deciding that ‘the word 'marriage' in all acts of Congress means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife’” (Miluso, 2004, para. 2). Under the act, no homosexual couple can be legally married, because the two partners are not of different genders. In a 2009 article in The Weekly Standard, Schulman (2009) states that “[g]ay marriage is not so much wrong as unnecessary” (Schulman, 2009, para. 2). Homosexual couples may cohabit at will. They are allowed to open joint bank accounts. They are able to adopt children, and to raise any children either partner might have from past relationships. Given that, and the fact that homosexual couples do not procreate together, there is no need for them to be able to marry. The Vatican, widely recognized even by most Protestants as the voice of authority on matters of faith, issued a statement in 1992 that “officially rejected the concept of lesbian and gay "human rights," asserting that there is "no right" to homosexuality” (Tatchell, 2001, para. 8). An article in Conscience went a step further, saying that “[m]arriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law” (The Church and State, 2003, para. 1). Homosexuality is seen as “immoral” (Bidstrup, 2000, para. 23), and so homosexual marriage “violate[s] the sacred institution of marriage” (Bidstrup, 2000, para. 23). In the eyes of the church, homosexual couples live together in violation of God’s will for mankind. Homosexual couples have no rights in the church, and are excluded from the sacramental joining of their lives in marriage, which is “[r]estrict[ed] … to heterosexual couples” (Shell, 2004, para. 32). As well as being unholy, “[g]ay sex is unnatural” (Bidstrup, 2000, para. 45). Sexual union exists for procreation, and homosexual sex is biologically incapable of resulting in offspring. Marriage is a legal means of “ensuring the continuation of the species” (Bidstrup, 2000, para. 24), and bishops of the Roman Catholic church state that “same sex unions cannot be given the same status as marriage because they ‘do not express full human complementarity and because they are inherently non-procreative’” (The Church and State, 2003, para. 2). Beyond the immorality of homosexuality, as defined by the Church, and the unnecessary nature of having a sexual union that is not intended to produce children, there is a belief that “[s]ame-sex marriage would start us down a ‘slippery slope’ towards legalized incest, bestial marriage, polygamy and all manner of other horrible consequences” (Bidstrup, 2000, para. 28). As Susan Shell (2004) writes, “gay marriage represents a direct assault on the grounding authority by which life at its most serious and intimate is lived” (Shell, 2004, para. 2). Many people fear that creating a law that allows one deviation from the safe and comfortable norm of traditional family life will, by necessity, lead to more laws that will allow more and more deviant behaviors to erode and destroy the lives of decent people. If homosexuals are allowed to marry, then sooner or later siblings will be allowed to marry, or fathers will many their daughters and mothers will marry their sons. Worse, some may take advantage of such laws and combine legal homosexual marriage with legal incestuous marriage, thus allowing a father to marry his son, or allowing a man to marry his brother. This is a deeply rooted fear, and the possibility of such a future inspires violent revulsion. To prevent such abominations, it is believed, homosexuals must not be allowed to marry. Homosexual marriage not only opens the possibility of other perversions of marriage, but it also causes uncomfortable changes in other aspects of traditional family life. If homosexuals are allowed to marry, then they will raise children who believe that homosexuality is normal. The children will grow up with two mothers or with two fathers, or even with a mother and a father who are both of the same gender. Such practices will confuse children, and will confound their understanding of what makes a family and of what parents are in the structure of a family. It is not unreasonable to think that some of these children will even grow up to have homosexual relationships. Some, who are naturally inclined to be heterosexual, but who grow up surrounded by homosexuality, may even be so confused as to practice polyamory or polygamy as adults. 116 A Journey Through My College Papers These are very troubling thoughts for anyone who believes that traditional, heterosexual marriage is the only right, proper, and acceptable way of life. Preventing homosexual marriage is necessary to be in harmony with God and with the Church. It is necessary to ensure a natural pattern of procreation, and reliable continuation of the species. It is also necessary to avoid the spread of any number of perversions and abominations. Synthesis: Despite a great deal of rhetoric against homosexual marriage, the fact remains that homosexual couples should be allowed to marry, both in the United States, and around the world. Sexual orientation should not be a consideration in deciding whether or not a couple should be allowed to marry. Likewise, the genders of the partners should not be an issue in such a decision. Where the Defense of Marriage Act stated that marriage is “a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife’” (Miluso, 2004, para. 2), the language should be changed to a legal union between two consenting adults as mutual spouses. In a world where a postal employee is a mail carrier, not a mailman; and where a member of Congress is a Congress person, not a Congressman; it is right that gender should also be removed from the subject of marriage. It has been stated that “[g]ay marriage is not so much wrong as unnecessary” (Schulman, 2009, para. 2). That may be true but, if it is, then the same can be said of heterosexual marriage. It is not unusual in the modern world for unmarried heterosexual couples to cohabit, to produce children, and to share finances. Most people, however, still agree that heterosexual marriage is socially, emotionally, and economically desirable, and heterosexual couples are generally expected to marry. Since marriage is equally necessary or unnecessary for both homosexual couples and heterosexual couples, the choice to unite in marriage should also be equally available to both groups. The many religious objections to homosexual marriage sound strong and convincing on the surface. These objections are not held in common by all belief systems, however. They do not take into account that not every couple belongs to, or subscribes to the beliefs of, the particular sects that are making the objections. In the United States, the federal government cannot base its laws on religious theory or on religious doctrine. It is true that a particular church or clergy person may refuse to perform or to recognize any given marriage, but the government is constrained against such behavior by the separation of church and state. No matter what the Vatican, or any other religious group, may say about there being “absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions … [in] God's plan for marriage and family” (The Church and State, 2003, para. 1), homosexual marriage should be equal to heterosexual marriage under civil, secular law. Bidstrup (2000) calls “[g]ay sex … unnatural” (para. 24), and Edward Vacek (2003) states that “homosexual unions … violate human nature and the common good” (Vacek, 2003, para. 7). These are statements that trigger fear in many people’s minds, but they are not true. As Bidstrup (2000) tells us in the same article, “gay couples … [are] loyal to their mates, are monogamous, devoted partners. They value and participate in family life” (Bidstrup, 2000, para. 12). The devotion of homosexual partners to their mates seems to be in line with the common good, not at odds with it. Monogamy, too, appears to promote the common good, especially in an age where diseases are passed on through indiscriminate sex, and where approximately half of heterosexual marriages end in divorce. Fostering strong, devoted, monogamous relationships by allowing the partners to marry, regardless of gender or sexual preference, is a natural response that the government needs to make. Such a move promotes stable families, and helps to stabilize the society at large. It has been stated that allowing homosexuals to marry will lead to the legalization of numerous perversions and abominations. This suggests to many that allowing homosexuals to marry will somehow cause, or increase the occurrence of, these atrocities. Such an idea is simply Undergraduate Series 117 silly fear-mongering. Homosexual marriage has no bearing on the perversions and abominations in the world. As far as “incest, bestial marriage, [and] polygamy” (Bidstrup, 2000, para. 28) are concerned, we need only return to my original rewording of the Defense of Marriage Act. If marriage becomes defined as a legal union between two consenting adults as mutual spouses, then those concerns are automatically excluded. The requirement for two prevents polygamy. The requirement for consenting prevents bestial marriage, since animals cannot give consent. The requirement for adults prevents most instances of incest, as children cannot marry. Currently existing laws, such as Michigan’s Manual on Michigan Marriages, which “prohibits marriages up to 2 generations apart (up to grandparents; down to grand-children), and also prohibits many but not all ‘in-law’ (e.g., son's wife and wife's mother, but not brother's wife or wife's sister) and ‘step’ unions (e.g., stepmother)” (Manual on Michigan Marriage, 2003, para. 18), prevent other incest cases, since siblings and parent-child pairs are not allowed to marry. Homosexual couples already raise children, whether born to one or the other of the partners or adopted by the couple. This removes any validity from the argument that homosexual marriage will teach children that homosexual relationships are acceptable. This already happens without the benefit of homosexual marriage. Allowing homosexual couples to marry would not taint the children of homosexuals; it would teach their children the importance of making a commitment through marriage. Allowing homosexual couples to marry, and to have all the rights and privileges of marriage that are currently enjoyed by any heterosexual couple that chooses to marry, is the right thing to do. As Susan Shell (2004) states in Public Interest, “gay marriage is … a celebration of the individual's heroic struggle to find love and validation in a hostile world … [and] it is no one else's business” (Shell, 2004, para. 3). When a heterosexual couple marries, the community celebrates with the newlyweds. Even relative strangers celebrate the marriage of a heterosexual couple. The same should be true for every homosexual couple that chooses marriage. Every couple, regardless of gender or of sexual orientation, should be allowed to experience the special joy and intimacy of marriage. References Bidstrup, S. (2000). Gay Marriage: The Arguments and the Motives. Retrieved June 21, 2010, from http://www.bidstrup.com/marriage.htm “Church and State, The.” (2003). Conscience, XXIV(3), 8. Retrieved June 21, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Dnes, A.. (2007). “Marriage, Cohabitation, and Same-Sex Marriage.” The Independent Review, 12(1), 85-99. Retrieved June 21, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Manual on Michigan Marriage Law. (2003, February 18). Retrieved June 25, 2010, from http://courts.co.calhoun.mi.us/book012.htm Miluso, B.. (2004). “Family ‘De-Unification’ In the United States: International Law Encourages Immigration Reform For Same-Gender Binational Partners.” The George Washington International Law Review, 36(4), 915-946. Retrieved June 21, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Schulman, S. (2009, June 1). "The Worst Thing About Gay Marriage: It isn't going to work." The Weekly Standard, Vol. 14, No. 35. Retrieved June 21, 2010, from http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/533narty.asp Shell, S.M.. (2004). “The liberal case against gay marriage.” Public Interest,(156), 3-16. Retrieved June 21, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Tatchell, P.. (2001). “Stop the Vatican's Anti-Gay Crusade.” Conscience, 22(3), 22. Retrieved June 21, 2010, from ProQuest Database. 118 A Journey Through My College Papers Vacek, E.C.. (2003). “The meaning of marriage.” Commonweal, 130(18), 17-19. Retrieved June 21, 2010, from ProQuest Database. SOC 101: Introduction to Sociology Social Settings 7/1/2010 It is difficult for me to choose a single social structure as coming closest to matching my social setting. Tonnies' and Lenski's systems are very different, not unlike comparing apples to oranges. If I was only looking at Durkheim and Tonnies, I would say with confidence that my social setting is a Gemeinshaft. This deals with how people interact in a smaller society, and describes my setting. Where I grew up, where I spent my early adulthood, and where I live now are all small communities. In each of these communities, relationships are very close, similar to kinship relationships. Everyone knows everyone, and strangers and newcomers are identified immediately. Everyone knows else's business, and there is little real privacy. However, I must also look at Lenski. Lenski's postmodern society collides with Tonnies' Gemeinshaft in my social setting. There is a combination of ascribed status and achieved status in my setting, particularly in relation to race and gender. I come from an area where racial integration was rare, though it was not overtly opposed. The area where I live now has some integration, but my social interactions with church, social and service organizations, and with my sons' Scout troop, almost never involve multiple races. In both locations, gender roles are very traditional, and males have greater ascribed status than females. Social roles are also clearly understood in my social setting, with the expectation that each person will have knowledge of his or her occupation. As a stay-at-home mother, I am expected to know about children and about cooking and sewing. Achieved roles, and related status, are harder, as people do not expect or easily accept deviations from the norm. People are often surprised to discover my roles as a student and as an artist, because of my status as a stay-athome mother and as a middle-aged woman. My primary group consists of four people: my husband, me, and my two sons by a previous marriage. My husband works outside the home to provide the income needed to support the family. I cook, clean, and raise the children and, beginning this fall, I will be facilitating my sons' education through an online charter school. The boys, who are still in elementary school, leave our home for an extended period each summer to visit their father in another state. Other primary groups for me are our church community, which is much like an extended family; my brothers and sisters in the local chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star; and the "household" my husband and I associate with in our medieval reenactment organization. (Explaining how the household works would take too long for this discussion, but it is a clan-like, fraternal, social group.) I suppose Ashford University is a secondary group for me, as classmates never really get close. I don't have a lot of interactions beyond my primary groups to form secondary groups, which fact takes me back to Gemeinshaft. When I identified Lenski's postmodern society, it was not so much about interpersonal relationships as about world influences on my life. In an average month, my family is likely to eat at On the Border, a Mexican restaurant; at Tokyo Sushi, a Japanese restaurant; and at Pita Way, a Mediterranean restaurant; as well as to enjoy take-out from Chinese, Thai, and Italian restaurants that my husband visits. Everyone in my home primary group uses the Internet, and I am likely to chat with friends in London, Wales, and Dubai on any given day on Facebook. Many products Undergraduate Series 119 that we buy are manufactured in other countries, and we are impacted by global economies. So, while the atmosphere of my social setting matches well with Gemeinshaft, it is set in a backdrop of postmodern society. Sociological Perspective 7/1/2010 The practice of prostitution involves a person, usually a woman, selling the use of her body in exchange for money or for services. Akpom and King (2002) define prostitution as ""the act or practice of engaging in sexual activity for money or its equivalent" (para. 1). A conflict theorist might interpret prostitution as a reflection of gender inequality, which permits men to exploit women's need to support themselves. A man, it might be argued, can work at a job that not only supports him and his family, but that also allows him to pay for sexual favors. A conflict theorist might argue that women who cannot get such jobs are forced to sell what they have to get by. A functionalist view of prostitution might see the practice as fulfilling the third functional prerequisite: that of providing a service. So long as some members of society wish to purchase sexual activity, there is a need for prostitutes to provide this service. In that view, prostitution ceases to be a shameful, illicit activity, and becomes a necessary profession. Where conflict theory cast prostitutes in the dim and demeaning light of women who can do no better for themselves, functionalist theory casts women in the strong, steady light of providing a necessary service. The feminist view, in this instance, would likely agree with the conflict view. The feminist view sees society treating women as inferior to men, which matches the view of prostitution as being the result of women having to struggle to survive in a male-dominated world. On the other hand, a feminist might view prostitution as a form of female empowerment. Whereas men have historically taken sexual satisfaction with women who had no choice but to submit, prostitution gives women the power to choose with whom they will have sex and under what circumstances. A prostitute can make a man pay for sex, instead of submitting to him taking what he wants for free. References: Akpom, K. and King, T.A.. (2002). "Prostitution." Gale Encyclopedia of Public Health [Electronic Version]. Retrieved July 1, 2010, from http://www.healthline.com/galecontent/prostitution?utm_term=prostitution&utm_m edium=mw&utm_campaign=article#hl2 Shrinking Middle Class 7/8/2010 According to our text, a middle class family is one "whose income falls between 75 and 125 percent of the nation's median household income" (Schaefer, 2009, p. 189). Fewer than a quarter of American families qualify as middle class (Schaefer, 2009, p. 189). The dangers of a shrinking middle class can be seen in the feudal societies of medieval Europe. When there was little or no middle class, the wealthy had all of the power, and the poor were powerless to improve their lot in life. When there is a small or nonexistent middle class, jobs with good wages become scarce, low-paying and temporary jobs become more common, and members of the lower class find themselves unable to support themselves and their families. 120 A Journey Through My College Papers In modern America, unlike in medieval Europe, there are social programs in place to provide supplemental income, food, housing, medical care, child care, education, fuel assistance, transportation, and various other services to the lower class. As the middle class in America dwindles, many social programs are running out of money. Every day, the news reports cases of agencies being unable to extend unemployment benefits, cases of schools closing for lack of funds, and increasingly high unemployment rates. (The unemployment rate in some areas is falsely improved when people whose benefits have run out cease to be counted among the jobless, even though they are still unemployed.) While the poor get poorer, and face dimmer and dimmer prospects for a return to financial stability, the rich in America seem to be getting richer. Those who already have money are able to keep earning more money, and are able to take advantage of tax exemptions and other opportunities to keep more of their money. Typically, the wealthy are able to get good educations, which allows them to get better jobs, which in turn allows their children to get better jobs, thus perpetuating the cycle. Specific dangers of a shrinking middle class include increased poverty and homelessness, an increased drain on public resources, increased health concerns as people become less able to afford health care, and increased crime and violence. These factors tend to lead to increased stresses for families, which often lead to the fracturing of families, the corruption of family values, and the increase and continuation of the problem. Living just outside of Metro Detroit, it is difficult to write about the declining middle class without extreme emotion. Most communities feel the effects of this decline in today's world. References Schaefer, R.T. (2009). Sociology: A brief introduction (8th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Life Chances 7/8/2010 I tried to do the assignment as instructed and to imagine a society in which there are no social classes, but I was unable to stretch or to bend my mind to meet the task. I cannot think of a time in history, even back to that history recorded in cave paintings before the creation of written language, in which there have been no significant differences in people's wealth, income, and life chances. Admittedly, there have been times when the differences were larger or smaller than they are today, but there have always been strata in human societies. If a truly equal society ever did arise, every person would have an equal social opportunity to survive and to succeed. However, success would be defined as maintaining the status quo, which would not provide anyone with any challenges to meet or to overcome. Meeting challenges is what causes creativity and invention to thrive, and I imagine that both would be lost in an equal society. It seems to me, after watching a large cage of white mice at the pet store yesterday, that social stratification is a natural fact of life. In that cage, certain mice seemed to influence other mice, with the more powerful mice keeping control of the food bowl and of the water bottle, while the other mice were left to scrabble with each other over the scraps of food that fell out of the bowl. In many ways, humans are not so different from those mice. The stronger, smarter, and more ambitious members of human society exert physical, fiscal, and social controls over the weaker, less intelligent, and slower members of society. Even when a play yard full of toddlers starts with each child having the same number of toys, the naturally dominant child always ends up with more toys than anyone else, and the more submissive children end up toyless. Undergraduate Series 121 As I have illustrated with the mice and with the toddlers, an equal society is unstable, and will stratify over time. If the members of the society make a conscious effort to maintain the equality of the society, it might take longer for the society to stratify, but stratification will inevitably occur. Max Weber believed that a person's position in society is based on that person's "class, status, and power" (Schaefer, 2009, p. 190). In a society in which there are no social classes, there is, in fact, just one class. Therefore, at the beginning of an experiment with an equal society, every person would be of the same class as every other person. Status and power, on the other hand, would define each person in the society. Even if matters of race, color, gender, language, and religion were all equal, age and generation affect a person's status and power. A parent has higher status than a child, even in the animal kingdom. At the same time, a parent has power over a child, simply as a matter of biology; a parent controls a child's access to food and shelter, and can exert that power by providing or by withholding the things a child needs. This creates a natural stratification in a society. In addition, superior strength and superior intelligence represent power, and contribute to defining a person's position in society. The strong person, who can use force to get what he or she wants, can rise to the top of an otherwise equal society. The intelligent person, who can solve problems and invent things that people want and need, can also rise to the top of an otherwise equal society. An intelligent person who also possesses physical strength, or who can control and direct people with physical strength, can rise to the highest point of all in a previously equal society. Weak and less intelligent people slip to the bottom of a society that includes strong and intelligent people. In such a society, the single economic class can be expected to break apart into multiple classes as the members of the society sort themselves into various strata. References Schaefer, R.T. (2009). Sociology: A brief introduction (8th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Death Penalty 7/12/2010 The death penalty is an antiquated form of punishment that is no longer necessary for the good of society, and it should be abolished. Many countries, including “28 European countries[,] have abolished the death penalty” (Bedau, 1992, para. 78). Amnesty International (2010) reports that “[i]nternational death penalty trends are unmistakably towards abolition” (para. 1). The death penalty does not serve as an effective deterrent to crime. Although Richard T. Schaefer (2009) writes that “sanctions against deviant acts help to reinforce society’s standards of proper behavior” (p. 176), “the consensus among criminologists is that the death penalty does not add any significant deterrent effect above that of long-term imprisonment” (Radelet and Lacock, 2009, para. 41). If the threat of extended incarceration is at least as effective as the death penalty in deterring crime, then it is time to retire the death penalty. Further supporting the abolition of the death penalty, especially in today’s poor economy, is the fact that it costs almost three times as much to employ the death penalty in a criminal case as it costs to sentence an inmate to a life sentence in prison (Schaefer, 2009, p. 177). Crime rates in the United States are high in comparison to much of the rest of the world for several reasons. One reason is that American culture “has long tolerated, if not condoned, many forms of violence” (Schaefer, 2009, p. 175). This tendency goes back to the birth of our country, with the celebration of the civil rebellion that came to be called the American Revolution. The Wild West has been romanticized, as have organized crime activities, in literature, television, 122 A Journey Through My College Papers and movies. Another reason for the high crime rate in the United States is that “[c]rime rates are strongly affected by economic” (Niskanen, 1994, para. 5). The United States has been in a state of economic crisis for some time, which has added to the increased crime rate. The world view on the death penalty is split, with some countries, including Japan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the United States, continuing to execute criminals. The trend, however, is toward finding alternatives to execution. “In Great Britain, [the death penalty] was abolished … in 1971; France abolished it in 1981. Canada abolished it in 1976” (Bedau, 1992, para. 78). Juvenile criminals are of particular concern in a discussion of the death penalty. Amnesty International (2010) reports that “juvenile offenders … face possible execution in Saudi Arabia” (para. 7). In the United States, youths also face the possibility of the death penalty, and “many states, such as New York, set 13-yes 13-as the age of full criminal responsibility” (Blecker, 2006, para. 13). Bradley (2006) reports that “the American Psychiatric Association … forbids diagnosing any patient under 18 as a psychopath or a sociopath” (para. 15) because children are not considered to have a fully developed understanding of what is and what is not acceptable in society. Children, who are not considered to be responsible enough to make legal decisions, or to sign contracts, before age 18, cannot be held responsible for their behavior in the same way that adults are held responsible. Blecker (2006) writes that "retribution is not proportional if the law's most severe penalty is imposed on one whose culpability or blameworthiness is diminished, to a substantial degree, by reason of youth and immaturity" (Blecker, 2006, para. 16). I believe that the death penalty should be abolished worldwide. Although I understand the emotional appeal of killing a person who commits a crime such as murder, treason, or child molestation, law and justice cannot be predicated on an excess of emotion. It is hypocritical to sentence a person to death for the crime of killing another person. That is, in effect, justifying murder by the government, and I find it to be abhorrent. The death penalty also removes any possibility of a conviction being overturned and of a convict being freed if additional evidence comes to light. Death cannot be reversed, and there is the real danger that innocent people will be wrongly convicted and executed. On a simple, practical level, it is much less expensive to sentence a person to life in prison than to sentence a person to the death penalty. Schaefer (2009) reports that “imprisoning a person for life costs $1.1 million, but sentencing a person to death costs $3 million” (p. 177). With the difficult economy in the United States, it makes clear, financial sense for the government to save $1.9 million for each person who would be executed by instead sending these people to life in prison. The death penalty has outlasted its time, and it needs to be abolished. It does not significantly deter crime, and it justifies the taking of human life. It is financially costly, and it is morally costly in the risk of executing the innocent. The United States should join the majority of European countries in doing away with the death penalty, and in encouraging the abolition of the death penalty throughout the world. References Amnesty International USA. (2010). International Death Penalty. Retrieved July 12, 2010, from http://www.amnestyusa.org/death-penalty/internationaldeathpenalty/page.do?id=1101074 Bedau, H.A.. (1992). The Case Against The Death Penalty. Retrieved July 12, 2010, from http://users.rcn.com/mwood/deathpen.html Blecker, R.. (2006). "A Poster Child For Us". Judicature, 89(5), 297-301. Retrieved July 9, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Undergraduate Series 123 Bradley, C.M.. (2006). “The Right Decision On The Juvenile Death Penalty.” Judicature, 89(5), 302-303,305. Retrieved July 9, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Niskanen, W.A.. (1994). Crime, Police, and Root Causes. Retrieved July 12, 2010, from http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-218es.html Radelet, M., & Lacock, T.. (2009). “Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates?: The Views Of Leading Criminologists.” Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 99(2), 489508. Retrieved July 9, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Schaefer, R.T.. (2009) Sociology: A brief introduction (8th ed.) New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Social Norms 7/14/2010 The norms in a high school environment include many formal norms, since rules of behavior need to be spelled out for the safety of the children who are entrusted to the school. If I had to serve temporarily as a high school principal, there are several formal norms that I would expect from my students:  Safety: o Students will not possess or use alcohol or illegal drugs on school property. o Students will not possess prescription or over-the-counter medications on school property; all medications will be secured in and dispensed by the school office. o Students will not possess or use firearms, knives, or other weapons on school property.  Academic: o Plagiarism will not be tolerated. o Excessive unexcused absence will not be tolerated. o Cheating will not be tolerated.  Social: o Racial and other hate language will not be tolerated. o Revealing or provocative dress will not be worn by students on school property. o Students will not use MP3 players during classes; students will not use cell phones, text, or email during classes. o Informal norms are generally set by the student body, or by groups within the student body, rather than by the administration. However, I would use incentives to encourage the student body to reinforce desirable, informal norms. These would include: o Students will "go green" at school by using recycling containers, and by turning off unneeded lights and water. o Students will practice good citizenship by helping each other. o Students will practice stewardship by taking responsibility for cleaning up their own messes, and by cleaning up messes that they find. In general, it seems that formal norms are those that tell what one may not do, and that provide consequences for failure to comply. It seems that informal norms are more often those that encourage and reward desirable behavior. Formal and informal norms for college students are not that different from the norms for high school students, or, at least, they were not very different at the community college I attended in the 2008-2009 school year. Because college students are usually legal adults, while most high school students are minors, some formal norms that would apply in high school might not apply in 124 A Journey Through My College Papers college. From the list above, for example, high school students cannot be allowed to carry medications in school, because they are children, but adult college students may carry prescription and over-the-counter medications for their personal use. McDonald's Goes East 7/19/2010 Often, when Western businesses expand into the Middle and Far East, they take Western culture with them. Sometimes, Western culture is well received. More often, the companies must adapt to local cultures in order to survive; those that fail to do so are often forced to withdraw from the foreign regions. Gordon Fairclough is the co-author of two companion articles in the Wall Street Journal that discuss some of the difficulties that McDonald’s encountered when it started doing business in China, as well as some of the strategies that McDonald’s adopted to deal with doing business in China. “Drive-Through Tips for China” (2006), co-authored by Geoffrey A. Fowler, explores McDonald’s efforts to introduce the Western “grab-and-go lifestyle” (Fairclough and Fowler, 2006, para. 8) in China. “Dispatch: Burger time: McDonald's beefs up presence in China with Quarter Pounders, racy ads” (2006), co-authored by Janet Adamy, discusses how Western misconceptions about Chinese food preferences missed the mark, and about how McDonald’s changed its approach in China. In “Drive-Through Tips for China” (2006), Fairclough and Fowler compare McDonald’s efforts in China with the efforts of KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken). McDonald’s has achieved an advantage over KFC in the drive-through market because of a deal that McDonald’s made in 2006 to open drive-through locations at filling stations owned by China’s Sinopec Group. The article identifies this deal as a response to McDonald’s falling market share in China, and to KFC’s rising market share in China for the same period. McDonald’s is responding to the rapidly growing car culture in China, but the introduction of fast-paced food habits is taking time to catch on in a country whose people prefer “to sit down for leisurely meals” (Fairclough and Fowler, 2006, para. 8). This difference in the pace of life between the American market and the Chinese market has been a challenge that McDonald’s has had to face in doing business in China. In “Dispatch: Burger time: McDonald's beefs up presence in China with Quarter Pounders, racy ads” (2006), Fairclough and Adamy discuss how McDonald’s has adapted its advertising in China to promote its beef products, especially the Quarter Pounder. The initial view of Chinese food preferences by the West has been that the Chinese prefer chicken products and products that resemble native Chinese foods. McDonald’s has learned that beef is desired by Chinese diners, especially men, because “beef boosts energy and heightens sex appeal. The word ‘beef’ in Chinese has connotations of manliness, strength and skill” (Fairclough and Adamy, 2006, para. 4). McDonald’s is using this image of beef in China, and is making its ads for Quarter Pounders sexy. McDonald’s has also discovered that its Chinese customers are embracing Western culture in their dress and electronics, and McDonald’s is becoming part of that cultural shift. One challenge that is highlighted in these articles about McDonald’s moving into China is the misunderstanding about what the Chinese want to eat. Western belief was that the Chinese wanted mostly chicken offerings, and that they wanted foods that tasted like Chinese foods. McDonald’s has been known for offering “local” foods in the countries where it does business, including “a Big Mac made of lamb” (Adams, 2007, para. 4) in India, “mashed potato, cabbage and katsu sauce, all in a sandwich” (Adams, 2007, para. 7) in Japan, and “burgers … between, not burger buns, but two patties of glutinous rice” (Adams, 2007, para. 12) in Hong Kong. In China, Undergraduate Series 125 McDonald’s considered introducing “an Asian-style triangle-shaped wrapper filled with beef or chicken and rice” (Fairclough and Adamy, 2006, para. 3), and this approach of tailoring foods to local cultures, which has been successful in other countries, fueled by Western misconceptions about China, caused McDonald’s market share in China to drop by 1.3% from 2002 to 2004 (Fairclough and Fowler, 2006, para. 13). As McDonald’s looked for a way to “claw its way back” (Fairclough and Fowler, 2006, para. 16), it discovered the appeal of beef for Chinese men, and it has responded to this discovery by designing racy ads to promote the Quarter Pounder in China. In one spot, a man and a woman eat Quarter Pounders, and close-up shots of the woman's neck and mouth are interspersed with images of fireworks and spraying water. The actors suck their fingers. The voice-over says: "You can feel it. Thicker. You can taste it. Juicier." (Fairclough and Adamy, 2006, para. 6) Another hurdle that the articles bring out for McDonald’s in China is that “China’s eating culture [doesn’t] mix well with American grab-and-go lifestyle” (Fairclough and Fowler, 2006, para. 8). To help the Chinese deal with American-style drive-through restaurants, “employees were deployed in the parking lots to direct drivers to the drive-through lane … [and] customers place[d] their orders with a person, rather than through a speaker” (Fairclough and Fowler, 2006, para. 5). China is not the only place where McDonald’s has had to make changes in how customers order food in order to fit in with the local culture. In Kuwait, McDonald’s has had to designate a “male-only line” (Leiby, 2003, para. 1) to conform to Islamic laws. The articles also draw attention to how the pace of life in the United States clashes with the slower, more traditional pace of life in China. Americans are accustomed to grabbing food on the go, and to packing as much activity as possible into every day. Fast food appeals to Americans because it provides instant gratification, and because it frees them to hurry on to the rest of their day. The Chinese, on the other hand, “prefer to eat their meals in … restaurants, or take it home with them” (Fairclough and Fowler, 2006, para. 11). Fairclough and Fowler (2006) report that McDonald’s is responding to China’s slower culture by “learning to slow down from its fast-paced U.S. roots” (para. 17). McDonald’s is designing its Chinese restaurants not to maximize speed, but to “reinforce their role as gathering places” (Fairclough and Fowler, 2006, para. 17). Unlike many Western companies, McDonald’s is becoming adept at responding and adapting to local cultures, rather than “attempt[ing] to export U.S. cultural values to another country” (Schaefer, 2009, p. 68). Even so, McDonald’s has been hurt by the effects of Western culture invading other cultures. In the UAE (United Arab Emirates), for example, “McDonald’s, like many other fast food chains, was hit by a boycott of western brands” (Derhally, 2003, para. 5). McDonald’s survived the boycott in part because of its sensitivity to local cultures, and to its willingness to offer foods that appeal to local tastes. The McArabia carried McDonald’s through the boycott. The McArabia is “two grilled chicken patties, dressed in Arabic flatbread, and seasoned with lettuce, tomatoes, onions and garlic sauce [and] is very close to the traditional chicken shawerma or shish taouk” (Derhally, 2003, para. 3). McDonald’s market share in China “slid to 8.7% in 2004 … from 10% in 2002” (Fairclough and Fowler, 2006, para. 13). Similarly, “[i]n 2002 … the sale of US food … was down a staggering 25 percent” (Alkhereiji, 2003, para. 4) in Saudi Arabia. As of 2005, China is working to “halt sliding market share and revive McDonald’s performance” (Fairclough and Adamy, 2006, para. 14) in China. Unlike Wal-Mart, which “fail[ed] to adjust to the national culture” (Schaefer, 2009, p. 68) in Germany, McDonald’s is making adjustment and adaptation its rule for its international market. McDonald’s menu has a chameleon-like quality, which allows it to survive and to succeed in many markets. From burgers topped with “not ketchup – avocado paste” (Adams, 2007, para. 9) in Chile, to “the McLaks, a sandwich made of grilled salmon and dill sauce” 126 A Journey Through My College Papers (Adams, 2007, para. 8) in Norway, to non-Kosher “’McPitzutz’ ice creams and cheeseburgers” (Adams, 2007, para. 13) in Israel, and even to beer in Germany (Adams, 2007, para. 5), McDonald’s is embracing the cultures in which it does business, instead of trying to impose Western culture on the countries in which it operates. McDonald’s flexibility and sensitivity to local markets should ensure its success around the globe, even as other businesses “fail to adjust to new cultures when they enter foreign markets” (Schaefer, 2009, p. 68). McDonald’s has established itself as a success in the global marketplace because it is willing to adjust to other cultures. This is a good model for other companies to follow when entering other countries. Although McDonald’s may not always be a resounding success in every country, despite its willingness to adapt, it is more likely to succeed in more places than companies that are unable or unwilling to change. References Adams, B. (2007, July 19). Mcdonald’s Strange Menu Around the World. Retrieved July 13, 2010, from http://trifter.com/practical-travel/budgettravel/mcdonald%E2%80%99sstrange-menu-around-the-world/ Alkhereiji, M.. (2003, March 5). “McDonald’s Launches McArabia.” Arab News. Retrieved July 13, 2010, from http://archive.arabnews.com/?page=1&section=0&article=23313&d=5&m=3&y= 2003 Derhally, M.. (2003, March 5). McDonald’s rolls out McArabia. Retrieved July 13, 2010, from http://www.arabianbusiness.com/475954 Fairclough, G. and Adamy, J.. (2006, September 21). "Dispatch: Burger time: McDonald's beefs up presence in China with Quarter Pounders, racy ads." The Wall Street Journal Asia, p. 32. Retrieved July 13, 2010, from ProQuest Newsstand. Fairclough, G. and Fowler, G.A.. (2006, June 20). "Drive-Through Tips for China." Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition), p. B.1. Retrieved July 13, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. Leiby, R.. (2003, March 17). “You Want Falafel With That?” Washington Post. Retrieved July 13, 2010, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wpdyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A35653-2003Mar16 Schaefer, R.T.. (2009) Sociology: A brief introduction (8th ed.) New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Human Rights 7/21/2010 Human rights are defined as "universal moral rights possessed by all people because they are human" (Schaefer, 2009, p. 229). Whether in a state of peace or in a state of war, humans remain humans, and they are always and everywhere entitled to human rights. If we allow exceptions to who is entitled to human rights, we run the risk of losing those same rights ourselves. There is never, ever a time when violations of human rights are, or could ever be, excusable. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it was easy to succumb to fear, and to think, in the confusion of the time, that it would be acceptable to limit or eliminate the rights of a certain segment of the world's population. Sitting in front of the television with my two sons, then 11 months old and 11 days old respectively, it was tempting to adopt as "us and them" mentality, where "we" deserved every possible protection and "they" could be deprived of their Undergraduate Series 127 privacy and their liberty for the sake of our safety. When the initial mental haze cleared, however, I realized that it was not an entire race or ethnic group that had attacked the United States; it was a group of individuals. I remembered that it was not so many generations ago that my own ancestors the "them" of their time: Irish immigrants in New England, who could not even apply for, much less hold, decent jobs, and who were abused and reviled for their ancestry. Other groups have had similar experiences, including the descendants of the African slave trade, and the Japanese-Americans during World War II. Dividing humanity into "us" and "them" is a dangerous business. In the aftermath of the 2001 disaster, human rights should have been protected even more rigorously than they had been before. Reducing or suspending the human rights of even one person as a reaction to the attacks placed the rights of every American, and of every human on the globe, at peril of being stripped away. Human rights were not rigidly and universally upheld, so now we see an erosion of those rights for all people. References Schaefer, R.T. (2009). Sociology: A brief introduction (8th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Social Interactions 7/21/2010 The ascribed status of race and ethnicity, especially that based on differences of physical appearance, plays a large role in how different racial and ethnic groups interact. In the United States, it is typical for people who appear to have white, European ancestry to have greater status than people of other groups. In my personal experience in several states, racial groups seem to be stratified thus: Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Arabs, and Native Americans, although achieved status sometimes changes the order of the non-white races. The roles that are typically held by various racial or ethnic groups in society also impact interactions among the groups. In the United States, it has historically been expected that Whites, especially White men, hold positions of authority, and that Whites tend to have the more desirable jobs in general than other groups. This has been changing, and we now have an African-American president in the White House. In the private sector, however, Whites are still likely to get the best jobs. In my personal experience, Asians tend to elevate their roles above the order I listed for status, by attaining jobs in the medical field. Granted, most of my experience has been in Whitedominant communities, and the circumstances might be very different in areas that are Blackdominant, Asian-dominant, etc. In many areas, a person's primary groups are mainly composed of people who all share a common racial or ethnic background. In many places, that is less true for secondary groups, in which an individual may have casual acquaintances of many racial and ethnic groups. Some examples of how status, role, primary groups, and secondary groups impact interactions among racial and ethnic groups include: o Status: White men holding the majority of positions of power and authority in the United States. President Obama has proved that this is changing. o Role: Whites holding most "white-collar" jobs, while Latinos often find employment as housekeepers and taxi drivers. o Primary groups: Families are often mono-racial, although mixed-race families are becoming more common. In many areas, individuals tend to form friendships within their own racial or ethnic groups. Often, this has as much to do with shared ethnic culture and similar points of reference as with race itself. 128 A Journey Through My College Papers o Secondary groups: A college campus or a large business is likely to have a variety of racial and ethnic groups represented, even in communities that are largely, and unofficially, segregated. Pluralism seems to be gaining popularity, and I see this as a good thing. Unlike amalgamation and assimilation, where ethnic traditions are likely to be lost, pluralism allows people to experience and to embrace multiple traditions. Social Movements 7/29/2010 Richard T. Schaefer (2009) defines social movements as "organized collective activities to bring about or resist fundamental change in an existing group or society" (p. 401). A sub-set of this is new social movements, which are defined as "organized collective activities that address values and social identities, as well as improvements in the quality of life" (Schaefer, 2009, p. 403). There are always social movements of one kind or another, whether on a local, regional, national, or global scale. I have identified six social movements that have been in evidence in the last decade. The American family values movement seeks to improve the quality of life for American families, and especially for children, by promoting marriage and the two-parent family. "Between the years of 1970 and 1996, the number of children living in two parent homes decreased from 85 percent to 68 percent" (Pan, 2008, para. 1). In 2001, Bill O'Hare (2001) reported that "[o]ver the last five years, ... [t]he share of children born to unmarried mothers has stabilized, the divorce rate continues to fall, and the share of children living in single-parent families has stabilized and inched downward" (para. 2). In an effort to support and promote this movement, in 2002, "President Bush's budget provides $64 million ... to fund community and religious groups that promote fatherhood, marriage education, and conflict resolution" (O'Hare, 2001, para. 9). If this movement is successful, it will serve to help stabilize American families, and to help restore the American middle class. It has the potential to reduce the crime and violence that are often born of broken families. it may reduce the strain on public assistance programs by providing two incomes in a family, or by reducing the need for child care programs by enabling families to have a parent at home with the children while the other parent works. The gay liberation movement of the 1970s has become the gay rights movements, with "a new generation of activists dedicated to radically re-imagining the possibilities for human sexuality and gender expression" (Solidarity National Office, n.d., para. 11). Of prime concern for this movement is the legalization of same-sex marriage, followed closely by allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. In 2000, "Vermont becomes the first state in the country to legally recognize civil unions between gay or lesbian couples" (American Gay Rights Movement, 2009, para. 12). As recently as June 17, 2009, "President Obama signs a referendum allowing the samesex partners of federal employees to receive benefits" (American Gay Rights Movement, 2009, para. 29). At least eight states and the District of Columbia now recognize same-sex unions. If this movement continues to succeed, it will redefine marriage and the structure of the American family. It will also promote tolerance and acceptance of differing lifestyles, and the development of new folkways. The immigrant rights movement seeks to "pass an immigration policy that would create a roadmap to citizenship, without detours, for millions of undocumented immigrants living in the [U]nited [S]tates" (Miller, 2010, para. 1). According to the Solidarity National Office (n.d.), "by 2004 [the U.S. immigrant population] had risen fourfold (approximately 34.2 million)" (para.5). The movement attempts to "strike a blow against ignorance and misunderstanding" (Miller, 2010, Undergraduate Series 129 para. 6). Related to the immigrants rights movement is the immigration reform movement. The chief aims of this movement are "keeping families together by reducing visa backlogs; [and] requiring those in the country illegally to pay a significant fine and begin the process of legalization" (Briseno, 2010, para. 13). "Local organizer and UBM president Tony Barreda said ... he was moved 'to hear so many speak in one voice against the oppressive nature of the present broken-down immigration laws and to urge Congress for a moral and just reform of immigration laws'" (Briseno, 2010, para. 14). These are controversial movements, as many Americans do not agree with allowing undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States to become citizens. These movements will bring more people who are already in the United States under the same government taxation and controls as other citizens. It will allow better utilization and allocation of taxes. It will reduce crime resulting from immigrants' illegal status, and from the attendant underthe-table employment, housing, and other activities. The environmental justice movement seeks fair treatment of poor and minority communities in the disposal of toxic wastes. "The trend to turn urban areas into toxic wastelands and dumping grounds is being opposed now in an organized way" (Caffee, n.d., para. 7). Dumping these wastes in urban areas causes exposure of local populations to serious health problems, including an "epidemic of developmental, learning, and behavioral disabilities ... [and] [a]sthma and other respiratory illnesses" (Caffee, n.d., paras. 13-14). Encouraging communities to find green alternatives to dumping, and to stop targeting low income communities and communities of racial minorities for dump locations, will improve the quality of life for many struggling people. It will reduce the occurrence of certain childhood illnesses and developmental disabilities, especially in low income groups, thus reducing the drain on tax dollars from public health care programs. If green alternatives are used, it will improve the environment for future generations. The global justice movement opposes "'free trade', privatization, deregulation, unregulated capital markets, structural adjustment, corporate welfare, [and] user fees on education" (Peart, 2010, para. 3). In general, the movement is against big business, and "demand[s] that social justice, sustainability and democracy are integral to peace" (Peart, 2010, para. 10). The movement supports fair treatment of the common person on a financial level, and supports small, local businesses and entrepreneurism. It seeks "a decentralization of economic and political power, and at the same time advocate[s] a borderless world in which people can move freely" (Peart, 2010, para. 2). With global justice, consumers are encouraged to support local economies by buying and using products that are grown and produced locally. People are encouraged to oppose government bailouts for big businesses, and to support local development. References American Gay Rights Movement: A Timeline, The. (2009). Retrieved July 29, 2010, from http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0761909.html Briseno, O. (2010, January 19). Immigration debate spurs call for social movement. Retrieved July 29, 2010, from http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/article_0b7f1608-521d-5a68-9ed5d609deb714e8.html Caffee, V. (n.d.). Environmental Justice: A New Social Movement. Retrieved July 29, 2010, from http://www.iamsaam.org/user.images/wp2003.pdf Miller, D. (2010, June 30). Immigrant Rights Movement Received Jumpstart As Thousands Of Immigrants March In Manhattan On Saturday. Retrieved July 29, 2010, from http://www.qgazette.com/news/2010-0630/Features/Immigrant_Rights_Movement_Received_Jumpstart_As_Th.html 130 A Journey Through My College Papers O'Hare, B. (2001, July). The Rise -- and Fall? -- of Single-Parent Families. Retrieved July 29, 2010, from http://www.prb.org/articles/2001/theriseandfallofsingleparentfamilies.aspx Pan, W. (2008, December 29). Single Parent Family Statistics -- The Increase in Single Parent Families. Retrieved July 29, 2010, from http://bizzywomen.com/2008/single-parent-family-statistics-the-increase-in-singleparent-families Peart, S. (2010). What is the global justice movement?. Retrieved July 29, 2010, from http://scottishsocialistparty.org/international/esfssp2.htm Schaefer, R.T. (2009). Sociology: A brief introduction (8th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Impact of Sociological Theories on the Institution of Family 8/2/2010 Families may be found in every culture and society in some form or another. Schaefer (2009) defines the family as “as a set of people related by blood, marriage or some other agreedupon relationship, or adoption, who share the primary responsibility for reproduction and caring for members of society” (p. 288). The family serves different functions in society, depending upon which sociological theory is applied to it, even though the family itself remains the same, despite being viewed from different perspectives. We will consider the institution of the family according to the functionalist theory, the conflict theory, and the interactionist theory. Each of the three sociological theories takes a different view of the social institution of family. According to the functionalist theory, “[t]he family performs six paramount functions, first outlined more than 70 years ago by sociologist William F. Ogburn” (Schaefer, 2009, p. 292). These functions have been identified as reproduction, protection, socialization, regulation of social behavior, affection and companionship, and the provision of social status. The reproductive function of a family is fairly obvious, as it is necessary for people to reproduce if the society is to continue into the future. The protective function of a family goes along with the reproductive function, since it is not enough to produce infant members of a society if those members are not protected from harm. Socialization and the regulation of social behavior go together, as individuals in a family learn what social behaviors are and are not acceptable as they are socialized by interactions with other family members. For most people, the family is the first and most important source of affection and companionship. The assignment of social status is a function of the family as an individual becomes a spouse, a parent, or a grandparent. Children often acquire social status because of the roles their relations play in society. Similarly, parents and other family members may gain or lose social status based on the social status of one or more members of the family. Similar to Ogburn’s functions of the family, “Murdock argued … that the nuclear family … existed universally because it fulfilled four basic functions for society : the sexual, reproductive, economic and education functions” (Haggar, 2010, para. 2). The sexual and reproductive functions relate to Ogburn’s reproductive and affection functions. The economic function relates to Ogburn’s functions of protection and of providing social status. The education function relates to Ogburn’s functions of socialization and of regulating social behavior. Schaefer (2009) states that “[c]onflict theorists view the family not as a contributor to social stability, but as a reflection of the inequality in wealth and power that is found within the larger society” (p. 292). Where functionalists view the family as a cohesive unit, conflictists view the family as a disparate collection of individuals who act upon one another in a variety of ways. Conflict theorists see the power and status that are often accorded the husband and father as a representation of the power and status that men typically hold over women in the world. Schaefer Undergraduate Series 131 (2009) goes on to note that conflictists “also view the family as an economic unit that contributes to social injustice. The family is the basis for transferring power, property, and privilege from one generation to the next” (p. 292). In this way, conflict theory resembles Murdock’s functionalist view of the family, as both theories recognize the economic role of the family in society. More affluent families transfer more power, property, and privilege to new generations than poorer families are able to do. Unlike functionalist and conflict theories, the Interactionist theory looks not at how families relate to the society, but at the “micro level of family and other intimate relationships … [and] in how individuals interact with one another, whether they are cohabiting partners or longtime married couples” (Schaefer, 2009, p. 292). Interactionists examine the relationships that actually make up a family. These may include spousal relationships, parent-child relationships, sibling relationships, and also the modern variations, which include single parent families, blended families, and same-sex couples in families. They may also include self-proclaimed family groups that do not involve any relationships by blood, marriage, or adoption. Functionalism and conflict theory are different in that functionalism examines how the institution of family contributes to the stability of society, whereas conflict theory examines how the family reflects the inequalities and problems in society. Interactionism is different from both functionalism and conflict theory because it examines the internal workings of the family, while they are concerned with the family’s interaction with society. Functionalism affects the views of the individual who is a part of the family in that it tends to identify the roles of the members of the family. Parents are assigned the functions of reproducing, and of educating the children that result from reproduction. Husbands are often given the function of providing for the material needs of the family, while wives are often given the function of providing for the emotional and spiritual needs of the family. Caitlin Flanagan (2009) notes that “a lasting covenant between a man and a woman can be a vehicle for the nurture and protection of each other, the one reliable shelter in an uncaring world — or it can be a matchless tool for the infliction of suffering on the people you supposedly love above all others, most of all on your children” (para. 8). When a family is a source of nurture, it serves to help stabilize the society around it, but when a family becomes a source of suffering, it serves to destabilize society. Conflict theory affects the views of the family member as each individual recognizes his or her role in the family as a representation of social and economic inequality in the larger society. A husband may see himself as the head of his household, with power and status over the rest of the family, if the society includes male domination of positions of authority. Wives and children may be financially dependent on the male head of the family, reflecting the economic disparity between the upper and lower classes in society. Individuals’ views are affected in a family under Interactionism as each individual considers how he or she relates to each other family member. “Attachments to parents, children, and friends are attachments that in part constitute human flourishing. Without some attachments along these lines, we could plausibly hold that a person's life is diminished” (Driver, 2007, para. 37). It is these attachments, as well as the occasional lack of these attachments, that interactionists study, and that affect the individual’s view of his or her place in the family. Functionalism does not favor social change within the institution of the family, since functionalists seek the stability of society. Social change does not, by its nature, promote stability. Rather than seeking social change, under functionalism, “[a]ll families despite their economic status … share the same goal: to provide for their families and ensure a bright future for their children” (Vega-Marquis, 2008, para. 4). Conflict theory tends to welcome social change within the family institution, as that change tends to mirror the changes that take place in society. Not all social change is positive, and 132 A Journey Through My College Papers this is reflected in families. The current economic recession in American society is reflected in “[o]vercrowded living conditions, with relatives doubled up and sharing housing in cramped conditions … [because of] raised unemployment and housing loss” (Po, 2010, para. 9). Interactionism affects the approach to social change within the family by considering how social change alters the relationships between and among the members of the family. When women began working outside the home and contributing to the finances of the family, relationships between husbands, who had been the wage earners, and wives, who had been the home makers, had to change. Changes of this type are often slow in coming, and the particular changes between husbands and wives, in which household responsibilities become equally shared in families in which both spouses work, have not yet taken root in many families. Within the institution of the family, functionalism affects the views of society as it identifies how the family contributes to the stability of society. When society looks at the function of the family, it often becomes the function of society to bolster those family functions that are not working. For example, if a family cannot adequately feed its members, then society may institute programs to assist families in obtaining food. Society also develops opinions about the functions of families and their members. Laura Purdy (2009) notes that “being instrumental in bringing a new child into the world is to have at least a prima facie moral obligation to it” (para. 9). This reflects one of society’s views of the function of the family. Haggar (2010) states that “even if the family is no longer a unit of production , it is a unit of consumption” (para. 4). This reflects society’s view of the family since more children are being produced outside of traditional families, but the family consumes many goods and services regardless of whether or not the family produces children. Conflict theory influences the views of society toward the family as society views the “socioeconomic status of a child’s family” (Schaefer, 2009, p. 292). The unequal relationships of power and status within the family contribute to the inequality of society. Society’s view of the family is influenced by interactionist theory as the relationships within families change or stay the same. Society makes decisions about what is normal and acceptable in society based on what kinds of relationships are most prevalent in society. Blended families, which were unusual in the 1970s, became accepted in society because of the growing prevalence of blended families, until they are commonplace today. As we have seen, the family serves different functions in society. Which functions the family serves, whether contributing to the stability of society, contributing to social inequality, or defining interpersonal relationships within the family, depends upon which sociological theory is applied to it. In the end, the family is the family, regardless of which perspective is used to view it. References Driver, J.. (2007). “Cosmopolitan Virtue.” Social Theory and Practice, 33(4), 595-608. Retrieved July 23, 2010, from ProQuest Research Library. Flanagan, C.. (2009, July 2). Is There Hope for the American Marriage?. Retrieved July 23, 2010, from http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1908243,00.html Haggar, R.. (2010, July 3). Functionalism and "the" Family: A Summary. Retrieved August 1, 2010, from http://www.earlhamsociologypages.co.uk/functfamsum.html Po, V.. (2010, May 21). “In Families Squeezed by Recession, Kids Show Effects.” La Prensa San Diego, pp. 8-9. Retrieved July 23, 2010, from ProQuest Newsstand. Purdy, L.. (2009). “At the Crossroads: Families and Society.” Social Theory and Practice, 35(2), 303-318. Retrieved July 23, 2010, from ProQuest Research Library. Schaefer, R.T.. (2009) Sociology: A brief introduction (8th ed.) New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Undergraduate Series 133 Vega-Marquis, L.. (2008, August 29). “Listen Up! America’s Families Demand Action.” La Prensa San Diego, p. 6. Retrieved July 23, 2010, from ProQuest Newsstand. Fall Semester, 2010 PHI 107: Philosophy of Human Conduct Principle of Charity 8/26/2010 The principle of charity, as it applies to ethics, requires that the opposing opinion be viewed as strongly and as fairly as possible. Ideally, each side of an argument should be treated with equal fairness and should be represented with equal accuracy for the meaning of the argument. Bruce N. Waller (2008) says of the principle of charity that "you should interpret opposing views and arguments as generously, fairly, and honestly as you can" (p. 4). Nigel Warburton (2007) defies the principle of charity as "[i]nterpreting arguments or positions adopted by others in the best possible light" (para. 1). The principle of charity is important for avoiding the strawman fallacy. An argument that ignores the principle of charity is likely to be weakened by fallacious reasoning, because the opposing view is likely to be misrepresented. An argument that cannot stand on its own merit, and that needs to undermine the opposing argument by disregarding the principle of charity, might need to be reconsidered to see whether or not the argument is really what the arguer is trying to say. Warburton (2007) warns that the principle of charity is not always appropriate in every argument: "the charitably interpreted argument may be the wrong argument to consider altogether if you are trying to engage with another person's actual thought rather than an idealised version of it" (para. 4). It is necessary in any argument to assess what is actually being argued, what the opposing position actually is, and what result one wishes to gain from the argument -- whether it be a solution to a real problem, or whether it "might simply be an intellectual exercise" (Warburton, 2007, para. 4). References: Waller, B. N. (2008). Consider ethics: Theory, readings, and contemporary issues (2nd ed). New York, NY: Pearson/Longman. Warburton, N. (2007, January 21). Principle of Charity -- another draft for new edition of Thinking from A to Z. Retrieved August 25, 2010, from http://virtualphilosopher.com/2007/01/principle_of_ch.html Conflict Between Reason and Feelings 8/26/2010 The basic conflict between those who base ethics on reason and those who base ethics on feelings and affections arises from the difference between reason and feelings. Reason is the deliberate consideration of what is. Ethics based on reason states that "[t]o act ethically, it is essential to overcome one's feelings and suppress sentiments in order to follow true rational moral principles" (Waller, 2008, p. 36). On the other hand, feelings, emotions, and affections come from 134 A Journey Through My College Papers inside each person, and are intuitive, rather than deliberate. Reason and emotion are generally seen to be polar opposites, and to be mutually exclusive. It is popularly considered that reason is preferable to emotion in morals and ethics, because reason can be controlled, directed, and predicted. Reason appeals to those for whom rules and order are cardinal virtues. The conflict can be seen is a comparison of the thinking of Immanuel Kant and David Hume. Kant's moral thought is that "of a reason that is practical in itself" (Kivumbi, n.d., para. 3), while Hume's moral thought is that (such feelings as benevolence and generosity are proper moral motivations" (Kivumbi, n.d., para. 3). Feelings and affections cannot be controlled, directed, or predicted in the same ways that reason can be. It is popularly considered that emotion is unreliable as a guide for morality because emotion is capricious and variable. Many people are unsettled by unpredictability, and fall back on rules and reason to restore a sense of balance when emotion becomes too disordered. In my opinion, there needs to be a balance between reason and emotion in the development of ethical thought. While an excess of emotion can cause anarchy and chaos, an excess of reason can cause arbitrary cruelty and disinterest. Ethics should be based on emotions, tempered by reason; or ethics should be based on reason, tempered by feelings and affections. Rules should be tempered by mercy. When ethics are based solely on reason, the "right" choice is determined by what is required by rules and laws. When ethics are based on reason but tempered by emotion, the "right" choice may sometimes be an exception to rules, which allows for compassion and extenuating circumstances. References: Kivumbi Articles. (n.d.) Difference Between Kant and Hume. Retrieved August 26, 2010, from http://www.differencebetween.net/science/difference-between-kant-and-hume/ Waller, B. N. (2008). Consider ethics: Theory, readings, and contemporary issues (2nd ed). New York, NY: Pearson/Longman. Veil of Ignorance 9/2/2010 The veil of ignorance means approaching situations as if we do not know any of the "talents or status [we] will inherit at birth" (Piccard, 2005, para. 25). What this means is that "it helps us look at our society without the various prejudices and preferences we accumulate because of gender, race, economic class, religion, or political allegiance" (Waller, 2008, p. 74). When we make decisions behind the veil of ignorance, we make decisions that will be fair for everyone, no matter who it may be. We do not make decisions that particularly favor any one group over any other group. Rawls' theory of justice is that "disadvantages to some [cannot] be justified by advantages to others" (Kilcullen, 1996, para. 3). Rawls believes that society's rules should be fair and impartial to everyone. With the veil of ignorance, those rules are fair and impartial. The veil of ignorance is central to Rawls' theory, providing a tool that we can use to be sure that rules and policies are fair. It causes us to consider "[h]ow would [we] like it if [we] were in that position" (Waller, 2008, p. 74). References: Kilcullen, J. (1996). Rawls: The Original Position. Retrieved September 1, 2010, from http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/y64l13.html Undergraduate Series 135 Piccard, D. (2005, April 4). A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls. Retrieved September 1, 2010, from http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/piccard/entropy/rawls.html Waller, B. N. (2008). Consider ethics: Theory, readings, and contemporary issues (2nd ed). New York, NY: Pearson/Longman. Cultural Relativism 9/2/2010 According to our text, cultural relativism is "the claim that not only do differing ethical codes exist, but ethical judgments can only be made relative to a given culture" (Waller, 2008, p. 90). Chris Gough (2010) defines cultural relativism as "a perspective which asks that we evaluate other cultures according to their standards, not ours" (para. 1). What this means is that a culture's ethics cannot be compared against the ethics of another culture, but only within their own culture. In cultural relativism, universal ethics do not exist. No one culture is better or worse than any other culture; instead, "all cultures are of equal value and need to be studied from a neutral point of view" (Glazer, 1994, para. 1). A major advantage of cultural relativism is that it "remind[s] us that other cultures may have values that are not the same as our own" (Waller, 2008, p. 90). This helps us to have understanding and tolerance for different cultures, and to develop peaceful interactions between members of different cultures. A disadvantage of cultural relativism is that it can result in conflicts when an individual belongs to multiple cultures simultaneously. If two or more of those cultures have conflicting values and principles, then it can be difficult for the individual to reconcile those values and principles. Another disadvantage of cultural relativism is "the problem of ethical reform" (Waller, 2008, p. 92). This is because, if something is seen to be right in a culture, then it is difficult to the point of impossibility to get a culture to change its values or beliefs. A third problem with cultural relativism is that it "trivialize[s] our ethical concerns" (Waller, 2008, p.92). This means that, under cultural relativism, we must accept large differences between cultures, as well as small differences. It is one thing to accept that two cultures have different dietary or dress rules, but another thing entirely to accept that one culture believes that slavery is right, or that prostitution or cannibalism is right, when our culture believes that these things are wrong. Cultural relativism does not allow for that value difference, and considers all of these differences to be of equal importance. It requires us to accept all of the beliefs of another culture as being right in the context of that culture. References: Glazer, M. (1994, December 16). Cultural Relativism. Retrieved September 1, 2010, from http://www.utpa.edu/faculty/mglazer/theory/cultural_relativism.htm Gough, C. (2010). Overview: Cultural Relativism. Retrieved September 1, 2010, from http://www.helium.com/items/169733-overview-culture-relativism Waller, B. N. (2008). Consider ethics: Theory, readings, and contemporary issues (2nd ed). New York, NY: Pearson/Longman. Just Desserts 9/6/2010 In a truly just world, each person would be rewarded or punished according to the rightness or wrongness of his or her actions. This is, of course, the way the world should work, 136 A Journey Through My College Papers even though the real world does not always, or even often, work this way. As J. McDole (2010) reminds us, “deciding whether an action is positive or negative is difficult” (para. 4). Difficult or not, it is absolutely essential to determine the quality of an action before assigning a reward or a punishment to that action. The difficulty arises from the fact that rightness and wrongness are relative, and that what is right in one situation might be very wrong in another situation, while what is wrong in most situations might be right in specific situations. In what might be called a perfect world, the people who do good things would always be rewarded by having good things happen in their lives. The people who do bad things would always be punished by having bad things happen in their lives. At the same time, it would be reasonable, in such a world, to assume that people for whom good things happen are good people, while people for whom bad things happen are bad people. This is far too simplistic. While a person who does bad things, such as lying, stealing, cheating on his or her partner, or putting others down, might deserve to be punished by having bad things happen in his or her life, it is often better to try to rehabilitate a wrongdoer by giving him or her a few good things as an incentive to do better things in the future. More difficult than deciding what punishment is appropriate for a given wrong action, or than deciding whether or not wrong actions should be punished, is deciding what actions are wrong in what situations. Most people in Western cultures would easily agree that lying, cheating, stealing, and killing other humans are all wrong actions. Most people would not even need to think about the question. What would happen, however, in the case of a fourteen-year-old single mother who finds herself and her baby suddenly living on the streets without a home, without a job, without an education, without family supports, and without food? She has been turned away by the over-crowded shelter. She has been turned down by social services because she lacks identification, being a minor. She turns to prostitution to provide her baby with the food they both need to survive. Should she be punished? It is true that she has broken a law by selling her body, but has she done wrong? If she has truly exhausted every legitimate option that she can think of, then she has not done wrong by taking the only option she can find to provide for her child. Instead, she has done right, by obeying her maternal mandate to care for her baby. Society has failed her, causing her to fall into circumstances that are beyond her ability to overcome by accepted means. She is a child in need of help, not a criminal in need of punishment. She deserves to be rewarded for caring for her child by being given a fresh start in society, so that she and her baby can have a chance to succeed in life and to be better than her childhood. Louis Pojman (1999) says “we should strive to make this a world where … the virtuous are rewarded and the vicious punished in proportion to their relative deserts” (Cited in McDole, 2010, para. 8). While I object to the characterization of all those who do wrong as being vicious, I appreciate Pojman’s (1999) use of the term “relative deserts” (Cited in McDole, 2010, para. 8). McDole (2010) defines desert as “the effort put forth by individuals” (para. 2). He goes on to define merit as “the rewards earned by people according to their behaviors” (McDole, 2010, para. 2) Peter Vallentyne (2003) defines moral desert, or moral effort, as “a matter of how deserving one is from the perspective of morality” (para. 9). So, relative deserts refers to the efforts put forth by individuals from a moral perspective and relative to the individual’s circumstances and to the efforts of others. Everything in justice, then, is relative and conditional. There is no absolute good that should always be rewarded, and there is no absolute wrong that should always be punished. Instead, each individual’s effort should be considered relative to the individual’s circumstances. It is also important to remember that the merit of one’s efforts “is not directly changed by things that happen to one when one had no ability to deliberately influence them” (Vallentyne, 2003, para. 15). According to this, a person may be a victim of circumstance, and is not responsible through his or her actions for the good or the bad that may result from such circumstances. Through this lens we see that a person deserves the opportunity to rise above his Undergraduate Series 137 or her fullest potential. If that potential turns out to be for good, then the individual deserves to be rewarded for the good that he or she does. If that potential turns out to be for wrong-doing, despite overcoming circumstances that were beyond his or her control, then the individual deserves to be punished for the wrong that he or she does. Each person should be rewarded or punished according to the rightness or wrongness of his or her actions, but only relative to the individual’s circumstances. Right and wrong are relative, conditional issues, and what is right or wrong in one situation may be just the opposite in a different situation. Each person deserves the opportunity and the means to overcome circumstances that are beyond his or her control, and each person deserves the rewards or punishments that he or she earns for those deliberate actions that the individual does control. References Belrad, B.. (2010). Let the punishment fit the crime: The law of just desserts. Retrieved September 1, 2010, from http://www.helium.com/items/930352-let-the- punishment-fitthe-crime-the-law-of-just-desserts McDole, J.. (2010). Let the punishment fit the crime: The law of just desserts. Retrieved September 1, 2010, from http://www.helium.com/items/1747644-virtue-and-vice Vallentyne, P.. (2003). Brute Luck Equality and Desert. Retrieved September 1, 2010, from http://klinechair.missouri.edu/online%20papers/Brute%20Luck%20Equality%20and%20Desert.doc Virtuous Behavior 9/9/2010 Several virtue theorists have somewhat different ideas of what counts as virtuous behavior but, in general, "the virtuous person in one who consistently does right acts for the right motives" (Waller, 2008, p. 104). So, virtuous behavior is doing what is right or good for the right reasons. If a person who consistently does wrong does an isolated good act, that good act is not virtuous behavior. If a person who consistently does right does the same good act, then that act is likely to be virtuous behavior. Aristotle, Rosalind Hursthouse, and Philippa Foot all put forth that "virtue is what promotes human flourishing" (Waller, 2008, p. 106). This means that virtual acts are those that allow people to reach their best potential, and to lead good lives. This seems reasonable to me, as virtuous acts are generally good acts, and things that are "good" usually contribute to happiness and well-being. Aristotle also theorizes that "virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate" (Waller, 2008, p. 107). He says that virtue avoids both positive and negative extremes, seeing extremes of goodness and of badness as vices to be avoided. I agree that moderation in all things is a good thing, but I'm not sure that I agree that moderation is virtue, as it seems that leaning toward goodness a bit more might be the better way. Aristotle also specifies that a virtuous act requires the actor to know what choices exist, to consciously choose the good act, and to choose the act for the right reasons. If the person does not know what choices there are, then doing something right is not virtuous. If the person does not consciously choose the right act, but does it unthinkingly or accidentally, then the act is not virtuous. If the person does the right thing for the wrong reason, then the act is not virtuous. I think, though, that if a person mistakenly chooses a wrong act for the right reason, it might be a virtuous act, since the intent was right, even though the result might have been wrong. 138 A Journey Through My College Papers References: Waller, B. N. (2008). Consider ethics: Theory, readings, and contemporary issues (2nd ed). New York, NY: Pearson/Longman. Intent in Moral Acts 9/9/2010 Intent is an important element of ethical judgments because it is possible to do something with good results without intending to do something good, and it is necessary to use intent to be able to determine whether or not an action was simply good, or whether it was morally good. In the case where there is no intention to do something good, the act is not morally or ethically good. In order to be an ethically good act, the actor must intend to do something good. The act cannot be an accident, or motivated by an intent to do something else, in order to be a morally good act. Intent to do something good is required for moral acts. "[M]otives need not stem from deliberation" (Waller, 2008, p. 143). The important thing is the intent to do the good act, not the intent to "do a good ... deed" (Waller, 2008, p. 145). References: Waller, B. N. (2008). Consider ethics: Theory, readings, and contemporary issues (2nd ed). New York, NY: Pearson/Longman. Moral Consensus 9/16/2010 Moral realists believe that it is necessary to "put aside religious fervor and cultural biases and heated rhetoric" (Waller, 2008, p. 180) in order to develop a consensus on our moral views. They believe that people generally agree on the most basic moral issues, but that they are unable to see that they agree because the details surrounding the moral issues are too emotionally charged for clear thought. When we "think calmly, observe carefully and without prejudice, and consider thoughtfully" (Waller, 2008, p. 180), we are able to move beyond rhetoric, beyond religious indoctrination, and beyond cultural influences, to understand the basic moral truths associated with the issues. Unfortunately, while individuals may be capable of being calm and thoughtful, society as a whole appears to be unwilling to view issues calmly and without rhetoric and, in fact, incapable of doing so. Until calm and thoughtful consideration is possible for the masses, it is severely unlikely that a moral consensus can be reached. References: Waller, B. N. (2008). Consider ethics: Theory, readings, and contemporary issues (2nd ed). New York, NY: Pearson/Longman. Taoism 9/16/2010 Taoism is the most natural of the ethical theories that are discussed in our text. Taoism believes that we should "follow natural ethical feelings" (Waller, 2008, p. 187) in order to develop good moral lives. This is in contrast to Kantian and Platonic ethics, which both require adherents to deny their natural inclinations in order to achieve a moral life. It is important to note that Undergraduate Series 139 Taoism calls on us to follow "natural ethical feelings" (Waller, 2008, p. 187), and not to follow our base inclinations. This suggests that we cannot live with no impulse control, but that we must listen to what some would call our conscience to guide our inclinations to be ethical. Inclinations to do things that harm others, and that are selfish, are not ethically good, and Taoism seems to assume that these negative inclinations are not the natural inclinations that people will follow. References: Waller, B. N. (2008). Consider ethics: Theory, readings, and contemporary issues (2nd ed). New York, NY: Pearson/Longman. Susan Wolf 9/23/2010 According to Susan Wolf, "free will consists of acting in accordance with Reason, with full knowledge of the True and the Good" (Doyle, n.d., para. 1). Put a different way, free will "requires doing the right thing for the right reason" (Waller, 2008, p. 206). her argument for this view is that having the ability to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, or to do the wrong thing for any reason, removes free will. It is not enough to do the rigt thing; it is necessary to use reason to choose the right thing, and to use willpower to hold to the right thing once it has been chosen. References: Doyle, B.. (n.d.). Susan Wolf. Retrieved September 22, 2010, from http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/wolf/ Waller, B. N. (2008). Consider ethics: Theory, readings, and contemporary issues (2nd ed). New York, NY: Pearson/Longman. Posner and Singer 9/23/2010 Richard Posner does not believe that non-human animals should be given the same basic rights as are given to humans. He says that "the painless death of a human being causes on average a greater loss of utility than the painless death of a mouse" (Waller, 2008, p. 279). In a June 12, 2001, letter to Peter Singer, Posner writes: I do not agree that we have a duty to (the other) animals that arises from their being the equal members of a community composed of all those creatures in the universe that can feel pain" (Posner, 2001, in Animal Rights, 2001, para. 7). Posner does not advocate cruelty to animals, but he maintains that human responses to animals are based on human empathy and emotions, rather than on ethical arguments. Peter Singer believes that all beings capable of feeling pleasure and pain, whether human or non-human animal, should be given the same rights and equal consideration. According to Singer, "no adequate reason can be given for taking species membership, in itself, as the ground for putting some beings inside the boundary of moral protection and others either totally or very largely outside it" (Waller, 2008, p. 283). In a June 11, 2001, letter to Richard Posner, Singer writes: "if an animal feels pain, the pain matters as much as it does when a human feels pain" (Singer, 2001, in Animal Rights, 2001, para. 2). Singer equates speciesism to racism and sexism, claiming that "all of these prejudices use an arbitrary, and morally irrelevant fact ... as if it were morally crucial" (Waller, 2008, p. 284). Posner and Singer appear to have diametrically opposed views on the matter of animal rights. Posner believes that non-human animals do not have equal moral status with humans, 140 A Journey Through My College Papers while Singer believes that non-human animals do have equal moral status with humans. Posner believes that the needs of humans trump the needs of animals, while Singer believes that the needs of an animal may come before the needs of a human if favoring the animal increases overall utility. I have to agree with Posner. While I support efforts to minimize animal pain and suffering, I could never advance the rights of an animal at the expense of harm to a human. It is not a matter of humans being superior to animals; rather, it is a matter of species survival, just as members of any species will ultimately preserve its own species above the needs of other species. I agree with Posner that protecting a child from an attacking dog, even if the dog experiences pain in the process, "would not be a weakness; it would be a sign of sanity" (Waller, 2008, p. 279). References: Animal Rights. (2001, June). Retrieved September 22, 2010, from http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/interviews-debates/200106--.htm Waller, B. N. (2008). Consider ethics: Theory, readings, and contemporary issues (2nd ed). New York, NY: Pearson/Longman. Stay-at-Home Mothers Deserve Respect 9/27/2010 Stay-at-home mothers should not be treated as second-class citizens in comparison to mothers who work outside the home. Instead, stay-at-home mothers should be judged according to their individual talents and abilities, and should receive credit in society for the work that they do for their families. The decision of a stay-at-home mother to provide full-time care for her family and for the family home is a social contract among the members of the family, which defines the roles and responsibilities of the family members. This social contract is entered into for the best interests of the children’s growth and development. A stay-at-home mother is not quite what she sounds like. A stay-at-home mother is rarely at home all day long; instead, she spends most of her days hurrying to libraries, to play groups, to sports activities, to volunteer activities, and to run errands to support her home. According to a 2007 Pew Research Center survey, “at-home moms are slightly younger, on average … [and] have less formal education and lower household incomes than working mothers” (Parker, 2009, para. 19). In reality, a stay-at-home mother may be of any age or of any income level. As a stay-at-home mother, I often experience the scorn and disappointment of society when I associate with adults who work outside the home for pay, and with those who work at paying jobs at home. Mine is not an unusual case, as many stay-at-home mothers have similar experiences. Often, stay-at-home mothers are treated as though they are not as good, or as valuable, as working moms. Ralph Gardner (2010) writes of a stay-at-home mother: “[s]he felt her ‘insuperiority’” (para. 58). Kyanna Sutton (2010) writes that “a mother-at-home … may be the worst child-rearing arrangement of any culture” (para. 4). In fact, however, the stay-at-home mother performs a virtuous act when she stays at home with her children to give them a stable, morally grounded upbringing. She gives up her personal time and the opportunity to have a career for the good of her children. As Waller (2008) writes, “[i]t is this deep natural feeling of compassion, rather than rational reflection or strict rules, that guides humans to act virtuously” (p. 36). It is this compassion that mothers feel for their children that causes them to choose to stay at home with their children. Undergraduate Series 141 It is necessary, in order to understand what a stay-at-home mother is, and why she should be treated with understanding and respect, to know who is not a stay-at-home mother. Aside from the obvious fact that mothers working outside the home are not stay-at-home mothers, some mothers at home are also not stay-at-home mothers. A mother who would normally work outside the home, but who is at home because she is temporarily out of work, is not a stay-at-home mother. A mother who can no longer work because of health concerns, and is therefore at home, is not a stay-at-home mother. A mother who is forced by her parents or by her partner to remain at home, when she is not allowed to exercise her free will, is not a stay-at-home mother. A stay-athome mother chooses to remain at home in order to do what is right for her children. She does “the right thing for the right reason” (Waller, 2008, p. 206). She “consider[s] what specific act would produce the best overall consequences” (Waller, 2008, p. 52), and she chooses to be a stayat-home mother. One criticism that stay-at-home mothers experience from working adults, and sometimes from their own children, is the stigma of not working. A teenage girl, identified as Sophie, says, “Mom, why don’t you do something? You’re so lame. Everybody else’s mother does something” (Gardner, 2010, para. 57). Lisa Belkin (2008) counters this charge, saying: “Don’t all parents work? Just because you don’t get paid for it, does that mean it’s not work?” (para. 7). Gardner (2010) is even more direct: “[n]onworking mother is an oxymoron” (para. 50). Adults who work outside the home need to recognize that stay-at-home mothers do work, and that most work at least as much as do parents who work outside the home. Stay-at-home mothers should be judged on the basis of moral responsibility to their children, acknowledging that the stay-at-home mother “deserves … praise” (Waller, 2008, p. 227) for her moral decision to remain at home with her family. Stay-at-home mothers are frequently told that they need to work outside the home, and that it is wrong for them to assume the traditional roles of women by remaining at home as wives and mothers. Nancy McDermott (2007) goes so far as to say “when … women choose to leave work, they are harming other women and society as a whole” (para. 16). Meghan O’Rourke (2006) adds that “it’s imperative for women not to ‘opt out’ of employment to stay home with the kids” (para. 1). Studies conducted by the Pew Research Center seem to agree with these claims, with reports showing that “[75%] of Americans … believe that both husband and wife should contribute to the family income … [and] 19% agree that women should return to their traditional roles” (Parker, 2009, paras. 1-9). Stay-at-home mothers disagree with these views. Heidi Brennan (2010) says that “[s]taying home … is a mother’s duty” (Cited in Houghton, 2010, para. 6). Brennan’s statement reflects the concepts of “womanly virtues … [and] a feminine ethic” (Waller, 2008, p. 128), which are found at level three of Kohlberg’s scale (Waller, 2008, p. 122). Mothers, especially stay-at-home mothers, are deeply involved with “focusing on the details of how to maintain relationships and promote the welfare of family and friends” (Waller, 2008, p. 122). For stay-at-home mothers, adopting the traditional roles is the right moral decision, for their own benefit and for the benefit of their families. For those who choose to be stay-at-home mothers, and who do not have the role of stay-at-home mother thrust on them, the decision to stay at home increases utility by adding to their own pleasure and to the pleasure of their families. Another claim about stay-at-home mothers by working adults, which is hurtful and disrespectful to stay-at-home mothers, is that stay-at-home mothers are unfulfilled. O’Rourke (2006) writes that “any woman who stays at home is choosing an impoverished life” (para. 4). McDermott (2007) writes that stay-at-home mothers are “settling for half a life … [and that] they have been duped” (paras. 11-12). Jessica Brown and Jeremy Sammut (2010) describe stay-athome mothers as “moping around the house is a dystopian fulfillment of John Howard’s 1950’sstyle family fantasy” (para. 2). Gardner (2010) even goes so far as to write that “full-time motherhood causes brain damage” (para. 22). None of these claims is made by a stay-at-home 142 A Journey Through My College Papers mother, but only by adults working outside the home who believe that “[o]nly by working … can women have a fully ‘flourishing’ life” (O’Rourke, 2006, para. 1), and that “self-esteem suffers” (Working Moms vs Stay-at-Home Moms, 2009, para. 6) when mothers stay at home. Stay-at-home mothers have a particular temperament that suits them to make the choice to remain at home, and “the most basic philosophical issues [are] decided … by temperament” (Waller, 2008, p. 60). Far from “moping around the house” (Brown and Sammut, 2010, para. 2), stay-at-home mothers are busily active. Stay-at-home mothers are often the classroom moms at their children’s schools, and they are the most frequent chaperones for school field trips. Stay-at-home mothers join book clubs, sewing circles, Bible studies, or other personal enrichment groups that suit their individual interests. Stay-at-home mothers take their younger children to play groups, to library groups, and to parks and cultural opportunities. When my two sons were small, I took them to the reading group at the library once a week, where I helped them with their games, songs, and craft projects once story time was over. I took them to a weekly mommy-and-me play group at a local church, where I socialized with other stay-at-home mothers while our children played, sang songs, and made crafts. I took my sons to peewee soccer three evenings each week for practices, and I cheered from the benches with the other stay-at-home mothers. When the park department offered concerts targeted for children, I sang under the trees with the other stay-at-home mothers and our children. There was never time to mope or to feel unfulfilled by my choice to be at home with my sons. Only when working adults denigrated my choices and minimized the importance of my decisions did I feel that “our society really doesn’t walk the walk of placing value on the day to day tasks of raising young kids” (Mint, 2008, para.7). The problem was not that I made a bad choice in staying home with my sons, but that working people perceived my choice as wrong simply because the same choice would be wrong for them. In “An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation,” Jeremy Bentham (1823) writes that “[i]t is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual” (Cited in Waller, 2008, p. 61). The interest of a stay-at-home mother is best served by her remaining in the home, and by her receiving due recognition from society for the good that she does. Her interest is not served by being told that “feelings of self-esteem and self-confidence are increased by … working outside the home” (Houghton, 2010, para. 11). Rather, her feelings of self-esteem and of selfconfidence are increased, and her interest is served, when working adults accept her moral decision and acknowledge the legitimate work that she contributes to society by concentrating her energies on raising her children to be good, moral members of society. With such acceptance and acknowledgement, we as a society can “maximize pleasure and minimize suffering for everyone” (Waller, 2008, p. 55). A third complaint that stay-at-home mothers hear with unsettling frequency is that stayat-home mothers are too dependent on men to support them and to provide for their material needs. Working parents believe that mothers should be financially independent of their partners. Leslie Bennetts (n.d.) says that “[w]hen women make themselves dependent on a man … more than half will end up on the wrong side of the odds” (Cited in McDermott, 2007, para. 7). While it may be true that “when [women are] divorced or widowed they [are] left with little or no income” (McDermott, 2007, para. 10) if they do not work for pay, it is not necessarily true that they have “few prospects and no social status” (McDermott, 2007, para. 10). Most stay-at-home mothers have strong ties to their extended families, to churches or other worship groups, and to a network of friends and agencies that are available to help a stay-at-home mother survive the trauma of divorce or of the death of a partner. Further, most stay-at-home mothers are accustomed to living on a single income, and their lives do not reflect “the prevailing standards of our culture of privilege and consumption” (Waller, 2008, p. 191), but to a simpler standard of love and moral responsibility. All of this aside, stay-at-home mothers are independent thinkers, with their own opinions and desires, and are no more interested in having their lives meddled with than would be Undergraduate Series 143 any other adult. “If I cannot make my own moral decisions, follow my own drummer, and exercise control over my plans and purposes … then I cannot be a full moral being” (Waller, 2008, p. 228). Although rarely in these exact words, this is the frequent refrain of stay-at-home mothers whose families, friends, neighbors, and other members of society try to tell them that they need to leave the home and do “real work.” There are few words that can make a stay-at-home mother bristle with anger and resentment more than the word “real.” When she is told to get a “real job,” she gets the message that others see her work at home as fake, or as make-believe, and her selfesteem is threatened. While taking a break from doing research for this paper, I received a message on one of my social network sites from my step-father, wishing my younger son a good first day at his “REAL school.” My son was transitioning from an online charter school to a brickand-mortar school, and it was an emotional time for our family. My step-father’s use and capitalization of “REAL” in his message made me feel that he considered the online school to be an imitation, and that he did not respect my choices for my sons. “If you try to … offer unsolicited advice, I shall feel resentful. After all, it’s my life, and I want to make my own choices” (Waller, 2008, p. 228). Many people offer advice to stay-at-home mothers, or offer opinions about the choices that stay-at-home mothers make, and this causes stay-at-home mothers to feel resentful toward the working adults who do these things. As a stay-at-home mother, “[t]o live morally, I must make my own choices” (Waller, 2008, p. 229). Many people, when faced with the charge that stay-at-home mothers are undervalued in society, claim that the reverse is true. They claim that stay-at-home mothers are actually valued more than working mothers. Jennifer Livengood (2010) writes that “[p]eople favor not only a mother, but also her child and their relationship when she is not employed outside the home fulltime” (para. 2). She writes further that “[p]eople also devalue mothers employed full time outside the home … [and] perceive their children to be troubled and their relationships to be problematic” (Livengood, 2010, para. 4). Dulce Zamora (2006) concurs, writing that “there’s actually more status to not be a working mom” (para. 6). This sounds good, and may well be the perception that working mothers have about themselves and their position in society, but it is not the reality that most stay-at-home mothers experience every day. Stay-at-home mothers are frequently accused of not properly socializing their children by placing them in day care centers. Stay-at-home mothers are accused of spoiling their children by being more accessible to their children than working parents are to their children. Stay-at-home mothers are often required to identify themselves as “unemployed” when filling out forms for the government, for financial institutions, and for schools, but “stay-at-home mothers don’t think of themselves as unemployed” (Gardner, 2010, para. 32). Far from being valued more than working mothers, stay-at-home mothers experience the feeling that their “contribution … goes unnoticed” (Mint, 2008, para. 6). Stay-at-home mothers make a moral decision to remain at home with their children out of a feeling of love and compassion for their children. These mothers make an intentional choice to put their children’s needs before their own needs, and they find fulfillment in this virtuous act. Stay-at-home mothers deserve to be treated as social equals with adults who work outside the home. It is morally wrong for society to punish stay-at-home mothers for accepting the feminine ethic by working inside their homes for the betterment of their families. This punishment of stayat-home mothers causes harm to these mothers and to their families, causing a reduction of utility in society that cannot be counterbalanced by shaming, coaxing, or forcing mothers into the workplace. To reverse this reduction of utility, and to improve the overall utility of society, mothers need to be allowed to exercise their free will and to choose to stay at home for the best interests of their children, of society, and of themselves, and to so so with the respect of the other adults in society. 144 A Journey Through My College Papers References Belkin, L.. (2008, November 10). The Loaded Language of Parenting. Retrieved September 07, 2010, from http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/stay-at-home- parents/ Brown, J. and Sammut, J.. (2010, May 28). Equal help for home and working mums. Retrieved September 07, 2010, from http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/equal-help-for-home-and-workingmums/story-e6frg6zo-1225872280227 Gardner, R., Jr.. (2010). “Mom Vs. Mom.” New York Magazine. [Electronic version.] Retrieved September 07, 2010, from http://nymag.com/nymetro/urban/family/features/n_7837/ Houghton, K. (2010). “Stay at Home Moms vs Working Moms -- Can't We All Just Support Each Other?” The Huffington Post. [Electronic version.] Retrieved September 07, 2010, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-houghton/stay-at-home-moms-vswork_b_602264.html Livengood, J.. (2010, February 18). Study shows people not only judge mothers based on work status, but also judge their kids. Retrieved September 07, 2010, from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-02/ksu-ssp021810.php McDermott, N.. (2007, November 30). Is stay-at-home motherhood only ‘half a life’?. Retrieved September 07, 2010, from http://www.spikedonline.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/4133 Mint, K.. (2008, October 17). Equal Value?. Retrieved September 07, 2010, from http://www.svmoms.com/2008/10/equal-value-dra.html O’Rourke, M.. (2006, June 26). A Working Girl Can Win. Retrieved September 07, 2010, from http://www.slate.com/id/2144505/ Parker, K.. (2009, October 1). The Harried Life of the Working Mother. Retrieved September 07, 2010, from http://pewsocialtrends.org/pubs/745/the-harried-life-ofthe-working-mother Sutton, K.. (2010). Do Working Moms Make Better Moms?. Retrieved September 07, 2010, from http://life.familyeducation.com/working-parents/child-care/36134.html Waller, B. N. (2008). Consider ethics: Theory, readings, and contemporary issues (2nd ed). New York, NY: Pearson/Longman. Working Moms vs Stay-at-Home Moms. (2009, January 25). Retrieved September 07, 2010, from http://www.enotalone.com/article/19281.html Zamora, D.. (2006, May 8). Hard Choice for Moms: Work or Stay Home?. Retrieved September 07, 2010, from http://www.webmd.com/parenting/guide/hard-choice- formoms-work-stay-home SOC 315: Cross-Cultural Perspectives Social Cleavages 9/30/2010 The four main social cleavages that interest political scientists are social class, geographic region, religion, and urban-rural. Social class refers to the "[l]ayer or section of population of similar income and status" (Roskin, 2011 [sic], p. 583). Society is divided into two general social classes: the middle- and upper-class, and the working class. In today's world, there is also a lower, impoverished class of the unemployed and severely under-employed. This social cleavage interests political scientists Undergraduate Series 145 because each class tends to have different political views, with the elite class tending toward social conservativism and the working class tending toward social progressivism. Geographic region refers both to different parts of the world and to different regions within the political boundaries of a country. Roskin (2011) tells us that we "must study the regions of a nation, what their politics are, and how they got to be that way" (p. 14). A region's history, especially of warfare, can affect the politics of the geographic region for years, or even for centuries. While most religions espouse peace and harmony, the reality is that religion can divide people more definitely than almost anything else. "Religion accounts for the formation of more political parties than does social class" (Roskin, 2011, p. 14). Protestants clash with Catholics, Christians clash with non-Christians, Hindus clash with Muslims, and individual sects within a given religion often clash with each other. Urban-rural is an important cleavage because urban areas tend to be more modern and more politically progressive, while rural areas tend to be more traditional and more politically conservative. All four of the main social cleavages have affected my social and political views. Growing up in a middle-class family, with upper-class grandparents, I was raised to embrace political conservativism, and to be something of a social elitist when dealing with the working and lower classes. When life changed and I found myself at the bottom of the lower class, I had a social wake-up call, and my political views in many matters shifted sharply to the left. Now returned to the middle class, I find some of my views settling back into the patterns of my childhood, while my memories of life in the lower class keep some of my views much more liberal than the views of most of my peers. Growing up in the United States, my geographic region affected my political views. I favor democracy and the separation of church and state. Despite all the study I have undertaken, I still have a negative emotional reaction to Communism, to the former Axis powers, and to the former Soviet Union, which reaction I must consciously control. I am further influenced by having grown up in New England, where politics tend to be more conservative, and where individualism tends to be more popular, than many other regions of the United States. New Englanders are generally taught a certain social elitism in relation to other regions of the country. For most of my life, I have been a Protestant Christian. The denomination in which I was raised tends to be socially traditional while also being politically liberal. At times in my life, my religious affiliations have changed, and I have witnessed social cleavage in my mother's reaction to my religious choices. When I was in the Roman Catholic church, she was uncomfortable, and she mourned the loss of her Protestant daughter. When I explored Judaism, she was afraid for me, and she expressed her belief (founded on her religious upbringing, and wholly incorrect) that the Jews would harm me. In the non-denominational Christian church that I attended in the South, the social and political views were seriously conservative. In the non-denominational Christian church that I attended in the Midwest, on the other hand, the social and political views were the most progressive that I have encountered. At this point in my life, my religious experiences have settled down, influencing me to be slightly more socially traditional and slightly more politically progressive. I have never lived in a true urban area. Most of my life has been spent in very small towns, where many people are related and where nearly everyone knows nearly everyone else. The social and political views in these towns have almost always been traditional and conservative, but with a degree of socialism that happens in communities where everyone looks out for everyone else. In addition to these main cleavages, I have been influenced more toward liberalism because of being a woman, and because of being responsible for raising my children. 146 A Journey Through My College Papers References: Roskin, M.G. (2011). Countries and concepts: Politics, geography, culture (11th ed.). New York: Longman. Quarrels of the Britons 9/30/2010 A quarrel faced by modern Britons is that of racial and religious problems. Once an allwhite nation, Britain created an empire that included colonies that were predominantly non-white, including lands in Africa, Asia, the Asian Subcontinent, the Americas, and the Caribbean. In 1948, Britain "legally made the natives of its many colonies British subjects" (Roskin, 2011, p. 81). This move allowed the new British subjects to live in the United Kingdom, which was a desirable destination for many former Colonials. In Britain, most white Britons "looked down on anyone from across the English Channel" (Roskin, 2011, p. 83). Non-whites in Britain were still referred to as "coloureds" (Roskin, 2011, p. 83) until recent decades, and most colonial immigrants to Britain made do with "lowly jobs that Britons did not want" (Roskin, 2011, p. 81). The race/religion problems in Britain are not just about immigrant "coloureds," but also about Pakistani Muslims and Muslim jihadis. Not only do white Britons discriminate against Muslims, but Muslims keep themselves largely segregated in an effort to "preserve their original faith and culture" (Roskin, 2011, p. 82). Because of Britain's geographic identity as an island, separated from the rest of Europe, the British culture developed as a unique, individual entity. "Britons did not see themselves as Europeans" (Roskin, 2011, p. 83). In Britain's earliest history, up to about the fifth century, Britain was invaded rather frequently, and the Celts, the Romans, the Scandinavians, and the Germans of that period -- all white -- blended to form the Anglo-Saxon culture, and eventually became the Britons. "The last successful invasion of England ... was in 1066" (Roskin, 2011, p. 22). Since that time, Great Britain became a powerful nation and extended its power around the world as it conquered lands and made them part of the British Empire. During this imperial period, the Britons maintained a sense of social superiority over the natives of the British colonies, and that history of social superiority has developed into the current problem of race/religion in Britain. While Britain exerted imperial control over its colonies around the world, within the British nation the political structure evolved from a monarchy to a parliamentary system with a Prime Minister; the Queen is more of a figurehead today than a political figure. Today, a political party in Britain seeks "the expulsion of all 'coloureds' back to their native lands" (Roskin, 2011, p. 81). This only makes Britain's race problems that much worse. References: Roskin, M.G. (2011). Countries and concepts: Politics, geography, culture (11th ed.). New York: Longman. Right Amount of Welfare 10/7/2010 Of the three countries to be considered, Germany has the greatest amount of welfare. The United States has a middle level of welfare, while Japan has "practically no welfare" (Roskin, 2011, p. 290). It is difficult to determine what the "right" amount of welfare is, because each of Undergraduate Series 147 these countries has a different history, different traditions, and different values. What is right for Germany would not be right for Japan, and what is right for the United States would be right for neither Germany nor Japan. Because of the German welfare system, Germans have "short work weeks ..., long vacations ..., the world's highest pay, lush unemployment benefits, male retirement at 63 ... with fat pensions, and almost no strikes" (Roskin, 2011, p. 228). The German welfare system is very comprehensive, but it is also very expensive for the German nation. "The US does not ... have a unified welfare system" (An introduction to Social Policy, n.d., para. 17). The system is complex and "is also unusually expensive" (An introduction to Social Policy, n.d., para. 18). Many in the United States, who have experienced the welfare system first-hand, would say that the system is flawed and broken, and that it works just enough to be indispensable. People in the United States do not experience the level of welfare that is the norm in Germany, but a great many Americans depend on the welfare system for the survival of their families. Japanese culture is vastly different from Western culture, so it follows that Japan's approach to welfare is different from the approach of any Western nation. Japan has "public assistance programs benefiting about 1 percent of the population" (Japan: Social Welfare, 1994, para. 5). "Japanese work hard and produce much but ask for little ... [and] Japan never developed a social safety net or social security system, so Japanese save for hard times and retirement" (Roskin, 2011, p. 282). The reason such a low level of welfare works in Japan is that the Japanese, unlike Westerners, are trained to be obediently pluralistic, rather than individualistic. No one expects society to give him or her anything, and everyone expects to work hard. This system is much less expensive for Japan than the systems in Germany and the United States are for their respective countries. If the cost to the nation is the prime consideration, then almost nonexistent welfare, as found in Japan, is the "right" level of welfare. Since most of the rest of the world would find it almost impossible to shift to a Japanese mindset, however, the moderate level of welfare that is found in the United States is closer to being the "right" level of welfare, even though the system in the United States could still benefit from a great deal of restructuring and demystifying. References: Introduction to Social Policy, An. (n.d.). Retrieved October 4, 2010, from http://www2.rgu.ac.uk/publicpolicy/introduction/wstate.htm Japan: Social Welfare. (1994, January). Retrieved October 4, 2010, from http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-7136.html Roskin, M.G. (2011). Countries and concepts: Politics, geography, culture (11th ed.). New York: Longman. Democratic Deficit 10/7/2010 In regard to the European Union (EU), the phrase "democratic deficit" refers to the fact that "the EU is not a democracy" (Roskin, 2011, p. 249). Although "new members are admitted only after they demonstrate they are democracies" (Roskin, 2011, p. 251), the EU itself is not a democratic body, does not elect an executive, and does not even have a ratified constitution or similar document. "The EU relies heavily on the European parliament to provide democratic legitimacy" (Mulvey, 2003, para. 17), but most "Europeans believe that the Europarliament is less important than their own parliaments" (Roskin, 2011, p. 248). In order to turn the democratic 148 A Journey Through My College Papers deficit around for the EU, the EU's representative democracy needs to become stronger, and members of European nations need to think of themselves as Europeans. Voter turnout for the European Parliament elections are notably low for several reasons. The greatest reason is the one cited above: "Europeans believe that the Europarliament is less important than their own parliaments" (Roskin, 2011, p. 248). Voters will not turn out for an election that they do not consider to be important to them; they will consider it to be a waste of their time and effort if the election is not personally relevant for them, if they worry about it at all. Another problem is that "many Europeans are now skeptical or even hostile to the EU" (Roskin, 2011, p. 250). Voters will not turn out to support a government or an organization (since the EU is not yet, truly, a government, but more of an economic organization) about which they are skeptical. Even less will voters support an organization to which they are hostile. Europeans are nationalistic, and there is a long and complicated history of European nations fighting against each other to form and define those nations. Putting aside those centuries of nationalistic sentiment and history is a very difficult proposition, and the memories of "[o]ld grudges ... [, b]orders, languages, wars, and symbols" (Roskin, 2011, p. 245) will inhibit people's desire to vote in elections for the European Parliament. There is an underlying fear that one's historic adversary may be represented in the parliament while one's own country goes unrepresented. Voter turnout could be improved somewhat if elections were timed better. "In the UK, there is a good chance that turnout will be higher than last time -- because to vote will be held on the same day as local elections" (Mulvey, 2003, para. 38). Coordination of all of the local elections throughout Europe with the vote for the European Parliament, however, would be an unrealistic goal. References: Mulvey, S.. (2003, November 21), The EU's democratic challenge. Retrieved October 4, 2010, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/3224666.stm Roskin, M.G. (2011). Countries and concepts: Politics, geography, culture (11th ed.). New York: Longman. Japanese Spirit, Western Things 10/11/2010 The article, “Special Report: Japanese spirit, western things – 150 years after Commodore Perry” (2003), discusses how Japan has modernized since the West forced Japan to end its self-imposed isolation in 1853. The most important point of the article is that Japan “mastered the art of opening up on its own terms … [and] decid[ing] for itself how to make the process of opening suit its own aims” (“Special Report: Japanese spirit, western things,” 2003, para. 5). By opening to the West on its own terms, rather than on the West’s terms, Japan has been able to preserve its own culture and to modernize without Westernizing. Japan was not a backward nation when Commodore Perry forced it to open to Western modernization. “Japan was distinctive, prosperous, and highly developed” (Roskin, 2011, p. 264) by the time Perry arrived. Nevertheless, the Japanese needed to “save Japan by modernizing it quickly, before the West could take it over” (Roskin, 2011, p. 265), and as a result, “Japan emerged as one of history’s great economic success stories” (“Special Report: Japanese spirit, western things,” 2003, para. 2). Another important point of the article is that America cultivated Japan’s modernization because America needed Japan as an economically, especially in the nineteenth century. Undergraduate Series 149 “America’s main goal in opening Japan was “to enlist Japan’s support in creating a global marketplace” (“Special Report: Japanese spirit, western things,” 2003, para. 19). Japan did, indeed, become an important economic power, and today Japanese products are well-respected. As an example, “Japan’s Toyota Motor said … total global sales of its Prius hybrid topped the two million mark” (“Toyota,” 2010, para. 1). Japan has also become important in modern science, with Japanese citizens receiving eighteen Nobel prizes – seven Nobel prizes in chemistry – before 2010 (“Two Japanese and an American,” 2009). Japan’s Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) works “in cooperation with US space agency NASA” (“Japan’s Hayabusa probe,” 2010, para. 4). It is important to recognize that modernization is not the same thing as modernity. “Japan’s industrialization, with its rapid shift from a politically isolated and feudal nation to the second largest economy in the world, demonstrates that neither Westernization nor modernity is necessary for modernization” (Buntrock, 1996, para. 1). Indeed, Japan “has shown clearly that you do not have to embrace ‘western’ culture in order to modernize your economy and prosper” (“Special Report: Japanese spirit, western things,” 2003, para. 10). Japan has modernized its technology, its industry, and its economy, but it has labored diligently to preserve its Japanese history, culture, and values. Japan has taken “the best of the West” (Roskin, 2011, p. 265), without becoming Westernized. Japan modernized its economy without embracing Western culture by “absorb[ing] western technology in a way that would shield them from political competition and protect their interests” (“Special Report: Japanese spirit, western things,” 2003, para. 16). Japan learned to “control the aperture through which new ideas and practices streamed in” (“Special Report: Japanese spirit, western things,” 2003, para. 11), so Japan was not overwhelmed by its interactions with the West. Japan achieved economic modernization without succumbing to the lure of Western modernity. Modernization in Japan has been fabulously successful. “[I]n a generation Japan went from the Middle Ages to the modern age” (Roskin, 2011, p. 265). Japan and America have become the economic allies that nineteenth-century Americans hoped they would be. “America has helped Japan by opening it up … [and] Japan has helped America by improving on many of its technologies, teaching it new manufacturing techniques, spurring on American firms with its competition, and venturing into East Asia to trade and invest” (“Special Report: Japanese spirit, western things,” 2003, para. 22). Although Japan’s success at modernization has been dramatic, its meteoric rise to the top of the economic world may be ending. “In 1990,… Japan’s extraordinary economic growth ended with a major recession and unemployment” (Roskin, 2011, p. 289). This poses a problem for Japan, which “has public assistance programs benefiting about 1 percent of the population” (Japan: Social Welfare, 1994, para. 5). With such a small portion of the population being served by government welfare programs, unemployment pushes Japanese workers to consider “employing more western things to help lift Japan out of its mess” (“Special Report: Japanese spirit, western things,” 2003, para. 28). Modernization may lead to modernity, with a greater connection to the West, and to America in particular, since “[y]ounger Japanese, educated and traveled, [see] how people in other countries [do] not live in rabbit hutches and pay exorbitant prices. Many [are] no longer willing to support the status quo” (Roskin, 2011, p. 289). “The International Monetary Fund … forecast Japan’s real economic growth in 2011 … 0.3 percentage point lower than predicted” (“IMF lowers nation’s 2011 growth estimate,” 2010, para. 1). If this financial situation continues or worsens in Japan, it may soon become necessary to reconsider how successful Japan’s modernization has been. While modernization itself “can be said to exist when the country in question has arrived at a point comparable to the technological development of other leading nations” (Buntrock, 1996, para. 3), the success of such modernization depends on the country’s ability to remain at that point of comparability, and to maintain its economic growth. 150 A Journey Through My College Papers There are several factors that I can see potentially occurring in Japan’s economic and social environment that might affect further cooperation between Japan and America. One possibility is that Japan’s economic downturn, coupled with younger Japanese’s enculturation in the West, could push Japan to become more and more Westernized, and to have closer bonds with America. As American foods – “McDonald’s and KFC have become, respectively, Japan’s first and second most popular restaurants” (Roskin, 2011, p. 282) – clothing, and values permeate Japan’s younger generation, younger Japanese look and act more and more Western. Already, “[y]ounger Japanese switch their jobs and their votes and oppose corruption” (Roskin, 2011, p. 282), which was unheard-of behavior in previous generations. Another possible event that I can imagine happening is Japan once again “rapidly slamming shut” (“Special Report: Japanese spirit, western things,” 2003, para. 11) in an attempt to restore its culture and traditions by shutting out the West. Since Japan has almost no import economy, closing itself off would not pose a significant material hardship for Japan. However, Japan’s prodigious export economy would present a very significant hardship for the rest of the world if Japan closed its borders. In this eventuality, I could imagine the United States once again forcing Japan to open its doors to the West, this time with imperial intentions toward Japan, and occupying Japan. I would hope that this possibility is far less likely than the former possibility, should a significant shift in Japan’s relations with the West occur. Other possible factors that could affect relations between Japan and America could come from outside either country. With the political and military situation in North Korea uncertain, a change in America’s relations with North Korea could positively or adversely affect America’s relations with Japan. An open war between America and any East Asian country would be likely to affect relations with Japan. I would not like to have to guess which alliance Japan would choose in that case: a modern, economic alliance with America; or an ancient kinship with other Asians. “Japanese … ancestors came from other parts of the Pacific Rim, especially from Korea … [and] Japan and Korea both owe much to Chinese culture” (Roskin, 2011, p. 261). The Japanese revere their ancestors, and the ancient tie might be enough to end the cooperation between Japan and America in the event of a war with North Korea. It would be hoped that the fact that “Japanese look down on Koreans” (Roskin, 2011, p. 261) might be enough to keep Japan from siding with North Korea in that case, if Japan did not side with America. Japan modernized reluctantly, to protect itself from being overwhelmed by the West. Its modernization was uncommonly rapid and remarkably successful, but may be reaching an end. Japan has successfully maintained its rich and ancient culture in the process of modernizing, but that, too, may be coming to an end. If Japan cannot find a way to balance its culture with its modernization, then one or the other may have to be sacrificed to preserve the Japanese people. References Buntrock, D.. (1996, December). “Without Modernity: Japan’s Challenging Modernization.” Architronic, 5 (3). Retrieved October 10, 2010, from http://corbu2.caed.kent.edu/architronic/PDF/v5n3/v5n3_02.pdf “IMF lowers nation’s 2011 growth estimate.” (2010, October 7). The Japan Times [Electronic version]. Retrieved October 7, 2010, from http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nb20101007a2.html Japan: Social Welfare. (1994, January). Retrieved October 4, 2010, from http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-7136.html “Japan’s Hayabusa probe may have brought home space dust – reports.” (2010, October 6). Herald Sun [Electronic version]. Retrieved October 7, 2010, from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/japans-hayabusa-probe-may- havebrought-home-space-dust-reports/story-e6frf7k6-1225935055269 Undergraduate Series 151 Roskin, M.G. (2011). Countries and concepts: Politics, geography, culture (11th ed.). New York: Longman. “Special Report: Japanese spirit, western things – 150 years after Commodore Perry.” (2003, July 12). The Economist, 368 (8332), 20. Retrieved October 3, 2010, from ProQuest database. Toyota: over two million Prius sold since launch. (2010, October 7). Retrieved October 7, 2010, from http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i5sNTEbEM6nvzJZFQUqFcWVq7DA?docId=CNG.617fcb341028c061553240385e14f91f. 451 “Two Japanese and an American win Nobel Prize in Chemistry.” (2009). News on Japan [Electronic version]. Retrieved October 7, 2010, from http://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/84289.php Middle Way 10/14/2010 There can be a middle economic way between capitalism and either socialism or communism, but such a system is doomed to be short-lived, and to fail. As Roskin (2011) states in our text: "a little bit of capitalism is like being a little bit pregnant" (p. 434). The nearest thing to a middle way is welfarism, in which a government provides "medical, unemployment, educational, housing, and other programs to lift up the lower rungs of society" (Roskin, 2011, p. 362), while also permitting free market economics. This system works in Scandinavia, and it also works to a certain extent in Germany and in the United States. This welfarism is actually a form of capitalism, however, because the government controls only a portion of the distribution of the nation's wealth, not the means of producing that wealth. No matter how many pseudo-socialist programs a government offers to its people, if the means of production in that nation are held in the private sector, then the system is capitalist. When a nation tries to follow a middle way, two things may happen. Either that nation will give up its socialist or communist beliefs and practices to become an openly capitalist nation, or the nation will crush capitalist development and revert to a state of socialism or of communism. Either of these responses is an attempt to rescue an economy that will inevitably blow itself up or collapse in on itself. When the Gorbachev government attempted to find a middle way between socialism and capitalism for Russia, the "Russians felt angry and betrayed" (Roskin, 2011, p. 358) as they "witnessed the explosive growth of inequality" (Roskin, 2011, p. 358). Under socialism, a few had been rich, but the government had preached against the middle class, and most people had been equal. When the door was opened for capitalism, the gap between the rich and the poor grew. Public finances became dangerously weak, and "the Yeltsin government simply printed more money" (Roskin, 2011, p. 358). The Chinese also tried to find a middle way, introducing elements of capitalism into their communist system. When a nation does this, "[t]he private sector keeps bumping into the state sector" (Roskin, 2011, p. 434). It is not yet clear how the conflict between communism and capitalism in China will end, but "China's elite is still firmly Communist, [and] has no desire for democracy" (Roskin, 2011, p. 434), so it doesn't look like it will end well. References: Roskin, M.G. (2011). Countries and concepts: Politics, geography, culture (11th ed.). New York: Longman. 152 A Journey Through My College Papers The Quiet Revolution 10/14/2010 China has been able to build up a huge industrial infrastructure that produces wealth for the country by maintaining state control of the instruments of production, while giving the impression of allowing private, capitalist firms, and also by allowing and encouraging foreign companies to operate in China. This has created a vast gap in incomes for the Chinese, with the urban upper- and middle-classes centered in eighteen coastal cities while the under-class of peasants lives on a pittance in rural areas. For the time being, China appears to have found a sort of middle way between it Communist government and its capitalist economy. In addition, the development of the household responsibility system has promoted "both ... rapid economic development and ... rapid increase in income disparity" (Bloom, 2009, para. 7). This program undid the communes established by Mao and gave the land to farmers. The system is feudal in nature, with the government still owning the land itself, and requiring the farmer to contribute a set amount of his produce to the state, but it allowed some farmers to accumulate personal wealth through motivated labor. Since the late 1950s, the Chinese have fought repression, usually by quietly ignoring the government to find illegal, private employment, and sometimes more openly, as in the case of the student demonstration in Tiananmen Square in 1989. There is no reason to believe that these moves toward greater demands for respect of civil rights and political freedoms will end. "You cannot reform the economy alone, for economic reform generates demands for political reform, namely, democracy" (Roskin, 2011, p. 434). However, "[d]o not count on China moving to democracy automatically or peacefully, no matter what its economic growth" (Roskin, 2011, p. 434). Communism is deeply entrenched in China, but it seems likely that it must eventually give way to democracy if China continues to encourage and to support a free market economy, or anything that strongly resembles a free market economy. References: Bloom, A.. (2009, July 21). China's Income Gap: Capitalism in Communism. Retrieved October 14, 2010, from http://admanb.com/posts/1 Roskin, M.G. (2011). Countries and concepts: Politics, geography, culture (11th ed.). New York: Longman. Caste System 10/21/2010 Ending India's caste system sounds very straightforward. Make a law that abolishes the caste system and that makes all Indians equal under the law. Prohibit discrimination based on a person's former caste status, and punish anyone who discriminates against anyone else on the basis of caste. This method was tried in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Abraham Lincoln abolished America's caste system by abolishing slavery. Black Americans were made equal with White Americans. Banning discrimination against Blacks took several generations longer, but that was done, as well. It looks good on paper, but it wasn't actually that simple in America, and it will not be that simple in India. The American Civil War was fought, in large part, over the issue of slavery, and there is likely to be violence accompanying the end of India's caste system. Discrimination against Black Americans still happens, and discrimination against Indians based on caste will continue to happen. Undergraduate Series 153 If I had to end India's caste system, I would do all of the things I described, despite the fact that they won't really end it, because it is necessary to build a legal foundation for this sort of revolution. Afterward, I would introduce specific laws by which Indians would receive equal opportunity employment, housing, education, and services. I would end the current quota system, in which "15% of the government jobs and 15% of the students admitted to universities must be from Scheduled Castes" (Daniel, 2005, para. 7), since we learned during America's civil rights struggle that quotas do not produce non-discrimination or equality. I would flood the country, especially the less-modernized northern part of the country, with educational campaigns that demonstrate that caste has nothing to do with inherent worth or with personal ability. I would also publicize the 1997 genetic study by the University of Utah and Andhra Pradesh University that indicates that the upper caste is descended from "invaders known as Indo-Europeans, or true Aryans, [who] came from Eastern Europe or western Asia and conquered the Indian subcontinent" (Cooke, 1999, para. 12), and that the lowest castes are actually the most pure Indians. Opposition to any attempt to get rid of the Indian caste system will come from members of all of the castes. I would expect more opposition from the rural populations than from the urban populations, since rural populations are almost always more resistant to change than are urban populations. In urban areas, such as Chennai, caste is already less of an issue, with Indians becoming socially mobile (Polgreen, 2010, para. 3), while "in some rural areas there is still discrimination based on castes and sometimes also on untouchability" (Daniel, 2005, para. 2). Opposition will also come from the Brahmin caste, and the elimination of the caste system would threaten the status and the authority of the priests. Indian individuals, who believe that they were born into their castes as a result of karma and reincarnation, will present additional opposition, as they believe that they deserve their position in society. Along with this, opposition will come from the simple fact that the caste system has been around for so long, and has become so deeply embedded in the Indian psyche, that cultural inertia will make it difficult for many Indians to change what they believe and what they do. References: Cooke, R.. (1999, May 26). "History of Ancient Indian Conquest Told in Modern Genes, Experts Say." San Francisco Chronicle [Electronic edition]. Retrieved October 21, 2010, from http://www.raceandhistory.com/historicalviews/casteindia.htm Daniel, A.. (2005). Caste system in modern India. Retrieved October 21, 2010, from http://adaniel.tripod.com/modernindia.htm Polgreen, L.. (2010, September 10). "Business Class Rises in Ashes of Caste System." The New York Times [Electronic version]. Retrieved October 21, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/11/world/asia/11caste.html Muslim Modernization 10/21/2010 While Islam does not, of itself, impede modernization, "hatred of anything Western" (Roskin, 2011, p. 548) does impede modernization by Western definitions. "[O]ne of the major responses to western modernization and occupation of the Muslim world was Islamic modernism" (Baraz, 2010, para. 1). Islamic modernism allows a people that has been conquered time after time to enter the modern world without "admitting the West is superior" (Roskin, 2011, p. 548). This is important because "Islam teaches it is superior to all other civilizations and will eventually triumph worldwide" (Roskin, 2011, p. 548). 154 A Journey Through My College Papers Islam teaches that it is "in harmony with the principles discovered by scientific reason ... [and is] the religion demanded by reason" (Baraz, 2010, para. 3). Early in the history of Islam, "Islamic civilization was for centuries far ahead of Christian Europe in science, philosophy, medicine, sanitation, architecture, steelmaking, and much more" (Roskin, 2011, p. 548). The decline of this technologically advanced Muslim society was brought on "by forces of Western colonialism" (Baraz, 2010, para. 2). Modernization is coming to some Muslim countries. In Indonesia, the "trend is trying to adapt to globalization" (Lacey, 2009, para. 6). Also, "[t]he modernization that has been changing Amman [, Jordan,] daily has affected the outward appearance of the city, especially through the young" (Lee, 2010, para. 3). Lee (2010) goes on to tell us that, in Amman, "[o]n one street, there will be girls fully covered and veiled, girls wearing a hijab with skinny jeans and a tight skirt, girls without the hijab, and girls wearing shorts or skirts with a t-shirt" (para. 3). In Malaysia, "many Malays have become prosperous and content not only through secular capitalism, but through the country's renewed sense of Islamic identity, on which ... [it] embraced modernization" (Ooi, 2005, para. 2). No Muslim country is fully modernized ... yet. Even when a Muslim country does modernize, it may maintain certain practices that are important to the beliefs of its people, and that might make it look less modern to Western observers. It is important for us to remember that the founders of the United States came here to escape religious persecution and to secure the right and freedom to worship as they chose, and for us to extend to other cultures the courtesy of recognizing their rights to believe and to worship as they see fit. It is wrong for us to suppose that Westernization is the only right thing for a country's development, or that a non-modernized country lacks social or cultural value. It is important not only to not retard modernization, but also to not rush modernization so much that the beauty and uniqueness of a culture is lost. References: Baraz, Y.. (2010, May 10). Islamic Modernism: Responses to Western Modernization in the Middle East. Retrieved October 21, 2010, from http://www.studentpulse.com/248/islamic-modernization-responses-to-westernmodernization-in-the-middle-east Lacey, T.. (2009, November 27). "Muhammadiyah -- A century of Muslim modernization." Sri Lanka Guardian [Electronic version]. Retrieved October 21, 2010, from http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2009/11/muhammadiyah-century-of-muslim.html Lee, S.. (2010, October 7). Seungah Lee on the Face of Islam in the Midst of Modernization. Retrieved October 21, 2010, from http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/letters/seungahlee-on-the-face-of-islam-in-the-midst-of-modernization Ooi, K.B.. (2005, August 31). Islam as a Tool of Modernization. Retrieved October 21, 2010, from http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/beng1/English Roskin, M.G. (2011). Countries and concepts: Politics, geography, culture (11th ed.). New York: Longman. Political Diversity in the Developing World 10/28/2010 Developing countries have far more things in common than otherwise. Developing countries are mostly poor and non-white. Most, including Mexico and Nigeria, have been colonized by various European countries, including Britain, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, and, less often, Germany and Italy. Most developing countries are in hot areas, close to Undergraduate Series 155 the equator. They are unstable, and they are prone to political unrest and revolution. Developing countries are generally marked by crime and corruption, which are often interwoven in their politics. "In a weak state, politics, because it is unrestrained, easily turns violent. Crime, because it has little to fear from the state, ignores state power" (Roskin, 2011, p. 495). In most developing countries, the rural populations are poor and illiterate. The rural populations tend to flock to the cities to seek better lives, even though "life is so wretched in the barrios ... [, because] it is even worse in the countryside" (Roskin, 2011, p. 498). Although "barrios" refers specifically to the shantytowns in Mexico, the statement applies just as well in other developing countries. Developing countries are religiously diverse, with many being predominantly Muslim, others being predominantly Christian, others being predominantly Hindu, and a few having no religion. Despite having been anticlericalist, Mexico is largely Christian, and "[t]hree-quarters of Mexicans are professed Catholics" (Roskin, 2011, p. 495). Nigeria, on the other hand, is more evenly divided, and "[h]alf of Nigerians are Muslim; another 40 percent are Christian, and 10 percent are indigenous faiths" (Roskin, 2011, p. 517). Developing countries are divergent in how their economies are supported. Some developing countries depend on oil and petroleum products. Others depend on agriculture. Few are industrialized, but a few, such as "Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea" (Roskin, 2011, p. 377) are exceptions. Economic development and representative democracy run into difficulties in Latin America and in Africa, because "[p]oor countries rarely sustain democracy" (Roskin, 2011, p. 569), and the developing countries in Latin America and in Africa are poor -- desperately poor in rural areas. Economic development has trouble in these areas because of the political turmoil in the regions. Political turmoil causes social instability and uncertainty, which prevents the development and the maintenance of a strong economy. The economic and political difficulties have become a vicious cycle, perpetuating itself and spiraling countries like Nigeria down to "weak state" status, bordering on the edge of becoming a "failed state." Democracy is tentatively establishing itself in Mexico and most other Latin American countries. If democracy becomes stable in those countries, then stability might give their economies a chance. The same could be true in Nigeria and other African countries. References: Roskin, M.G. (2011). Countries and concepts: Politics, geography, culture (11th ed.). New York: Longman. Major Trends, Issues and Prospects 10/28/2010 The role of women in society is an important topic in any modern nation. As Muslims move into the modern world, the role of women in Muslim society, and the role of Muslim women in Western society, becomes more important. In some traditionally Muslim countries, women are gaining some rights that are usually associated with Western women. For example, on a single street in Amman, Jordan, "there will be girls fully covered and veiled, girls wearing a hijab with skinny jeans and a tight skirt, girls without the hijab, and girls wearing shorts or skirts with a t-shirt" (Lee, 2010, para. 3). This is not the case in most Muslim countries, however, even in the twenty-first century. Even in Britain, a modern, Western nation, it is not unusual to find "Muslim women in full-face veils" (Roskin, 2011, p. 82). 156 A Journey Through My College Papers In India, where modernization has made education more available to women, "it appears that these factors have been relatively more detrimental to Muslim women's wage employment compared to their enrollment [in schools]" (Rastogi, 2007, para. 1). Interestingly, the segregation of Muslim women is not an historical practice that is slowly relaxing, but a relatively modern development that "is not in the Qur'an" (Cole, 2010, para. 2). In the past, the veiling of women was only required for the wives of the Prophet, and later, for wealthy women. "Most Muslim women in history never veiled or were secluded" (Cole, 2010, para. 3). The relaxing of the segregation rules for women in some Muslim countries is actually a return to practices that were common until two centuries ago. As we learned in Roskin's (2011) text, "Iranian women drive cars, go to school, work outside the home, and participate in politics" (p. 552). Even so, women in Iran face "tough restrictions on dress, contact with males, and travel" (Roskin, 2011, p. 552), and Iran is one of the better countries for Muslim women. Recently, Sheik Abdul-Mohsen al-Obeikan has introduced a sort of compromise in "an attempt to create a wider circle of men with whom women can legitimately interact in public" (Cole, 2010, para. 10). The practice he has offered in a social institution called milk kinship, in which "a nanny ... might breastfeed the aristocratic baby at the same time that she breastfed her own infant, and that practice was considered to make the children a kind of sibling" (Cole, 2010, para. 5). Drawing on that pre-Muslim tradition, al-Obeikan's ruling is "that if a woman needs to appear without her veil in front of an adult, unrelated male, she has the option of breast-feeding him, because it establishes a mother-son bond in Islamic tradition" (Michael, 2010, para. 12). While this is certainly an option to allow women to expand their social interactions, it is not a modern option by Western standards. Still, it is a nod toward the fact that Muslim women need to have access to unrelated males, and it may be a step toward more modern options, and, possibly, toward the establishment of rights for Muslim women. References: Cole, J.. (2010, June). A Sign of Modernization: Saudi Clerics Promote Kinship by Sharing Breast Milk. Retrieved October 28, 2010, from http://www.juancole.com/2010/06/saudi-clerics-promote-kinship-by-sharing-breastmilk.html Lee, S.. (2010, October 7). Seungah Lee on the Face of Islam in the Midst of Modernization. Retrieved October 21, 2010, from http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/letters/seungahlee-on-the-face-of-islam-in-the-midst-of-modernization Michael, M.. (2010, October 10). "Saudi Arabia: Moving toward modernization?" Sioux City Journal [Electronic version]. Retrieved October 28, 2010, from http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/a1/article_57c5d8d3-3d3c-58e7-9bc13a1f3dc29f0e.html Rastogi, S.. (2007, April 30). Indian Muslim Women's Education and Employment in the Context of Modernization, Religious Discrimination and Disadvantage, and the Rise of HinduFundamentalism and Muslim Identity Politics. Retrieved October 28, 2010, from http://drum.lib.umd.edu/handle/1903/6861 Roskin, M.G. (2011). Countries and concepts: Politics, geography, culture (11th ed.). New York: Longman. Undergraduate Series 157 The British Disease November 1, 2010 The British class system is dangerous to British society, and the class system needs to be torn down, and to have its social constructs and entitlements and restrictions outlawed. The worst example of the dangers of the British class system is the current racial problem in Britain. The British class system, which may be referred to as the British disease, dates back at least to 1066, when “William [the Conqueror] replaced the Saxon ruling class with Norman nobles” (Roskin, 2011, p. 22). The mention of an existing ruling class at that time suggests that British classism goes back much farther than the eleventh century. In the beginning, there was not the sharply defined difference between the ruling class and the aristocratic class, as evidenced by the oath sworn to a new monarch by the nobles of Aragon: “We who are as good as you swear to you, who are no better than we, to accept you as our king and sovereign lord provided you observe all our statutes and laws; and if not, no” (Roskin, 2011, p. 22). The British aristocracy in modern times has “mysteriously given way to snobbery, stupidity, extravagance and buccaneering” (Mandler, 1998, para. 5). There are those who believe that the class system in Britain is a laudable social institution, and that members of the aristocracy are entitled to the privileges that their class affords them. Michael G. Roskin (2011) writes that “only a minority [of Britons] would abolish the monarchy in favor of a republic with a president” (56). The monarchy is, of course, the pinnacle of the British class system. Others deny that a problem of class even exists. Dave Cameron, “a direct descendant of King William IV … [and] fifth cousin twice removed” (Behr, 2008, para. 11) of Queen Elizabeth II, states: “I don’t believe this is a class-ridden society … I think that’s a load of rubbish” (Behr, 2008, para. 11). Stephen Heathorn (2002) describes the aristocratic class as an “elite culture that … was actively promoted as the ‘national’ code of masculine deportment” (para. 26). While it is true that much of the world admires the apparent civility and decorum of Britain’s upper classes, “the lingering cultural influence of the British aristocracy” (Mandler, 1998, para. 7) is “notions of racial superiority [that are] still found … among all classes within British society” (Smith, 2008, para. 10). Far from benefitting the Britons, this legacy could destroy civilized society in Britain. The British class system does not serve a useful purpose in modern Britain. In the Middle Ages, when the class system got its start, it was useful for the aristocratic class to rule over a nation of low-class serfs in a feudal society, with a middle class of merchants and tradesmen to supply the needs that could not be supplied from the land. Today, the British class system is no more than a symbol and a tradition. Even Queen Elizabeth “reigns but does not rule” (Roskin, 2011, p. 36). The British monarch, like the rest of the class system, has become a symbol and a tradition. “The monarch, as head of state, is a dignified office with much symbolic but no real political power” (Roskin, 2011, p. 36). Roskin (2011) goes on to tell us that “[t]he typical Briton likes traditions and symbols” (p. 56). The symbols and the traditions of the British class system do not serve a political or an economic purpose. They do not serve the best interests of the British people. “[T]hey … serve to deepen British feelings about the rightness of the system” (Roskin, 2011, p. 56), but the system is no longer right, and the systems that support the British class system need to be removed and reworked until the people are served. Only in that way can the collateral affects of racism and of anti-foreign sentiment be cleansed from Britain’s culture. The racism associated with the British aristocracy goes back to British imperialism. The British set out to claim colonies because the British believed themselves to be the superior race and culture. “Lord Hugh Cecil … declared it to be the duty of the government ‘to keep for the Anglo-Saxon race whatever the Anglo-Saxon race has won’” (Heathorn, 2002, para. 5). This is an 158 A Journey Through My College Papers odd attitude for a race that was formed over more than a millennium from an admixture of “Celts, Romans, Angles and Saxons, Danes, and … Normans” (Roskin, 2011, p. 21), but it was class, not race, that truly prompted Lord Hugh’s remark. In Britain’s imperial age, Britons simply added a new, lowest class to their social hierarchy: the colonial native. Evan Smith (2008) writes that “even the lowest ranks of British society could feel superior to the highest members of the colonial societies” (para. 11), and Katherine Foxhall (2009) writes of “the imperial roots of contemporary British racism” (para. 6). Most of these colonial natives were non-white, meaning that white Britons were setting themselves above the natives on the basis of race as well as of class. An example of “prevailing racial and elite … ideologies” (Heathorn, 2002, para. 4) may be found in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902. This war was to “promote the causes of civilization and Christianity, to improve the economic and spiritual condition of the lower races, to crush slavery, and to bring all parts of the habitable world into closer material and moral union” (Heathorn, 2002, para. 5). This idea, which is originally attributed to J.A. Hobson, identifies nonBritons as “the lower races” (Heathorn, 2002, para. 5), and thus suggests that imperial Britons are a higher, or more deserving race. It expresses the “sometimes latent, sometimes overt racism that is deeply embedded within British society” (Garside, 2010, para. 5). This, of course, is the root of the problem: British society. It is not that there is anything inherently better or worse about a Briton than about a person of any other culture, but that the British class system has taught the Britons that they are better than everyone else. The British class system makes a segment of British society, the aristocratic class, believe that it is entitled by some unfathomable difference inside each of its members to “fame and fortune, power and prestige, place and office, rank and title, ancestor worship and family pride” (Mandler, 1998, para. 5). It has also made another, much larger segment of society, the working class, believe that it is not entitled to all of those things to which the aristocracy is entitled, and has made both the aristocratic class and the working class believe that the lower class and non-native Britons – meaning non-white Britons – are entitled to none of the benefits of British class structure. The “nuances of class … [have] invited snobbery” (Weight, 2010, para. 4) from the British aristocracy, and have pushed “British workers … [into] showing solidarity with their ‘mates’” (Roskin, 2011, p. 75). The class structure in Britain is so ingrained in the British psyche that it is not only the privileged aristocrats who perpetuate the class system; the members of the working class also display “deep-seated attitudes resist[ing] change” (Roskin, 2011, p. 75). The situation would have been bad enough if Britons had remained in Britain, largely cut off from much of the world by the fact that Britain is an island nation, but Britons went forth to build and empire. Imperialism did not weaken the British class system but, rather, imperialism strengthened and bolstered the divide between the aristocracy and the working class as it added the colonial working class and the class of colonial natives to the bottom of the hierarchy. The British working class was thus elevated, and “racism born of empire helped to create a sense of superiority among the British working class” (Smith, 2008, para. 11). Simply declaring social equality for all residents of Britain is not enough to wipe away millennia of class division. In order to save Britain, the British class system must be completely dismantled, with every hereditary title and entitlement being outlawed. Not only must class divisions among white Britons be removed, but non-white and Muslim Britons must be legally, and publicly, recognized as being fully equal with all other Britons. No segment of Britain’s population can be labeled as a “problem population,” and prisons cannot be used to regulate poor, black, and Middle Eastern populations that have committed no crimes. The government and the police force must be diligent and scrupulous about enforcing a measure to dismantle the British class system, and about ensuring that such a measure is applied to each and every British resident equally and impartially. The “disproportionate targeting by criminal justice agencies of young men of black and Middle Eastern appearance and ethnicity … to curb the social turmoil generated at the foot of the urban order” (Garside, 2010, paras. 5-7) must be stopped. “Britain in 1948 Undergraduate Series 159 legally made the natives of its many colonies British subjects, entitled to live and work in the United Kingdom” (Roskin, 2011, p. 81), but that is not enough, as evidenced by the ongoing and escalating racial tensions and race- and religion-related violence in Britain. Former colonials and natives of former colonies must be made legally and socially equal – not only with working-class Britons, but with all Britons, in a class-free society. Racism, and discrimination on the basis of race, is not just a feature of Imperial Britain, but of modern Britain, as well. Racial issues were not left behind in Africa, in India, in the Far East, and in other colonial lands when the Britons retreated back into Britain. Instead, “West Indians arrived from the Caribbean, then Indians and Pakistanis, taking lowly jobs that Britons did not want and then sending for relatives” (Roskin, 2011, p. 81). Even after colonial natives were recognized under British law as British citizens, “the traditional view … of black workers as still ‘colonials’ or ‘outsiders’” (Smith, 2008, para. 1) is still prevalent in Britain. The upper classes of the British class system do not bear all of the blame for the racial tensions in Britain today, although the British class system as a whole is at fault. Britain’s middle and lower classes also contribute to the problem. Even the colonial natives against whom British society discriminates help to perpetuate the racial intolerance of which they are the victims. Muslims are discriminated against in Britain for their race, for their religion, and for their culture. Still, it is common in many parts of Britain to see “Muslim women in full-face veils” (Roskin, 2011, p. 82), which draws attention to their differences, and which serves to reinforce their segregation from the rest of British society. Members of the working class are proud of their class status, and they feel superior to the non-white workers who do the dirtiest, most dangerous, most undesirable jobs in Britain. Sometimes, these non-white residents of Britain take racism to the extreme themselves, lashing out at the white upper classes with violence. “In 2005 four Muslim youths … set off three bombs on London’s Underground and one on a bus, which killed 56 and injured 700” (Roskin, 2011, p. 82). Incidents like that only increase racial tensions in Britain. In order to heal the social wound of racism, and to cure the British disease of classism, every person in Britain must be socially and legally equal to every other person in Britain. This cannot only mean that a piece of legislation must be signed; it must mean the changing of attitudes, emotions, and ideas held by the people of Britain. There is a way to approach this monumental task that has a chance of working to reduce racist attitudes and behaviors over time. David Lammy (2006) presents the possibility of building “an ‘encounter culture’ in which it becomes easier and more rewarding to interact with and respect others” (para. 2). To replace a hierarchical social structure, “Gordon Brown … has argued that a ‘thicker’ conception of shared national citizenship is needed as a basis on which other, more particular identities can be overlaid” (Lammy, 2006, para. 5). At first glance, this might be seen as re-establishing the identity of British superiority that gave birth to British imperialism, but it is something else entirely. Where “[c]olonial paternalism aptly describes … Britain’s relationship with the ethnic national minorities” (Glais, 2010, para. 20), the encounter culture calls for “the next generation in Britain … [to] re-learn how to live together successfully” (Lammy, 2006, para. 2). “The emphasis on anti-colonialism … served to reinforce the ‘foreignness’ of immigrant workers” (Smith, 2008, para. 5), but an encounter culture seeks to create bonds among all of the people of Britain that will develop a national identity of Britishness for everyone, including immigrants. Without a divisive class structure of entitlement and disenfranchisement, an encounter culture seeks to build a civic space in which people engage with people who look, sound and live differently from themselves, who are from different backgrounds, age brackets or areas, and with whom they share a common destiny as residents of the same street, users of the same service or voters for the same council. (Lammy, 2006, para. 6) This means that black Britons, white Britons, Muslim Britons, and Christian Britons would all live and work together, simply as Britons. Members of Parliament, clerks, hospitality workers, 160 A Journey Through My College Papers university professors, journalists, street sweepers, and workers in every business and industry would work and live together without regard for skin color, religious belief, income level, native language, or residential location. No more would being an MP imply white skin, or would being a waiter imply black skin, or would being a domestic employee imply brown skin. Michael G. Roskin (2011) writes that “the only way to save Britain [is] to change British culture” (p. 75), and he is quite right. The British class system needs to be outlawed, and the social vestiges of the class system need to be swept away, because the class system is divisive to the British people, and it is dangerous to British society. The Britons do not need the trappings of aristocracy to establish the legitimacy of the British nation or the identity of the British people. The days of British imperialism are long past, and their legacy of the Britons’ sense of superiority over any people who come from anywhere other than Britain needs to be relegated to the past. Likewise, the days of aristocratic leisure, fed by the labor of feudal lower classes, or, more recently, by the industry and ingenuity of the working middle classes, is ready to come to an end. Britons of every race, color, belief system, and walk of life need to become equal, and need to learn to accept one another’s differences. References Behr, R.. (008, November 9). “Is there a new class war?” The Observer [Electronic version]. Retrieved November 1, 2010, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/nov/09/class-war-mosaic-database Foxhall, K.. (2009). “The British Empire: Themes and Perspectives.” Journal of World History, 20(2), 293-296. Retrieved October 12, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Garside, R.. (2010). “Punishing the Poor: The Neo-liberal Government of Social Inequality.” Renewal : a Journal of Labour Politics, 18(1/2), 150-152. Retrieved October 12, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Glais, N.. (2010, March 6). The Task of the British Working class against racism and class oppression and the struggle for Socialism in the 21st century. Retrieved November 1, 2010, from http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.com/2010/03/task-ofbritish-working-class-against.html Heathorn, S.. (2002). “’The highest type of Englishman’: Gender, war, and the Alfred the great millenary commemoration of 1901.” Canadian Journal of History, 37(3), 459-484. Retrieved October 12, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Lammy, D.. (2006, April 23). “Close encounters.” Prospect Magazine, 121 [Electronic version]. Retrieved November 1, 2010, from http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2006/04/closeencounters/ Mandler, P.. (1998). “Aspects of Aristocracy: grandeur and decline in modern Britain.” European Review of History, 5(1), 105-106. Retrieved October 12, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Roskin, M.G. (2011). Countries and concepts: Politics, geography, culture (11th ed.). New York: Longman. Smith, E.. (2008). “’Class Before Race’”: British Communism and the Place of Empire in Postwar Race Relations.” Science & Society, 72(4), 455-481. Retrieved October 12, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Weight, R.. (2010). “Family Britain 1951-57.” History Today, 60(2), 59-60,63. Retrieved October 12, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Undergraduate Series 161 ENG 125: Introduction to Literature Creating Art 11/4/2010 After completing the required readings for this week, discuss how you see the theme of creating art developing in the different stories and poems. What did you learn about the human impulse to create? Give examples from one of the stories and at least two of the poems that you think influenced this theme. Respond to at least two of our fellow students' postings. The clearest expression of the theme of creating art is in Raymond Carver's story, "Cathedral," when Robert and the narrator draw a cathedral: "First I drew a box that looked like a house ... I put a roof on it ... I drew spires ... I kept at it. I'm no artist ... I closed [my eyes] ... It was like nothing else in my life up to now" (Cited in DiYanni, 2007, pp. 464-465). The seeing man's hand guides the blind man's hand to draw a cathedral, encouraging the narrator to draw without looking, so he can experience the activity through the senses of a blind man. Neither of these men is familiar with what a cathedral looks like, and the narrator has only seen images of cathedrals in one television program. Although he hardly knows Robert, and he resents and is jealous of Robert, he draws to let Robert "see" a cathedral after the narrator's attempt to describe a cathedral fails miserably. Along with creating a drawing on a paper bag, the narrator and Robert together create a bridge over the differences between them, and they create a personal bond between them, which illustrates the human impulse to create. We create in order to form connections with ourselves and with other people. The vivid descriptions in Stephen Crane's "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" express the author's creative impulse. In order to fully convey to the reader the experience of the setting of the story, he includes descriptive details that would not otherwise be necessary for the narrative of the story. "He pointed out to her the dazzling fittings of the coach ... the sea-green figured velvet, the shining brass, silver, and glass, the wood that gleamed as darkly brilliant as the surface of a pool of oil" (Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 483). The description of the velvet, in particular, changed my mental picture of the scene; left to my imagination, I would have pictured the interior of the coach car with smooth, red velvet, but sea-green, figured velvet brightened the visual experience, and the attendant emotional experience, for me. Emily Dickinson creates visual images of the moments after death with the delicately macabre poems, "I died for Beauty -- but was scarce" and "I heard a Fly buzz -- when I died." In "I died for Beauty," she creates an image of two brothers who find each other in the persons of strangers in death. She illustrates how truth and beauty are two representations of the same thing, and she suggests that truth and beauty outlive the memory of individual names: "For Beauty ... for Truth -- Themself are One ... so, as Kinsmen, met a Night ... Until the Moss had reached our lips -And covered up -- our names" (Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 926). "I heard a Fly buzz" also creates an impression that something lasts beyond the individual's identity: "I willed my Keepsakes -Signed away/ What portion of me be/ Assignable -- and then it was/ There interposed a Fly --" (Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 927). She creates an image of the incorruptible part of the person leaving the body before the fly brings the corruption of mortal death and decay to the body. References: DiYanni, R. (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. 162 A Journey Through My College Papers Literature and Life 11/4/2010 After completing the required readings for this week, what connections have you made between literature and everyday life? Use examples and quotes to support your thoughts from at least three of the readings. Respond to at east two of your fellow students' postings. Stephen Crane's "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" connects with everyday life in the interaction between Scratchy Wilson and Jack Potter. Scratchy and Jack have a ritual game in which Scratchy gets drunk and then Jacks fights with Scratchy and subdues him. Jack's marriage to a girl from San Antonio changes the dynamics of his relationship with Scratchy, and the game is no longer fun for Scratchy. In getting married, Jack has grown up, moving beyond the activities of youth, while Scratchy is still "a simple child of the earlier plains" (Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 489). This reminds me of my own life, and of the way my unmarried friends responded when I married and started a family. It seemed to confuse them that I was no longer available for adolescent activities, and those friends drifted out of all but the periphery of my life, much the way Scratchy walked out of Jack's life, even though they would still interact peripherally in the town, "[h]is feet ma[king] funnel-shaped tracks in the heavy sand" (Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 489). Raymond Carver's "Cathedral," with its emphasis on the alcohol, tobacco, and drugs that the characters use to ease the discomfort of lives that don't really fit them well, vividly portrays the pain that many people experience in their everyday lives. The narrator speaks plainly about his wife's life before their marriage, and his resentment and jealousy are starkly visible in the plain, undecorated narrative. It is clear that they are a couple that exists together, and that is perhaps affectionate together, but that they are not a couple with a passionate love, or with deep ties between them. They are typical of many, many real-life couples in almost any city. It is harder to connect the poetry of Emily Dickinson to everyday life. "I dwell in Possibility" describes an approach to the tawdry nature of ordinary life with its imagery of an escape into an inner, spiritual life. The description of a house of poetry, comprised of nature in a cedar wood, under the open sky, creates a mental picture for me of a cathedral. It reminds me of my own inner spiritual life, and of how I can escape from the narrow confines of everyday life into a bright and beautiful contemplation of God and of nature. The peculiar punctuation in Dickinson's poetry reminds me of something my priest said in a study group last spring. She was talking about how the psalms were written in early times -the calligraphy, not the composition -- with dashes inserted at the ends of lines or of phrases. She said those dashes were the precursors of the asterisks that we use in the modern church to indicate where the lector should pause in reading a psalm to allow the congregation to respond with the next line or phrase. In ancient times, the dashes were not used to indicate a congregational response, but to signal a pause for prayerful meditation on the words that had just been read. When I read Dickinson's poetry, I see her dashes as opportunities to pause in my reading and to consider what I have just read. It is easy to treat her dashes as commas, and to hurry past them, or even to skip over them as inconvenient distractions. Consider, for a moment, three arrangements of Dickinson's "I reckon -- when I count at all." The first is her original arrangement. The second removes the distracting dashes, representing the hurried way in which we often read poetry. The third emphasizes the pauses provided by her dashes. To make the point easier to see, I am leaving out the [ ] brackets where I alter the punctuation in the second and third versions. [1.] I reckon -- when I count at all -First -- Poets -- Then the Sun -Then Summer -- Then the Heaven of God -Undergraduate Series 163 And then -- the List is done -But, looking back -- the First so seems To Comprehend the Whole -The Others look a needless Show -So I write -- Poets -- All -Their Summer -- lasts a Solid Year -They can afford a Sun The East -- would seem extravagant -- And if the Further Heaven -Be Beautiful as they prepare For Those who worship Them -It is too difficult a Grace -To justify the Dream -- (Cited in DiYanni, 2007, pp. 929-930) [2.] I reckon when I count at all First Poets Then the Sun, Then Summer, Then the Heaven of God, And then the List is done. But, looking back, the First so seems To Comprehend the Whole The Others look a needless Show. So I write Poets, All, Their Summer lasts a Solid Year. They can afford a Sun. The East would seem extravagant And if the Further Heaven Be Beautiful as they prepare For Those who worship Them, It is too difficult a Grace To justify the Dream. (Cited in DiYanni, 2007, pp. 929-930) [3.] I reckon -when I count at all -First -Poets -Then the Sun -Then Summer -Then the Heaven of God -And then -the List is done -But, looking back -the First so seems To Comprehend the Whole -The Others look a needless Show -So I write -Poets -All -Their Summer -lasts a Solid Year -They can afford a Sun The East -would seem extravagant -And if the Further Heaven -- 164 Be Beautiful as they prepare For Those who worship Them -It is too difficult a Grace -A Journey Through My College Papers To justify the Dream -- (Cited in DiYanni, 2007, pp. 929-930) In the third version, but the dashes and the spaces between the stanzas invite pauses, not just to take a breath, but to contemplate the words. I wonder whether that was Dickinson's intent when she wrote her poetry: to stop and to reflect before moving on. I think we do that too often in everyday life, as well as in reading poetry: we miss moments for contemplation because we hurry too much, skipping over the distractions in life instead of benefiting from the opportunities to slow down and to appreciate what we have just experienced. References: DiYanni, R. (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Shared Values 11/11/2010 "The Lesson" illustrates the difference in values between the poor, black families of New York City's slums and the wealthy, presumably white families of New York City's Fifth Avenue. When Miss Moore takes a group of children to F.A.O. Schwartz, the children discover that the wealthy families' children play with toys that cost more than the poor families pay for rent. "A clown that somersaults on a bar ... Cost $35 ... Thirty-five dollars would pay for the rent and the piano bill too" (Bambara, 1972, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 431). Miss Moore asks the children to "[i]magine for a minute what kind of society it is in which some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven" (Bambara, 1972, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 432). To the poor, money is something that is needed to survive. Very rarely is it splurged on anything that is purely for pleasure. Even when money is spent on fun things, poor families spend far less actual money, but a far greater percentage of their income, on the fun thing. For the middle and upper classes, spending money on pleasure is done almost carelessly. The farther up the economic ladder, the more expendable income is available for non-survival purchases. Until the children went to Fifth Avenue, they had no conscious awareness of this, although they probably had some sense of the social injustices around them. I have experienced the dichotomy between rich and poor in my own family. For a number of years, I was an unemployed, single parent. My sons and I lived in a HUD apartment in a low-income neighborhood, with $188 per month in food stamps and $172 per month in government cash assistance. I paid $55 for rent and over $100 each month for diapers. That didn't leave much for shampoo, toilet paper, and other necessary items, or for bus fare to get to stores and doctors, and it certainly didn't leave money for anything fun. My children learned very early that they shouldn't ask for anything extra because there was no money to buy extras. On the other side of things, my parents were very wealthy at that time. They had a summer home in Vermont and a winter home in South Carolina. They traveled whenever they wanted to, and they stayed in multi-room suites when they traveled. They had all of the newest electronics as soon as they came out. They traded stocks, using a slush account that had nothing to do with the accounts they used to pay the bills. My parents and I could not understand each other's lives. They could never understand why my children wore second-hand clothing and played with toys that were bought at the Salvation Army. I could never understand or appreciate their traveling, or their eating at different restaurants every day instead of cooking at home, or their having an empty house waiting for them while they lived in another house. Because of this, I was able to sympathize with the confusion of the children in "The Lesson." I was able to relate to Undergraduate Series 165 not really comprehending how other people could take money so lightly. References: DiYanni, R. (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Reflecting on your Reading 11/11/2010 "This Land is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie (1956) is a very familiar song from my childhood. When I saw it on the reading list, I didn't realize that it was the same piece, but when I turned to the reading, I was awash in warm memories and emotions. I paused to note this reaction in my journal, while humming the familiar camp fire tune. The first four stanzas of "This Land is Your Land" are the verses that I learned as a child, and that I have taught to my children. I was not aware of the existence of the final three stanzas until I read the assignment. Before I reached those stanzas, I was enjoying a feeling of universal brotherhood and belonging that the words evoked. I also felt a sense of pride, and of ownership of America with all other Americans. When I reached the fifth stanza, however, I stumbled over: "As I went walking, I saw a sign there,/ And on the sign it said 'No Trespassing'" (Guthrie, 1956, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 898). I had to reread these lines several times. I had trouble with the intrusion of a non-unifying idea in a song that has always represented unity for me. As I read onward, I discovered that "This Land is Your Land" is actually a protest against social injustice, instead of a celebration of unity and brotherhood. This is a difficult mental shift for me, since the song is so closely tied to summer camp, camp fires, and singing on long school trips in hot, crowded school buses. It is uncomfortable to think about the segment of society that does not usually feel that this land was made for them. I think that is what Guthrie is trying to make us realize, though: that this country is for everyone, not just the wealthy, the well-fed, and the well-employed. It is an appeal for social justice for the people who cannot speak out for themselves. I still like this poem. I will still sing this song. I will teach my children all of its verses, not just the warm-fuzzy ones. References: DiYanni, R. (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Literature in Community November 15, 2010 A community can be as small as a family, or it can be as large as the population of the earth. Each person belongs to at least one community, and most people belong to multiple communities. In each of our second week readings, we see how individuals relate to the communities to which they belong. In “The Lesson,” by Toni Cade Bambara (1972), we see how the narrator, Sylvia, relates to her home community in New York City’s slums, and we see how she is unable to relate to life in the nearby community on New York City’s Fifth Avenue. In “A&P,” by John Updike (1961), we see how Sammy, a cashier in a small grocery store, views the community of teenage girls that inhabits the beaches north of Boston, and we see how he responds to the middle-class community to which his employer and his parents belong. In “The 166 A Journey Through My College Papers Metamorphosis,” by Franz Kafka (1915), we see how Gregor relates to the community of his family after he is overtaken by a debilitating and, ultimately, fatal affliction, and we see how he is ostracized from his community because of the changes that his condition produces in him. Sylvia’s is a tight-knight community, united by race, by culture, and by economic condition. Most of her close friends are known to us only by nicknames: “Flyboy … Fat Butt … Junebug … Q.T. … Rosie Giraffe” (Bambara, 1972, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 428). The children, who are the main characters of the story, are ill-educated, rude, and prone t minor acts of violence: “Rosie Giraffe shifting from one hip to the other waiting for somebody to step on her foot or ask her if she from Georgia so she can kick ass … Flyboy a faggot … making farts with our sweaty armpits” (Bambara, 1972, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 428). Still, the children stick together in a pack, and we get the impression that they are united against the world when they travel to Fifth Avenue: “the rest of us tumble in like a glued-together jigsaw done all wrong” (Bambara, 1972, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 431). The children understand their life in the slums, and they identify as a black community when Sylvia generalizes that “[w]hite folks crazy” (Bambara, 1972, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 429). Sammy is an observer of the beach community when the girls enter the A&P. Along with his fellow cashier, Stokesie, he is a member of the community of young, working men who are no longer children, but who are not yet part of the adult establishment. Sammy distinguishes between “these three girls in nothing but bathing suits” (Updike, 1961, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 32) and “[t]he sheep pushing their carts” (Updike, 1961, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 33). Although all of the characters share the community of the town north of Boston, Massachusetts, where they live, each of their smaller communities is distinct and separate from each of the others. Before his metamorphosis into a giant bug, which can easily be taken as a metaphor for acquiring any seriously debilitating illness, Gregor is at the heart of the small community that is his family. After his father’s bankruptcy, Gregor’s role “had been to arrange everything so that the family could forget as soon as possible the financial misfortune that had brought them to a state of complete despair” (Kafka, 1915, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 624). He provides an apartment for his parents and his sister, with a staff of servants that is appropriate for a middleclass family in his time and place. When people in a given community are faced with the values of another community, it can be confusing, or even frightening. When an individual’s role in his or her community changes dramatically, it can cause upheaval not only for the individual, but also for the entire community. We see this when Sylvia and her friends are confronted with the wealth that is suggested by F.A.O. Schwartz. We see it again when Lengel, the manager of the A&P, confronts the girls about their apparel, and also when Sammy takes a stand for his principles by quitting his job. We also see it as Gregor’s changed condition forces his family into poverty and shame, and as Gregor’s relationships with the members of his family fall apart. In “The Lesson,” Sylvia expresses the children’s reaction to being in the wealthy, white community: “when we get there I kinda hang back. Not that I’m scared, what’s there to be afraid of, just a toy store. But I feel funny, shame” (Bambara, 1972, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 431). The children don’t understand the wealthier community or its culture. Sylvia asks us: “Who are these people that spend that much for performing clowns … What kinda work they do and how they live and how come we ain’t in on it? Where we are is who we are … [b]ut it don’t necessarily have to be that way” (Bambara, 1972, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 431). Seeing what life is like outside of their own community gives the children something to think about. In “A&P,” Lengel tells the girls that they cannot shop in his store in bathing suits: “We want you decently dressed when you come in here … come in here with your shoulders covered. It’s our policy” (Updike, 1961, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 35). The girls have stepped out of their beach community into Lengel’s middle-class community, and he expects them to meet his criteria Undergraduate Series 167 if they wish to function in his world. Although we are given the impression that Sammy’s family belongs to Lengel’s middle-class community, Sammy steps out of his comfort zone by standing up against Lengel, and by quitting his job. While the action will do no practical good, Sammy is acting on principle, defending the girls’ right to not be embarrassed by Lengel. He is also, by his action, refusing to condone Lengel’s behavior. In “The Metamorphosis,” “[t]he household was ever more reduced in circumstances. The servant girl had been dismissed … various pieces of family jewelry … were sold … they had been afflicted by misfortune such as had struck no one in their circle of relatives and acquaintances” (Kafka, 1915, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, pp. 632-633). Gregor’s changed role in the family community, from provider to dependent, causes the entire family to suffer. Gregor’s parents and sister, all of whom have been frail, take jobs to help support the family. At the same time, as Gregor’s condition slowly degenerates and his humanity is subsumed by his affliction, his family’s care of him becomes less and less compassionate. In the end, even his sister, who has been closest to him, and who has been the most patient with his needs, can take no more: “We must try to get rid of it … When people have to work as hard as we do, they can’t bear this kind of constant torture at home. I can’t bear it anymore” (Kafka, 1915, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 637). The communities in these stories are all different, but each story shows us how its characters relate to their own communities. Each character belongs to a community – even Gregor, even at his lowest point, is still a member of his family community, even though it has become dysfunctional. Each of us is a member of at least several communities. Reading about diverse communities that resemble our own helps us to gain perspective about our roles in our communities, and it helps us to appreciate other communities. References DiYanni, R. (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Poems and Feelings 11/18/2010 Different poems have elicited different feelings this week, which is as it should be. When I read "The Street," by Octavio Paz (n.d.), I feel the poet's fear as he senses someone following him in the dark. I feel his sense of hopelessness in the words: "Everything dark and doorless ... turning and turning among these corners/ which lead forever to the street" (Paz, n.d., Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 1052). The idea that everything is doorless gives the feeling that the writer sees no way out of his troubles. The endless corners make me feel that he is never getting anywhere in life, no matter where he turns. Having lived with depression and despair, I can relate to these feelings, and it makes me feel sad for the writer's experience. Emily Dickinson's (1863) "Because I could not stop for Death" is an old friend, so I have mixed feelings when I read it. I feel pleasure and the warmth of familiarity because of my past experience reading this poem. I also feel the writer's acceptance in the face of death when she writes: "And I had put away/My labor and my leisure too,/ For His Civility --" (Dickinson, 1863, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 810). In the third stanza, I feel Dickinson's sense of nostalgia as she passes the children playing in the schoolyard. The description of the grave as a house in the ground is welcoming, and makes me smile to think that she is going home, rather than into a mouldering grave. Robert Frost's (1916) "The Road Not Taken" is another old friend, with that same feeling of warm familiarity. This poem makes me feel good, as the writer makes the less popular choice 168 A Journey Through My College Papers and takes the less traveled path. I feel a slight pang of regret in the third stanza, at the thought that there probably won't be another chance to try the other choice, but that is overshadowed by a feeling of satisfaction when he writes: "I took the one less traveled by,/ And that has made all the difference" (Frost, 1916, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 809). "The Raven" and "She walks in beauty" are also old, familiar friends, that make me happy just for having read them again, even though they are very different poems. "Golden Retrievals," by Mark Doty (1998) makes me smile. I feel the happy energy of the playful dog as he dashes this way and that: "Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who's -- oh joy -actually scared ... I'm off again" (Doty, 1998, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 1031). I feel the dog's bemused frustration with the human's inattention to the moment. I feel frustration with "The Cadet Picture of My Father," by Rainer Maria Rilke (n.d.). I don't understand what the writer is trying to convey, beyond the visual description of the photograph. Not understanding this poem makes me not like it, and even after several readings, all I get is frustration. References: DiYanni, R. (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Reading Poems 11/18/2010 I have always read and written poetry (my first book is at the publisher now), and I enjoy it, so I don't think my ability to read poetry has changed with this week's readings. I always look for the imagery in poetry, and I enjoy the more indirect imagery of "She walks in beauty," "Because I could not stop for Death," and "The Street" better than the direct, concrete imagery of "The Fish," "Theme for English B," and "Golden Retrievals." In "She walks in beauty," I love the description of the woman: "And all that's best of dark and bright/ Meet in her aspect and her eyes" (Gordon, 1815, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 1111). In "Because I could not stop for Death," the description of the grave captures my imagination: "We paused before a House that seemed/ A Swelling of the Ground --/ The Roof was scarcely visible -/ The Cornice -- in the Ground --" (Dickinson, 1863, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 810). In general, I find that I am more deeply moved by the flowery language of older poems than by the starker language of more recent poems. I get a smile from "Golden Retrievals," but the clear language of the first six lines, and maybe even the whole poem, reminds me of poetry that my fourth- and fifth-grade sons read. In particular, it reminds me of the poetry of Jack Prelutsky. I find it hard to be deeply moved by: "Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention/ seconds at a time. Catch? I don't think so" (Doty, 1998, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 1031). On the other hand, I am moved by "Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,/ Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before" (Poe, 1845, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, 1173). I feel a stirring of dark excitement and anticipation as I read "The Raven." When I read the poems, I find myself rereading lines and phrases that I don't understand. I reread "The Cadet Picture of My Father" in its entirety several times, hoping to find some meaning in the poem. I reread much of "My Papa's Waltz," especially: "The whiskey on your breath/ Could make a small boy dizzy;/ ... At every step you missed/ My right ear scraped a buckle./ You beat time on my head" (Roethke, 1942, Cited in DiYanni, 2007, p. 773). I was trying to decide whether it was describing an innocent romp, or abuse by a drunk father. It struck a nerve with me, and my imagination went from an image of a man playing with his son to a Undergraduate Series 169 memory of my children's step-grandfather throwing one of my sons across the living room, then running after my other son, shouting that he was going to kill him. It hurt me to think that an abusive experience might be immortalized in a poem that was provided to students for study. References: DiYanni, R. (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Langston Hughes and Alice Walker 11/27/2010 In "Dream Deferred," Langston Hughes (1951) answers his main question with a list of other questions because he isn't actually answering his main question. Instead, he is asking the reader to consider several possibilities. It is interesting to note that the first five possibilities are expressed as similes, while the final possibility does not compare a deferred dream to anything else. All of the possibilities offered by Hughes (1951) are undesirable results, but the first five are passive, while the sixth is active. A dream deferred might become useless if it "dr[ies] up/ like a raisin in the sun" (Hughes, 1951, p. 896). If it "fester[s] like a sore ... [or] stink[s] like rotten meat" (Hughes, 1951, p. 896), then it has gone bad, and must be discarded. However, a dream deferred might still yield creative results in the wake of destruction if "it explode[s]" (Hughes, 1951, p. 896). I think Hughes (1951) is expressing societal values in "Dream Deferred." Very often, people defer their dreams for a variety of reasons. They may defer dreams until finances get better, so they can afford their dreams. They may defer dreams because young children or disabled family members require their attention for a period of time. They may defer dreams because they are too busy building careers or amassing money and power to pursue their dreams. They may defer dreams while they search for themselves in people, places, or activities that take them away from their dreams. Hughes (1951) suggests to the reader that dreams should not be deferred, because dreams deferred are likely to be corrupted by the time the dreamers finally get around to them. Dreams should be realized in the course of life, not as an afterthought when life makes time for them. The theme of dreams deferred appears in "Everyday Use," by Alice Walker (1973). The mother, who narrates the store, at first appears to have deferred her dreams in order to stay at home to care for Maggie. By the end of the story, however, we realize that Mama's dream has not been deferred; it has been realized in Maggie's knowledge of her family, and in Maggie's awareness of what is truly important in life. Maggie's dreams also appear to have been deferred at the start of the story. "She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever since the fire that burned the other house to the ground" (Walker, 1973, p. 744). By the end of the story, however, we realize that Maggie, like her mother, has been living her dream through her life. "I can 'member Grandma Dee without the quilts" (Walker, 1973, p. 748). Dee seems to have achieved her dream of being someone intelligent and important at the start of the story. By the end, however, we see that she has deferred this dream in favor of pursuing the trappings of style and sophistication. When she comes home to visit Mama and Maggie, Dee is intent on connecting herself to her heritage, but she doesn't want to get too close to her family's real life; she only wants to collect pictures and objects that she can display in her sophisticated home after her visit. A part of Dee has dried up, "like a raisin in the sun" (Hughes, 1951, p. 896). She does not care about the real lives of the real people of her family, and her 170 A Journey Through My College Papers feelings for those relatives have dried up. References: Hughes, L.. (1951). “Dream Deferred.” In R. DiYanni (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed., p. 896). New York: McGraw-Hill. Walker, A.. (1973). “Everyday Use.” In R. DiYanni (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed., pp. 743-749). New York: McGraw-Hill. Reading Drama and Plays 11/27/2010 "The Importance of Being Earnest," by Oscar Wilde (1896), is a British comedy. Jack Worthing pretends to have a younger brother named Ernest so that Jack can lead a respectable life in the country while also living a disreputable life in town under the persona of his brother. Jack wishes to marry Gwendolyn, and they become engaged, but her mother, Lady Bracknell, refuses consent when she learns that Jack was found as a baby in a handbag in Victoria Station. Jack's friend, Algernon, who is Gwendolyn's cousin, pretends to be Jack's brother, Ernest, and visits Jack's ward, Cecily, in the country; Algernon and Cecily become engaged. When Gwendolyn arrives in the country, looking for Jack, she meets Cecily. The women discover that they are both engaged to Ernest Worthing. Jack arrives in the country with the news that Ernest has died, only to find Algernon posing as Ernest. Jack admits that Ernest never existed. Lady Bracknell arrives in the country and discovers that Cecily's tutor was once Lady Bracknell's sister's nanny. The tutor, Miss Prism, admits that she accidentally left the baby in her charge in a handbag in Victoria station. Lady Bracknell realizes that Jack is her long-lost nephew, and Algernon's elder brother, whose real name is Ernest. The couples find themselves able to marry, and they fall into each other's arms. "The Importance of Being Earnest" evokes feelings of irritation at the shallowness of most of the characters. It takes a bit of reading to become comfortable with the fact that a great deal of what the characters say is actually opposite to what ordinary people would say in similar situations. When Jack tells Lady Bracknell the true story of his origins, the reader feels sympathy for him being a foundling, and feels sorry for him, even though the account is related with almost no emotion. Jack says, "I don't actually know who I am by birth. I was ... well, I was found" (Wilde, 1896, p. 1947). This is one of the few truly earnest lines in the play, and it turns out to be of critical importance in the final scene. Lady Bracknell's response to Jack's story is an example of shallowness: "To be born, or at any rate bred, in a handbag ... seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life" (Wilde, 1896, p. 1948). The very end of the play, where Jack -- who is now known to be Ernest -- and Algernon are reunited as brothers, evokes feelings of happiness and sentimentality, and can elicit tears. The play expresses several ideas. Algernon says, in the first act, "The truth is rarely pure and never simple" (Wilde, 1896, p. 1941). Throughout the play, the characters play fast and loose with the truth, giving the reader the idea that truth is not something to be desire or to be respected. This is done in a farsical manner, so that the reader is left with the opposite impression: that the truth is very important. Another idea is that love and marriage are undesirable and unfashionable: "Mary Farquhar, who always flirts with her own husband ... it is not even decent" (Wilde, 1896, p. 1942). This is ironic, since the story of the play is primarily concerned with the engagements of two couples, and with the obstacles to marriage that the couples have to overcome. An idea that is addressed only briefly is that clerical celibacy is undesirable. The tutor, Undergraduate Series 171 Miss Prism, tells Canon Chasuble: "by persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation ... this very celibacy leads weaker vessels astray" (wilde, 1896, p. 1956). This is a comment on religion, and on the undesirable strictures of religion. Clerical celibacy is required by the Roman Catholic church, but not by the Anglican church, which is the church to which Canon Chasuble must be connected in nineteenth-century England. I last saw "The Importance of Being Ernest" as a stage production over twenty years ago. I enjoyed it then, and I enjoyed reading it today. I have always liked the story of the baby in the handbag, and I enjoy the great coincidence of Jack being that baby. The entire play is sarcastically funny, as British humor tends to be. I almost always enjoy British humor plays, as long as they aren't too campy, and that includes this play. References: Wilde, O.. (1896). “The Importance of Being Earnest.” In R. DiYanni (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed., pp. 1937-1979). New York: McGraw-Hill. Imagery in Literature November 29, 2010 Imagery is the heart of literature, which allows the reader to become immersed in the story, the poem, or the play. It provides all of the “details of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch” (DiYanni, 2007, p. 779) that elicit emotional responses from the reader, and that allow the reader to experience the settings, the characters, and the actions in the piece. Without imagery, literature would be dry and sterile, and would be hard-pressed to touch the reader’s imagination. The most common imagery in literature is the imagery of sight, because it is the easiest sense to articulate. Visual imagery can be very concrete and detailed, and it serves to paint vivid pictures in the reader’s imagination. “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” contains a great deal of rich, visual imagery. From the very first sentence, the reader begins to see the setting and the action: “the plains of Texas were pouring eastward. Vast flats of green grass, dull-hued spaces of mesquite and cactus, little groups of frame houses, woods of light and tender trees, all were sweeping into the east, sweeping over the horizon, a precipice” (Crane, 1898, p. 482). The words “pouring” and “sweeping” give the sense of rapid, smooth, forward motion as the train crosses the plains. The short snippets of what the train is passing, without a lot of descriptive detail, gives the impression that the train is going too fast for the passengers to register the details of the landscape; the passengers see the groups of plants, the clusters of houses, the grassy flats for just moments before those features vanish in the distance. The description of the interior of the train car in “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” is more detailed than the exterior descriptions. The details draw the reader into the car, to witness the exchange between the bride and the groom on a more intimate level: “the sea-green figured velvet, the shining brass, silver, and glass, the wood that gleamed as darkly brilliant as the surface of a pool of oil … a bronze figure sturdily held a support for a separated chamber … on the ceiling were frescoes in olive and silver” (Crane, 1898, p. 483). Descriptions of the characters in works of literature are as important to a reader’s experience of a piece as are descriptions of the setting. In “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” Crane (1898) describes Scratchy Wilson: A man in a maroon-colored flannel shirt … In either hand the man held a long, heavy, blue-black revolver … his boots had red tops with gilded imprints, of the kind beloved in winter by little sledding boys … The man’s face flamed in a rage begot of whisky. His 172 A Journey Through My College Papers eyes, rolling, and yet keen for ambush … He walked with the creeping motion of the midnight cat … the little fingers of each hand played sometimes in a musician’s way. Plain from the low collar of the shirt, the cords of his neck straightened and sank, straightened and sank, as passion moved him. (p. 487) By this, we see a man who is a study of reds, from his maroon shirt, to his flaming face, to the red tops on his boots. The red suggests rage and violence in scratch Wilson, but the red boot tops, “of the kind beloved in winter by little sledding boys” (Crane, 1898, p. 487), give the impression that he might at the same time have some childlike qualities, suggesting to the reader that Scratchy might be a bit simple in his thinking. The hands that hold heavy guns, and the visible cords in his neck, give the impression that he is a physically strong man, although his drunken rage suggests that he might have some emotional weakness. All of these details are gleaned from visually descriptive imagery. In “The Metamorphosis,” Kafka (1915) describes the creature into which Gregor Samsa has changed, allowing the reader to see the transformation: he found himself transformed into an enormous insect … a back as hard as armor … a jutting brown underbelly divided into arching segments … many legs, pitifully thin in comparison with the rest of his bulk … the spot that itched: it was covered with small white dots that he couldn’t identify … he was strangely broad … many little legs which were continuously moving in every direction. (pp. 612-614) The description, especially of the legs waving in the air, elicits a thrill of horror from any reader who has ever dealt with bugs of any kind in his or her home. The horror is magnified by the realization that this bug is the size of a man, and that it actually was a man only a short time ago. The spots on his belly are a detail that most readers are unlikely to notice in a normal insect, and they evoke a feeling of revulsion that the reader is being introduced so intimately to the giant, unnatural bug. Sometimes, visual imagery can best be achieved by describing what a thing is not. In “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,” William Shakespeare (1609) describes his mistress’ plain, unlovely appearance by describing the beautiful things that are opposite to her appearance. “Coral is more red than her lips’ red” (Shakespeare, 1609, p. 1187) suggests that her lips are pale. “I have seen roses damasked, red and white,/ But no such roses see I in her cheeks” (Shakespeare, 1609, p. 1187) gives the reader the impression that his mistress’ complexion is pale, and possibly that it is sallow. These seemingly negative descriptions highlight the dept of his love for his mistress, because despite all of this, and despite her reeking breath, “by heaven, I think my love as rare/ As any she belied with false compare” (Shakespeare, 1609, p. 1187). Sometimes, imagery in literature brings to life the sounds in a piece. Sounds can elicit emotional responses to the reading, especially the emotions of fear and suspense. The sounds of voices and of dialects also serve to produce sympathy or antipathy in the reader, and can underscore or overturn social prejudices in the reader. In “The Raven,” Edgar Allen Poe (1845) creates an atmosphere of fear with his imagery of sounds: “suddenly there came a tapping,/ As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door … silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain/ Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before” (Poe, 1845, p. 1173). As the narrator becomes afraid, the reader’s pulse quickens in sympathetic fear, enhanced by the cadence of the poem itself. “But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token” (Poe, 1845, p. 1173). Silence can become a sound unto itself, and Poe uses an almost unnatural silence to punctuate the tapping, rapping, and rustling that are unnerving the narrator. A master of terror and suspense, Poe (1845) does not stop at the vague, unsettling sounds of the night, or at the pregnant silence while the narrator frets in the night; he introduces the surreal, or even supernatural raven with what the narrator perceives as human speech. “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’ … Then the bird said ‘Nevermore’ … What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, Undergraduate Series 173 gaunt, and ominous bird of yore/ Meant in croaking ‘Nevermore’” (Poe, 1845, pp. 1174-1175). Four more times does Poe (1845) repeat “Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore’” (p. 1175). Poe (1845) also uses the device of alliteration to create sound imagery, as quoted above: “grim, ungainly, ghostly, gaunt” (p. 1175). The repetitive use of the letter “g” evokes images of another “g” word: a ghost, which is what the narrator seems to really fear as he thinks about the lost Lenore. Emily Dickinson (1862) uses a very common sound to elicit feelings of horror in the face of death. “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –/ The Stillness in the Room” (Dickinson, 1862, p. 926). These lines combine two different sound images at opposition to each other. The buzzing of a fly is familiar to most readers, and the sound of a buzzing fly brings to the reader’s mind images of death and decay. The stillness is similar to Poe’s (1845) use of silence in “The Raven,” and Dickinson (1862) uses it to indicate the silence of death. Also, the fact that the fly’s buzzing can be heard emphasizes the silence. No one wants to think that the fly that feasts on offal will land on his or her own body to celebrate the moment of death. In “The Lesson,” Toni Cade Bambara (1972) uses the sound imageries of diction and dialect to give the reader an image of Miss Moore’s children, and of their lifestyle. The casual use of mild vulgarities that are consistent with children living in New York’s slums in the middle of the twentieth century is an effective use of diction that conveys the children’s rough environment and their lack of education: “his sorry-ass horse … pissed on our handball walls … without a goddamn gas mask … this nappy-head bitch and her goddamn college degree … so she can kick ass … Flyboy a faggot … get the hell out … bringing it up in the first damn place … she know damn well … smelly-ass stationery … Your father, my ass” (Bambara, 1972, pp. 427-430). Each of these instances of vulgarity, and each additional instance in the story, is gratuitous, and could be omitted in the simple telling of the story, but these instances of vulgarity are necessary to establish the atmosphere of the story, and to define the characters of the story. Along with the diction of the story, the dialect used by the characters is important for creating an image of the characters and of their environment. The children’s speech is not grammatically correct. They do not enunciate their words: “we kinda hated her … she was black as hell, cept for her feet … cause we all moved North the same time … got some ole dumb shit foolishness … it’s purdee hot and she’s knockin herself out … Messin up my day with this shit … ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin” (Bambara, 1972, pp. 427-432). If Bambara (1972) had used correct grammar, and if she had spelled all of the children’s dialogue correctly, then the reader would be left without the impression of their poverty, or of the life that they lead. The sense of taste is difficult to convey in words, but taste imagery can help a reader to more fully experience the lives of the characters in a piece of literature. In “The Metamorphosis,” Kafka (1915) describes how Gregor’s sense of taste has changed as a result of his transformation. Gregor sees a dish of fresh bread and milk, and his human memory makes him happy to see food that he knows is good. His insect senses, however, tell him something different: “the milk … didn’t taste good to him at all. He turned away from the basin with something like revulsion” (Kafka, 1915, p. 6220. Later, Gregor’s sister provides Gregor with food to satisfy his new appetite: “old, half-rotten vegetables; bones from last night’s meal, covered with congealed white sauce … a cheese that Gregor had declared inedible two days before … In rapid succession, amidst tears of joy, he devoured the cheese, the vegetables, and the sauce” (Kafka, 1915, p. 623). Where Gregor is sickened at the thought of eating fresh foods, the reader’s gorge rises when reading about Gregor’s new diet. The sense of smell is also very difficult to convey in words, and it must sometimes be hinted at by other, more visual imagery. At other times, a clear description of a smell that is generally familiar to most readers is the best choice. In “My Papa’s Waltz,” Theodore Roethke (1942) opens with: “The whiskey on your breath/ Could make a small boy dizzy” (p. 773). The imagery is clear and immediate. The reader who has ever smelled the breath of a person who is 174 A Journey Through My College Papers drunk on whiskey will smell the overpowering reek that threatens to give the child a sort of contact high from breathing the fumes. For most readers, this imagery elicits feelings of disgust and anger for the father, and it elicits feelings of concern for the child. In Roethke’s (1948) “Root Cellar,” he writes of the root cellar as being “dark as a ditch … mildewed crates … what a congress of stinks!/ Roots ripe as old bait” (p. 1181). The stinks, as the poet expresses them, are wet and rotten. The reader smells the strong odors of decay and neglect, and the list of specific odors of “Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,/ Leaf-mold, manure, lime” (Roethke, 1948, p. 1181) feeds the reader’s imagination with very clear and specific odors, each of which is better avoided when possible. These strong images of smells suggest that the root cellar is a place where no one goes any more, and that it is a place where no one should want to go. Touch is another sense that can be hard to convey, since people’s opinions differ in regard to what constitutes soft, hard, warm, cold, and so forth. Touch is often conveyed best by similes and metaphors, which cause the reader to make connections between his or her own tactile experiences and the tactile imagery in a piece of literature. In “A Blessing,” James Wright (1963) uses simile to describe the experience of petting an Indian pony: “the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear/ That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist” (p. 1218). He could have used many combinations of words to describe the smooth, soft delicacy of the pony’s ear without the use of simile, but his use of simile expresses the texture of the ear simply and elegantly, in terms that are familiar to most readers. Imagery is essential to literature because “it is through our senses that we perceive the world” (DiYanni, 2007, p. 793). When the reader is able to experience the sights, the sounds, the tastes, the smells, and the touches in a piece of literature, then he or she is better able to apprehend and to appreciate the piece of literature. Literature would be sere and vacant without the imagery that draws the reader into an intimate experience of literature. References Bambara, T.C.. (1972). “The Lesson.” In R. DiYanni (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed., pp. 427-432). New York: McGraw-Hill. Crane, S.. (1898). “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky.” In R. DiYanni (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed. , pp. 482-489). New York: McGraw-Hill. Dickinson, E.. (1862). “I heard a Fly buzz – when I died.” In R. DiYanni (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed. , pp. 926-927). New York: McGraw-Hill. DiYanni, R. (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Kafka, F.. (1915). “The Metamorphosis.” In R. DiYanni (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed. , pp. 612-641). New York: McGraw-Hill. Poe, E.A.. (1845). “The Raven.” In R. DiYanni (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed., pp. 1173-1175). New York: McGraw-Hill. Roethke, T.. (1942). “My Papa’s Waltz.” In R. DiYanni (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed. , p. 773). New York: McGraw-Hill. --. (1948). “Root Cellar.” In R. DiYanni (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed., p. 1181). New York: McGraw-Hill. Shakespeare, W.. (1609). “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” In R. DiYanni (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed., p. 1187). New York: McGraw-Hill. Wright, J.. (1963). “A Blessing.” In R. DiYanni (2007). Literature, reading fiction, poetry, and drama (Ashford Custom 6th ed., pp. 1217-1218). New York: McGraw-Hill. Undergraduate Series 175 My Reading Experience 11/29/2010 Many of the pieces that we have read in this course were already familiar to me. In some cases, it was because I had read them for school at some point, but, more often, it was because I already love to read, and I read widely. I love the writing of Edgar Allen Poe, and have read a great deal of his work. I would very much enjoy reading more of Poe's work, or rereading some of the pieces I have already read. I feel similarly about Emily Dickinson, William Shakespeare, and Robert Frost. Conversely, I have reaffirmed my prior feeling that I would be quite happy to never read Franz Kafka again. While "The Metamorphosis" was reasonably interesting, I did not really enjoy it as I usually enjoy reading stories. The same writers whose work I would like to read further are those about whom I would like to know more. A writer's life contributes to his or her writing, so it feels as though it makes sense to want to know more about the writers whose work interest us. It might also be interesting to learn more about Oscar Wilde. A reading session for me is any time I am not doing other things. I nearly always carry a book with me, and I will read anywhere. For this course, my preferred reading situation has been in the quiet times while my children were at school or asleep. Snuggling into a comfortable chair with a favorite comforter, so I could lose myself in what I was reading, has been my favorite position for reading. Although I don't normally take notes on my reading, I have done so for this course, and I have generally written my notes and impressions after reading a piece, rather than interrupting the flow of the reading to make notes. I think I have come closest to using the reader-response criticism theory, but I do not intentionally use any of the theories on a normal basis. I tend to immerse myself in whatever I am reading, allowing my imagination to weave pictures for me as I read. LIB 320: Global Socioeconomic Perspectives Historical Perspectives 12/9/2010 As stated in the text by Viotti and Kauppi (2009), realists "hold pessimistic views on the likelihood of the transformation of the current world into a more peaceful one" (p. 16). Some of the best-recognized political realists are Niccoló Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean Bodin. Realism is one of four perspectives on sovereignty and international relations "that focuses on power and a balance of power among states in international relations" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 88). Machiavelli promotes national unity as a means of ensuring peace. He writes that "the ruler of the city of Florence ... needed to use his resources to unify Italy" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 405). Similarly, Hobbes promotes the development of governments "with the necessary power to maintain law and order and thus provide security" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 487). Each of these realists recognizes the importance of security. Machiavelli writes that "a wise prince takes care to devise methods that force his citizens, always and in every sort of weather, to need the government and himself; and always then they will be loyal" (Chong, 2005, para. 19). As a realist, Machiavelli knows that people need to be united, and to be guided; he does not believe that individuals should be allowed to act with autonomy, because that would likely result in anarchy. 176 A Journey Through My College Papers Hobbes also recognizes the need for order. He "rationalized a will to defend a semblance of order amidst the national arbitrariness of disorder in human affairs" (Chong, 2005, para. 24). He posits that conflict is the natural order for man, and that governments need to unite their citizens to establish and to maintain order. Hobbes writes that "before covenants and laws were drawn up, neither justice nor injustice, neither public good nor public evil, was natural among men any more than it was among beasts" (Chong, 2005, para. 25). Bodin believes that governments must guide their citizens into becoming ready for the higher ideals of peace and cooperation, just as parents must prepare their children to get along with their playmates. Bodin writes that one cannot conceive of educating a child until it has developed a capability for learning in the same way that commonwealths must first provide for human subsistence and prudence 'sufficient for the defence of the state against its enemies', before concerning themselves with philosophy and 'the moral and mental sciences'. (Chong, 2005, para. 43) Bodin, like Machiavelli and Hobbes, recognizes the importance of governments maintaining peace and security. Realists recognize that ununited individuals, as well as ununited, independent nations and states, will tend toward anarchy and violence. As the head of a household must exert authority over the members of the household to maintain peace among them, so must a sovereign exert authority over the citizens of a state to maintain peace among them. Realists recognize that the only way to achieve a more peaceful world is to unite more states under supreme rulers who can exert authority over the member states to maintain peace among them. Realists realize that the unification of the nations of the world under a single head is unlikely to occur. As Viotti and Kauppi (2009) state in our text: "No central, global power exists to enforce peace among the various political units, whether they are city-states, empires, principalities, or modern states" (p. 89). References: Chong, A.. (2005). "Classical realism and the tension between sovereignty and intervention: constructions of expediency from Machiavelli, Hobbes and Bodin." Journal of International Relations and Development, 8 (3), 257-286. Retrieved December 8, 2010, from ProQuest Database. Viotti, P., & Kauppi, M.. (2009). International relations and world politics: Security, economy, identity (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Technology and Globalization 12/9/2010 Globalization is defined by Viotti and Kauppi (2009) as the "continual increase in transnational and worldwide economic, social, and cultural interactions that transcend the boundaries of states, aided by advances in technology" (p. 4). The most prevalent and visible example of globalization is the use of the Internet. People in every corner of the world can have instant access to communications, education, commerce, entertainment, news, and almost anything else. This has made the world a much smaller place than it has ever been before. In this past week, I had occasion to tell my sons about international correspondence when I was in my early teens, when the world was much larger than it is today. This was in response to my younger son's frustration that his email friend had not yet replied to a message that had been sent about an hour earlier. I told my son about writing letters on paper, in longhand, then buying special, more expensive stamps to post the letters to my friends in several foreign countries. I Undergraduate Series 177 explained that it was not unusual, then, for letters to European addresses to take a week to be delivered, while letters to Middle Eastern and African addresses often took two to three weeks to be delivered. I told him about being unsurprised when letters of response were delivered to my mail box as long as four to six weeks after I posted my original letters. He was stunned. I realized that, as much as I appreciate email, instant messages, and my Facebook connections, not to mention these classes, globalization has caused the next generation to lose the skill of patience. It has produced an expectation of immediate gratification. The art of letter writing has very nearly been lost. At the same time, I am reminded of the adage that "familiarity breeds contempt," and I see that being able to post instant thoughts on Twitter, Facebook, and similar sites, from anywhere in the world that has cell phone access, is causing a breakdown in the habits and traditions of respect for authority, respect for other people, and even respect for oneself. I am not the only one who has noticed this negative trend stemming from globalization, as evidenced by Viotti and Kauppi's (2009) text: "there is another trend ... crises of authority" (p. 7). In addition, "[t]hough such media as the Internet help transmit scientific information essential to economic development, such networks also allow political dissidents to communicate with the outside world or encourage global dissemination of potentially dangerous information" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 7). There are other negatives to globalization and technology. Professor Carrasco (2007) writes that "the placement of technology in developing countries often causes social costs, as well as costs in the form of urbanization, employment displacement, and the 'digital divide'" (para. 3). When technology replaces human labor, it results in unemployment, which can seriously influence the well-being of a region. Another concern about technology and globalization has to do with how equally the benefits of technology are distributed. For example, "the introduction of new drugs reveals global disparities of wealth and class, since many individuals cannot afford access" (Carrasco, 2007, para. 3). Technology and globalization are not all bad, of course. While there are some concerns about the Internet, the ready availability of information on almost any conceivable topic is a boon to research. While instant communications may result in a loss of patience, the ability to communicate quickly with people in other countries brings people closer together. This is especially important to military families with individuals deployed to distant lands. Other types of technology "can play an integral role in population stabilization" (Carrasco, 2007, para, 7). Technology that improves the production and distribution of food obviates the need for families in rural areas to raise large families to provide manual labor for food production. In addition, "technology will decouple population growth from land and natural resource consumption through recycling, end-use efficiency, and industrial ecology" (Carrasco, 2007, para. 7). Technology shrinking the world is not a new idea. "Indeed, advances in technology, particularly during the last five hundred years, have shrunk the globe dramatically" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 22). Electricity, petroleum-based fuels, telecommunications, plastics, synthetic fabrics, weather-related technology, irrigation and other agricultural technologies, and many other technological advances have changed, and generally improved, style and quality of life for most people in the world. 178 A Journey Through My College Papers References: Carrasco, E.. (2007, May 13). Technology & Globalization. Retrieved December 9, 2010, from http://www.uiowa.edu/ifdebook/issues/globalization/readingtable/technology.shtml Viotti, P., & Kauppi, M.. (2009). International relations and world politics: Security, economy, identity (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. International Organizations 12/16/2010 International organizations, as a whole, are not just the playgrounds of major powers. While it is true that "some states may cooperate in order to exploit weaker states economically" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 197), that is the exception, not the rule. Rather than advancing the interests of the more powerful member nations of these organizations at the expense of lesspowerful countries, most organizations, such as the United Nations (UN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the European Union (EU), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Gulf Cooperation Council, and others, protect the interests of less-developed countries. Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and the Red Cross provide humanitarian relief in developing countries and in lands that are ravaged by war or by natural disasters, often in conjunction with UN peacekeeping forces. UN peacekeeping forces "have never been intended to fight wars" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 215), and instead are exactly what their name implies: guardians of peace around the world. During the first Gulf War, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Western European Union, and the Arab League united to relieve Kuwait, a small nation that had been invaded by Iraq. They were there to provide security not only for Kuwait, but for the region, and "security is the collective good ... they produce" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 203). Rather than exploiting a weak country to benefit the members of this temporary alliance, the members worked for collective security, "[t]he essential idea [of which] is 'all against one' as in a common law-enforcement or police action against an aggressor state" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 205). In a similar way, "NATO members have also played an important role in providing peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 205). International organizations, such as the UN, "facilitate dialogue and negotiation between disputants" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 209). The EU is "committed to strengthening economic and political ties among its members" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 210). The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) "works to expand free or open trade and contribute to economic development not only in advanced-industrial and postindustrial countries but also in developing countries" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 301). Assisting open communications, improving ties among nations, and building economic development in preindustrial countries sounds like excellent stewardship, not like powerful countries treating international organizations as playgrounds. References: Viotti, P.R., & Kauppi, M.V. (2009). International relations and world politics: Security, economy, identity (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Undergraduate Series 179 Transnational Crime 12/16/2010 Dr. Cecil E. Greek (2006) identifies the three most important examples of transnational crime as "global terrorism ... trafficking in people ... [and] the internet and international crime" (paras. 3-19). In our text, Viotti and Kauppi (2009) further identify: "Colombian drug cartels' assassination and bombing campaign ... Sicilian Mafia attacks on the Italian state ... rise of criminal organizations in Russia and other areas of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe ... [e]xtension beyond Japan (Yakuza) and China (Triads) of long-established criminal networks ... [and] trafficking in nuclear materials in Europe" (p. 274). Among Internet-related crimes, Dr. Greek (2006) includes: "Illegal interception of telecommunications ... Electronic vandalism and terrorism ... Stealing telecommunications services ... Telecommunications piracy ... Pornography and other offensive content ... Telemarketing fraud ... Electronic funds transfer crime ... Electronic money laundering ... [and] Telecommunications in furtherance of criminal conspiracies" (para. 26). Along with the groups identified above, I would include al-Qaeda as a serious transnational terrorist group. "Strong law enforcement institutions ... are vital to preventing a wide array of transnational threats to our hemisphere, from drugs to other forms of organized criminal activity to terrorism" (Johnson, 2008, para. 3). The United States uses law enforcement institutions to combat illegal drug trafficking, human trafficking, Internet crime, terrorism, and other forms of transnational crime. "The Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Anti-Terrorism Act of 1986 ... strengthens so-called long-arm statutes that enable the ... FBI ... to arrest individuals overseas who are charged with committing a terrorist-related criminal act against U.S. citizens" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 271). In Central America, the U.S. uses local law enforcement to help in the campaign against illegal drugs, but "[e]ven where U.S. in-country enforcement efforts have been somewhat successful ... the result has been simply to spread coca production into other countries" (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 281). The U.S. and other countries have instituted many security measures in regard to international travel, in order to reduce terrorism, but these are not completely successful, as evidenced by the Detroit underwear bomber of Christmas Day, 2009, who fell through the cracks in the security. It is very difficult to eradicate transnational crime because there are countries that support, and even harbor, the criminals. Also, international law is not uniform, so criminals are not always punished. As with the coca production, crack-downs in one country simply cause the criminals to move to another country. Peasants in developing countries don't want to speak out or to act against criminal organizations and regimes because the peasants fear retribution against themselves and against their families. References: Greek, C.E. (2006, September 7). Specific Types of Transnational Crime II. Retrieved December 16, 2010, from http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/transcrime/week7.htm Johnson, D.T. (2008, April 29). Combating Transnational Crime and Joint Efforts to Safeguard the Western Hemisphere. Retrieved December 16, 2010, from http://mexidata.info/id1825.html Viotti, P.R., & Kauppi, M.V. (2009). International relations and world politics: Security, economy, identity (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. 180 A Journey Through My College Papers Criteria for Armed Intervention December 20, 2010 Conflicting criteria exist for determining when to use armed intervention in other states. If I were the president of the United States, I would support the use of armed intervention in extreme cases of human rights violations. I would reject the use of armed intervention for any other reason, other than for the direct defense of the United States and its territories and possessions. In this discussion, I will identify the current criteria for initiating armed intervention, I will examine the use of armed intervention in cases of humanitarian relief, and I will explore my reasons for rejecting armed intervention in other matters that do not include direct national defense. Paul R. Viotti and Mark V. Kauppi (2009) identify the five criteria for making decisions on the use of armed intervention as: “Sovereignty … National Interest … Human Rights … Expected Net Effect on the Human Condition … [and] Degree of Multilateralism” (pp. 186-187). In addition to these criteria, “the United Nations Charter (1945) does specify conditions under which force may legally be used … Unilaterally in self-defense … Multilaterally when authorized by the UN Security Council ‘to maintain or restore international peace and security’ … [and] Multilaterally by regional collective defensive action” (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 183). It is necessary, when determining whether or not to initiate armed intervention, to reconcile any conflicts between the first stated set of criteria and the three UN criteria. “[M]any believe that there is a legal right to use force in the most extreme cases of humanitarian need” (Wilmshurst, 2004, para. 4), but “[t]he UN charter prohibits a state from using force in another country without the latter’s consent” (Wilmshurst, 2004, para. 2). Similarly, “[t]he genocide convention is sometimes thought to give authority for states to intervene in other countries … [b]ut that does not give the legal right to intervene militarily” (Wilmshurst, 2004, para. 7). What this means is that what might be perceived by many people around the world as the right course of action may not, in fact, be the legal course of action. Government leaders are constrained to make legal decisions, even though “[a] consensus has been forming … that human beings have rights that may supersede those claimed by sovereign states” (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 186). Viotti and Kauppi (2009) write that “states are normally prohibited from intervention in the domestic affairs of other sovereign states” (p. 186). As Artur Victoria (2010) states: “’Domestic’ matters are not subject to [sanction intervention’s] jurisdiction” (para. 2). In the case of a civil war, “outside intervention in such an internal matter [is not] legitimate under international law” (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 184). When one state desires to intervene in another state’s civil war, the intervening state must show that the civil war endangers “international peace and security” (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 183) in order to act legally. The Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty has identified six criteria, which resemble the first set of criteria identified in this paper, for initiating armed intervention for humanitarian purposes: “just cause … right intention … last resort … means used must be proportionate … reasonable prospects of success … [and] lawful authority” (Wilmshurst, 2004, paras. 10-11). It is noteworthy that this list includes a requirement for lawful authority, so that armed humanitarian actions are still subject to the constraints of the UN charter. If decisions regarding armed intervention were left up to me, I would support the “responsibility to protect – unanimously adopted by more than 150 states at the UN World Summit in 2005” (“The UN and humanitarian intervention,” 2008, para. 3). This would be legally acceptable because “human rights violations are also understood to endanger international peace and security” (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 186). I would make this decision because it is the responsibility of every reasoning person – and, by extension, of every state – to protect people Undergraduate Series 181 who are weak or vulnerable. This is a moral truth that I have held since early childhood, when I learned it as part of my religious education. While I recognize that some developing countries, including “Cuba, Egypt, Russia, Algeria and Myanmar have been vocal opponents” (“The UN and humanitarian intervention,” 2008, para. 12) of the responsibility to protect, I feel that it is appropriate to employ “military force in situations of gross human rights violations and grave breaches of international humanitarian law” (Slim, 2002, para. 2). In severe cases of crimes against humanity, I believe that the United States and other advanced-industrial and postindustrial nations have a responsibility to recognize that “saving human lives might in some extreme circumstances override sovereignty” (“The UN and humanitarian intervention,” 2008, para. 2). I do not mean that I would initiate armed intervention as a first response to every instance of human rights violations. In most cases, it is preferable for such offenses to be corrected through diplomatic negotiations whenever possible. “[H]umanitarian intervention … refers to the use of international military force to stop the massive abuse of human rights in another state” (Slim, 2002, para. 13). Massive human rights violations include “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity” (“The UN and humanitarian intervention,” 2008, para. 11), but they do not usually include lesser violations of human rights, which are integral to various cultures. I would reject initiating armed intervention in other countries in the interest of preserving the safety of the United States and its citizens. I would not hesitate to launch an armed defense of the United States, or to take action to safeguard United States citizens and business concerns in other countries. “Armed intervention is an option often weighed against considerations on national interest and … national objectives” (Viotti and Kauppi, 2009, p. 186). In my opinion, it is in the national interest to stay out of foreign military actions. Tax dollars would be better spent on domestic education, health, welfare, and employment programs than on maintaining massive military forces all over the globe. In the past, “power has [been] used in the international scene to push forward national interests and agendas, sometimes without any regard to the nations and people they may directly or indirectly affect” (Shah, 2001, para. 1). Serving national interests and agendas, however, does “not necessarily mean that they are good for the international community” (Shah, 2001, para. 3). I believe that national interest can be better served by improving the quality of life of the citizens of the nation. Although there are conflicts among the criteria for determining the use of armed intervention in other states, the criteria given by the United Nations charter (1945) resolve some of those conflicts by stating clearly what is required for armed intervention to be legal. Regardless of how justifiable an action might appear, as in the case of human rights violations, if it does not meet the UN’s requirements, then it is not a legal action, and it must not be undertaken. I would support armed intervention to relieve extreme cases of human rights abuses, and for the direct defense of the United States, its citizens, and its possessions. I would reject armed intervention for other purposes, because I believe that national resources should be allocated for improving quality of life in the United States, rather than for waging military actions in other countries. References Shah, A. (2001, July 14). Foreign Policy – National Interests. Retrieved December 20, 2010, from http://www.globalissues.org/print/article/101 Slim, H. (2002). Military Intervention to Protect Human Rights: The Humanitarian Agency Perspective. Retrieved December 14, 2010, from http://www.jha.as/articles/a084.htm “UN and humanitarian intervention, The.” (2008, May 15). The Economist [Electronic version]. Retrieved December 20, 2010, from http://www.economist.com/node/11376531/ Victoria, A. (2010). Armed Intervention in States’ Sovereignty. Retrieved December 20, 2010, from http://ezinearticles.com/?Armed-Intervention-in-States- Sovereignty&id=3596439 182 A Journey Through My College Papers Viotti, P.R., & Kauppi, M.V. (2009). International relations and world politics: Security, economy, identity (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Wilmshurst, E. (2004, October 14). “Rules of Engagement.” The Guardian [Electronic version]. Retrieved December 14, 2010, from http://www.guardian.co.uk.world/2004/oct/14/sudan.guardiananalysispage Global Civil Society 1/6/2011 International law has affected trade, human rights, and the environment in several ways. In regard to trade, international law requires "that ships carrying cargoes [are] free to transit the high seas without interference ... [and] piracy threatening international commerce [is] understood as a crime" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 30). Organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund deal with import taxes, treaties, international lending, and international liquidity. In addition, international law deals with "copyrights and patents across national borders" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 31), which protect the intellectual property of authors, artists, and inventors. International law in regard to trade may not eliminate crime in these areas, but it provides relief for victims of crime, and consequences for perpetrators of crime. In particular, with the widespread use of the Internet, international laws that protect intellectual property are becoming more and more important. They protect against electronic piracy of media and of commercial plans and designs in much the same way that older international laws protect against piracy on the high seas. In regard to human rights, international law allows humanitarian intervention in the form of "the use of international military force to stop the massive abuse of human rights in another state" (Slim, 2002, para. 13). Unfortunately, Emma Fanning (2010) reports that "communities identified key barriers to their protection as a lack of information about ... international laws, difficulty in approaching military and civilian authorities, and lack of knowledge about where to refer victims of abuse" (para. 4). Clearly, for international law to serve populations effectively, the people need to be educated as to what international laws apply to them, as well as how to seek relief under those laws. From 1948 to 1975, at least ten United Nations (UN) conferences and treaties to "guide human conduct and protect human rights" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 32) came into existence. Only the most serious human rights violations warrant international intervention under current international laws, and "[u]niversal acceptance of ... international law ... is a decades-long process" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 32). "A growth area in the construction of international law for global civil society is the physical environment within which human beings, plants, and animals live" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 33). Sweeping international law for environmental issues is not yet extant, but the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) are steps in the right direction. "To date, the United States is among the few countries that have chosen not to be bound by these restrictions on the use of fossil fuels" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 33). It is to be hoped that future international law will bring the United States into line with other nations to preserve the environment. International laws to reduce piracy, both physical and electronic; to relieve abuses of human rights, and to protect the environment of the planet have contributed to the development of a global civil society. These efforts "have facilitated bringing diverse peoples around the globe into ever-greater and more frequent contact in economic or commercial, cultural, and social matters" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 33). Having uniform international laws contributes to the development of a global civil society by establishing common values and goals for the people of Undergraduate Series 183 the world. Sadly, it is not an entirely positive process, as the bringing together of the peoples of the world, and the effective reducing of the relative size of the world, also makes way for "the globalization of terrorism and crime, environmental degradation, labor exploitation, and the ability of extremist religious and secular movements to disseminate their hate-filled messages" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 34). References: Fanning, E.. (2010). Challenges of protection. Forced Migration Review, (36), 37-38. Retrieved January 6, 2011, from ProQuest database. Slim, H. (2002). Military intervention to protect human rights: The humanitarian agency perspective. Retrieved December 14, 2010, from http://www.jha.as/articles/a084.htm Viotti, P.R., & Kauppi, M.V. (2009). International relations and world politics: Security, economy, identity (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. GNP 1/6/2011 According to Paul R. Viotti and Mark V. Kauppi (2009), the "[t]wo important components of gross national product (GNP) ... are annual consumption and investment" (p. 289). These components refer to how a nation uses its resources, represented in terms of value in currency. The GNP understates the aggregate production in Third World countries because "goods and services produced and consumed in a household cannot be measured directly ... [and] Third World economies ... typically have a higher proportion of household production and consumption" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 290). Third World countries have a higher annual consumption than is reflected in their GNPs because much of their production never reaches markets that measure that production, or its subsequent consumption. Per capita income (PCI) is the "mean or average income for each person. Calculated on an annualized national basis it is gross national product or gross domestic product divided by the total population" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 551). According to Farid and Lazarus (2008), in regard to post-industrial nations, "absolute per capita income has increased over time, but the mean SWB [subjective well-being] ... has remained constant" (para. 11). If the SWB of a nation does not increase with its PCI, then PCI may not be a good measure of the level of living that people enjoy. In a country with many people living in poverty, but with a reasonable GNP due to international trade, the PCI may be skewed, making it appear that the people enjoy a better living than they actually do. Conversely, in a country with a low GNP caused by products being consumed where they are produced, instead of being measured in the markets, the PCI might indicate that the people's living is lower than that which they actually enjoy. In many Third World countries, the leaders of the countries often enjoy great personal wealth, while the rest of the population lives in poverty. In this case, the data resulting from calculating PCI will be skewed. References: Farid, M. & Lazarus, H.. (2008). Subjective well-being in rich and poor countries. The Journal of Management Development, 27 (10), 1053-1065. Retrieved January 6, 2011, from ProQuest database. Viotti, P.R., & Kauppi, M.V. (2009). International relations and world politics: Security, economy, identity (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. 184 A Journey Through My College Papers India and China 1/13/2011 It has been proposed that the countries of India and China have the "right" to pollute the environment until they catch up with more industrialized countries. I maintain that no country, regardless of its economic status, has the right to pollute the environment. The environment is not the sole province of any one or several nations, to use or abuse at will; it is the public good, and each nation must be held accountable for maintaining the environment for everyone. As our text states, "the environment ... [is] a human security issue" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 374). China and India together represent "40% of the world's population" (Diener & Frank, 2010, para. 1). Environmental actions of these nations, positive or negative, therefore, directly affect almost half of the world's population, without even considering the other 60% of people everywhere. Unfortunately, environmental abuses are not contained in single countries; they affect the entire planet. "Acid rain affects more than one-third of China's land, including its farmland, before drifting eastward over Japan" (Diener & Frank, 2010, para. 6). Acid rain infiltrates the world's water when it enters rivers and oceans, affecting millions of people and causing "millions of deaths" (Diener & Frank, 2010, para. 6). Global warming, which causes flooding, droughts, and severe weather around the world, is also affected by China's and India's environmental actions. "CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions ... lead to further global warming ... [and] China is ... the number one emitter of greenhouse gasses" (Diener & Frank, 2010, paras. 1314). India and China have the means to reduce their pollution of the environment at this time. "India was the fourth biggest producer of wind power in the world [in 2003] and its Suzion Energy is one of the five biggest wind turbine manufacturers in the world. China's Suntech is the world's third largest manufacturer of solar cells" (Diener & Frank, 2010, para. 12). By using wind power and solar power, India and China can reduce their coal consumption, thus reducing their emissions of CO2, carbon monoxide, sulfuric acid, nitrous oxide, and mercury into the environment. Granted, converting to an alternative energy source would require an initial investment to change equipment, but the net benefit to the world should make it worth the short-term expense. Otherwise, the projected growth in energy usage for these two countries over the next few years "would require a level of energy supplies literally beyond the world's energy resources" (Diener & Frank, 2010, para. 11). The instruction for this assignment was to debate the proposition, which implies presenting at least two opposing views. I can imagine that one might argue that China and India have the "right" to pollute the environment because their economies are not yet mature, and so they should not be expected to be able to clean up their own environmental messes. One might argue that they should have this right because it isn't fair to expect them to be as responsible as more mature nations, or because it isn't fair that more advanced nations have stronger economies than their economies. Frankly, I find that I cannot in good conscience play the Devil's advocate and argue these views. As a parent, I hear that the two children should not have to clean up their messes because they are too young. I hear that it is not fair that the child should be responsible like his more mature siblings and schoolmates because he is young. I have always taught my children that if they are old enough to do the thing that makes the mess, then they are old enough to take care to minimize the mess, and to clean up their mess. When my children mess up their environment by leaving toys, dirty dishes, and papers strewn about the house, I expect them to clean up the mess and to learn to be more responsible in their actions. I would expect China and India, likewise, to avoid making environmental messes in the first place, and to be responsible enough to clean up their messes. In regard to fairness, I would, likewise, tell China and India that Undergraduate Series 185 it is not fair for China and India to get special treatment to help them catch up with more developed nations, and that it is most certainly fair for more advanced nations to have stronger economies than China and India have, because the more advanced nations have worked to develop those economies. References: Diener, B., & Frank, W.. (2010). The China-India challenge: A comparison of causes and effects of global warming. The International Business & Economics Research Journal, 9(3), 21-26. Retrieved January 13, 2011, from ProQuest database. Viotti, P.R., & Kauppi, M.V. (2009). International relations and world politics: Security, economy, identity (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Maintaining Peace 1/13/2011 According to our text, the various methods of maintaining peace and unity in binational, multinational, and multiethnic states are: partition, assimilation, consociation, federation, and confederation (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, pp. 419-423). Partition is "[d]ivision and separation of peoples, particularly those with a propensity or demonstrated record of engaging in intercommunal violence" (Vioti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 550). Partition can ease regional violence in the short term, but that appears to be its only strength. On July 2, 2010, Albanian deputy Premier and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ilir Meta stated that "[t]he ideas of partitioning Kosova [Kosovo] or to exchange territories constitute a serious danger to peace, security and stability, not only in Kosova, but throughout the region and further" (Ideas on Kosovo partition, 2010, para. 1). Partition does not really stop conflict. Warfare between the partitioned nations does not address the differences between the parties; it only physically separates them. Assimilation is "[a] strategy to create a single national identity out of diverse populations" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 535). When it is non-repressive, this can be a successful option. The United States is a good example of assimilation, in which "[s]eparate ethnic and racial identities ... commonly identify themselves as 'Americans'" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 421). When divergent populations are allowed to maintain their individual identities, while uniting under a group identity, this is effective. A weakness of assimilation is when it is repressive, and people are forced to give up their distinct ethnic identities when they take on the new group identity. Consociation is "formal arrangements for sharing power in society among diverse national, ethnic, or other groups" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 538). This method allows divergent groups to retain as much local autonomy as possible, while dividing decision-making power over the whole group among the member groups. "In Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement (GFA) was meant to solve conflict through a system of elite power sharing known as consociationalism" (White, 2007, para. 1). The strength of this system is the local autonomy that it allows. A weakness is that a consociated group will require a great deal of maintenance over time to keep all of the power-sharing arrangements in balance. A federation "is [a state] in which there is a division of power between the central government and constituent governments in states or provinces" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 553). Confederation is "[a] loose federation or association of component states or provinces ... [that] can be used to integrate societies often divided by regional, national-ethnic or other cleavages" (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 538). The strength of these systems in that member states retain a great deal 186 A Journey Through My College Papers of autonomy, while a central government controls agreed-upon matters for the entire group. A weakness, as the United States discovered with the Articles of Confederation, is that the central government is limited in its ability to control the member states. References: Ideas on Kosovo partition are "serious danger to peace" - Albanian minister. (2010, July 2). BBC Monitoring European. Retrieved January 13, 2011, from ProQuest database. Viotti, P.R., & Kauppi, M.V. (2009). International relations and world politics: Security, economy, identity (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. White, T.. (2007). Civil society and peace in Northern Ireland. Peace Review, 19(3), 445. Retrieved January 13, 2011, from ProQuest database. Universal Human Rights 1/20/2011 While I acknowledge that there is a great need for improvements in human rights around the world, and especially in Third World countries, I do not believe that the United States should take a more active role in universal human rights, as a government, at this time. I do believe that individuals should be free to work for universal human rights if they feel morally bound to do so, but I do not believe that US federal funds should be allocated for such activities. My reasons actually have little or nothing to do with the issue of universal human rights. I am not against the issue. I believe that all people everywhere are equally entitled to live in safety, and without fear. However, I was brought up to believe that each person should make things right within himself or herself before trying to make things right in another person's life. "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye" (The Holy Bible, 1979, Matthew 7:5). I believe that the same is true for nations (or states, or countries, or however such a body may be called). For the United States to take a more active role in support of universal human rights, I believe that it must first address and deal with internal, domestic issues. (I believe this about our military involvement around the world, as well, and about our financial aid to other countries, but those are separate discussions.) I believe that before the U.S. can spend money to stop women in other countries being forced into lives of prostitution, it must first spend money inside the U.S. to relieve the situations in many of our major cities that force American women, girls, and even boys into lives of prostitution. The pimps and the drug dealers, who force these unfortunates to sell their bodies, and who make it impossible for many of them to leave the lifestyle alive and healthy, are at least as bad as their counterparts in other countries. It is unconscionable to allow such human rights abuses to continue in New York, Los Angeles, and other U.S. cities while our government pours U.S. resources into stopping the same abuses in Africa, the Middle East, Central America, and other regions. I believe that before the U.S. can spend money to try to end hunger in other countries, it must first work to eradicate hunger in the U.S.. Food stamp programs and food pantries are not enough to ensure that no American goes hungry. I can speak to this from direct, personal experience. When my sons were 21 months and 10 months old, the three of us became homeless despite all of my efforts to stop it. There was no room for us in any local shelter. We were fortunate that our church allowed us to sleep on an air mattress in its nursery. However, since I did not have a fixed address, I was denied both food stamps and WIC benefits. We fell through our government's cracks. We were lucky, and members of the church provided our needs until we Undergraduate Series 187 were able to get a HUD apartment, but thousands -- more probably millions -- of families, of women, of children are not so lucky, and go without the most basic needs of food and shelter in this country. It is abhorrent to me that American children should go hungry, and that American families should be without shelter, while American money goes to feed the people of other countries. If private citizens and private organizations want to spend their private funds on humanitarian aid in other countries while Americans experience human rights abuses and neglect in our own country, then they are within their rights to do so. I cannot, and the government cannot, dictate their moral choices. However, if the U.S. government wants to spend tax dollars, raised from the American public, in such a way, then they should not be allowed to do so. Humanitarian relief should begin in the streets, alleys, shelters, and neighborhoods of our own country. Once we have our own house in order, then we should do what we can to support universal human rights. References: The Holy Bible [King James Version]. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 1979 Convention against Torture 1/20/2011 The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) was signed in 1985 by twenty-five countries. It is noteworthy that the United States did not sign the CAT. The definition of torture, contained in the CAT (1985) is long, and it includes: "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining ... information or a confession, punishing ... intimidating or coercing ..., or for any reason" (Convention against Torture, 1985, part 1, art. 1, para. 1). The CAT applies to contemporary conflicts in the form of the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Torture has been an issue throughout the so-called War on Terror that is being fought on both of these fronts. Speaking of torture in an episode of Frontline, reported Jim Gilmore says, "It's not at Abu Ghraib anymore. It's all over Iraq. The infantry admits they're torturing people in their homes" (Kirk, 2005). By the time Gilmore makes this statement, Abu Ghraib is a U.S. prison, no longer an Iraqi prison. Similarly, "[r]eports from a lawyer for detainees currently being held at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp ... claim that rampant abuse has continued at Guantanamo and possibly other U.S. sites" (Swanson, 2009, para. 2). Reports of torture by Americans at U.S. facilities abroad are not only troubling, they are also reports of violations of the CAT. According to Manfred Nowak (2006), "[o]n 26 June 2004, ... President Bush reaffirmed US commitment to worldwide elimination of torture" (para. 3). Based on that reaffirmation, the U.S. should apply the CAT to its overseas intelligence-gathering activities. Even though no signature for the United States appears on the Convention against Torture, as a member of the UN, the US should still be bound by the CAT. Americans who use or have used torture in current and recent conflicts should be held responsible for, and should be punished for, their actions. "No circumstance whatsoever, including war, the threat of war, internal political instability, public emergency, or an order from a superior officer or public authority, may be invoked as a justification for or defense to committing torture" (Nowak, 2006, para. 4). There are no excuses for committing torture. No one, even up to and including the president of the United States, should be exempt from reprisals for committing, or for causing to be committed, acts of torture. 188 A Journey Through My College Papers The abuses at Abu Ghraib and at Guantanamo Bay came to light, and torture at these locations was stopped. The Convention against Torture should be applied equally to all those who committed, caused to be committed, or knowingly allowed to be committed acts of torture. References: Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. (1985, February 4). Retrieved January 20, 2011, from http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html Kirk, M. (Writer, Director, & Producer). (2005, October 18). The torture question [Television series episode]. In Frontline. Boston: WGBH Educational Foundation. Retrieved January 20, 2011, from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/ Nowak, M.. (2006). What practices constitute torture?: US and UN standards. Human Rights Quarterly, 28(4), 809-841, 1094-1095. Retrieved January 20, 2011, from ProQuest database. Swanson, D.. (2009). Torture probe: Who's being protected under the searing bright light? The Humanist, 69(4), 16-18. Retrieved January 20, 2011, from ProQuest database. Responsibility to a Broader Humanity January 24, 2011 In this modern world, where people around the globe communicate with each other via text messages and electronic social networks, it is easy to forget that we are each a part of a living, breathing humanity. It is a strange paradox that, as we become able to interact with more people in more places than ever before, we simultaneously become more isolated from real human contact. This is a dangerous situation for our shared future. While “there is a real sense that the world is rapidly growing smaller” (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 8), there is also the very real fact that the world’s resources are diminishing. Thomas Malthus believed that “human ingenuity would run up against the Earth’s limits to produce” (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 390). That time appears to be approaching. As members of the human community, each of us has a responsibility to a broader humanity. Each of us makes an impact on the world around us. Each of our actions affects other people beyond us. “[E]very action you take, every decision you make, no matter how small and seemingly inconsequential, has a ripple affect [sic] that goes immediately beyond you to those around you … and then beyond to those around those around you … until it impacts everyone on earth for all time” (Carroll, 2010, para. 1). As each of us impacts a broader humanity, so each of us must be responsible to a broader humanity. “[I]t is essential that people are engaged at a deeper level” (Reynolds, 2010, para. 38). When a person is connected to the world only through his or her iPhone, or only through status messages and news feed messages on Facebook, then he or she is not likely to be deeply engaged with the world. It becomes easy to become strongly consumerist in our actions, and it becomes easy to forget “how simple individual actions could make a difference to the environment” (Reynolds, 2010, para. 18). It is important for each of us, as a member of the human community, to promote “the global consciousness needed to support human rights and ecological sustainability” (Andrzejewski & Alessio, 1999, para. 1). Each of us has a personal responsibility for ecological sustainability. If we do not conserve the resources of our planet, then it will not take long for the human community to be homeless and bereft. “[T]he environment … should … be even more broadly as a human security issue” (Viotti & Kauppi, 2009, p. 374). If humanity uses up the world’s resources, then there will be nothing left, but if humans individually and collectively take responsibility for the world’s Undergraduate Series 189 resources, then humanity may have a home for a very long time. “When people pursue their passions and interests, their capacity to impact the world with their effort is endless” (Carroll, 2010, para. 5). We must each become passionate about caring for the world in which we all live. We must each take a sincere interest in “the needs of fellow human beings” (Wharton, 2002, para. 3). As members of the human community, we each need to choose “a life of active engagement to make a difference in the lives of others” (Chickering & Braskamp, 2009, para. 6). When we do this, then we will be able to develop habits, plans, programs, and technologies that will increase humanity’s ecological sustainability on the planet. “Since the beginning of recorded time, communities have been grounded in family, tribe, and place” (Chickering & Braskamp, 2009, para. 7). The human community is unique in that it encompasses every family, every tribe, and every place. Together, we are all one family, sharing “responsibility in a common world” (Wharton, 2002, para. 5). We cannot afford, in this evershrinking world, to allow differences of color, language, spiritual belief, or political ideology to stand in the way of caring for our shared human family, or for our shared home planet. “All humankind on the globe is presumed to be our brother – and sister – for whom we have a human responsibility” (Wharton, 2002, para. 27). Because of our shared human history, and because of our shared human destiny, we must “live our lives and actively participate in creating a safer, more humane, sustainable world” (Andrzejewski & Alessio, 1999, para. 2). Along with our responsibility for ecological sustainability, as members of the human community we each have an obligation to society. “Who is responsible for maximizing the ‘common good?’” (Wharton, 2002, para. 13). Because our “choices and decisions are rippling out into the universe” (Carroll, 2010, para. 6), we are responsible – individually, severally, and collectively – for the common good. It is important for each of us to recognize, and to understand, his or her unique and irreplaceable role in the promotion of the common good. In order to do this, we must each make a genuine, personal connection to the human community. We must recognize and remember the human element in each of our daily interactions – from greeting one’s child, one’s significant other, one’s neighbors, and one’s coworkers, to sending and receiving text messages on one’s hand-held device, to sending and receiving emails, instant messages, and even electronic “pokes” on the Internet. Whether we see the faces behind the words or not, we must remember that a real human being is directly involved with each of these interactions, whether the interactions are vitally important or largely trivial. This consciousness and acknowledgment of the humans with whom each of us interacts is crucial because “persons with a civic and moral identity and sense of obligation to society are more apt to behave in ways that fulfill individual and social responsible goals” (Chickering & Braskamp, 2009, para. 4). It is critical, as well, because we must each learn to value the members of our human community in ways not unlike the ways in which we value the members of the local communities with which we each identify. “[P]eople are more motivated to engage in behaviour change – particularly more difficult behaviour change – when they are led to do so through an expression of what they value intrinsically – their friendships, their communities, the places they live, or their own sense of selfdevelopment” (Reynolds, 2010, para. 39). When we value the members of our human community, then we are more likely to change our behavior in ways that reflect our shared responsibility to a broader humanity. In Great Britain, the “Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has its own Environmental Behaviours Unit, whose remit is to ‘protect and improve the environment by increasing the contribution from individual and community action’” (Reynolds, 2010, para. 7). This is a positive example of taking responsibility for a broader humanity. Individual action and community action are both ways in which we can fulfill our obligation to society. Through individual action, whether it is humanitarian action, ecological action, or other action, “every single person is changing the world in their way” (Carroll, 2010, para. 2). 190 A Journey Through My College Papers Individual actions do not have to be grandiose in order to make a difference in the world. Greeting each person whom each of us encounters during the day – even if only with a smile or with a nod – makes a positive difference in one’s own life, as well as in the lives of each of those other people. The emotional effect of the greeting, of the smile, or of the nod will ripple out until it touches people whom we have never even met; it will produce a salutary emotional response in each person whom we greet. Making the individual decision to put a beverage can or bottle into a recycling container, instead of into a trash can, makes an impact on the world. Not only does it conserve that resource, but it also encourages others who see that individual action to follow the example by putting their cans and bottles into the recycling container. Making the individual choice to keep a reusable mug at work or at school, and using the mug instead of using disposable paper or Styrofoam cups, makes a very similar impact on the world. When it comes to making individual choices, “doing something will always be better than doing nothing” (Reynolds, 2010, para. 37). There are those who do not agree that we have a responsibility to a broader community. They maintain that we have a responsibility only to ourselves. Some will allow that we have a limited responsibility, as well, to our immediate family and to our friends, but they do not go farther than that. “Americans, [Alexis de Tocqueville] wrote … [are] indifferent to the larger community … They form the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation and imagine that their whole destiny is in their own hands” (Purdy, 2009, para. 2). It is unfortunate that any persons should become so self-absorbed that they can become indifferent to the broader humanity of which they are a part. It is rather like a finger that believes that it is independent of the rest of the body. The finger still draws warmth and nourishment from the body’s circulatory system. It still takes its direction from the body’s nervous system. It is connected by bone, tendons, and ligaments to the body’s skeletal system. It is enclosed within the body’s skin. Such a finger deludes itself when it believes that it is independent of the rest of the body. In the same way, a person deludes himself or herself by believing that he or she is isolated from the broader humanity. Even a person who lives entirely alone in the wilderness, hunting and fishing for meat, farming and foraging for other foods, still impacts the world as it is, in turn, impacted by the world. His or her footprint on the world may be small, but it still exists. This person is affected by the rest of the world in the form of global warming, of air and water pollution, and even of light and noise pollution, imperceptible as these forces may seem to the individual. The “I look out for myself” (Benar, 2010, para. 9) way of thinking, described by Dr. David Katz, director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center, is dangerously shortsighted. While we must each look after one’s self, we cannot stop there. “Americans have embraced stronger forms of individuality and self-realization, and they have begun seeking out communities that help to fulfill these goals” (Purdy, 2009, para. 3). Seeking out communities is a good first step toward Americans reconnecting with their shared destiny with, and responsibility to, a broader humanity. Purdy (2009) goes on to write: “They enter community out of a sense of responsibility and a wish to be connected and make a difference beyond themselves” (para. 21). Recognizing one’s personal responsibility opens the door for accepting one’s wider “responsibility for global welfare” (Wharton, 2002, para. 27). Simple individualism is not the whole of the problem with people’s perceptions of their responsibility to a broader humanity. Wharton (2002) writes that “there are genuine reasons for concern about the darker side of globalization” (para. 7). As the world grows smaller, and as populations continue to grow, it becomes increasingly difficult for people to avoid interacting with other people who are racially or ethnically different from themselves. “Cultural division could present a serious barrier to ambitious initiatives” (Purdy, 2009, para. 12) in the promotion of global ecological sustainability and for the promotion of humanitarian actions. It is necessary to educate people all over the world about their responsibility to a broader humanity, and to Undergraduate Series 191 encourage them to set aside or to accept the differences between and among them. “Creating experiences of shared effort … can affect participants’ attitudes beyond those experiences and make them open to broader visions of national community” (Purdy, 2009, para. 13). Shared experiences can help individuals to feel connected to the broader humanity. Such experiences can help individuals to see past personal and cultural differences to the deeper, shared similarities throughout humanity. “There are things that people simply will not do for others with whom they have only a weak feeling of common fate” (Purdy, 2009, para. 12). However, when people begin to form relationships with others, and to feel a common bond among them, then they will be willing to embrace a responsibility to a broader humanity. It is clear that “we must be responsible for how we are contributing to the world” (Carroll, 2010, para. 7). When we adopt “a simple pro-environmental behaviour, we then come to see ourselves as ‘the type of person who does things to help the environment’, and may be more likely to engage in other similar behaviours” (Reynolds, 2010, para. 35). Becoming active in the human community is a positive response to the world in which we live. When we take responsibility for a broader humanity than that which we see around us each day, then we can see “the broader landscape on which [we] can help bring peoples of the world together” (Wharton, 2002, para. 2). Education looms large on that broader landscape in “defining global citizenship as knowledge and skills for social and environmental justice” (Andrzejewski & Alessio, 1999, para. 19). Education must begin with the individual, and then expand to communities, to nations, and to the world. “[E]ducation can prepare students to become socially responsible global citizens” (Andrzejewski & Alessio, 1999, para. 13). More than a decade after the publication of this statement, American schools are preparing students to take their places as global citizens. This past fall, my younger son, who is in fourth grade, was assigned to do a project in which he collected post cards from around the United States, and from around the world. Each person who sent a postcard to the students in my son’s class was asked to write a paragraph or two about where he or she lived. My son collected cards from several American states, and also from England, from Germany, from Kenya, from New Zealand, and from Australia. A card that was sent from Dubai, UAE, never arrived, and the class talked about how the postal system in that region is different from the U.S. postal system. Other students in my son’s class had cards from Central and South America, from other countries in Europe and Africa, and from the Far East in Asia. The students took a virtual tour of the places whence their cards originated, utilizing Google Earth on the Internet. This project engaged the students’ interest and imagination, and it helped to “educat[e] students to be citizens of a global society” (Chickering & Braskamp, 2009, para. 1). While “education at all levels has a responsibility to prepare global citizens to address the problems of the world” (Andrzejewski & Alessio, 1999, para. 8), the main focus of global education in the United States appears to be in colleges and universities. One of the four essential learning outcomes of a liberal education advocated by the Association of American Colleges and Universities is for students to develop a sense of personal and social responsibility. Through its Core Commitments initiative, AAC&U (2007) is working with colleges and universities to make this goal a central part of a movement in higher education to change the way we can think and educate our young people for the twenty-first century. (Chickering & Braskamp, 2009, para. 1) Developing a sense of personal responsibility is the first step toward developing any broader responsibility. Although this is a stated goal of the AAC&U, it actually begins with much younger students. Children in preschool and in kindergarten begin learning personal responsibility from the moment when they first enter a classroom. By the time these students reach college, they should each already have a strong, well-defined sense of personal responsibility. At the college level, each student’s sense of personal responsibility should be supported and reinforced. If a 192 A Journey Through My College Papers student does arrive at college without this sense, then it is certainly reasonable for the college to help him or her to develop it. The college’s larger function should be to help the student to expand his or her sense of personal responsibility into a sense of social responsibility, and then to a sense of global responsibility. “The traditional-aged college student needs to develop and internalize a global perspective into her thinking, sense of identity, and relationships with others” (Chickering & Braskamp, 2009, para. 2). Many non-traditional-aged college students will already have developed strong senses of identity, but students of all ages will benefit from gaining a global perspective of social, cultural, religious, political, and other issues. Students, particularly traditional-aged students, have great potential to reach out into the world, and to see how the ripples of their individual actions and decisions affect the world and their relationship in it. Each of us, regardless of age, race, religion, nationality, or any other divisive factor, has a responsibility, as a member of the human community, to a broader humanity. Each action that any one of us takes, and each decision that any one of us makes, ripples far beyond the individual to affect the world, and to affect all of humanity. We are each responsible for ensuring the ecological sustainability of this planet, so that the human community will continue to have a home. Our education systems can help each of us to develop a broader sense of personal and social responsibility to help us to become responsible global citizens. We are each a member of the human family, and of the human community, and we are each and all responsible to a broader humanity. References Andrzejewski, J., & Alessio, J.. (1999). Education for global citizenship and social responsibility. Progressive Perspectives: 1998-99 Monograph Series [Electronic version.], 1(2). Retrieved January 10, 2011, from http://www.uvm.edu/~dewey/monographs/glomono.html Benar, N.. (2010, July 13). Unites States shifts focus to food marketing in battle to reduce childhood obesity. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 182(10), E459-60. Retrieved January 10, 2011, from ProQuest database. Carroll, G.. (2010, October 2). The butterfly effect: Personal power and global responsibility. Retrieved January 10, 2011, from http://proactiveblackparenting.blogspot.com/2010/10/butterfly-effect-personal-powerand.html Chickering, A., & Braskamp, L.A.. (2009). Developing a global perspective for personal and social responsibility. Peer Review, 11(4), 27-30. Retrieved January 10, 2011, from ProQuest database. Purdy, J.. (2009). Community. Democracy, (11), 16-22. Retrieved January 10, 2011, from ProQuest database. Reynolds, L.. (2010, January). The sum of the parts: Can we really reduce carbon emissions through individual behaviour change? Perspectives in Public Health, 130(1), 41-46. Retrieved January 10, 2011, from ProQuest database. Viotti, P.R., & Kauppi, M.V. (2009). International relations and world politics: Security, economy, identity (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Wharton, C.R.. (2002), April 4). Responsibility in a modern world: My brother’s keeper? Retrieved January 10, 2011, from http://www.kon.org/archives/forum/14-1/wharton.htm Undergraduate Series 193 Spring Semester, 2011 PSY 104: Child and Adolescent Development Experiential Learning 1/27/2011 During my freshman year of college, I participated in ten hours of clinical teaching experiential learning as a member of the Future Teachers Club. Each Friday for ten weeks, I spent one hour in Mr. Taylor's third grade classroom at East Richland Elementary School. I worked one-on-one with various students, listening to them read aloud and helping them improve their reading fluency. On three occasions, when there were substitute teachers in the class, I did the morning attendance and exercises with the students. This experiential learning benefited me as I prepared for a teaching career. Helping the substitute teachers was the most useful thing for me, as I was very nervous about being in charge of a classroom. When Mr. Taylor was in the room, I was a helper, but I was not in charge; when there was a substitute, I was in charge for that hour. Another way in which this experiential learning helped me was in narrowing down the area of education in which I want to work. Before I had this experience, I thought that I wanted to teach early elementary grades. By the time I completed my ten weeks, I had realized that I would prefer to teach adult learners. During the time when I was working with the third grade class, I was also tutoring remedial college classes, and I was assisting in the GED class at my college. This experience helped me to realize that I love to teach adult, or non-traditional-aged, students. The nontraditional-aged students in the remedial classes were my favorite students. I found it difficult to work with the GED students, most of whom were there because of court requirements of one kind or another, and did not really want to be there. Many of the traditional-aged students in nonremedial classes were unwilling to take tutoring seriously. The non-traditional-aged students who were there voluntarily were a joy to work with because they wanted to learn, and because they worked hard to improve their grades. Experiential learning helped me to understand myself better as I learned to do the job that I hope will be my future career. I found out what methods worked best for my students in ways that I never could have learned by sitting in a lecture hall. Theoretical Perspectives: Cognitive 1/27/2011 The cognitive perspective is the "[v]iew that thought processes are central to development" (Papalia, Olds, Feldman, 2008, p. 33). It is largely based on the theories of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky. Piaget and Vygotsky had different ideas about how children's thought processes develop. Piaget believed that cognitive development occurs in a series of stages, which he identified as "organization, adaptation, and equilibration" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 34). Vygotsky believed that children "learn through social interaction" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 34). Vygotsky's theory also included stages, of a sort: the "zone of proximal development (ZPD), the gap between what [children] are already able to do and what they are not quite ready to do by themselves" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 35). 194 A Journey Through My College Papers Whether children's thinking develops in clearly defined stages, or whether it develops through a series of ZPDs, children achieve psychosocial development as they achieve cognitive development. How a child thinks will change as the child moves from infancy through toddlerhood, early elementary age, upper elementary age, and adolescence, to young adulthood. If a child's thought processes do not develop and mature, then the child's psychosocial development will be similarly retarded. An example of cognitive development comes from my two sons:  When they were infants, if they needed a bottle, a diaper, a blanket, or some cuddling, then they would cry, and they would expect to just get what they needed.  When they were toddlers, they learned that there were other things that they wanted, but they did not yet know the difference between want and need. They learned that they had to use words to identify the items that they wanted, or I would not give the items to them.  When my boys reached the early elementary age, they learned that some of the things that they wanted could be had just by asking me for them. These were called needs. Other things could be had in exchange for good behavior, and sometimes these things could not be had. These were called wants. They learned that they had to ask for things by using full sentences that started or ended with "please," and that they had to say "thank you" after receiving anything or they would receive fewer of their wants in the future.  My sons are now in the upper elementary age group. For the last year, they have had to perform chores in order to earn money that they can spend on their wants. Each chore has a set monetary value, and they have learned that they can earn more by doing the harder chores than by doing the easier ones. They have savings accounts, and they keep track of their own funds. They are learning to evaluate the relative importance of the things that they want, and to adjust their savings and spending to get what they want the most. They are learning to control impulses, and to spend deliberately, instead of frivolously. Their cognitive responses to needs, wants, and money have developed as they have moved through various stages of physical development. Their development has reflected Vygotsky's ZPDs more than Piaget's stages of development. References: Papalia, D. E., Olds, W.S., Feldman, D.R. (2008). A child’s world: infancy through adolescence (11th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill. Child Development 1/27/2011 The three most important influences in child development are "heredity ... environment ... [and] maturation" (Papalia, Olds, Feldman, 2008, p. 12). Heredity deals with what is passed genetically from a child's biological parents. A child my be genetically predisposed to specific personality traits and behavior traits that are independent of how he or she is taught to behave. Environment deals with everything in a child's "world outside the self" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 12). This includes not only the physical place where a child grows up, but also the relationships, behaviors, and life examples of the people who are around the child. Culture and ethnicity affect a child's environment, as do family composition, socioeconomic condition of the family, and the geopolitical issues of where the child lives. Environment also includes nongenetic, inborn traits, such as fetal alcohol syndrome or health problems, associated with the mother's nutritional issues or use of/exposure to substances during pregnancy. Premature birth can Undergraduate Series 195 also result in problems that would be considered environmental, such as breathing problems, because the problems would be caused by forces outside the child's self. Maturation is "the unfolding of a universal, natural sequence of physical changes and behavior patterns" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 12). Hereditary and environmental influences can affect the rate at which a child experiences these changes. Maturation includes normative and nonnormative influences. Normative influences "are highly similar for people in a particular age group" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 16). Normative maturation events are what is usual or average for children at particular ages, and they include both biological and social events in a child's development. Nonnormative maturation events are those that affect individuals, rather than generally affecting groups. They may be ordinary events that take place at unusual times in a child's life, or they may be unusual events -- both positive and negative, emotionally -- that happen in a child's life and causes stresses that influence the child's development. References: Papalia, D. E., Olds, W.S., Feldman, D.R. (2008). A child’s world: infancy through adolescence (11th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill. Early Child Care 2/3/2011 Parental employment and early child care have a psychological effect on many individuals today. Based on the information in the text and other resources, how might this impact the children in our society? Respond to at least two of your fellow students’ postings. The effects of parental employment on preschool-aged children varies according to several factors. In more affluent or better educated families, "children whose mothers worked full-time in their 1st year after giving birth were more likely to show negative cognitive and behavioral outcomes at ages 3 to 8 than children whose mothers worked part-time or not at all during their 1st year" (Papalia, Olds, Feldman, 2008, p. 240). This is largely because "children derive their sense of self-esteem by the quality and quantity of direct care provided by their parents" (Direnfeld, 2008, para. 3). Children at this socioeconomic level have better self-esteem and self-image when they spend most of their waking hours with at least one of their parents. These children tend to be more confident, and to experience fewer behavioral problems, than their peers who are cared for outside the home. Another view is that "children are given positive role models when both parents work" (Working parents, 2002, para. 3). In this case, it is important for the children not only to see that the parents work on a regular basis, but also to "understand that you are working for them" (Working parents, 2002, para. 6). In low-income families, children "tend to benefit academically from the more favorable environment a working mother's income can provide" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 240). Children in low-income families, in my personal experience, are aware that their lives are better overall when their parents work to provide for them. For these children, for whom parental contact is necessarily limited, "time together must include opportunity for pleasurable activity and engagement between parent and child" (Direnfeld, 2008, para. 7). Just being present with the child is not enough; "stimulating interactions with responsive adults are crucial to early cognitive, linguistic, and psychosocial development" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 241). Although interactions with fathers is important for children, the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), reports that "[t]he quality of interactions between mothers and children was more important for children's 196 A Journey Through My College Papers development that [sic] the quality of the childcare" (Arnst, 2006, para. 10). With many lowincome families being single-mother families, this is particularly important. Despite the need to work and to care for the home and the child, a mother also needs to make time for meaningful activities with her child. In all groups, children "who spent 30 or more hours in child care each week showed somewhat more problem behavior ... and had more episodes of minor illness than children who spent fewer hours in child care each week" (Arnst, 2006, para. 8). This suggests that a child being placed in child care while the parents work has a negative effect on the child's behavior and on his or her health. A study by NICHD reports that "the more time a young child spends in nonmaternal care, the greater the risk of problem behavior" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 243). In contrast, children who are placed in child care "tended to have stronger cognitive and language skills ... than children who had spent little or no time in center care" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 242). It is necessary, then, to weigh several factors when deciding how parental employment affects child development. In low-income families, the improved living provided by parental employment appears to outweigh the negative effects on a child from being placed in child care. In other situations, a child's behavior and general health are negatively influenced by the child being placed in child care while the parents work, but the child's cognitive, language, and other learning skills are improved by spending time in child care. Whether or not a parent works, it is the parent who most strongly affects a child, by the parent's choices regarding employment and child care, and also by the parent providing "well organized routines, books, and play materials" (Arnst, 2006, para. 6) for the child. References: Arnst, C.. (2006, October 3). New study: It's the family, not the care. Retrieved February 3, 2011, from http://www.businessweek.com/careers/workingparents/blog/archives/2006/10/new_ study_its_t_1.html Direnfeld, G.. (2008, September 12). Working parents and child development. Retrieved February 3, 2011, from http://www.boloji.com/parenting/02340.htm Papalia, D. E., Olds, W.S., Feldman, D.R. (2008). A child’s world: infancy through adolescence (11th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill. Working parents and child development: The two income family is alive and well, but are they healthy?. (2002). Retrieved February 3, 2011, from http://www.essortment.com/all/workingparents_pio.htm Infant Mortality 2/3/2011 The major factors in infant mortality are "preterm delivery ... sepsis or pneumonia ... asphyxiation at birth ... [b]irth defects ... sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), maternal complications of pregnancy, and unintentional injuries" (Papalia, Olds, Feldman, 2008, p. 165). Preterm delivery, or premature birth, can result in infant mortality because the baby is not fully developed. "Preterm birth accounts for nearly half of all neurological birth defects, such as cerebral palsy, and more than two-thirds of infant deaths" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 128). If the heart, lungs, or other major systems are not fully developed, then the child may experience "[a]noxia or hypoxia ... [resulting in] permanent brain damage, causing mental retardation, behavior problems, or even death" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 123). In many cases, modern medical technology can prevent infant mortality from preterm delivery in developed countries. Undergraduate Series 197 Sepsis and pneumonia are among the "primary causes of neonatal death worldwide" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 165), as is asphyxiation at birth, but neither of these is a primary cause in the United States. With appropriate medical care, many cases of sepsis and of pneumonia can be cured. Birth defects are often caused by genetic factors or by prenatal exposure to various substances or prenatal injury. Birth defects include "such rare genetic conditions as PKU [phenylketonuria] ..., congenital hypothyroidism ..., galactosemia ..., and other, even rarer, biochemical disorders" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 125). "Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), ... is the sudden death of an infant under age 1 year in which the cause of death remains unexplained after a thorough investigation that includes an autopsy" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 167). There are a number of factors that are believed to contribute to SIDS, including an "underlying biological defect ... a delay in maturation of the neural network that is responsible for arousal from sleep in the presence of life-threatening conditions ..., a disturbance in the brain mechanism that regulates breathing ..., or a genetic factor" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 167). In addition, there is believed to be "a relationship between SIDS and sleeping on the stomach" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 167). Maternal complications during pregnancy can include drug or alcohol use, gestational diabetes, and illnesses or injuries during pregnancy. "Early, high-quality prenatal care, which includes educational, social, and nutritional services, can help prevent maternal or infant death and other birth complications" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 108). This is one of the most preventable causes of infant mortality, since the mother can take measures before conception and during pregnancy to ensure the health of her baby. Unintentional injuries include "falls ... ingesting harmful substances ... and by burns" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 168). Unfortunately, some infant deaths are homicides, not unintentional. Like maternal complications, injuries are often preventable. References: Papalia, D. E., Olds, W.S., Feldman, D.R. (2008). A child’s world: infancy through adolescence (11th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill. Infant and Toddler Nutrition February 7, 2011 The quality of nutrition in an infant’s or a toddler’s first months of life is critical for the child’s development and future health. Infant nutrition actually begins in utero with the quality of the expectant mother’s nutrition. “Undernutrition is the … cause of over a third … of all child deaths … [, and] [a]fter age 2 years, undernutrition will have caused irreversible damage for future development towards adulthood” (Horton, 2008, para. 3). It is generally accepted that, after ensuring a mother’s prenatal nutrition, the key to good nutrition for an infant is the consumption of human breast milk, preferably by means of nursing. Infant nutrition works in concert with genetic factors and other environmental factors to determine how a child will grow and develop. Children who are “well-nourished … grow taller and heavier than less well-nourished … children” (Papalia, Olds, Feldman, 2008, p. 145). This is actually true only to an extent, as poorly-nourished children are often prone to obesity as a result of the high quantities of sugar and fat in their diets. Healthy weight involves sturdy bones, strong muscles, and efficiently-functioning organs, not layers of fat. Mothers are strongly encouraged to breast-feed their infants. Breast-feeding should continue until the infant is at least six months old, and should continue through the child’s first 198 A Journey Through My College Papers year of life, if possible. Some infants, such as those who are born prematurely, are unable to nurse from their mothers, but human milk is still the best food for an infant. Breast milk can be expressed manually, or by using a specially designed milk pump, and can then be fed to the infant using a bottle. In the event that the mother is unable to produce sufficient milk to meet her infant’s nutritional needs, human milk can be supplemented with iron-fortified formula. A study by the Dunn Nutrition Center of Cambridge, England, reports that “infants fed mother’s milk with a formula supplement for four weeks postnatally had a significantly higher IQ at seven-and-a-half to eight years of age than those who received only formula” (Nutrition is key, 1994, para. 1). This fact clearly illustrates the importance of good nutrition in an infant’s cognitive development into early childhood. In addition to improving an infant’s future IQ, breast milk reduces a child’s risk for a number of health concerns, including “diarrhea, respiratory infections, otis media …, and staphylococcal, bacterial, and urinary tract infections” (Papalia, et. Al, 2008, p. 147). Breast feeding also reduces a child’s long-term risk of obesity, as the child learns to regulate his or her intake by nursing only until he or she is full, rather than trying to empty a bottle of formula. Mothers with transmittable diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, should not feed their breast milk to their infants, in order to protect the infants from infection. Some medications and medical treatments, including radiation, can also negatively affect an infant’s health, and mothers with these risk factors should not breast feed. The infant’s risk of contracting a disease, or of having an adverse reaction to substances in breast milk, must outweigh the usually-assumed developmental benefits of breast feeding. Infants and toddlers with good nutrition grow and develop at fairly predictable rates, and they have different nutritional requirements at each stage of development. “In the first two months of life, a baby should gain about an ounce a day” (Coila, 2010, para. 3). To achieve this, an infant should nurse every two to three hours. If the infant is fed formula instead of breast milk, he or she should take in about six ounces in that same time span. Infants and toddlers grow rapidly, and their food intake increases accordingly. Infants should not begin eating solid foods until six months of age, except on the advice of a physician. When a child does begin to eat solid foods, it is usual for the infant to start with an iron-fortified rice cereal, then to progress to puréed fruits and vegetables. When my two sons were infants, I was unable to produce breast milk for more than a few weeks after each delivery. Tommy, my elder son, had a negative reaction to milk-based formula, and he began to lose vitally important ounces due to a lack of nutrition. The pediatrician prescribed a soy-based formula, as well as a thin gelatin mixture that helped to ease his colic, and he began to thrive. By the time Tommy was four months old, the pediatrician had advised us to start feeding him rice cereal, as well as his formula. Tommy rejected jarred baby foods, and he ate mashed-up table food by six months of age. Robby, my younger son, suffered from gastroesophogeal reflux disease (GERD) from birth. He was unable to tolerate my milk because it was too thin to stay down after he ate. He had the same problem with regular formula, as well, and he lost precious ounces due to projectile vomiting. The pediatrician prescribed a special formula that was fortified with rice cereal, beginning before Robby was two months old. By the time Robby was four months old, he was eating jarred baby food with rice cereal mixed into it, along with his formula, and he was thriving. Like Tommy, Robby was eating table food, on the advice of his doctor, by age six months. My sons’ stories are not typical for American infants. However, they illustrate the fact that each child has unique nutritional needs, even though the norm is for infants to breast feed for at least one year, and to begin eating solid foods after six months of age. Nutrition is important for toddlers, as well as for infants. It is during the toddler years that children often learn poor eating habits, as it becomes easier to tempt a child with French fries Undergraduate Series 199 than to ensure that the child eats nutritious foods. Toddlers need to eat lean meats, whole grains, and fresh fruits and vegetables, just as their parents need to eat so. “By 19 to 24 months, French fries become the most commonly consumed vegetable” (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 148). Faulty nutritional decisions like the one that creates this statistic increase the probability that a child will be overweight, may develop diabetes or heart disease, and will have other nutrition-related health issues. Providing infants and young children with good nutrition takes effort on the part of parents and care-givers, but the healthy growth and development of a child is worth the effort. Whenever possible, an infant should have an exclusive diet of breast milk during the first six months of life, and should continue to consume breast milk at least until the child’s first birthday. Solid foods should be added to an infant’s diet after the first six months. Toddlers need to eat healthful foods to continue growing and developing well, even though it is often easier to give a toddler a less-healthful snack than to get the child to sit down to a sensible meal. Regardless of the age of a child – or of an adult – good nutrition is essential for good health and proper development. References Coila, B.. (2010, January 20). Infant nutrition & development. Retrieved February 7, 2011, from ProQuest database. Horton, R.. (208). Maternal and child undernutrition: An urgent opportunity. The Lancet, 371 (9608), 179. Retrieved February 7, 2011, from ProQuest database. Nutrition is key to intelligence – infant development. (1994). USA Today [Electronic version.]. Retrieved February 7, 2011, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_n2587_v122/ai_15173055/ Papalia, D. E., Olds, Wendkos S., Feldman, Duskin R. (2008). A child’s world: infancy through adolescence (11th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill. Parenting Styles 2/10/2011 The three main parenting styles are authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative. Most parents have a primary parenting style, but occasionally slip into one or the other of the other parenting styles. The authoritarian style is very strict and rigid. Children are expected to "conform rigidly" (Papalia, Olds, Feldman, 2008, p. 316) to rules and expectations, and are punished when they do not conform. Authoritarian parents tend to be less affectionate to and connected with their children, resulting in children who are often unhappy, and who have difficulty getting close to or trusting others. The permissive style is the polar opposite of the authoritarian style. Permissive parents tend to become more like friends to their children as they allow the children to make their own choices. They have few rules, and they seldom punish their children. While the children may benefit from a warm relationship with the parent, the lack of structure in the child's life causes a lack of maturity in the child. The authoritative parenting style falls between the authoritarian style and the permissive style. Authoritative parents tend to be loving and nurturing, and they encourage their children to develop into strong, confident, caring individuals. They also have rules and standards for their children, but they prefer to correct unacceptable behaviors through discipline, punishing only when necessary. Authoritative parents tend to produce "self-reliant, self-controlled, self-assertive, 200 A Journey Through My College Papers exploratory, and content" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, pp. 316-317) children who are accustomed to talking about their problems and reaching reasonable accommodations. An additional parenting style is the neglectful style. Neglectful parents "focus on their own needs rather than on those of the child" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 317). Parental neglect may be caused by depression or by another health issue, or by stress. Unfortunately, this parenting style is entirely too common, and it usually results in children having emotional and behavioral problems. In addition, neglectful parenting can cause nutrition and health problems in children, which can impair healthy development. Of all of the parenting styles, the one that seems to be best for children is the authoritative style. Under this style, children are taught stability and consistency, along with warmth, confidence, and communication. Children learn limits, in contrast with permissive homes, without learning to fear testing those limits, in contrast with authoritarian homes. Parents are neither too distant nor too indulgent in authoritative homes, but they are firmly supportive. In the authoritative home, the parents "set sensible expectations and realistic standards" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 317) for their children. References: Papalia, D. E., Olds, W.S., Feldman, D.R. (2008). A child’s world: infancy through adolescence (11th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill. Gender Information 2/10/2011 "A gender schema ... is a mentally organized network of information about gender that influences behavior" (Papalia, Olds, Feldman, 2008, p. 306). The types of information contained in a gender schema may include a child's knowledge of gender-associated interests and activities, gender-associated play, gender-associated dress, gender-associated roles in the family and in society, and cross-gender relationships with playmates. Gender schema theory "has shed light on how gender-schemic processing affects attention, organization, and memory of gender-related information" (Bussey & Bandura, 1999, p. 5). Children develop gender schemas from their observations of gender roles in the world around them. They watch how males dress, act, play, and talk; and they watch how females dress, act, play, and talk; then they categorize the various behaviors as "male" or "female" in their memories. Younger children have less-well-developed gender schemas than older children. Younger children will play cross-gendered games, and may wish to wear cross-gendered clothing. They will play with children of either gender. Older children will choose gender-indicated clothing. They will usually give up cross-gendered toys before they give up opposite gender friends. Boys are more likely to adopt rigid gender roles than are girls. "Social learning theory ... has also been used to explain gender-role stereotyping of occupations by children" (Helwig, 1998, para. 5). The social learning theory of Albert Bandura (1977) states that "from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action" (Cited in Cherry, 2011, para. 1). According to this theory, children can learn about gender-related behaviors and activities by observing how other people behave. Consequently, much that children learn under the social learning theory is heavily influenced by the child's culture. If a child observes that men go to work and that women stay at home with the children, then those gender roles will become part of the child's gender schema. Through observation of the behaviors modeled by the child's parents and other close adults, the child learns how each gender dresses, what interests are held by each Undergraduate Series 201 gender, in what activities each gender participates, and even what foods are preferred by each gender. What children learn about gender identity and gender schema influences how they will develop socially. Studies show that "children show, on average, significant sex differences: gender identity self-labeling, sex-of-playmate preference, toy and activity interests, roles in fantasy play, forms of social interactive behavior..., parental rehearsal play, and so on" (Fridell, Owen-Anderson, Johnson, Bradley, Zucker, 2006, p. 729). Children who choose clothing, toys, or activities that are commonly associated with the opposite sex will often experience ridicule and social ostracism, especially once they reach school age. Children who are secure in their gender identities tend to have better self-confidence, and they are better able to develop emotionally, than children who are unsure of gender roles, or who feel repressed by society's expectations of gender roles. The three ways in which information is processed, according to social cognitive (learning) theory, are modeling, enactive experience, and direct tuition. "Modeled activities convey the rules and structures embodied in the exemplars for generative behavior" (Bussey & Bandura, 1999, p. 16). For most children, the exemplars are their parents or guardians. Children learn by observing the behaviors modeled by their parents. In enactive experience, children learn gender behaviors "by observing the positive and negative consequences" (Bussey & Bandura, 1999, p. 20) of various gender-related behaviors. Children see not only how socially-acceptable behaviors are rewarded in society, but also how socially-unacceptable gender behaviors are punished in society. Positive consequences usually involve having friends and being included in activities. Negative consequences, which can have distinct negative impacts on psychosocial development, often include ridicule, humiliation, bullying, and social isolation. Direct tuition of gender ideas involves adults and older children telling children directly what is expected for gender-appropriate behavior. References: Bussey, K., & Bandura, A. (1999). Social cognitive theory of gender development and differentiation. Psychological Review, 106, 676-713. Retrieved February 10, 2011, from http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/Bandura1999PR.pdf Cherry, K. (2011). Social learning theory: An overview of Bandura's social learning theory. Retrieved February 10, 2011, from http://psychology.about.com/od/developmentalpsychology/a/sociallearning.htm Fridell, S.R., Owen-Anderson, A., Johnson, L.L., Bradley, S.J., Zucker, K.J. (2006). The playmate and play style preferences structured interview: A comparison of children with gender identity disorder and controls. Springer Science & Business Media, Inc., 35, 729-737. Retrieved February 10, 2011, from ProQuest database. Helwig, A.A. (1998). Gender-role stereotyping: Testing theory with a longitudinal sample. Sex Roles, 38 (5/6), 403-423. Retrieved February 10, 2011, from ProQuest database. Papalia, D. E., Olds, W.S., Feldman, D.R. (2008). A child’s world: infancy through adolescence (11th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill. Information Processing 2/10/2011 Young children do not process information the same way adults do. Young children often have difficulty understanding the concept of cause and effect, and they also have difficulty with the concept of time. Young children use symbols to represent ideas in their thinking, and 202 A Journey Through My College Papers they have difficulty extrapolating one idea into another. Most children work with concrete ideas, rather than with abstracts. They do not think linearly, as adults do, but they think in the here and now. Past and future exist for young children, but "tomorrow" might just as easily represent tomorrow, next week, or next year. Children learn a great deal through deferred imitation, which "is based on having kept a mental representation of an observed action" (Papalia, Olds, Feldman, 2008, p. 269). A child will play-act the things he or she has seen adults and older children doing, without necessarily understanding just what the adults and older children are doing, or why they are doing it. In place of cause and effect, young children use transduction to connect events that have a correlation with each other, such as being in the same place at the same time, without regard for whether or not there is causation between the events. Studies show that, even though children do not use cause and effect for reasoning, they are often able to "grasp cause and effect" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 271). Young children establish identities for objects and ideas by mentally organizing them into categories. Children tend to have difficulty with the idea that there can be exceptions in their categories. Culture can have an influence on how children categorize specific objects, depending on what they hear and observe of the beliefs of the people around them. Children are better able to relate to situations, and to answer questions and express ideas, within a familiar context. Asking a child an abstract question is not likely to be useful. As a child's experience grows, the child has a greater range of contexts on which to base his or her thinking. Very young children "hold mental representations of reality, which can sometimes be wrong" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 275). Children tend to be truthful by nature, but they learn to be less truthful as they get older. In a similar vein, children often have difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality. "Magical thinking in children age 3 and older does not seem to stem from confusion between fantasy and reality" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 277), and it is different from false beliefs or deceptions. Because of the different ways in which children process information, their early educational experiences should be designed to take these differences into account. Children should learn simple concepts at first, and should build upon those concepts as the children categorize new ideas and develop new contexts for connecting ideas. Instructions should be simple, and only one to three consecutive steps should be given at one time. References: Papalia, D. E., Olds, W.S., Feldman, D.R. (2008). A child’s world: infancy through adolescence (11th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill. Cognitive Development 2/17/2011 One approach to cognitive development in middle childhood is Jean Piaget's concrete operations, in which children "about age 7 ... can use mental operations to solve concrete (actual problems" (Papalia, Olds, Feldman, 2008, p. 351). Piaget's concrete operations stage addresses several aspects of cognitive development:  Spatial thinking  Cause and effect,  Categorization,  Seriation and transitive inference, Undergraduate Series 203  Inductive and deductive reasoning,  Conservation,  Numbers and mathematics. (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 351, table 13-1) Spatial thinking allows children to understand concepts such as maps and models, which represent real space in a condensed form. Children at this stage have a better grasp of relative distances, and of how to get from one place to another. They "can more easily remember the route and the landmarks along the way" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 352). This is an advance from the preoperational stage, where children might not realize that a thing that is out of sight still exists. A new understanding of cause and effect in the concrete operational stage allows children to judge how their actions affect the world around them. This awareness of cause and effect improves with a child's experience, and children at this stage are better able to remember what cause and effect relationships they have experienced, as well as to predict cause and effect relationships. Categorization includes seriation and transitive inference. Seriation is "arrang[ing] objects in a series according to one or more dimensions" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 352). In the concrete operational stage, children recognize groups of objects that can be arranged in series, and they are able to arrange the objects. Transitive inference is "the ability to infer a relationship between two objects from the relationship of each of them and a third object" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 352). For example, my sons like to help pack snacks in the morning. Last week, we had leftover pizza and bread sticks. Robby noticed that the bread sticks were too large for the snack bags that he had out. He also recognized that the pizza slices were larger than the bread sticks. He decided not to try to put the pizza in a snack bag, and instead got out sandwich bags, which he knew were larger than snack bags. The pizza fit in the sandwich bags. Without realizing it, he used transitive inference first to know that the pizza could not fit in the snack bag, and second to choose a bag that would hold the pizza. Piaget says that children in the concrete operational stage (ages 7-11) use only inductive reasoning, not deductive reasoning. At this stage, he expects children to make observations about members of a class, and to "draw general conclusions about the class as a whole" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 352). My personal experience with children in this age group agrees with the findings of Galotti, Komatsu, and Voelz (1997), who discovered that "second graders ... were able to answer both [inductive and deductive] problems correctly" (Cited in Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 353). Children at the concrete operational stage have a better grasp of conservation than preoperational children. They are able to understand the concepts of identity, reversibility, and decentration. They think in two dimensions, while pre-operational children think in just one dimension. Children in the concrete operational stage have a better grasp of numbers and mathematics than have children in the pre-operational stage. As with many cognitive functions, "children learn to add and subtract through concrete experience in a cultural context" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 353). In a family of four, a child may have the daily task of setting the table for dinner. The child knows to put out four plates each evening. When the child's grandparents are coming to dinner, he or she is able to figure out that six plates are needed. In my home, we use a chore chart for my sons to earn money. Robby, who is 9, knows that if he washes the dishes every day for a week, then he will earn $5.25. However, if he is asked to multiply 75 by 7 on a math test, then he is at a loss. He knows that he earns twice as much for mopping the kitchen as he earns for sweeping the kitchen, but 5 0 divided by 2 or 25 times 2 will confuse him. "[T]eaching math through concrete applications may be more effective than teaching abstract rules" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 354). 204 A Journey Through My College Papers I think Piaget has a lot of it right for this age group. There will always be exceptions who exceed expectations or who develop more slowly than others, but concrete operations works for the majority of children aged 7 to 11 years. References: Papalia, D. E., Olds, W.S., Feldman, D.R. (2008). A child’s world: infancy through adolescence (11th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill. Psychosocial Development 2/17/2011 Two of the primary relationships in psychosocial development in middle childhood are sibling relationships and friendships. Both of these relationships are peer-oriented, rather than oriented on an authority figure and a subordinate, such as relationships with parents, care givers, teachers, etc.. Siblings are usually children born to the same parents, but they may also include halfsiblings, step-siblings, and foster-siblings. "Siblings influence each other, not only directly, through their own interactions, but also indirectly through their impact on each other's relationship with the parents" (Papalia, Olds, Feldman, 2008, p. 397). In my experience, siblings squabble, bicker, and even get into physical fights with each other, but they will present a united front if anyone outside the sibling group tries to interfere with any of the siblings. Siblings tattle on each other to try to improve their own standing with the parents by making their siblings look bad, but they keep each other's secrets to keep their siblings out of trouble in situations that they deem to be important. Sibling relationships reflect the parents' relationship, and also the parent-child relationship. "[W]hen the parent-child relationship was warm and affectionate, siblings tended to have positive relationships as well. When the parent-child relationship was conflictual, sibling conflict was more likely" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 397). Often, older siblings have some degree of responsibility for teaching and for safeguarding younger siblings. In my experience, while a preschool-aged child mat be threatened by the birth of a new sibling, children in middle childhood will often be possessive and protective toward the new sibling. My sons, who are 9 and 10, squabble almost constantly, but they are warmly solicitous toward their 4-year-old half-sister and toward their 3-year-old half-brother, and they have been so toward them since the little ones were born. When the boys visit their father, much of their time is occupied with tending to the little ones. Friendship usually occurs between two children who are similar in age and who have similar interests. By middle childhood, most friendships will be between same-gender children. "With their friends, children learn to communicate and cooperate" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 399). A child's self-image at once affects and is affected by his or her ability to make and keep close friendships. A child with a positive self-image will usually have an easier time making friends than will have a child with a negative self-image. Even generally unpopular children are able to form friendships, "but they have fewer friends than popular children and tend to find friends among younger children, other unpopular children, or children in a different class or a different school" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 399). Through friendships, children learn how to resolve differences and how to be sensitive to each other's needs. They tend to stand by their friends, even to the point of forming cliques. Children's friendships change as they mature, though they may still have the same friends in redefined relationships. Sometimes, when a child has reached the level of intimate, mutually shared relationships, two friends may become emotionally akin to siblings. I see this happening with my elder son, Tommy, and his best friend, Kyle. Unlike his Undergraduate Series 205 brother, who makes friends with almost anyone, Tommy has always had trouble forming friendships. Tommy met Kyle when we moved to Michigan almost two years ago, and they have been inseparable since they met. At ten years old, there is only a week of difference between them, and they are firmly in Selman's third stage of friendship. "School-age girls care less about having many friends than about having a few close friends they can rely on. Boys have more friendships, but they tend to be less intimate and affectionate" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 401). Boys and girls who form friendships with each other during middle childhood do so rather tentatively, in most cases, because friends of both genders are likely to tease them about having a romantic involvement. A mixed-gender group of three friends is less likely to face this difficulty. Since being teased in this way often leads to embarrassment and to a reduced self-image, many children avoid cross-gender friendships. References: Papalia, D. E., Olds, W.S., Feldman, D.R. (2008). A child’s world: infancy through adolescence (11th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill. Psychotherapy 2/17/2011 Three forms of child psychotherapy that my own children receive are individual psychotherapy, play therapy, and drug therapy. Because of my personal experience of these forms, they are the forms that I will discuss. "In individual psychotherapy, a therapist sees a child one-on-one, to help the child gain insights into his or her personality and relationships and to interpret feelings and behavior" (Papalia, Olds, Feldman, 2008, p. 407). In reality, in order to avoid accusations of inappropriate behavior being made against the therapist, individual therapy for children is no longer truly private between the therapist and the child. A parent or other responsible adult must be present during each session. As a result, I am present for my sons' sessions, and I have come to believe that the lack of true privacy and confidentiality impairs a child's ability to speak openly and honestly with a therapist. Still, the goal in individual therapy is for the therapist to listen to the child, guiding the session with questions that cause the child to work through his or her issues to try to find solutions. "Listening to the child is essential" (Hartmann, 2008, para. 6). This form of psychotherapy requires a great deal of trust between the child and the therapist so that the child feels comfortable expressing thoughts, feelings, memories, and ideas. In the new setting, it is important for the witnessing parent to always remember -- and to remind the child before and after every session -- that nothing the child says in a therapy session is ever subject to punitive action by the parent. Sadly, "psychological services for youths may not lead to significant symptom reduction" (Ash & Weis, 2009, p. 400). This is very frustrating for parents and children alike. Frequent sessions may keep symptoms to a minimum, but it is rare that symptoms are ever truly resolved. Both of my sons have PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) caused by experiences with their father and his family. In addition, Tommy has high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome, and Robby has moderate ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). Weekly sessions with their therapist help keep their symptoms under control, but if they miss a week due to illness, holidays, etc., then they almost have to start over the following week. "In play therapy, a child plays freely while a therapist occasionally comments, asks questions, or makes suggestions" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 408). The therapist usually provides several toys or sets of toys from which the child may choose. When Tommy was 15 months old, and already exhibiting symptoms of Asperger's, he was not yet verbal, so the therapist used play 206 A Journey Through My College Papers therapy. He was offered a box of toy cars and a bag of toy dishes. Sometimes he chose the cars, and other times he chose the dishes. The therapist took copious notes of what he chose and of how he played. He almost invariably sorted toys by size and by color, even at that age. He made precisely straight lines of cars of each color, and he was upset if his sorting was disrupted. From the way Tommy played, the therapist was able to make deductions about his thought processes, and to help us to cope with his condition. Today, the boys' therapist uses play therapy in concert with individual therapy. They assemble puzzles, build with blocks, and play with clay. The play provides a distraction that helps the boys to verbalize more freely. Freud stated that "play involves suspension of reality in the service of reworking unpleasant experiences" (Levy, 2008, p. 282). A well-trained child psychologist can observe a child's play and understand what the child is thinking or feeling subconsciously, but "[m]any child therapists find it difficult to understand and respond therapeutically within the frame of play" (Levy, 2008, p. 281). "The use of drug therapy ... to treat childhood emotional disorders is controversial" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 408). Drug therapy is almost always in conjunction with individual therapy. The most common condition that is treated with drug therapy for children is ADHD. "Although stimulant medication is quite effective for the majority of children with ADHD, up to 42 percent do not respond as intended ... and some show increased behavior problems" (Doggett, 2004, p. 74). There is a wide range of "stimulants ... [,] anti-depressants, selective serotoninreuptake inhibitors ..., anti-hypertensive drugs, [and] anti-seizure medication" (Doggett, 2004, p. 74). Different children respond well to different drugs or combinations of drugs. The intent of drug therapy is to control a child's behavior and to help a child focus. Children with ADHD who do not take medication tend to have difficulties at school because they have poor impulse control, excessive energy that is inadequately directed, and difficulty focusing. Although drug therapy is the preferred treatment for children with ADHD and related disorders, "the effects of antidepressant medication are weaker in children than in adults" (Conner, 2006, para. 1). References: Ash, S.E., & Weis, R. (2009). Recovery among youths referred to outpatient psychotherapy: Reliable change, clinical significance, and predictors of outcome. Child &Adolescent Social Work Journal, 26(5), 399-414. Retrieved February 17, 2011, from ProQuest database. Conner, M. G. (2006). When are antidepressants better than psychotherapy? Retrieved February 17, 2011, from http://www.oregoncounseling.org/ArticlesPapers/Documents/TherapyVsRx.htm Doggett, A.M. (2004). ADHD and drug therapy: Is is still a valid treatment? Journal of Child Health Care, 8(1), 69-81. Retrieved February 17, 2011, from http://scottsdale.brainadvantage.com/PDF/ADHD%20and%20drug%20therapy.pdf Hartmann, L. (2008). Magical moments of change: How psychotherapy turns kids around. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 165(5), 655. Retrieved February 17, 2011, from ProQuest database. Levy, A.J. (2008). The therapeutic action of play in the psychodynamic treatment of children: A critical analysis. Clinical Social Work Journal, 36(3), 281-292. Retrieved February 17, 2011, from ProQuest database. Papalia, D. E., Olds, W.S., Feldman, D.R. (2008). A child’s world: infancy through adolescence (11th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill. Undergraduate Series 207 Key Learning 2/24/2011 Infant mortality has several varied causes, including delivery before the pregnancy reaches full term, illnesses such as sepsis and pneumonia, birth defects resulting from genetic anomalies or from fetal trauma, sudden infant death syndrome, complications experienced by the mother during pregnancy, unintentional injuries that occur after birth, and intentional injuries resulting in unintentional death or intentional homicide. Most causes of infant mortality can be prevented by good prenatal care, by good neonatal medical care, and by attentive care by the parents or by the primary caregiver. Article Review 2/24/2011 In a local magazine on children and child development, Metro Parent, Dolly Moiseeff (2010) explains why sibling rivalry occurs, and how parents can reduce episodes of sibling rivalry. Sibling rivalry includes any competition, bickering, or fighting between siblings. It is usually a sign that one sibling is trying to place himself or herself in a position that is superior to that of the other sibling. To avoid sibling rivalry, parents should talk to children about the children's concerns, and should remind each child that everyone is good at some things, even though not everyone is good at the same things. Setting aside individual time for each child to spend with the parent each day also helps reduce siblings' feelings of needing to compete with each other for position in the family. Moiseeff (2010) suggests that parents use instances of sibling rivalry to help children learn conflict resolution skills. The author's children, who are the example in the article, are three boys, aged 8 years, 6 1/2 years, and 20 months. The focus is on the two older boys, and it illustrates aspects of two of a child's primary relationships in middle childhood: the sibling relationship and the parent-child relationship. Moiseeff (2010) writes that she sees "a lot of friendship ... but I don't see a lot of competition" (paras. 2-4) among her sons. She attributes the friendship between her two older boys to their close ages, as well as to her own efforts to defuse problems that arise between the boys. She writes that "sibling rivalry ... is a battle for position ... between siblings" (Moiseeff, 2010, para. 7). This parallels the statement by Papalia, Olds, and Feldman (2008) that "[s]iblings influence each other ... through their own interactions, but also indirectly through their impact on each other's relationship with the parents" (p. 397). When the siblings know that each has a strong, affectionate relationship with the parents, then they do not need to compete for position. In regard to the parent-child relationship, James Windell (2010) writes: "Parents need to mediate ... conflicts so they get resolved in ways that represent compromises and resolution" (Cited in Moiseeff, 2010, para. 15). With children in middle childhood, parents need to guide sibling interactions to avoid rivalry to help the children "to be relatively free from negative emotion, and to cope with problems constructively" (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 386). This publication has a paper edition that is local to the Metro Detroit area, where I live, and I read it each month for its articles about issues in child development. Almost every article in each issue relates in some way to the topics that we have studied in the past five weeks. References: Moiseeff, D. (2010). Sibling rivalry and school-aged kids: Individual attention and quick conflict resolution are key to eliminating issues. Metro Parent [Electronic version]. Retrieved 208 A Journey Through My College Papers February 24, 2011, from http://www.metroparent.com/Metro-Parent/December2010/Sibling-Rivalry-and-School-Aged-Kids/ Papalia, D. E., Olds, W.S., Feldman, D.R. (2008). A child’s world: infancy through adolescence (11th ed.) New York: McGraw-Hill. Developmental Theories February 28, 2011 Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, and Erik Erikson each had a different view of child development, but their views had marked similarities among them. In order to truly understand the cognitive and psychosocial development of children, it is appropriate to create a synthesis of the three theories. Jean Piaget’s cognitive-stage theory states that the “cognitive perspective focuses on thought processes and the behavior that reflects those processes” (Papalia, Olds, Feldman, 2008, p. 33). Approaching child development from a different direction, Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory asserts that “complex forms of thinking have their origins in social interactions rather than in the child’s private explorations” (Boyd & Bee, 2006, p. 40). Approaching child development from the psychoanalytical perspective, as opposed to the cognitive perspective of Piaget and Vygotsky, Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development theory states that development continues throughout the entire life span, and that it occurs in eight stages. This theory states that “development result[s] from the interaction between internal drives and cultural demands” (Boyd & Bee, 2006, p. 26). Jean Piaget’s cognitive-stage theory emphasizes mental processes. He tells us that “cognitive development begins with an inborn ability to adapt to the environment” (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 33). He determined that cognitive development occurs in four qualitatively different stages during childhood: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational stage, the concrete operational stage, and the formal operational stage. The sensorimotor stage is found in infancy, when a child “understands the world through … senses and … motor actions” (Boyd & Bee, 2006, p. 35). The preoperational stage is normally the pre-school and kindergarten stage. At this stage, a child “use[s] symbols both to think and to communicate” (Boyd & Bee, 2006, p. 35). Preoperational children engage in pretend play, and they sort the objects and people in their lives into categories. The concrete operational stage normally includes children aged 7 to 11 years. This stage is marked by the “development of new internal operations, … but is still tied to the known world” (Boyd & Bee, 2006, p. 35). Children at this stage have improved skills in categorization and mathematics, and they are able to understand conservation and inductive reasoning. The formal operational stage encompasses adolescence and the teen years. A child in this stage “begins to manipulate ideas as well as objects; … [and] thinks hypothetically” (Boyd & Bee, 2006, p. 35). Children at this stage are able to employ deductive reasoning. Along with the four stages of cognitive development, Piaget identifies three interrelated processes that influence cognitive growth. Organization is the “tendency to create increasingly complex cognitive structures” (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 34). Adaptation is “how children handle new information in light of what they already know” (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 34). Equilibrium is “organizing new mental patterns that integrate the new experience” (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 34). Organization, adaptation, and equilibrium occur with each new experience in each of Piaget’s four stages. Lev Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory emphasizes the social and cultural processes that guide children’s cognitive development. He sees “cognitive growth as a collaborative process” (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 34). Vygotsky believes that children learn through social interaction, not Undergraduate Series 209 just on their own, and that “adults or more advanced peers must help direct and organize a child’s learning before the child can master and internalize it” (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 35). Vygotsky identified zones of proximal development (ZPD), which are defined as “the gap between what [children] are already able to do and what they are not quite ready to do by themselves” (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p.35). The ZPDs have been associated with the concept of scaffolding, which is “the temporary support that parents, teachers, or others give a child in doing a task until the child can do it alone” (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 35). It is key that the support remain temporary, so that the child can stand on his or her own developmentally once the task is mastered, just as a building stands on its own once its physical scaffolding has been removed. Erik Erikson’s psychosocial development theory emphasizes the influence of society on developing personality. Erikson asserts that “to achieve a healthy personality, an individual must successfully resolve a crisis at each of the eight stages of development” (Boyd & Bee, 2006, p. 26). Erikson believes that psychosocial development continues throughout a person’s life, and that the life span is divided into eight distinct developmental stages. Each of these stages is marked by a crisis between a positive trait and a negative trait, and by a virtue that is attained when the crisis has been resolved. The first crisis is between trust and mistrust, and its associated virtue is hope. The second crisis is between autonomy and shame and doubt, resulting in the virtue of will. Purpose is the virtue that results from the crisis between initiative and guilt. Successful resolution of the crisis of industry and inferiority results in the virtue of competence. The fifth crisis, between identity and role confusion, results in the virtue of fidelity. Resolving the sixth crisis, between intimacy and isolation, results in the virtue of love. The virtue of care is associated with the crisis of generativity and stagnation, while wisdom is associated with resolving the final crisis between integrity and despair. (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 30). To achieve a synthesis of the developmental theories of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Erikson, it is necessary to examine the shared points of similarity among the three theories. One marked similarity is that each of the three theories defines cognitive and psychosocial development as occurring in stages or on rungs. Whether the parts of development are called stages or rungs, they are all progressive steps by which learning and development advance. Each step, regardless of the theory, builds on the steps before it. Piaget’s formal operations builds on concrete operations, which builds on preoperations, which builds on sensorimotor experience. Each of Vygotsky’s zones of proximal development builds on the development that the child has already achieved. Each of Erikson’s eight psychosocial stages builds on the successes of the crises that have come before it. A second similarity among the three theories is that, in each case, children develop as they learn, and they also learn as they develop. In other words, cognitive learning contributes to psychosocial development. At the same time, as a child achieves psychosocial development, he or she is able to achieve more cognitive learning. This also means that delays in cognitive learning can impede psychosocial development, and that delays in psychosocial development can retard cognitive learning. While Piaget believes that children will develop cognitive skills on schedule, without outside social input, Vygotsky’s and Erikson’s theories are similar to each other in that each of their theories requires social interaction to promote cognitive and psychosocial development. Vygotsky’s zones of proximal development require that the child have the support of adults and of older children to help him or her to master each new skill. Children “learn through social interaction. They acquire cognitive skills as part of their introduction into a way of life” (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 34). According to Vygotsky’s theory, a child who is without a social support system lacks necessary tools for cognitive and psychosocial development. Similarly, Erikson’s eight stages, with their crises, require social interaction. Each crisis involves the relationship of the child to his or her society, and each virtue gained by the successful resolution of a crisis is a 210 A Journey Through My College Papers tool to help the child to succeed in society. It is also necessary to consider the differences among the three theories when creating a synthesis of the theories. Understanding the differences allows us to reconcile the three theories as we seek to understand the cognitive and psychosocial development of children. One of the chief differences among the three theories is the differing foci of the theories. Piaget’s cognitive-stage theory concentrates on the mental aspect of cognitive development. Social development is noticeably absent from Piaget’s theory. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory concentrates on the cultural aspects of cognitive and psychosocial development. The way of life in which a child is raised is central to how the child will develop, according to Vygotsky’s theory. Erikson’s psychosocial development theory concentrates on the societal aspect of psychosocial development. Cognitive development is subordinated to social development in Erikson’s theory, as the child faces social crises and attains personal strengths in the form of virtues. A second difference among the theories is between the cognitive approach that is favored by Piaget and Vygotsky, and the psychoanalytic approach that is favored by Erikson. The cognitive perspective “focuses on thought processes and the behavior that reflects those processes” (Papalia, et. al., 2008, p. 33). The psychoanalytic perspective, on the other hand, “views development as shaped by unconscious forces that motivate human behavior” (Papalia, et. al., 2088, p. 27). The cognitive approach deals with thought, while the psychoanalytic approach deals with the unconscious. A third difference among the three theories is in how each theory organizes the stages of a child’s development, and in what is considered to be important to a child’s development according to each theory. Piaget’s cognitive-stage theory expects that children will achieve definite development at specific ages. He gives four stages, neither more nor fewer, in which children develop. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory does not give definite ages for specific stages of development. Instead, it offers zones of proximal development, which may be close together for a child who is developing rapidly, or which may be farther apart for a child who is developing slowly or who has reached a temporary developmental plateau. Erikson’s psychosocial development theory gives a series of age-related stages at which the developing child must resolve crises between a positive social aspect of his or her personality and a negative social aspect of his or her personality, in order to define and develop his or her personality. Cognitive development, physical development, and emotional development interact in the overall development of a child. Both a child’s heredity and a child’s environment impact all three types of development. A child may develop more rapidly in one aspect of development, such as cognitive, while developing more slowly in other aspects, such as physical and emotional. Society has archetypes for two of the three imbalances of development. The stereotyped nerd is more developed cognitively and less developed physically and emotionally. The stereotyped thug is more developed physically and less developed cognitively and emotionally. The third imbalance is more developed emotionally and less developed cognitively and physically, and it is uncommon enough that it does not have an archetype in society. In any event, developmental imbalance is not desirable. In order for a child to grow into a healthy, successful adult, it is necessary for the child to experience appropriate growth in cognitive development, in physical development, and in emotional development. A child who is not well-developed either cognitively or physically is likely to face self-esteem issues that will negatively impact his or her emotional development. A child who is not well-developed either physically or emotionally may be prevented from developing cognitively. Good physical health, good emotional health and support, and good cognitive stimuli and support work together to produce a healthy, well-balanced adult. Understanding normal child and adolescent development is important in assisting children to reach their potential because it allows parents, teachers, care givers, and other adults in Undergraduate Series 211 a child’s environment to support and promote a child’s development. Also, it allows adults to recognize when a child exhibits abnormal development, and to provide appropriate supports and interventions to assist the child to achieve his or her potential. While some abnormal development might mean that a child’s development is retarded in some way, other cases of abnormal development might involve a child developing with extraordinary rapidity in one area or another. It is necessary to encourage and to support children who are developing normally, so that their development will continue without interruption. It is also necessary to encourage and to support children who are developing abnormally. In some cases, medical or psychiatric intervention may be required to correct physical or chemical anomalies that are interfering with normal development. In other cases, special educational arrangements may be required to help the child who is markedly behind his or her peers, or the child who is significantly ahead of his or her peers. Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky, and Erik Erikson each had a different approach to child development, but their similarities allow us to synthesize their approaches when working with children. We are able to draw from each of the three theories to aid our understanding of child development, and to provide the best developmental environment for children. All three theories are based on stages, or steps, of development. All three theories link child development with learning. Erikson and Vygotsky agree that child development requires social interaction. Piaget and Vygotsky approach development from a cognitive perspective, while Erikson approaches development from a psychoanalytic perspective. Piaget concentrates on the mental aspects of development, Vygotsky concentrates on the cultural aspects of development, and Erikson concentrates on the societal aspects of development. Piaget identifies definite development at definite ages, while Vygotsky identifies zones of proximal development, and Erikson associates the resolution of crises with the acquisition of virtues. It is important to understand normal child development so that we are able to help each child to reach his or her potential. By fitting Erikson’s eight stages of psychosocial development into Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development, and by allowing Vygotsky’s zones of proximal development to bridge the gaps as children move from what they can do to what they will soon be able to do, we are able to achieve a synthesis of developmental theories. This synthesis allows us to truly understand the cognitive and psychosocial development of children. References Boyd, D., and Bee, H. (2006). Adult development. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Papalia, D. E., Olds, W.S., Feldman, D.R. (2008). A child’s world: Infancy through adolescence (11th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. PSY 370: Learning & the Brain Fundamentals of Brain-based Learning 3/3/2011 A student's brain learns in order to survive. A student is more likely to learn better in an environment which encourages student engagement, group physical activities, and creativity. A student can memorize facts in stressful situations, such as the "Survival of the Fittest" (Jensen, 2008, p. 5) model, in which students must succeed or fail. "Memorization of isolated facts can be accomplished under high-stress conditions, but higher-order and creative thinking may be lost" (Weiss, 2000, p. 29). Students learn more effectively in more relaxed settings, where they are able to reflect on what they are learning, "so that desired behavior emerges as a natural consequence" (Jensen, 2008, p. 6). 212 A Journey Through My College Papers Learning happens when sensory input is processed in the thalamus, sorted, routed to the relevant lobes of the brain, then stored in the cortex of the brain. "The original processing takes place at lightning speeds, but the subsequent stages and storage process can take hours, days, and even weeks" (Jensen, 2008, p. 10). Each bit of information is sorted, first in the short-term memory of the frontal lobe, then in the hippocampus. Irrelevant and unimportant details, as determined by the frontal lobe, usually do not make it past the frontal lobe. The information that is retained is sorted, and it is also linked by association with other information in an amazing and ever-growing matrix. As long as the brain is stimulated, the connections formed by axons and dendrites continue to grow, but "with impoverishment, you lose them" (Weiss, 2000, p. 28). The student's brain learns "optimally in the most conducive environment" (Jensen, 2008, p. 6). The most conducive environment can vary from student to student, so teachers need to be creative in designing learning environments that provide enough stimuli to promote learning, while at the same time providing a calm, safe environment to allow students to process and analyze the material they have learned. References Jensen, E. (2008). Brain-based learning (2nd ed). California: Corwin Press. Weiss, R.P. (2000). Brain-based learning: The wave of the brain [Electronic version]. Retrieved March 3, 2011, from http://fleen.psych.udel.edu/articles/AEP04.2.6.PDF Brain Dominance 3/3/2011 The paradox of left-brain processes is that, even though the left hemisphere of the brain is usually associated with logic, and with analytical thought processes, creativity is also present in the left hemisphere of the brain. Musicians, in particular, "process music to a greater degree in the left hemisphere" (Jensen, 2008, p. 21). This is because music is a mathematical construct that uses logical, sequential thought. Using music to help teach math encourages the involvement of both hemispheres of the brain, and improves learning. Emotions, which are usually associated with the right hemisphere, are also associated with the left hemisphere, and "the left hemisphere functions to regulate the intensity of the emotional reaction" (Jensen, 2008, p. 21). Emotional upset can negatively impact student learning, so educators should be aware of the impact of emotions on both hemispheres of the brain, and should facilitate discussions that help students to express and process emotions to free the students for more effective learning. The paradox of right-brain processes is that, even though the right hemisphere of the brain is usually associated with creativity and art, while the left brain is associated with language, right-brain processes are critical to the proper understanding of language. Language arts instructors should keep in mind that "the right hemisphere processes the inflection, tonality, tempo, and volume of the communication" (Jensen, 2008, p. 20). Artists, who are unquestionably creative, "must consider very specific ... rules of proportionality, color, balance, and order" (Jensen, 2008, p. 22), which occurs in the right hemisphere through intuitional logic. Art teachers should remember that right-brain logic is not the same as left-brain logic, as it is more random than left-brain logic. Science teachers dealing with artistically-inclined students should remember that the students are as capable of advanced logic as left-brain-dominant students, but that their thought process are less likely to be sequential than the thought processes of left-brain-dominant students. In regard to student learning, it is important to remember that each student uses both hemispheres of his or her brain, regardless of seeming to favor one hemisphere or the other. Undergraduate Series 213 "[T]he right hemisphere seems to deal with a general sense of space, while the left hemisphere deals with objects in specific locations" (Brain Mythology, 2011, para. 11). A left-brain-dominant learner will prefer a structured learning environment with sequential learning. A right-braindominant learner will prefer a more open-ended learning environment with spontaneous, random learning experiences. Left-brain-dominant learners tend to prefer working from individual parts to whole concepts, while right-brain-dominant learners tend to prefer starting with the whole picture and working down to the parts. "Further, the female brain processes both language and feelings at the same time far more efficiently than the male brain does" (Jensen, 2008, p. 20). It is important for educators to present both broad overviews and specific directions in the classroom, in order to fully engage the brains of all of the students. References Brain Mythology. (2011). Retrieved March 3, 2011, from http://www.positscience.com/human-brain/facts-myths/brain-mythology Jensen, E. (2008). Brain-based learning (2nd ed). California: Corwin Press. Physiological Effects on Learning 3/10/2011 There are a number of functional differences between the genders that influence learners. Some of these include:  Female hearing is more attuned to differences in sound quality and nuance than male hearing.  Females are more likely than males to have greater range of vocal tone and "greater vocal clarity" (Jensen, 2008, p. 35).  Females have faster and more accurate verbal memory than males, as well as better visual memory.  Females are better able than males to interpret "facial clues and context" (Jensen, 2008, p. 35).  Females have a more "sensitive sense of touch" (Jensen, 2008, p. 35) than males, and females can handle pain for longer periods than can males.  Females tend to have better fine motor ability than males.  Females are more sensitive to odors and aromas than are males.  "Males have better distance vision and depth perception" (Jensen, 2008, p. 35) than have females, and males' vision is better in bright light.  Males are more reactive than females to changes in temperature.  Males tend to be better than females in regard to mathematics and to "manipulating spatial relationships" (Sabbatini, 1997, para. 14).  Males tend to have a stronger "perception of time and speed" (Sabbatini, 1997, para. 14) than have females. As a teacher, I might meet the gender-specific needs of learners by providing some periods of bright light in the classroom and some periods of lower light. Alternatively, I might have different light levels in different parts of the classroom. This would allow boys, who see better in bright light, and girls, who see better in lower light, to have equal opportunity to optimize their visual capabilities. Another way I might meet the gender-specific needs of learners would be to provide both visual and tactile aids, along with written and auditory instructions. This would allow girls, who have better visual memory, and boys, who have better spatial and tactile memory, to relate to the 214 A Journey Through My College Papers lesson. It would also give boys, who tend to do better with written language, and girls, who do better with auditory cues in "voice, music, and other sounds" (Jensen, 2008, p. 35), to understand and to remember instructions. In math and science, which tend to be easier for boys than for girls because "a brain region in the cortex, called the inferior-parietal lobule (IPL) ... is significantly larger in men than in women ... [and] IPL's size correlates highly with mental mathematical abilities" (Sabbatini, 1997, paras. 11-12), I would try to provide auditory and olfactory connections, as well as verbal and visual aids, to help girls to keep up with boys. In language arts, which boys usually master "one to two years later than girls do" (Jensen, 2008, p. 36), I would provide reading topics that appeal to socio-culturally influenced gender differences as far as topics, in order to make the material relevant to the students, and to help hold the students' attention. I have seen the importance of this in my sons' elementary school classes, where stories and articles about sports, adventure, and science have held the attention of the boys; while stories and articles about animals, family life, and history have held the attention of the girls. In general, I would try to keep in mind the results of a study at Michigan State University in 2007, which showed that "[f]emales preferred unimodal learning, whereas males preferred multimodal learning" (Wehrwein, Lujan, DiCarlo, 2007, para. 11). With girls preferring to have information presented in only one way -- predominantly kinesthetic, followed by read-write, then by visual, according to the study (Wehrwein, et. al., 2007, para. 13) -- I would try to offer unimodal lessons, recognizing that the read-write mode would, of necessity, be the most commonly used mode in the classroom. To accommodate boys' preference for multimodal learning, I would try to offer lesson enrichment options that would involve all four learning modes: visual, auditory, read-write, and kinesthetic. References: Jensen, E. (2008). Brain-based learning (2nd ed). California: Corwin Press. Sabbatini, R.M.E. (1997). Are there differences between the brains of males and females? Retrieved March 10, 2011, from http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/mente/eisntein/cerebro-homens.html Wehrwein, E.A., Lujan, H.L., DiCarlo, S.E. (2007). Dender differences in learning style preferences among undergraduate physiology students. Advances in Physiology Education, 31(2), 153-157. Retrieved March 10, 2011, from http://advan.physiology.org/content/31/2/153.full Physical Movement and the Brain 3/10/2011 7:14:20 PM Six points that I would include in a presentation on the importance of physical education and the brain are: 1. Exercise "enhances circulation so that individual neurons can get more oxygen and nutrients" (Jensen, 2008, p. 38). 2. Exercise, especially "sports and games that require high coordination skills, as well as cognitive action to guide strategy during play" (Berg, 2010, para. 9), promotes the "production of nerve growth factor" (Jensen, 2008, p. 38) that improves the functioning of the brain. 3. Repetitive motion associated with exercise, especially gross motor activity, "can stimulate the production of dopamine" (Jensen, 2008, p. 38) in the brain. This is a chemical that contributes to improved mood. Undergraduate Series 215 4. Exercise promotes the growth of new brain cells, "including the production of new neurons and increased intersynaptic connections" (Berg, 2010, para. 1). 5. Aerobic exercise "trigger[s] a fast adrenaline-noradrenaline response" (Jensen, 2008, p. 38), which improves thinking and improves the ability to handle challenges. 6. Exercise "uses 100 percent of the brain" (Jensen, 2008, p. 39), which is a claim no other cognitive activity can make. It is interesting to note that "students' fitness was more strongly associated with math achievement than with English achievement" (Davenport, 2010, para. 4). Many schools in the United States "are reducing physical activity time at schools because of time constraints and pressures related to the federal No Child Left Behind Act" (Jensen, 2008, p. 37). While it is not mentioned in the literature that I used for this discussion, it is a commonly known fact that this decision is often based on budgetary constraints, as well as the need many teachers experience to "teach to the test." In Detroit, which is close to where I live, many classes that are not directly related to NCLB -- and, hence, to government funding -- are being eliminated. Physical education, art, and music are usually the first things to be cut. Kris Berg (2010) states that "reductions in the time allocated for physical education in schools imply a continuation of the traditional Western schism of mind and body" (para. 2). While it is possible that there is such an ideological component to the reduction of physical education instruction in the United States, it does not seem to be a compelling enough explanation for why "an astonishingly low 36 percent of K-12 students in the United States participate in a daily physical education program" (Jensen, 2008, p. 39). It is more likely that financial considerations cause teachers to push standardized testing, which causes the elimination of what is seen as an extraneous class. References: Berg, K. (2010). Justifying physical education based on neuroscience evidence. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 81(3), 21-29, 46. Retrieved March 10, 2011, from ProQuest database. Davenport, M. (2010). The relationship between physical fitness and academic achievement. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 81(6), 12. Retrieved March 10, 2011, from ProQuest database. Jensen, E. (2008). Brain-based learning (2nd ed). California: Corwin Press. Brain-based Learning Strategies Benefit Students March 14, 2011 Incorporating brain-based learning strategies in the curriculum, including physical activity in the classroom, will help improve students’ learning. In order to maximize students’ ability to learn, and to improve test scores, educators need to break the accepted mold of keeping students in their seats for hours on end. Educators need to use physical activity to stimulate brain function, to help students to focus and to remember, and to improve students’ ability to face challenges as eustress instead of as distress. Physical education and physical activity in academic classrooms have a pronounced positive effect on students’ learning. In a 2005 study at Naperville Central High School, in Naperville, IL, “students who took PE prior to class showed one and a quarter year’s growth on the standardized reading test after just one semester, while the exercise-free students gained just nine-tenths of a year” (Richardson, 2009, para. 14). In the same study, “exercising students increased their math test scores by 20.4 percent, while the rest gained 3.9 percent” (Richardson, 2009, para. 15). Michael Davenport (2010) reports that a 2009 study in the Cambridge Public 216 A Journey Through My College Papers School Department, in Cambridge, MA, found that “students’ fitness was more strongly associated with math achievement than with English achievement” (para. 4). These results strongly suggest that exercise improves students’ ability to excel at the standardized tests that have become the measure of success for students and for their schools, and that help to determine how much federal funding schools receive. Physical activity does not have to be protracted or profound in order to have a positive impact on learning. In the classroom, even such subtle activities as using “modeling clay or playdough is an especially good way for children to grow new connections [in the brain]” (Renew – Exercise, 2004, para. 41). Growing new connections in the brain means “the production of new neurons and increased intersynaptic connections” (Berg, 2010, para. 2), which allows learning to occur. “In humans, three weeks of repetitive finger-movement training appears to enlarge the primary cortex” (Berg, 2010, para. 10). The cortex houses almost three-quarters of the human nervous system, with a great deal of its area not assigned a specific function, “which gives humans extraordinary flexibility and capacity for learning” (Jensen, 2008, p. 11). Enlarging the primary cortex through physical activity expands the ability of students to learn. According to Juliet Boyd (n.d.) of the Seattle, WA, YMCA, “the health benefits of exercise can be achieved in 30 minutes per day, even when done in blocks of 10 minutes at a time” (para. 2). Even in a busy classroom that is focused on meeting the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), there are opportunities to include physical activities in the curriculum. Such simple activities as having children march once around the classroom between learning blocks can increase circulation to the brain, which helps the students to focus on the next learning block, while also helping them retain in their long-term memories what they have just learned. The gross motor activity of marching around the classroom “can stimulate the production of dopamine” (Jensen, 2008, p. 38), which can improve students’ moods and make them more receptive to learning. Along with increased physical activity in the academic classrooms, students benefit from daily physical education. At present, “Illinois is the only state that requires daily PE for all grades” (Richardson, 2009, para. 18). Physical education gives students the opportunity for aerobic exercise, which “trigger[s] a fast adrenaline-noradrenaline response” (Jensen, 2008, p. 38) that improves cognition and improves students’ ability to handle challenges in a positive way. Physical education also introduces students to “sports and games that require high coordination skills, as well as cognitive action to guide strategy during play” (Berg, 2010, para. 9). These more complex physical activities often involve bilateral movements that stimulate both hemispheres of the brain, and they promote the “production of nerve growth factor” (Jensen, 2008, p. 38), to improve brain function. It is important when considering the inclusion of brain-based learning strategies in the curriculum to consider what happens to the brain in distress. Distress is the “negative form of stress … [that] occurs when we feel threatened by some physical or emotional danger, intimidation, embarrassment, loss of prestige, fear of rejection or failure, unrealistic time constraints, or a perceived lack of choice” (Jensen, 2008, p. 43). Brain-based learning is not only about including physical activity in the classroom; it is also about helping children to reduce distress in order to promote brain health and improved learning. When the brain is in distress – whether from stimuli at school, at home, or in other aspects of the student’s life – the brain becomes unable to “correctly interpret subtle clues from the environment” (Jensen, 2008, p. 43), to store and to retrieve information correctly, to recognize patterns and relationships, and to hold information in long-term memory. It also becomes “more automatic and limited in its responses” (Jensen, 2008, p. 44), overreacts to situations, and reverts to older and more familiar ways of doing things. The brain in distress “is less able to use higher-order thinking skills” (Jensen, 2008, p. 44). For students, this means a reduction in the ability to learn and to succeed in school. A Undergraduate Series 217 student in distress experiences an impaired immune system, and “more test stress means more illness and missed classes, which eventually means lower test scores, and the cycle of failure repeats” (Jensen, 2008, p. 44). As educators, we are responsible for helping students to learn. This means not only teaching our students, but also providing them with an environment for learning that reduces distress. To this end, educators need to adopt classroom rules and behaviors that reduce students’ experiences of embarrassment and humiliation. Students need enriched learning environments with plenty of support from educators, from other responsible adults, and from their peers. Educators need to be sensitive to signs of students’ distress, and they need to help students to overcome their fears and insecurities in the classroom. Increasing students’ physical activities in the classroom and through formal physical education classes helps to make students brains stronger for better learning. Decreasing students’ mental and emotional distress in the classroom through enriched learning environments and strong support systems helps to keep students’ brains stronger for better learning. Incorporating these brain-based learning strategies in the curriculum, and continuing to be aware of the brain-based needs of students, will help improve students’ learning. Improving students’ learning will improve students’ performance on standardized tests that are required for NCLB. Improved performance on standardized tests will benefit the school. Thus, brain-based learning strategies should be incorporated in the classroom in the best interests of the school and of its students. References Berg, K. (2010). Justifying physical education based on neuroscience evidence. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 81(3), 21-29, 46. Retrieved March 10, 2011, from ProQuest database. Boyd, J. (n.d.). Exercise benefits the brain. Retrieved March 7, 2011, from http://www.seattleymca.org/files/25/Exercise%20benefits%20the%20brain%20%20City%20of%20Seattle.pdf Davenport, M. (2010). The relationship between physical fitness and academic achievement. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 81(6), 12. Retrieved March 10, 2011, from ProQuest database. Jensen, E. (2008). Brain-based learning (2nd ed). California: Corwin Press. Renew – Exercise. (2004). Retrieved March 7, 2011, from http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/exercise.html Richardson, V. (2009). A fit body means a fit mind: Along with physical strength, a little exercise helps kids build brainpower. Retrieved March 7, 2011, from http://www.edutopia.org/exercise-fitness-brain-benefits-learning Memory Strategies 3/17/2011 To teach students when to use a comma, I would help the students to develop cues for when a comma is needed by having them read or write aloud and pay attention to their breathing. As the student speaks aloud what is to be written, he or she can hear and feel a short pause for breath. Generally, that is where a comma belongs. This works for lists, for the commas that appear in a written address, and at most other times when a comma is used. The pause for a breath becomes the student's cue, and "recalling the cue ... will help the student recall [when to use a comma]" (Thorne, 2006, para. 12). Eventually, the student will only have to speak under his or breath, and will finally be able to find the pauses in the silent thinking of the thing to be written. I 218 A Journey Through My College Papers know that this method is effective, because I used it with GED and adult remedial students when I was tutoring at Olney Central College two years ago. Students were able to correctly place commas in their writing, and when editing unpunctuated passages, by paying attention to the cue of pausing briefly to take a breath. I have also used this method to teach my sons the correct use of commas. To help students recall the parts of a cell, I would engage multiple memory pathways by having the students build and label model cells. This would produce episodic memories for the students, as they would recall the shapes and colors of the parts of their models during a test. Also, I would use The Cell Song by Robin Walling (2011), or The Animal Cell and The Plant Cell, both by Heather Carter (2011), and have the children sing the song while pointing to the parts on a picture or poster as the parts come up in the song. Carter (2011) provides colorful cross-sections of an animal cell and of a plant cell, which could be used with an overhead projector. This method uses "storytelling, visualization, and metaphors ... [and] new learning on a ... poster" (Jensen, 2008, p. 167). To help children remember the chronological order of satellites that have been launched into space, I would have the class create an amusing acrostic of the names of the satellites in order. This method was effective for me when I was in school. I will never forget "My very educated mother just served us nine pizza-pies." This triggers the memory of a list: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. With modern developments in science, the version that I am teaching my sons ends: "just served us nuts," since Pluto is no longer a planet. The same method is used by music teachers to remember which musical notes are on the lines of a staff, and which are in the spaces. "Every good boy deserves fudge" identifies the notes on the lines: E, G, B, D, F. "Face" identifies the notes in the spaces: F, A, C, E. Of course, we all also remember "Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally," which helps students to remember the order of operations in math. This is a very powerful mnemonic device, and it would be rendered even more memorable by having the students select the words or phrases to complete the acrostic. The students would have an episodic memory from the creation of the mnemonic, as well as the mnemonic itself. To help children remember the names of the first three presidents of the United States, I would look on the Internet to find a song. (I found half a dozen or more while writing this.) I have run across several songs that list the presidents, in the course of educating my sons. While singing the song, I would show the students pictures of the presidents. Really, this method could help the students learn all of the presidents, from Washington to Obama and beyond, if desired. Alternatively, I would also use an acrostic of the presidents' last names, having the students create phrases to help them remember the presidents in order. When I was in eighth grade, we had to learn all of the presidents up to that point, and the only method of memorization that was offered was frequent repetition. That was a painful and frustrating method, and I remembered the list only long enough to complete the unit test. Combining music with pictures, along with repetition, could secure the names of the presidents in long-term memory. References: Carter, H. (2011). The animal cell. Retrieved March 17, 2011, from http://teamcarterlces.com/cell_song.htm Jensen, E. (2008). Brain-based learning (2nd ed). California: Corwin Press. Thorne, G. (2006). 10 strategies to enhance students' memory. Retrieved March 17, 2011, from http://www.cdl.org/resource-library/articles/memory_strategies_May06.php Walling, R. (2011). The cell song: Teaching cellular components and their functions. Retrieved March 17, 2011, from http://www.songsforteaching.com/scienceinsong/cells.htm Undergraduate Series 219 In the Classroom 3/17/2011 To teach a class of 5th graders the historical significance of the Civil War, I would do several things, listed here in no particular order. First, of course, would be to assign the textbook reading, but that would involve very little of the three factors of relevance, emotions, and context. I am aware that there are numerous Civil War reenactment events where I live in southeast Michigan, that are open to the public. When we lived in North Carolina, and later in Virginia, there were even more events available. I would schedule a field trip to take my students to one of those events, where the students could see, hear, and talk to men, women, and children portraying participants in the Civil War. Seeing this could help put the war into context for the children, and could engage their emotions for the lifestyle of soldiers and civilians during this period. Hearing that units from their own towns fought in the war could make the war more relevant for the students. If the school did not allow field trips, as is the case sometimes, I would take advantage of certain personal resources at my disposal and invite a reenactment group in to do a demonstration in the classroom. The group to which my in-laws belong does educational presentations in school by invitation. I realize that this would not be an option if we lived elsewhere. In order to increase the relevance of the Civil War for students, I would assign a family tree project that would focus on identifying ancestors and other family members who served in the Civil War or who were freed from slavery as a result of the war. For children whose families were not in America at the time of the Civil War, I would offer the option of researching a person who is known to have been in the war. Many children might find that they had relatives on both sides of the war. I would ask the students to write reports or to make posters to tell about their Civil War participants. This project would be likely to raise a lot of emotions in the students, including pride and anger, and I would encourage the students to discuss their feelings in a classroom forum. I would assign the reading of Across Five Aprils, by Irene Hunt (1964). I read this book as an assignment when I was in fifth grade, and it provided a look at the social context of the war. I would ask students to produce book reports that emphasize the context of the Civil War. In fact, I bought a copy of this book several weeks ago for my sons to read. I would attempt to connect the Civil War to current conflicts in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East to help the students find relevance in the Civil War. I would ask the students to find news articles and pictures of current or recent wars, and then have the students discuss the similarities and the differences between the modern wars and the Civil War. I expect that this would also form emotional and contextual connections for the students. I would have the students draw maps of Civil-War-era America, labeling the states, and have them color the maps to show Union states and Confederate states. This would help establish the context of the war through the geographical borders of the two sides. Incorporating math with social studies, I would have the students research the cost of various goods during the Civil War, and compare those costs to present-day prices. This would involve all three factors, as there is little in this world that makes things seem real to people than attaching price tags to it. I would ask the children to perform skits about the Civil War, portraying Union soldiers, Confederate soldiers, civilians on each side, and slaves, without intentionally typecasting anyone, and rotating roles from skit to skit. I would include scenes from just before the war, from during the war, and following famous battles of the war. I would ask the students to do some research on the Internet to see how various characters in the skits would think, feel, talk, and act at various points of the war. I would include a skit in which brothers or close relatives met on the battlefield 220 A Journey Through My College Papers on opposite sides of the conflict, as well as a skit in which slaves chose to fight for the Confederacy and one in which slaves escaped to fight for the Union. This role-play would increase relevance by exposing students to "understanding and valuing the people and lessons of the past" (Jensen, 2008, p. 180). Trying to recreate the emotions of characters in the skits would provide an emotional connection. Last, I would have a discussion in the classroom in which I would ask the students first to brainstorm the ways in which their lives would be different if the Civil War did not happen, then to brainstorm the ways they would have been different if the South had won the war, and then to discuss what good things they believe came out of the Civil War. How their lives might have been different would provide relevance. How their lives reflect the effects of the Civil War would provide emotional connections. Discussing what might have been but wasn't would provide contextual clues. References: Jensen, E. (2008). Brain-based learning (2nd ed). California: Corwin Press. Sensory Contributions to Learning 3/24/2011 The sense of sight contributes to brain-based learning because "90 percent of the brain's sensory input is from visual sources" (Jensen, 2008, p. 56). According to Eric Jensen (2008), "[t]he essential elements enabling our eyes to compose meaning from our visual field are contrast, tilt, curvature, line ends, color, and size" (p. 55). In the classroom, having soft lighting helps students to learn. Fluorescent lighting, which flickers, can invoke a stress response, causing an increased cortisol level, which impairs students' ability to learn. Using colorful peripherals in the classroom, such as posters, bulletin boards, models, and displays of students' work, helps to reinforce memory for the subjects being taught. The brain has an "immediate and primitive response to symbols, icons, and other simple images" (Jensen, 2008, p.56), so using such symbols in conjunction with lectures and other teaching will help to fix lessons in students' memories. In teaching math, I would use bright, contrasting colors to teach such things as fractions. When I took math for elementary majors in my freshman year, we had math manipulatives to work with. For each fraction set, we had a circular tray with wedge-shaped pieces that fit inside to make a whole. There were two red pieces for halves, three orange pieces for thirds, four yellow pieces for quarters, and so on to eighths, moving through the rainbow to sevenths, and adding aqua and pink for eighths and a whole, respectively. The bright colors were engaging, and they made it easy to remember the fractions. The sets used were molded plastic, but students could make their own sets of colored fractions with computer print-outs on colored card stock to cut out, or by tracing patterns onto sheets of colored craft foam. Having the children use crayons to use the same colors when filling in fraction exercises on worksheets would reinforce their memory of the fractions. Another use of color to stimulate the sense of sight in the classroom would be to build sentences on a word wall. Nouns could be red, verbs could be blue, adjectives could be yellow, and so on, with each standard part of speech getting its own color. The thing to avoid would be having all of the words in black and white, which does not help with memory. The colored words could be arranged by students on a magnet board, a flannel/felt board, or with loops of tape on the back, to form sentences. Individual worksheets could be used on which students would use the same colors to underline or to trace words in sentences to identify the parts of speech. Again, the colors would reinforce students' memory of the parts of speech. Undergraduate Series 221 The sense of touch "is as important as vision for learning and retaining information" (Cabrera & Colosi, 2010, para. 2). It is clear to see how important touch is to learning if one looks at an elementary classroom, with its "wooden blocks, math beads, coins, letters made of sandpaper" (Cabrera & Colosi, 2010, para. 8) and other manipulatives, including the fraction sets that I already discussed. "Touching and manipulating objects also promotes the symbolic thinking essential to learning language and mathematics" (Cabrera & Colosi, 2010, para. 10). According to a study by Charles H. Wolfgang (2001), "children who had played the most with blocks ... had significantly higher standardized math scores in seventh grade and high school" (Cabrera & Colosi, 2010, para. 10). A study by Karyn Wellhousen and Rebecca Giles (2006) showed that "children who frequently played with blocks ... also built larger vocabularies" (Cabrera & Colosi, 2010, para. 15). Taking the two studies together, it is clear that touch contributes to increased learning. An article by Sandy Stone and Basanti Chakraborty (2010) offers a series of touch-based learning activities that involve inexpensive pieces of ribbon. Brightly-colored ribbons incorporate sight, as well as touch, in the lessons. The ribbon lessons draw on the students' spatial intelligence, as well as counting and sorting skills. Ribbons are used for math lessons, such as estimating, by having the students estimate the length of a piece of ribbon, then check the estimate by measuring the ribbon with a ruler. For language arts, the authors recommend having students use pieces of ribbon to form letters on the classroom floor. The ribbon lessons are generally intended for use in preschool and kindergarten classes, but they could also be useful in a special needs classroom. I know that my sons, one of whom has Asperger's Syndrome, and one of whom has ADHD, often used pipe cleaners, pieces of yarn, twigs, and even pretzel sticks to help them learn to form letters when they were younger. They still do, when they feel stressed, and it helps with learning. In a classroom, I would use puzzles of maps to help teach geography. I would blow up a map and cut out large shapes of the states from construction paper or felt. The students could then fit the shapes together to form the United States. By holding the pieces in their hands, they could gain a better understanding of how small the New England states are in contrast with the Western states. They could feel the more irregular borders of the eastern states and the straighter borders of the western states. Understanding the sizes and shapes of the states can lead to a better understanding of the history that established those states. For math, the same fraction sets that I mentioned earlier would appear in my lessons. I would also use units, rods, flats, and cubes to teach students about numbers and about the decimal system. I have diagrams in my old math notebook, which I kept, that I would use to show students how to use the units, rods, flats, and cubes not only to count, add, and subtract, but also to multiply and divide. Manipulating the pieces would help students to remember the concepts of the lessons. In addition, I would use prisms, cylinders, pyramids, cones, and spheres in the classroom. I would bring in -- or have the students bring in -- collections of objects that the students would sort by type. From a jumbled pile, the students would sort prisms (cereal boxes, books, etc.) onto one desk; cylinders (cans, cups, etc.) onto a second desk; pyramids (those might take some work to find) onto a third desk; cones (funnels, ice cream comes, traffic cones, etc.) onto a fourth desk; and spheres (oranges, balls, etc.) onto a fifth desk. Students could them explain why the items in a given group were similar, and they could identify the properties of each group. They could also identify similarities and differences between and among the groups. References: Cabrera, D. & Colosi, L. (2010). The world at our fingertips: The connection between touch and learning. Scientific American [Electronic version]. Retrieved March 24, 2011, from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-world-at-our-fingertips 222 A Journey Through My College Papers Jensen, E. (2008). Brain-based learning (2nd ed). California: Corwin Press. Stone, S. & Chakraborty, B. (2010). Classroom idea-sparkers. Childhood Education, 87(2), E7-E8. Retrieved March 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. The Role of Emotion in Learning 3/24/2011 Emotions are important in the learning process because they "bind the learning ... help us determine what's real ... activate long-term memory ... help us make faster decisions ... [and] help us make better-quality decisions" (Jensen, 2008, p. 90). Creating positive emotions in the classroom allows learning to occur, while negative emotions produce a "fight or flight" response that blocks learning. Eric Jensen (2008) tells us that from "excitement to calm, from depression to euphoria, [neurotransmitters and neuropeptides] influence our thinking and behaviors" (p. 83). As emotions influence thinking, so emotions must influence learning. One example of how emotions negatively affect learning is when a memory of a past experience causes the amygdala to send a message that launches a person into a "defensive posture" (Jensen, 2008, p. 87). When this happens, the brain goes into survival mode and meaningful learning is all but impossible. For this reason, it is important for teachers to foster a calm, non-threatening, positive emotional environment in the classroom. According to Larry Squire (1987, 1992), "emotions are so important that they have their own memory pathways" (Cited in Jensen, 2008, p. 91). This is a second example of how emotions are important to learning. If students are emotionally invested in the subject matter, then they will form stronger, deeper memories of what they are learning. In teaching geography and history, which are rarely separated in teaching, in the classroom, I would attempt to get students emotionally involved in the lesson. One strategy I would use to do this would be to have the students find out what countries their ancestors came from, then have the students put on a cultural festival. Each student would do a project of one or more things that represent that student's heritage, including, but not limited to, costumes, art works and music, models, collages, slide shows, and foods. I would encourage the students to focus on aspects of their heritage that give them positive emotions, such as pride, sense of belonging, and joy. Each country represented would be located on a map of the world. Another strategy I would use to incorporate emotions in teaching history would be to ask my students to write reflective essays about their emotional responses to the historical events in each lesson. I would provide them with writing cues to help them start their essays, including:  asking them to imagine that they are characters from the lesson, or from the area where the events took place;  asking them to imagine that they are archaeologists exploring the area where the events in the lesson took place; and  asking them to consider how life today might be different if the events in the lesson had not happened. If a particular lesson appeared to be producing negative emotions or emotional distress in my students, I would take time out to hold a discussion forum with the students to let them express what they are feeling. Some history lessons, by their nature, will evoke negative emotions for many students, but I would talk with my students about moving past, or controlling, the negative emotions. I would help them realize that the events of the past do not pose a threat to them in the safety of the classroom. This is a conversation my husband and I often have with our sons when Undergraduate Series 223 we watch television programs about the atrocities of the World Wars. Emotional involvement in a lesson is not useful if it triggers a defense response that shuts down learning. References: Jensen, E. (2008). Brain-based learning (2nd ed). California: Corwin Press. Vail, P.L. (n.d.). The role of emotions in learning: An expert explains how emotions affect your chid's learning, memory, and performance in school. Retrieved March 24, 2011, from http://www.greatschools.org/parenting/teaching-values/the-role-of-emotions-inlearning.gs?content=751&page=all Advantages of Brain-Based Learning Environments April 4, 2011 Brain-compatible learning environments provide significant cognitive advantages for students, in contrast with traditional learning environments. Students “learn best when they are immersed into the subject area” (McCarthy, 2010, para. 3), which engages all of the students’ senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, as well as the proprioceptive and vestibular senses. While the five basic senses are familiar to almost everyone, the last two senses might not be. “The proprioceptive sense gives us information about where our body parts are and what they are doing. The vestibular sense gives us information about our position in space and the movement of our head in relation to gravity” (Stensaas, 2008, para. 2). “It's the snap, crackle and pop of neurons combined with the senses of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell that help the human mind form thoughts” (Smith, 2009, para. 1). Learning environments that serve the five basic senses, and that incorporate movement, provide the best learning opportunities for students. “90 percent of the brain’s sensory input is from visual sources” (Jensen, 2008, p. 56). In education, the sense of sight usually involves movement, lighting, and color in the classroom. Educators can keep students’ attention by moving about the classroom as they teach. Movement provides stimuli for the brain, which increase the brain’s ability to learn. “When speaking to a group, the teacher needs to move around the room, increasing and decreasing distance from the audience” (Wilmes, Harrington, Kohler-Evans, Sumpter, 2008, para. 6). Students who are compelled to watch and listen to a teacher who sits or stands still in a given spot while teaching are likely to become sleepy and inattentive, and they will not retain the lesson. Lighting is important for a brain-compatible learning environment. In fact, “one of the most critical physical characteristics of the classroom is lighting” (Ali, Hukamdad, Ghazi, Khan, 2010, para. 3). “[S]oft, full spectrum lighting is optimal for learning” (Wilmes, et. al., 2008, para. 9), while bright or harsh lighting impairs learning. Natural lighting from windows is the best for learning. Fluorescent lighting, which flickers, can distract students from learning, and can produce increases in hyperactivity among students. This type of lighting produces a stress response in the brain, causing an increase in the brain’s level of cortisol, which can “wreak havoc on the brain” (Jensen, 2008, p. 44). Brain-compatible learning environments provide soft lighting in the classroom, with areas of brighter lighting and of lower lighting available to students. Turning off the lights for very brief intervals allows students to reflect on what they have learned, and allows an opportunity for the brain to move information from short-term memory to long-term memory. “Color in the visual environment is particularly important because of its powerful impact on the brain” (Wilmes, et. al., 2008, para. 7). Color is important in the brain-compatible classroom because color affects mood, attention, and memory. A dull, colorless classroom, with white, grey, or brown walls, does not stimulate learning, but a bright, colorful classroom engages 224 A Journey Through My College Papers students’ attention and imagination and promotes learning. For classroom walls, “yellows, beiges, or egg shell white are the best for creating an optimal learning environment” (Collins, 2011, para. 2.4). Brightly colored peripherals, using bold, simple symbols, reinforce memory for the subjects that are being taught. Reds and oranges increase alertness, while blues and purples have a calming effect on students. Color-coding handouts, notes, bulletin boards, and manipulatives helps students to sort facts and to develop patterns of association that increase the number and complexity of neural connections in the brain to improve learning and memory. Brain-compatible learning environments use colorful visual aids in conjunction with lectures, and with other teaching activities to help fix lessons in students’ memories. Besides its importance for memory, color is important in the brain-compatible learning environment because of the impact of color on the emotions of learners, and because of “relationships between emotions, memory and the brain” (Kaufman, Robinson, Bellah, Akers, Haase-Wittler, Martindale, 2008, para. 3). Morton Walker (1991) writes that “[r]ed tends to raise blood pressure, pulse rate, respiration, perspiration, and excites brainwaves … Orange is similar to red … Blue tends to lower blood pressure and pulse rate … Green is also a fairly calming color … Yellow … stimulates a sense of well being and optimism” (Cited in Wilmes, et. al., 2008, para. 7). When the brain reacts to reds and oranges, the amygdale usually triggers a survival response. When this happens, the brain is unable to engage in learning. Thus, a learning environment with predominantly red or orange walls, furnishings, or lighting is likely to keep students in a state of emotional arousal that impedes learning. When the brain reacts to blues, and to greens and purples that tend toward blue, “[c]ool colors … bring about reverse effects such as muscles relaxing more and sleep being facilitated” (Ali, et. al., 2010, para. 19). Jennifer Lloyd (2010) writes that “students who are mentally, [or] emotionally … engaged … might understand the underlying concept more easily” (para. 3). The emotions associated with yellows are the most conducive to effective learning. After sight, hearing is the sense that is most often involved in learning in the classroom. “It is possible to use … music memory techniques to help students retain more information and provide them with multiple modes or [sic] information retrieval” (Brewer, 2011, para. 1). Playing classical music in the classroom while teaching “engages the entire brain … [and] the nerves in the ear have more extensive brain connections than any other nerves of the body” (Wilmes, et. al., 2008, para. 12). Learners who listen to music while learning facts will tend to associate those facts with the music. Hearing the same music at a later time will facilitate retrieving facts from the learner’s long-term memory. Brain-compatible learning environments avoid distractions from outside sources, such as street sounds, and the distraction of silence itself, by playing music that is appropriate to the type of learning that is taking place. [M]usic can be used in the classroom to accomplish various learning goals including: creating a relaxing atmosphere, establishing a positive learning style, providing a multisensory learning experience that enhances memory, increasing attention by creating a short burst of energizing excitement, developing rapport, providing inspiration, and adding an element of fun. (Wilmes, et. al., 2008, para. 14) Soft music, such as classical music or New Age music, and recordings of melodic nature sounds, are played during lectures, independent reading times, reflective periods, and during testing, to help learners to integrate the learning or to retrieve prior learning. “It can help students understand and remember lessons better” (Collins, 2011, para. 2.1). More energetic music is appropriate for group project times and for other kinesthetic activities. Stirring, lively music is good for celebrations and for physical activity periods. “As teachers, we can increase sensory input during learning by using music intentionally during memory activities” (Brewer, 2011, para. 2). Music in the form of song is very common and useful in a brain-compatible learning Undergraduate Series 225 environment. Nearly everyone – from preschool teachers to marketing executives – knows that songs make information easy to remember. Children learn to sing the alphabet song almost as soon as they learn to speak. Children’s television programs, such as Sesame Street, the Wiggles, and Dora the Explorer, use songs to teach a dizzying number of ideas and lessons. Advertising jingles flood television, radio, and even cinema previews. Almost any educational topic can be arranged into a memorable song, as evidenced by the popular 1970s television series, School House Rock, which is still utilized in America’s classrooms thanks to You Tube. When learners sing the material that they are learning, more connections are made in the brain to help retrieve the material at a later date. Songs become deeply embedded in long-term memory, and it often requires no more than a few notes of the song’s melody for the entire song to flood into conscious memory. “Words of songs are very easily remembered … and, therefore, are often used as educational tools” (Wilmes, et. al., 2008, para. 14). This is a huge advantage for educators in brain-compatible learning environments, as it takes much less time and effort to teach lasting lessons with songs than with textbook readings and lectures. The senses of sight and hearing work very well together to make lessons even more memorable. Using colorful pictures of symbols with songs connects the pictures, words, and music in the brain, thus creating more and more neural connections. Learners are later able to recall all three elements – pictures, words, and music – when they encounter any one element. The strongest recall in such an event happens when the learner encounters the music. Smell and taste are not actively employed in most classrooms to the same extent as sight and hearing, and “the senses of smell and taste are often overlooked in the learning process” (Make Sense, 2001, para. 1). Smell, however – and taste to a lesser extent – is important to learning because “[i]t is through the sense of smell that we gather messages about the environment around us … [and] smell plays a powerful role in the way we … recall memories” (Haughey, 2011, para. 1). In a brain-compatible learning environment, the educator makes an effort to control the aromas to which students are exposed during learning activities. “Pleasant smells can improve cognitive functioning … [and] one study showed that a combination of floral aromas was associated with double the speed of learning” (Wilmes, et. al., 2008, para. 22). The sense of smell is widely recognized as the most powerful sensory trigger for memory, as the slightest whiff of an aroma will bring back otherwise-forgotten memories. “The use of aromas produces similar effects as music in the learning environment” (Wilmes, et. al., 2008, para. 19). Teachers are able to use essential oils and other fragrance-producing items in the classroom to reinforce students’ memory of the lessons. Scented stickers and pens with scented inks are popular incentive rewards that have been in American classrooms for at least three decades. Joan Collins (2011) tells teachers to “[s]timulate your student’s minds with … cinnamon, lemon, peppermint, basil … and rosemary” (para. 2.2). It is important that educators avoid having odors in brain-compatible learning environments that trigger negative responses in students unless a strongly negative memory is specifically desired for a particular lesson. Odors such as sewage, garbage, vomit, burned hair, and strong disinfectant many have their places in very specific history lessons, for example, but they are likely to trigger a stress response in the amygdale and prevent effective learning if they are not managed very carefully. It is more effective for students to associate learning with the aromas of flowers, fresh-baked goods, citrus, herbs, spices, and fresh air, than with negative odors. Taste is greatly neglected in many traditional classrooms, but educators are bringing taste into the classroom more often in brain-compatible learning environments. Classes often include samplings of foods from various nations, cultures, or ethnicities. Students at my sons’ school had the opportunity to sample fresh tamales that were made in the classroom by the mother of a Hispanic student for Cinco de Mayo two years ago. When they studied the Chinese New Year, they ate egg rolls and dumplings in the classroom. A recent study of Hawaii concluded with a 226 A Journey Through My College Papers celebration that featured pineapple and other treats from the South Pacific. Each year, the school celebrates Thanksgiving with a turkey dinner, and the students celebrate the winter holidays in their classes with peppermint candy canes before getting out for vacation. Since smell and taste are closely related, taste has much the same effect as smell on the creation, the reinforcement, and the retrieval of memories. The sense of touch “is as important as vision for learning and retaining information” (Cabrera & Colosi, 2010, para. 2). The sense of touch includes not only haptic activity, but also spatial intelligence, responses to textures, elevations, and air pressure; and responses to temperature. For the purposes of this paper, proprioceptive and vestibular senses are also grouped within the sense of touch. “The sense of touch allows us to make a better connection between sight and hearing and therefore helps [students] to learn to read” (CNRS, 2008, para. 1). Also related, to a certain extent, to the sense of touch is the need for teachers to “[k]eep students from dehydrating … [because] dehydration can impair cognitive performance and affect mood” (Lloyd, 2010, para. 5). “Kinesthetic refers to knowing through touch or by doing” (Massaro & Wallis, 2004, para. 3). Many learners favor the kinesthetic modality of learning. In a brain-compatible classroom, students are immersed in the subject matter. Not only do they learn by reading texts, listening to lectures, and performing practice drills, but they also learn by handling math manipulatives, by building models and other projects, by performing skits, and by actually doing what is being taught through field trips and internships. “A ‘sensory smart’ classroom provides children with many opportunities for heavy work, movement, and other … activities to improve their ability to attend and focus” (Stensaas, 2008, para. 4). Deborah Laurel (2011) offers an example of how profoundly kinesthetic activities can affect learning for some students: John … didn't participate in the banter, or offer answers to questions, or even ask questions … He had no affect and no emotion in his face … After the second morning break, … [i]t finally dawned on me that John was a kinesthetic learner … I found a wide purple rubber band. I gave John the rubber band and explained that it might help his ability to learn if he kept his hands busy. I suggested he just play with the rubber band during the rest of the class … Within a minute, John was animated, joking around, making constructive suggestions, answering questions, and completely engaged. (paras. 5-8) Kinesthetic learners need to be physically engaged during learning, even if the physical activity is not actually related to the learning. Squeezing a bit of clay or putty, or playing with a rubber band, or any of a vast number of small activities can help a kinesthetic learner get through the inevitable lecture portions of the classroom experience. Educators in brain-compatible learning environments provide models and manipulatives along with visual and auditory instruction. The physical activity secures the visual and auditory components of the lesson in the student’s memory. “When designing learning environments, teachers should focus on what the children will be doing, and on what objects and materials they can provide for the children to handle and observe” (Stone & Chakraborty, 2010, para. 1). “While many types of obstacles are known to impair learning, heat stress is one of the most preventable” (Jensen, 2008, p. 60). Students cannot learn effectively if they are too warm or too cold. A warm classroom without adequate air circulation will lull students to sleep. A hot or cold classroom will trigger a survival stress response, and students will be unable to learn. Teachers need to “[c]reate the perfect learning environment by setting the thermostat to the optimal temperature for the day” (Collins, 2011, para. 2.5). For most students, 70ºF is the best temperature for effective learning, and teachers in brain-compatible learning environments strive to maintain this classroom temperature. The brain-compatible learning environment takes into account not just the basic senses, Undergraduate Series 227 but also the need for students to move around during the day. Physical exercise promotes the “production of nerve growth factor” (Jensen, 2008, p. 38) that improves brain function. Movement is not limited to physical education classes. Students should stretch and walk around the classroom, at the minimum, every 45 minutes to an hour to improve their alertness. “Strategies that work movement into the school day boost blood flow to the brain” (Lloyd, 2010, para. 21). Physical activity can be paired with music to further enhance education. Brain-based learning and brain-compatible learning environments foster learning more effectively than most traditional classrooms. In traditional classrooms, students are often faced with grey or tan walls that do not promote optimal learning. Many traditional classrooms feature fluorescent lighting or inadequate lighting, either of which is deleterious to effective learning. Many traditional classrooms include loud fans or other environmental control devices, the noise from which is distracting for students. Extraneous noise can also keep students from hearing the lesson clearly. Traditional classrooms often use very little music and few songs in their lessons, although learning songs are found in some traditional classrooms. Many traditional classrooms, especially those in older or urban buildings, smell strongly f the disinfectant that is used to clean them. It is not unusual to smell dirty rest rooms, or to smell Dumpsters and local city odors in these schools. Negative odors do not permit effective learning. Students in traditional classrooms often spend hours sitting still at their desks. The only exercise provided in some schools is walking to and from the cafeteria or to and from the rest room; some schools do not even offer the movement of a physical education class. Brain-based learning is finding its way into more and more classrooms. Bright peripherals and hands-on manipulatives can be found in most American schools. As more schools develop brain-compatible learning environments, the quality of student learning will improve. “Providing the setting for effective learning using a brain-based model creates an individualized and multisensory approach by fostering learning as a process of discovery, deepening learning” (Roizman, 2010, para. 5). Brain-compatible learning environments involve all of the senses, which causes the brain to develop more connections for learning and memory. The brain is “involved in everything we do learn and achieve at school” (McBeth, 2007, para. 7). Because brain-based learning environments teach the whole student, by immersing the student’s senses in an array of experiences, brain-based learning environments provide significant cognitive advantages for students of every learning modality. References Ali, R., Hukamdad, Ghazi, S., Khan, H. (2010). The impact of brain based learning on students academic achievement. Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, 2(2), 542-556. Retrieved March 21, 2011, from ProQuest database. Brewer, C. (2011). Music memory activities. Retrieved April 4, 2011, from http://www.songsforteaching.com/brewer/memory.htm Cabrera, D. & Colosi, L. (2010). The world at our fingertips: The connection between touch and learning. Scientific American [Electronic version]. Retrieved March 24, 2011, from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-world-at-our-fingertips CNRS (Délégation Paris Michel-Ange) (2009). Touch helps make the connection between sight and hearing. Science Daily. Retrieved April 4, 2011, from http://www.sciencedaily.com- /releases/2009/03/090318112937.htm Collins, J. (2011). How to create a brain-based classroom. Retrieved April 4, 2011, from http://www.ehow.com/how_5926946_create-brain_based-classroom.html Haughey, S.F. (2011). The sense of smell. Retrieved April 4, 2011, from http://fairydustteaching.blogspot.com/2011/02/saturday-senses-sense-ofsmell.html 228 A Journey Through My College Papers Jensen, E. (2008). Brain-based learning (2nd ed). California: Corwin Press. Kaufman, E., Robinson, J., Bellah, K., Akers, C., Haase-Wittler, P., Martindale, L. (2008). Engaging students with brain-based learning. Techniques, 83(6), 50-55. Retrieved March 21, 2011, from ProQuest database. Laurel, D. (2011). A kinesthetic learner - How the sense of touch can literally transform learning. Retrieved April 4, 2011, from http://ezinearticles.com/?A-Kinesthetic- Learner--How-the-Sense-of-Touch-Can-Literally-Transform- Learning&id=3885150 Lloyd, J.R. (2010). Beyond the lesson plan: Brain-based learning. San Antonio Express-News, A9. Retrieved March 21, 2011, from ProQuest database. Make sense of your learning. (2001). Retrieved April 4, 2011, from http://www.solida.net/sense/learning.html Massaro, C. & Wallis, S. (2004). Using your senses for fast learning. Retrieved March 24, 2011, from http://www.selfgrowth.com/print/519922 McBeth, N. (2007). Brain-based learning advocated: ‘Revolution’ in research – speaker [1 Edition]. The Southland Times, 5. Retrieved March 21, 2011, from ProQuest database. McCarthy, A. (2010). Brain based learning. Retrieved March 21, 2011, from http://rowanclass09.blogspot.com/2010/04/brain-based-learning.html Roizman, T. (2010). What are the benefits of brain-based learning? Retrieved March 21, 2011, from http://www.livestrong.com/article/169539-what-are-the-benefits-of-brain-basedlearning/ Smith, J. (2009). Tickling the mind: Experts explore education the brain-friendly way. The Berkshire Eagle. Retrieved March 21, 2011, from ProQuest database. Stensaas, A. (2008). Feelings, nothing more than feelings: Sensory integration in the classroom. Retrieved April 4, 2011, from http://www.superduperinc.com/handouts/pdf/155_SI.pdf Stone, S. & Chakraborty, B. (2010). Classroom idea-sparkers. Childhood Education, 87(2), E7E8. Retrieved March 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. Wilmes, B., Harrington, L., Kohler-Evans, P., Sumpter, D. (2008). Coming to our senses: Incorporating brain research findings into classroom instruction. Education, 128(4), 659666. Retrieved March 21, 2011, from ProQuest database. Brain-based Compatible Classrooms 3/31/2011 Planning a curriculum with the brain in mind requires knowing, and taking into account, the physical, chemical, and psychological ways in which the average brain learns. The educator must consider the circadian and seasonal rhythms of the brain, as well as the effects of brain dominance and gender differences, all within the framework of what the school and the school district require students to learn on what schedule. Educators must also consider sensory contributions to learning when developing curricula, and they must build a variety of learning activities into the curricula to accommodate the several learning modalities. "Psychologists tell us that a student learns only when a task is a little too hard for that student" (Dobush, 2011, para. 6). Students should not be exposed to high stress in the classroom, which would result in their brains shutting down into survival mode, but neither should they experience such low stress levels that their brains shift into sleep patterns. Moderate stress produces learning when students are in their zones of proximal development. When preparing brain-based curricula, educators must plan to stimulate student learning by providing "some Undergraduate Series 229 challenge, or environmental press that generates stress ... to activate emotions and learning" (Lackney, n.d., para. 25). Educators must be prepared to adjust teaching in response to students, so that students are appropriately challenged without feeling threatened. Curricula should "[i]mmerse learners in complex, interactive experiences that are both rich and real" (Silvestri, 2011, para. 2). This immersion carries through Eric Jensen's (2008) seven stages of brain-based planning: 1. Pre-exposure; 2. Preparation; 3. Initiation and acquisition; 4. Elaboration; 5. Incubation and memory encoding; 6. Verification and confidence check; and 7. Celebration and integration. (pp. 215-217) Immersion involves both brain-dominance considerations and sensory contributions to learning. It also involves "learning across disciplines" (Jensen, 2008, p. 216), as a reading lesson is likely to include history or science; a history lesson will include reading, art, and science; and a science lesson will include reading, math, and possibly history. Brightly-colored peripherals, "color, texture, ... displays created by students" (Lackney, n.d., para. 1) contribute to the immersion experience. Curricula planning must "[e]nsure that learning activities offer auditory, visual, and kinesthetic components" (Jensen, 2008, p. 221) to serve students with different learning modalities. Incorporating art projects, physical movement and exploration, music and learning songs, individual and group models and projects, field trips, cultural celebrations, and guest speakers into the curriculum provides students an array of sensory learning experiences. "[T]he best way to learn is not to be lectured but to take park in activities that allow learners to try new things in safety" (Silvestri, 2011, para. 4). Students must feel safe in order to learn, and it is important, when planning curricula, for educators to take physical and emotional safety into account. Students must feel that it is safe to ask questions, to put themselves forward, and to make mistakes without fear of embarrassment, humiliation, or reprisals. Learning must have relevance and emotional connections for students. In planning brainbased curricula, educators must consider "what possible value and relevance the topic has to [the learners] personally" (Jensen, 2008, p. 215). Schools in different areas have different cultural and socio-economic demographics, and it is important to consider these demographics when determining what will constitute relevance and emotional connectedness. Students from an upperclass neighborhood will respond to different connections than will students from a lower-class neighborhood. Students from a predominantly Christian neighborhood will respond differently than students from a predominantly Muslim neighborhood. Educators must adjust their presentation of lessons and learning activities to reflect the needs and interests f the students whom they serve. Educators need to expect students to succeed, to be positive about letting students know that they can succeed, and to reward student success with celebrations and rewards. This is as important as the curriculum itself, because students who receive frequent, positive feedback for their learning will be more receptive to continued learning, and they will retain more of what they learn. Students at all levels -- from preschool through graduate school -- respond well to such simple rewards as positive comments or motivational stickers on papers. It may seem childish, but the brain responds to even the simplest positive feedback. Educators have no choice, especially in primary and secondary school, but to "teach to the test." Nevertheless, it is possible to use brain-based learning techniques in almost any 230 A Journey Through My College Papers curriculum. Allowing students to learn in multiple modalities, and to have downtime away from active learning to process what has been learned, takes into account the needs of the brain. References: Dobush, K. (2011), Differentiated instruction. Retrieved March 31, 2011, from http://webhost.bridgew.edu/kdobush/Strategies%20for%20Teaching%20Reading/H andbook/Diff_Inst/Differentiated%20Instruction.htm Jensen, E. (2008). Brain-based learning (2nd ed). California: Corwin Press. Lackney, J.A. (n.d.). 12 Design principles based on brain-based learning research. Retrieved March 29, 2011, from http://www.designshare.com/Research/BrainBasedLearn98.htm Silvestri, E. (2011). How to use brain-based learning in designing lessons. Retrieved March 31, 2011, from http://www.ehow.com/how_5139511_use-brainbased-learning-designinglessons.html EDU 321: Introduction to Serving English Language Learners Sara 4/7/2011 Sara has lived in the United States for six months. She seems withdrawn and does not socialize much with other students. She was educated in her home country and, in fact, studied some English as a foreign language in school. Her teachers are pleased with her work, given the limited time she has been in the country Sara appears to be a limited bilingual student, though she is not far from being a monolingual/literate student. She is at the early production level. Sara would benefit from a traditional bilingual education program, because she has learned some English, but she still needs the scaffolding of sheltered instruction in English. It is likely that Sara is withdrawn, and that she does not socialize with other students, because she is not comfortable with the language and cultural features of her classmates and their activities. She probably has better receptive English than expressive English, as she is afraid of being embarrassed by her limited ability to communicate. Having Sara participate in integrated non-academic classes, while learning English in a sheltered program, may help her to overcome her emotional and social limitations. Lupe 4/7/2011 Lupe has lived in a large urban United States city for 10 years. She was in bilingual classes in elementary school and is now mainstreamed for all subjects, although her English is not completely fluent. She is friendly and cooperative when she is in class but has a high rate of absenteeism. She seems to prefer talking with friends to completing assignments. Teachers think she has academic potential but worry that she will eventually drop out of school because of persistent underachievement. Lupe needs a combination of tier 1 and tier 2 interventions, though mostly tier 1. Her absenteeism may indicate issues at home, possibly including lack of parental support for academic Undergraduate Series 231 achievement. Her school issues may also indicate inadequate fluency in academic English, which may be causing her to withdraw from academic achievement. The first intervention that I would recommend would be a combination of "involv[ing] the parents in the teaching and learning process" (Echevarria & Graves, 2007, p. 24) from tier 1, and talking to Lupe's parents about her absenteeism and her lack of assignment completion, from tier 2. If necessary, since I barely speak anything other than English, I would have an interpreter present for the discussion. It is possible that the parents are not aware of Lupe's difficulties, and that increased parental involvement will produce improvements. The second intervention that I would recommend for Lupe would be reassessment of her readiness for fully mainstreamed classes. If her English is not fluent, then she might be masking academic frustration with increased social activity. It is likely that her academic English is not yet fluent enough for her to grasp the lessons. Reassessment might result in a recommendation for sheltered instruction in English. Improved facility with English and improved understanding of assignments will be likely to turn Lupe's underachievement around. She may have moved from bilingual classes to monolingual English classes too soon. This is from tier 1: "Identify what the student can and cannot do academically and linguistically based on assessment data" (Echevarria & Graves, 2007, p. 24). The third intervention that I would recommend is from tier 1: "Encourage goal setting and consistent measurement of academic progress with mechanisms for self-report and regular reports to parents" (Echevarria & Graves, 2007, p. 25). Setting attainable goals can encourage Lupe to be present in class in order to reach her goals. Regular reports to her parents, both about her academic performance and about her behavior and attention during class, can encourage Lupe to pay attention, to not socialize during work times, and to complete required assignments. References: Echevarria & Graves, (2007). Sheltered content instruction teaching English Language Learners with diverse abilities (3rd Edition). Boston, MA : Pearson Education, Inc. Theories 4/14/2011 After reading the descriptions in our text, I find that I identify most closely with a combination of cognitive learning theory and behavioral learning theory. In the example of Mr. Gimplin's class (Echevarria & Graves, 2007, p. 41), I see many hours that I have spent teaching math to my own sons. Students are more likely to retain learning that they discover on their own, with careful guidance, than to remember learning that is dictated to them. Also, I believe strongly in the importance of mnemonic strategies. Just last night, I was helping my younger son practice verbal rehearsal so he can pass the recitation test on the Preamble to the Constitution tomorrow. I also see myself in the example of Ms. Smith's Sea World reports (Echevarria & Graves, 2007, p. 42). Setting out a clear list of objectives for a project or learning activity, then assessing and reporting on each objective as it is completed, instead of only at the end of the entire activity, helps make assignments less overwhelming for students. Assessment at each stage of the assignment allows students to adjust their work as needed to achieve the best final result. By combining these two theories, the structure involved with behavioral learning theory will help to reduce the difficulty for ELLs that is caused by a lack of structure in the methods of cognitive learning theory. I would need to be aware of the need of ELLs to have clear vocabulary, so that a lack of English proficiency can be mitigated. The exploration and discussion that seems to go with cognitive learning theory will help to provide the ELLs with authentic English language 232 A Journey Through My College Papers practice that is often missing from behavioral learning theory. I could insert opportunities for discussion during assessments to increase the opportunity for practice. After reading each of the theories, it is clear that no one theory is really best for ELLs. As a teacher, I will need to create an eclectic learning theory that is an amalgam of all of the theories in our text. It is necessary to provide mnemonic strategies, step-by-step processes for objectives, individual and group exploration, journaling and group sharing, and leading prompts for students, as well as to allow students to work at their own levels of function while providing scaffolding assistance to encourage students to successfully reach and work through their zones of proximal development. References: Echevarria & Graves, (2007). Sheltered content instruction teaching English Language Learners with diverse abilities (3rd Edition). Boston, MA : Pearson Education, Inc. Teaching Strategies 4/21/2011 My plan is to teach adult learners in a junior college setting, with a focus on English and composition. The following five teaching strategies, in descending order of anticipated effectiveness, are those that I believe I would use in a classroom with ESL/ELL students. Providing students with activities that will promote success in reading and writing uses journaling, literature-based instruction, and language arts activities that are relevant to the lives and experiences of students, to encourage acquisition and use of English-language writing skills. I believe that this would be the most effective strategy because it ties in directly with college-level English skills. Having the students write in journals "at the beginning of each class day" (Echevarria & Graves, 2007, p. 83), then responding in each student's journal at the end of each week, reinforces language development, and it also provides a forum in which students can work through, and receive support for, their feelings about their educational and linguistic experiences. Actively involving students in their own education gives students a sense of ownership of the educational experience. When students feel a sense of ownership, then they are more likely to take an interest in being successful at learning. "Teachers who actively engage students meaningfully often are more successful than teachers who do not" (Echevarria & Graves, 2007, pp. 85-86). I believe that this would be my second most effective teaching strategy, because the students will have a better feeling about learning if they are actively interested and involved in learning. Using alternate grouping strategies involves organizing students into pairings or groups in which the "students can learn from each other" (Echevarria & Graves, 2007, p. 87). It also involves teaching small groups with similar needs to maximize learning. Partner and group sharing activities require communication between and among group members, which contributes to improved language skills. That is why I believe this would be my third most effective teaching strategy. By rotating group assignments, I could provide the students with exposure to a variety of personal skill sets and linguistic abilities, which would foster deeper learning opportunities. Focusing on students' background knowledge that is relevant to the lesson, or to the topic, allows students to apply the lesson to their own lives and experiences. As a college English teacher, I could have students compare the experiences of the characters in assigned literature to their own life experiences. This teaching strategy "maximizes the amount students learn by linking new knowledge to existing knowledge" (Echevarria & Graves, 2007, p. 84). I believe this would be my fourth most effective teaching strategy, although it might take a higher ranking if it Undergraduate Series 233 was combined with the journaling in my first-ranked strategy. Asking students to apply information from the lesson to their own lives helps to build additional pathways to memory, which improves learning. Finally, while creating roles in the classroom for family members might seem to be more appropriate for primary and secondary students than for college students, having family members of ESL/ELL students serve in the classroom could help the students to acquire English language skills, while helping other students learn and understand something of the languages and cultures of the ESL/ELL students. For college students, this might include parental involvement, but it might also involve the participation of spouses, siblings, or even the children of students when the children have greater English fluency than the parents. I ranked this teaching strategy last because of my intended student group. It is familiar to students in primary grades for family members to help in the classroom, but it is less common in post-secondary settings. References: Echevarria & Graves, (2007). Sheltered content instruction teaching English Language Learners with diverse abilities (3rd Edition). Boston, MA : Pearson Education, Inc. Bianca 4/21/2011 Bianca is an eight year old who was orphaned by a devastating tsunami in Indonesia at the age of five. Bianca was recently adopted by an English speaking family in Indiana and enrolled in third grade at James Madison Elementary. Her native language is Bahasa Indonesia and her adopted family only speaks limited phrases of this language. Prior to coming to James Madison Elementary, Bianca's education has been sporadic and her English language development is limited. The practice for English Language Learners at James Madison Elementary is total immersion. Bianca is in a traditional third grade classroom and receives support from an ESL teacher (English as second language) for thirty minutes twice a week. Her teacher, Mrs. Perkins, is concerned because Bianca has made limited progress over the past three months and is essentially a non-reader. During a parent-teacher conference, Mrs. Perkins spoke with Bianca's parents concerning her language struggle and academic progress. She is considering referring Bianca for testing to determine if she has a specific learning disability. Bianca's parents fear labeling their young daughter and think she will catch up once she becomes proficient in English. They have asked Mrs. Perkins for additional intervention strategies before agreeing to assess for a specific learning disability. On reading Bianca's story, I do not believe that testing for a specific learning disability is the appropriate next step, because her affective difficulties appear to be due mainly to her lack of English fluency, and to her lack of language support in Bahasa. One hour of ESL instruction per week is not sufficient for Bianca to learn even conversational English, much less to acquire academic English fluency at her grade level. Testing Bianca for a learning disability at this stage will only cause additional harm to her self esteem. Total immersion is probably not appropriate for Bianca, who needs a newcomer program to help her acquire English language and culture skills. As her teacher, I would request, as a minimum, that she receive daily ESL support, and that she be assigned a classroom aide who speaks Bahasa. However, I recognize that Bahasa is not a common language in South Bend, Indiana (the school actually exists), so I realize that this would probably not be possible. Bianca lacks native language support at home, so she needs more 234 A Journey Through My College Papers language support at school. If possible, involving one of Bianca's parents in her ESL instruction at school would help improve Bianca's confidence, and would probably help in her acquisition of English. I would advise Bianca's parents to use visual clues to help Bianca learn English vocabulary at home. If they could learn more Bahasa, it might encourage Bianca to learn more English. Bianca's fluency in Bahasa is probably at or below a second grade level, so she will not have existing native-language vocabulary on which to build her English vocabulary. Bianca has several affective issues. First, she probably remembers her family of origin, and it is unlikely that she has adequately dealt with their loss. She probably fears losing people in her life, as a result. Fears and grief will retard learning, even in one's native language. Second, Bianca has no native language support. She is probably confused and frustrated by the barrier to communication. She may also be embarrassed by this difficulty in dealing with her peers. Third, Bianca's cultural experience is Indonesian. Without language to help her understand the cultural differences in her new home, she probably feels alienated from her family and from her classmates. Fourth, Bianca is probably overwhelmed by the total immersion experience. She has to try to keep up with content learning in a language she cannot yet decode. Again, this is probably causing her frustration and confusion. She may be experiencing anger and/or fear at her situation. As an aside, the name of the hypothetical school in this exercise seemed familiar, so I did some checking. James Madison Elementary School is located in South Bend, Indiana, which explains the familiarity, as I used to live in Indiana. As of this school year, the school has 619 students in grades K-6, with a student-to-teacher ratio of just under 17:1 (School Tree, 2011, figure 1), 3% of the students, or about 19 students, are Asian and Pacific Islander (School Tree, 2011, figure 4), which would include Indonesia. 17% of the students are identified as Hispanic (School Tree, 2011, figure 4), which probably includes at least some ESL/ELL students. Based on these statistics, it seems likely that better ESL support should be available to Bianca at James Madison Elementary, and Mrs. Perkins should push for improved language accommodations for her before seeking to label her as learning disabled. References: SchoolTree.org. (2011). James Madison Elementary School. Retrieved April 21, 2011, from http://indiana.schooltree.org/public/James-Madison-Elementary-030655.html Mini-lesson: "I before E" 4/28/2011 My mini-lesson is one that I used with adult remedial students when I tutored at a community college a few years ago. It was taught to me so long ago that I don't remember learning it, and it is familiar to most English language students. I would teach the students a poem to help with the S (Spelling) of COPS: "I before E, except after C, or when sounded as A, as in neighbor and weigh" (Anonymous, n.d.). English being the slippery language that it is, I would warn the students that there are "weird" words that break the rule. I would use the board or the overhead to print the poem as I said it the first time, then I would point to the words as I had the students repeat the poem. I would put up a poster of the rule Undergraduate Series 235 as a reminder for students, along with a list of common "weird" words for the students to look out for. I would use this mini-lesson with any grade from about third grade up. I would use it in language arts, in and social studies class, in any science class, or in any class where students were required to write. I would repeat this lesson at intervals through the semester or the year, asking students to repeat the poem aloud before beginning a writing assignment. Before this mini-lesson is taught, students need to have mastered the alphabet, so they can recognize the key letters: I, E, and C. The students need to be able to hear and to recognize word sounds, so that they will know when they hear the long A sound. I will encourage students to employ the O (Overall) of COPS when using this lesson, as well. It is easier for students to employ correct spelling when the overall quality of their work includes legibility. This is an effective mini-lesson, according to my experience. Not only was it successful with my remedial students at the community college, but I have used it with my sons, who are now 9 and 10 years old. Poems and songs are effective mnemonic tools, because they create additional neural pathways to facilitate memory retrieval. References Anonymous. (n.d.). Cultural and Linguistic Differences 5/5/2011 One instructional strategy that could be used to support Maria would be to use cooperative learning, or alternate grouping strategies, in the classroom. Maria has social English proficiency, but she appears to lack academic English proficiency. By working in a group that includes native English language students who possess grade-level academic English proficiency, Maria could improve her own academic English proficiency while learning the content material of the various subject lessons. "Working with peers provides academic supports and creates more opportunities to practice language skills" (IRIS Center, How does linguistic diversity influence classroom performance?, n.d., para. 5). Maria's social English proficiency would allow her to receive support from her classmates, so she would have "an equal opportunity ... to participate actively" (Echevarria & Graves, 2007, p. 87). Another instructional strategy that could be used to support Maria would be to build on her background knowledge, and to be responsive to her cultural and personal diversity. "Students from ethnolinguistically diverse backgrounds may have experienced ignorance, prejudice, or disrespect, and may have been targets of abuse" (Echevarria & Graves, 2007, p. 92). It is entirely possible that Maria's academic Spanish proficiency is not much better than her academic English proficiency, despite Spanish being her probable first language from her life in Mexico. Mr. Bennett or an ESL support teacher should use "information gathered from students, their families, or a bilingual liaison" (IRIS Center, How does linguistic diversity influence classroom performance?, n.d., para. 6) to understand Maria's background and experiences before her arrival at the school. This should involve a native language assessment for Maria, as well as one or more visits with Maria's parents, which might require an interpreter. Understanding Maria's background might help Mr. Bennett to know how to teach her. Also, as assessment might reveal that Maria's parents are English illiterate, afraid to deal with authority figures, or both. This could explain why sending notes home has been unsuccessful. Being responsive to Maria's cultural diversity might also help to solve the problem of her frequent tardiness. 236 A Journey Through My College Papers A third instructional strategy that could be used to support Maria would be the use of word walls that include not only the English spellings or definitions of words, but also spellings and definitions in the other native languages that are represented in the classroom. This would help to provide native-language support to Maria, helping her to acquire "the transfer and comprehension skills necessary for learning a new language" (Echevarria & Graves, 2007, p. 87). Maria might need more or different words on her walls than might be needed by her Englishlanguage classmates, and it might be possible for her to have word lists in both English and Spanish on her desktop or on a portable folder or testing screen, such as many schools use now. From the information given, it sounds like Maria is in a full-immersion English-language classroom, when she needs to be in a newcomer program. She has little cultural background on which to build her new, English vocabulary. She needs, at the least, ESL support in the classroom. Also, both Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Casey need to receive some sensitivity training about ELL students, based on their comments that "you don't need to know how to read English to do math" (IRIS Center, Challenge transcript, n.d., para. 9). Maria would benefit from sheltered instruction, but she is trying to keep up in full immersion. References: Echevarria & Graves, (2007). Sheltered content instruction teaching English Language Learners with diverse abilities (3rd Edition). Boston, MA : Pearson Education, Inc. IRIS Center. (n.d.). Challenge transcript. Retrieved May 5, 2011, from http://isir.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/clde/challenge_trans.html --. (n.d.). How does linguistic diversity influence classroom performance? Retrieved May 5, 2011, from http://isir.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/clde/clde_06.html HIS 204: American History Since 1865 American Slave Narratives 5/12/2011 According to our text, freedom for former slaves during the period of Reconstruction meant that they could live their lives without the interference of Whites. It meant that they could "travel without a pass or white permission" (Davidson, DeLay, Heyrman, Lytl, Stoff, 2008, p. 482). It meant that Blacks could legally marry and raise families, and that they could have surnames. It meant that Blacks could work, and that their "labor would be for their own benefit" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 482). In general, freedom meant an improvement in the lives of American Blacks. Not all freed slaves agreed that freedom was better for their lives than had been slavery. Freedom was better ideologically, because no person should ever be owned by another person, but freedom meant a more difficult life for many former slaves. Fountain Hughes (1949) said, in an interview with Hermond Norwood: "We didn' have no property. We didn' have no home. We had nowhere or nothing. We didn' have nothing only just, uh, like your cattle, we were jus' turned out" (Cited in Norwood, 1949, para. 31). Freedom for Hughes meant being left to his own devices, without any sort of preparation, resources, or support. Some former slaves didn't even understand that they were free. Joseph Holmes (1937), in an interview with Ila B. Prine, said: "Talkin' 'bout n[-----]s bein' freed, 01 Miss tole us us wuz free but hit wuz ten or twelve years atter de Surrender befo' I railly knowed whut she meant" (Cited in Prine, 1937, para. 4). Some former slaves felt that their lives had been better before they were free than they were after they were freed. In an interview with Travis Jordan (1997), Tempe Herndon Durham said: "Freedom is all right, but de Undergraduate Series 237 n[-----]s was better off befo' surrender, kaze den dey was looked after an' dey didn' get in no trouble fightin' an' killin' like dey do dese days" (para. 10). Former slaves were used to being provided for by Whites, and they were never prepared for the possibility that they might have to provide for themselves. For those Blacks, freedom seemed like a shock and a burden. Many former slaves were, in many ways, like little children, despite their strong bodies and their years of life; they expected to be taken care of, and to have the necessities of life provided to them. Like children growing up, however, once the shock of being free adults passed, the former slaves found that it was good to be free, and to provide for themselves. I agree that many of the events of Reconstruction cast a long shadow over race relations for future generations. I do believe that America missed an opportunity to create a true multiracial society, but the beginning of today's society was in the Reconstruction. Former slave owners were no more prepared than former slaves for the changes that came with Black freedom. Generations of Whites believing that they were racially superior to Blacks, and of Blacks believing that they were racially inferior to Whites, could not be changed in a matter of a few months or years. More than a century was required for the majority of society to truly accept that all people are equal. If President Johnson had pushed Black equality on the nation, equality might have come sooner, but it still would not have changed people's beliefs in the first years after the Civil War. It would have required a generation growing up with a false, enforced equality for Blacks, before a true, genuine equality could be achieved. That is what did, eventually, happen in my generation, but it could have come sooner if Johnson had forced the states to "allow African Americans any political rights or make any effective provisions for black education" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 474). I believe that the accounts in the several former slave narratives that I read, and that are cited above, are accurate. I also believe that they paint a rather one-sided picture of slavery and new freedom, because it seems that the former slaves who were intervewed were all treated rather better than the common understanding of how slaves were treated in America. It is possible for these narratives to be accurate in and of themselves, while still presenting an inaccurate picture of slavery in general. I believe that there is value in every personal narrative, no matter how prominent or how obscure the person may be. Each person's narrative is important to that person, and those who were close to, or who came after, that person. References: Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M.H., Soff, M.B.. (2008). Nation of nations: a narrative history of the American Republic (6th ed., Vol. 2). Boston: McGraw Hill. Jordan, T.. (1997). Tempe Herndon Durham, 1312 Pine St., Durham, North Carolina. Retrieved May 10, 2011, from http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/durham1.html Norwood, H.. (1949). Fountain Hughes, Charlottesville, Virginia. Retrieved May 10, 2011, from http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/hughes1.html Prine, I.B.. (1937). Joseph Holmes, Mobile, Alabama. Retrieved May 10, 2011, from http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/wpa/holmes1.html Corporations and Big Business 5/12/2011 During the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, business in the United States shifted from artisanal manufacturing and family-owned business to vast, interstate corporations that employed vertical integration to increase production and profits by controlling all aspects of the manufacturing process, from the production of raw materials to distribution to the consumer. The first modern big business was the American railroads, which provided a template 238 A Journey Through My College Papers on which other big businesses, such as Western Union and AT&T, were built. "By lowering transportation costs, railroads allowed manufacturers to reduce prices, attract more buyers, and increase business" (Davidson, DeLay, Heyrman, Lytle, Stoff, 2008, p. 547). As big business replaced artisanal businesses, laborers worked for owners they usually never knew, instead of for themselves. Workers in manufacturing jobs worked long hours, without breaks, for low pay. The rise of big business thus brought back almost a form of feudalism, with employees' lives immersed in work that ultimately profited the wealthy, while leaving the employees scrabbling to maintain lives above the poverty line. The American economy went through a series of economic depressions as a result of the meteoric rise of big business. Banks "could not always keep pace with the demand for capital" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 556). Still, "[t]he economic changes resulting from the rise of big business were generally beneficial to consumers and investors" (Carey, 2010, para. 17). Big business produced more goods more efficiently for less cost than had the smaller business model that preceded it. Consumers in Boston could enjoy beef that was processed in Chicago. Steel and other building materials could be shipped anywhere the railroad went, to facilitate building larger, stronger buildings and bridges. Big business moved many unskilled laborers from the fields to the factories. Men, women, and children worked in dangerous conditions, but not all workers were paid the same wages for the same work. White men earned the highest wages, followed by white women, and then by white children. Black men and women, along with other non-white groups, earned less than Whites. Americans earned more than immigrants, and English-speakers earned more than non-English-speakers. (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 559). Factory workers often earned less than was needed to support a family, so women and children were often forced to work. "Big businesses ... made the gap between rich and poor more apparent than ever" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 556). While big businesses did contribute to national wealth, and did pride increased access to goods and services, big business also ended the simple, self-sufficient lifestyle that many Americans had enjoyed in small communities after the Civil War. References: Carey, C.W.. (2010). Corporations and big business. Retrieved May 10, 2011, from http://www.informationaccess.com/DigitalCollections/whitepapers/4_GML33607_ Corporations_whtppr.pdf Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M.H., Stoff, M.B.. (2008). Nation of nations: a narrative history of the American Republic (6th ed., Vol. 2). Boston: McGraw Hill. Elections of 1912 5/19/2011 In the 4-way race for president in 1912, Socialist party candidate Eugene V. Debs failed to get a single electoral vote. Debs' campaign issue was to make "the working class the ruling class" (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, Stoff, 2008, p. 654). Debs represented the American laborer, and promoted putting laborers into positions to lead the country, instead of the pseudoaristocracy that held most positions of power in the United States. Incumbent President William Howard Taft was the Republican party candidate in 1912. "Taft emphasized that political parties had the responsibility to endorse and defend fundamental constitutional principles" (Milkis, 2003, para. 17). Unfortunately for Taft, "voters found the Republican Taft beside the point" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 654). Supporting the U.S. Constitution was not the issue that resonated with the majority of voters in 1912. Undergraduate Series 239 Former President Theodore Roosevelt was the Progressive party candidate in 1912. The Progressive party "embraced and helped legitimize new social movements and candidate-centered campaigns, [and] pioneered a plebiscitary form of governance" (Milkis, 2003, para. 2). Social welfare was at the heart of Roosevelt's platform, but the American people were not yet ready for that level of government involvement in their lives, and Roosevelt accrued only 28% of the popular vote and 17% of the electoral vote (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 654). New Jersey's Governor Woodrow Wilson was the Democratic party candidate in 1912, and he won the presidency. Wilson's platform was based on the "limitation of governmental power" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 654). Wilson supported protecting the free market by limiting the growth of big business. In 1912, Americans were ready to be freed from the yoke of the trusts and big business, and were ready to elect Wilson to make that happen. Although not the Progressive party candidate, President Wilson was a progressive leader. Americans were ready for a degree of progressivism in 1912, and they were ready to allow the government to step in to defend social welfare by regulating big business. The broader social goals of progressivism were still too much for Americans in 1912; however, as the people generally valued individual achievement. "[T]he failure of the 1912 experiment and the Progressive Party's demise underscore the incoherence of the Progressive movement" (Milkis, 2003, para. 25). The progressive reform movement needed better definition before it would appeal to the American public again. References: Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M.H., Stoff, M.B.. (2008). Nation of nations: a narrative history of the American Republic (6th ed., Vol. 2). Boston: McGraw Hill. Milkis, S.M. (2003). Why the election of 1912 changed America. Claremont Review of Books. Retrieved May 16, 2011, from http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/winter2002/milkis1912.html World War I Propaganda 5/19/2011 There are a number of recurring themes in the posters found at http://www.firstworldwar.com/posters/usa.htm: saving food to support the Army and the Navy; working to support the Army and the Navy; recruiting soldiers and sailors; buying Liberty Bonds; the role of churches and religious groups in support of the Army and the Navy; humanitarian relief in the Near East; and women and children supporting the war effort. Lesser themes include wartime entertainment, tourism in the Near East, and a campaign to stop the spread of disease that featured the slogan: "Kill the rat!" (Duffy 2, 2009, poster 4). A large part of the money for the war "came from the sale of 'Liberty' and 'Victory' bonds and war savings certificates" (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, Stoff, 2008, p. 675). Among the posters on the Web site were many that urged or encouraged Americans to buy bonds or thrift stamps. A few of these are:  A picture of two young children holding hands with a uniformed American soldier. The text reads: "Help him win by saving and serving" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 40).  A picture of the Statue of Liberty. The text reads: "You buy a Liberty Bond lest I perish" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 16).  A picture of the Liberty Bell. The text reads: "Ring it again ... Help Your Country and Yourself" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 17). 240 A Journey Through My College Papers  A picture of a woman leaving a grocery store. The text reads: "Take your change in thrift stamps" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 23). Numerous posters promote the 2nd Liberty Loan with slogans like "help win the war" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 15), and the 4th Liberty Loan with slogans like "We like our pay -- but if we have to we can go without it" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 14). "Boy Scouts sold [bonds] under the slogan 'Every Scout to Save a Soldier'" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 675).According to Treasury Secretary McAdoo, on the subject of bonds, "Every person who refuses to subscribe ... is a friend of Germany" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 675). Saving food to support the Army and the Navy was a serious matter. "The Food Administration encouraged farmers to grow more and citizens to eat less wastefully" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 675). Posters urged Americans to eat more fish and cottage cheese, and to leave meat and wheat for the troops. A few specific posters read:  "Food will win the war ... Waste nothing" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 43).  "We have promised to feed the hungry millions of Europe ... Save food" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 51).  "Save Food -- Don't Waste It" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 21).  "Get behind the girl he left behind him -- Join the land army" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 41). The land army refers to raising beef, pork, and wheat to feed the soldiers, and to raising vegetables to feed the nation at home. "Huge publicity campaigns promoted 'wheatless' and 'meatless' days each week and encouraged families to plant 'victory' gardens" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 675). Americans were exhorted to stay at their jobs and to put in a full day's work every day in order to support the war effort. One poster told Americans to "be true to the boys who are giving their lives for you" (Duffy 1, 2008, poster 7). Another poster, which featured a picture of an American soldier, read: "We don't put down our tools till quitting time" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 61). Recruiting posters encouraged American men to join the Army and the Navy. The most famous of these is James Flagg's "I Want You for the U.S. Army" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 678) poster, which features a picture of Uncle Sam pointing at the viewer. Other posters took advantage of the German nickname for the U.S. Marines by proclaiming a "Devil Dog Recruiting Station" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 25). Boys who were too young to serve in the military were encouraged to serve in other ways, with posters declaring that "every American boy should enroll in the Victory Boys" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 11). Religion-based organizations supported the war effort with posters. The American Red Cross had numerous posters that called attention to the Red Cross nurses in the European theatre. One Red Cross poster featured a picture of Jesus and a church towering over a war nurse as she tends the wounded in the field (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 82). A Salvation Army poster proclaims "Soldiers Soul Dressing Stations" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 27). The Knights of Columbus had posters for the National Catholic War Council, and also a poster that read "Helping your boy through No Mans Land" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 35). Humanitarian relief posters featured pictures of women and children living in poverty. A few specific posters read:  "2 1/2 Million Women and Children Now Starving to Death -- You Can't Let Us Starve" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 19).  "Lest we perish" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 39).  "Humanity Calls! Dare You Refuse" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 31).  "The 'War' Bread that You get would seem like Cake to the children of Europe" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 54). Undergraduate Series 241 Most of the humanitarian relief posters were in support of the people of Serbia, and the rest were in support of the people of the Near East. These campaigns called on Americans to donate money to the relief effort. Women who were not already working at jobs to support the war effort were exhorted to "Knit a bit for our first line of defense" (Duffy 1, 2009, poster 74). I remember my grandmother talking about knitting scarves, and about knitting squares for blankets, when she got home from work in the evenings and on Saturdays, to be sent to the soldiers in Europe. American propaganda posters in World War I encouraged Americans to take several specific actions:  Eat more fish, grains, vegetables, and dairy, so the Army can have more meat, wheat, and sugar.  Don't waste food.  Put in a full day of work every day.  Do without luxuries so soldiers can have essentials.  Donate money to humanitarian relief.  Serve in the Army or in the Navy.  Above all else, buy war bonds. References: Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M.H., Stoff, M.B.. (2008). Nation of nations: a narrative history of the American Republic (6th ed., Vol. 2). Boston: McGraw Hill. Duffy, M. (2009). Propaganda posters -- United States of America (1). Retrieved May 16, 2011, from http://www.firstworldwar.com/posters/usa.htm --. (2009). Propaganda posters -- United States of America (2). Retrieved May 16, 2011, from http://www.firstworldwar.com/posters/usa2.htm American Imperialism 5/23/2011 American Imperialism developed in the second half of the nineteenth century because of a combination of social and economic imperatives for our young country. The social imperatives included “an underlying belief in manifest destiny, our nation’s fate and duty to settle our North American lands coast to coast” (Chimes, n.d., para. 3). Social imperatives also included the idea that “Americans had a moral responsibility to bring progress, self-government, and material prosperity to the so-called weaker races of the earth” (Rice, 2010, para. 3). The economic imperative for American Imperialism was expressed by Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1890, when he “argued that great nations were seafaring powers that relied on foreign trade for wealth and might” (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, Stoff, 2008, p. 613). America imposed imperialist control over other countries not only by formal annexation of the countries, but also by technological and economic superiority over the other countries’ economies. In addition, the rapidly vanishing American frontier in North America prompted America to push beyond its continental borders to expand into distant lands. Beyond Mahan’s belief in the need for foreign trade, American Imperialism was rationalized as a purer form of imperialism than the form practiced by European powers. “Americans could be portrayed as bearers of long-cherished values: democracy, free-enterprise capitalism, and Protestant Christianity” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 612). America was then viewed as an Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Christian nation, and many believed that social Darwinism proved that Anglo-Saxons were the superior race when compared to all non-white races. While 242 A Journey Through My College Papers much of American Imperialism was really about making money and about building economic and political power in the world, it was touted as the noble and necessary fulfillment of America’s duty to “assert their dominion over ‘lesser peoples’ of the world” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 613). In particular, the occupation of the Philippine Islands was rationalized as “White Man’s Burden” to teach “the virtues of Western civilization, Christianity, democracy, and self-rule” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 623) to the Filipinos. Because of the policy of American Imperialism in the late nineteenth century, the United States came into conflict with Great Britain, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, and Japan. The United States was involved with Russia in 1867, when Secretary of State William Henry Seward purchased Alaska. Revolts in Cuba led, in part, to the Spanish-American War. America acquired Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines in 1898, as part of the Treaty of Paris and a financial arrangement between the United States and Spain. In the same year, America annexed Hawaii in the Pacific. In addition, the United States became involved in China, and American Secretary of State John Hay “brashly announced that the open door in China was international policy” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 625). The Anti-Imperialist League was founded after the American acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, by Americans who “feared racial intermixing and the possibility of Filipino and other Asian workers flooding the American labor market” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 623). The Anti-Imperialist League was not a group of disgruntled rabble or of radical, antigovernment troublemakers. “[M]any of the nation’s most illustrious citizens – including Andrew Carnegie and William James” (Halsall, 1997, para. 1) were involved in founding the League. In the League’s official platform, Carl Schurz (1913) stated that “imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism” (Cited in Halsall, 1997, para. 2). The Anti-Imperialist League opposed America’s actions in the Philippines, and promised “to contribute to the defeat of any person or party that stands for the forcible subjugation of any people” (Halsall, 1997, para. 9). The League was unsuccessful in its attempt to stop the annexation of the Philippines, and a Filipino revolt in 1899 began a war that lasted until 1902, bridging American Imperialism into the twentieth century. American Imperialism influenced society in the twentieth century. The second open-door note in China was signed in 1900, right at the threshold of the new century, and those notes helped “to open closed markets and to keep open those markets that other empires had yet to close” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 625). The benefit of this policy is still felt in the twenty-first century, when Americans can buy many inexpensive products that are made in China. The end of the Philippine War in 1902 led to the future independence of the Philippines in 1946. The American colonies of Puerto Rico and Guam that were annexed in 1898 are now referred to as American territories, and they continue to be held by the United States. Other American territories and possessions, which continue American Imperialism through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, include American Samoa, Baker Island, the Howland Islands, Jarvis Island, Johnson Island, Kingman Reef, the Midway Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, Palmyra Atoll, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Wake Island (Internal Revenue Service, 2010, paras. 1-2). Alaska, purchased in 1867, and Hawaii, annexed in 1898, became American states in the twentieth century. During World War II, bases in Hawaii, and on Midway and on Guam, served the American Navy, and Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, and Midway, are famous for their roles in major battles during the war. Secretary of State James G. Blaine’s effort “to cancel the ClaytonBulwer Treaty (1850), which shared with Great Britain rights to any canal built in Central America” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 615) led to the building of the Panama Canal in the first part of the twentieth century. Theodore Roosevelt’s acquisition of the needed land in Panama was another example of American Imperialism in the twentieth century. Undergraduate Series 243 American Imperialism in the latter part of the nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth century developed to forge economic and political power for the United States, to fulfill America’s moral mandate to civilize and to Christianize the non-white people of the world under the White Man’s Burden, and to fulfill America’s Manifest Destiny to spread across the North American continent and beyond. American Imperialism was more about economic control of other lands than about military force, at least in theory. America did buy or annex a number of colonies and territories, two of which achieved statehood, and several of which continue to exist as American possessions today. References Chimes, M. (n.d.). American foreign policy in the late 19th Century: Philosophical underpinnings. Retrieved May 17, 2011, from http://www.spanamwar.com/imperialism.htm Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M.H., Stoff, M.B.. (2008). Nation of nations: a narrative history of the American Republic (6th ed., Vol. 2). Boston: McGraw Hill. Halsall, D. (1997). Modern history sourcebook: American Anti-Imperialist League, 1899. Internet Modern History Sourcebook. Retrieved May 17, 2011, from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1899antiimp.html Internal Revenue Service. (2010). Retrieved May 23, 2011, from http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/international/article/0,,id=97321,00.html Rice, M. (2010). His name was Don Francisco Muro: Reconstructing an image of American imperialism. American Quarterly. Retrieved May 17, 2011, from ProQuest database. Automobile and America 5/26/2011 The automobile changed American culture in several ways. The most obvious change was that "[r]ural Americans could drive around freely and examine the world around them ... [and] urban Americans would drive into the hustle and bustle of the city" (Elliott, 2011, para. 4). This increased mobility "fueled urban sprawl, real estate booms ... and a new roadside culture of restaurants, service stations, and motels" (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, Stoff, 2008, p. 695). Since the "1920's were ruled by the youth of the country ... [and] an intense feeling of rebellion and breaking away from society's boundaries" (Elliott, 2011, para. 1), the increased mobility appealed to a great many people. People wee able to move out of the city into the suburbs without giving up their jobs in the city. "Americans enjoyed the highest standard of living any people had ever known" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 693). The cultural changes brought by the automobile were not all good, however. "Because of this increased sense of personal freedom ... many American families fell apart" (Elliott, 2011, para. 4). Women and children had greater freedom to leave home and to find their own lives, which disrupted the stable home lives that they had known in earlier decades. Henry Ford's "success came after he formed the Ford Motor Company in 1903" (Bellis, 2011, para. 9). Ford adapted the assembly line from "a practice of Chicago meatpacking houses" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 694), which cut the time for assembling an automobile in half. As well as introducing the assembly line, which is now in use in practically every field of manufacturing, Ford "established the 'Five-Dollar Day,' twice the wage rate in Detroit. He reduced working hours from 48 to 40 a week and cut the workweek to five days" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 694). By improving working conditions and doubling wages, Ford made the tedium of the assembly line 244 A Journey Through My College Papers more bearable. Also, with the increased wages, Ford helped to boost the post-war economy, since "workers with extra money in their pockets would buy enough to sustain a booming prosperity" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 694). Other companies adopted Ford's assembly line, but used their own business strategies. References: Bellis, M.. (2011). The first mass producers of cars -- the assembly line. Retrieved May 26, 2011, from http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aacarsassemblya.htm?p=1 Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M.H., Stoff, M.B.. (2008). Nation of nations: a narrative history of the American Republic (6th ed., Vol. 2). Boston: McGraw Hill. Elliott, S.. (2011). The roaring 1920's: The effects of the automobile on American life. Retrieved May 26, 2011, from http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/94668/the_roaring_1920s_the_effects_of _the.html WWII-Related Events 5/26/2011 Executive Order 9066 was created to allow "the exclusion of any person from designated military areas" (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, Stoff, 2008, p. 781). It was largely an excuse to get the Japanese off the West Coast because Caucasians believed it to be "a question of whether the white man lives on the Pacific Coast or the brown man" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 781). The excuse that was given to the American public was that the loyalty of Japanese Americans, both Nisei and Issei, was in doubt because of their Japanese heritage, and that they needed to be contained until after WWII so they wouldn't aid the enemy. The Order was presented as a wartime necessity, but the evacuation of Japanese Americans to internment camps was unconstitutional. "Together, [Executive Order 9066 and Public Law 503] constituted a Bill of Attainder which were unconstitutional enactments against Japanese Americans pronouncing them guilty without trial" (Ostgaard, Smart, McGuire, Lanz, Hodson, 2000, para. 3). By depriving the Japanese Americans of liberty without a proper trial violated their constitutional rights. "In 1976, ... President Gerald Ford declared the evacuation a 'national mistake.' And in 1988 HR 442 is signed into law by President Ronald Reagan providing for reparations for surviving internees Beginning in 1990 $20,000 in redress payments were sent to all eligible Japanese Americans" (Overview, 2011, para. 7). This small financial reparation was hardly more than a token for Nisei who had taken huge losses when they were evacuated. While internment camps in America were better than German concentration camps, the fact remains that they were concentration camps. An effort was made to keep families and family groups together, but those families had to live in single-room accommodations in barracks with "a few cots, some blankets, and a single light bulb" (Davidson, et. al., p. 781). At Camp Harmony, the barracks had "walls with one tiny window every twenty feet in the rear wall, no windows on the side, and a small door (no window in it) at the front. Over all a tarpaper roof ... Each room is about 20 feet square and separated from the next room by a partition that runs up part way to the roof ... The floors laid right on the ground. Mud everywhere ... No plumbing facilities" (Physical Layout, 2011, para. 7). Residents of Camp Harmony were subjected to curfews, and "[o]ther regulations denied basic rights such as the right to assemble ... religious freedom ... speech ... and privacy" (Civil Liberties, 2011, para. 3). This was a gross violation of the U.S. Bill of Rights, but it was justified as a military necessity. At Camp Harmony, "by way of toilets are two wooden planks with six holes but out by the carpenters in each plank, the [holes] facing back to back. Undergraduate Series 245 Under the twelve holds [sic] is a large zinc lined pan through which water is flushed every so often" (Housing, 2011, para. 4). In all, detainees were treated as subhuman prisoners. Life was harsh and humiliating for the proud and fastidious Japanese. Japanese language materials and Japanese religious practices were not allowed. References: Civil liberties. (2011). Retrieved May 26, 2011, from http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/harmony/exhibit/civil.htm Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M.H., Stoff, M.B.. (2008). Nation of nations: a narrative history of the American Republic (6th ed., Vol. 2). Boston: McGraw Hill. Housing. (2011). Retrieved May 26, 2011, from http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/harmony/exhibit/housing.html Ostgaard, K., Smart, C., McGuire, T., Lanz, M., Hodson, T.A.. (2000). The JapaneseAmerican internment during WWII: A discussion of civil liberties then and now. Senate Publication Number 1028-S [Electronic version], 30-34. Retrieved May 26, 2011, from http://bss.sfsu.edu/internment/rightsviolated.html Overview. (2011). Retrieved May 26, 2011, from http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/harmony/exhibit/intro.html Physical layout. (2011). Retrieved May 26, 2011, from http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/harmony/exhibit/layout.html Summer of Hate 6/2/2011 The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and the police riot at the Democratic convention in Chicago, are connected by an ideological generation gap. The gap was opened from a hairline crack to a chasm by the violence of the Tet Offensive, which "awoke the American ... people to the fact that years of bombing had not had the predicted effect" (Golding, n.d., para. 2). Conservative Americans, including in great part of the elder generation, who supported the war in Vietnam, found themselves faced by the liberal Americans, who were mainly the young adult generation, and who protested the war. The war was not the only issue over which the generations were split; civil rights and segregation also polarized America. "The nation split between the old and the new -- between parents and their children" (Nilsen, 2008, para. 53). The situation was not limited to America, with students protesting a number of issues in China, Cuba, Italy, France, and Czechoslovakia. "Almost all the forces dividing America seemed to converge in 1968 ... [and] students worldwide ... showed remarkable unanimity in condemning one event on the world stage: the American war in Vietnam" (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, Stoff, 2008, pp. 893-895). King and Kennedy "exemplified the liberal tradition" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 895). The liberals challenged the status quo, and opposed the war in Vietnam. The two men appealed to "the poor and minorities ... [and were] popular among traditional white ethnics and blue-collar workers" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 895), which posed a threat to the American establishment. With their assassinations in the spring of 1968, they became martyrs for the cause to "change U.S. policy in Vietnam and end the draft and provide racial equality for Americans" (Nilsen, 2008, para. 63). The shock and anger that followed the assassinations flowed into the Democratic convention in Chicago, but it was not the American populace that caused the violence there. Demonstrators who were afraid that "no major candidate would speak for Americans disillusioned with the war or the status quo" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 895) did throw "eggs, rocks, and 246 A Journey Through My College Papers balloons filled with paint and urine" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 895), so they were not wholly innocent. It was the Chicago police who "took off their badges and waded into the crowd, nightsticks swinging, chanting, 'Kill, kill, kill'" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 895). Stan Robinson (2008) was in Grant Park in Chicago at the time of the riot, and he reported: "We were tear gassed, beaten by the police and arrested ... this time it was Americans against Americans" (Cited in Nilsen, 2008, para. 43). Marilyn Zeitlin (2008) reported: "We were in Grant Park when the police charged the protestors. It was impossible to get away from them" (Cited in Nilsen, 2008, para. 45). The violence of 1968 preceded the 1968 election of Richard Nixon as President of the United States. The liberal cause of peace and civil rights was lost in the violence of massacre, assassination, and rioting. "The majority of the American electorate seemed to have turned their backs on liberal reform and the idea of an activist government" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 896). Where peaceful activism might have established liberal reform, rampant violence shocked and frightened America into a more conservative position. Nixon appealed to conservative and moderate Americans, which allowed him to win the presidency. References: Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M.H., Stoff, M.B.. (2008). Nation of nations: a narrative history of the American Republic (6th ed., Vol. 2). Boston: McGraw Hill. Golding, B.. (n.d.). The summer of hate. Retrieved June 2, 2011, from http://www.pressrecord.com/politic/chicago68.html Nilsen, R.. (2008). 1968: Slipping into darkness. The Arizona Republic [Electronic version]. Retrieved June 2, 2011, from http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/ae/articles/0217sixtyeight0217.html Hollywood/Fiction - Hollywood Blacklists 6/2/2011 The HUAC focused its attention on the Hollywood Ten because the ten men "refused on First Amendment grounds to say whether they were or ever had been Communists" (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, Stoff, 2008, p. 816). The committee assumed that the "unfriendly" ten remained silent in order to conceal the fact that they were, in fact, Communists. The assumption was accurate, as "the Hollywood Ten who were all held in contempt of congress, later admitted to being or having been members of the Communist Party" (Mills, 2007, para. 8), but the assumption should never have been made in America, where citizens are assumed to be innocent until proven guilty. The Hollywood Ten, who were eleven until "Bertolt Brecht left the country" (Mills, 2007, para. 5), were questioned about their ideologies because "[t]he HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood ... [who] named nineteen people who they said held leftwing views" (Dresler, Lewis, Schoser, Nordine, 2005, para. 1). Of the nineteen, eight people answered the committee's questions. The whole process took place because the HUAC "began to investigate Communist influence in the film industry" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 816). America was marked by fears that Communism would be promulgated through subtle wording in film scripts. The situation was, in some ways, more frightening than combating Europeans during WWII because "Communist spies ... spoke without accents and looked much like the rest of us" (Mills, 2007, para. 2). An easily-identified enemy or threat is always less terrifying than one that hides in plain sight. Fears of Communists hiding in American society led to the paranoia that triggered the investigations by the HUAC. Undergraduate Series 247 References: Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M.H., Stoff, M.B.. (2008). Nation of nations: a narrative history of the American Republic (6th ed., Vol. 2). Boston: McGraw Hill. Dresler, K., Lewis, K., Schoser, T., Nordine, C.. (2005). The Hollywood Ten. Retrieved June 2, 2011, from http://www.mcpld.org/trumbo/WebPages/hollywoodten.htm Mills, M.. (2007). Blacklist: A different look at the 1947 HUAC hearings. Retrieved June 2, 2011, from http://www.moderntimes.com/palace/blacklist.htm Iran Hostage Crisis 6/9/2011 At the beginning of Ode's captivity, he was kept restrained, with his hands tied together some of the time, and with his hands "tied to each side of the chair" (Ode 1-50, 1981, p. 3) at other times. The hostages were moved frequently, and were often blindfolded. At times, the hostages were made to sleep on the floor, while they were allowed to sleep in real beds at other times. The hostages were not allowed to talk to one another, and Ode was relieved of his personal possessions. At the middle of the captivity, Ode reported cases of disciplinary harassment. The hostages were allowed books, games, and cigarettes, and they were allowed to communicate with each other. Ode was allowed to write letters and to keep a diary. The hostages ate poorly some of the time, and they ate very well at other times. On June 6, 1980, Ode wrote: "Things are really going from bad to worse here" (Ode 1-50, 1981, p. 37). The biggest problems seem to have been boredom and irregular communication with family and friends. On November 9, 1980, Ode wrote: "Last year I was lying on the hard floor" (Ode 51-100, 1981, p. 48), while that night he "[p]ut on a warmer blanket tonight" (Ode 51-100, 1981, p. 48). Although he was still a hostage, his circumstances had improved in a year. The hostages were giving in to depression, as Ode described: "Don ... spent most of his day in bed ... Jerry did the same thing. He just lies and stares at the ceiling, picking his nose or sucking his fingers! Today he got into his pajamas and crawled back into bed again after being there all night! He really is in a depressive state" (Ode 51-100, 1981, p. 50). The Americans were taken hostage because "the United States admitted the ailing Shah to an American hospital for medical treatment" (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, Stoff, 2008, p. 937). The Iranians wanted the Shah returned to Iran, and the students who took the hostages were seeking revenge for the U.S.'s support of the Shah. The Iran hostage crisis created "a crisis of confidence" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 937) in America. I was in seventh grade when the crisis came to an end, and I remember all of the adults talking about how the Iranians were waiting for Reagan to be President before releasing the hostages, because it would embarrass President Carter. Economically, the Iran hostage crisis caused problems in America. The "problems of energy dependence and the economic instability interacted to create a political crisis ... [and] OPEC increase[d] ... the price of oil" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 937). The American economy suffered from the crisis, and "[s]oaring energy costs soon drove up inflation to near 14 percent and some interest rates above 20 percent" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 937). References: Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M.H., Stoff, M.B.. (2008). Nation of nations: a narrative history of the American Republic (6th ed., Vol. 2). Boston: McGraw Hill. 248 A Journey Through My College Papers Ode, R.. (1981). Calendar of events: Robert Ode [Electronic version]. Retrieved June 9, 2011, from http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/r_ode/Ode_pages1thru50.pdf --. (1981). Calendar of events: Robert Ode [Electronic version]. Retrieved June 9, 2011, from http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/r_ode/Ode_pages51thru100.pdf Sit-Coms 6/9/2011 All in the Family and M*A*S*H each addressed controversial social issues of the time, with many of the same issues appearing in both shows. Both shows were often condemned by the religious right because they offered a "permissive, even positive portrayal of unmarried women, premarital sex and drug use, profanity, homosexuality, nudity, and violence" (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, Stoff, 2008, p. 932). They caused people to think about issues that had not previously been acceptable in television shows, and sometimes not even in mixed company. They also addressed racism and minorities, and the futility of war and criticisms of the American government. All in the Family included "many controversial topics including rape, sex, homosexuality, death, and other topics that were relevant to the 1970's, especially political strife and inflation" (All in the Family, 2011, para. 3). Some specific topics that were addresses were:  Sex and reproduction:  Episode 6: "Gloria suffers a sudden miscarriage" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 6).  Episode 28: Edith faces "the approach of menopause" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 28).  Episode 110: Gloria has problems "announcing her unexpected pregnancy because of Mike's stubborn attitude toward overpopulation" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 110).  Episode 130: "Mike and Gloria's sex life suffers" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 130).  Episode 148: Unmarried sex is an issue when the family discovers its boarder "in bed with her boyfriend" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 148).  Episode 152: Female enjoyment of sex, which was not an acknowledged subject of the time, comes up when "Edith sneaks a peek at a best-selling sex manual" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 152).  Inequality of the sexes:  Episode 11: "Gloria leaves the house in a rage when Mike refuses to recognize her as an equal partner in her marriage" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 11).  Episodes 88 and 91: Archie is upset about Edith and Irene getting jobs.  Episodes 186: "Edith is disillusioned when her bank refuses to grant a loan without her husband's signature" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 186).  Homosexuality and transsexuality:  Episode 113: "Archie gets a rude shock when the tall, classy dame whose life he saved in a taxicab turns out to be a man" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 113).  Episode 159: The Bunkers learn at "the funeral of Edith's cousin Liz ... that she'd been living with a lesbian roommate for years" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 159). Undergraduate Series 249  Violence:  Episode 60: Gloria deals with "an attempted sexual assault" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 60).  Episode 160: On Edith's birthday, "a rapist holds her at gunpoint in her own living room" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 160).  Episode 168: The Bunkers are shocked when a friend "is brutally murdered by street thugs at Christmas" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 168).  Drug and alcohol use:  Episode 71: "Archie spends a long night contemplating his life through the haze of a drunken stupor" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 71).  Episode 163: "Archie takes a few pep pills ... and winds up with an amphetamine addiction" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 163).  Nudity:  Episode 15: "Mike ... agrees to let Gloria pose as a nude model" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 15).  Racism and prejudice:  Episode 57: "Archie wakes up to find a swastika painted on his front door" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 57).  Episode 165: "Archie is nominated for membership in ... the KKK" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 165).  Episode 196: "Archie is forced to reevaluate his religious prejudice after [his neice] tries to conceal the fact that she's Jewish" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 196).  Cancer:  Episode 76: "Edith tries to hide the fact that she may have breast cancer" (All in the Family Episodes, 2010, para. 76). M*A*S*H "was initially developed as a critique of the Vietnam War" (M*A*S*H, 2011, para. 3). A combination of pointed comedy and poignant drama, the series addressed many social issues within its episodes. Heavy drinking to escape the war, often supplied by the home-made still in Hawkeye’s tent, and very liberal sexuality and lechery, feature in most of the episodes. M*A*S*H "criticized the politicians who mired the United States in Vietnam" (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 932). Some specific topics that are addressed are:  Slavery:  Episode 5: "Hawkeye ends up winning a Korean girl as servant from the sergeant who purchased her. The girl, unfortunately, has a hard time understanding Hawkeye when he attempts to set her free" (Krause, 1997, para. 5).  Faked illness and self-inflicted injuries:  Episode 7: "Hawkeye fakes insanity" (Krause, 1997, para. 7).  Episode 9: Hawkeye and Trapper John get "Radar to fake an illness to get Henry to return" (Krause, 1997, para. 9).  Episode 104: "Danny Fitzsimmons has shot himself to get out of combat" (Krause, 1997, para. 104).  Suicide:  Episode 15: While not an actual suicide, Hawkeye tells the camp that "Capt. Tuttle leaped from a chopper without a parachute" (Krause, 1997, para.15). Capt. Tuttle was a fictional character created by Hawkeye.  Racism: 250 A Journey Through My College Papers       Episode 33: "A bigoted sergeant seeking the right-'colored' blood learns a lesson in prejudice" (Krause, 1997, para. 33).  Episode 228: "[T]he doctors suspect pre-judice when an inordinate number of black casualties are brought in from a single unit" (Krause, 1997, para. 228). Homosexuality:  Episode 46: "Burns tries to slap a dishonorable discharge on a decorated soldier who admits to being a homosexual" (Krause, 1997, para. 46). Alcohol and drugs:  Episode 65: When a visiting doctor needs to do an artery transplant, "Dr. ... Borelli's drinking problem to interfere at the worst time" (Krause, 1997, para. 65).  Episode 143: "Charles takes amphetamines to keep up his energy level, and even drugs Radar's mouse" (Krause, 1997, para. 143).  Episode 209: "One of Margaret's nurses tries to hide her severe drinking problem" (Krause, 1997, para. 209). Death:  Episode 72: "Radar announces that Henry has been killed when his plane was shot down over the Sea of Japan" (Krause, 1997, para. 72). This scene was presented with incredible realism, and "public sentiment toward the event was so negative that the producers promised never to have another character depart the same way" (M*A*S*H, 2011, para. 3).  Deaths of patients occurred in many episodes, as did the deaths of various civilian minor characters. Extra-marital sex:  Episode 114: Despite being a happily married man, "B.J. consoles [Nurse Carrie], and they spend the night together" (Krause, 1997, para. 114).  Episode 246: "Colonel Potter discovers that his son-in-law has had an affair" (Krause, 1997, para. 246). Mental trauma:  Episode 251: "A deeply troubled Hawkeye has been sent away to the psychiatric hospital ... [to] find the cause of his breakdown, which is associated with a tragic incident on a trip back from R&R at the beach" (Krause, 1997, para. 114). This was the final episode, and Hawkeye's repressed memories were very intense as he recalled having seen a Korean mother kill her own child to make it be quiet to keep them from being discovered by the enemy. References: All in the Family. (2011). Retrieved June 9, 2011, from http://www.tv.com/all-in-thefamily/show/201/summary.html All in the Family episodes. (2010). Retrieved June 9, 2011, from http://www.allinthefamilysit.com/episodes.shtml Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M.H., Stoff, M.B.. (2008). Nation of nations: a narrative history of the American Republic (6th ed., Vol. 2). Boston: McGraw Hill. Krause, D.. (1997). M*A*S*H faq: Episode guide. Retrieved June 9, 2011, from http://www.faqs.org/faqs/tv/mash/guide/ M*A*S*H. (2011). Retrieved June 9, 2011, from http://www.tv.com/mash/show/119/summary.html Undergraduate Series 251 African Americans in Post-Civil War America 6/12/2011 Although America has elected an African American president in the twenty-first century, African Americans have faced anti-black racism continuously through the period since African Americans were freed from slavery. The issue of race “has cursed the nation from the beginning, and we have never gotten it right, or even close to right” (Nuechterlein, 2011, para. 1). Racism is often less obvious in the twenty-first century than it was in the nineteenth century, but it still pervades much of American society. “America's racial divide on public opinion began in 1619 when the first African slaves were transported to these shores” (Contemporary controversies, 2000, para. 20). Most white people in America at that time agreed with black slavery, while most Africans in America vehemently disagreed with the concept. Even today, “the old prejudices lurk not far beneath the opposition [Barak Obama] encounters” (Nuechterlein, 2011, para. 16). In Unit One, African Americans moved from slavery to freedom, and from agricultural work to urban factory work. Although African Americans received pay for their work as freedpeople, which they had not done as slaves, they still received less pay and poorer living and working conditions than whites. “Blacks could not gain effective freedom simply through a proclamation of emancipation” (Davidson, Delay, Heyrman, Lytle, Stoff, 2008, p. 472). In order to have true freedom from the oppression that they had suffered during the centuries of slavery, African Americans needed to acquire land and to establish their economic independence. In the early days of Reconstruction, it was difficult for African Americans to acquire land, and not many African Americans did so. Still, “in spite of racial prejudice, harsh conditions, and inferior equipment” (Clendenin, 2005, para. 4), African Americans worked to make their freedom a reality. “At the end of the Great Civil War, approximately 180,000 African Americans served in the Union Army” (Clendenin, 2005, para. 2). After Emancipation, military service did not significantly improve for African Americans. Even African Americans who had graduated from military academy at West Point found themselves discriminated against by their white classmates. Other African Americans moved from the location of their former slavery, in the American South, to the perceived opportunities of the frontiers in the American West. In the West, many African Americans “worked as miners, farmers, soldiers, housewives, prostitutes, newspaper publishers, hotel owners, restaurateurs, barbers, and even politicians” (Hardaway, 2001, para. 1). There, they were able to do much of the same work that was done by their white neighbors, but they “could not stay in white hotels, eat in white restaurants, or patronize white prostitutes” (Hardaway, 2001, para. 8). Even on the frontier, African Americans continued to encounter racial discrimination. In response to the discrimination that African Americans experienced between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the twentieth century, African Americans asserted what rights they were able to claim by leaving the places where they had been enslaved; a few freedpeople stayed with their former masters, but most freedpeople agreed with a cook who said, “I must go. If I stays here I’ll never know I’m free” (Davidson, et. Al., 2008, p. 482). African Americans, most of whom had only had first names to identify them during slavery, “adopted last names ... without white interference” (Davidson, et. Al., 2008, p. 482). Another response to the discrimination and racial prejudice was African Americans working to become literate and educated. They knew that they could best establish their economic freedom, and thus achieve true freedom, if they could read. The outcome of the African American response to prejudice and discrimination in this period was that African Americans began to form families, schools, and churches. They began to earn their way in the world, even though many were still forced by circumstances to work for 252 A Journey Through My College Papers white land owners. This was just the beginning of freedom for African Americans, and there was no real solution to the issue of racial prejudice. In Unit Two, African Americans experienced racial prejudice and segregation in the beginning of the twentieth century. “Jim Crow segregation forced ‘black people to encounter the color line differently’" (Inwood, 2009, para. 1). The color line divided whites from blacks in American society. “Most African Americans found that industries in Buffalo [, New York,] drew the color line, preferring to hire recent immigrants rather than African-American migrants from the south” (Cha-Jua, et. al., 2002, para. 5). African Americans were still working to confirm their true freedom through economic equality, but they were fighting continued discrimination. In some areas, racial prejudice and discrimination led to violence. In “Brooklyn, Illinois class and color divisions led to such political chaos and factionalism by 1915, that the sheriff had to declare martial law to maintain law and order in the town” (Cha-Jua, et. al., 2002, para. 6). Brooklyn was just one of many cities where African Americans met with white resistance. American institutions also discriminated against African Americans. African Americans were denied benefits of Social Security when it was first established, “through a shifting web of alliances of white policymakers that crossed regional and political parties . . . who genuinely sought to build a fairer and better world, and devoted their waking hours to that challenge, but whose vision was steeped in racial privilege" (Archenbaum, 2007, para. 3). Prejudice was already so much a part of the white American psyche that this sort of unintentional discrimination was rampant. The denial of benefits to African Americans were done subtly, and without actually identifying African Americans as the target of the exclusions, by requiring “the exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers" (Archenbaum, 2007, para. 5), which group included a great majority of African Americans. In Mississippi, the “new state constitution required voters to pay a poll tax and pass a literacy test” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 605). The new requirements blocked some few white Mississippians from voting, but it also “eliminated the great majority of black voters” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 605). The discrimination of this rule was legal because it was not overtly directed at African Americans, and so, African Americans continued to face discrimination. African Americans entered the military and served in World War I. “African Americans volunteered in disproportionately high numbers ... [and] [o]nly 10 percent of the population, blacks made up 13 percent of all draftees” (Davidson, et. Al., 2008, p. 674). Where African Americans were generally not considered to be good enough to live in society, they were considered to be well suited to fight and to die for society. Even in the military, African Americans faced racial discrimination. The army employed “new intelligence tests ... and almost 80 percent of blacks showed up as ‘inferior’” (Davidson, et. Al., 2008, pp. 674-675). A part of the African American response to the continuing racial discrimination of the late nineteenth century was the 1896 establishment of the National Association of Colored Women. In 1900, Booker T. Washington, a former slave, “organized the National Negro Business League” (Davidson, et. Al., 2008, p. 607). In 1909, “a coalition of blacks and white reformers transformed the Niagara Movement into the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People {NAACP]” (Davidson, et. Al., 2008, p. 645). The outcome of the response to racial discrimination in the late nineteenth-century and the early twentieth century was that African Americans began to have some support for their freedom. They were not yet free of racial prejudice and discrimination, but the NAACP, which continues to support the interests of American Americans today, and the African American contributions to the war effort helped to begin integrating African Americans ever-so-slowly into American society. In Unit Three, African Americans gained some social footing with the rise of mass media and the culture of celebrity, and with the creation of jazz. “Jazz was a remarkably complex blend Undergraduate Series 253 of several older African American musical traditions, combining the soulfulness of the blues with the brighter syncopated rhythms of ragtime music” (Davidson, et. Al., 2008, p. 703). This music was denounced by many white purists, but Paul Whiteman said, “Jazz is the folk music of the machine age” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 705). On the airways, African Americans were portrayed to mainstream America on the popular radio program Amos ‘n’ Andy, “a comedy about African Americans created by two white vaudevillians in 1926” (Davidson, et. Al., 2008, p. 702). African American musicians from the 1930s and 1940s included “Benny Goodman, The Dorsey Brothers, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Guthrie, etc” (Karagirova, 2009, para. 1). The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) opposed African Americans, as well as other racial and cultural groups. The KKK was “a throwback to the hooded order of Reconstruction days ... [that] worried about ... African Americans who refused to ‘recognize their place’” (Davidson, 2008, p. 712). The KKK “touted white supremacy ... [and] resorted to floggings, kidnappings, acid mutilations, and murder” (Davidson, et. Al., 2008, p. 712). The overt prejudice and racial hatred of the KKK was a clear danger to African Americans in many states. African Americans served in World War II, but they faced racial prejudice, and they were assigned to segregated units. “When World War II began, Americans lived in a society deeply segregated along racial lines” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 781). African Americans lived and worked alongside white Americans in this period, but they were not treated equally with whites. In the poor economy between the world wars, African Americans found it particularly difficult to get meaningful work. “Angry white supremacists called for ‘No jobs for niggers until every white man has a job.’” (Recollections, 2008, para. 6). The anger and hostility of whites toward African Americans represented a deepening of racial prejudice in America. “African Americans arrived in the city with a culture of poverty that lowered aspirations and earnings” (Woodard, 2010, para. 3), and it was difficult for African Americans to rise above that poverty to realize their true freedom, even so long after Emancipation. In response to the improved opportunities that became available to select African Americans in the age of celebrity, more African American youths aspired to achieve success through professional sports and through entertainment. In the decades that followed, African Americans achieved prominent roles in movies, in music, and in sports. There was not much response that could be made to the attitudes of the KKK at that time, but the KKK “was undone by sex scandals and financial corruption” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 712) within itself, making it a much less significant threat. In response to the discrimination in employment opportunities, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was developed and became “the most powerful black labor organization” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 782). In addition, President Roosevelt “issue[d] Executive Order 8802 barring discrimination in the hiring of government or defense industry workers” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 782). One outcome of these responses was that African Americans are still prominent in the entertainment and sports industries in the twenty-first century, and that the early African American celebrities are still remembered. Executive Order 8802, and the subsequently established Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) have not always been so successful, as “[m]ore than half of all defense jobs were closed to minorities” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 782), even after the FEPC began. Non-government jobs were not covered by Executive Order 8802, so employment discrimination continued. In Unit Four, African Americans fought for and won increased civil rights and civil liberties during a period of cultural revolution. In the 1950s and the 1960s, “the rise of large black voting blocs in major cities created political pressures that helped force the nation to dismantle the worst legal and institutional barriers to racial equality” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 859). African Americans had been left since the period of Reconstruction “without any real enforcement of the 254 A Journey Through My College Papers civil rights that would have given meaning to the word freedom” (Gauthier, 2011, para. 20), but civil rights and civil liberties began to be important to American society in this period. The NAACP “convinced the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 861), which finally opened education equally to African Americans as well as to whites. African Americans had known since before the end of slavery that education was a key to freedom, and that was finally made available to them in 1956. Still, in the same year, “19 senators and 81 representatives ... declared their intent to use ‘all lawful means’ to reestablish legal segregation” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 861), so African Americans continued to face racial prejudice and discrimination. “[T]he essential, even the sole, black problem was white prejudice” (Nuechterlein, 2011, para. 11). This was the heart of most of the problems faced by African Americans, and it had been so for the nearly a century since Emancipation. In response to the racial segregation of the 1950’s, African Americans began to make a stand for their civil rights. The most famous example of this stand for civil rights is the African American Rosa Parks, who was arrested when she refused to “give up her seat for a white man” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 863) on a public bus. This arrest gave rise to the Monday boycott, which protested segregation on buses. In addition, Martin Luther King, Jr., began preaching nonviolence in race relations. One outcome of this response was that African American civil rights were brought to the attention of the American public as they had never been before. The arrest of Rosa Parks drew attention to the wrongness of the Jim Crow laws. School segregation issues came to a head in Little Rock, Arkansas, when the governor closed the schools rather than allow racial integration, and President Eisenhower’s intervention brought desegregation of America’s schools into the public consciousness. “From 1955 to 1959 civil rights protesters endured over 200 acts of violence” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 864). This was an outcome of the effort to establish the civil rights of African Americans. Despite everything, “[t]he civil rights laws did not strike at the de facto segregation found outside the South” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 867), and racial prejudice and discrimination continued. In Unit Five, African Americans continued to face a racial divide right up to the end of the text. While African Americans have achieved positions of power and influence in entertainment, in the military, and in politics in modern America, as well as in nearly every other field of endeavor, racial prejudice and discrimination still exist all around us. An African American in almost any city in America may still be “stopped by the police for ‘Driving While Black ... [or be] called a ‘Nigger.’” (Goldstone, 2005, para. 2). We cringe away from admitting that such a hateful epithet can still exist in this country, while our African American neighbors wish “for it to be possible ‘for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face’” (Goldstone, 2005, para. 13). America is a powerful nation that polices the rest of the world for civil rights violations, but a significant percentage of its population is still marginalized, if only in subtle, hard-to-distinguish ways. Even the name “African American” discriminates against the man or woman whose ancestors arrived on a slave ship in the seventeenth century. My own ancestors arrived from England in 1636, after the beginning of the slave trade, but I am not an “English American.” We do not designate the ancient origins of any race in America except African Americans and Native Americans. All the rest of us are generally referred to only as Americans. Following the attacks by Islamic extremists in 2001, Cornel West (2002) identified all Americans with the experiences of African Americans when he said, I would argue that America was 'niggerized.' What I mean by niggerized is that between 1619 and 2002, to be a nigger is to be unprotected, is to be subject to random violence Undergraduate Series 255 and hated. And America as a whole has never been hated, never been unprotected, and never subject to random violence. (Cited in Goldstone, 2005, para. 14). West recognized that African Americans have been subjected to hatred and violence because of their race. White Americans, even when certain immigrant groups faced discrimination for short periods of time, never experienced the helplessness and the fear that are experienced by African Americans, until Al Qaeda flew aircraft into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Amiri Baraka (2001) echoed that idea when he said, “Black Americans have suffered from domestic terrorism since being kidnapped into US chattel slavery ... denial of rights, national oppression, racism, character assassination” (Cited in Goldstone, 2005, para. 17). “Although the situation of African Americans had improved vastly compared with their position in the 1950s, race still mattered [in the 1990s]” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 974). The 1991 beating of Rodney King by four white police officers in Los Angeles, California, outraged Americans. Racial violence was still alive in America. African Americans in the early twenty-first century are still not free of racial prejudice and discrimination from their white neighbors. In many communities, “local race relations [are] governed by "polite racism" that maintain[s] white supremacy while allowing a unique degree of African American political participation” (Jolly, 2010, para. 2). In the town where I live now, African American children are suspected of local crimes before white children are considered in relation to the same crimes. “There is no reason to believe that the severe current recession will not result in ... a widening of the racial attainment gap between whites and blacks” (Recollections, 2008, para. 7). That such a sentiment can still exist in America paints a vivid picture of the racial prejudice and discrimination that white Americans still inflict on African Americans. Affirmative Action effectively ended in California in 1996, although it had only “been reduced in scope but not abolished” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 975). Affirmative action is the “practice of actively seeking to increase the number of racial and ethnic minorities, women, persons in a protected age category, persons with disabilities, and disabled veterans in a work place or school” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. G-1). When it is capitalized in the common vernacular, it is generally understood to refer to minorities, and particularly to African Americans. It was set up in 1967 by the Johnson administration, and it initially applied to the building trades. California Proposition 209 “eliminated racial and gender preferences in hiring and college admissions” (Davidson, et. al., 2008, p. 975). Other states followed suit. Just beyond the end of the text, in 2008, America elected its first African American president, Barak Obama. President Obama’s election should have been a sign that African Americans were finally free of racial prejudice and discrimination, but that was not the case. “African Americans ... held out hope for a black president, yet ... did not expect ever to see such a momentous event occur within their own lifetimes” (Gauthier, 2011, para. 12). The momentous event occurred, resulting in “America congratulating itself for being willing to consider a black man for president, with the subtext being that the United States had finally liberated itself from its racist past” (Serwer, 2008, para. 3).If racial prejudice was a thing of the past, it would not be necessary for such congratulations to take place, but it is necessary. Amina Gautier (2011), in her discussion of post-racial America in the age of Obama, describes a poster that was displayed at the college where she teaches: “A poster for the College Republicans depicted President Obama as the Joker from Dark Knight, the 2008 film that is part of the Batman film series” (para. 21). She explains how President Obama depicted as the Joker is “as undoubtedly ‘racial’ as any picture of a black man in whiteface must be ... unquestionably a terrorist; a man who disguises his face ... and prefers anarchy to democracy” (Gauthier, 2011, paras. 21-22). Although an African American – and truly African American, as slave descendants are not, since his father is a black Kenyan and his mother is a White American – is the President of the United States, even he is not free from racial prejudice, discrimination, and profiling. He is painted, quite literally, as a criminal, on a 256 A Journey Through My College Papers college poster. He “continues to face a series of arbitrary and shifting public tests merely because he is black” (Serwer, 2008, para. 3). President Lincoln freed the slaves in 1863. Almost a century and a half later, President Obama still faces discrimination, merely because of the color of the skin – even though none of his ancestors was ever a slave in America. The response to discrimination in the twenty-first century is yet to come. Most African Americans “shake their heads and move on” (Serwer, 2008, para. 13) when they encounter racial prejudice. It is not yet possible to know what the full response will be, or what outcomes may emerge from those responses. History continues to unfold around us, and only the future will tell us how racial discrimination may end. African Americans have faced racial prejudice and discrimination since the first captive Africans were sold into slavery in the American colonies in 1619. Despite being freedpeople, and later becoming citizens, they have continued to face anti-black racism continuously through the period since the Emancipation Proclamation. Although America has elected an African American president in the twenty-first century, African Americans still face racial discrimination in American society. It is to be hoped that racial prejudices may be erased in the future, and that racial discrimination may end. African Americans have been free in America for 148 years. It is my hope that is does not take that long from now for people of all races to be truly equal in American society. References Archenbaum, W.. (2007). The segregated origins of social security: African Americans and the welfare state. Journal of Social History, 41(1), 207-208. Retrieved May 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. Cha-Jua, S., Williams, L.S., Wickett, M.R.. (2002). America’s first black town, Brooklyn, Illinois, 1830-1915. Urban History Review, 30(2), 53-55. Retrieved May 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. Clendenin, D.. (2005). The Buffalo Soldiers: Unsung heroes of the American West. Social Studies Review, 45(1), 38-39. Retrieved May 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. Contemporary controversies and the American racial divide. (2000). The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, (29), 138. Retrieved May 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. Davidson, J.W., Delay, B., Heyrman, C.L., Lytle, M.H., Stoff, M.B.. (2008). Nation of nations: a narrative history of the American Republic (6th ed., Vol. 2). Boston: McGraw Hill. Gauthier, A.. (2011). On post-racial America in the Age of Obama. Daedalus, 140(1), 90-94, 97. Retrieved May 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. Goldstone, D.. (2005). An African American professor reflects on what 9/11 meant for African Americans, and herself. The Journal of American Culture, 28(1), 29-34. Retrieved May 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. Hardaway, R.D.. (2001). African American cowboys on the western frontier. Negro History Bulletin, 64(1-4), 27-32. Retrieved May 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. Inwood, J.. (2009). Upbuilding black Durham: Gender, class, and black community development in the Jim Crow South. Southeastern Geographer, 49(3), 313-315. Retrieved May 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. Jolly, K.S.. (2010). Grassroots at the gateway: Class politics and black freedom struggle in St. Louis, 1936-75. The Journal of American History, 97(2), 569-570. Retrieved May 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. Karagirova, M.. (2009) Music of 1930-1945. Retrieved June 12, 2011, from http://team-4-popculture.blogspot.com/2009/06/assignment-1-5-culture-and-society.html Nuechterlein, J.. (2011). Race matters. First Things, (210), 3-5. Retrieved May 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. Undergraduate Series 257 Recollections of the Great Depression “No jobs for niggers until every white man has a job”. (2008). The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, (62), 29. Retrieved May 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. Serwer, A.. (2008). Obama’s racial catch-22. The American Prospect [Electronic version]. Retrieved June 12, 2011, from http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=obamas_racial_catch22 Woodard, K.. (2010). African American urban history since World War II. The Journal of American History, 97(1), 260-261. Retrieved May 24, 2011, from ProQuest database. ENG 341: Studies in Literary Genres Parables, Fables, and Tales 6/16/2011 In parables, which are "often religious or spiritual in nature" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 30), the tone is usually serious and didactic. This is evident in Luke’s The Prodigal Son from the lack of details, such as personal names, that could detract from the lesson of the parable. When Luke writes: "A certain man had two sons" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 27), he does not tell where the father and sons live, when they live, or anything about their lifeways. He leaves it open for the reader to imagine any father with two sons, so that the reader can understand the moral of the parable without hindrance. In fables, which are "brief stories that point to a moral" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 43), the tone is usually lighter than that of the parable, and it is often satirical. In Aesop's The Wolf and the Mastiff, the tone is first set by anthropomorphizing the wolf and the dog. The animals interact in a way that creates a mental image of two men meeting : a scruffy, scrawny outcast or outlaw, and a comfortably well-situated city guard or police officer. The moral, "Better starve free, than be a fat slave" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 44), shows that the true life situations of the wolf and the dog are rather the reverse of what they appear to be at the start of the story. The wolf is free to live his life, while the dog is the slave of his human masters. Another of Aesop's fables, The Ant and the Grasshopper, also anthropomorphizes its main characters: a grasshopper and an ant. This is a very common feature of fables, which makes the stories and their morals more appealing to readers. This fable teaches a serious moral lesson in a light and whimsical manner. When the grasshopper asks, "Why bother about winter?" (Aesop, n.d., para. 4), the reader can see that the silly creature is setting itself up for disaster. In tales, which relate "strange or fabulous happenings" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 44), the tone is harder to define. It may be serious, as with a parable, but it is more likely to be lighter and more intimate. A tale draws the reader into the story to provide entertainment, and it may not contain any clear lesson. In Petronius' The Widow of Ephesus, the tone is that of telling a secret about a woman who is first pathetic, and later clever. It begins as a tragedy, but ends as a romantic comedy, when she tells her lover, "better far, I say, to hang the dead than to kill the living" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 46). The widow saves the life of her lover by having her dead husband's body hung on the cross in place of the missing body of a thief. References: Aesop. (n.d.). The ant and the grasshopper. Retrieved June 15, 2011, from http://aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?sel&TheAntandtheGrasshopper&&antgrass.ram 258 A Journey Through My College Papers Di Yanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. The Short Story 6/16/2011 Plot and structure are crucial elements of fiction because they are the devices around which a story is constructed. The plot is the series of events through which the story unfolds, with "a sequence of incidents that bear a significant causal relationship to each other" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 49). Without the causal relationship, the account might be a sort of history, but it would not be a story plot. The plot usually follows a predictable pattern, with an introductory bit, called the exposition; a bit of crisis or complication that builds tension and interest in the story; a climax, where the tension peaks and a significant event in the story occurs; a period of falling action, where the tension eases away; and a conclusion, resolution, or denouement, which wraps up the threads of the story and provides closure. The "structure is the design" (DYanni, 2008, p. 50) of the story. It includes the patters of the story. "Plot directs us to the story in motion, structure to the story at rest" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 51). The structure gives a story its balance and order, and it guides the reader through shifts of scene or focus in the story. Frank O'Connor's (1931) Guests of the Nation follows the classic plot order of exposition, complication, climax, falling action, and denouement. Chapter one provides the exposition, introducing the characters, suggesting the setting through oblique references to being in Ireland, and indicating the time period through mention of the "German war" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 53). Chapter two provides the complication of possibly needing to execute prisoners who have become friends. Chapter three stretches out the tension of the rising action as the Irish guards take the English prisoners to be executed. Chapter four begins with the climax of the story. The execution of one prisoner is the climax, but the execution of the second prisoner leads into the falling action, providing something of an anti-climax. The final quarter of chapter four is the denouement. The dead men are buried, and the story slows to a close. The structure of Guests of the Nation provides the tempo of the story. The beginning of the story is sow, taking half of the story to build the relationships among the characters. Hawkins' argumentative nature is contrasted with Belcher's quietly accepting nature. Noble and the narrator are shown to be sympathetic with the prisoners, while Donovan is shown to be more distant. The tempo quickens as the first execution approaches, then drops off abruptly between the two executions. The tempo drifts slowly to a stop at the end of the story. Margaret Atwood's Happy Endings is not so much a story as a spectrum of related stories. Each option represents a sort of alternate reality option. Each lettered option follows the classic plot structure in miniature. The structure of the six separate stories into one story is key to this piece. Part A has almost no real plot, although the story moves from getting married, through getting settled, climaxing with the birth of children, falling through retirement, and concluding with death. Part B has interesting action, with complications that make the reader keep reading. Part C is similar in tension levels to B, and its complications keep the reader engaged. The same is true of the subsequent parts, and several of the parts have the potential for being strung together to form a longer story with multiple mini-climaxes. Happy Endings has a clear point: each of the stories ends with the death of the characters, but it is "the stretch in between" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 291) that the makes the stories interesting to read. Each plot in the story is different from the other plots, but each plot has the same resolution. The overarching resolution of Happy Endings is the Undergraduate Series 259 acknowledgement that it is the body of the story, between the exposition and the denouement, that makes a story worth reading. References: Di Yanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Fall Semester, 2011 ENG 201: American Literature to 1865 Iroquois 7/18/2011 In "The Great Binding Law," nature plays a practical role in several ways. First, when Dekanawidah plants the Tree of the Great Peace, which is also called the Tree of the Great Long Leaves (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 29), he is not literally planting a growing tree in the earth. Rather, he is using the tree as a metaphor for establishing an overarching covenant among the Five Nations. He uses the image of a great tree because it is familiar to the people of the American Northeast, which was heavily forested with old-growth trees. A tree is strong, but it can yield to the forces of the world in order to survive; it is stronger because it is not brittle or unyielding. A tree represents a place of shelter from scorching sun, blowing winds, and soaking rains, so it is a symbol of the Great Peace protecting the people of the Five Nations, and especially those leaders who will gather under "The Great Binding Law." Another role of nature in "The Great Binding Law" is: "Roots have spread out from the Tree of the Great Peace, one to the north, one to the east, one to the south and one to the west" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 29). Just as the tree is a metaphor, so are the roots that are "Peace and Strength" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 29) a metaphor. As the roots spread out from the tree, they carry peace and strength from the conference of the leaders of the nations to the people of the Five Nations. The roots are not a physical thing; the roots represent the oneness of the people who have joined the Five Nations together to live as one people. At the top of the tree is "an Eagle who is able to see afar" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 29). The eagle is a symbol of power. It is strong and fierce, and it has extraordinary vision. When the eagle is placed atop the tree, it suggests that the eagle's nest is in the tree. The eagle will guard its nest, and will be vigilant against any threat to the tree in which the nest is built. The eagle here is a metaphor for how carefully the representatives of the Five Nations who are in the council will guard against any danger to the people of the Five Nations. This is not only in the sense of physical danger from other tribes or from Europeans, but also in the sense of being mindful of dangers that may be faced by the leaders. The leaders must guard against any action or decision that is not right for the people of the Five Nations. In the opening ceremony of the Council, the Onondaga offer thanks to many aspects of nature for providing the needs of the people: [T]hanks to the earth where men dwell, to the streams of water, the pools, the springs and the lakes, to the maize and the fruits, to the medicinal herbs and trees, to the forest trees for their usefulness, to the animals that serve as food and give their pelts for clothing, to the great winds and the lesser winds, to the 260 A Journey Through My College Papers Thunderers, to the Sun, the mighty warrior, to the moon. (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 30) The thanks continue, to include what Europeans would call angels, and to include God. In this case, nature is not being used as a metaphor. The people give thanks to each being of nature, as they believe that each thing in creation is a being with which the people of the Five Nations share the world. It is necessary to acknowledge and honor each being for its contribution to the lives of the people. "The Great Binding Law" has parallels to the Constitution of the United States. "The Council of the Mohawk shall be divided into three parties as follows: Tekarihoken, Ayonhwhathah and Shadekariwade are the first party; Sharenhowaneh, Deyoenhegwenh and Oghrenghrehgowah are the second party, and Dehennakrineh, Aghstawenserenthah and Shoskoharowaneh are the third party" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 30). These are not political parties, but they are more similar to the houses of Congress, except that there is a third house. Another similarity to modern government is in the arrangement of the various nations in the Council. The Mohawk and Seneca Lords are like the House of Representatives, or the "lower" house of Congress, where a bill may first be considered. When they reach a decision, the matter is passed to the Cayuga and Oneida Lords, who are like the Senate, or the "upper" house of Congress, where a bill may be considered for a second time. They either agree with or disagree with the Mohawk and Seneca Lords. The matter then goes to the Onondaga Lords, who are like the President, who ratifies or vetoes the bills that are sent up from Congress, for a final decision on the matter. If the Onondaga render an inappropriate decision, then "the Two Sides shall reconsider the matter" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 31), and the Onondaga can be "compelled to confirm their joint decision" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 31). This reminds me of the passage of bills in Congress, with presidential ratification or veto, and with the ability of Congress to overturn a veto. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Sinners 7/18/2011 Jonathan Edwards' 1741 sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," is filled with rhetoric that is designed to evoke fear in its audience. Edwards' sermon was "spoken with dramatic calmness and restraint" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 155), which makes his words more serious and frightening than they would be if they were delivered loudly, with wild movements, as often happens with sermons about doom and damnation. "Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth, yea, doubtless, with many that are now in this congregation, that, it may be, are at ease and quiet, than He is with many of those that are now in the flames of hell" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 157). This would have been terrifying for many Puritans. It was well known and widely accepted that the souls in hell suffered eternal anguish because they had incurred God's anger. To learn that one, or one of one's neighbors, might be the object of greater anger from God than were the souls in hell would make a Puritan afraid that he or she would not be counted among the elect in Heaven. Each Puritan lived in the hope and expectation of spending eternity with God, and any chance of missing that would have been a great source of fear. Undergraduate Series 261 "The wrath of God burns against them; their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared; the fire is made ready; the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 157). The commonly accepted punishment for heresy in the 17th and 18th centuries was burning. Even witches were only hanged, but heretics were burned. The thought that one's sins were a heresy against God, and that God had prepared not a brief, killing fire, but an eternal, tormenting fire would cause terror in the heart of a Puritan. Since the Puritans were educated, they would know the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and the description would call it to mind even before Edwards mentioned it later in the sermon. They would recall that the three brothers were saved by God from the fiery furnace, and they would be afraid at being told they would not be saved. "And you children who are unconverted, do not you know that you are going down to hell, to bear the dreadful wrath of that God who is now angry with you every day and every night?" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 166). Even in Puritan times, when it was believed that everyone bore the stain of Original sin, the idea that a child might bear God's wrath would be frightening. Aside from the horror evoked by the thought of children suffering in hell, this would have made adults think how much more danger they, who had lived lives that were not wholly blameless, were in, if innocent little children had incurred such anger from God. Over all, I do not think this sermon would have the same power over a congregation, or over the general population, today as it had when Edwards first delivered it. A great many Americans do not follow an organized religious practice, so those would not even hear it. Many of those who did hear it would dismiss it, as hell as come to be seen by many to be a fiction. Others, who go to church only to hear about love and salvation, would be offended at the reminder that God punishes sinfulness. A select few would still hear the message to convert or face eternity away from God, and some would hear that they were irretrievably doomed, but these would be the minority. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Letters 7/27/2011 In "Correspondence," there are several ways by which the authors seek to establish trust with their intended audiences. One way is to employ humility, so that the reader finds honesty that causes the reader to trust other statements by the writer. In Jefferson's letter to Madison, Jefferson writes: "I do not pretend to decide what would be the best method of procuring the establishment of the manifold good things in this constitution, and of getting rid of the bad" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 181). By honestly admitting a limitation, Jefferson gives the impression that the rest of the letter is similarly honest, thus engendering Madison's trust. In Banneker's letter to Jefferson, Banneker uses a similar degree of honesty when he reveals his race: "Sir, I freely and cheerfully acknowledge, that I am of the African race" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 189). Another means of gaining trust is to state the writer's agreement with the known ideas of the reader. In Jefferson's letter to Adams, he begins, "I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 182). Having established the intimacy of common ground between the writer and the reader, Jefferson can be confident of having also 262 A Journey Through My College Papers established trust. In Adams' letter to his wife, Adams likewise uses mutual agreement to establish trust: "It is very true, as you observe" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 187). A third means of gaining trust is to refer in an intimate manner to the reader's life, locale, or experiences. In Jefferson's letter to Adams, Jefferson uses this manner of writing: "like your townships ... as your people have so often done" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, pp. 183-184). By comparing the proposed division of counties to Adams' townships, Jefferson establishes the desirability of making the divisions. By comparing proposed actions to the way Adams' people have done things, Jefferson suggests that the proposed actions are the correct actions. When Benneker writes to Jefferson, Banneker employs name-dropping to obtain Jefferson's trust: "by the request of Mr. Andrew Ellicott" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 190). By establishing an implied relationship with a prominent man in society, Banneker raises his own status by association. Jefferson uses an interesting device to establish trust in his letter to Banneker: "our black brethren ... Sir, Your most obedient Humble Servant" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 191). Jefferson implies in the use of the first person possessive that he and Banneker have similar status. More, the slave-holder styles himself as the servant of the black man, whom he calls Sir. The leveling of the social playing field engenders trust. In his essays, or sermons, Paine uses the first person pronouns "we" and "us" to engage the trust of his audience. He establishes solidarity with his audience when he writes: "when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a Government" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 273). Had he preached "you" instead of "we," his audience would have been less inclined to trust the rest of his message. Again, he uses this first-person-plural solidarity when he "quotes the Declaratory Act of Parliament" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 274): "Britain ... has declared that she has a right ... to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 274). By identifying himself with his audience, Paine secures the trust of his audience. Red Jacket addresses his audience as "Friend and Brother" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 369), or simply as "Brother," throughout his speech. By establishing kinship with his audience, Red Jacket establishes the trust of his audience. He also uses the device of first-person solidarity, in the same manner as that used by Paine. Red Jacket also uses the beliefs of the Seneca in order to engender trust in his audience: "It was the will of the Great Spirit that we should meet together this day" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 369). By invoking the Great Spirit, Red Jacket establishes the authority by which he addresses his Seneca brethren. According to Merriam-Webster, a speech is "something that is spoken ... usually public discourse" (Speech, 2011, para. 2); a sermon is "a religious discourse delivered in public usually by a clergyman as part of a worship service" (Sermon, 2011, para. 1) Based on these definitions, a sermon is a kind of speech, and it is only set apart by being of a religious nature. Paine's speeches are generally secular in nature, so they are simply speeches. Red Jacket's speech invokes the Great Spirit, which makes the communication of a religious nature, so it is properly designated as a sermon. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Sermon. (2011). Merriam-Webster [Electronic version]. Retrieved July 27, 2011, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sermon Speech. (2011). Merriam-Webster [Electronic version]. Retrieved July 27, 2011, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/speech Undergraduate Series 263 Franklin 7/28/2011 Some details are important in storytelling, while other details are only important to formal recordings of history. In Franklin's "The Autobiography," details such as the precise location of Bradford's establishment in Philadelphia would have disrupted the intimate rhythm of the narrative. Conversely, the information that Bradford's "quarters were presumably somewhere on the forty-five-foot lot, located eighty feet south of the southwest corner of Second and Market streets, which extended west one hundred and thirty-two feet to Strawberry Alley" (Roach, 1960, pp. 129-130) is a treasure for the serious historian. Other details are appropriate to an autobiography, but would clutter a historical account. "The Autobiography" devotes just over three pages of description to Franklin's journey to Boston to ask his father's help to set up a printing business, including a description of Franklin's visit to his brother's shop: "I was better dress'd than ever while in his Service, having a genteel new Suit from Head to foot ... This visit of mine offended him extreamly ... he said, I had insulted him in such a Manner before his People that he could never forget or forgive it" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 220). The account is filled with intimate details of dress, of persons met along the way, and of Franklin's activities, which details draw the reader into the story. Roach (1960) devotes only sixty words to the same adventure, writing that Franklin "made a short trip to Boston in a search for capital with which to set himself up in business ... the search proved fruitless, Franklin returned to Philadelphia" (p. 133). Both accounts are truthful and accurate, so far as can be determined, but the homely details of Franklin's account provide depth to the story, which is missing in the historical account. Similarly, Franklin devotes several pages to his first stay in England, while the historical account devotes only a few short paragraphs to the experience. However, Franklin skips over the period of 1726-1730 almost entirely, while the historical account goes into some detail about that period. Roach (1960) writes: "Franklin was still debtor to Denham for the £10 passage money which Denham had paid to Captain John Crain on December 29, 1726" (p. 136). The manner of storytelling in "The Autobiography" reminds me a great deal of the stories that my grandmother told throughout my childhood. Like my grandmother, Franklin is telling his story to his family, so that his posterity will know who he was and what his life was like. He tells the story from his own memory of events, without recourse to any journals, letters, or other papers that might have contained exact dates, addresses, financial information, and other clinical details. The omission of such clinical details, and the inclusion of intimate, personal details in the story gives the story a warmth and a depth that simple, historical facts could not convey. The truth of Franklin's life is manifest in his autobiography, even though it may lack the academic accuracy of Roach's (1960) account. Writing about personal experiences is difficult when the audience is not a family member or a close acquaintance. When writing for someone I do not know personally, I find it necessary to add explanatory details, such as how a named person relates to the story, while omitting other details that are too personal to be presented to an anonymous audience. This assignment comes at a rather difficult time for me to complete it, as it is not hypothetical for me. After I submit this response to the class, I must write out my memories of my step-mother, to be included in a booklet at her funeral this weekend. Coming up with the memories is easy; writing the memories to be read by strangers is a daunting task. I need to write in such a manner as to honor her memory, leaving out details that, while wholly innocent, and even amusing, in the context of family, would tend to make outsiders think ill of her. 264 A Journey Through My College Papers I think the same challenge faces anyone who writes about personal experiences for an impersonal audience. In writing a book of my own life memories, which will be part of my future legacy for my children, I am writing very differently than I would write if I intended my book for open publication. For my posterity, I am writing the narratives as I remember them; for open publication, I would need to be more circumspect about relating events that could hurt or embarrass anyone other than myself. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Roach, H.B.. (1960). Benjamin Franklin slept here. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 84(2), pp. 127-174. Retrieved July 19, 2011, from http://www.jstor.stable/20089285 Fiction 8/4/2011 Poe uses many nature symbols in his stories and poems. In both "Sonnet -- to Science" and "The Tell-tale Heart," Poe uses the vulture as a metaphor for what is evil and frightening. "Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,/ Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 491). In this instance, Poe uses the entire vulture as a metaphor for science, which strips away the romantic beauty of the world by replacing poetry with cold facts. "He had the eye of a vulture" (Poe, 1843, para. 2). Here, Poe refers only to the vulture's eye, which seeks out dead things on which the vulture may prey. The vulture's eye is evil and threatening, and Poe's narrator is compelled to destroy the eye. Poe also uses water as a symbol in his poems. "Sonnet -- to Science" asks: "Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 491). "To Helen" speaks of "desperate seas" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 491). "The City in the Sea" speaks of "melancholy waters ... [and] some far-off happier sea" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, pp. 492493). The Naiad's flood is a symbol of happy innocence, unblemished by the complications of science. Tearing her from her flood indicates the rending of innocence by the advent of science. Desperation and melancholy are both negative emotions. The waters represent those emotions in the poems. One may be carried along by such waters, influenced but unharmed; or one may fight against the pull of such waters; or one may be overpowered by and drowned in such waters. In the same way, one may be affected in various ways by the experiences of desperation and melancholy. It seems likely that Poe was fighting such emotions, and that he was losing the battle. Irving describes an idyllic area of upstate New York in both "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle." In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," he introduces the terror of Crane's walk home by describing "[w]hat fearful shapes and shadows beset his path amidst the dim and ghostly glare of a snowy night" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 422). The shadows are repeated often in the story, providing hiding places for the "ghosts and goblins ... direful omens and portentous sights" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 421). Even casual mention of darkness or shadows is enough to stir up fear in the human imagination. The unknown is in the shadows. The thief and the predator lurk in the shadows. Even most Western religions refer to darkness as the abode of evil. Irving's use of the symbol to evoke fear, terror, and dread is apt. Similarly, in "Rip Van Winkle," Irving describes the land that faces away from the Dutch settlement as "wild, lonely ... and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting sun" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 408). again, the shadowed land is frightening, as it is separated Undergraduate Series 265 from the "fair and settled" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 404) land where the Dutch have established civilization. The community of Sleepy Hollow is described: "[I]t is in such little retired Dutch valleys ... that population, manners, and customs, remain fixed; while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 418). Even at this early date, expansion and progress are happening in the larger world, while Sleepy Hollow remains a sleepy, dreamy, old-fashioned place. The spectre of the Headless Horseman as "the ghost of a Hessian trooper" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 418) recalls a violent, martial time in the area's history. The Hessian is frightening, with or without his head, because he disturbs the complacent tranquility of Sleepy Hollow. The community in "Rip Van Winkle" is a similarly quiet place. It is still a Colonial settlement, with its inn "designated by a rubicund portrait of His Majesty George the Third" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 406). After Rip's supernatural sleep, he finds the community larger, busier, and less peaceful. The inn has been redesignated "the Union Hotel" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 411). The painting of the king has been repainted to represent George Washington. Rip has slept through the Revolution, and does not understand the new, American community. When he innocently declares himself "a loyal subject of the king" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 412), he causes a public upset, but he does not realize what is wrong. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Poe, E.A. (1843). The tell-tale heart. Retrieved August 4, 2011, from http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/telltale.html Oppressions 8/4/2011 Red Jacket and Black Hawk have different styles of writing. Most noticeably, Red Jacket addresses the white missionaries, and uses a direct, personal tone. He calls the missionaries Brother. Black Hawk addresses the Indians, writing in a semi-personal, narrative style. Both Red Jacket and Black Hawk recall injustices of the whites against the Indians. Red Jacket does this calmly, writing: "They wanted more land; they wanted our country. Our eyes were opened, and our minds became uneasy. Wars took place ... and many of our people were destroyed. They also brought strong liquor amongst us. It ... has slain thousands" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.370). Black Hawk writes more forcefully, stressing some of his words. He writes: "We knew very well that our Great Father has deceived us, and thereby forced us to join the British ... what they had said was a lie!" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.438). Red Jacket writes more about the beginning of relations between whites and Indians, while Black Hawk writes more about the Indians' customs and habits. Anne Hutchinson uses simple, direct language to express herself in response to questions put by Governor Winthrop. She does not write a paper herself. She says: "Do you think it is not lawful for me to teach women, and why do you call me to teach the court? ... I desire that you would then set me down a rule by which I may put them away that come unto me and so have peace in so doing" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.27). Maria Stewart writes in the style of a sermon or oratory. She makes references not only to the Bible, but to other nations. She writes: "I 266 A Journey Through My College Papers have enlisted in the holy warfare, and Jesus my captain; and the Lord's battle I mean to fight, until my voice expire in death. I expect to be hated of all men, and persecuted even unto death for righteousness and the truth's sake" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.609). Both women espouse the cause of the oppressed, each in her own time and place. Hutchinson's words are from 1637, while Stewart's words are from 1832. Hutchinson defends her actions in holding educational meetings in her home for women. In her time, women were required to keep to their place in society. Hutchinson cites the book of Titus, in the Bible, as her authority for teaching the women. Stewart cites many passages from the Bible to support her exhortations to her female audience to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to raise up women, and especially to raise up "the descendants of fallen Africa" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.609). Stewart concludes her sermon: "O woman, woman! ... let me exhort you to cultivate among yourselves a spirit of Christian love and unity, having charity one for another" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.611). The two women express themselves differently because of the social differences at either end of two centuries. Hutchinson could not have spoken out as forcefully in the 17th century as Stewart spoke out in the 19th century, without certain punishment. By 1832, Stewart was able to have a voice, at least before female audiences, to effect social change. Black Hawk and Maria Stewart both write at a time when freedom of the new United States is translating into a quest for other forms of freedom from oppression. In 1832 -- the same year in which Stewart writes -- William Lloyd Garrison describes slavery as "a system of the most atrocious villainy ever exhibited on earth" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.387). In 1848, "a group of men and women gathered in Seneca Falls, New York, to discuss the issues surrounding the rights of women in American society" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.397). Where Hutchinson is barely allowed to speak in public in 1637, and Stewart addresses only women in 1832, men and women are talking together about the rights of women in 1848. The notes in "Reading in Historical Context" show that the styles of writing and public speaking change as history moves forward. We cannot judge Red Jacket's writings in 1805 and Black Hawk's writings in 1833 through the lens of 2011. Likewise, we cannot judge Anne Hutchinson's testimony in 1637 against Maria Stewart's sermon in 1832. Each writing must be considered against the social and political atmosphere of its own time. It is evident from the writings that these four individuals share a common passion for what each believes, but that each is constrained by society to express that passion -- or to repress it -- in a different way. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Commentary in Fiction 8/11/2011 In "Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne comments on how people who appear to be good, pious people in the light of day, all have dark or evil secrets that they hide from society. He enumerates some hidden sins: "how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widow's weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him sleep in her bosom ... and how fair damsels ... have dug little graves in the garden" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 628). Goodman Brown sees his own father and grandfather, the minister, and other good people at the unholy rite in the forest. Hawthorne shows that there is darkness in every person, and writes: "Evil is the nature of Undergraduate Series 267 mankind" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 628). Goodman Brown resists the lure of evil, clinging to the supposed purity of his wife. When he realizes that she, too, has darkness inside her, he becomes "[a] stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 629). By setting his story in an earlier time, when good and are more clearly defined, Hawthorne avoids openly accusing 19th century Americans of putting pious faces on their secretly impious lives. He reveals the lie of hubris by showing that those who are proud of their godly reputations do not fully live good lives. In "Bartleby, the Scrivener," it is harder to discern the social commentary in the person of Bartleby. The narrator hires Bartleby, in part, because he is "a man of so singularly sedate an aspect" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 669). The employer hires someone he believes will make his office look good, without checking his references. At first, Bartleby does very good work, but he soon becomes a burden as he refuses to perform time after time. Finally, the employer moves, rather than deal with the problem. The employer continues to have an assumed social responsibility for Bartleby, even after moving to a different office to get away from his erstwhile employee. The story is written too early to be a social commentary on the sense of entitlement found in the welfare state, but Bartleby certainly seems to feel entitled to receive support without having to work for his support. I am not well-associated with the history of the early- to mid-19th century, but I suppose there may be a growing problem with people feeling entitled to unearned support. Also, the employer seems to be unable to control his employee. This could be a veiled reference to the slaves in the South, or to the rise of the working class and the decline of the gentry, although both became more distinct issues somewhat after Hawthorne's time. In Franklin's "Autobiography," we have an example of a life built on hard work and enterprise. Franklin does not feel a sense of entitlement to anything for which he has not worked, in apparent contrast to Bartleby. Irving's character, Rip Van Winkle, seems to feel more of the sense of entitlement, but he is an amiable character, unlike Bartleby. Rip avoids work in order to enjoy life, while Bartleby appears to avoid work in order to remove himself more thoroughly from life. Jonathan Edwards preaches against the hidden evils that Goodman Brown encounters in the woods. Edwards preaches: "God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth, yea, doubtless, with many that are now in this congregation, that, it may be, are at ease and quiet" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 157). He is addressing those who, like Hawthorne's characters, are apparently at ease, and are piously attending the sermon, but who harbor in their secret hearts a wide range of faults, sins, and crimes. Edwards and Hawthorne both write of the darkness that outwardly good people carry in their souls. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Douglass/Autobiography 8/11/2011 Douglass is a slave, first to Auld and then to Covey. Auld is an inconsistent, weak-willed man. He does not inspire respect in his slaves, and he is incapable of controlling them. Douglass does not refer to Auld as Master, and is "hardly disposed to title him at all" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 768). Douglass is an educated slave, having spent six years learning to read in Baltimore. He is not well suited to plantation work, and writes: "My master and myself had quite 268 A Journey Through My College Papers a number of differences. He found me unsuitable to his purpose" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 769). The one area in which Auld is consistent is in the mean way in which he feeds his slaves, which forces them to bed and to steal to survive. "Not to give a slave enough to eat, is regarded as the most aggravated development of meanness even among slaveholders" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 767). The lack of food causes Douglass to be intentionally careless about Auld's horse so Douglass will have to go retrieve it when it runs away to Mr. Hamilton's farm. Douglass does this because "Master William Hamilton ... always gave his slaves enough to eat. I never left there hungry" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 769). Covey is very different from Auld. Covey has "acquired a very high reputation for breaking young slaves" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 769). Douglass tries to obey Covey, but Covey beats him when he is unable to do the work. At times, Douglass admits that he does not always comply with Covey's instructions, but he does not mention any consequences for those events. He writes: "I was somewhat unmanageable when I first went there, but a few months of this discipline tamed me. Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul, and spirit" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 772). After this, however, Douglass resists Covey and beats him in a brawl: [A]t this moment ... I resolved to fight; and, suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat ... He asked me if I meant to persist in my resistance. I told him I did, come what might; that he had used me like a brute for six months, and that I was determined to be used so no longer ... We were at it for nearly two hours. Covey at length let me go, puffing and blowing at a great rate, saying that if I had not resisted, he would not have whipped me half so much. (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 776). The fight put an end to Douglass' being beaten by Covey, and it "recalled the departed selfconfidence, and inspired me again with a determination to be free" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 776). Douglass is largely indifferent with Auld. With Covey, Douglass is broken, then restores himself by standing up to his master in the manner of an equal. I believe the fragment of the narrative in our text is true. The details may or may not be fully accurate, but the accounting is truthful. I believe this in large part because Douglass does not conceal his own faults, but reports them in the course of the narrative. If he wished to write an untrue narrative to gain sympathy or support, he would not include his own misbehaviors. While Benjamin Franklin will always be a master of words, it is easier to read Douglass' autobiography than to read Franklin's autobiography. Douglass uses more standardized spelling, and less florid language than does Franklin. Both accounts are interesting and compelling, but they describe men of very different backgrounds. Franklin's well-known joviality comes through in his colorful account of his life. Douglass' struggle against the abuses suffered by a slave come through in his earnest account. Franklin's account is written to his son, for the sake of posterity. He writes: Having emerg'd from the Povert and Obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a State of affluence and some Degree of Reputation in the World, and having gone so far thro' Life with a considerable Share of Felicity, the conducing Means I made use of, which, with the Blessing of God, so well succeeded, my Posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them suitable to their own Situations, and therefore fit to be imitated. (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 201). Douglass is more reserved and direct in his writing: "I have now reached a period of my life when I can give dates. I left Baltimore, and went to live with Master Thomas Auld, at St. Michael's, in March, 1832" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 766). Undergraduate Series 269 References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Rhetorical Analysis 8/15/2011 In “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Frederick Douglass writes of the hypocrisy of American government. He writes of the treatment of slaves, and of how American laws degrade slaves. In “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau also writes about the hypocrisy of American government. Like Douglass, Thoreau writes about how slaves are treated. Both Douglass and Thoreau support the abolition of slavery, and the acknowledgement that slaves are men just as much as whites are men. Both writers decry a government that does not correct, or that perpetuates, the wrongs of its society. Douglass declares the hypocrisy of American law that declares the equality of all men, while excluding a significant portion of the population from that equality. He writes: “I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary!” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 779). As a freed slave in 1852, Douglass does not share in the celebration of freedom from tyranny that is experienced by white Americans. He has only been free for half a decade, instead of for a century, and he is still barred from the enjoyment of true freedom. Thoreau also writes of how laws can be “abused and perverted” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 784), as the declaration of the equality of all men, in the “Declaration of Independence,” has been perverted to disallow certain Americans. He also writes: “I did not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 794). There is a clear hypocrisy to laws that require the separation of church and state, but that force citizens to pay the support of the clergy. The clergyman is not taxed to support anything, because of the law forbidding the establishment of religion by the state, but the clergyman is supported by a tax on those who do not follow the clergyman. Douglas writes: “There are seventy-two crimes in the state of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man … subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 780). This sentence demonstrates the inequality between the treatment of the black man and the treatment of the white man, under the law. The law clearly favors the white man, who receives lighter punishment for most crimes than does the black man. This continues Douglass’ commentary on the hypocrisy of American jurisprudence. Thoreau is very direct in his writing about American laws. He writes: “Unjust laws exist” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 790). He illustrates this fact when he writes: “If a man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that I know of … but if he should steal ninety times nine shillings from the State, he is soon permitted to go at large again” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, pp. 790-791). The law favors the man who commits an intentional crime, rather than the man who refuses to be taxed unfairly. Both Douglass and Thoreau write against the unjust treatment of slaves. Douglass writes that the celebration of the Fourth of July is, to a former slave, “a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 781). He also writes that “it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty … into obedience and submission to their masters” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 781). The Fourth of July reveals the mistreatment of the black man, because the white man celebrates liberty while keeping the black man enslaved. Thoreau writes: “[I]f one HONEST 270 A Journey Through My College Papers man … ceasing to held slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, pp. 791-792). Thoreau supports a peaceful revolution against the laws that perpetuate slavery. He supports the end of slavery, and he also supports the same peaceful revolution by men of conscience against any law that treats any man unjustly. Speaking as a black man, and as a freed slave, Douglass writes that “we are called upon to prove that we are men!” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 781). Black men in his time are not considered to be truly men, or even to be truly human. In calling attention to the need to prove that he is a man, Douglass shows the injustice of laws that make him, according to the law, less than a man. Thoreau writes: “This people must cease to hold slaves … though it cost them their existence as a people” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 787). The end of slavery is so important to Thoreau that he considers it better for America to end than for Americans to hold each other in slavery. Douglass’ “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” is similar to Red Jacket’s “Speech Against the Foundation of a Mission Among the Senecas.” Both men write about how the white man has acted against people of other races. Red Jacket writes: “Our eyes were opened, and our minds became uneasy” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 370). Douglas writes: “The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 779). Each man shows that what benefits the white man brings uneasiness and trouble to the Native and to the black man. With its educated language, and with its references to passages from the Bible, Douglass’ work is similar to Maria Stewart’s “An Address Delivered Before the Afric-American Female Intelligence Society of Boston.” Stewart writes: “I am a strong advocate for the cause of God, and for the cause of freedom” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 609). Like Douglass, Stewart comes from a segment of society which has been repressed and denied social freedoms. Broth writers support freedom based on their experiences of having been denied freedom by white men. Douglass connects with his audience in “What to the Slave in the Fourth of July?” by identifying himself and his audience with the greeting, “Fellow-Citizens” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 778, 779). After establishing equality between himself and his audience, Douglass changes to an “us versus them” theme, in which he identifies himself with the slaves in opposition with the white men. By placing himself in this juxtaposition of a black man who is a fellow citizen with his white audience, Douglass seeks to make his audience realize that the black men whom the whites keep as slaves are also equal to the white men. Douglass and Thoreau write against the injustice and the hypocrisy of a government that perpetuates the subjugation of a segment of its society. Proclaiming the equality of all men, while enslaving the black man, is a perversion of the laws of the land. Black men are men, not brutes, who should not be forced to prove that they are men. Both Douglass and Thoreau promote the abolition of slavery, and of social injustice of any kind. References McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. American Poetry 8/17/2011 In reviewing the poetry of Emerson and Poe, and in reading the poetry of Longfellow, Whitman, and Dickinson, I find that they all seem to deal heavily with death. Emerson and Poe Undergraduate Series 271 seem to write more directly, at least some of the time, while Longfellow, Whitman, and Dickinson hide their meaning in more symbolic imagery. Longfellow writes of war and suffering in "The Arsenal at Springfield," and he writes of religious persecutions, death, and the fall of nations in "The Jewish Cemetery at Newport." He writes: "But ah! what once has been shall be no more!/ The groaning earth in travail and in pain/ Brings forth its races, but does not restore,/ And the dead nations never rise again" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.904). In "Song of Myself," Whitman covers practically every subject, but death is an overarching theme. His death phrases include: "the horrors of fratricidal war ... the dead young men and women ... it is just as lucky to die ... the suicide sprawls on the bloody floor ... my man's body up dripping and drowned ... as to you Death, and your bitter hug of mortality ... I bequeath myself to the dirt" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, pp. 1051-1095). He also describes many people and places, describes various aspects of nature, and refers to both science and God. His poem is a blend of clear descriptions and symbolic imagery. Dickinson's most common theme is death. She also writes of nature being more important to her than religion: "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church --/ I keep it, staying at Home --/ With a Bobolink for a Chorister --/ And an Orchard, for a Dome" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.1140). She also writes: "'Faith' is a fine invention/ When Gentlemen can see --/ But Microscopes are prudent/ In an Emergency" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.1137). Unlike the earlier poets, whose poetry often appealed to God, Dickinson writes of science and nature as more desirable than God. Dickinson's most significant images are of death and mortality. "Safe in their Alabaster Chambers --/ ... Lie the meek members of the Resurrection --/ Rafter of Satin -- and Roof of Stone!" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.1138). Dickinson writes in this poem about dead people who are buried in coffins. The reference to the Resurrection suggests that Dickinson believes that the soul is separate from the body, and that the soul will rise one day. In another poem, she writes: "Until the Moss had reached our lips --/ And covered up -- our names --" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.1144). In this, she tells how death silences us, and how even our names are forgotten as time passes and moss covers our tombstones. It seems that this may be a commentary on the transience and futility of life, that is forgotten after death. I notice that Dickinson writes of death in the first person and in the past tense, as one who is already dead. It is known that she is reclusive, and I wonder whether she feels as lonely and as dead inside as her many poems seem to suggest. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Racial Tensions 8/17/2011 From the writings of Stowe and Jacobs, I see that slaves are not regarded as fellow humans in bondage, but as domestic beasts to be used and traded at the white man's will. Some individual whites treat the slaves well, as in the case of Stowe's Shelby, but even they do not regard slaves as humans. The slave trader, Haley, says, "These critters an't like white folks, you know; they gets over things, only manage right" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 929). Selling a slave's child is no more to the whites than would be selling a sow's piglets. The trader says, "[G]et the gals out of the way ... and when it's clean done, and can't be helped, they naturally get used to 272 A Journey Through My College Papers it" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 931). Similarly, Jacobs writes: "These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 994). This treatment of the slaves echoes the treatment of Native American's by the white man in Black Hawk's "Autobiography." He writes: "[T]o be driven from our village and hunting grounds, and not even be permitted to visit the graves of our forefathers, our relations and friends" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 440). The white man drives the Native away in the same way he would drive away a pack of wolves or a herd of wild horses that is occupying land that the white man wants. The white man has no regard for the human needs of the Natives to honor their dead. The slave is expected to get over the sale of her child, and the Native is expected to get over the loss of his ancestral home. From Lincoln's two addresses, and looking back to Stewart's speech, I see that there is a segment of society in the mid-19th century that does not approve of or support slavery. Lincoln and Stewart both support freedom for all men, not just for white men. In the "Gettysburg Address," Lincoln reminds his audience that the United States is "conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1019). In Lincoln's "Second Inaugural Address," he calls into question the rightness of slavery when he writes: "It may seem strange that any men should dare ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1020). Lincoln does not believe that one man should force another man to work against his will. Lincoln does not believe that any people should be held in bondage. He believes that all men are equal, regardless of race or color. Stewart writes: "I am a strong advocate for the cause of God, and for the cause of freedom" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 609). She does not specify that the freedom that she supports is that of the black man, but it may be so inferred from the fact that she is addressing the African-American Female Intelligence Society of Boston. The growing awareness, in the mid-19th century, of the wrongness of slavery contributes to the freedom and equality experienced by people of African-American descent in the 21st century. This awareness contributes to the Civil War, at the start of which, "[o]ne eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1020). By writing about the treatment of slaves, Stowe, Jacobs, and Frederick Douglass all raise awareness of the need to free the slaves, and to acknowledge them as human beings who are equal to writes. President Lincoln is universally recognized as the president who freed the slaves, and his words are known by nearly everyone. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Nature in Early American Literature 8/17/2011 Trees represent strength tempered by flexibility, and also shelter from danger. Birds variously represent power, watchfulness, rapaciousness, threat, and evil, depending on the type of bird. Rivers, lakes, and seas; mosses and grasses; a variety of animals; and many other natural elements and entities take on a wide range of meanings, from literal to deeply symbolic. Nature is a pervading theme in much of the body of early American literature. The fifteenth century writings of the Iroquois, which are rich with nature imagery, are largely ignored by Jonathan Undergraduate Series 273 Edwards in the eighteenth century, but they are echoed by the nature imagery in the writings of the transcendentalist writers of the nineteenth century. In “The Great Binding Law,” the Iroquois use natural images as metaphors for greater truths and higher ideals. They also address elements of nature as living entities with which the Iroquois share the earth. Dekanawidah writes: “I plant the Tree of the Great Peace … Under the shade of this Tree of the Great Peace … There shall you sit and watch the Council Fire of the Confederacy of the Five Nations” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 29). The Tree of the Great Peace is a metaphor for “The Great Binding Law.” The tree is a metaphor for establishing an overarching covenant among the Five Nations. A tree represents strength and durability, but it is also able to yield when necessary in order to survive; it is stronger because it is not brittle or unyielding. In “Certain Iroquois Tree Myths and Symbols,” Cadwallader Colden “says that the Five Nations always express peace under the metaphor of a tree” (Parker, 1912, p. 608). The tree reflects the “tree of the upper-world” (Parker, 1912, p. 609), which is the Iroquois symbol of what Christians call Heaven, so peace established under a tree is peace established under the divine protection of Heaven. Also, a tree represents shelter from the elements, thus symbolizing how the Great Peace will protect the people of the Five Nations from harm. Continuing the metaphor of the tree, Dekanawidah writes: “Roots have spread out from the Tree of the Great Peace, one to the north, one to the east, one to the south and one to the west. The name of these roots in The Great White Roots and their nature is Peace and Strength” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 29). As the tree represents the covenant of the Five Nations of the Iroquois, so the roots of the tree, which spread out in every direction, are a metaphor for how the establishment of the Great Peace will spread peace and strength from the conference of the leaders of the leaders of the Five Nations to all the people in the land. The roots of a tree reflect its branches, and are stronger than the visible branches of the tree. Roots are very tough, and difficult to break, so the peace of the “Great Binding Law” is to be strong and difficult to break. The roots of the tree also show that the laws that are enacted by the Council are rooted in the people’s desire for peace and strength from their leaders. To establish a safeguard for the council fire of the Five Nations, Dekanawidah writes: “We place at the top of the Tree of the Long Leaves an Eagle who is able to see afar. If he sees in the distance any evil approaching or any danger threatening he will at once warn the people of the Confederacy” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 29). The eagle is a symbol of both power and vision. It is strong and fierce, and it is known for its keen eyesight and for its vigilance in guarding its children or, in this case, the tribes of the Five Nations. Placing the eagle atop the tree symbolizes how vigilant the Council will be to guard the Five Nations from any threat. The threat may be from other tribes or from white men; or it may be any act or decision that the leaders may consider that might not be in the best interests of the people of the Five Nations. The eagle assures the people that the leaders will be vigilant against selfish or unwise decisions that could harm the people. The Iroquois’ reverence for nature is an indivisible part of their religion, culture, and identity. They use natural images of trees, tree roots, eagles, and other aspects of nature so that the people of the Five Nations will better understand the deeper truths that are represented. The Iroquois revere the Great Spirit, and they address in their writings the spirits of many parts of nature as conscious entities. The Iroquois’ nature images continue to be seen in American literature, art, and culture throughout American history into the twenty-first century. Jonathan Edwards’ understanding of nature is that it is a base, ungodly state. He preaches that natural man is below what is divine, but that man can rise above nature with God’s help. In “A Divine and Supernatural Light”, Edwards writes: “Those convictions that natural men may have of their sin and misery is not this spiritual and divine light” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 151). Edwards describes natural men as having thoughts or beliefs, which he calls 274 A Journey Through My College Papers convictions, that are not from God. By writing that natural man’s convictions are not from the divine light, he states that man is below the divine because he is natural. Edwards writes: “Natural men may have lively impressions on their imaginations; and we cannot determine but the devil … may cause imaginations” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 152). Edwards attributes imagination to the devil, and he writes that man is affected in this way because he is natural. Man’s nature predisposes him to baser ideas, and makes him accessible to the devil. Edwards uses “nature” not only to describe that which is base or godless in man, but also to describe man’s inner identity and inclinations. He writes: “God … deals with man according to his nature or as a rational creature” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 154). Edward writes about man as a rational being, capable of thought and understanding. Man has the ability to reason, and God uses this rationality to deal with man, because man is the one creature that has the ability to listen to and to understand God. Edwards’ understanding of nature is shaped by Puritan religious teachings, which state that “human beings are not what they ought to be and reason is in a somewhat weakened condition” (Brauer, 1987, p. 50). In his view, natural man is below the level of the supernatural Holy Spirit. He believes that man can, and should, aspire to rise above the bonds of nature, but that man should not expect to get very far. Man’s nature as a rational creature is a different use of the word “nature,” and refers to man’s essential state of being, rather than to the natural world. Edwards does not share or understand the Iroquois’ harmony with nature; in that, he is representative of his time and culture. The transcendentalist writers of the nineteenth century are influenced by the early writings of the Iroquois. Three prominent transcendentalist writers of this period are Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman. Each of these writers recognizes goodness in nature, although each writer approaches nature from a slightly different angle. Ralph Waldo Emerson echoes the belief by the Iroquois that nature is a reflection of the divine, and that nature is intrinsically good and beautiful. In the introduction to “Nature,” Emerson writes: “The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 546). Emerson identifies that he sees God and nature through the experience of earlier generations. His use of nature in his writings echoes the poetic use of nature images in the writings of the Iroquois. In an article in The North American Review, W. Robertson Nicoll (1903) writes of Emerson: “Though not a scientific observer himself, he asked why America should not have a poetry and philosophy of nature” (pp. 676-677). Emerson sees a need for nature in America’s literature and culture. In particular, he calls for poetry and philosophy, not for dry prose or sermons. His own essays, although written in prose, have the lyric sense of poetry in his discussion of nature. This reflects the poetic undertone in the writings of the Iroquois. Emerson sees nature as a positive force. Nicoll (1903) writes that Emerson “had no doubt that the nature of things was kind and righteous” (p. 678). Emerson ignores the eighteenth century writers, such as Jonathan Edwards, who treat nature as base, and instead Emerson sees nature as right and good. Henry David Thoreau believes that it is necessary to leave busy society behind and to return to nature. He views nature as reflecting Eden in the world. In Walden, Thoreau writes: “Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 802). Thoreau has a dim view of modern society, as it exists in his time. He believes that the local men who labor constantly just to survive would have had better lives if they had been raised away from human society. In his opinion, they are not living up to their potential as men because they are constrained by society, and they would fare better if they gave up society and lived at one with nature. Undergraduate Series 275 In “Henry David Thoreau, the State of Nature, and the Redemption of Liberalism,” Philip Abbott (1985) writes: “The river itself becomes for Thoreau a metaphor of his own liberation from false human relationships in society” (p. 185). As the river flows freely through the countryside, restrained only by its own natural banks, and not by human intervention, so Thoreau wishes to flow through a life at one with nature. In “A Week,” Thoreau uses natural images as metaphors for the good that can be found when one returns to nature. While his natural references, including the river, are metaphors, Thoreau is literal when he promotes a return to living with nature. In “Walden, echoing the metaphor of the river,” Thoreau writes of watching a lethargic snake resting in at the bottom of a calm pond” because [the snake] had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 824). He reflects that “for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 824). If man allows himself to move with the river, instead of lying torpid in the calm pond, man may achieve a higher state of existence. In an essay that compares and contrasts Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, Nicole Smith (2010) writes: “Thoreau takes a slightly more radical or extreme stance, advocating a literal return to nature” (para. 5). She explains that Thoreau’s approach to nature is to see life away from society, immersed in nature, as necessary for achieving man’s full potential. His belief is not only in a need for a philosophical return to nature, but in a need for an actual return to living in nature. Walt Whitman writes of the earthly realities of nature. While he does not consider nature to be a base, ungodly thing, as does Edwards, he also does not exalt nature as idyllic or edenic, as do Emerson and Thoreau. In part 36 of “Song of Myself,” Whitman writes: “Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1082). Whitman describes odors that trigger images of death even in people who have no earlier memory of the scents. He describes nature just as it is, without embellishing or idealizing it, even though descriptions of natural death odors might be off-putting to many readers in his time. In “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” Whitman describes a summer scene from his memory: “Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive, / Out from the patches of briars and blackberries, / From the memories of the bird that chanted to me” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1106). The description evokes the sights, scents, and sounds of a simple, natural briar patch. The blackberries add detail to the shapes and smells of the scene. Only the chanting of the bird strays from the plain-written description of nature, and that appears to be more of a poetic device to maintain the tone and rhythm of the poem than an attempt to anthropomorphize the bird. In an article in The North American Review, Louise Collier Willcox (1906) writes: “There is a profound sacredness, he wishes to assert, in every human experience, since to bring it to the birth, the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one plant or animal” (p. 283). She asserts that Whitman sees nature and the human experience as sacred. As such, Whitman accepts all aspects of nature equally, allowing him to write with equal honesty about death, decay, and other dark aspects of nature, as well as about the beauty and goodness of nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman are among the transcendental writers of the nineteenth century. Each is influenced by, and echoes, the beliefs of the Iroquois in regard to nature, but each in his own manner. All three writers recognize the intrinsic goodness of nature. Emerson delights in the total goodness and rightness of nature, and in the connection to the divine that nature provides to man. His writing echoes the joyful reverence for nature in “The Great Binding Law.” Thoreau presents nature as the essential environment for man to achieve true manhood. Thoreau rejects the depravity of society, and he 276 A Journey Through My College Papers embraces a true return to nature. His writing echoes the Iroquois’ lives in and with the entities of nature. Whitman recognizes the sacredness of nature in all of its forms and guises. He represents both the light side and the dark side of nature, delighting in the deep truth in all of nature. His writing echoes the Iroquois’ oneness with nature, and their honest thanksgivings for every aspect of nature. The early writings of the fifteenth century Iroquois are echoed and reflected in the transcendental writings of the nineteenth century. America’s understanding of nature was briefly warped by the Puritan teachings of the eighteenth century, but America’s joy in nature was restored by the middle of the nineteenth century. Much of early American literature is illuminated by descriptions of nature and nature-oriented metaphors. Whether nature is a connection to the divine, an escape from human society, or a representation of the sacred, American literature is filled with references to and descriptions of nature. American thought about nature reaches back through history to a time before European colonists arrived in America, when the Native peoples lived in unity with the natural world that surrounded them. Americans have resisted the call of nature in our literature, but we continue to return to the acknowledgement that we need and delight in nature. References Abbott, P. (1985). Henry David Thoreau, the state of nature, and the redemption of liberalism. The Journal of Politics, 47(1), 182-208. Retrieved August 8, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2131071 Brauer, J.C. (1987). Types of Puritan piety. Church History, 56(1), 39-58. Retrieved August 17, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3165303 McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Nicoll, W.R. (1903). Ralph Waldo Emerson. The North American Review, 176(558), 675-687. Retrieved August 8, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25119398 Parker, A.C. (1912). Certain Iroquois tree myths and symbols. American Anthropologist, 14(4), 608-620. Retrieved August 17, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/659833 Smith, N. (2010). The role of nature in transcendental poetry: Emerson, Thoreau & Whitman. Retrieved August 8, 2011, from http://www.articlemyriad.com/nature_emerson_whitman_thoreau.htm Willcox, L.C. (1906). Walt Whitman. The North American Review, 183(597), 281-296. Retrieved August 8, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25105615 ENG 202: American Literature After 1865 Narrative Writing 8/25/2011 There are more stylistic differences than similarities between "Story of the Bad Little Boy" and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." One similarity is that both stories are written in the third person, with the narrator outside the story. Another similarity is that both stories deal with main characters who have performed misdeeds. Twain gives almost no setting to his story. Jim might live in almost any part of the United States, but the reader doesn't have good clues to tell where he lives. The story proceeds without the need to set it in a particular time or place, or to identify Jim's social or economic status. Bierce, on the other hand, describes the setting clearly, including a great deal of visual Undergraduate Series 277 detail, as well as a clear time and place. "A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below ... The water, touched to gold by the early sun ... Circumstances ... had prevented him from taking service in the gallant army which had fought the disastrous campaign ending with the fall of Corinth" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, pp. 1461-1463). From this, the reader knows that the story is set at a river or creek in northern Alabama, early in the morning on a day not too long after May, 1862. The setting or lack of setting influences the reading of the story. Twain's lack of a defined setting results in a series of individual, mental vignettes of Jim's various misdeeds. Bierce's detailed setting results in a rich mental image that draws the reader into the story. Twain's tone is informal and conversational. It gives the reader the impression of being part of an intimate conversation with the narrator. "Once there was a bad little boy whose name was Jim -- though, if you will notice, you'll find that bad little boys are nearly always called James in your Sunday-school books" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1184). Bierce's tone is formal. The narrator does not interact with the story or with the reader. Twain's story is told in a series of related, but non-consecutive, incidents, and it has a tone of confusion or amazement on the part of the narrator. There is a second story under each story of Jim's adventures, as the narrator clearly relates a story of what does not happen to Jim. Jim's actual experiences bracket the stories of the experiences he does not have. "[B]ut all at once a terrible feeling didn't come over him, and something didn't whisper to him, 'Is it right to disobey my mother?...' and then he didn't kneel down all alone and promise never to be wicked any more, and rise up with a light, happy heart" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1185). Twain relates almost as much about what does not happen to Jim as he relates about what does happen to Jim. Bierce's story is told by a combination of a flashback and a dream or a hallucination. Farquhar experiences most of the action of the story in a mental flash in the instant between the sergeant stepping off the board and the breaking of Farquhar's neck. The narrative style of these stories differs from other essays, including speeches and sermons, in that narratives tend to involve the reader's imagination and emotions in the experience of reading their accounts. Narratives have characters with whom the reader can relate, or to whom the reader can react in a range of emotional ways. Narratives usually include aspects of fictional writing, such as rising action, a climax, and falling action. All of these are advantages that narrative writing has over other forms of essays. Narrative writing allows the clear communication of concrete actions and events, while non-narrative essays are better for the communication of intangible concepts. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. The Essay 8/25/2011 The essay is an effective genre because it allows the writer to communicate facts and concepts in a clear, organized manner. The essay is not free of emotion, but it presents ideas that may be emotionally charged in a format that allows the reader to focus on the information that is presented, rather than on the emotional impact of the information. As with most of Twain's writing, the tone of his essay is light, but his subject is serious. He presents the replacement in the South of the serious, Catholic church with the frivolity of Mardi Gras: "Sir Walter has got the advantage of the gentlemen of the cowl and rosary, and ... the 278 A Journey Through My College Papers grace-line between the worldly season and the holy one is reached" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1169). Twain blames Sir Walter Scott's romantic writings for drawing the South back to certain medieval practices, and for preventing the South being "wholly modern, in place of modern and medieval mixed" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1170). Tourgée's essay is written with a more formal tone than that of Twain's essay. Tourgée discusses the politics of the South, focusing on the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan. He presents the Klan as "a huge joke which certain pretended ghostly night-riders were playing upon the ignorant freedmen of the South, making them believe that they were the spirits of slain Confederates hailing from hell and slain in some great battle" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1175). Tourgée shows up the tensions between the landed, Southern whites and the new, black freedmen. He shows the philosophical tension associated with the improved conditions of former slaves, writing of the "Invisible Empire" that "no one motive was at the bottom of it, except the very broad and general one of an organized hostility to the elevation of the colored race ... that they would never submit ... their slaves were made their equals, or were likely to be, and perhaps their superiors, to rule over them" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1177). Twain's essay deals with the light, social issues of the day in the South, including the perpetuation of older-style dress and customs. Tourgée's essay deals with the dark, philosophical and political issues, including white supremacy and the repression of black freedmen. The two writers present different views of Southern society, References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. The Wrong Race 8/29/2011 Growing up in an influential, white family in rural Vermont in the 1970s and 1980s, I didn’t know how deeply racial tensions ran in the rest of the country. I only knew a few blacks – we didn’t know to say African American then. Learning the truth about racial discrimination and racial violence was a journey for me, and an encounter with the American Experience. In the process, I learned more about racial tensions than I could have imagined in my youth. Bobby is a black man, who is about two years my junior, and he was a bright, personable child. We played together in the church nursery. It never occurred to me to wonder why Bobby’s skin was brown while his family was white. Race was not an issue then, and I didn’t know that many people thought it should be otherwise. About the time I started junior high, Doris, the daughter of the wealthiest elderly widow in our church, returned from serving almost two decades as a missionary in Nigeria, bringing her family to Vermont with her. Her husband was one of the tallest men I had ever met. His skin was ebony. He was a professor in Nigeria, and he came from a noble family. Their three teen-aged children were almost as dark as their father, and they bore little resemblance to their small, blonde mother; they were beautiful. I thought they were delightful. That first Sunday, though, I learned a bit more about racial tensions than I had known before. Most of the fine, upstanding, moral members of our Congregationalist church demanded that Doris take her half-breed family and leave the church. I had never heard that word before, and I had never before witnessed the hatred and hostility that I saw that day on the faces of adults whom I loved and trusted. My own parents and Bobby’s parents were among the very few who stood against the body of members who demanded the family’s removal. In the end, I learned another unpleasant lesson about the adults Undergraduate Series 279 who taught my Sunday-school lessons. The question was settled when Doris’ mother, told the church that it would accept her daughter’s family or she would remove the church from her will. Greed won out, but the lingering racial tensions pushed the family out of the church after a few months, anyway. Many years later, racism finally came home to me in a very personal, very frightening way. We were living in North Carolina at the time. My husband and I fell on hard times when he lost yet another job, and we became homeless when we were unable to pay to stop an eviction. The church allowed us to stay in the church nursery while we figured out what to do, but my husband took the car and his clothes, and he left for Indiana. I was alone with two babies under two years old. It took a few weeks for me to find an apartment. The pastor and a social worker helped me apply for public assistance and for public housing. The public assistance office was staffed with white women, and I was treated with some compassion and respect there. The public housing office was staffed with black women, and I was treated with open contempt there. The contempt and disrespect got worse when the church and the social worker applied pressure to move me to the top of the list to receive housing. On the morning when we got our apartment, the public housing worker drove my sons and me to see it. As we drove into the long cul de sac, I saw many black children playing in the street and in front of the apartment buildings. I saw black faces pressed to windows, and I saw black heads thrust out of doorways. Every face was curious. When we were seen in the back seat, every expression became one of open hostility. I didn’t see a single white face outside of that car. I learned very quickly that we were the only non-black family for three denselypopulated blocks in any direction. I locked my doors and covered my windows for the first time in my life, because black children and teens peered through any crack they could find during all hours of the day and night, and they tried to push their way into the apartment. I kept my children inside as I listened to the endless taunts about my race, and to the endlessly shouted demands that we go back where we belonged. When we did need to leave the apartment for any reason, hands grabbed and slapped at us as we went. One day, a police officer told me to keep my children in the upstairs bedroom until he returned to tell me it was safe to move. Two young men with loaded guns were fighting over a young woman right outside our door. Another day, I saw two young men exchange a sandwich bag of white pills for a handful of cash at the foot of my steps. Every day, I was told many times over how my sons and I would be beaten, raped, and killed if we didn’t go back where whites belonged. I lived in constant terror. After only two weeks, which felt like months, two large, white, male police officers came to my door to check on our well-being. They had seen and heard the threats on several days, and they told me that I needed to move. They said that they would talk to the public housing office on my behalf. That was late on a Friday afternoon. On Monday morning, the housing office assigned us to an apartment in a different neighborhood, for our safety. Several pickup trucks and several cars came from our church, all filled with white men. While a few packed our things and loaded them in trucks, the pastor and the rest of the men formed a barrier around us. The apartment was empty in under an hour. The threats and insults continued throughout the loading process, and a crowd ran after our caravan of cars and trucks, continuing the verbal abuse until we left that neighborhood. I had known about racial discrimination and racial violence before I lived in the South. I had learned in school about the civil rights movement. Until I was a victim of racial violence, though, I did not truly understand it. I did not have true compassion for the victims of such hatred. After my experience, my outlook changed. Instead of politely disapproving of racist behavior, I was outraged by it. I learned to have true compassion for the victims of racial injustice. My 280 A Journey Through My College Papers encounter with the American experience of racial violence changed how I view people of any race, and how I am raising my sons. Racial tension has been part of the American Experience since the white man first enslaved the black man. No one is truly free of it, no matter how he or she was raised, or what color his or her skin may be. Modernist American Literature by Women 9/1/2011 The heroine of The School Days of an Indian Girl is Zitkala Sa, a young Dakota girl who has been taken from her reservation and forced to endure a Quaker school. The heroine of Trifles is Mrs. Wright, a middle-aged woman who has been arrested for the murder of her apparently abusive husband. Zitkala Sa tells her own story autobiographically, using descriptions from the culture of her origin. Mrs. Wright does not actually participate in the story, but her life and actions are described and discussed by other characters. Both Zitkala Sa and Mrs. Wright have been taken out of lives of freedom and happiness, and have been subjected to loneliness and cruelty by people who possess social and physical power over them. These are both stories of how the heroines respond to their abusers, as much as about the abuses that the heroines suffer. Zitkala Sa, being a child, has few options, but she takes small revenge on her abusers. "[A]s I sent the masher into the bottom of the jar, I felt a satisfying sensation that the weight of my body had gone into it ... the pulpy contents fell through the crumbled bottom to the table" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1615). Zitkala Sa pours her suffering into mashing the turnips, and she smashes the bottom of the container. "A few moments later, when I was ready to leave the room, there was a ragged hole in the page where the picture of the devil had once been" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1616). After she has a nightmare about the devil, she destroys his picture in one of the school's books. Mrs. Wright, being a childless housewife with no friends, gets a pet bird. The reader is led to conclude that Mr. Wright killed the bird by wringing its neck, and that Mrs. Wright killed her husband in a manner similar to the way the bird died, by strangling him with a rope. Both Zitkala Sa and Mrs. Wright strike out against those who torment them. These stories fit the mold of Modernism. Zitkala Sa's autobiography is based in realism. She does not shape her story with traditional pleasantries or euphemisms. She tells her memories of a traumatic period in her life. She describes her experience of being indecently exposed: "I felt like sinking to the floor, for my blanket had been stripped from my shoulders. I looked hard at the Indian girls, who seemed not to care that they were even more immodestly dressed than I, in their tightly fitting clothes" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1612). This is a depart5ure from the formulaicly polite writing of earlier times, as it allows the reader to be discomfited by stark reality. Mrs. Wright's story is told more abstractly. The reader is never actually told that Mrs. Wright murdered her husband. The women discover the truth by examining the minutiae of her life, which the men deem to be mere trifles. From the quilt block, whose stitches are "all over the place" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1715), to the dead canary in the box, to the final comments about knotting the quilt, the things that are important to a woman are the real clues to what has happened. This story is also a social commentary on men and women, and it shows that the things that men dismiss as trifles in women's lives may actually be important and significant facts. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale conceal the evidence of the canary in a show of solidarity with Mrs. Wright against the male power structure. The theme of Zitkala Sa's indoctrination at the school as a representation of the repression of Native Americans by white supremacists is important because it goes against the Anglo-American society of the time. It brings into the light the injustice of forcing Native Undergraduate Series 281 children to become like Anglo children. The theme of Mrs. Wright's response to male domination of and disregard for women is important because it shows how women's lives and ideas are important, and how women deserve to be free to find happiness in their lives. Both stories include the theme that the oppressed can strike out against the oppressors. Neither story is happy or pretty, but each story shows important truths. I think these works are steps toward progress, rather than triumphs of progress. They are powerful, compelling stories that help pave the way toward establishing rights for oppressed segments of the population. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. The Harlem Renaissance 1900 – 1940 9/1/2011 McKay and Cullen use the convention of the sonnet. Both "White Houses" and "Yet Do I Marvel" employ iambic pentameter with a first-third/second-fourth rhyming pattern that reflects traditional poets, especially Shakespeare. Johnson's poem also follows traditional forms, using iambic pentameter with couplets, varying the line break and the rhyming in the third and fourth lines for the sake of fluidity. Grimke, Cullen, and Hughes use a lot of open verse and free verse, sometimes with rhyme but an uneven rhythm, sometimes with rhythm but no rhyme, and sometimes with neither rhyme nor rhythm. Grimke's "The Black Finger" is imagery-rich free verse. She describes a tree as a black finger. It connects beauty to something black, drawing on the African American experience and saying that things that are black can be beautiful, and can point upward toward a higher, nobler truth. "Why, beautiful still finger, are you black?/ And why are you pointing upwards?" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1802). Cullen's "Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song" is an open verse commentary on the rape trial in Alabama. "The foe smug in his citadel" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1805) is the white establishment, which was jarred by the news of the legal atrocities of the case. The versification of the poem is intense, with a quick, uneven rhythm, and with a loose collection of couplets and triplets punctuated by unrhymed lines. All of Hughes' selected poems are open or free verse. His work is filled with commentary on the black experience. The river imagery in "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" draws a picture of the history of the African American. The history flows and changes as the rivers flow and change. Hughes writes: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1865). There is a huge, irresistible strength in the depths of the large rivers in the poem, which is usually concealed by a still, even surface. The black spirit is similarly strong beneath a still exterior. Jazz reflects and projects the African American heritage in music. Cullen's "Incident" relates the experience of being put down by whites. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" has a rolling, musical quality that echoes the movement of a deep river. While I am largely unacquainted with jazz, beyond the few lines in our text and a vague impression of music heard on television, I can hear this poem set to a piano and a saxophone. "Aunt Sue's Stories" has the same musical feel, as the varied rhythm lends itself to the varied tones of music. More formal sonnets and other structured forms would have too much of the sing-song for jazz, I think, but these poems, and the rest of Hughes' poems, relate aspects of the African American heritage and experience, and of the human experience, in comfortable, expressive forms. "I've known rivers:/ I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins/ ... I've known rivers;/ 282 A Journey Through My College Papers Ancient, dusky rivers" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1865). These lines flow musically and echo what I believe are the rhythms of jazz. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Modern American Writers 9/8/2011 The apparent truth in "In Another Country" seems to be the inevitability of loss and death. Throughout the story, the reader finds one form of loss after another. "There were usually funerals starting from the courtyard" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1846). The constant presence of death begins the story, as a strong memory in the mind of the narrator. Loss of physical function is also a pervading theme: "My knee did not bend and the leg dropped straight from the knee to the ankle without a calf" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1846). Losses of friendships and prestige are presented: "I was never really one of them ... because it had been different with them and they had done very different things to get their medals" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1849). Even apart from the war, the loss in death is still present: "the major's wife ... had died of pneumonia" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1850). Loss permeates the story in the same way that an awareness of death and loss permeates contemporary society. The apparent truth in "Barn Burning" seems to be that, while a parent may be beyond redemption, a child may still be redeemed. Sartoris is abused and neglected. His father is a violent criminal who is always on the run from his past. Despite his violent upbringing, Sartoris goes against his father at the end and warns Major de Spain. "He did not look back" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1863). At the end, Sartoris walks away from his violent childhood, and enters life with the good deed that he has done in the night. In "In Another Country," the narrator sees the losses that surrounds him. I believe he comes to an understanding of the truth of the inevitability of loss when he witnesses the major's grim determination after his wife's death. In "Barn Burning," Sartoris recognizes the truth that he can break away from his father's way of life, and that he doesn't have to come to his father's end. I think that "In Another Country" tells us that the human spirit is able to continue on, despite the losses that a person experiences. The narrator seems to be resilient, and hopeful about moving on, while the major seems to be bitter and grim in the face of loss. Both characters, and the boy with the rebuilt nose, continue their therapy to help them move past losses to lead productive lives. The story indicates that the human condition requires that each person will face loss differently, but that each person must seek balance after loss. The major seeks that balance by apologizing to the narrator: "I am so sorry ... I would not be rude. My wife has just died. You must forgive me" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1850). The human potential in this story is the ability to endure and to recover from pain and loss. In "Barn Burning," the message about the human spirit is that a person who is abused, neglected, and raised in violence does not have to remain in that life. Sartoris loves his father, and is proud of his father, but he rises up against his father's violence. It is part of the human condition to want justice in life, and Sartoris realizes that Snopes has evaded justice. It is also part of the human condition to want a better life, and Sartoris seeks that better life when he walks away. The story points up the human potential to rise above one's base beginnings, and to be a better person than one's upbringing has raised one to be. Undergraduate Series 283 References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Modern American Fiction 9/15/2011 "Winter Dreams" and "The Chrysanthemums" both deal obliquely with love, although the theme of love is more obvious in "Winter Dreams." Dexter Green and Elisa Allen both have good, stable lives. Dexter is a caddy who achieves the American Dream by building himself up to become a wealthy man. Elisa is a rural housewife on a prosperous farm. Neither character is truly satisfied by his or her life. Dexter seeks love with Judy Jones, and he achieves a sort of frustrated infatuation. She makes herself unattainable to him. She is spoiled by her family's wealth, and she behaves like a brat to the men who follow after her. "Well, there's a house there that I live in ... in that house there is a fella waiting for me ... Come to dinner tomorrow night" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, pp. 1835-1836). Judy unashamedly admits her fickleness, and she stays true to form for most of the story. Dexter has a chance at love with Irene Scheerer, but there is no passion with her. He leaves the stability of Irene for the passion of Judy, and he ends up with neither. He is successful in business, but he is alone. "He wanted to care and he could not care ... he could never go back any more" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1845). Elisa Allen has a comfortable, stable life with her husband, Henry. He recognizes her abilities and encourages her interests. "You've got a gift with things" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1870). Elisa is bored with being a farm wife. Her world is grey, like the "high greyflannel fog ... like a lid on the mountains" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1869). The anonymous tinker represents a life Elisa cannot have, and his life challenges her to want a more exciting life. "I wish women could do such things" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1874). When Elisa sees the flower sets on the road, her spirit is crushed. The real love in "Winter Dreams" is not romantic love, but love of an ideal. Dexter wants to achieve a life beyond that which his parents had. "[H]e wanted the glittering things themselves" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1833). In "The Chrysanthemums," the real love is for the chrysanthemums, which also represent an ideal. Elisa wants to be good at something beyond housework. Her flowers represent her value as a person, at least in her own eyes. The tone in "Winter Dreams" is one of hope and expectation. Dexter's future is before him, and he keeps working to achieve it. The tone in "The Chrysanthemums" is one of frustration and loneliness. Elisa is stuck in her life, and is stagnating. She has a good life, but she wants more. Dexter's life represents the upwardly-mobile young men of the industrial age, and the superficiality of their social lives. Elisa's life represents the rural housewife of the first half of the twentieth century, and the helpless loneliness of their lives. Elisa seems like a counterpoint to Minnie Wright in "Trifles." Both women are lonely, rural housewives. Elisa's husband encourages her attempts to have beauty in her life, through her flowers. Minnie's husband stripped beauty from her life by killing her bird. The two women are opposite representations of the same lifestyle in similar times. Dexter sees the futility of seeking love when he hears how marriage and children have faded Judy. Elisa sees the same futility when she finds the plants in the road. While the two stories deal with people of very different socio-economic groups, the two stories are generally parallel in their style. 284 A Journey Through My College Papers References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Literature in the Postmodern Era 9/15/2011 I can relate to Anne Sexton's and to Sylvia Plath's need to pour out their feelings about their private lives through published poetry, since it is less than a year since I published my own volume of poetry. There is catharsis in expressing one's emotions through poetry, and it is not surprising to me that Sexton's and Plath's poetry is so revealing of their inner turmoils. Publishing such poetry is not unlike the oral sharing that takes place in a group counseling session, where the pain of experiences is lessened by sharing it with others. I suspect that this is the purpose these women had in submitting their work for publication: to release their pent-up anguish, and to expose their secret hurts and fears. Sexton expresses her pain in addition: "It's a kind of war/ where I plant bombs inside/ of myself" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1952). Plath expresses her pain in the loss of, and the memories of, her father: "The vampire who said he was you/ and drank my blood for a year ... There's a stake in your fat black hear" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1960). Expressing these things publicly helps the writer to begin to heal, or at least to survive. The socially-acceptable response should be that yes, the writers have divulged too much. I disagree with that view. The writers did not force others to read what they had written; they merely made their words available to be read. The reader can close the book at any time, so the reader is not forced to endure the pain that is exposed in the works. On the other hand, it seems that it was personally necessary to Sexton and to Plath to reveal as much as they did about themselves. Reading it might be uncomfortable, but they had to write it, and to publish it, to relieve their own discomfort. "[O]r the black sacrament" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1952). Sexton alludes to the ritual communion practiced by the Church of Satan, which is a corruption of the communion practiced in most denominations of Christian churches. She compares her ritualized taking of drugs to the ritual consumption of bread and wine, specifying that it is the Satanic, or evil rite, not the good, Christian rite. By comparing her addiction to an evil ritual, Sexton sets the tone of her poem, making it clear that she condemns, rather than celebrates, her drug use. The theme of her poem, then, is her fear and suffering as an addict, not the numbing effect of the drugs to hide that suffering. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Language and Rhetoric 9/22/2011 First, I was surprised to find that the link in the assignment for Dr. King's speech did not work. Due to copyright issues, none of the video links I found for the speech worked, but I finally found an audio recording of the speech. I am amazed at a few lines from Dr. King's speech that are omitted from the transcript in our text, which I will discuss in a moment. Both Dr. King and President Obama use intentional repetition of words and phrases to emphasize points, and to embed their words in the memories of their audiences. Dr. King repeats Undergraduate Series 285 the phrase "One hundred years later" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1906) three times. He repeats "go back" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1908) five times. He repeats "I have a dream" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1908) nine times. He repeats "With this faith" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1908) three times. He repeats "together" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1908) five times in a single sentence. He repeats "let freedom ring" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1909) eleven times. Similarly, President Obama repeats "For us" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1915) three times. He repeats "we will" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1915) six times in a single paragraph. he repeats and stresses "and" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1917) between pairs of virtues four times in a single sentence. President Obama also repeats "Our" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1915) five times in a single paragraph, in which he identifies himself with his audience: "Our workers ... Our minds ... Our goals ... Our capacity ... our time" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1915). These repetitions are a sort of alliteration, which forms stronger memory connections than would do a series of similar words for a single idea. Understandably, given his role in the church, Dr. King's speech has the meter and cadence of a Southern Baptist sermon. His voice rises and falls rhythmically, almost stressing every other syllable. The meter and cadence make the speech almost musical, which helps to form additional memory pathways for his audience. President Obama's speech is more even and less cadenced than that of Dr. King, but there is a lyric quality to specific phrases that he wishes to embed in the memory of his audience: "So it has been; so it must be" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1914) stresses the first and fourth syllables of each phrase, producing a rhythm of "dum da da dum, dum da da dum." Later, he uses the same rhythm: "pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off ... begin again" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1915); and again: "these things are old. These things are true" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1917). Both Dr. King and President Obama reference Scripture. Dr. King's speech is peppered with allusions to Psalms, Amos, Exodus, Isaiah, and the Gospels, as explained in the footnotes for readers who are unfamiliar with the references (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, pp. 1906-1908). Such references are to be expected in a speech made by a minister, and they would have resonated with much of his contemporary audience. President Obama references First Corinthians when he says, "the time has come to set aside childish things" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1915). The scriptural reference would have caught the attention of the Christians in the audience, but the speech is not filled with scriptural references that might alienate or exclude audience members of other faiths. In the audio recording of Dr. King's speech, there are several phrases that are omitted from the transcript, and that would have made the speech more memorable to his audience. In the fourth paragraph of the transcript, we read: "all men would be guaranteed" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1906), but the same sentence in the recording says: "all men, yes black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed" (King, 1963). The emphasis that black men are included in all men would have been significant for his audience. In the fifth paragraph of the transcript, a sentence has been omitted after the third sentence. It reads: "Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy" (King, 1963). Again, the sentence would have been significant to Dr. King's audience, much of which had been denied the promises of democracy. In the fourth paragraph on page 1908 of our text, the first sentence begins: "I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor's lips" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1908). In the audio, the sentence is worded differently: "I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor whose lips" (King, 1963). The audience would have remembered the original, explicit commentary that was censored from our text. President Obama echoes Dr. King's speech when he says: "why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall" 286 A Journey Through My College Papers (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1917). Dr. King's similar words are: "when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, p. 1909). Both men speak of a future of peaceful integration and equality among all people, without regard to age, gender, color, or creed. Dr. King's speech was made at a time when African Americans were beginning to get the freedoms that they deserved as Americans. The Jim Crow laws were crumbling, and there was a lot of social unrest as many people were unsure how to live with equality between blacks and whites. President Obama faces social unrest in regard to Muslims, and to others of Middle Eastern descent, as well as in regard to homosexuals. There was domestic terror as African Americans sought equality in the 1960s, and there is domestic terror as Muslims seek to impose their beliefs on Americans in the twenty-first century. There was social unrest as women sought equality in the 1960s, and there is social unrest as homosexuals seek equality today. Dr. King's speech was compelling for contemporary audiences because he addressed the social situation: "The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people ... Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive" (McMichaels & Leonard, 2011, pp. 1907-1908). It is compelling to modern audiences because of the paragraphs that declare Dr. King's dream for a nation of equality, and because of his declarations of freedom for all. References: King, M.L. (1963, August 28). I have a dream. [Estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.]. [MP3 recording]. Retrieved September 22, 2011, from http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. The Immigrant Experience 9/22/2011 "No Name Woman" and "Half and Half" both deal with Chinese women whose lives are affected by American culture. In "No Name woman," Kingston tells the story of an aunt who committed suicide. The story has been passed on to the narrator to keep the narrator from repeating her aunt's mistakes. In "Half and Half," Tan provides a first-person narrative of a Chinese-American girl whose young brother drowns during a family outing. The story shows how the Chinese family struggles to fit in as Americans, and how its Chinese culture makes it impossible to fit in. Kingston writes: "Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fit in solid America" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, pp. 2029-2030). She describes how difficult dating was for her because all Chinese are closely related: "Any man within visiting distance would have been neutralized as a lover -- 'brother,' 'younger brother,' 'older brother' -- one hundred and fifteen relationship titles ... As if it came from an atavism deeper than fear, I used to add 'brother' silently to boys' names ... [it] made them less scary" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.2033). Most of Kingston's story deals with the narrator's aunt. The narrator describes the sort of person her aunt may have been, since the family does not speak of the aunt, and there is only supposition available. The silence results from the aunt's adultery, her illegitimate child, and her murdersuicide by drowning in the family's well. Undergraduate Series 287 Tan writes: "We were all blind with the newness of this experience: a Chinese family trying to act like a typical American family at the beach" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.2120). She describes how the family walked in single file, as contemporary Chinese families would do. She describes her mother's superstitions about how children can be hurt. She writes of the Chinese concept of responsibility that her parents perpetuate in America: "Why did I have to care for them? And she gave me the same answer: 'Yiding.' I must" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, pp.2120-2121). The culture in which the aunt grew up, in Kingston's story, is very different from American culture. The sons of a family remain with the parents, bringing their wives to live with them in "the ideal of five generations living under one roof" (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.2033). The home, the crops, and the livestock of an entire family of this sort are destroyed by the villagers to punish an adulteress, and the family accepts the violence as the normal course of events. In American culture, it is usual for only two generations to share a home, and for married couples to move out of their parents' homes to start new families in their own homes. While an adulteress giving birth to a lover's child might bring shame in contemporary America, it would not result in wholesale destruction, as it did in the story. The narrator of Tan's story is growing up between two cultures. He mother's culture is one of superstition and responsibility. The American culture around her involves studying at UC Berkeley. Later in her life, the narrator is unable to talk to her mother about getting a divorce, because her mother does not believe in giving up hope. Both the narrator's mother and Ted's mother warn against the marriage because of the racial issues. Both authors use flashbacks to tell their stories, anchoring the narrators' points of view in their contemporary, American lives, while describing the Chinese culture of their families. This allows the narrators to comment in retrospect on the traditions and superstitions of the past. References: McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Indifferent Universe 9/26/2011 Robert Frost and Langston Hughes express the indifference of the universe in their poems about death and destruction when Frost focuses on the dual dichotomies of fire and ice and of desire and hate, while Hughes focuses on the dichotomy of wealthy whites and poor blacks. In “Fire and Ice,” Frost expresses that fire or ice would suffice equally to destroy the world, and, in “Question,” Hughes refers to Death as a junk man, who gathers the dead indiscriminately. Destruction comes to individuals, it comes to relationships, and it comes to entire worlds, each in its turn; we will examine how the universe is indifferent to death and destruction in regard to the individual, in regard to relationships, and in regard to the eventual destruction of the world. Fire and ice are elemental opposites. Fire cannot exist when it is surrounded by ice. Neither can ice exit in the midst of fire. Neither fire nor ice contributes anything of value to the other; each substance cancels out and destroys the other substance. Frost brings these two antagonistic elements together to demonstrate that it is not important how destruction is accomplished; the inevitability of death, destruction, and loss, and the indifference of the universe to that inevitability, are the things that matter. Frost begins “Fire and Ice”: “Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1609). Frost’s personal world ends time and time again during a 288 A Journey Through My College Papers life marked by tragedy: "[Frost’s] father ... died early; his sister in a hospital for the insane ... his first born dying in infancy, the second in young manhood by his own hand ... his wife ... left him in death ... his daughter Lesley ... wouldn't take him in" (Fraser, 1998, p. 47). The ice of death is a common theme in Frost’s life, as he loses one loved-one after another. Death is cold and indifferent in its finality. The fire of betrayal is also a common theme, as a young boy undoubtedly feels betrayed by the father who dies too young and by the sister whose mental illness brings shame to her family and as a man is betrayed by the daughter who abandons her father in the time of trouble. Betrayal burns through the heart with indifference for the life that it destroys. Ice and fire destroy Frost’s personal world time after time. The indifference of the universe is embodied in the words, “And would suffice” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.1609). Sufficiency is neither great nor terrible. Ice would suffice for the destruction of the world just as fire would suffice to accomplish the same result. The universe does not care how the world will end; it is not relevant to any supreme plan for the world to end in one way or in another way. It is merely inevitable that the world will be destroyed in some way in the course of time. Just as the indifferent heat of fire destroys ice by melting it into a puddle, so the world will inevitably end. Just as the indifferently suffocating cold of ice destroys fire by freezing away the heat that is needed for the fire to continue to burn, so is the destruction of the world unavoidable. The agent of destruction is irrelevant to the universe; death and destruction will inexorably come to the world eventually. In showing that death and destruction are inevitable, Frost reminds the reader that life will end in death. Death is inevitable. Whether life ends in cold and lonely emptiness, as by ice, or whether life ends in a dramatic conflagration, as by fire, it is inevitable that each life will end. As the universe is indifferent to the destruction of a whole world, even more so is the universe indifferent to the death of any person. Life may end in fire, or life may end in life, but life will end. Frost writes: “From what I’ve tasted of desire … [and] I think I know enough of hate” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1609). It is important to notice that Frost’s dichotomy is between desire and hate, not between the usual opposites of love and hate. Frost equates desire with consuming fire and with raging infernos that are capable of destroying the world. He equates hate with freezing ice that is likewise capable of destroying the world. He does not suggest that love is hate’s opposite, or that love has anything to do with death and destruction. Instead, he sets desire as hate’s opposite. "[A] great deal of Frost's poetry deals with human limitations and with the tragedy of the human condition" (Durham, 1969, p. 61). Desire and hate are human limitations, and they are both involved in the tragedy of the human condition. Desire is a carnal force, not an emotion, and it has the power to blind individuals to the real possibilities in interpersonal relationships. Desire is superficial to relationships, and it is a transient force in life. If desire is devoid of love, or if it is lacking sufficient love, then desire can destroy a relationship. Desire is able to tear a relationship apart, leaving the individuals empty and broken. Conversely, hate is one of the strongest emotions in existence. It has the power to bind people together in relationships of destruction. Hate is a perversion of love, and hate freezes the life out of a heart as surely as ice freezes the last leaves of autumn, sucking the life from the heart and leaving emotional death and destruction in the wake of the hate. Either desire or hate will serve with equal efficacy to destroy a relationship, and the universe is indifferent in regard to which condition ultimately causes the destruction. Contemporary relationships are less relevant than earlier relationships, and they often lack substance as the post-war generation finds itself “devoid of faith and alienated from a civilization they [feel] no longer [makes] any sense” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.1561). Relationships are fleeting, and as the participants find themselves alleviated from society, so do they cling to Undergraduate Series 289 desire and to hate alike to form the bases of their relationships. Contemporary relationships, in the same manner as the world in Frost’s poem, even experience destruction twice in many cases: first, the relationships are destroyed by the flames of desire, which consume the participants in the relationship, but which are unable to leave a foundation of love and trust behind on their own because desire is too shallow to contain love and trust. Second, the relationships are destroyed by the ice of hatred, which freezes the heart, leaving no place for love and forgiveness to abide. The relationship that is destroyed by the ice of hate resembles Hughes’ “suck of oblivion” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.1866). Each is an indifferent void, consuming everyone without regard for whom or what is destroyed in the process. The difference between hate and oblivion is that hate remembers every detail of that which is hated, and it destroys the hater continuously, while oblivion forgets what is destroyed and why and how the destruction was accomplished. It makes no great difference in eternity whether destruction comes with the long memory of hatred or with the complete forgetfulness of oblivion, since everything is always destroyed, and all destruction is equal. "Hughes' poetry ... reflects so much of his own life. It poignantly relates his own personal experiences with racism, poverty, and loneliness ... in Kansas, where he spent most of his childhood" (Scott, 1981, p. 1). Hughes’ “Question” explores the dichotomy of wealthy whites and poor blacks in the persons of “a white multi-millionaire … [and] A Negro cotton-picker” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1866). Despite the fact that Hughes is writing almost sixty years after Reconstruction, there is still a vast difference in American society between blacks and whites. His is a time in which “racial and other sorts of bigotry [are] on the rise, even including the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.1561). Hughes wonders which man Death will find “Worth more pennies of eternity” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.1866). The question is multifaceted, as it considers race, it considers economic status, and it considers the lifestyle of each man. Is the white man more valuable than is the black man when Death collects their bodies? The universe is indifferent to the color of a person’s skin, of a person’s hair, or of a person’s eyes, as each body rots away to dust just as well as each other body. Is the rich man more valuable to eternity than is the poor man? The universe is indifferent to economic wealth, as there is no use for money or material goods in eternity. Is the multimillionaire – who may or may not have worked hard at manual labor in his life, or who may or may not have lived off the toil of others – more valuable than the man who picked cotton in the fields all of his life? The universe is indifferent to the deeds and occupations of men, whose lives are not long enough to register as specks on the timeline of eternity. Death does not care about the differences among the dead, nor even does Death notice the differences, because they are all equal in death. The universe is indifferent to kings and to peasants, to tyrants and to slaves, and to the color of any person’s skin. Langston Hughes’ “Question” and Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice” both describe the indifference of the universe toward mankind and toward the world. Frost expresses that either fire or ice would suffice equally to destroy the world, and Hughes refers to Death as a junk man who indiscriminately gathers the dead. The three dichotomies – of fire and ice, of desire and hate, and of wealthy whites and poor blacks – all illustrate the vast indifference of everything in the face of the inevitability of death and destruction. Hughes writes: “When the old junk man Death/ Comes to gather up our bodies/ And toss them into the suck of oblivion” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1866). Death is portrayed as a junk man, or as a rubbish collector. Death is not collecting anything of value; he is only collecting the bodies of the dead, which are destined to decompose, and which are of no further use to anyone. He does not identify the bodies as he gathers them up. He does not extol the virtues and the accomplishments of their lives. He does not denounce their failings, or the evils that they have done. He does not even place them in his cart with any degree of care. Death is indifferent to 290 A Journey Through My College Papers everything that is valued in life. Death comes to each of us in turn as casually as the trash collector picks up the litter that is scattered carelessly along the roadside. Death is even more indifferent to the bodies that he collects than is the trash collector to the detritus that he gathers, who may care enough about some trinket to pocket it and save it along the way; Death throws each of the dead “into the suck of oblivion” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1866), saving none from destruction. Frost writes: “I hold with those who favor fire … for destruction ice/ Is also great/ And would suffice” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p. 1609). Just as the universe in Hughes’ poem is indifferent to who is destroyed, so the universe in Frost’s poem is indifferent to the manner of destruction. In death and destruction, everyone and everything is equal. Death is the end that cannot be avoided. Destruction is the destiny that is always certain. Whether it is a single life that is destroyed in death, or whether it is an entire world that is destroyed by a cataclysm, the universe is too big and too distant to so much as notice the loss, much less to care that the world is gone. The junk man clears away the debris, and all that was destroyed by whatever means is equally forgotten in oblivion. The universe lacks the passion to care whether the world is destroyed by fire or by ice. It lacks the passion to care whether death comes to a white man or to a black man. “The bittersweet tone and view of life reflected in Hughes’s perspective … is consistently mirrored in his poems” (DiYanni, 2008, pp. 701-702). “What really disturbs Frost is the absence of intense feelings” (Durham, 1969, p. 71). Both Frost and Hughes write about the lack of feeling in the universe. Hughes’ treatment of the subject reflects the bitterness of an African American in PostReconstruction America. He is free, but his people continue to live and work in much the same way as did their forbearers, under the oppression of white society. He sees the universe as being indifferent to the history of the African American, to his plight, and to his future fate. Frost’s treatment of the subject reflects the pain of a life marked by loss after loss. He has lost his father, his sister, his children, and his wife. He sees the universe as indifferent to his personal suffering. He sees that his life is irrelevant in a world that is vastly insignificant to the universe. In “Fire and Ice” and in “Question,” Robert Frost and Langston Hughes express the indifference of the universe toward human suffering, toward death, and toward destruction by exploring the dichotomies of fire and ice, of desire and hate, and of wealthy whites and poor blacks. Frost expresses the passionless, equal sufficiency of fire and of ice for the destruction of the world, while Hughes expresses the equality that unites all men in death, through his portrayal of Death as an indiscriminate junk man. Sufficiency is an unemotional, passionless, indifferent state, which expresses no preference for one mode of destruction over another mode of destruction; any agent of destruction will serve equally well to accomplish destruction. No individual life is spared the destruction of death and loss, if only that individual’s own final demise. No relationship is spared the destructive forces of desire and of hate, whether within the relationship, or battering the relationship from the outside. Even the apparently timeless, permanent world on which we reside has not been spared the destruction of fire from volcanoes, from crashing meteors, and from war; and of ice from creeping glaciers. It will not be spared its final destruction in the fullness of time, whether by fire from the death of the sun, or from the final destruction in human technology and warfare; or by ice as the earth’s internal fires burn out and the world succumbs to the endless cold of space. Destruction will come, and the universe will neither notice nor care that our world is gone. Individual bodies, dead at the end of our short, irrelevant lives, will be gathered indiscriminately by the indifference of Death, making us all equal in the end, regardless of who we were in life. Frost and Hughes express great bitterness and desolation in their poems, which I do not share. I do not believe that the universe is indifferent to the fate of the humblest creature, much less that the universe is indifferent to the destruction of a world. I do believe that they are both Undergraduate Series 291 right in believing that death is inevitable, and that it does not discriminate between the white man and the black man, between the rich man and the poor man, between man and woman, or in any other way; death is the great equalizer, regardless of how death comes, or to whom. Will the “white multi-millionaire … [or the] Negro cotton-picker” (McMichael & Leonard, 2011, p.1866) have more value in eternity? They will be equal, as they should have been equal in life. References DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Durham, J.M. (1969). Robert Frost: A bleak, darkly realistic poet. Revista de Letras, 12, 59-89. Retrieved September 4, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27666084 Fraser, R. (1998). Frost in the waste land. The Sewanee Review, 106(1), 46-67. Retrieved September 12, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27548472 McMichael, G. & Leonard, J. S. (2011). Concise anthology of American literature. (Eds.). New York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc. Scott, M. (1981). Langston Hughes of Kansas. The Journal of Negro History, 66(1), 1-9. Retrieved September 12, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2716871 ENG 345: British Literature I Beowulf: Reading for Theme 9/29/2011 An example of the theme of salvation through glorious sacrifice is found in lines 671 through 687 of Beowulf. Beowulf is preparing for his battle with Grendel. Since Grendel does not use weapons in his attacks on Heorot, Beowulf will not use weapons in his contest with Grendel. Beowulf says, "When it comes to fighting, I count myself/ as dangerous any day as Grendel ... He has no idea of the arts of war,/ of shield or sword-play ... No weapons, therefore,/ for either this night" (Beowulf, n.d., lines 677-684, cited in Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 47-48). By choosing to meet Grendel on equal terms, Beowulf does three things. First, Beowulf uses this gesture to improve his own image and prestige. By fighting the monster without a weapon, Beowulf displays his strength and endurance. In Beowulf's time, a leader attracts followers, in part, by his displays of strength and power. Second, Beowulf honors Grendel as a worthy opponent by fighting Grendel on equal ground. Beowulf garners more personal glory by fighting a worthy opponent than he would gain by fighting an inferior opponent, or by fighting an unarmed opponent with armor and weapons. Third, Beowulf's actions reflect the theme of salvation through glorious sacrifice. Salvation comes when Beowulf saves Heorot and the Danes from Grendel's depredations. The glorious sacrifice is because Beowulf puts his life at risk by facing Grendel without shield or sword. Beowulf offers himself as a sacrifice if he is not successful in subduing Grendel, but Beowulf redeems the honor of the Danes by killing Grendel, and so adds glory to himself and to his deed. In J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, Frodo Baggins undertakes a quest to return the One Ring to the fires in which it was forged in order to free his world from evil. Frodo has to fight the seductive evil of the One Ring as he transports it across Middle Earth. The long journey that Frodo and his companions undertake to travel from the Shire to Mordor to free Middle Earth from the evil ravages of Sauron resembles the long journey that Beowulf and the Geats undertake to travel from Geatland to Denmark to free Heorot from the evil ravages of Grendel. Frodo and Beowulf each begin his quest with a group of companions; Frodo's band totals nine members, 292 A Journey Through My College Papers while Beowulf's band totals fifteen members. Although each hero begins with companions, each hero faces his final battle with his final opponent alone. Frodo leaves his remaining companion, Sam, and "runs to the top of Mount Doom on his own" (The lord of the rings, 2011, para. 34). Similarly, Beowulf is alone to fight Grendel: "One man, however, was in fighting mood,/ awake and on edge, spoiling for action" (Beowulf, n.d., lines 708-709, cited in Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 48). A great difference, however, is that Frodo does not defeat Sauron on his own at the end; Gollum bites off Frodo's finger, which bears the One Ring, then falls to his death in the fires of Mount Doom, which also destroy the One Ring. Beowulf does defeat Grendel on his own; the swords of those who try to help Beowulf are useless against Grendel, but Beowulf rips off Grendel's arm and leaves Grendel to run off to die of the fatal injury. It is interesting to me to note that Beowulf could not have prevailed against Grendel if Beowulf had chosen to use his shield and sword against the unarmed monster because swords are ineffective against the monster. Only by stripping himself of the symbols of his power and authority, including his shield and his sword, and meeting Grendel as a worthy equal is Beowulf able to defeat him. To fight an unarmed opponent with a sword would be dishonorable, but Beowulf fights and wins through his honorable choice. An additional echo of Beowulf in Lord of the Rings is the entire concept of rings. The Danes and other Germanic kings of Beowulf's time give rings to the leaders among their followers as symbols of loyalty between the kings and the thanes, as well as giving rings as a distribution of treasure. In Lord of the Rings, rings of power have been distributed to the leaders of the races in the distant past. Rings as symbols of loyalty and relationship continue into the present, with class rings showing loyalty to schools, Super Bowl rings honoring successful football players, Episcopal rings worn by the prelates of several Christian denominations to show their loyalty to the church, and wedding rings exchanged between spouses as symbols of their fidelity and eternal union. This is a lasting and universal connection between the tale and society. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.1). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. The lord of the rings: Plot overview. (2011). Retrieved September 29, 2011, from http://www.sparknotes.com/film/lordoftherings/summary.html Christian Content in Beowulf 10/3/2011 The central conflict of good versus evil in Beowulf is imbued with the religious convictions of the Middle Ages not in the original, oral tradition, but in the written interpretation of the poem by the Christian writer who first recorded it. Beowulf predates the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England to Christianity, and “[i]t is admitted by all critics that the Beowulf is essentially a heathen poem” (Blackburn, 1897, p. 205). Because Beowulf is transcribed from an oral tradition to a written manuscript during the European Middle Ages, it is necessary for the transcriber to adapt the poem to be acceptable to a world that is dominated by the Christian Church. The power of the Church during this period is nearly absolute, and it is unacceptable for heathen or pagan heroes to be triumphant over the forces of evil. In order to honor God and the Church, the transcriber “ignor[es] all that was pagan in the story, [and] present[s] his personages as if they had been Christian” (Stevick, 1963, p. 80). By adapting the heathen poem to contain vague allusions to Christianity, the transcriber makes the epic tale palatable to his Christian audience. Undergraduate Series 293 When Beowulf is assumed to be a Christian tale, strong allegories may be found in the characters of Beowulf and Grendel. Beowulf, the Geatish warrior, is an allegory for Jesus Christ. Just as Jesus came to the Israelites to save them from eternal destruction by the devil through sin and evil, so Beowulf comes to the Danes “to perform to the uttermost/ what your people wanted or perish in the attempt” (ll. 634-635) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 47). Although Jesus is generally recognized as being humble, while Beowulf is represented in the poem as being boastful, there are clear similarities between the two heroes. Jesus and Beowulf each fight an evil that is too great to be defeated by the people. Each hero is prepared to sacrifice his life in order to gain salvation for the people to whom God has sent him. Beowulf represents Christ in the epic poem even though Beowulf contains no “reference to Christ, to the cross, [or] to any doctrine of the church” (Blackburn, 1897, p. 216). Grendel stands as an allegory for evil as a whole, not for Satan as an individual. “[T]he poem turns on Beowulf’s three great fights against preternatural evil, which inhabits the dangerous and demonic space surrounding human society” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 31). Grendel is one of the three manifestations of this evil, and he is the first manifestation which Beowulf must face. Grendel attacks the center of the Danes’ social order in order to wreak havoc on the people, rather than randomly attacking the individual homes in the community. His evil seeks to destroy Danish society from the top down, leaving the people without the security of leadership or infrastructure to protect them from the nameless evils that surround them. As such, Grendel is an allegory for the destruction of ordered, civilized society. While good and evil are common themes in pre-Christian folklore and hero tales, the attribution of these themes to a Christian basis for Beowulf comes from the Christianization of Anglo-Saxon society. The heathen hero tale is Christianized by the poet who transcribes the oral tradition “because the poet was attempting to produce a major, written poem about Beowulf that avoided inconsistency in Christianized and non-Christianized matter with which he was working” (Stevick, 1963, p. 84). The fact that the poet-transcriber finds it necessary to Christianize the Germanic hero tale tells us something about the society in which the poem originates, and something about the society in which the Christian writer lives. The original poem tells us that its society values great acts of courage and great feats of strength. It is a society in which extolling one’s own accomplishments is regarded as a worthy pastime, and in which it is appropriate to accrue to oneself as much honor and prestige as possible. The society of the transcriber, on the other hand, is ruled by the Church. All honor and prestige must be given to God, and to those whom God favors. Success in battle is no longer achieved through one’s own strength and skill, but by the will of God. One does not boast of one’s daring, courage, or prowess, but of one’s faith that God will deliver victory over evil to those who are righteous. Beowulf’s “text belongs to Christianized Anglo-Saxon society and the oral materials existed prior to conversion of the kingdom of Britain” (Stevick, 1963, p. 81). While the oral tradition may continue in its heathen form for some time, the written text is adapted to include many references to God and the Biblical themes. Christ is not mentioned, but frequent appeals to God by the characters and attributions to God of the positive aspects of the story, makes Beowulf acceptable to the Christian society of medieval Britain. The central conflict of good and evil has been converted in Beowulf from the heathen concepts of Germanic hero tales to the Christian concept of God’s triumph over evil. This parallels, and is coextensive with, the conversion of Anglo-Saxon Britain to the new faith of Christianity. “Grendel is Evil and Beowulf is Righteousness” (Stevick, 1963, p. 86) because the Church does not tolerate a monster that is not associated with Satan; nor does it tolerate a heathen hero who triumphs over evil without the support of God. Beowulf is a victim of the revisionist history that is often evident when Christianity overtakes an existing culture and appropriates the beliefs and symbols of the old culture to suit the new, Christian culture. 294 A Journey Through My College Papers References Blackburn, F.A. (1897). The Christian coloring in the Beowulf. PMLA, 12(2), 205-225. Retrieved September 28, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/456133 Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.1). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Stevick, R.D. (1963, November). Christian elements and the genesis of “Beowulf”. Modern Philology, 61(2), 79-89. Retrieved September 28, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/435497 Chaucer: Reading for Imagery 10/6/2011 "An housbonde wol I have, I wol nat lette,/ Which shal be bothe my dettour and my thral,/ And have his tribulacion withal/ Upon his flessh whil that I am his wif./ I have the power during al my life/ Upon his propre body, and nat he" (ll. 160-165) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 260). In this passage, Alice says she will not give up on getting a husband. Her husband will be her debtor and her slave, and she will have power over his body while they are married. This gives us an insight into the characterization of Alice. She does not intend to submit meekly to the domination of a husband, as would be the normal situation for a woman in her time and culture; instead, Alice intends to control her husband. Alice is a strong individual, who has learned through experience what she wants from life and from marriage. The passage also provides insight into the theme of "The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale." The theme is feminism, in contrast with the misogynism that is prevalent in England in Chaucer's time. Alice is profeminism. In the prologue, she relates to her fellow travelers how she gains dominion over each of her five husbands. Her fifth husband is misogynistic, but she bends even him to her will after he strikes her and renders her deaf in one ear. In the tale, Alice has the old wife lecture the young husband on the relationship between husbands and wives. He does not want to be intimate with his wife because she is old, ugly, and from a low social class, but she brings him around to her way of thinking by means of a long speech. "Thou saidest this, that I was lik a cat:/ For whoso wolde senge a cattes skin,/ Thanne wolde the cat wel dwellen in his in;/ And if the cattes skin be slik and gay, She wol not dwelle in house half a day,/ But forth she wol, er any day be dawed,/ To shewe her skin and goon acaterwawed" (ll. 354-360) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 264). Alice explains how her husband compares her to a cat. She says that if a cat's owner makes it ugly, then it will stay at home to avoid being seen; but that a cat that is sleek and happy will roam away from home to show off its beauty and to celebrate. Likewise, if Alice's husband keeps her in unstylish, ugly clothes, then she will stay at home and be faithful to him; but if Alice is able to choose her own clothes, and to be beautiful, then she will go out into society and her husband will not trust her fidelity. This speaks to the characterization of Alice's fifth husband, who believes that women should be dominated by their husbands. It is interesting that he chooses to compare her to a cat, since cats are generally seen to be sexually promiscuous and to be mean-spirited and secretive, as in the adjective "catty" to describe a woman who verbally attacks a rival. The choice of a cat suggests that he believes that Alice will not just go out into society, but that she will cuckold him with other men. The passage also speaks to the theme of feminism versus misogyny, as it presents a misogynistic view of Alice. Undergraduate Series 295 References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.1). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Chaucer: Reading for Lexicon 10/6/2011 "Up sterte the Pardoner and that anoon:/ 'Now dame,' quod he" (ll. 169-170) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 260). "I knowe you for a trewe wif, dame Alis" (l. 366) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 264). These two quotes from "The Wife of Bath's Prologue" identify Alice as "the wife or daughter of a lord" (Dame, 2011, para. 1.b). This shows that Alice is, at the lowest, a member of the middle class, and that she may be a member of the upper class. The Pardoner may not be expected to know her exact status, but he addresses her in this respectful manner because he recognizes status in her manner and appearance. "My fifthe housband -- God his soule blesse! --/ Which that I took for love and no richesse" (ll. 531-532) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 268). This statement by Alice suggests that her fifth husband is of a lower socio-economic class than her own. He is represented in the prologue as a clerk who left school to marry, suggesting that he is not a rich man. The statement also reinforces the idea that Alice belongs to an upper class of society. She can afford to marry for love in a time when marriage is usually about dynastic and economic concerns. "And wered upon my gaye scarlet gites" (l. 565) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 269). This line further illustrates Dame Alice's position in the middle or upper class. Red clothing is generally restricted to the upper class by the sumptuary laws of the period. "Red stood for power, passion, wealth, and blood" (Hartman, 2001, para. 20), and it is usually associated with men. The fact that Alice wears scarlet gowns underscores the anti-misogynistic, feministic theme of the story, because she goes against social customs of her culture in her sartorial choices. "And so bifel it that this King Arthour/ Hadde in his hous a lusty bacheler" (ll. 888-889) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 276). Since only noble-born men were able to be knights in this period, this passage identifies the knight as a member of the upper class. In addition, the knight is residing in the house of a king, further identifying his high social class. "Save on the greene he sawgh sitting a wif --/ A fouler wight ther may no man devide./ Again the knight this olde wife gan rise" (ll. 1004-1006) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 278). In this passage, a foul, lower-class person rises from the ground when the knight approaches her. That she is sitting on the ground, unattended by any companion or servant, is an indication that she is of the lower class. The description of her as foul reinforces this image. If she was a woman of the upper class, she would be likely to remain seated, and to allow the knight to salute her first; by rising to show respect to the knight, she demonstrates that she is of a significantly lower class than is he. "For though that I be foul and old and poore" (l. 1069) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 280). The old wife speaks plainly and explicitly identifies her status in the lower class in this line. "For prively he wedded hire on morwe" (l. 1086) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 280). The knight marries the old woman secretly in the morning. "Prively" is closer to "privily," or in secret, than it is to "privately," or not in public. Marrying her in secret suggests that the knight is ashamed to be marrying the foul, old, lower-class woman. His shame at having to keep his promise shows that he lacks the nobility of spirit that is usually attributed to the upper class, and especially to knights. "It wol nat been amended nevermo./ Thou art so lothly and so old also. And thereto comen of so lowe a kinde,/ That litel wonder is though I walwe and winde./ So wolde God myn 296 A Journey Through My College Papers herte wolde breste" (ll. 1105-1109) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 278). This speech by the knight in his marriage bed further illustrates that he lacks nobility of spirit. He insults his wife, and he bemoans the necessity of keeping his promise to her. He whines and complains of his plight in the same way that women are thought to whine and complain in the period. While he may be of the nobility, or at least of the gentry, his behavior is neither noble nor genteel. "Now ther ye saye that I am foul and old:/ Thanne drede you nought to been cokewold,/ For filthe and elde, also mote I thee,/ Been grete wardeins upon chastitee,/ But natheless, sin I knowe your delit,/ I shall fulfille youre worldly appetit" (ll. 1219-1224) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 283). The old wife is kind and gracious to her husband, despite his churlish behavior toward her. She pledges to keep her side of the deal, and to give him what society views as his by right. She exhibits nobility of spirit, despite her low origins. References: Dame. (2011). Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved October 6, 2011, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dame Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.1). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Hartman, R. (2001). Sometimes a codpiece is just a codpiece: The meanings of medieval clothes. Retrieved October 6, 2011, from http://www.strangehorizons.com/2001/20011022/medieval_clothing.shtlm Satire in “The Wife of Bath” 10/10/2011 Literature is often defined by the values that are contemporary to its readers, rather than by the values that are contemporary to its writers. It is easy to fall into this trap when reading Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale.” Alison’s stories appear to be early feminist literature, but it is actually a satirical treatment of women’s role in medieval society. Although modern readers see the work as feminist literature that defends the role of women in society, the piece is a satire that reflects the antifeminist values of its time. An examination of Alison’s account in the prologue of her marriages, and of the romantic fairy story in her tale, reveals the work’s satire. Alison describes her marriages as being opposite to the values of her time. In the Middle Ages, a wife is submissive to her husband. He has full control over her body and her actions. Alison’s description of the next marriage that she hopes to have is a satire of the conventional roles of wives and husbands: “An housbonde wol I have, I wol nat lette,/ Which shal be bothe my detour and my thral,/ And have his tribulacion withal/ Upon his flesh whil that I am his wif./ I have the power during al my lif/ Upon his proper body, and nat he” (ll. 160-165) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 260). Modern readers see this passage as evidence that Alison is a medieval feminist who controls her husbands. Instead, this is an example of Chaucer’s use of satire to underline the contemporary view that a proper wife serves her husband, and does not expect him to be her servant. In a contemporary setting, Alison is an unnatural woman. Susan Crane (1987) writes: “[A]ntifeminist satire is nonnarrative, organized instead by an authoritative voice that rigidifies and fragments femaleness into a set of discrete exempla and negative topoi on nagging, mercenary dependence, overbearing sexuality, and so on” (p. 21). This applies to Alison’s statement that her next husband will be her debtor and her slave, as well as to her claim that she will control his body. Alison’s mercenary dependence on her husband is illustrated by his role as her debtor. He owes her a living and support. While a medieval husband does support his wife, she is not able to Undergraduate Series 297 make claims or demands of him. Alison’s overbearing sexuality is clear in her boast that she controls her husband’s body. In medieval society, a man has the right to require sexual satisfaction from his wife whenever he chooses to do so, and to withhold sexual satisfaction from her at his whim. A wife does not have the right to demand sexual attentions or to withhold sex from her husband. The satire exists in Alison’s assertions that her marriage is opposite to everything that her contemporaries expect in marriage. In “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” Chaucer uses romantic literature to achieve his satire of the anti-feminine values of his time. Kenneth J. Oberembt (1976) writes: “The thrust of the Wife’s Prologue and Tale is only to criticize and to correct Authority by means of Experience, not to depose it” (p. 294). The romantic story of the knight and the poor, old wife provides this connection in its commentary on the social order. Chaucer provides this speech that the old wife makes to the knight in their marriage bed: For God it woot, men may wel often finde/ A lords sone do shame and vilainye;/ And he that wol hans pris of his gentrye,/ For he was boren of a gentil hous,/ And hadde his elders noble and virtuous,/ And nil himselven do no gentil deedes,/ Ne folwen his gentil auncestre that deed is/ He nis nat gentil, be he duc or erl –/ For vilaines sinful deedes maken a cherl.” (ll. 1156-1164) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 281) In this passage, Chaucer accomplishes three things: first, he satirizes the relationship between men and women; second, he satirizes the role of women in society; and third, he makes a strong social commentary on the noble virtues of the nobility. The relationship between medieval men and women is weighted in favor of the man, especially in marriage. A wife does not lecture her husband on moral issues. A husband has authority over his wife, and he instructs her in proper behavior. In the wife’s lecture to her husband, Chaucer overturns the accepted relationship. The wife lectures in a learned manner, moralizing to her husband. Since the husband does not interrupt the lecture, the reader finds that the husband is submitting to his wife. Many modern readers see this as evidence that the tale is a feminist work that supports a woman’s authority. Reading the passage in a contemporary context shows that it is a satire that reinforces the propriety of a husband’s authority over his wife. The old wife’s speech is a lecture on morality that resembles speeches made by clerics in the medieval period. According to the accepted social order, women are not well educated, and they do not give morality lectures. Clerics are generally the only educated members of society. While a woman may enter holy orders as a nun, only a man is allowed to be a cleric. A secular woman, such as the old wife, does not presume to lecture a man. By presenting a woman who lectures like a cleric, Chaucer underscores the contemporary view that such a woman is unnatural, and he supports social norms against this behavior. The wife chastises her husband’s behavior when she tells him that being born to a noble house does not guarantee that a lord’s son will exhibit noble behavior. Her husband promises that he will grant her one desire if she helps him, but he tries to get out of his promise when she desires to marry him. He behaves churlishly, and she lectures him that ignoble deeds will turn a lord’s son into a churl. She tells him that nobility does not come from noble ancestors; it comes from noble deeds and behavior. This is a major social commentary in a period when social status depends almost exclusively on a person’s ancestry. That this point is made by a woman, who is at the bottom of the social order, is another example of Chaucer’s satirical treatment of women in contemporary society. In a discussion of medieval women that centers on “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale,” S.H. Rigby (2000) writes: “What was originally meant as a satirical defence of women can come to seem a convincing refutation of medieval misogyny” (p. 157). While modern readers infer this refutation, Chaucer’s story is a satire. He ends Alison’s romantic tale with the wife’s prayer: “And Jesu Crist us sende/ Housbondes meeke, yonge, and fresshe abedde –/ And grace 298 A Journey Through My College Papers t’overbide hem that we wedde,/ And eek I praye Jesu shorte hir lives/ That nought wol be governed by hir wives” (ll. 1264-1268) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 283-284). She asks for meek, young husbands who will be fresh in bed, and she asks to outlive her husbands. It is common for older medieval men to marry young women and girls. Despite being much older than their wives, many men outlive young wives who die as a result of childbirth. The knight’s wife prays for the opposite of what is usual in contemporary society. This is the satirical defense of women that highlights the antifeminism of Chaucer’s period. The wife desires a social role in opposition to the actual role of women; she desires power in her marriage, while women in her period are forced by society to relinquish all power to their husbands. “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale” satirizes the role of the wife in medieval society. In the prologue, Alison describes how she gains dominion over her husbands; in the tale, the husband and wife reverse the traditional roles in the wife’s morality lecture. Modern readers find Alison to be a feminist, but the reader sees the original satirical nature of the story when the reader considers the contemporary context of the work. References Crane, S. (1987, January). Alison’s incapacity and poetic instability in the wife of Bath’s tale. PMLA, 102(1), 20-28. Retrieved October 4, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/462489 Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.1). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Oberembt, K.J. (1976). Chaucer’s anti-misogynist wife of Bath. The Chaucerian Review, 10(4), 287-302. Retrieved October 4, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25093359 Rigby, S.H. (2000). The wife of Bath, Christine de Pizan, and the medieval case for women. The Chaucerian Review, 35(2), 133-165. Retrieved October 4, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25096124 The Bible: Reading for Context 10/13/2011 In the mid-sixteenth century, one of the controversies surrounding the interpretation of the Bible in England is the debate over whether salvation and damnation are predetermined by God, or whether they are determined by the acts and the works of the individual. The Catholic view is that salvation must be earned by prayer and by good works, while the Protestant view is that salvation is a gift of faith. A third view that is supported by John Calvin is that salvation is predetermined by God, and that it is not dependent on the faith, works, or character of the individual. Calvin (1561) writes: "God by eternal and unchangeable counsel hath once appointed whom in time to come he would take to salvation, and on the other side whom he would condemn to destruction" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 627). In Calvin's view, a person is not able to do anything to affect his or her fate. Regular attendance at church does not ensure salvation. Doing good works to help the less fortunate is equally ineffective. There is no way for anyone to know who is or who is not saved. This causes great controversy for those who believe that Jesus Christ died to give salvation to all who believe in Him. The doctrine of predestination is equally troublesome for those who believe that salvation is given to those who work for it, and that salvation is denied to those who are selfish or who do no good works. In a world in which the institutional Church has held power over the people, and has grown rich from the tithes and gifts of the people because the people believe that they can earn their way to Heaven by donating to the Church to support the poor, predestination is a devastating concept. People who do not believe Undergraduate Series 299 that prayer or good works will save them have little incentive to listen to the teachings of the Church or to follow the rules of the Church in secular life. As a result, the Church begins to lose power and authority in England. I see this controversy all around me in my life today, so I know that it continues. I have friends, both here in Michigan and in the several other states where I have lived, who believe that they do not need to attend any sort of worship activities or do any sort of community service because it does not matter in the end. These people, including my first two husbands, believe that they will go to Heaven or to Hell as God wills it, and that they are powerless to change His will. On the other hand, I have friends who are passionate in their belief that good works will guarantee them places in Heaven, but only if they are constantly busy with doing good works. They work in the soup kitchens, the counseling programs, and many other outreach projects that do a great deal of good for people who are in need. I also know many people who believe that salvation is secured through the act of baptism, or through a public confession of faith in Jesus Christ. I will not say what I believe, but there are good people in each of these groups. There are also those who live immoral personal lives while outwardly doing good works or professing faith in Christ, and there are deeply moral, faithful people who neither do good works nor publicly witness their faith. Sadly, the controversy continues to separate people, and the fracture the Church into sects that do not agree on specific points of doctrine. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.1). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Paradise Lost: Reading for Character and Imagery 10/13/2011 Satan is the main character in the assigned portion of Paradise Lost. Milton describes Satan's physical appearance: "With head uplift above the wave, and eyes/ That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides/ Prone on the flood, extended long and large/ Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge/ As whom the fables name of monstrous size" (ll. 193-197) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1836). The most notable part of this description is Satan's great size. He is not of any human stature; he is as large as the largest creatures in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern myths. Milton names many of these monsters to strengthen the visual imagery for readers who are familiar with classical mythology. Milton uses imagery to show how Satan thinks. Satan is depicted as evil and proud as he repeatedly takes pleasure in being the lord of evil. "[R]ound he throws his baleful eyes/ That witnessed huge affliction and dismay/ Mixed with obdúrate pride and steadfast hate" (ll. 56-58) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1833). Satan views suffering with pride in his eye. This echoes the blazing eyes in his physical description, and shows that his evil is expressed in his eyes. Typically, a person can show almost any demeanor in his or her face, but true personality and emotions show in the light and movement of the eyes. That Milton describes Satan's eye as baleful reinforces the impression that Satan is a malignant character. In his speech to Beelzebub, Satan says, "But ever to do ill our sole delight,/ ... If then his providence/ Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,/ Our labor must be to pervert that end,/ And out of good still to find means of evil" (ll. 160-165) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1836). Satan chooses to make the most of his new situation; he does not just accept the role of evil-doer, he chooses to embrace his role, and to delight in it. Not only does he choose to do evil, he chooses to 300 A Journey Through My College Papers pervert goodness into evil. This further reinforces Satan's depiction as a being of evil. He is not forced to take pleasure in evil, but his evil nature causes him to choose pleasure. Perhaps the most famous line from Paradise Lost also illustrates Satan's evil character: "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n" (l. 263) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1838). Satan served in Heaven before he was cast out, and he prefers to rule evil than to serve good. The visual image in this line is the juxtaposition of an infernal king in the dreary realm that Milton describes in the story, against a servant in the hall of a heavenly king in the glorious realm to which Milton alludes in the story. The recurring motifs that illustrate Satan's pleasure with doing evil, and with witnessing suffering, show his character as sadistic and cruel. I could have a degree of sympathy for him in his exile if he did not take pleasure in causing suffering. Until he chooses to delight in evil, he is a victim of his circumstances, but when he uses free will to make that choice, he takes control of his destiny, and I can no longer pity him. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.1). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Renaissance Love Poetry: Reading for Lyricism 10/20/2011 In "Sonnet 64," Edmund Spenser uses a blazon of flowers to describe the features of the lady whom he kisses: Her lips did smell lyke unto Gillyflowers, Her ruddy cheeks lyke unto Roses red; Her snowy browes lyke budded Bellamours, Her lovely eyes like Pincks but newly spred, Her goodly bosome lyke a Strawberry bed, Her neck lyke to a bounch of Cullambynes; Her brest lyke lillyes, ere theyr leaves be shed, Her nipples lyke yong blossomd Jessemynes. (ll. 5-12) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 905). He describes her in whites and reds, even describing her eyes with this color scheme. I am interested in Spenser's decision to capitalize all of the flowers except the lilies; capitalization suggests personification, and the one flower that usually represents Christ is not personified. Beauty is the common theme among the four poems in this week's assignment. Philip Sidney's "Sonnet 52" deals with Stella's "beauty and her grace" (l. 9) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 984). Love claims Stella's beauty, but Virtue disdains beauty and claims Stella's inner self. Her outer beauty is not the feature that identifies Stella; virtue is the more important feature. Spenser's "Sonnet 64" describes a lady's beauty as a flower garden. The lady's odor, or personal essence, is more attractive than the beauty of the flowers, as Spenser writes in lines 13-14: "Such fragrant flowres doe give most odorous smell,/ But her sweet odour did them all excell" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 905). William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 16" describes how love endures even though beauty yields to Time. He writes: "Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks/ Within his bending sickle's compass come" (ll. 9-10) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1073). The appearance of the lips and cheeks changes with the passage of time, but these changes do not influence love. Thomas Campion's "There is a garden in her face" describes the beauty of a lady's face, using a blazon of flowers and fruit to illustrate beauty. He writes: "Her eyes like angels watch them still;/ Her brows like bended bows do stand,/ Threatening with piercing frowns to kill/ All that attempt Undergraduate Series 301 with eye or hand/ Those sacred cherries to come nigh" (ll. 13-17) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 1230-1231). These lines tell that a beautiful woman will not be used by those who are attracted to her beauty; she will guard the cherries that are her lips from being kissed without her permission. The theme of beauty indicates that Elizabethan women are judged according to their beauty. However, virtue and love go beyond beauty and endure the passage of time. This suggests that Elizabethans rate virtue and love higher than beauty. According to Reginald Waddy (1912), "Love is the first subject of the Elizabethan lyric" (p. 23). The ascendance of love over beauty in this week's readings is in line with Waddy's identified theme. Waddy (1912) identifies "monosyllables or dissyllables" (p. 25) as the preferred diction for Elizabethan lyric poetry. The assigned poems tend to follow this trend, with only a few words that have more than two syllables in any of the poems. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.1). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Waddy, R. (1911-1912). Elizabethan lyrics and love-songs. Proceedings of the Musical Association, 38, pp. 21-39. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/ Early 17th Century Elegy, Epigraph , and Friendship 10/20/2011 I find it difficult to clearly identify a theme of honor common to the four poems in the assignment. Mary Wroth's "Sonnet 103" has a clear theme of honor. She writes: "And thus leave off, what's past shows you can love,/ Now let your constancy your honor prove" (ll. 13-14) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1461). For Wroth, honor exists in being constant in one's love for another. It is not enough simply to love; love must be secure from threats of being ended by restless fancies. Honorable love is faithful and constant. Honor is harder to find in Alexander Pope's "Impromptu to Lady Winchilsea." Pope writes: "I knew Ardelia could not quote the best,/ Who, like her mistress on Britannia's throne,/ Fights and subdues in quarrels not her own" (ll. 6-8) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2596). By comparing Ardelia to Queen Anne, Pope is trying to honor Ardelia. He calls her the greatest female wit, who cannot quote the best because she is the best. When Pope does this, he does not succeed in honoring Ardelia; Pope dishonors Ardelia because the tone of the poem is condescending to her, and it is demeaning to female writers. In the first two lines of "The Answer (To Pope's 'Impromptu')," Anne Finch exhibits honorable behavior: "Disarmed with so genteel an air,/ The contest I give o'er" (ll. 1-2) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2596). In giving over the contest, Finch yields the debate about female writers rather than fighting with Pope on the subject. She is courteous, and she protects her honor by taking the higher moral position in her debate with Pope. At the end of the poem, Finch reminds Pope to behave honorably toward female writers, and to learn from her poem. Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is difficult to follow. The excerpt in the assignment begins: "The struggleing Pangs of conscious Truth to hide,/ To quench the Blushes of ingenuous Shame" (ll. 1-2) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. A9). Gray's shame is his devotion to luxury and to pride. If he does not feel shame, then his honor is tarnished; he does feel honest shame, so his honor is redeemed. The epitaph in the final three stanzas of the poem confirms his honor: "Large was his Bounty & his Heart sincere;/ Heaven did a Recompence as largely send./ He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a Tear./ He gain'd from Heav'n, 'twas all he wish'd, a Friend" (ll. 77-80) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. A10-A11). He is sincere and generous, and he is 302 A Journey Through My College Papers sorrowful when he encounters misery. He does not seek fame or wealth; he seeks only friendship. He has honor in life. The meaning of honor changes from one poem to another. Wroth and Gray use the noun form of honor. It is a thing to be valued, and it is part of a person. Honor includes honesty, humility, kindness, generosity, and compassion. A person with honor is virtuous. Wroth's virtue of constancy in love is an element of honor. Gray's virtue of honest shame for one's faults is an element of honor. Pope uses the verb form of honor. He honors Ardelia, or shows her respect. In fact, in trying to honor her, Pope dishonors Ardelia, because his respect for her appears to be insincere mollifying instead of true esteem. Finch's use of honor is close to that used by Wroth and Gray. She preserves her honor by not squabbling with Pope. She then reminds Pope to be honorable, using the adjective form of honor. She does not tell him to have honor, but to behave like someone who has honor. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.1). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Swift’s A Modest Proposal 10/27/2011 The social situation in Swift's time is described well in his list of expedients he does not want to be told of. Ireland uses too many products of foreign manufacture. Landlords treat their tenants cruelly, "devour[ing] most of the parents" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2464). Merchants are dishonest and cheat their customers. Many people beg for money to support their children, and the children become thieves at an early age to support themselves. Ireland is largely Catholic, and it is at odds with England. Suggesting that the children of the poor, especially those born in bastardy, should be killed as food because their parents cannot afford to raise the children might be a catalyst for reducing the number of children born to unwed mothers. Swift writes: "[T]hese children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2464). Since the work is blatantly satire, this passage tells the reader that children should be born in marriage. Swift writes: "Neither indeed can I deny that if the same use were made of several plump young girls in this town ... the kingdom would not be the worse" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2465). He is referring to the pampered rich of the kingdom who live dissipated lives of luxury and leisure without contributing to society. In suggesting that the kingdom will not suffer from such people being eaten. Swift shows that society will benefit from a reduction of this morally and economically useless segment of society. In describing the poor of the kingdom in terms of animals that are raised for the slaughterhouse, Swift illustrates how bad living conditions have become. Being culled for food gives people as good a life as cattle and swine, that being an improvement over their present conditions. This may be a catalyst for the eventual end of feudal habits and the beginning of social welfare programs that improve the lives of the poor. Swift's mention that "the poorer tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to distress" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2466) refers to the feudal state of affairs. The poor are the tenants of the rich, and the belongings of the poor may be seized to pay the debts of the poor. The idea that Undergraduate Series 303 infants might be seized as property is abhorrent, and may be a catalyst for eliminating the laws that allow such seizures. To the monarchy and to the common people alike, the idea of rich people dining on the children of the poor should point to the impression that the monarchy devours the people through taxes and through laws that prevent people rising to higher social status. Clearly, it is wrong to eat children; in the same way it is wrong to crush the people with unjust laws and taxes. The satirical presentation of the contemporary social situation strengthens Swift's arguments against the abuses committed by the ruling class. Swift compares his proposal to the fictional land of Formosa, which the people of his time should recognize as being absurd to the point of horrific in its practices of cannibalism and human sacrifice. This parallel should further strengthen Swift's argument on behalf of improved conditions for the poor. I believe that revolutionary writing is necessary in society when the actions of the ruling class jeopardize the lives and livelihoods of the poorer classes, but not when society is running well. Revolutionary writing serves to draw attention to the elements of society that need to be changed. It holds the ruling class responsible for its actions, and calls on the ruling class to change its actions to the good or to be overthrown by those whom it rules. Revolutionary writing serves to empower the common people to rise up against a government that represses or abuses the people. It can incite an actual revolution, but if the ruling class heeds the message of revolutionary writing there can be social change without the destruction of revolution. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.1). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Reading for Global Significance 10/27/2011 Burke identifies six reasons for Americans' spirit of liberty. Of these, four address the conflict between human rights and the rights granted by the laws of England; descent and remoteness are not associated with rights. "[T]he people must in effect themselves, mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2846). This passage deals with government and taxes. People have a basic right to choose how and when to give their money to a government. The laws of England require taxes to be paid to England by the American colonies without the benefit of representation. "[T]he Church of England, notwithstanding its legal rights" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2847). The Church of England is the legally constituted church of the English colonies. The King or Queen is the head of the church. This is in conflict with the human right of the individual to full freedom of, or from, religion. Although England abolishes slavery in 1772, at the time of Burke's writing, "in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2848). This Southern manner of slavery is supported in the colonies by the laws of England, but it is in direct opposition with the human rights of the slaves to be free and equal citizens in society. "I mean their education, In no country, perhaps, in the world is the law so general a study" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2848). It is a human right for each individual to be educated. The laws of England in this period limit all but the most basic education to the upper class. 304 A Journey Through My College Papers Burke's reference to taxes, above, speaks to the way economics play into the decisions made by the empire. By taxing the colonies, the empire raises money to continue imperial expansion and the defense of imperial holdings. Johnson writes: "A man may accept life from a conquering enemy on condition of perpetual servitude; but it is very doubtful whether he can entail that servitude on his descendants" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2849). Human rights preclude involuntary servitude, or slavery, in opposition to the rights granted by English law for individuals to hold slaves. Johnson further writes: "Inhabitants of this island can neither gain riches nor power by taking away the liberty of any part of the human species" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2850). While this should be true, the empire learns that slaveholders and their governments can make a great deal of money by using slave labor, especially in agriculture. Slavery is abolished in England, but it continues in the colonies for some time. Equiano writes: "I would have freely parted with [ten thousand worlds] to have exchanged my condition with that of the meanest slave in my own country" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2851). He is not afraid to be a slave, only to be a slave in the British Empire. Human rights require that a person be treated decently, not captured and frightened. The laws of England allow slaves to be forcibly taken from family and friends, and to be terrorized by their captors. Equiano further writes: "[O]n my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2852). Human rights do not allow one person to beat another, especially when the victim cannot defend himself or herself. Slave traders are given the right under law to punish slaves. Equiano writes: "Many merchants and planters now came on board, though it was in the evening" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2854). Slavery is a lucrative business, and there is a great interest in slaves in the English colonies in this period. Slave holders make a lot of money by using slave labor, so the empire allows slavery to continue in the colonies. I think the exposure of cruelties associated with slavery might influence the empire to put a stop to slavery, but history tells me that slavery lasts far beyond this period. The discussion of the American love of freedom might influence the empire to change its policies, especially in regard to taxation, to keep peace in the colonies. The American Revolution tells me that the empire does not pay heed closely enough to these writings. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.1). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. The Evil of Grendel 10/31/2011 Grendel is described in Beowulf as “feond” (Lancashire, 2011, l. 962), which is modernly translated as “fiend,” or a creature of evil. He is later described as seeking the company of “deofla” (Lancashire, 2011, ll. 755-757), the plural of deofol, which is modernly translated as “devil.” Although these Middle English words that appear to describe Grendel as a fiend and as a devil may also be translated into less monstrous words in modern English, it is the early definitions that are important to an understanding of the original nature of Grendel as a creature of evil. Grendel is a fiend and a devil, a monster that represents evil in society. He is an enemy of God, and God sends the hero Beowulf to defeat Grendel. Grendel is also a descendant of Cain, who is marked by God as a monster after Cain murders Abel in the Biblical creation story. By Undergraduate Series 305 attacking the mead hall, Grendel attacks the social and economic center of contemporary Danish society, which is also a reflection of God’s kingdom, becoming a representation of evil in society. Jeffrey Helterman (1968) compares Heorot the mead hall with heaven when he writes: “If the symbolic import of Heorot is accounted for, i.e., it is a place where the temporal brytta [dispenser, giver] repeats the acts of the spiritual brytta, then the throne is Hrothgar’s which stands for God’s” (p. 8). When Grendel attacks Heorot, he attacks the throne of God, branding Grendel as a creature of evil. F.A. Blackburn (1897) contends that the understanding of Grendel as evil is based on a mistranslation of the original text into modern English. He writes: “[I]t is not certain that feond, which strictly means 'foe,' has here the later sense that we now attach to the word 'fiend,' and deofol … does not refer … to the devils of hell, but to the ocean monsters like Grendel, into whose company he wishes to escape” (pp. 209-210). A foe is not necessarily either good or evil; a foe is merely an entity in opposition with another. The characterization of a foe as evil, based on the condition of being a foe, is highly subjective, and is not sufficient to equate “foe” with “fiend.” Similarly, a sea monster is not necessarily evil; it is strange, perhaps ugly or strange in appearance, and possibly dangerous, but that is not sufficient to characterize a sea monster as evil. Feond sounds similar to fiend, just as deofol sounds similar to devil, and the homophonic quality of the words tricks modern readers into characterizing Grendel as a fiend and a devil. While it is possible to translate feond as foe, and to define a deofol as a sea monster, these are just two words in the entire text of Beowulf. Nicolas K. Kiessling (1968) explains the use of the descriptive word “maere” in relation to Grendel when he writes: “When the poem was written, however, maere would have been a most appropriate term if applied to the ravager, Grendel; and the weight of the evidence … would seem to point not to ‘famous,’ but to ‘incubus, night monster’ as the more probable meaning of the word maere in lines 103 and 762 of Beowulf” (p. 201). An incubus is an ancient creature of evil that sucks the souls from its victims. As an incubus, or a monster in the same category as an incubus, Grendel is evil. He is not merely a foe of the Danes; he is the evil enemy of God. Grendel is not simply a sea monster, he is an evil creature of the night that ravages Heorot and seeks to destroy the West Danes. The battle between good and evil is classic in literature. Ordinary humans are often caught in the middle of the debate, with evil threatening to destroy human society, and with good protecting humanity by defeating the forces of evil. In Beowulf, Grendel represents evil and is defeated by Beowulf, God’s instrument of good. In the classic conflict, good and evil compete for possession of humans, and for possession of creation. In Beowulf, Beowulf and Grendel battle for possession of Heorot. Beowulf represents God as the ultimate good; Grendel represents the ultimate evil as he kills Hrothgar’s men and destroys the peace of Heorot each night. Grendel is a monster that represents evil in society because God guides Beowulf to defend the Danes against Grendel as against an enemy of God. Since God is the source of all good, especially for the early Christians, any enemy of God is evil. There is no neutral ground between good and evil. “Holy God/ has, in His goodness, guided [Beowulf] here/ to the WestDanes, to defend us from Grendel” (ll. 381-383) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 42). The author of Beowulf states clearly that Beowulf intervenes between Grendel and the Danes because God wills that Beowulf should do so. God takes this action because Grendel is God’s enemy, the opposite of good; Grendel is evil. Robert D. Stevick (1963) writes: “Hygelac's paganism … Hrothgar's Christianity: both belonged historically to pre-Christian times, while both give thanks to God for Beowulf's success” (Stevick, 1963, p. 82). Both the Pagan Hygelac and the Christian Hrothgar acknowledge God’s role in Beowulf’s defeat of Grendel. Pagans and Christians are rarely depicted on the same side of any issue in literature, but Grendel’s evil is so great that these two characters agree on his nature. If Grendel is not evil, then there is no reason for God to orchestrate 306 A Journey Through My College Papers Grendel’s defeat. God does not intervene in mortal matters unless He is called upon to fight and destroy evil, or to promote and propagate goodness. “Grendel … disrupted the joyful life of Hrothgar's kingdom; he is a hellish fiend who perpetrated terrible crimes. He lives in the moors, keeps the region of monsters that are descended from Cain” (Stevick, 1963, p. 85). In destroying Heorot, Grendel tears apart the fabric of Danish society; he destroys the heart of social, economic, and political infrastructure for the West Danes. Heorot is the center of society for the local area, and the West Danes depend on the safety and security of Heorot to provide for the safety and security of the common people and the community. Heorot is the center of government, of finance, of defense, and of socialization. Hrothgar reigns over the West Danes from his throne in Heorot. He makes laws from this center point, and he dispenses justice among his followers in the mead hall. As king, Hrothgar distributes wealth to his supporters in the mead hall. It is the custom of the early Germanic tribes for the ruler of a tribe or nation to give gold rings and other treasures to the men who distinguish themselves by their prowess in battle or by their service to the ruler. The soldiers or heroes who serve Hrothgar congregate in Heorot, and they often sleep in the mead hall. It is usual for unmarried men, in particular, to use the mead hall not only as a place to eat and drink, but also as a place to sleep. In addition, men who travel through a tribe’s territory often sleep in the tribe’s hall, and Heorot is used in this way. The men of the West Danes gather in Heorot to socialize, to sing songs and hear stories, and to eat and drink together. The people tell stories and sing songs to teach history to each generation and to share their adventures and achievements with the community. When Grendel ravages the hall, he strikes not only at a group of men who happen to be there at night; he strikes at the center of life and power in the community. Similarly, God rules creation from His throne in Heaven. God gives gifts of every kind to His faithful followers from Heaven. God defends the faithful from evil from His seat of power. God’s faithful gather in His kingdom in the afterlife to live together in peace. When Grendel attacks Heorot, he symbolically attacks Heaven, as evil makes war on good. The Christian devil attacks Heaven as the center of God’s kingdom, and God casts him out of Heaven. When Grendel attacks the center of the kingdom of the west Danes, Beowulf casts Grendel out of Heorot. Grendel is evil, and he represents the ultimate evil. Grendel is described in Beowulf as a demon that is related to the Judeo-Christian devil and to the demons of Germanic mythology. Robert L. Chapman (1956) writes: “Grendel is not, in virtue of the same new tone, merely a troll, but ‘an impersonation of evil and darkness, even an incarnation of the Christian devil.’" (p. 335). In the time of Beowulf’s author, any creature of the night, or of darkness, is a creature of evil. The evil beings of the ancient Germanic beliefs live in caverns and tunnels under the mountains, or in caves under lakes and swamps. The Christian devil, after he is cast out of Heaven, establishes his kingdom of Hell in caverns under the earth. All things good reside in the light, while all things evil lurk in the darkness. The people gather indoors at night with hearth fires and torches to hold the creatures of the night at bay. Natural creatures of the night, such as wolves, are a danger to people who are out of doors after dark; it is reasonable that early imaginations fill the darkness with supernatural beings of evil that threaten the safety of the people. Grendel does not attack Heorot during the day, when Hrothgar’s men may safely occupy the mead hall; Grendel attacks Heorot under the cover of darkness. He waits until the men in the mead hall have fallen asleep and the fires and torches have likely been banked for the night or burned out, allowing darkness to enter the hall. Grendel does not reside above ground, in the light of day; he hides in a cave under the earth in the way of Germanic trolls, or in the manner of the Christian devil in his underworld Hell. Grendel does not even face the protecting light of torches and hearths; he moves in darkness, and he does his evil among the West Danes in the darkness. Undergraduate Series 307 It is notable that Grendel attacks only those people who are in the mead hall, not those who spend the night in the security of their homes in the community. Grendel attacks the center of power, not those places where there is no power in contemporary society. He attacks men, never women or children. Like the heroes of the time, Grendel fights only with those who are worthy opponents. Unlike heroes, who fight on the side of good, however, Grendel ravages sleeping men who are unable to offer any more defense against the attack than could the women who sleep in the houses. This cowardice is never an attribute of forces of good in contemporary sagas; cowardice is assigned to forces of evil that hide and skulk in the shadows at the periphery of life. Kiessling (1968) compares Grendel to other evil creatures of darkness when he writes: “[M]aere, incubus, night monster, describes such a demon very well … Striae, strigae, lamiae vulgo mascae. These witches could consume the insides of men and so kill them, or they could act as vampires (Grendel himself sucked out the blood of Hondscioh)” (pp. 192-196). Witches and vampires are exemplars of evil. Both groups of evil creatures are denizens of the dark that incite terror by their very existence. The particular types of Latin witches to which Grendel is compared are especially horrible, as they do not merely cast spells and enchantments; these witches destroy men from the inside, leaving nothing alive. Similarly, vampires suck the life out of their victims with the victims’ blood. Grendel sucks the life out of the society of the West Danes when he ravages Heorot night after night, terrorizing Hrothgar’s people under the cover of darkness. Grendel is a monster that represents evil in society is that Grendel is cursed by God and is cast out of the world of men. Just as Satan is cast out of Heaven as an enemy of God, Grendel is cast out of human society because he is God’s enemy. Grendel is the embodiment of evil, which he inherits from his murderous ancestor, Cain. Grendel is identified in Beowulf as a descendant of Cain, from the Biblical creation story. “He had dwelt for a time/ in misery among the banished monsters,/Cain’s clan, whom the Creator had outlawed/ and condemned as outcasts” (ll. 104-107) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 36). Cain is cast out of human society by God, and Cain’s descendants are also cast out. Marie Padgett Hamilton (1946) writes: “The analogy between Cain and Grendel is well sustained. Guilty alike of envy, anger, murder, and impenitence, both were outlaws from the genial fellowship of men and estranged from the favor of God” (p. 316). Cain is envious of his brother, Abel, because God favors Abel. Cain is angry because of his jealousy, and his anger drives him to murder his brother. Similarly, Grendel is envious of the happy, prosperous West Danes. His envy drives him to a rage of anger and he ravages Heorot, murdering many of Hrothgar’s followers. Cain is unrepentant when his crime is discovered, and he is cast out of the society of his original people to wander in the wilderness. He is marked by his evil, but he is protected by God from human retribution for Cain’s crime. Grendel is similarly unrepentant, as evidenced by the continuous repetition of his evil violence against the occupants of the mead hall. Unlike his accursed ancestor, Grendel is not protected by God; God guides Beowulf to kill Grendel to end the carnage at Heorot. “Suddenly then/ the God-cursed brute was creating havoc:/ greedy and grim, he grabbed thirty men/ from their resting places and rushed to his lair” (ll. 120-123) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 36). The author of Beowulf identifies Grendel as cursed by God. There is no greater horror in the medieval world than to be separated from God and from human society by being damned or cursed by God. Again the poet writes: “God-cursed Grendel came greedily loping./ The bane of the race of men roamed forth” (ll. 711-712) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 48). Grendel is beyond the reach of divine grace. He is cut off from the sacraments of the medieval church, and he is destined to spend eternity in Hell. He is worse even than a person who is excommunicated from the church because that person has the opportunity to receive the sacraments until he or she is excommunicate, but Grendel never has the opportunity to experience those blessings. He is the enemy not only of God, but of the human race. He is evil, and apart from God. 308 A Journey Through My College Papers “Grendel, as a diabolic agent … was damned at birth” (Chapman, 1956, p. 336). Grendel is not evil because of his own actions; he is evil by nature. He is marked as an agent of the devil from the beginning, and he does not have a choice between good and evil. Because he is damned by God, Grendel is beyond the possibility of being redeemed from evil, and he must live as an evil monster. Despite modern translations that assign benign or neutral meanings to Middle English words used to describe Grendel, Grendel is an evil monster that attempts to destroy the socioeconomic center of the West Danes by repeatedly and savagely attacking Heorot. He is comparable to incubi, witches, and vampires that haunt the night and drain the life out of their victims. He is a demonic fiend that is marked by God’s curse on his ancestor and his entire line. When Grendel ravages Hrothgar’s West Danes in Heorot, God guides Beowulf to cross the sea to save the Danes from the evil that is destroying the center of their society. Grendel’s evil exists on several levels. Grendel is evil by virtue of his birth, and he is unable to escape the curse that Cain suffers after murdering his brother. Grendel is evil by virtue of his own actions. He lives in the darkness, takes refuge from the world among the sea monsters, and terrorizes contemporary society with extraordinary and repetitive acts of unprovoked violence. Grendel represents the evil of Germanic pagan demons and the Christian devil. He is the enemy of God, and he makes war on God and Heaven when he attacks Hrothgar and Heorot. Grendel represents the evil that erodes the fabric of society as he destroys the social, political, and economic infrastructure of the West Danes. Grendel is beyond the possibility of redemption for the evil in his life, and he is cursed to an eternity of division from God’s good grace. Grendel is not only evil, but he is the epitome of evil. He is the embodiment of all that medieval readers fear in the dark and unexplained fringes of the world. He attacks in the night, hiding in darkness, and he sucks the life out of his victims as evil sucks the life and goodness out of society. A monster out of man’s nightmares, Grendel is only able to be defeated by Beowulf, the agent of God. He is evil that cannot be defeated by ordinary men, but only by divine good. References Blackburn, F.A. (1897). The Christian coloring in the Beowulf. PMLA, 12(2), 205-225. Retrieved September 28, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/456133 Chapman, R.L. (1956, March). Alas, poor Grendel. College English, 17(6), 334-337. Retrieved September 28, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/372370 Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.1). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Hamilton, M.P. (1946, June). The religious principle in Beowulf. PMLA, 61(2), 309-330. Retrieved September 28, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/459354 Helterman, J. (1968, March). Beowulf: The archtype enters history. ELH, 35(1), 1-20. Retrieved September 28, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2872333 Kiessling, N.K. (1968, February). Grendel: A new aspect. Modern Philology, 65(3), 191- 201. Retrieved September 28, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/436467 Lancashire, I. [Ed.]. (2011). Beowulf. Retrieved October 30, 2011, from http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/19.html Stevick, R. D. (1963, November). Christian elements and the genesis of “Beowulf”. Modern Philology, 61(2), 79-89. Retrieved September 28, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/435497 Undergraduate Series 309 ENG 346: British Literature II Innocence/Experience 11/3/2011 "Songs of Innocence" focuses on images of happiness and of youth. The Lamb is a natural images of innocence, gentleness, and purity, and it is also a reference to Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God, who is entirely void of sin. In "Introduction," Blake writes: "On a cloud I saw a child,/ And he laughing said to me,/ 'Pipe a song about a Lamb'" (ll. 3-5) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 81). In "The Lamb," Blake writes: "Little Lamb, who made thee?/ ... He is callèd by thy name,/ For he calls himself a Lamb" (ll. 1, 13-14) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 83-84). Both of these are references to Jesus Christ, who brings innocence and goodness into the world to challenge the supposed wisdom and experience of the Pharisees. Blake continues this symbolism in "The Little Black Boy" when he writes: "When I from black and he from white cloud free,/ And round the tent of God like lambs we joy" (ll. 23-24) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 84). In this case, Blake uses lambs to show that everyone is equally free and innocent in God's sight. This appears to be a comment on racial inequality just a few years after slavery is banned in England; black and white are clouds that obscure the fact that all people are the same inside as God's creations. Again, Blake uses the image of lambs in "Holy Thursday" when he writes: "but multitudes of lambs,/ Thousands of little boys & girls" (ll. 7-8) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 86). In this instance, the lambs represent the children, who are still innocent in their youth and lack of experience. Throughout "Songs of Innocence," Blake also uses the nature imagery of the rising sun, of birds in song and birds in nests, and of young children. "The Sun does arise,/ And make happy the skies./ ... Look on the rising sun: there does God live/ ... Till the morning appears in the skies" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 82-86). Spanning three poems, these images are of light, hope, and goodness. The rising sun represents youth or the beginning of life, when a child is still innocent for lack of experience in the world. "Songs of Experience" contains varied nature images that indicate the loss of innocence and happiness through experience. In "Introduction," Blake writes: "Calling the lapsèd Soul/ And weeping in the evening dew" (ll. 6-7) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 87). The evening dew represents the end of life, when the experiences of life replace the innocence of youth and result in sadness and weeping for what is lost. In "Earth's Answer," Blake writes: "Cold and hoar/ Weeping o'er/ I hear the Father of the ancient men" (ll. 8-10) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 89). Hoar is another word for frost, which is a nature image for winter, or the end of the year. Winter is often a symbol for the last part of life and, again, it indicates sadness for the loss of youth's innocence. In "The Chimney Sweeper," Blake writes of how religion takes away innocence. He writes: "They clothed me in the clothes of death,/ And taught me to sing the notes of woe./ ... And are gone to praise God & his Priest & King,/ Who make up a heaven of our misery" (ll. 7-12) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 90). The narrator of the poem is happy in the innocence of nature, but he is miserable in the experience of religion. A similar theme is in "The Garden of Love," when Blake writes: "'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;/ ... it was filled with graves,/ And tomb-stones where flowers should be" (ll. 6-10) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 94). Again, religion destroys innocence as rules and commandments turn love's beauty into the emptiness of death. "Songs of Innocence" promotes the innocence and purity of you and nature. By extension, it promotes the good qualities of the first era of the world, before man-made religion corrupts the ideas of nature. "Songs of Experience" sorrows in the loss of innocence and beauty through experience in maturity. Paralleling "Songs of Innocence," this can extend to regretting the 310 A Journey Through My College Papers loss of innocence in nature in the modern age, with both reason and religion replacing nature in man's concepts of good and evil, innocence and experience. "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" joins the ideas from "Songs of Innocence" and "Songs of Experience." Innocence represents Heaven and experience represents Hell. In the prose sections of the reading, it is evident that Blake values the wisdom of experience over what he views as the foolishness of innocence. Blake writes: "A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 113). Blake makes many comparisons between innocence and experience in his collection of proverbs. He uses numerous images from nature and from Judeo-Christian religion in his discussions. He appears to change his mind and to prefer nature over experience when he writes: "Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion. The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the Lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 114). Man-made religion is bad and nature-based religion is good. Blake's work is full of the juxtaposition of innocence and experience and of nature and religion. Over all, he commends what is innocent and natural and he rejects what is experiential and artificial. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Conversations in Poems 11/3/2011 As the subject for this discussion suggests, both Wordsworth and Coleridge use conversations and conversational language within their poems to bring their ideas within the readers' scope of understanding. It is easier to understand an exchange between two characters than it is to understand the elaborate descriptions and generalizations that are common in poetry. In "Simon Lee," Wordsworth describes his title character in conversational language, and he also talks directly to his character. Wordsworth describes Simon Lee: "And he is lean and he is sick;/ His body, dwindled and awry,/ Rests upon ankles swoln and thick;/ His legs are thin and dry" (ll. 33-36) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 246). The language is simple and direct, similar to the language of a common conversation about a neighbor's health. In "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," Coleridge uses similarly conversational descriptive language: "There passed a weary time. Each throat/ was parched, and glazed each eye./ A weary time! a weary time!/ How glazed each weary eye" (ll. 143-146) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 434). Each poet's description is simple and clear so ordinary readers can understand it. Conversational language makes the writing immediate to the reader, whereas grand, eloquent language would make the writing appeal only to the upper class. Each poet writes sad ballads of loss. Wordsworth writes of a child's insistence that her dead siblings should still be counted among her family. "We Are Seven" reminds me sharply of my elder son, Tommy. When asked about his siblings, he says he has two brothers and three sisters: one brother lives with us, one brother and two sisters live in North Carolina with their father, and one sister is buried in a graveyard in Virginia. Tommy is as earnest in counting even the deceased as is the cottage girl in the poem. It is the simple honesty of Wordsworth's writing, and the common, conversational language and subject of his poem, that make such a connection possible for a reader. Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is also a story of sadness and suffering as the title character in the sole survivor of a doomed voyage. Undergraduate Series 311 The strongest connection between the two poets is Coleridge's "To William Wordsworth." This poem is clearly addressed to Wordsworth, and Coleridge confirms the friendship between the two poets: "O Friend! my comforter and guide!/ Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength! --/ ... yet thou thyself/ Wert still before my eyes" (ll. 102-106) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 473). Wordsworth and Coleridge "quarreled bitterly" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 425) in 1810 and they are not reconciled until 1828. Coleridge's poem is written in 1817, in the midst of their rift, showing that their friendship survives the difficulties between them. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Religion and Myth in Romantic Poetry 11/7/2011 William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge use images and themes of religion in their poetry; John Keats uses images and themes of mythology in his poetry. Nature images, which may be taken as a sort of religious imagery, appear in the poetry of all three writers, but they are not the subject of this discussion. Nicholas O. Warner (1982) writes: “Blake uses traditional motifs as thematic signals to his reader-viewers” (p. 220). Throughout Blake’s Songs of Innocence, the traditional image of a lamb represents the purity and innocence of Jesus Christ, who is the Lamb of God. In "Introduction," Blake writes: "On a cloud I saw a child,/ And he laughing said to me,/ 'Pipe a song about a Lamb'" (ll. 3-5) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 81). In "The Lamb," Blake writes: "Little Lamb, who made thee?/ ... He is callèd by thy name,/ For he calls himself a Lamb" (ll. 1, 13-14) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 83-84). In each of these poems, the Lamb is a religious image of the salvation of Man through the literal innocence of Christ. Christ is not innocent in the sense of being unaware of the sins and grief in the world; he is innocent in the sense of being wholly and eternally without sin. Blake’s contemporary readers are very much aware of the immaculate nature of Christ, and the image of the Lamb in Blake’s poetry resonates with his readers as Blake pairs innocence the joyous themes of laughing children, sunrises, and nesting birds. Blake continues this symbolism in "The Little Black Boy" and in "Holy Thursday," using lamb imagery to show that all are equal in God’s sight. Wordsworth employs the theme of religion in “We Are Seven” when he writes: “Two of us in the church-yard lie,/ My sister and my brother” (ll. 21-22) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 248). The little cottage girl evinces the simple religious faith that her deceased siblings are still alive and part of her family, even though they are dead. Contemporary religious belief teaches that the dead live forever with Jesus Christ in Heaven. The child tells the poet: “In bed she moaning lay,/ Till God released her of her pain” (ll. 50-51) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 249). Blake uses the religious idea that God intervenes in human lives to show how the child’s sister is freed from pain in death. Wordsworth uses religious imagery in “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” as well. When he writes: “Thou Child of Joy,/ Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy!” (ll. 34-35) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 308), Wordsworth uses traditional imagery to refer to Jesus Christ. Christ is the Child of Joy when he is born in the stable and is worshipped in the manger by the shepherds. Christ is also the Good Shepherd, who protects his flock of faithful mortals. Later in the same piece, Wordsworth writes: “Not in utter forgetfulness,/ And not in utter nakedness,/ But trailing clouds of glory do we come/ From God, who is our home” (ll. 62312 A Journey Through My College Papers 65) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 309). Wordsworth here uses trailing clouds that are traditional images of angels to show that Man is connected to Heaven. Man does not entirely forget that he came from God, and that provides a basis for religious beliefs that mortals will return to Heaven one day. Coleridge uses religious images and themes in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Coleridge makes frequent references to “The wedding-guest” (ll. 14, 17, 31, 37) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 431) and to a “Wedding-Guest” (ll. 346, 597) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 439-445). The capitalization of the title is significant, as it evokes images of the wedding feast described in Matthew 22:1-14 (King James Bible, 1769 version), which is familiar to contemporary readers. The wedding feast is an allegory for Heaven, and Jesus is the Wedding Guest. The poem includes Marian references that are familiar to contemporary readers as references to the mother of Jesus Christ: “Heaven’s Mother send us grace!” (l. 178) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 435) and “To Mary Queen the praise be given!/ She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,/ That slid into my soul” (ll. 294-296) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 438). Coleridge invokes Mary’s help for his title character, employing the religious theme that the Virgin Mary will help those who call on her, and that earthly salvation is had from Mary as eternal salvation is had from Jesus Christ. James D. Boulger (1961) writes: “For Keats it was a quest of a special kind to create a symbolic world in which the qualities of the spirit modify harsh facts of nature, yet where the colors, sounds and attitudes of the natural world are the realities of the poetic vision” (p. 244). In “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on Melancholy,” Keats creates his symbolic world by using themes from Roman mythology and from the Bible. In both poems he references the river Lethe in Hades, where the souls of the dead forget their earthly lives. In “Ode to a Nightingale” he writes : “One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk” (l. 4) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 903); and in “Ode on Melancholy”: “No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist/ Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine” (ll. 1-2) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 907). In both poems, Keats uses the image of the river Lethe in reference to suicidal behavior; in the former, he takes opium, and in the latter he references wolfs-bane, each of which is a strong and dangerous drug. Keats also uses happier, more beautiful myth references in “Ode to a Nightingale” when he writes: “That thou, lightwinged Dryad of the trees,/ …Tasting of Flora and the country green,/ … Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene” (ll. 7-16) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 903). A dryad is a beautiful, Roman tree spirit. Flora is the Roman goddess of flowers. The Hippocrene is the “Fountain of the Muses on Mount Helicon” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 903). The images of trees, flowers, and a fountain of inspiration are beautiful, and are familiar to contemporary educated readers who study classical mythology. Keats also refers to Judeo-Christian religion in “Ode to a Nightingale” when he writes: “Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,/ She stood in tears amid the alien corn” (ll. 66-67) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 904). Ruth is an Old Testament heroine who worked in the fields to support her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi. She gathered the fallen bits of grain that would otherwise be wasted and took them home to feed Naomi. The story of Ruth is powerful, and is familiar to contemporary readers, who recognize the sacrifice Ruth makes by remaining with Naomi when Ruth is not by law or custom obligated to do so. I expect to focus on the religious images and themes of Blake’s work and on the mythological images and themes of Keats’ work in my final paper. Blake’s lamb images of innocence and of Christ compare and contrast well with Keats’ myth images of natural elements and Roman gods. References Boulger, J.D. (1961). Keats’ symbolism. ELH, 28(3), 244-259. Retrieved November 7, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2872068 Undergraduate Series 313 Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. King James Bible [Electronic version]. (1769). Retrieved November 7, 2011, from http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/book.php?book=Matthew&chapter=22&verse=114 Warner, N.O. (1982). The iconic mode of William Blake. Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, 36(4), 219-234. Retrieved November 5, 2011, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1347359 Romantics into Victorians 11/10/2011 I disagree that Victorian poets "cannot sustain the confidence that the Romantics felt in the power of imagination" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 996). I think the Victorians approach imagination differently than do the Romantics, but I do not think the Victorians have less imagination than the Romantics. The Victorian imagination that I see in Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a power to help the reader see what is in her poems. She applies imagination to real life, sometimes using some of the Romantic imagery to capture the attention of her audience. In "The Cry of the Children," Browning echoes Blake's imagery of the innocence of lambs when she writes: "The young lambs are bleting in the meadows,/ ... But the young, young children, O my brothers,/ They are weeping bitterly" (ll. 5-10) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1079). By placing the image of lambs close to the reference to children, Browning causes her reader to imagine that the children should be innocent lambs. That the children are weeping with premature experience reflects back again to Blake's writings on innocence and experience. In Browning's "22," from Sonnets from the Portuguese, her imagination is evident when she writes: "Let us stay/ Rather on earth, Belovèd, -- where the unfit/ Contrarious moods of men recoil away/ And isolate pure spirits, and permit/ A place to stand and love in for a day" (ll. 9-13) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1084). She imagines a place that is apart from the rest of the world, where she and her husband can be together in peace. Lord Tennyson's imagination is evident in the tragic "The Lady of Shalott." He paints a vivid picture of a magical scene from Arthurian legends, so that his reader can see the lady on her island and Lancelot as he rides close to her location on his way to Camelot. In fact, the poem stirs the imagination so well that lines 100-104 are quoted by a character in the Disney Channel movie "Avalon High." Tennyson's imagination is contagious in his description of the people of Camelot coming out to view the tragic heroine in her death boat: "Under tower and balcony,/ By garden wall and gallery,/ A gleaming shape she floated by,/ Dead-pale between the houses high,/ Silent into Camelot./ Out upon the wharfs they came,/ Knight and burgher, lord and dame,/ And round the prow they read her name,/ The Lady of Shalott" (ll. 154-162) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1118). The reader sees through the poet's imagination the lady's boat slipping silently down the river among the buildings, with people of all but the lower classes leaving their homes to witness her passing. Blake touches briefly on the suffering of poor children in "Holy Thursday" when he writes: "Is this a holy thing to see,/ In a rich and fruitful land,/ Babes reduced to misery,/ Fed with cold and usurous hand?/ ... And so many children poor?/ It is a land of poverty!" (ll. 1-8) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 90). Elizabeth Barrett Browning gets much closer than Blake to the subject of childhood poverty and misery in "The Cry of the Children" when she writes: "They look up with their pale and sunken faces,/ And their looks are sad to see,/ For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses/ Down the cheeks of infancy;/ ... Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking/ 314 A Journey Through My College Papers Death in life, as best to have" (ll. 25-28, 53-54) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1080). Blake speaks of the children's misery, but Browning describes their misery in uncomfortably clear, stark images of near-starvation. She describes the children's preference for death over the life that they experience. Later in the poem sh writes: "They know the grief of man, without its wisdom;/ They sink in man's despair, without its calm;/ Are slaves, without the liberty of Christdom,/ Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm" (ll. 141-144) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1082). Browning again echoes the Romantic themes of innocence and experience while expressing the contrast of the themes with Victorian realism. The children in her poem have lost their innocence to experience without gaining the benefit of wisdom that adults have from experience. She also references Christian images of martyrdom and of the glory, honor, and sacrifice of the Crusades in the image of the palm. The children give their lives without the benefit of giving them freely for their beliefs. The children suffer the pang, or pain, of sacrifice, but they do not accrue honor or salvation, only grief and despair. Browning gets very close to her subject, and she draws her reader close, to illuminate the wrongs that the poor children suffer in English society. References: Gillard, S. (Director). (2010). Avalon High [Motion Picture]. United States: Sudden Motion Productions. Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Victorian Science 11/10/2011 Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde share the theme of the struggle for existence. The Descent of Man and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde share the theme of the nature of Man. In The Origin of Species, Darwin writes: "A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1540). Each living thing, whether plant or animal, seeks to survive. Since the world can hold only so many of any organism, each must work to be one of the few to make it. This results in only the strongest or most intelligent specimens reaching maturity, unless artificial assistance or impediments are imposed on the population. This is a clinical, scientific view of the struggle for existence, and it does not take into account any emotional aspects that might influence the individual's struggle. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Stevenson writes: "I began to be tortured with throes and longings, as of Hyde struggling after freedom" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1681). At this point in the story, Hyde has experienced a great deal of freedom, but Jekyll is restraining that aspect of his identity. Hyde has become an independent entity, although he shares memory with Jekyll. Ultimately, only one entity can occupy the body, and Hyde is struggling to become the dominant entity so he can get rid of Jekyll and survive as the sole occupant of the body. In The Descent of Man, Darwin writes that Man has "risen ... to the very summit of the organic scale ... Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1549). Man is the ultimate survivor, and has risen above the development of any other species. Despite this, Man still carries lower attributes within each individual. These lower attributes form the base nature of each person. Darwin comments on the relative moral nature of the beasts that are Man's supposed developmental or evolutionary inferiors Undergraduate Series 315 and the humans from whom modern Man has developed in recent centuries: "I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper ... as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up blood sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superstitions" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1549). Being the evolutionarily fittest species does not automatically make Man the best or the most moral species. In The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jekyll is a tall, physically fit man with features that are recognized in England as those of a person of good birth. Nevertheless, he seeks to make himself even better, and to purify himself by removing the base or evil side that he recognizes in his nature. Stevenson has Jekyll write: "Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 1675-1676). The dual nature of Man that Stevenson explores in his characters of Jekyll and Hyde is the duality of good and evil, of the noble nature and the base nature, and of the evolved Man and the primitive Man. Through an error in his experiment, Jekyll releases his evil self to become Hyde, but still has a dual nature, not a purely good nature, when he is Jekyll. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Darwin's works are accepted by many as scientific fact. Only those who believe that the Bible must be read as literal truth dispute the theory of evolution. As various sciences provide more and more evidence to support Darwin's theories, more is learned about the development of the earth, of the origins and evolution of various organisms on the earth -- including Man -- and of the structure of the universe. From these discoveries, scientists are able to make reasonable predictions about how Man and nature will continue to develop. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a popular science fiction horror story. It has been retold in numerous televisions and movies, and in countless animated series. Nearly everyone knows the general story, but the warnings of the original story about the dangers associated with the base side of Man's nature often seem to be overlooked. Allowing the base side dominance too often or for too long gives the base aspect strength to overpower the noble side of an individual's nature. Once released, Man's base side resists being repressed, and it struggles to express its darker inclinations in the individual's behavior. Developing a habit of allowing base behavior to control an individual's actions produces a callousness in the individual for the evil of his or her behavior, and the habit sometimes leads to an acceptance of despair of reasserting the individual's more noble side. In modern times, these moral lessons tend to be ignored in favor of viewing the story as no more than a fantastic horror tale. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Heart of Darkness 11/17/2011 The first choice that is offered is to become like one of those who exploit Africa's resources for financial gain. One image of nightmare that Marlow relates is the chain gang at the Inner Station: "Six black men advanced in a file ... Black rags were wound round their loins ... I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them" 316 A Journey Through My College Papers (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1900). The six men are enslaved by the white Europeans to work removing earth to make way for a railroad. The human resources of Africa are exploited by the nominally civilized whites in the interest of making more and more money for the several European empires. The image of chained humans who are visibly starving and neglected is part of the nightmare of becoming like the Manager. Another image of the nightmare of becoming like the Manager is that of the pilgrims at the Inner Station, who have come to Africa to exploit its resources: "They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands, like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a rotten fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air ... You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1906). Those who come to Africa for financial gain worship ivory like a pagan idol, and they give the appearance of being under a spell. It is a nightmare to think of people being so consumed by greed that Africa's material riches become like deities to the Europeans. The nightmare of becoming like Kurtz is embodied in Marlow's description of Kurtz: "The wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball -- an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and -- lo! -- he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some devilish initiation" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1925). Africa destroys Kurtz. I disagree with the assumption that Kurtz is an idealist, since he exploits Africa's material and human resources no less than does the Manager. Kurtz collects ivory for material gain, and he fears that the Company will claim his collection without payment when he dies. He uses native tribes to gather ivory for him, and he allows the Africans to worship him as a god. As he strips resources from Africa, Africa strips health from Kurtz. One moral challenge in the story is that of how one should treat other humans. The African natives are enslaved by the Europeans to work for the advancement of European wealth. and power. They are forced to carry burdens as if they were pack animals. They are collared and chained to make them work on railroads. When he sees these things, Marlow is shocked. Another moral challenge is in the way the natives worship Kurtz. He has allowed himself to be treated as a god, and he "came to them with thunder and lightning" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1931). Tricking Africans who do not understand European technology into believing a man is a god so the Africans will help the man exploit their land for financial gain is immoral. Kurtz gives Marlow a packet of papers that Marlow refuses to give to the Company. Even though Kurtz's behavior with the natives is immoral, Marlow's loyalty to Kurtz's final request is moral. He is keeping a promise by taking the papers to Kurtz's intended wife instead of turning them over to the Company. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Poetry of the Great War 11/17/2011 Edward Thomas writes about the loneliness of war. In "Adlestrop," he writes about an empty platform at a train station: "No one left and no one came/ On the bare platform. What I saw/ Was Adlestrop -- only the name" (ll. 6-8) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1957). The towns are empty because the men have gone to the war. Similarly, in "The Cherry Trees," there are no couples to be married because the men have gone to the war. "On the old road where all that Undergraduate Series 317 passed are dead" (l. 2) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1958). The only men in town are the returning war dead; the living men are away fighting. Wilfred Owen writes about the young men who die in war, and those who are disabled by the war. He creates images of suffering: "And moans down there/ Of boys that slept wry sleep, and men/ Writhing for air" (ll. 14-16) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1973). Men not only dig to mine coal, but also to create tunnels under the enemy in which to set off explosions. Men who write for air are suffocating in mines and tunnels with deadly gases, or that have caved in and have no air. Robert Graves writes both poetry and prose. In his poetry, he writes of death and suffering: "A word of rage in lack of meat, wine, fine,/ In ache of wounds beyond all surgeoning" (ll. 29-30) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1989). Wounds beyond the help of surgery may be wounds that require amputation, wounds that kill, or wounds of the mind and spirit that debilitate even a person of sound body. Siegfried Sassoon also writes both poetry and prose. His poetry is about suffering and death in war, but it has a lighter side than has the work of the other poets. In "They," he uses irony to soften the reality that the named boys are all severely wounded: "The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back/ They will not be the same; for they'll have fought/ In a just cause ...'/ '... you'll not find/ A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.'/ And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!'" (ll. 1-3, 10-12) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 1960-1961). The Bishop's prediction comes true, but not in the way he expects. The boys come back broken by the war, not strengthened by it. The use of military language in war poetry creates a sense of immediacy for the contemporary reader. For the modern reader, such language gives the poetry a sense of historical authenticity. Although I know from the biographies which writers died in the war and which ones survived the war, it does not seem to change my experience of the poetry. For those who did die in battle, they did not know they would do so, and their future fate did not change how they wrote. I read the poetry from their perspective as soldiers in a war, not as soldiers who would die soon. I don't think the poetry benefits or suffers from the reader's knowledge that some of the writers died in the war. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Themes in Romantic and Victorian Poetry 11/21/2011 The poetry of the Romantic period includes the themes of nature, of the contrast between innocence and experience, and of dissatisfaction with Christian ideology. All three themes appear in the work of William Blake. The poetry of the Victorian era includes the themes of social injustice, of romantic love, and of the loss of innocence. Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes about social injustice and about romantic love, and Alfred Lord Tennyson writes about the loss of innocence. Blake uses the nature imagery of the lamb in several of his poems. The lamb is a symbol of innocence and purity. It is also a reference to salvation in the person of Jesus Christ, who is depicted as the Good Shepherd and as the Lamb of God. In "The Lamb," Blake writes: "Little Lamb, who made thee?/ ... He is callèd by thy name,/ For he calls himself a Lamb" (ll. 1, 13-14) 318 A Journey Through My College Papers (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 83-84). In this poem, Blake is using the lamb first to refer to a child when Blake asks the question. He then uses the lamb to refer to Christ when Blake tells the child that Christ made the child. Blake contrasts innocence and experience in his paired poems from Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. In his two poems that are each called “Holy Thursday,” Blake illustrates this contrast. In the first of the poems, Blake writes: “O what a multitude they seemd, these flowers of London town!/ Seated in companies they sit with radiance all their own./ The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,/ Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands” (ll. 5-8) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 86). In the second poem by the same name Blake writes: “Is this a holy thing to see,/ In a rich and fruitful land,/ Babes reduced to misery,/ Fed with cold and usurous hand?” (ll. 1-4) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 90). The first version of “Holy Thursday” depicts the beautiful innocence of childhood. The second version contrasts it with the miserable experience of the children of poverty in industrialized England. The nature imagery of the lamb is repeated in this poem, referring to the innocent children. Dissatisfaction with Christian ideology is evident in Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Blake writes a section of “Proverbs of Hell” that mimics the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament of the Bible. Among the perverted proverbs, Blake writes: "Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion. The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the Lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 114). Blake opposes the common beliefs that prostitution and nudity are in opposition with Christian religion, and that pride, lust, and wrath are sinful. Blake uses the nature imagery of the peacock, the goat, and the lion in these proverbs. The peacock is a symbol of beauty and pride, the goat is a symbol of lust and sexual appetite, and the lion is a symbol of wrath and aggression. Barrett Browning writes about social injustice in industrialized England when she describes the lives of poor children who are forced to work in the mines in “The Cry of the Children.” She writes: "They look up with their pale and sunken faces,/ And their looks are sad to see,/ For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses/ Down the cheeks of infancy;/ ... Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking/ Death in life, as best to have" (ll. 25-28, 53-54) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1080). Browning describes the children’s misery in uncomfortably clear, stark images of near-starvation, and she describes the children's preference for death over the life that they experience. Browning writes about romantic love in Sonnets from the Portuguese. One of the most famous lines from poetry is in poem “43”: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” (l. 1) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1085). In “22” she writes: "Let us stay/ Rather on earth, Belovèd, -where the unfit/ Contrarious moods of men recoil away/ And isolate pure spirits, and permit/ A place to stand and love in for a day" (ll. 9-13) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1084). She proposes remaining on earth with her husband rather than going to Heaven, so they can remain together in their love for each other. She imagines a place that is apart from the rest of the world, where she and her husband can be together in peace. Tennyson writes about the loss of innocence in “The Lotos-Eaters.” “Tennyson expands Homer’s brief account into an elaborate picture of weariness and the desire for rest and death” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1119). The characters in Tennyson’s poem have lost the innocence of seeing the beauty in “Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies./ … cool mosses deep./ And through the mosses the ivies creep” (ll. 52-54) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1120). Tennyson uses the nature images of moss and ivy to evoke a feeling of calm and an image of lush life. With the loss of innocence, the characters experience the discomforts of a life of experience: “Why are we weighed upon with heaviness,/ And utterly consumed with sharp distress,/ While all things else have rest from weariness?” (ll. 57-59) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1120). This shift Undergraduate Series 319 from the beauty of innocence to the suffering of experience returns to the Romantic theme of innocence and experience in the context of Victorian poetry. References Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Feminist Manifesto and Woolf 11/25/2011 Mina Loy writes angrily and violently about the genders and their relationship to each other. She defines feminism in terms of a woman "expressing herself through all her functions" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2017). She argues that a woman must integrate the various roles of a woman's life to enjoy her full identity as a woman. Virginia Woolf writes about the many ways in which women are put down and held back by men and by social conventions. Her definition of feminism is that in order to be a complete woman a woman must have her own income so she will not be dependent on the support of a man. She writes: "[I]t is remarkable ... what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds ... I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2111). She discusses the living conditions of women from Shakespeare's time up to the early twentieth century, and she concludes that poor women lack opportunity and power because of their poverty. She writes: "Moreover, in a hundred years ... women will have ceased to be the protected sex" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2112). She correctly predicts that women in the twenty-first century will be independent. The difference between Loy's view of feminism and Woolf's view of feminism is mostly in the tone of each piece. Loy's commentary is adversarial from the first phrase: "The feminist movement as at present instituted is Inadequate" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2016). Woolf's commentary is calmly reflective about the issues that affect the lives of women in England. Loy comments on a woman's sexual virtue and reproduction; Woolf comments on a woman's opportunities and lack of opportunities in a patriarchal society. Loy's unconventional format makes it difficult to take her seriously. Her use of exaggerated font sizes, capitalization, and underlining, combined with her random punctuation at the ends of her thoughts, makes it difficult to focus on the message in her writing. The largest words jump off the page, demanding the reader's attention, while the words that appear in the smaller font recede into the background. The paragraph structure of Loy's work is also difficult to read, especially in her own time when readers are not used to seeing left-justified block paragraphs that modern readers often see in hypertext documents. Woolf's traditional presentation is comfortable to read. Some of her paragraphs are too long, so the reader's eyes tend to become unfocused in the middle of a paragraph. The varied sentences and common capitalization help put the reader at ease. Woolf writes in a stream-ofconsciousness style that feels as though she is having a casual conversation with her reader. Her prose uses common language that is accessible to most readers. Each writing is a valid expression of the views of its author. The style and presentation of Wool's piece gives it credibility, but the style and presentation of Loy's piece detract from its credibility. 320 A Journey Through My College Papers References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Tradition 11/25/2011 Modern poetry is influenced by the poetry of the Romantic and Victorian eras. The nature imagery of the Romantic era establishes conventions for the use of nature imagery that carry over into the twentieth century. In "Down by the Salley Gardens," Yeats writes: "In a field by the river my love and I did stand,/ ... as the grass grows on the weirs" (ll. 5-7) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2024). The image of the field suggests innocence, such as that written about in the Romantic period. The growing grass suggests nature reclaiming man's technological intrusions as the grass grows over the weirs, or dams. This also reflects the inclusion of industrial themes that appear in both the Romantic and Victorian eras. In "Tradition and the Individual Talent," Eliot writes that "the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2321). Auden's "As I Walked Out One Evening" contains nature imagery that reflects the poetry of the Romantic era. At the same time, his use of nature imagery alters the perceptions of nature imagery that were established in the past and redefines the images for the present. Where Yeats' river imagery, above, suggests innocence, Auden's river suggests the experience of maturity. He writes: "And down by the brimming river/ I heard a lover sing" (ll. 5-6) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2427). Auden's river brims with experience and emotion. He is close to his subject in the style of the Victorian era, while using imagery that echoes the Romantic period. The poets of the twentieth century write of love, fear, sadness, and loss, just as do the Romantic and the Victorian poets. Eliot writes: "Great variety is possible in the process of transmutation of emotion" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2323). Modern poets take the innocent, detached emotions of the Romantic period and the deep, personal emotions of the Victorian era and apply the emotions to the busy, chaotic, industrialized, war-torn issues and events of the twentieth century. In "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," Thomas encourages the emotion of anger in the face of death and grief when he writes: "Do not go gentle into that good night,/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light" (ll. 18-19) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2450). Thomas' rage echoes the poverty of England's children in Blake's Romantic poetry (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 90). It also reflects the sorrow about the misery and suffering of England's children in Browning's Victorian poetry (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 1079-1082). References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. The Kind Aspect of Leopold Bloom 11/28/2011 In the “Lestrygonians” section of Ulysses, Leopold Bloom appears as a man who has sympathy for the poor and who helps people in need. He is critical of the self-serving behavior of Catholic priests, and of the Catholic Church. He is disgusted by gross manners and prefers to dine in clean, decent establishments. He endures his wife’s infidelity without lashing out in anger at Undergraduate Series 321 her lover. He is a member of the Freemasons, and is a moral person. Leopold Bloom is a kind, decent, upstanding man. Bloom feels sympathy for the poor of Dublin. As he walks through the city, he sees a thin, ragged, young girl, and his mind focuses on her for a few moments. He thinks, “Good Lord, that poor child’s dress is in flitters” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2215). He notices not only the tattered condition of her clothing, but also that she is thin and hungry. Bloom expresses his sympathy for others in the way he treats the people with whom he comes in contact. When Mrs. Breen needs someone to talk to about her husband’s mental illness, Bloom takes the time to listen to her. He thinks, “Let her speak. Look straight into her eyes. I believe you. Trust me” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2219). Bloom pays attention to Mrs. Breen, meeting her eyes and letting her know by his actions that she can trust him. Bloom is recognized by other characters as a kind man. Nosey Flynn tells Davy Byrne about Bloom: “He has been known to put his hand down too to help a fellow” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2234). It is one thing for a person to perform an isolated act of kindness once in a while and another thing entirely for a person to be known in the community for helping others. The former is likely to be an aberration of behavior if the individual is not kind or helpful on a regular basis. The latter suggests that the individual is a philanthropist in ordinary life, helping others and performing acts of kindness and compassion as an expression of the individual’s personality. Flynn’s identification of Bloom as a person who is known for helping others indicates that Bloom’s personality and identity are those of a kind and compassionate man. Bloom is critical of the self-serving behavior of Catholic priests, and of the Catholic Church. He considers it ludicrous that Catholic families are encouraged by the Church to have large families as a display of their obedience to the church. When Bloom sees the daughter of Stephen Daedalus, he is reminded of this Catholic tradition and he thinks, “Birth every year almost. That’s in their theology or the priest won’t give the poor woman the confession, the absolution. Increase and multiply. Did you ever hear such an idea?” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2214). These thoughts indicate that Bloom disagrees with the practice of raising huge families for religious reasons. The practice of having many children serves the church, not the family, in Bloom’s time, producing many new members to make the church grow, while making it difficult for families to feed so many children. Bloom views this idea as wrong. Bloom is a decent, discerning person who is disgusted by gross dining habits. He prefers clean establishments where people are respectful and courteous. When he enters a restaurant where men are eating gluttonously, he finds an excuse to leave without eating: “Smells of men. His gorge rose … Not here. Don’t see him. Out. I hate dirty eaters” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2228). Bloom finds his way to Davy Byrne’s restaurant, where he is able to relax and dine without being disgusted by slovenly customers. His sense of decency and good manners are aspects of his personality that contribute to his identity as a decent, upstanding man. Bloom is aware that his wife is having an affair with another man. Bloom does not rage in his mind about being cuckolded; he worries that his wife’s lover might infect her with a venereal disease, but he “puts the thought from him as incredible” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2216). A man is expected to be furious when his wife is unfaithful, but Bloom appears to be resigned to his situation. Bloom is not unfeeling about his wife’s infidelity: “A warm shock of air heat of mustard hanched on Mr. Bloom’s heart” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2230) Bloom’s reaction comes when he realizes that it is time for his wife to be meeting her lover. Even when Bloom encounters his wife’s lover in the street, however, his decent and kind character makes him avoid a confrontation instead of attacking his opponent: “Straw hat in sunlight … It is. It is” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2238). Bloom recognizes his wife’s lover and “tries to avoid an encounter” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2238). A less upstanding man would have confronted the lover and prevented the meeting with his wife, but Bloom’s character is such that he accepts what 322 A Journey Through My College Papers is happening and avoids making a scene that will make the situation worse for everyone involved. This is an act of kindness toward his wife and her lover. Flynn identifies Bloom as a member of the Free and Accepted Order of Freemasons: “He’s in the craft … Ancient free and accepted order. Light, life and love, by God” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2234). The Freemasons have a bad reputation in Catholic Ireland in Bloom’s time, but members of the Order are good, moral, upstanding men. No man who is not decent and moral is allowed to be a member, and membership guarantees the character of a member. As a Freemason, Bloom can be trusted to keep his word and to safeguard confidences, and to serve the good of mankind. Leopold Bloom is kind and sympathetic to those in need. He is a decent, upstanding man, who is recognized in his community for the quality of his character. He disapproves of the excesses of the Catholic Church and of gluttonous people. He accepts wrongs against him in order to avoid causing harm to others. He is trustworthy and moral. All of the various aspects of Bloom’s character contribute to his identity as a kind, compassionate man. References Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. English Poetry from Around the World 12/1/2011 Claude McKay's "Old England" can be taken two ways: either it is a sincere tribute to England as the center of the world for history, honor, and grandeur; or it is a sarcastic comment on the ancient sites of the center of a collapsing empire. I see the sarcastic side in McKay's descriptions of St. Paul's Cathedral and of City Temple: "I ... would hear some of de great/ Learnin' comin' from de bishops, preachin' relics of old fait';/ ... I'd go to de City Temple, where de old fait' is a wreck,/ An' de parson is a-preachin' views dat most folks will not tek" (ll. 9-14) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2463). This doesn't sound like the admiration of a loyal colonialist, but rather like the derision of a former colonial for the empire that no longer rules him. McKay seems to see England as a sort of museum that isn't relevant to the modern world, full of grand relics of the past. Philip Larkin's poetry is filled with disillusionment. In "Church Going," he expresses disillusionment with the church: "Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,/ And always end much at a loss like this" (ll. 19-20) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2567). In "Talking in Bed," he expresses disillusionment with intimate relationships: "Talking in bed ought to be easiest,/ ... Yet more and more time passes silently./ ... It becomes still more difficult to find/ Words at once true and kind" (ll. 1-10) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2569). "This Be The Verse" expresses the harm that each generation does to its next generation, and "Aubade" expresses the slow and steady approach of death. Larkin's poetry says that his parents fail him, religion fails him, his youth fails him by passing away, and death fails him by refusing to pass by. In all, the world Larkin sees is bitter and depressing. Thom Gunn writes about his life in San Francisco, and about death and AIDS. The leather jacket and tattoos in "Black Jackets" represent a rite of passage into his new society (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2583). Both "Still Life" and "The Missing" consider Gunn's encounters with death, and the end of "The Missing" suggests that his encounter with AIDS might have been very personal: "Trapped in unwholeness, I find no escape/ Back to the play of constant give and change" (ll. 27-28) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2586). I wonder whether he feels trapped Undergraduate Series 323 because his friends are dying of AIDS, or because he has contracted the disease. Gunn's biography in the San Francisco Chronicle does not clear up the matter, reporting that "[a]n autopsy was performed and a medical examiner's report dated Sept. 17, 2004, lists 'acute polysubstance abuse' as the cause of death" (Guthmann, 2005, para. 8). Whether Gunn had AIDS or not, his world is his friends in San Francisco and the realities of disease and death. Seamus Heaney's poetry describes a world of domestic scenes. In "Digging," he illustrates that he has traded his traditional paternal work as a potato farmer for his own work as a writer. He has exchanged his shovel for a pen (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 2824-2825). In "Clearances," Heaney reveals vignettes of his relationship with his mother, even admitting to an almost oedipal relationship when he mentions "our Sons and Lovers phase" (l. 82) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2835). Eavan Boland's poetry is filled with feelings of displacement. Her world is one in which she has no firm anchor. Her feeling is probably the result of her frequent moves during childhood as the daughter of a diplomat. In "Fond Memory," she writes: "I thought this is my country, was, will be again,/ ... And I was wrong" (ll. 16-18) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2849). In "The Lost Land," she writes: "I see myself ... saying all the names I know for a lost land" (ll. 31-34) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2852). Boland does not feel that she belongs to any land because she lived in several lands during her childhood. Salman Rushdie's magical miracle story is told in the same Oriental tradition as the "Thousand and One Nights" and the stories of Aladdin. Wrongdoing and greed result in the moneychanger being compelled to become strictly observant of religious laws. In the end, nearly everyone dies as a result of doing the wrong things, regardless of the reasons for their actions. His is a moral story about greed, deceit, and thievery, and it presents a world that contains too many of these wrongs. The powerful man seeks to collect more power. The thief cripples his children so they can beg in the street. The daughter shows her face in public, which is unacceptable in her culture. These worlds are different from those of earlier British poets because the earlier poets are firmly grounded in the land, history, and traditions of England. The modern writers have lost stability as the British Empire collapses around them. Earlier writers feel secure in their culture, but later writers are forced to redefine culture in their lives. World views of disillusionment, of the transitory nature of life, and of not belonging all come out of the shifting social realities of the growth and decline of empire. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Guthmann, E. (2005, April 26). A poet's life part two: As friends died of AIDS, Thom Gunn stayed healthy -- until his need to play hard finally killed him. San Francisco Chronicle [Electronic version]. Retrieved from http://articles.sfgate.com/2005-0426/entertainment/17368566_1_mike-kitay-thom-gunn-bill-schuessler/5 Process 12/1/2011 After reading the introduction and footnotes, I do not see that the writing process has changed significantly since the time of Blake, except for the introduction of the computer. For writing that is done on paper, the process of crossing out and replacing words, lines, and stanzas in poetry, and sentences and paragraphs in prose, remains the same. I tend to prefer manuscript 324 A Journey Through My College Papers composition, and many of my personal and academic writings look like the examples in our text before I commit them to the computer. It does appear that the timing of writing revisions has changed over time. "The selections from William Blake ... [etc.], are drafts that were written, emended, crossed out, and rewritten in the heat of first invention; while poems by ... Yeats [, etc.,] are shown in successive stages of revision over an extended period of time" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. A1). The earlier poets wrote and revised their work quickly, with passion for the writing. The later poets wrote and revised their work slowly and deliberately, sometimes over a period of years, to produce final works that were refined and perfected. It appears that earlier poets revised their work to use more elaborate vocabulary; the later poets, such as Yeats, revised their work because "occasional prosaic words give the impression of an active man speaking" (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. A20). As society became industrialized and left the Romantic period behind, poets incorporated more practical language in their poetry, editing out some older, more courtly vocabulary. Computers offer a change in the way writings are composed and edited. A writer can type a composition directly into a word processing program. Words can be changed, added, deleted, or rearranged with a few clicks of a mouse. The original form of the piece is not seen after it is edited, and it is usually ready for immediate publication when the author is done. Spellcheck and grammar-check further ease the writing process, and most computers have on-board dictionaries and thesauruses and access to vast on-line resources. The word-processing capabilities of our on-line classroom are a ready illustration of the writing aids that are available to modern writers. Still more radical are voice-to-text programs that transcribe the author's spoken words into text files that can be revised after the fact. As a personal note, I'm a paper-bound writer. My best work is composed with a ballpoint pen, not with a keyboard. There's a sense of process in crossing out and inserting words, and in arrows and margin notes. Manuscript writing forces me to slow down and interact with my writing. I fear that future writers will lose that sense of connectedness as pen and paper are pushed to the wayside. References: Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Religion and Myth in English Poetry 12/5/2011 The poetry of William Blake and of John Keats is representative of the Romantic period of English poetry, just as the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and of Alfred Lord Tennyson represents the Victorian era and the poetry of William Butler Yeats represents Modern poetry. The poetry of Blake and of Keats expresses the dichotomy between the innocence of youth and the experience of life. Blake uses traditional symbols from Christian religion to express innocence and purity, and Keats uses a combination of Judeo-Christian religious imagery and Roman mythological imagery to express experience. In the Victorian era, Browning uses Blake’s religious imagery to express the premature experience of children in industrialized England, and Tennyson uses Arthurian mythological imagery to express the loss of innocence. In the Modern age, Yeats uses imagery from Greek and Irish mythology and from Judeo-Christian religious beliefs to express sadness at the loss of beauty and innocence in the world. From the work of Blake and Keats to the work of Yeats, the use of religious and mythological imagery begins with Undergraduate Series 325 images of hope and faith in the Romantic era, becomes more intellectual and conflicts with science in the Victorian period, and passes through the metaphysical to focus on the sadness of loss in the twentieth century. In the Romantic era, Blake uses traditional Christian imagery as signals for his readers. Nicholas O. Warner (1982) writes: “Blake uses traditional motifs as thematic signals to his readerviewers” (p. 220). The lamb image is a familiar Christian religious motif that will evoke innocence and purity in the reader’s imagination. Throughout Blake’s Songs of Innocence, the traditional image of a lamb represents the purity and innocence of Jesus Christ, who is the Lamb of God. In "Introduction," Blake writes: "On a cloud I saw a child, / And he laughing said to me, / 'Pipe a song about a Lamb'" (ll. 3-5) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 81). In this poem, the child sitting on the cloud is a familiar image of the cherubic angels in Michelangelo’s paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The angelic child refers to Jesus Christ as a Lamb. Blake’s readers recognize these images from common religious stories in the English church. Blake repeats the Christ reference in "The Lamb" when he writes: "Little Lamb, who made thee? / ... He is callèd by thy name, / For he calls himself a Lamb" (ll. 1, 13-14) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 83-84). This time, Blake connects children to Christ by first addressing a child as a lamb and then identifies the child’s creator as a Lamb. In Blake’s time, children in literature are assumed to be innocent. Again, in “Holy Thursday,” Blake connects children to Christ by referring to children as lambs when he writes: “The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs, / Thousands of little boys & girls raising their innocent hands” (ll. 7-8) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p.86). The children are raising their hands in praise of Christ on the day that celebrates Jesus’ last supper with his disciples before his crucifixion. The use of religious imagery in Blake’s poetry offers a vision of hope and faith. The innocence of lambs presents a hopeful view of a world where there is goodness and purity. The representation of Jesus Christ as the Good Shepherd in the lamb images offers spiritual support for the reader through Christian symbolism of salvation. Keats uses Roman mythological imagery to represent the harsh realities of nature, and he uses Biblical imagery to offer the possibility of goodness and purity through Judeo-Christian religious faith. James D. Boulger (1961) writes: “For Keats it was a quest of a special kind to create a symbolic world in which the qualities of the spirit modify harsh facts of nature, yet where the colors, sounds and attitudes of the natural world are the realities of the poetic vision” (p. 244). Keats creates his symbolic world by using themes from Roman mythology and from the Bible. The river Lethe, the dryads, and the Roman goddess Flora evoke classical images of, respectively, forgetfulness, the beauty of trees and forests, and flowers. In “Ode to a Nightingale,” he writes: “One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk” (l. 4) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 903). The river Lethe is the place in Hades where the dead bathe to forget their mortal lives. Keats is writing about taking opiates to forget the experience of life. He uses additional Roman references to describe the pleasant flavor of the wine that he drinks when he writes: “That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, / …Tasting of Flora and the country green, / … Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene” (ll. 7-16) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 903). He describes the happiness of the Dryad, who is the Roman tree spirit, and the beauty of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers. The Hippocrene is a reference to the waters of inspiration, presumably as a reference to his inspiration as a poet. In “Ode on Melancholy,” Keats writes: “No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist/ Wolf’sbane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine” (ll. 1-2) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 907). In this passage, he again invokes the river of forgetfulness, but this time he cautions not to forget the experience of life. He warns not to take Wolf’s-bane, which is a poison that will cause the permanent forgetfulness of death. Keats also refers to Judeo-Christian religion in “Ode to a Nightingale” when he writes: “Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, / She stood in tears amid the alien corn” (ll. 326 A Journey Through My College Papers 66-67) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 904). Ruth is an Old Testament heroine who gathered barley in the fields of Boaz to support her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi. She gathered the fallen bits of grain that would otherwise be wasted and took them home to feed Naomi. Boaz was merciful to Ruth, and ordered that handfuls of barley be dropped for her to gather as she worked. Ruth’s is powerful, and is familiar to contemporary readers, who recognize the sacrifice Ruth makes by remaining with Naomi when Ruth is not by law or custom obligated to do so. The use of religious and mythological imagery in Keats’ poetry offers a mixed vision of hope and faith and of a desire to escape the experience of the world. The beauty of forests and flowers present a hopeful view of a world where there is goodness in nature. The reference to the story of Ruth offers the reader a reminder of the goodness of human nature through the story of faith and self-sacrifice. The references to Lethe and to Wolf’s-bane as instruments of forgetfulness are reminders that experience can be painful, and that a person might wish to forget life’s experience and return to a state of innocence. In the Victorian period, Browning uses Christian religious references in her poetry, echoing Blake’s use of lamb imagery to represent children who suffer poverty and misery under Victorian industrialization. In "The Cry of the Children," Browning writes: “We know no other words except ‘Our Father.’/ And we think that, in some pause of angels’ song, / God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather, / And hold both within His right hand which is strong. / ‘Our Father!’ If He heard us, He would surely/ (For they call Him good and mild)/ Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, / ‘Come and rest with me, my child’” (ll. 117-124) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 1081-1082). The children know the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus teaches to his disciples in the New Testament, but they do not know the full prayer. They cling to those words as a protection from the misery that they suffer in the poverty of industrialized England. Browning echoes Blake's imagery of the innocence of lambs when she writes: "The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, / ... But the young, young children, O my brothers, / They are weeping bitterly" (ll. 5-10) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1079). The children in Victorian poetry are not portrayed as innocent lambs as they are in Romantic poetry. Instead, Browning draws a distinction between the innocent lambs in a pastoral setting and the experienceravaged children in urban settings. The children are no longer wrapped in the safety of their faith, but they cling to the edges of their faith for release from suffering. Browning shows that the children are weary of their lives of poverty and suffering when she writes of the children praying that God will pluck them from life as one might gather flowers, and that God will call the children to rest with him in death. This is a change from the comforting faith and joy of religious imagery in Romantic poetry. The Victorian image is not of happiness on earth based on religious faith, but on relief in death and eternal life based on God’s mercy. By placing the image of lambs close to the reference to children, Browning causes her reader to imagine that the children should be innocent lambs. That the children are weeping with premature experience reflects back again to Blake's writings on innocence and experience. Tennyson uses the Arthurian myth imagery of Camelot and images from Greek mythology to illustrate weariness with life, and to present an escape from the trials of life in response to a desire for rest in death. In “The Lady of Shalott,” Tennyson writes: “There she weaves by night and day/ A magic web with colors gay./ She has heard a whisper say,/ A curse is on her if she stay/ To look down to Camelot./ … She looked down to Camelot./ Out flew the web and floated wide;/ The mirror cracked from side to side; / ‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried/ The Lady of Shalott” (ll. 37-41, 113-117) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, pp. 1115-1117). Tennyson uses mythological images of magic and of curses to weave a picture of a long lost age of mystery. Tennyson uses specific images of the legends of Camelot, especially the character of Sir Lancelot, to draw the reader into the world that is outside the tower of the Lady of Shalott. The reader finds an escape from the harsh realities of Victorian industrial life in the fairy tale magic of Tennyson’s Undergraduate Series 327 poetry. When the title character breaks the rules and looks out at the world of Camelot, her existence is shattered and she dies in a boat, floating on the current of the river into Camelot. In “The Lotos-Eaters,” “Tennyson expands Homer’s brief account into an elaborate picture of weariness and the desire for rest and death” (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1119). Tennyson’s treatment of Homer’s mythological story from The Odyssey reflects the weariness and suffering of the working poor of Victorian England, who seek an escape from their suffering. Tennyson writes: “Why are we weighed upon with heaviness, / And utterly consumed with sharp distress, / While all things else have rest from weariness? / … ‘There is no joy but calm!’ --/ Why should we only toil” (ll. 57-69) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 1120). In Homer’s story, Odysseus’ crew eats the lotus and loses all volition to do anything but stay and keep eating the lotus. The crew is stuck in what will be an endless cycle of doing the same thing day after day if they are not forced to leave the island. Tennyson compares that experience with the experience of Victorian workers, whose lives are defined by constant labor and unchangingly wearisome conditions. The industrialization of the Victorian age brings suffering to the poor as lower-class men, women, and children are forced to work excessively long hours under grueling conditions to support industrialization. Readers seek an escape from misery, and Tennyson’s poetry offers the spiritual escape of Arthurian mythology and the image of the physical escape of rest in death. In the Twentieth Century, Yeats' poetry is filled with both Judeo-Christian religious images and Greek and Irish mythological images in an attempt to find the religious sense that has been lost in modern times. Yeats’ poetry expresses sadness and weariness in the modern world, in which the age of myths and legends has passed into the background, and in which the institutional church is no longer the driving force in English lives. Laura Marvel (1986) writes: "Yeats himself says in A Vision that his mind 'had been full of Blake from boyhood up and [he] saw the world as a conflict -- Spectre and Emanation -- and could distinguish between a contrary and a negation'" (p. 95). Yeats’ poetry is influenced by the Romantic poetry of William Blake, and by Blake’s exploration of the contraries of innocence and experience through religious and natural imagery. In “The Stolen Child,” Yeats writes: “Come away, O human child!/ To the waters and the wild/ With a faery, hand in hand,/ For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand” (ll. 912) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2023). He uses the Irish mythological image of faeries to represent the innocence of childhood in the same way that Blake uses the Christian religious imagery of lambs. The poem echoes the Victorian sense of sadness in the world as the faery offers to lead the child away from the misery of modern life. Yeats refers to water as an escape from pain; water is a symbol of life and restoration in Judeo-Christian religious beliefs and in many world mythologies. Calling the child to the waters is an invitation to be cleansed of the sorrow of the world and to be healed and restored by the life-giving properties of the water. Water cleanses original sin in Christian baptism, and the invitation to the water may also be an invitation to return Christian religious practices and beliefs, in which the faery may take the role of an angel or of the Holy Spirit in restoring humanity to a sacred innocence. In “The Rose of the World,” Yeats writes: “Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam, / And Usna’s children died” (ll. 4-5) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2024). In this passage, Yeats combines the Greek mythology of Troy with Irish mythology of Usna or Usnach, the father of Ulster warriors in Irish legends, to reflect the loss of beauty in the world. The city of Troy is destroyed when Menelaus and Odysseus use the Trojan horse to retrieve the beautiful Helen from her abductor, Paris, in a well-known and popular story. The destruction of Troy represents a loss of great beauty in the world as a result of human greed and lust. The children of Usna are killed by Conchubar after they abduct the beautiful Deirdre in a popular Irish story that parallels Homer’s story of Troy. Richard Fallis (1976) writes: “The Keatsian poet remains, as in Yeats's striking image of Keats himself … For Yeats, obsessed with the business of making unities, neither detachable ideas 328 A Journey Through My College Papers nor fragmentary beauty could be enough. But disunity and fragmentation were, he realized, essential hallmarks of Victorian middle-class culture" (pp. 91-92). Yeats recognizes that the Modern age requires solid, definable, immediate images to replace the more ethereal Romantic images of Keats. In “The Sorrow of Love,” Yeats writes: “Doomed like Odysseus and the laboring ships/ And proud as Priam murdered with his peers” (ll. 7-8) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2025). Yeats refers to a fragment of Greek mythology in Homer’s The Odyssey that speaks of doom and murder as the sorrow of lost love. He compares love to the ships that are destroyed in the myth, saying that love is likewise doomed to destruction. This reflects the losses of his period as the world enters the twentieth century. Yeats writes the final version of the poem in 1925, amid the emotional losses of the First World War. In “Adam’s Curse,” Yeats writes: “It’s certain there is no fine thing/ Since Adam’s fall but needs much laboring” (ll. 21-22) (Greenblatt, et. al., 2006, p. 2028). This verse recalls references to labor and toil in Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters.” It expresses the disunity between the beauty of fine things and the meanness of physical labor. Yeats illustrates that beauty cannot exist without labor since mankind lost its innocence in Adam’s experience with the forbidden fruit in the Biblical account in Genesis. The title of the poem itself recalls religious ideas, as the story of Adam and Eve in Eden is familiar to his readers Yeats’ poetry is based on the foundations of Romantic and Victorian poetry, especially on the poetry of William Blake. He takes the pastoral nature images of Christ and transforms them into Irish mythological images of faeries in order to recapture the reader’s imagination in the wake of the Great War. Yeats’ modern poetic images reflect earlier symbols from popular myths, legends, and religious teachings in ways that make the images accessible to modern readers. The use of pastoral, Christian and Judeo-Christian religious imagery and classical Roman mythological imagery in Romantic poetry presents both a vision of hope and faith and a desire to escape the experience of the world. Victorian Christian religious imagery and Arthurian and Greek mythological imagery are transform the simple Romantic dichotomy of innocence and experience into a more intellectual form that resonates with the scientific and industrialized thinking of the Victorian era, displaying the suffering of industrialized poverty and the desire to escape misery in death. Modern poetry echoes Romantic and Victorian poetry in its use of Christian and Judeo-Christian religious imagery and of images from world mythology to represent sadness and weariness with life in the Modern age. From the pastoral nature of life in the Romantic poetry of Blake and Keats, through Browning’s and Tennyson’s poetry about the industrialization of the Victorian era, to Yeats’ search for meaning in life in the period around World War I, themes of religious and mythological images and symbols permeate British poetry. As the world progresses through the social unrests and upheavals of the twentieth century into the worries and struggles of the twenty-first century, images from many world religions and mythologies continue to express the emotions of modern poets. Mankind creates religions and myths to express and to explain the world, and to offer lessons and hope to the world. The poetry of the future is sure to follow in the path of the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern poets in using religious and mythological images to speak to the world. References Boulger, J.D. (1961). Keats’ symbolism. ELH, 28(3), 244-259. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2872068 Fallis, R. (1976). Yeats and the reinterpretation of Victorian poetry. Victorian Poetry, 14(2), 89100. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40002375 Greenblatt, S., et al. (Eds.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol.2). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Undergraduate Series 329 Marvel, L. (1986). Blake and Yeats: Visions of apocalypse. College Literature, 13(1), 95105. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25111689 Warner, N.O. (1982). The iconic mode of William Blake. Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, 36(4), 219-234. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1347359 ENG 325: Intermediate Composition Writing Competition 12/6/2011 One of the most significant events in my high school career was my participation in the Vermont Honors Competition for Excellence in Writing. The competition was sponsored by the University of Vermont, and was held for the first time when I was a sophomore at Mount Anthony Union High School. The competition consisted of three levels: local, regional, and state. The first level was held in the fall. Each student had to write an impromptu essay in class. We were not told at that point that we were participating in a competition, so I thought nothing of it. We were given the subject for the essays just moments before we began to write. I don’t remember what the subject was for that essay. At the end of the class, we were told that our essays would be entered in the state writing competition. I was a little bit nervous upon hearing that, and worried whether I had written well enough, but I was used to getting A’s on my papers, so it was only a slight bit of anxiety, and it didn’t last long. We didn’t hear anything more about the essays or the competition for several weeks. With everything else I had to think about, I forgot about it entirely during that time. Then, one morning, the winner for each of the four grades was announced over the public address system. I knew I was a competent writer, but I did not have a lot of confidence in myself. As a result, I was very surprised to hear my name announced. I sat in home room, staring at the speaker on the wall for several moments, unable to think or speak, until the bell shattered the moment. It only took a few minutes for surprise to be replaced by pride and satisfaction. Although I would have denied it if I had been asked, I knew that I would have been very disappointed if anyone else had won the competition in my grade. I have always been a perfectionist, and it would have crushed me if I had not won. In February, I went to the high school in Randolph for the regional level of the competition. There were five schools in our region. It was a bit unsettling to be in an unfamiliar school, surrounded by students I didn’t know. I didn’t even know the other participants from my own school. I had been calm and confident up until that point, but now my stomach began churning, and there was not quite enough air. The students from the other schools seemed to be larger than life. I was sure they were all smarter than I was. I’m sure we only had to wait a few minutes for the competition to begin, but those minutes passed like hours. I was sure that I would fail miserably. I concentrated on taking each new breath, hoping I would not embarrass myself by being sick there in the hall. We were finally ushered into a classroom with twenty empty desks. It was time to begin. Small, blue composition books and sharpened pencils were handed out, and we were each given a sealed envelope containing the subject for our essay. My hands trembled as I tore open my envelope. The sophomore topic was the person in history we admired the most, and why we admired him or her. I thought about it for several minutes, near panic as no good candidates came 330 A Journey Through My College Papers to mind. I considered and discarded several possibilities. I finally decided to write about Abraham Lincoln. I had one hour to complete my essay, beginning with the moment I had opened my envelope. Once I started writing, all of my nervousness and insecurity melted away, and I wrote steadily and confidently. I finished my essay about forty-five minutes into the allotted time, and turned in my booklet. Once again, there was a wait of several weeks between the writing and the announcement of the winners. This time, however, I never forgot about the competition. Each morning, I listened carefully to the announcements, hoping to hear the results, yet dreading that I would hear a name other than my own. One morning, the announcement finally came. I had won the regional level, and would be going on to the final competition at the state level. My fear that I would embarrass myself by not winning the regional level of the competition evaporated as relief at learning that I had won washed over me. I released the breath I had not realized I was holding. My relief was quickly replaced by pride and happiness as I received congratulations from nearly everyone I passed, with the feeling that I deserved nothing less. I had succeeded, and everyone around me knew it. The local and regional competitions were just a foretaste of the real competition. The final level of the competition was held on May 9, 1985, at the University of Vermont. I was a bundle of nerves for the three hours that it took for my English teacher, Ms. Woodard, to drive me north to face the four other top sophomore writers in Vermont. I knew it was a very important day, no matter how the competition ended. In consideration of the day’s importance, I dressed in my most mature outfit: a peach linen skirt suit, a white blouse with a ruffled front and ruffled cuffs, and high-heeled pumps. Although I looked very grown-up on the outside, I felt very young and unsure of myself inside. The final level of the competition was held in the morning, and consisted of two essays, with a very brief break between them. Once again, we each received a blue composition book, several sharpened pencils, and a sealed envelope. We were given one hour in which to write. I tore open the envelope and read my first topic. I had to write an essay comparing the views of teenagers with those of adults. My essay, which I titled “Teenagers Versus Adults,” took me about forty minutes to write. As I began writing, all of my doubts vanished. As I had done in Randolph, I wrote quickly and steadily. When I turned in my booklet, I was confident that I had given my best effort. I sat quietly, watching other students finish their essays as I waited for the break. The second half of the morning was very much like the first half. My second topic was to decide whether or not fantasy or imagination was important, and to support my position. I wrote “The Importance of Fantasy” in just over thirty minutes. When I sat down after turning in my booklet, a senior boy whispered to me to ask why I had rushed through without trying. I just smiled and sat quietly until the time was up. Ms. Woodard and I had lunch and walked around the town during the afternoon. I was very, very worried, but I tried to act like I was relaxed. I couldn’t concentrate on my conversation with my teacher, or on my surroundings. Evening finally came. There was an elegant banquet before the awards ceremony. The lights were low, and the tables were draped with real tablecloths. I hardly tasted the food that was served, and have no memory of anything that I ate. The air crackled with expectancy and anxiety. Conversations seemed stiff and unnatural, and laughter seemed just a bit too loud. By the time the dessert dishes were cleared, and the competition officials stepped up to the podium, the air practically sang with tension. I could hardly breathe when they started announcing the winners. They started with the fourth runner up in the twelfth grade. There were cheers and applause as each name was called, Undergraduate Series 331 and each student made his or her way through the crowd of tables up to the podium. Finally, they reached the tenth grade, and I listened anxiously for my name. I was relieved when I was not the fourth runner up. I felt dizzy after I was not called for the third runner up. My stomach clenched into knots when I was not the second runner up. I was paralyzed as the official opened the card with the name of the first runner up. I strained forward, sure it would be me, but hoping it would not be. I screamed out loud when my name was not called. I felt like my entire body had just been released from suffocating bonds. Ms. Woodard and I hugged each other with tears on our cheeks. When my name was called as the tenth grade winner a few moments later, my joy and triumph were dizzying. I hardly felt the floor under my feet as I went up to receive my certificate and a check for $1,500.00. I heard the applause as no more than a dim murmur in my ears. I was trembling as I shook hands with the president of the university. A reporter for the Burlington Free Press took my picture, and I was sure life couldn’t possibly be any better. I don’t remember hearing the ninth grade winners announced. Nothing else mattered, now that I had won. I bounced in my seat as I waited for the ceremony to end so I could call my mother with the news. Ms. Woodard drove me home that night, and I got there in time to watch myself on the late news with my mother and grandmother. It had been an amazing day, and sharing it with my family was the perfect ending. Writing a Final Paper 12/8/2011 The last fairly long paper that I completed was the final paper for the class that ended this past Monday. The last long project that I worked on is a personal project that is still in progress. It is a memory book for my sons, and I am writing it because I fear losing the ability to share my memories and family stories with them later, in case my father’s Alzheimer’s disease is hereditary. My methods for the two projects are quite different, so I will explain each project. The intended audience for the academic paper was my course instructor, and I also considered my classmates as a reasonable audience group for the piece. The intended audience for my personal project is my sons, once they are adults, and my potential grandchildren and future descendants. When I write, I rarely share my in-progress work, so no one has contributed to the development of my projects, except for the instructor’s feedback on the outline of the academic paper. The academic paper was a discussion of how religious and mythological imagery was used in Romantic, Victorian, and early twentieth century British poetry. For this paper, I began by “practice[ing] critical reading” (Axelrod, et. al., 2011, p. 9). I highlighted instances of the specific imagery in the texts, using margin notes to remind myself why I had highlighted those lines when I went back to write my paper. About the second week of the course, I used the Ashford Online Library to look up sources for my paper. For each source, I headed a WordPad document with the bibliography entry, then pasted selected quotes and page numbers in the document. An outline for the paper was due in week three of the course, and I assembled the outline on the due date. I pasted my bibliography entries from my note documents, and I pasted my selected quotes from my outside sources and from the textbook into my outline. Over the next two weeks, I filled out the outline as we read more material for the class. I didn’t convert the outline to a prose draft until the morning of the paper’s due date. I made minor revisions to the sentences and paragraphs from my outline to streamline the language, but I did not make major changes. I did expand on the thoughts from the outline, adding an introduction to the thesis statement, and adding a summary 332 A Journey Through My College Papers and synthesis of the body paragraphs to the conclusion. This is my usual method for a formal literary analysis paper. The personal project has been a recursive effort. It has been “a fairly chaotic process” (Axelrod, et. al., 2011, p. 12). I started it about ten years ago. I began by dumping my memories to paper without filtering myself. Each discrete memory began on a new sheet of paper; some memories were very short, taking less than a page each, and others used several pages each. As I wrote, if another memory tried to surface, I jotted a note on a growing list of writing prompts. When I had several hundred pages written, I went through and marked the top right corner of each memory with a number representing my age at the time the event took place; I had to guess at the ages for some of the memories. I then shuffled the pages into something resembling chronological order. I then typed the entire collection into a Word document. As I typed, I revised the diction of the pieces, correcting sloppy spelling and grammar. Sometimes, I expanded on particular descriptions, added the proper names of people in the stories, or trimmed out extraneous bits of prose. It took moths to type what I had already written, and I was still writing more memories. I went back to add the new memories in the proper order in the Word document. I am still adding memories, and I have added a table of contents that updates itself, thanks to the contents option in Word. I also added photos to the book after I typed it, using photo captions to add further details to the book. Many of the stories in this project are important to me, but they are inappropriate for children to read for various reasons, so this document remains locked. I go back and revise some of the stories from time to time, expanding descriptions and details as I can remember them to fill out the sketchy, original texts. I have also added journal and blog excerpts and certain emails to the text as my memories have begun to catch up with my current life. The memories remain discrete vignettes of my life, and I do not plan to convert them to a straight narrative with smooth transitions; each memory has a separate title and an introduction of its own. Eventually, this project will have a detailed index. It is an ongoing project, with no clearly projected completion date. References Axelrod, R.B., Cooper, C.R., & Warriner, A. M. (2011). Reading critically writing well (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Tipping the Tank 12/8/2011 One of my most exciting memories took place when I was seventeen years old, during my first encampment as a cadet member of the Civil Air Patrol. I had the opportunity to drive the big Army tanks at Underhill Firing Range in northern Vermont. It should have been one of my proudest moments, but events did not play out as I had expected them to do. I didn't mean to do anything wrong, but I panicked under stress. As a result of one afternoon’s misadventure, ours was the last group of cadets that was allowed to drive the tanks. It was the end of June, and it was hot even at the Canadian border. Sweat soaked our olive drab uniforms in the afternoon sunshine. Despite the heat, out group of over a hundred teenagers was in high spirits. We laughed and chatted while the soldiers in charge of the tanks divided us into groups, with just a few cadets in each tank. My friends, Vicky, Art, Missy, and Chris, were in the tank that I was driving. I had been in Civil Air Patrol for a little over a year, and I shivered in awed excitement at the idea of actually driving the tank. I climbed into the cramped driver’s seat of the tank with a bewildering array of levers where I had expected to find pedals and a steering wheel. It was terrifying and exhilarating at the Undergraduate Series 333 same time. The rest of the group dropped through the hatch at the top of the tank into the dark, confining body of the machine. The voice of an instructor from the Vermont National Guard crackled in my ear muff-like headphones as he guided me with voice commands to start driving the tank around the dirt track. All was going well as I drove confidently on the flat, dirt track until we came to a goodsized hill on the far side of the course. I started to guide the tank up the hill, and the instructor shouted at me to get up more speed. Without enough speed, we would never get up the hill. “More speed! More speed! Faster! Faster!” I began to be flustered under the verbal barrage as I gave the tank more or more gas and we rumbled upward and upward. Suddenly, we reached the apex of the hill. With horror, I realized that it was not the rolling sort of hill I was accustomed to, but a huge pyramid of earth. The tank crested the hill and plunged down the other side, no longer under my control. Ever obedient to gravity, the tank continued to accelerate as it hurtled down the hill. The instructor frantically yelled at me. Panicking, I moved levers, screaming into my microphone that I didn't know how to slow it down. I had the terrible realization that while I knew how to make the tank go, I had never been taught to make it stop. Do you remember Sir Isaac Newton? He said that a body in motion tends to stay in motion. The part of the law that everyone forgets is that it is only true unless the body is acted upon by an outside force. I had no idea which lever was the brake. I was frighteningly sure that the tank was going to stay in motion. Then we were acted upon. Rather, we acted upon something much bigger than we were. Either way, we stopped. Suddenly. Jarringly. The tank stood on its nose, with its tracks spinning idly in the air. I was dazed from the abrupt cessation of motion. I was aware of a lot of terrified screaming, most of it in my headset and some of it in the steel compartment behind me. At the bottom of the steep hill was a large, exposed piece of bedrock. It was this expanse of native granite that had stopped our headlong plunge. A great many soldiers ran across the driving course and tipped the tank back onto its treads. When the tank was finally righted, the soldiers determined that it was largely undamaged, and I drove it very slowly to the parking area. In the aftermath of my personal disaster, I felt the sweat of panic cool on my clammy skin inside my clinging tee shirt. I was humiliated. My face glowed scarlet from more than just the sun. As though one adventure would not suffice for the day, the soldiers shuffled us into an Armored Personnel Carrier for another trip around the track. Vicky got to drive this time, and the rest of our group piled into the back. We sat shoulder-to-shoulder on a hard, vinyl-covered bench in the close, windowless compartment. Chris was the closet to the front of the vehicle, followed by Missy, Art, and me. I was vaguely aware of the APC’s movement up the hill, but the ponderous vehicle moved so smoothly that we hardly felt it in our steel cocoon. I was jarred to full awareness when we were all thrown forward against the front wall, which had suddenly become the floor. We landed in a pile, arms and legs tangled as we all thrashed to right ourselves. Vicky had repeated my accident on the rock at the bottom of the hill. The soldiers came out again and tipped the vehicle off the rock again, laughing at the unlikely repetition. Vicky drove back to the parking area, where a medic checked us all out. Chris, who had been at the bottom of the thrashing pile in the passenger compartment, had a broken arm. Everyone else was fine, except for a bit of humiliation for Vicky and for me. 334 A Journey Through My College Papers Explaining Concepts 12/15/2011 Recently, I had a discussion with my mother in which we each had a very different definition of a concept that is familiar to everyone. She was upset because she saw in my wedding booklet that I wrote that I have six siblings. She was outraged that I would consider my father’s five step-children to be my siblings, and she said that my family loyalty was askew because I do not consider my one full sister to be my only sibling. I had never anticipated the need to explain to my mother my concept of family, but I was faced with that situation. She also berated me for acknowledging my children’s half-siblings (the children of their father and step-mother) as their siblings because she said their siblings could only be my children, not children of their father. I was forced to analyze my own assumptions about the concept of family, and to rapidly analyze what I was discovering about her concept of the same thing. “Assumptions … influence our opinions and judgments by leading us to value some things and devalue others” (Axelrod, et. al., 2011, p. 220). It was important for me to understand both sets of assumptions so I would be able to explain my concept to my mother in terms that she would understand. My assumptions about family are: 1) that everyone who is connected to me by blood lines is part of my family; 2) that everyone who is connected to me by my marriages or by the marriages of my blood relatives is part of my family; and 3) that everyone who is connected to me by adoption or by fosterage is part of my family. I inferred from my mother’s statements that she had different assumptions about family. For her, family is only those people with whom one shares a direct blood line. She considers her family to be her parents, my sister and me, and my two sons. She does not even consider her husband to be part of her family. Once I had a reasonable grasp of the assumptions that were in play, I was able to try to explain my concept of family to my mother. I first tried to classify the groups of people who are part of my family, as I outlined in my assumptions. I thought it would help to “divid[e] a concept into parts to consider each part separately” (Axelrod, et. al., 2011, p. 223). That approach failed when I got to the idea of family-by-marriage, and I never got to adoptive family as I tried to calm her down to try again. I next tried comparison and contrast, “pointing out how the concept is similar to and different from a related concept” (Axelrod, et. al., 2011, p. 223). I tried to show that my stepsiblings were related to me through my father’s remarriage in much the same way that my stepfather is related to me through my mother’s remarriage. It was at this point that I learned that my mother does not believe her husband is part of our family. That line of reasoning was not working. I did not pursue the explanation further. Instead, I tried to tell my mother that it was valid for the two of us to have different concepts of family. When that didn’t work either, I realized that it is sometimes impossible to make a given audience understand a concept if the audience has strong preconceptions about the concept, and if the audience is not open to the possibility of valid arguments that do not agree with those preconceptions. References Axelrod, R.B., Cooper, C.R., & Warriner, A. M. (2011). Reading critically writing well (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Undergraduate Series 335 Defining Family 12/15/2011 Every person has a family. Exactly which individuals in an individual’s life constitute the individual’s family is a matter of interpretation. Stuart and Terry Hirschberg (2012) write that “each family is different, with its own uniquely characteristic relationships and bonds” (p. 28). A family may be defined as those people who are related to one another by direct blood line. The definition may be expanded to include those people who are related by blood line and/or by marriage. A family may also include those people who are related by adoption or by fosterage. In some cultures, everyone in the local community is defined as a family, and many organizations consider their members to constitute a family. A family, then, is that group of people who are connected by ties of lineage, marriage, or fraternal affection, and who provide a social structure for the individual. A family is those people who are connected to one another by direct blood lines. This is a very narrow definition of family. It includes the individual, his or her parents and grandparents, his or her siblings, and his or her children and grandchildren. It might also include aunts and uncles, cousins, and nieces and nephews, but only if they are in the same line of blood descent. It can be traced backward or forward in history as long as the relationships are always traced through the blood line. This definition excludes step-parents and step-children, relations-in-law, families by adoption, and families in which a child is raised by a foster parent. This definition of family is useful for establishing lines of inheritance, but it is not a particularly nurturing family dynamic. A family is those people who are connected to one another by direct blood lines, by marriage, or both. This is a more nurturing family dynamic because it includes more of the people who make up the individual’s personal social structure. This model includes spouses, relations-inlaw, step-relations, and the marital relations of the individual’s blood relations, as well as those with whom the individual shares a blood line. In many modern families, children are raised by a parent and a step-parent, and the child may have another parent and step-parent at another location. Often, a child will have step-siblings, as well, and will know his or her stepgrandparents as well as he or she knows his or her biological grandparents. By including marital relations as family members, the individual has a broader, more diverse foundation on which to build his or her personal identity. A family is those people who are connected to one another by blood line and/or by marital bonds, as well as those who are connected by adoption or by fosterage. This is a broader definition of family than either of the previous definitions. In this model, family includes those people who nurture a child to adulthood, regardless of the child’s biological or marital connection to the family group or lack thereof. A family that adopts a child becomes the child’s “real” family, even though the child may remember his or her family of origin. Similarly, a family that takes in a foster child, whether through a private contract with the child’s family of origin or through a legal agreement with the state, may become the child’s “real” family. D. Bellissimo (2006) writes that "the definition of family … include[s] brothers and sisters, grandparents, grandchildren, parentsin-law, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces, guardians, foster parents and wards" (para. 5). An adopted or foster family may or may not retain a connection with the child’s family of origin, but the adoptive or foster family becomes the child’s family. Sometimes, if there are still good feelings between the child and his or her family of origin, the adoptive or foster family may expand to include the original family as part of itself. A family is any and all of these models, and it is also those individuals who choose to be related to one another by mutual bonds of fraternal affection and understanding. Organizations that foster this kind of family model include, but are not limited to, the Free and Accepted 336 A Journey Through My College Papers Masons, the Order of the Eastern Star, the Lions Club, the Rotary Club, and most college fraternities and sororities. The members of these and similar organizations consider the members within each organization to be brothers and sisters without regard for blood lines or marital ties. Similarly, an individual may gather around himself or herself a group of friends who become the individual’s family. An individual’s definition of family may be very traditional, or it may be unique to that individual. It may reflect any of the models described here, and it may take parts of different models and blend them to form an entirely new model. In the modern world, the definition of family has expanded to include same-sex couples, single-parent families, and families in which a grandparent raises grandchildren in the absence of the grandchildren’s parents. In some cultures, even within the United States, polygamous families still exist. Each of these family structures is a valid definition of family for the individuals who call it a family. Each individual’s concept of family is valid, even if it does not agree with the concept of family that is held by others in the individual’s social structure. Every person has a family, and every person’s concept of what constitutes a family is valid. References Bellissimo, D. (2006, October). Change to the E.I. definition of "family member" for compassionate care benefits. Update, 34(2), 7. Retrieved from ProQuest database. Hirschberg, S. & Hirschberg, T. (2012) One World, Many Cultures (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Tipping the Tank 12/19/2011 The ground rushed up at me as I tried frantically to stop our headlong plunge! My ears rang with the shouts of my instructor, and my vision was filled with the gray expanse of Vermont bedrock. I searched in vain for the brake. We were going too fast! Panic gripped me. Then we stopped in a jarring, terrifying crash. I was seventeen years old, attending my first encampment as a cadet member of the Civil Air Patrol. I had the opportunity to drive the big Army tanks at Underhill Firing Range in northern Vermont. I was excited that morning, and could hardly eat my breakfast in my hurry to get to the range. It should have been one of my proudest moments, but events did not play out as I had expected them to do. It was just as well that I didn’t have much in my stomach after all. I didn't mean to do anything wrong, but I panicked under stress. As a result of one afternoon’s misadventure, ours was the last group of cadets that was allowed to drive the tanks. It was the end of June, and it was hot even at the Canadian border. Sweat soaked our olive drab uniforms in the afternoon sunshine. Despite the heat, our group of over a hundred teenagers was in high spirits. We laughed and chatted while the soldiers in charge of the tanks divided us into groups, with just a few cadets in each tank. I was thrilled that my friends, Vicky, Art, Missy, and Chris, were in the tank that I was driving. I was driving! I still get chills when I remember being one of the cadets chosen to drive the tanks. I had been in Civil Air Patrol for a little over a year, and I shivered in awed excitement at the idea of actually driving the tank. I climbed awkwardly into the cramped driver’s seat of the tank, dropping down into the seat with a bewildering array of levers where I had expected to find pedals and a steering wheel. I was terrified and exhilarated! The rest of the group dropped through the hatch at the top of the tank into the dark, confining body of the machine, landing with heavy thuds of booted feet on solid steel. The voice of an instructor from the Vermont National Guard crackled in my ear muffUndergraduate Series 337 like headphones as he guided me with voice commands to start driving the tank around the dirt track. Driving the tank was easier than I expected. My nerves calmed and I began to relax. All was going well as I drove confidently on the flat, dirt track. Then we came to a good-sized hill on the far side of the course, and the trouble began. I started to guide the tank up the hill, and the instructor shouted at me to get up more speed. Without enough speed, we would never get up the hill. “More speed! More speed! Faster! Faster!” I became flustered under the verbal barrage as I gave the tank more and more gas and we rumbled upward and upward. Suddenly, we reached the apex of the hill. My heart missed a beat. With horror, I realized that this was not the rolling sort of hill I was accustomed to, but a huge pyramid of earth. The tank roared over the crest of the hill and plunged down the other side, no longer under my control. Ever obedient to gravity, the tank continued to accelerate as it hurtled down the hill. The instructor frantically yelled at me. “Slow it down! Brakes! Brakes!” I panicked! I moved levers as fast as I could, not knowing which lever I needed, screaming into my microphone that I didn't know how to slow it down. I had the terrible realization that while I knew how to make the tank go, I had never been taught to make it stop. Do you remember Sir Isaac Newton? He said that a body in motion tends to stay in motion. The part of the law that everyone forgets is that it is only true unless the body is acted upon by an outside force. I had no idea which lever was the brake. I was frighteningly sure that the tank was going to stay in motion. I saw the ground rushing upward to meet me. Then we were acted upon. Rather, we acted upon something much bigger than we were. Either way, we stopped. Suddenly. Jarringly. The tank stood on its nose, with its tracks spinning idly in the air. I was dazed from the abrupt cessation of motion. I heard a lot of terrified screaming, most of it in my headset and some of it in the steel compartment behind me. At the bottom of the steep hill was a large, exposed piece of bedrock. It was this expanse of native granite that had stopped our headlong plunge. Seconds passed, or perhaps it was minutes, all in a blur of sound and motion. A great many soldiers ran across the driving course and tipped the tank back onto its treads. When the tank was finally righted, the soldiers determined that it was largely undamaged, and I drove it very slowly to the parking area. In the aftermath of my personal disaster, I felt the sweat of panic cool on my clammy skin inside my clinging tee shirt. I was humiliated. My face glowed scarlet from more than just the sun. As though one adventure would not suffice for the day, the soldiers shuffled us into an Armored Personnel Carrier for another trip around the track. Vicky got to drive this time, and the rest of our group piled into the back. We sat shoulder-to-shoulder on a hard, vinyl-covered bench in the close, windowless compartment. Chris was the closet to the front of the vehicle, followed by Missy, Art, and me. I was vaguely aware of the APC's movement up the hill, but the ponderous vehicle moved so smoothly that we hardly felt it in our steel cocoon. I was jarred to full awareness when we were all thrown forward against the front wall, which had suddenly become the floor. We landed in a pile, arms and legs tangled as we all thrashed to right ourselves. Vicky had repeated my accident on the rock at the bottom of the hill. The soldiers came out again and tipped the vehicle off the rock again, laughing at the unlikely repetition. Vicky drove back to the parking area, where a medic checked us all out. Chris, who had been at the bottom of the thrashing pile in the passenger compartment, had a broken arm. Everyone else was fine, except for a bit of humiliation for Vicky and for me. Twice in one day, I had hurtled helplessly toward the earth. Twice, I had emerged unharmed from the experience. I was embarrassed by my failure to stop the tank. Embarrassment and humiliation were overshadowed by the sense of pulsing vitality that comes from surviving a life-threatening experience. Even more, the sheer sense of teenage invulnerability, which had 338 A Journey Through My College Papers been shaken during the crash, was reinforced by the knowledge that I had crashed headlong into the earth – not once, but twice – and I had walked away. It was an amazing experience. Defining Family 1/3/2012 Every person has a family. Exactly which individuals in an individual’s life constitute the individual’s family is a matter of interpretation. Stuart and Terry Hirschberg (2012) write that “each family is different, with its own uniquely characteristic relationships and bonds” (p. 28). A family may be defined as those people who are related to one another by direct blood line. The definition may be expanded to include those people who are related by blood line and/or by marriage. A family may also include those people who are related by adoption or by fosterage. In some cultures, everyone in the local community is defined as a family, and many organizations consider their members to constitute a family. A family, then, is that group of people who are connected by ties of lineage, marriage, or fraternal affection, and who provide a social structure for the individual. For many people, a family is those people who are connected to one another by direct blood lines. This is a very narrow definition of family. It includes the individual, his or her parents and grandparents, his or her siblings, and his or her children and grandchildren. It might also include aunts and uncles, cousins, and nieces and nephews, but only if they are in the same line of blood descent. It can be traced backward or forward in history as long as the relationships are always traced through the blood line. This definition excludes step-parents and step-children, relations-in-law, families by adoption, and families in which a child is raised by a foster parent. This definition of family is useful for establishing lines of inheritance, but it is not a particularly nurturing family dynamic. In addition to those people who are connected to one another by direct blood lines, for many individuals, a family is those people who are connected by marriage. This is a more nurturing family dynamic because it includes more of the people who make up the individual’s personal social structure. This model includes spouses, relations-in-law, step-relations, and the marital relations of the individual’s blood relations, as well as those with whom the individual shares a blood line. In many modern families, children are raised by a parent and a step-parent, and the child may have another parent and step-parent at another location. Often, a child will have step-siblings, as well, and will know his or her step-grandparents as well as he or she knows his or her biological grandparents. By including marital relations as family members, the individual has a broader, more diverse foundation on which to build his or her personal identity. In some cases, a family is not only those people who are connected to one another by blood line and/or by marital bonds, but also those who are connected by adoption or by fosterage. This is a broader definition of family than either of the previous definitions. In this model, family includes those people who nurture a child to adulthood, regardless of the child’s biological or marital connection to the family group or lack thereof. A family that adopts a child becomes the child’s “real” family, even though the child may remember his or her family of origin. Similarly, a family that takes in a foster child, whether through a private contract with the child’s family of origin or through a legal agreement with the state, may become the child’s “real” family. D. Bellissimo (2006) writes that "the definition of family … include[s] brothers and sisters, grandparents, grandchildren, parents-in-law, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces, guardians, foster parents and wards" (para. 5). An adopted or foster family may or may not retain a connection with the child’s family of origin, but the adoptive or foster family becomes the child’s family. Sometimes, if there are still good feelings between the child Undergraduate Series 339 and his or her family of origin, the adoptive or foster family may expand to include the original family as part of itself. In addition to these definitions of family, family is also those individuals who choose to be related to one another by mutual bonds of fraternal affection and understanding. Organizations that foster this kind of family model include, but are not limited to, the Free and Accepted Masons, the Order of the Eastern Star, the Lions Club, the Rotary Club, and most college fraternities and sororities. The members of these and similar organizations consider the members within each organization to be brothers and sisters without regard for blood lines or marital ties. Similarly, an individual may gather around himself or herself a group of friends who become the individual’s family. An individual’s definition of family may be very traditional, or it may be unique to that individual. It may reflect any of the models described here, and it may take parts of different models and blend them to form an entirely new model. In the modern world, the definition of family has expanded to include same-sex couples, single-parent families, and families in which a grandparent raises grandchildren in the absence of the grandchildren’s parents. In some cultures, even within the United States, polygamous families still exist. Each of these family structures is a valid definition of family for the individuals who call it a family. Each individual’s concept of family is valid, even if it does not agree with the concept of family that is held by others in the individual’s social structure. Every person has a family, and every person’s concept of what constitutes a family is valid. References Bellissimo, D. (2006, October). Change to the E.I. definition of "family member" for compassionate care benefits. Update, 34(2), 7. Retrieved from ProQuest database. Hirschberg, S. & Hirschberg, T. (2012) One World, Many Cultures (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Evaluation 1/5/2012 Recently, a friend asked me to recommend a good place for a family with children to have lunch. There are many restaurants in our area, but immediately I suggested Leo’s Coney Island, which is my family’s favorite place to eat. In explaining why I made this recommendation, I considered “which qualities [of Leo’s] are essential and which are minor distractions” from the experience of taking a family there to eat (Axelrod, et. al., 2011, p. 331). I decided that the essential qualities are the quality of the service from the wait staff, the quality of the food, the size of the portions, and the prices of the menu items. The minor distractions are the noise level in the restaurant and the cleanliness of the restrooms. I wanted my friend to understand that my family really likes Leo’s, and that our experience of the essential qualities has been overwhelmingly positive. I told her that the waitresses and the busboys are very friendly and polite, and that they work hard to get the food to the tables as quickly as the kitchen can get the food ready. They are ready with drink refills and are happy to take special requests about food preparation. I told her that the food is always delicious, no matter which menu items we choose. The food is always served at appropriate temperatures, with hot foods being hot and cold foods being cold. The portions are generous, and we have never left there feeling unsatisfied with the amount of food we have been served. I told my friend that it is not unusual for my family of four to spend near or less than $30.00 for a full meal, which is very reasonable for our area. It comes out to about $1.00 more per person than a high-fat, high-sodium meal at a fast food chain, and we have large portions 340 A Journey Through My College Papers of fresh, nutritious food. I did warn her that Leo’s is a very busy place all day long, and that the service is sometimes slow as a result, which is one of the few negatives we have ever experienced there. The minor distractions are both negative for our family, since the restaurant is always loud and the restrooms always have a slightly unclean feeling. I explained to her that the noise might be a good thing, though, since no one was likely to notice if her children were a bit noisy; noisy children can be a problem for a family in a restaurant that tends to be quiet. Over all, my evaluation of Leo’s was positive, with only minor negative aspects. Since I was evaluating the restaurant verbally, I was able to watch and listen for reactions from my friend to indicate times when I needed to explain my points more clearly. I don’t watch a lot of television, but I do enjoy Antiques Road Show on PBS. In each episode, experts evaluate antiques and other personal and family treasures that guests bring to the show. These evaluations are interesting to me because the experts examine and explain details about the quality and provenance of the items in a way that reveals a lot of historical value and artistic value in the pieces. Often, the guests share interesting stories about how the items came into their possession, which adds to the interest of the evaluations. The experts provide specific criteria for each evaluation to “give reasons to justify” their final evaluations of the objects (Axelrod, et. al., 2011, p. 282). The experts do not just offer a personal opinion of a piece and a assign a monetary value to the piece; they give solid reasons why the piece has a particular value, showing both the positive and the negative aspects of the piece. References Axelrod, R.B., Cooper, C.R., & Warriner, A. M. (2011). Reading critically writing well (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Defining Family 1/5/2012 Every person has a family. Exactly which individuals in an individual’s life constitute the individual’s family is a matter of interpretation. Stuart and Terry Hirschberg (2012) write that “each family is different, with its own uniquely characteristic relationships and bonds” (p. 28). A family may be defined as those people who are related to one another by direct blood line. The definition may be expanded to include those people who are related by blood line and/or by marriage. A family may also include those people who are related by adoption or by fosterage. In some cultures, everyone in the local community is defined as a family, and many organizations consider their members to constitute a family. A family, then, is that group of people who are connected by ties of lineage, marriage, or fraternal affection, and who provide a social structure for the individual. A family is those people who are connected to one another by direct blood lines. This is a very narrow definition of family. It includes the individual, his or her parents and grandparents, his or her siblings, and his or her children and grandchildren. It might also include aunts and uncles, cousins, and nieces and nephews, but only if they are in the same line of blood descent. It can be traced backward or forward in history as long as the relationships are always traced through the blood line. This definition excludes step-parents and step-children, relations-in-law, families by adoption, and families in which a child is raised by a foster parent. This definition of family is useful for establishing lines of inheritance, but it is not a particularly nurturing family dynamic. A family is those people who are connected to one another by direct blood lines, by marriage, or both. This is a more nurturing family dynamic because it includes more of the people who make up the individual’s personal social structure. This model includes spouses, relations-inUndergraduate Series 341 law, step-relations, and the marital relations of the individual’s blood relations, as well as those with whom the individual shares a blood line. In many modern families, children are raised by a parent and a step-parent, and the child may have another parent and step-parent at another location. Often, a child will have step-siblings, as well, and will know his or her stepgrandparents as well as he or she knows his or her biological grandparents. By including marital relations as family members, the individual has a broader, more diverse foundation on which to build his or her personal identity. A family is those people who are connected to one another by blood line and/or by marital bonds, as well as those who are connected by adoption or by fosterage. This is a broader definition of family than either of the previous definitions. In this model, family includes those people who nurture a child to adulthood, regardless of the child’s biological or marital connection to the family group or lack thereof. A family that adopts a child becomes the child’s “real” family, even though the child may remember his or her family of origin. Similarly, a family that takes in a foster child, whether through a private contract with the child’s family of origin or through a legal agreement with the state, may become the child’s “real” family. D. Bellissimo (2006) writes that "the definition of family … include[s] brothers and sisters, grandparents, grandchildren, parentsin-law, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces, guardians, foster parents and wards" (para. 5). An adopted or foster family may or may not retain a connection with the child’s family of origin, but the adoptive or foster family becomes the child’s family. Sometimes, if there are still good feelings between the child and his or her family of origin, the adoptive or foster family may expand to include the original family as part of itself. A family is any and all of these models, and it is also those individuals who choose to be related to one another by mutual bonds of fraternal affection and understanding. Organizations that foster this kind of family model include, but are not limited to, the Free and Accepted Masons, the Order of the Eastern Star, the Lions Club, the Rotary Club, and most college fraternities and sororities. The members of these and similar organizations consider the members within each organization to be brothers and sisters without regard for blood lines or marital ties. Similarly, an individual may gather around himself or herself a group of friends who become the individual’s family. An individual’s definition of family may be very traditional, or it may be unique to that individual. It may reflect any of the models described here, and it may take parts of different models and blend them to form an entirely new model. In the modern world, the definition of family has expanded to include same-sex couples, single-parent families, and families in which a grandparent raises grandchildren in the absence of the grandchildren’s parents. In some cultures, even within the United States, polygamous families still exist. Each of these family structures is a valid definition of family for the individuals who call it a family. Each individual’s concept of family is valid, even if it does not agree with the concept of family that is held by others in the individual’s social structure. Every person has a family, and every person’s concept of what constitutes a family is valid. References Bellissimo, D. (2006, October). Change to the E.I. definition of "family member" for compassionate care benefits. Update, 34(2), 7. Retrieved from ProQuest database. Hirschberg, S. & Hirschberg, T. (2012) One World, Many Cultures (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. 342 A Journey Through My College Papers Our School’s Behavior Code 1/5/2012 Our local elementary school has a behavior rule for the students that has made me uncomfortable ever since my sons transferred to the school three years ago. Students are taught that the only actual rule in the school is: “You are free to act in any way that does not create a problem for you or anyone else in the world” (Santola, 2012, para. 1). The school serves students in kindergarten through fifth grade, and these children are expected to figure out for themselves what actions are or are not acceptable under this rule. While I agree with the idea of teaching children to think for themselves, I disagree with expecting young children from a wide variety of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds to make good, independent judgments about what sort of behavior will not cause any problems for them or for anyone else in the world. The school’s behavior rule is too vague, and the school needs to provide more specific behavior rules for the students. When my family moved to Michigan, my sons were 7 and 8 years old. Despite my best efforts, they had been exposed to a lot of people making very questionable, damaging decisions all of their lives, from the domestic violence and criminal activities of their father and his side of the family to the emotionally damaged women and children among whom we lived at the domestic violence shelter. Many of their classmates lived in dilapidated homes with boarded-up windows, no running water, and no decent food aside from the breakfast and lunch provided at the school. My sons had very few examples of behavior that did not create problems for people. As a result, the first weeks and months of school involved many family discussions about appropriate behavior. I made many calls to school to try to understand the problems that my sons were experiencing; the secretary finally recognized my voice on the phone before I identified myself when I called. The principal and my sons’ teachers maintained that my sons just needed to sit and think about their behavior and about what they should do to improve their behavior. My husband and I were not and are not happy with that response. The school behavior rule has two parts. The first part involves a student not causing problems for himself or herself. The second part involves the student not causing problems for anyone in the world. Even taken separately, each of these parts is too broad for a young child to reason out without adult guidance. To a young child, causing a problem for himself or herself can mean causing other children to make fun of the child. It can mean causing the child to be mistreated at home. It can mean making the child uncomfortable about a social paradigm that is unfamiliar to the child. It can mean making a teacher think something is mentally or emotionally wrong with the child when the child has a different world view from that of the teacher. My younger son has ADHD, so he has trouble sitting still in class. In his previous schools, a teacher would remind him to sit still, be quiet, and stay on task. In his new school, a teacher would send him out of the classroom to think about his behavior; the teacher would not tell him what he had done that he was supposed to be thinking about. By being restless in his seat, he had caused a problem for the students who were working near him, but I had to call the school several times before that was finally explained to me. Once I could tell my son what he was doing wrong, we were able to work on strategies to help him change his behavior. His therapist contacted the school to explain his situation. My elder son has Asperger’s Syndrome. He responds to stress by becoming introverted, and by reverting to infantile speech patterns. His teachers saw this as behavior that caused problems for the students around him because he did not work well in groups, and because the teachers thought his speech patterns were an attempt to be funny or to mock the teachers. Again, I had to call the school several times before anyone told me what he was doing wrong. Again, the therapist had to call the school, and even had to visit the Undergraduate Series 343 school psychologist to explain the situation. Once we understood the problem, we were able to work out strategies for him to help him deal with stress at school. In each case, the school rule was too broad for the children to modify their behavior on their own. The teachers were not providing guidance to help the boys alter their behavior, or even to help them understand why or how their behavior was a problem. Causing a problem for anyone else in the world is too broad a concept for a young child. A child’s world is usually confined to the immediate family, a school, a place of worship, and a few friends outside of school. During my sons’ first year at this school, they would often ask how they could know whether their behavior caused problems for people in China or India. They were unsure of themselves with this lack of clearly defined rules of behavior. At home, we had rules about not taking things that did not belong to one. We had rules about not hitting or kicking others, about not biting each other, and about not breaking other people’s belongings. We had rules about not using certain words, and about remembering to use other words of courtesy. At school, there were no such explicit rules, but students were expected to know that physical or verbal violence causes problems, and that neglecting to use courtesy words such as “please” and “thank you” also causes problems. Chip Wood, Deborah Porter, Kathryn Brady, and Mary Forton (2011) write: “Children are able, even eager, to rise to high standards of behavior, but they need to know exactly what those standards are. Often we assume students already know what we expect of them, when they may not. When you use the technique of explicit modeling, you make your expectations clear and easier for students to meet” (para. 3). Children need to have explicit rules of behavior laid out by the adult authority figures in their lives. The school’s vague rule of behavior does not inculcate concepts of courtesy and responsibility for the students. The rule leaves children feeling lost, and it hampers their ability to make clear value judgments as they grow up. The teachers may model behaviors that they want the children to exhibit, but they do not explicitly model these behaviors in ways the children will understand. Since the school cannot assume that the children experience explicit modeling of appropriate behaviors in the home and in the community, the school needs to make its specific expectations clear for the children. The behavior rule at our local school does not clearly express the standards of behavior that are expected of the students. The rules need to be set out explicitly so the students can understand how the school requires them to behave. References Santola, J. (2012). Love and Logic. Retrieved from http://www.clarkston.k12.mi.us/education/components/links/links.php?sectiondetail id=20 982&PHPSESSID=667cc24f2f8698a506118a051fc5da7d Wood, C., Porter, D., Brady, K., Forton, M. (2011). Everyday rules that really work! Scholastic Instructor. Retrieved from http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/everyday-rulesreally-work Oral Argument 1/11/2012 The position argument with the most personal relevance for me recently was my discussion with my mother and step-father about family. I addressed this topic in the discussion of concepts, as well. I took the position that family can include not only blood relatives, but also people who are related by marriage, by adoption or fosterage, or even by choice. My mother took the position that family can only include blood relatives of a close degree of relationship. My 344 A Journey Through My College Papers step-father expressed that he agreed with my mother, but he seemed to waver between her position and my position. When I took my position I already knew a great deal about the concept and composition of family. I had given it a great deal of thought, and I was familiar with examples of many types of families. I had close relationships with my blood relatives, with my step-parents and my stepsiblings, with my relations-in-law, and with members of my father’s birth family and of his adoptive family. My original interest in arguing my position on this topic came from a confrontation with my mother. She accused me of trying to hurt her because I included my step-siblings in my biographical information in our wedding booklets. I felt the need to explain to my mother about my position on what constitutes a family. “[I]t is wrong to manipulate [others] with false or exaggerated emotional appeals” (Axelrod, et. al., 2011, p. 593). I also felt the need to defend myself against my mother’s accusations, and against the various red herrings that she threw into the conversation in an attempt to make me feel guilty enough to yield to her position, and to “distract [me] from the real issue” (Axelrod, et. al., 2011, p. 592). The need to assert myself as an independent adult and the need to validate my own beliefs and opinions in the face of my mother’s role as an authority figure made me care very strongly about the subject, and about helping my parents see my point of view as a valid position. The audience for my argument was my mother and my step-father. I knew that the entire conversation would be related to my younger sister, so she became part of the audience by extension. In taking my position, I hoped to make my parents recognize that I have a different understanding about the concept of family than their understanding of the concept. I also hoped to make my mother understand that she cannot control me through guilt and emotional blackmail, and that it is okay for me to have views that differ from their views. I did not expect to change their beliefs; I expected only to make them accept that I have my own beliefs, and that my parents cannot dictate what I will believe. “Assumptions … influence our opinions and judgments by leading us to value some things and devalue others” (Axelrod, et. al., 2011, p. 352). While I went into the argument with the assumption that my parents were already familiar with the many valid types of families, I discovered that my preconception was flawed. I discovered that my parents devalue many family types that I value, and that made it difficult to present my argument clearly and concisely. I had to break down the various types of family relationships in a great deal of detail. I had to present specific examples and make comparisons with relationships that I thought they would understand. It was very difficult to remain calm during this process, and I did respond badly to my mother’s emotional blackmail at first. We took a break for several hours, during most of which time I was crying over the many attacks my mother had made. When we resumed the conversation, I was better prepared to remain in control, and to explain my position calmly and rationally. My step-father seemed to understand my position by the time we were done, and he agreed that he would stay out of my decisions about whom to include in my family. My mother finally seemed to realize that she had lost the power to twist the argument with red herrings and ad hominem attacks, and she grudgingly acknowledged that she and I have very different ideas about what constitutes a family member. References Axelrod, R.B., Cooper, C.R., & Warriner, A. M. (2011). Reading critically writing well (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Undergraduate Series 345 Evaluating a School’s Behavior Rule 1/16/2012 A local elementary school has a behavior rule for the students that makes many parents uncomfortable. Students are taught that the only actual rule in the school is: “You are free to act in anyway that does not create a problem for you or anyone else in the world” (Santola, 2012, para. 1). The school serves students in kindergarten through fifth grade, and these children are expected to figure out for themselves what actions are or are not acceptable under this rule. Children need to be taught to think for themselves, but young children from a wide variety of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds should not be expected to make good, independent judgments about what sort of behavior will not cause any problems for them or for anyone else in the world. The school’s behavior rule is too vague, and the school needs to provide more specific behavior rules for the students. When Robby and Tommy moved to Michigan, the brothers were 7 and 8 years old. Their experiences at the local elementary school illustrate the problems with the school’s behavior rule. Despite their mother’s best efforts, they had been exposed to a lot of people making very questionable, damaging decisions all of their lives, from the domestic violence and criminal activities of their father and his side of the family to the emotionally damaged women and children among whom they had lived at a domestic violence shelter. Many of their classmates lived in dilapidated homes with boarded-up windows, no running water, and no decent food aside from the breakfast and lunch provided at the school. The brothers had very few examples of behavior that did not create problems for people. As a result, the first weeks and months of school involved many family discussions about appropriate behavior. Their mother made many calls to the school to try to understand the problems that her sons were experiencing; the secretary finally recognized her voice on the phone before she identified herself when she called. The principal and the boys’ teachers maintained that the brothers just needed to sit and think about their behavior and about what they should do to improve their behavior. The boys’ mother and their step-father were not and are not happy with that response. The school behavior rule has two parts. The first part involves a student not causing problems for himself or herself. The second part involves the student not causing problems for anyone in the world. Even taken separately, each of these parts is too broad for a young child to reason out without adult guidance. To a young child, causing a problem for himself or herself can mean causing other children to make fun of the child. It can mean causing the child to be mistreated at home. It can mean making the child uncomfortable about a social paradigm that is unfamiliar to the child. It can mean making a teacher think something is mentally or emotionally wrong with the child when the child has a different world view from that of the teacher. Robby has ADHD, so he has trouble sitting still in class. In his previous schools, a teacher would remind him to sit still, be quiet, and stay on task. In his new school, a teacher would send him out of the classroom to think about his behavior; the teacher would not tell him what he had done that he was supposed to be thinking about. By being restless in his seat, he had caused a problem for the students who were working near him, but his mother had to call the school several times before that was finally explained to Robby’s family. Once Robby’s parents could tell him what he was doing wrong, they were able to work on strategies to help him change his behavior. His therapist contacted the school to explain his situation. Tommy has Asperger’s Syndrome. He responds to stress by becoming introverted, and by reverting to infantile speech patterns. His teachers saw this as behavior that caused problems for the students around him because he did not work well in groups, and because the teachers thought his speech patterns were an attempt to be funny or to mock the teachers. Again, Tommy’s 346 A Journey Through My College Papers mother had to call the school several times before anyone told the family what he was doing wrong. Again, the therapist had to call the school, and even had to visit the school psychologist to explain the situation. Once Tommy’s family understood the problem, they were able to work out strategies for him to help him deal with stress at school. In each case, the school rule was too broad for the children to modify their behavior on their own. The teachers were not providing guidance to help the boys alter their behavior, or even to help them understand why or how their behavior was a problem. Causing a problem for anyone else in the world is too broad a concept for a young child. A child’s world is usually confined to the immediate family, a school, a place of worship, and a few friends outside of school. During the brothers’ first year at this school, they would often ask their parents how they could know whether their behavior caused problems for people in China or India. They were unsure of themselves with this lack of clearly defined rules of behavior. At home, the family had rules about not taking things that did not belong to one. They had rules about not hitting or kicking others, about not biting each other, and about not breaking other people’s belongings. They had rules about not using certain words, and about remembering to use other words of courtesy. At school, there were no such explicit rules, but students were expected to know that physical or verbal violence causes problems, and that neglecting to use courtesy words such as “please” and “thank you” also causes problems. Chip Wood, Deborah Porter, Kathryn Brady, and Mary Forton (2011) write: “Children are able, even eager, to rise to high standards of behavior, but they need to know exactly what those standards are. Often we assume students already know what we expect of them, when they may not. When you use the technique of explicit modeling, you make your expectations clear and easier for students to meet” (para. 3). Children need to have explicit rules of behavior laid out by the adult authority figures in their lives. The school’s vague rule of behavior does not inculcate concepts of courtesy and responsibility for the students. The rule leaves children feeling lost, and it hampers their ability to make clear value judgments as they grow up. The teachers may model behaviors that they want the children to exhibit, but they do not explicitly model these behaviors in ways the children will understand. Since the school cannot assume that the children experience explicit modeling of appropriate behaviors in the home and in the community, the school needs to make its specific expectations clear for the children. The behavior rule at this school does not clearly express the standards of behavior that are expected of the students. Students are expected to understand appropriate social behaviors without adult guidance. The rules need to be set out explicitly so the students can understand how the school requires them to behave. The children need to have clear, explicit directions for how they are expected to behave as children, and as they grow up and enter the real world. References Santola, J. (2012). Love and Logic. Retrieved from http://www.clarkston.k12.mi.us/education/components/links/links.php?sectiondetail id=20 982&PHPSESSID=667cc24f2f8698a506118a051fc5da7d Wood, C., Porter, D., Brady, K., Forton, M. (2011). Everyday rules that really work! Scholastic Instructor. Retrieved from http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/everyday-rulesreally-work Undergraduate Series 347 Taking a Position Online 1/19/2012 I chose Why SOPA and PIPA Won’t Stop Real Piracy by Christina Warren (http://mashable.com/2012/01/18/sopa-and-pipa-wont-stop-piracy/). Warren (2012) presents the issue in which she is taking a position: “Supporters of the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA … argue that legislation is needed because online piracy puts jobs and industries at risk” (para. 1). She expands on the details of the issue as she presents the points of her position. Warren (2012) presents her thesis in her second paragraph: “the language and implications of SOPA has the potential to hurt the very industries and content creators the bills purport to protect” (para. 2). Clearly, she opposes SOPA, and her position is that the proposed bill will do harm if it becomes a law. Warren does establish credibility in her writing. “Readers often are more willing to trust a writer who expresses concerns that they also have about an issue” (Axelrod, et. al., 2011, p. 357). Warren expresses her concerns about the issue by explaining how media pirates will not be affected by SOPA because of their ability to get around the proposed law, and how “[a]rtists and content creators” (Warren, 2012, para. 2) will not be protected by anti-piracy legislation. Warren also admits that she has used pirated media over the last decade, and explains how easy it is to obtain pirated material. Warren counters the opposing view that SOPA will protect creators, producers, and distributors of entertainment media by explaining how the law will not apply in other countries. “In parts of Asia, such as China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, it’s a chore to find content for sale that is not pirated” (Warren, 2012, para. 5). She also explains how an Internet site sold pirated music “under a Russian copyright loophole” (Warren, 2012, para. 8). By explaining how the opposing argument is inaccurate, she effectively counters the opposing view. The online environment is full of position papers in the form of formal articles, professional and amateur web sites, and informal blog posts. Positions are taken in status updates on social networking sites, which is how I became aware of Warren’s article. Some positions that are published online are credible, offering clear positions, background information, and references, and acknowledging the opposing view. Other positions are less credible, sometimes straying into the totally fantastic in their claims and supposed proofs. Because most people in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and many people in South America and Africa, have access to the Internet, a position that is published online will reach a great many people. A person who could not have presented a position to a large audience not so many years ago can now present a position to an international audience with a few keystrokes or clicks of a mouse. For this reason, it is important to be critical when reading a position and to take account of the author, the sources, and the issue that are involved. It is also important to note the site that publishes a position, and to avoid buying into satirical positions, such as those published by TheOnion.com. The Internet is a great place to read positions and to find out about issues, but readers must be very careful when choosing to accept or reject any given position. References Axelrod, R.B., Cooper, C.R., & Warriner, A. M. (2011). Reading critically writing well (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Warren, C. (2012). Why SOPA and PIPA won’t stop real piracy. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2012/01/18/sopa-and-pipa-wont-stop-piracy/ 348 A Journey Through My College Papers Position Papers 1/19/2012 As a reader and writer of position papers, I believe it is very important to give clear reasons for one’s position, and to present credible supporting evidence for one’s position. “To be convincing, a position paper must argue for its position by giving readers strong reasons and solid support” (Axelrod, et. al., 2011, p. 345). If a position is stated without clear reasons, then there is nothing to cause readers to accept the writer’s position. Similarly, if a position is given with reasons, but there is no evidence to support the reasons, then the reader has no cause to accept the position. Also, if reasons and evidence are given, the reasons need to be demonstrable, and the evidence needs to be reliable. Reasons that are stated but that cannot be demonstrated are not credible. Evidence that comes from unreliable sources, or that doesn’t actually apply to the issue, is not credible, and is not valid support for a position. When people argue positions on television, on the radio, and online, they often offer emotional appeals that sound like reasons and evidence on the surface, but that may have no real substance. People who present positions in this way are not trying to convince readers, listeners, and viewers through reason and logic, but by influencing the audience’s emotional responses to desires for wealth, beauty, popularity, etc., or to the audience’s emotional responses to social and political injustice, suffering, animals and small children, patriotism, etc.. The purpose of people who present positions in the media that appeal to emotional responses is different from the purpose of people who write position papers for academia. An academic position paper appeals to logic and critical thinking to influence its audience and it “depends on giving reasons rather than raising voices” (Axelrod, et. al., 2011, p. 345). A student or a credible media writer presents supportable facts and verifiable sources. The purpose is to present facts, not to present emotional appeals. Position papers contribute to society by offering critical thinking and reasoned arguments. They encourage the audience to learn more about the issue that is presented, and to take a stance on the issue based on facts and evidence. Position papers promote logical thinking, instead of offering society ready-made opinions that can be adopted without recourse to serious thought. In a society that is being lulled into an inability to make critical judgments, position papers force readers to make critical judgments of the issues that are presented. References Axelrod, R.B., Cooper, C.R., & Warriner, A. M. (2011). Reading critically writing well (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s. American Students Are Crippled By Cultural Diversity Education 1/23/2012 Bibi Aisha is a teenage girl from Afghanistan. She ran away from the abusive Taliban fighter whom she had been forced to marry. As punishment for running away, Bibi Aisha’s family cut off her nose and ears and left her to die. She was saved by an American hospital, but she is permanently disfigured by the open holes where her nose and ears used to be (O’Leary, 2011, para. 6). When Stephen L. Anderson asked his senior philosophy class to discuss what happened to Bibi Aisha, “They seemed not to know what to think. They spoke timorously, afraid to make any moral judgment at all. They were unwilling to criticize any situation originating in a different culture” (O’Leary, 2011, para. 9). Anderson’s students were confused about whether or nor Bibi Aisha’s treatment was wrong because they were taught in school that all cultures are Undergraduate Series 349 equally valid, and that what is horrible and wrong in one culture may be right and proper in another culture. The students were unable to take a moral stand because they had not been taught to make critical judgments about moral issues. Bibi Aisha’s story and the reactions of Anderson’s students are just one example of how American students’ ability to take a firm stand in regard to the virtue or the vice of an ethical issue is eliminated by the teaching in American public schools that all cultures are equally valid and that what is a vice in one culture can be a virtue in another culture. Although all humans are equally valuable, not all cultures are equally valid in terms of ethical behavior. Bibi Aisha is part of the culture of Afghanistan, where “women are regarded as chattels, exchanged as compensation for a crime or to settle a debt” (Sengupta, 2006, para. 14). Although American students are taught to support human rights, women in Afghanistan are afforded no such rights. They are treated as objects that are used, abused, or discarded at the whim of Afghan men. In Afghanistan, Bibi Aisha’s treatment at the hands of her family is considered to be right and proper. She was punished for running away from an arranged marriage. According to “Womankind Worldwide, 60 to 80 per cent of all marriages in Afghanistan are forced” (Sengupta, 2006, para. 14). Women are not allowed to go against the decisions of the men in their families. There is a vast difference between Afghan culture and American culture in regard to the treatment of women. In America, women are free to choose their own husbands, or to choose not to marry. American women can walk away from marriages and relationships without fear. Women are protected by law from physical and mental abuse by men. What are right and wrong? American students are losing the ability to answer this question. If all cultures are equally valid, and if what is wrong in one culture is right in another, then the students’ confusion is understandable. Virtue is defined as “the quality or practice of moral excellence or righteousness” (Virtue, n.d., para. 1). Vice is defined as “an immoral, wicked, or evil habit, action, or trait” (Vice, n.d., para. 1). Virtue is what is right, and vice is what is wrong. Both Islamic tradition and Catholic tradition provide clear answers, as well. “The moral virtues, therefore, are: wisdom, courage, chastity, and justice. The opposite qualities of these are: ignorance, cowardice, concupiscence (gluttony and lust), injustice and tyranny” (Sa’dat, n.d., para. 3). That is the Islamic tradition. The Catholic tradition identifies four cardinal virtues: “prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance“ (Richert (Cardinal Virtues), 2012, para.1). It also identifies seven deadly sins: “pride, covetousness (also known as avarice or greed), lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth” (Richert (Deadly Sins), 2012, para. 3). Under these definitions, the treatment received by Bibi Aisha was wrong. It was pride, cowardice, injustice, anger, and tyranny. American schools no longer teach students clear-cut definitions of virtue and vice. “The new view is that courage and cowardice have no intrinsic reality. Neither does the classical virtue of justice or the vice of injustice” (O’Leary, 2011, para. 15). Schools teach students to think in terms of gray areas, where there is no definitive right or wrong. In doing so, American schools fail to prepare students to make clear, critical moral judgments in the real world. An awareness of cultural diversity is important in American schools. Students need to be able to accept cultural differences among classmates. Students need to understand that different traditions of dress, speech, and behavior are equally valid in the school setting, and they need to learn that different cultural foods and holidays are equally valid. This is necessary to create a safe learning environment for students from many diverse cultures. Students need to be prepared to experience cultural differences in global society when they are adults. The same cultural differences that students encounter in schools are also present in the outside world, and adults need to be able to interact with each other without giving offense to others who have different cultural backgrounds. Despite this need to understand diverse cultures, students also need to understand that cultural differences do not excuse culturally-based violence, oppression, and other vices. “One outcome has been the popular convention that all cultures are of equal value” (O’Leary, 350 A Journey Through My College Papers 2011, para. 16). Students are taught that all cultures are equally valid without qualification, even though what is considered to be absolutely wrong in one culture may be considered to be right and proper in another culture. American students need to be able to distinguish between right and wrong. In order to do this, students need to understand that there is a right and a wrong in many situations, and that being accepted by a particular culture does not automatically render a particular behavior a right behavior. Just as American schools need to teach students about the importance of understanding culturally diversity in modern society, so do the schools also need to teach students to make informed, critical, moral judgments about the diverse cultures among which they live. Just as Anderson’s students were unable to judge whether or not Bibi Aisha’s family was wrong when it chopped off her ears and her nose, American students are losing the ability to make moral judgments about many crimes against human rights in the world. American students are no longer taught that there is right and wrong, only that there are shades of gray in regard to moral behavior. They are taught that “the overriding message is ‘never judge, never criticize, never take a position.’” (O’Leary, 2011, para. 13). Teaching students not to criticize, judge, or take a position on moral issues prevents students learning to use critical thinking skills. This position is called cultural relativism. “[C]ultural relativism … is incoherent and self-contradictory, … erects barriers to communication and understanding between people coming from diverse cultures; and … implies moral relativism, negating any basis for universally-valid ethical concerns” (Davidson, 2007, para. 2). Such extreme and contradictory cultural diversity education hampers a student’s ability to make a logical argument for or against any moral position. Instead of preparing students for life in a global society, it makes students unable to properly understand cultural diversity in the outside world. “All Member States of the United Nations have a legal obligation to promote and protect human rights, regardless of particular cultural perspectives” (Ayton-Shenker, 2005, para. 18). While American schools are teaching students to accept all cultural perspectives on morality, the United Nations is committed to promoting moral behavior through the protection of human rights despite diverse cultural perspectives. As American students learn to view all cultures as equally valid, they become less able to function in the real, adult world outside of the classroom. “Textbooks and school activities that promote destructive forms of multiculturalism are proliferating in U.S. public schools” (Holland & Soifer, 2010, para. 1). It is good to teach students to get along with people from diverse cultures, but it is a danger to society when students are taught to ignore all cultural differences among the people with whom they associate. Textbooks and school activities that promote this stripping of cultural differences deny students a basis for understanding cultural differences and for making ethical decisions as adults. It is good to teach students to get along with people from diverse cultures, but it is a danger to society when students are taught to ignore all cultural differences among the people with whom they associate. Textbooks and school activities that promote this stripping of cultural differences deny students a basis for understanding cultural differences and for making ethical decisions as adults. Students are numbed to the concepts of right and wrong and of winners and losers by the prevalent “everyone wins” concept in American public schools. This concept is part of the cultural diversity education in the schools, and it is designed to boost the self-esteem of every student by never allowing any student to lose, fail, or be markedly different from other students. While raising a student’s self-esteem is a positive goal, eliminating differences among students from diverse backgrounds is a disservice to all students. Individualism and uniqueness are important to building a strong self-image, and that requires acknowledging cultural differences as well as successes and failures. American schools teach students to blend into the whole when the schools promote an “everyone wins” mentality and intentionally blur the lines among the diverse Undergraduate Series 351 cultures represented by their students. “The movement, which is most prominent in academia, is referred to as multiculturalism. Its stated aim is to equalize all cultures in the estimation of the student” (Chojnowski, 2011, paras. 3-4). When all cultures are equalized in a student’s mind, the student becomes unable to process the differences between cultures. When this happens, the richness of an individual’s heritage becomes lost. In addition, any judgment about the relative merits of the beliefs and behaviors of different cultures is lost as all cultures are seen to be equal. “Conventional common sense morality is learnt by children in a manner similar to how they learn their mother tongue” (Tännsjö, 2007, p. 127). Children internalize the morality and ethics of the adults among whom they grow up. A child who learns English, for example, in an environment of regional dialects and slang, will not learn proper English. Similarly, if the child grows up surrounded by questionable moral choices, the child’s basic morality and understanding of ethics will be skewed from universal norms of behavior. Bibi Aisha grew up in a culture in which women are treated as property. Although the Afghan government prohibits domestic violence, it is common practice in Afghanistan for women and girls to be brutally beaten, maimed, and even killed. Bibi Aisha’s family did not think it was doing wrong when it “hacked off her nose and ears, and left her for dead in the mountains” (O’Leary, 2011, para. 6). The members of her family believed that she was the one who did wrong by fleeing an abusive marriage. They believed that it was right and appropriate from them to punish her for her disobedience and to leave her to die. They believed these things because they grew up surrounded by a cultural morality that supports those ideas. In America, women are equal to men. Domestic violence by anyone against anyone, regardless of age or gender, is not accepted in American society. Americans believe that a person who is being abused has a right to be safe from abuse, and abusers are punished for their crimes. Americans believe these things because they grow up surrounded by a cultural morality that is still based in large part on the cardinal virtues and the deadly sins. As a result of students being taught that all cultures are equally valid, students are unable to use critical thinking skills to evaluate whether a given action or behavior is right or wrong. “The students could not go from their vague discomfort to a rational ethical conclusion because they have never learned traditional philosophy of ethics” (O’Leary, 2011, para. 20). The students were unable to make critical judgments about the story of Bibi Aisha because they were taught to excuse any cultural behaviors on the basis of all cultures being equally valid in terms of morality. Students are afraid to single out a behavior associated with a particular culture because doing so might offend members of that culture. Worse, in the opinion of students in whom cultural relativism has been inculcated, judging a particular cultural belief or behavior might elevate or lower the moral status of a particular culture. A student finds it difficult to say “It is wrong to permanently disfigure a teenage girl for running away from an abusive marriage,” because saying such implies that the culture that supported the abuse is wrong. If American schools taught students to judge behaviors by the virtues and vices of Islamic tradition or by the virtues and sins of Christian tradition, as was the custom in America until just a few decades ago, then students could easily say that the action of abusing a 16-year-old girl is wrong, without pronouncing judgment on the girl’s native culture. Instead, American schools now teach that what is wrong in one culture may be right in another culture, and that judging a particular belief of a culture is tantamount to judging the entire culture. Modern belief holds that teaching cultural diversity to students in American public schools prepares the students to embrace cultural diversity in the adult world and makes them better citizens of a global society. It does not limit the students’ critical thinking ability. Torbjörn Tännsjö writes that “there is a kind of moral relativism we could call ontological, according to which, when two persons pass conflicting moral verdicts on a certain action, they may both be right. The explanation is that they make their judgments from the perspective of different, socially 352 A Journey Through My College Papers constructed, moral universes” (Tännsjö, 2007, p. 123). This is the moral and cultural relativism that is taught in American schools. The belief that differing cultural backgrounds can make a given action both right and wrong at the same time is the belief that is confusing and crippling American students. If nothing is definitively right or definitively wrong, then students lack any support for judging the moral quality of any action. They are able to accept oppression, domestic violence, sexual deviance, theft, marital infidelity, lies, and even acts of war based on these actions being accepted in one or more other cultures. They are unable to take a clear stance against violence, against the abuse of women, against the degradation of minority groups, or against any other action that would have been deemed morally intolerable by their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. The students’ ability to form judgments based on critical thinking are retarded or even petrified by the ontological moral relativism that they learn in their schools. The teaching in American public schools that all cultures are equally valid and that what is a vice in one culture can be a virtue in another culture cripples American students’ ability to take a firm stand on in regard to the virtue or the vice of an ethical issue. Classical morality in multiple cultures clearly defines those behaviors that are universally right and those behaviors that are universally wrong, but American students are not taught these universal morals. Instead, they are taught cultural and moral relativism, which renders all cultures equally valid, and which renders all behaviors morally equal based on cultural differences. In order to be strong, successful members of the modern, global society when they become adults, students must be equipped to employ critical thinking in forming moral judgments. Students must not be hampered by the fear that making a moral judgment is morally wrong in itself. Students must be able to see heroism and to praise it as a virtue. They must be able to see cruelty and violations and basic human rights and to denounce them as vices. They must be able to make these judgments so that they will be able to act on their moral judgments to protect the helpless, to preserve the environment, and to promote peaceful understanding among members of the diverse cultures that populate the planet. American schools prevent students making these judgments, and American schools need to change in such a way that students are fully enabled to be unique, strong, moral citizens of the future. References Ayton-Shenker, D. (1995, March). The challenge of human rights and cultural diversity. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/rights/dpi1627e.htm Chojnowski, P. (2011). Multiculturalism: "Diversity" for the Culturally Clueless. Retrieved from http://www.sspx.org/against_sound_bites/multiculturalism.htm Davidson, B. W. (2007). The pitfalls of cultural relativism. Retrieved from http://cicministry.org/scholarly/sch006.htm Holland, R. & Soifer, D. (2010, September 16). Radical multiculturalism a growing problem in public schools. The Daily Caller [Electronic version]. Retrieved from http://dailycaller.com/2010/09/16/radical-multiculturalism-a-growing-problem-inpublic-schools/ O’Leary, D. (2011, December 3). Is it still wrong if another culture says it is right? A teacher’s surprising discovery. Education Forum [Electronic version.], 27-29. Retrieved from http://www.thebestschools.org/bestschoolsblog/2011/12/03/wrongculture-right-teacher%E2%80%99s-surprising-discovery/ Richert, S. P. (2012). The cardinal virtues: The four hinges of the moral life. Retrieved from http://catholicism.about.com/od/beliefsteachings/tp/Cardinal_Virtues.htm Richert, S. P. (2012). What are the seven deadly sins? Retrieved from http://catholicism.about.com/od/beliefsteachings/f/FAQ_Deadly_Sins.htm Sa'dat, S. (Translator). (n.d.). Moral virtues and vices. Jami' al-Sa'adat [Electronic version]. Retrieved from http://www.al-islam.org/al-tawhid/felicities/3.htm Undergraduate Series 353 Sengupta, K. (2006, November 24). Abuse of Afghan women: 'It was my decision to die. I was getting beaten every day'. The Independent [Electronic version]. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/abuse-of-afghan-women-it-was-mydecision-to-die-i-was-getting-beaten-every-day-425580.html Tännsjö, T. (2007). Moral relativism. Philosophical Studies, 135(2), 123-143. Retrieved from ProQuest Research Library. Vice. (n.d.). Collins English Dictionary (Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition). Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vice Virtue. (n.d.). Collins English Dictionary (Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition). Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/virtue Spring Semester, 2012 ENG 321: Introductory Linguistics Animal Communication versus Human Speech 1/26/2012 Animal communication is not the same as human speech. Animals use sounds to communicate, but they lack a grammar to organize their communication in the way human language is organized. Animals use set systems of sounds and movements to convey specific messages to others of their species, but animals are unable to creatively rearrange their communications to produce an infinite number of different messages. Honeybees use a limited set of dance-like movements to convey to other honeybees "the location and quality of the food source" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 24). Although the honeybee can convey a large number of very specific messages about a food source, it is unable to communicate on an unlimited number of subjects. The inability to created infinite numbers of messages about many subjects differentiates honeybee communication from human language in the area of creativity in grammar. Humans do have the ability to create an infinite number of unique sentences to express an infinite number of messages by arranging a finite number of words in different combinations. Also, human language is not controlled by stimuli, as are the communications of honeybees about food sources. Certain parrots and mynahs acquire relatively large vocabularies of human words through sound mimicry. The use of human speech, however, does not equate to human language, since the birds are unable to arrange the words into coherent sentences to express ideas. The birds lack the ability to use syntax with the words that they have learned to mimic. They also lack human language morphology, as a parrot may say several verbs, but it is unable to add appropriate morphemes to the verbs to express tense. Similarly, it is unable to convert a noun in its vocabulary to express the plural. "[When animals vocally imitate human utterances, it does not mean they possess language" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 23). Parrots and mynahs mimic human speech, but they are unable to use human language to communicate. The sound system of human words is not sufficient to be language without grammar to organize the sounds into an infinite number of sentences that express meanings. Studies with chimpanzees and bonobos show that these primates are able to "understand a number of individual words" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 26).Some chimps are able to achieve a limited use of human language, but they do not achieve the language abilities even of a three-yearold human. The animals were unable to understand and use sentence structure. A normal human 354 A Journey Through My College Papers child understands word order in sentences by about age three, and "by the ages of three and four, without explicit teaching or overt reinforcement, create new and complex sentences never spoken and never heard before" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 27). This facility has not been demonstrated in other primates, and "the natural communication systems of these animals are quite limited" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011., p. 26). References: Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2011). An introduction to language (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth. The Lateralization of Language in the Brain 1/26/2012 Split brain experiments provide evidence of the lateralization of language in the human brain. "In humans who have undergone split-brain operations, the two hemispheres appear to be independent, and messages sent to the brain result in different responses, depending on which side receives the message" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 56). When the corpus callosum is severed, the two sides of the brain are unable to communicate with each other. Thus, when linguistic stimuli are seen or hear by the right brain (being seen or heard on the left side of the body), the stimuli cannot be named. However, when the same stimuli are introduced to the left side of the brain (by the right eye or right ear), the stimuli can be named and described. The plasticity of the brain relates to the lateralization of language in the brain. If a child's left hemisphere is damaged after the child has begun to acquire language, or if the child undergoes a hemispherectomy of the left hemisphere, then the right side of the brain takes over and the child can "reacquire a linguistic system that is virtually indistinguishable from that of normal children" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 54). This ability of the right hemisphere to take over language functions demonstrates the plasticity of the brain. The later in a person's life that severe injury, brain splitting, or a hemispherectomy occurs, however, the less able the right hemisphere is to compensate for language lateralization. Brain plasticity decreases with age. An adult or older child who undergoes a left hemisphere hemispherectomy will experience a "severe loss of language function" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 54). In these cases, plasticity is not evident and the right brain will not be able to take over the language functions. References: Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2011). An introduction to language (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth. Morphology and Creativity 2/2/2012 In our home, we have created the word "sushify." It is a verb, having the base "sushi" (a Japanese dish consisting of cold, cooked rice and sweetened rice vinegar, usually in combination with fish or other seafood) and the suffix "ify" (a verb suffix used to indicate that the subject is turned into the base noun). We sushify many foods, such as fried chicken, roast beef, various vegetables, and even fruits by using them in combination with vinegar-seasoned rice to form rolls (contained in roasted seaweed). Similarly, sushification is a noun that refers to the process of turning a non-sushi-related food into sushi. An ingredient that has already been turned into sushi has been sushified, with the "-ed" suffix signifying past tense. An ingredient cannot be Undergraduate Series 355 desushified once it has been sushified, so the prefix "de-" is blocked from use with this stem, but an ingredient can be unsushified when the prefix "un-" indicated that the ingredient has not been used in sushi. The person who prepares the sushi (usually me) sushifies the chosen ingredients by adding them to the seasoned rice, with the suffix "-es" indicating the present tense. That person is the sushifier, or the one who makes the ingredient into sushi, and is sushifying the ingredients when adding them to sushi. Some ingredients are sushifiable, and can be made into sushi, but my children have decreed that peanut butter and jelly, which a friend recommended as sushi ingredients that would be good for children, are definitely unsushifiable, and cannot be used as sushi ingredients. Sushifiability and unsushifiablity are matters of individual taste, and what one person may consider a sushifiable ingredient may be considered unsushifiable by another person. Morphology allows creativity in language because the addition of various affixes to a base creates an array of words with various meanings. Nearly any verb may be turned into a noun or an adjective, nearly any noun can be turned into an adjective or a verb, and nearly any adjective can be turned into a noun or a verb, all by means of morphology. New words enter a language by means of morphology, as discrete morphemes are combined to represent new or changing objects, actions, and ideas. Semantic and Pragmatic Meanings in a Cultural Context 2/2/2012 Semantically, the phrase, "That's a sick ring tone" doesn't make a lot of sense. The adjective "sick" modifies the noun "ring tone," suggesting that the sound is in ill health. In a cultural context, however, the adjective "sick" has come to mean "good," or even, "awesome." Thus, pragmatically, in certain modern cultural settings, "That's a sick ring tone" is a compliment to the owner of the cellular phone that has that particular ring tone. Another example of a phrase that illustrates a semantic versus pragmatic meaning distinction is "That party was so gay!" Semantically, the phrase suggests that the party was lightheartedly happy. An intermediate meaning might be that the party was characterized by homosexuality, as "gay" has come to mean "homosexual." A pragmatic understanding of the phrase in a modern context is that the party was bad, specifically that it was stupid or pointless. "Gay" has come to be used in a negative context that has no connection to happiness or to homosexuality. Thus, in a cultural context, "That part was so gay" means "That party was so stupid and pointless." I learned this bit of cultural knowledge from my sons' friends in upper elementary school and middle school. The children use both "sick" and "gay" as they appear in the above examples. Another, which I had to have the kids spell for me, is "That dress looks phat!" I heard, "That dress looks fat," and I was offended, but several preteen girls explained that "phat" means "good, in a stylish way." Culture creates the distinction between semantic meanings and pragmatic meanings through common usage of words and phrases. Language evolves over time, and word meanings are sometimes changed or replaced as that evolution occurs. Each generation creates its own slang, and some words and phrases from that slang creep into the common vernacular for future generations. Sometimes, slang creation has to do with rebelling against authority or the establishment. Sometimes, it is more a matter of technical jargon associated with emerging technologies. Sometimes, it is a cultural group seeking to identify itself. All of these factors contribute to distinctions between the semantic meanings of particular phrases and the pragmatic meanings of the same phrases. 356 A Journey Through My College Papers The Prosodic Qualities of Language 2/9/2012 Merriam-Webster defines prosody as "the study of versification; especially : the systematic study of metrical structure" (Prosody, 2012, para. 1). Prosody deals with how "the placement of stress on particular syllables" affects the meanings of words (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 252). The concept of prosody comes from the structure of poetry, and deals with the rhythmic quality of poetic verse and how the stressing of particular syllables in verse affects the meaning of the verse. The prosodic features are length, pitch, and stress. How long or short a particular consonant or vowel sound may be can change the lexical meaning of words in certain languages. It can also change the pragmatic meaning of a word without changing its lexical meaning. "What a mess!" Can be a simple expression that a room is a mess if the sounds are not lengthened, but "Wha-a-a-at a mess!" emphasizes the quality of the mess, suggesting that it is a large or significant mess, and "What a me-e-e-ess! emphasizes the fact that there is a mess. The pitch assigned to a word or to a syllable within a word can alter the lexical and grammatical meanings of words in tonal languages. It is how high or low a sound is, and how the sound moves from high to low or from low to high. English is an intonation language, in which the pitch of a word may change the contextual meaning of a word or of a sentence, but the lexical meaning remains the same. The stress placed on particular syllables of words changes the lexical meanings of certain words in English. Stressed syllables are "louder, slightly higher in hitch, and somewhat longer in duration than other syllables in the word" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 252). A person may desert his or her post, with the stress on the second syllable of "desert," or a person may long for water in a desert, with the stress on the first syllable of "desert." The spelling is identical for the two words, and the meaning is determined by the stress in the word. Prosodic features of words occur in vocal speech, but not in ordinary, written language. They must be heard in order to be understood unless special characters, such as those of the international phonetic alphabet, or stress markers over particular vowels, are used to indicate prosodic features in written language. The lack of prosodic features can make a letter or email more ambiguous than a telephone call or a face-to-face communication. The meaning of a word that is heard may be understood out of context, as in "desért" or "désert," but the word "desert" requires context to be understood when written in its common form. Prosodic features of a language are recognized by speakers of the language, but a nonnative speaker of a given language is likely to have an accent when speaking the language if the prosody of his or her native language uses sound lengths, pitch, and stress differently than does the non-native language. In the case of individuals who use computers to translate text to speech, prosodic features are usually lost because the computer generates uninflected speech. Our family watches a lot of science documentaries, and we often hear the computer-generated voice of Stephen Hawking. His speech does not have normal prosody because it uses a computer, instead of the relationships among the tongue, the palate, the teeth, and other parts of the vocal tract, to produce speech sounds. References: Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2011). An introduction to language (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth. Undergraduate Series 357 Prosody. (2012). Merriam-Webster [Electronic version]. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prosody Phonetics and the International Phonetic Alphabet 2/9/2012 The tongue, the vocal cords, and the lips are all involved in producing the sounds of human speech. The position of the tongue in relation to the palate, to the velum, to the teeth, and to other parts of the vocal tract affect the articulation of sounds. The tongue may be high, low, or neutral in the mouth. It may touch or extend between the teeth it produce particular sounds. It may block or direct the movement of air. The tongue is involved in producing interdentals and dentals, palatals, alveolars, velars, and uvulars. The vocal cords control the movement of air through the glottis by relaxing to open the glottis or by constricting to close it. The vocal cords may allow air to move freely, or they may produce a different sound by vibrating. The vocal cords are involved in producing glottals, and in providing or restricting air flow for other sounds. The lips may form a rounded shape or they may be spread out in a line or a smile-like form. They may touch the teeth, the tongue, or each other to produce different sounds. All of the parts of the vocal tract work together, moving constantly during speech, to produce the wide range of sounds that belong to human speech. The lips are involved in producing bilabials and labiodentals. "Stops are consonants in which the airstream is completely blocked in the oral cavity for a short period" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 241). Fricatives do not involve the complete blocking of airflow, but "the airflow is so severely obstructed that it causes friction" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 242). The difference between stops and fricatives is the amount of airflow associated with the sound. The airflow may be blocked or obstructed by any of several parts of the vocal tract, and each type of stop or fricative has its own name, but the airflow is the key. Both stops and fricatives are consonants. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is important because it assigns a unique symbol or notation to each and every distinct consonant and vowel sound in human speech. It may be used to phonetically represent any human language, including those that seem exotic to English speakers because of the inclusion of clicks and trills that do not exist in English. The IPA distinguishes between the soft th sound in "this" and the hard th sound in "then." It distinguishes among the many sounds that are represented by the English letters a, e, i, o, and u. The IPA provides a universal alphabet that applies to all languages, so a student of languages does not have to juggle the many different alphabets that are used in diverse languages. Our text presents several quotes from Pygmalion, but I find myself flashing on scenes from its derivative musical, My Fair Lady, as I read chapter 6. Teaching a person a different dialect of that person's native language is not far different from teaching a foreign language, as the sounds that are used from one dialect to another vary. The vocal tract is trained during early childhood to produce the particular sounds of the child's native language(s), and the vocal tract must be retrained to produce the different sounds of a new dialect. References: Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2011). An introduction to language (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth. 358 A Journey Through My College Papers A Critical Period for Language Acquisition 2/16/2012 There is evidence for a critical period in language acquisition, beyond which a child will not be able to acquire a first language. According to Eric Lenneberg, "If a first language isn't acquired by puberty ... it may be too late" (Secret of the wild child, 1997, para. 66). This assertion is based, in part, on the experiences of Victor and of Genie, each of whom was isolated from human society for approximately ten years, and neither of whom was able to achieve native-like speech after being re-introduced to society (Secret of the wild child, 1997). Children around the world typically acquire a first language (L1) during the first three to five years of life. This is equally true for children learning spoken language in homes with speaking parents and for deaf children learning sign language in homes with signing parents. Children may learn two or more languages simultaneously during this period with each language being an L1 for the child. A child is born with the ability to learn any human language(s), and loses the sounds and innate grammar of other languages as he or she specializes in his or her first language. Acquisition of a second (or subsequent) language (L2) occurs when a child has already acquired a first language and then learns another language. "The younger a person is when exposed to a second language, the more likely she is to achieve native-like competence" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 365). A young child, especially before the age of 8 years, has a better chance of learning a second language than has a student in middle or high school or has an adult. The older an L2 learner is, the more difficult it is to acquire the grammar of a new language, and to acquire the particular sounds of another language. Current language curricula typically begin in or after grade 6, which usually corresponds with a child's entry into puberty. Students who are exposed to L2 instruction in preschool, kindergarten, and lower elementary grades are more likely to achieve native-like competency in the additional language(s). Students who come from bilingual or multilingual homes need to be encouraged to use both or all of their languages, in order to maintain and improve both L1 and L2 fluency. Additionally, studying a second language in a classroom setting for 30-90 minutes per day at school will not produce the same language competency as will immersion in a bilingual or multilingual classroom or home environment. "Success may depend on a range of factors, including ... whether you are in the country where the language is spoken or sitting in a classroom five mornings a week with no further contact with native speakers" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 362). Based on the evidence, I would recommend that schools introduce L2 instruction and/or bilingual classrooms for all students beginning in kindergarten, instead of waiting to introduce languages in middle school. I would encourage academic preschool programs to offer bilingual or multilingual programs, as well, with the main focus on the languages most commonly spoken at home in the school's local area. References: Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2011). An introduction to language (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth. Secret of the wild child [Television series episode (Transcript)]. (1997). In Nova. Boston, MA: PBS. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2112gchild.html Undergraduate Series 359 Computers That Talk and Listen 2/16/2012 Computers and speech-recognition software make mistakes in interpreting human speech in part because of coarticulation in ordinary human speech. The computer has difficulty determining the meaning of a sentence when words are run together as in "whatcha for what are you" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 393). Regional dialects and accents, speech impediments, and background noises can also interfere with a computer's ability to correctly interpret human speech. Also, words that sound alike but that are spelled differently and have different meanings can pose problems for a computer. Examples of homophonetic words would be read and reed, read and red, threw and through, do and sew, sow and so, etc.. Listening software in various electronic devices continues to improve, and the accuracy with which human speech is interpreted by computers is likely to continue to improve as psycholinguists and software designers work together. However, I don't think computers will ever be able to correctly interpret every utterance by every user. The human brain gets tripped up by irregular speech, and it is reasonable to assume that computers will face the same impediments. Human brains filter out background noise, scratchy throats, lisps, and dialectic differences without conscious thought, and most people are able to distinguish between strictly semantic meanings and pragmatic meanings in what they hear. Among other things, it is unlikely that a purely mechanical/electronic computer will ever be able to understand the subtleties of humor, although I have some slight hope of a bio-mechanical system managing humor in the distant future. Both talking accurately and listening accurately are difficult for computers. Talking accurately is difficult because many words have multiple meanings, and a computer must determine which words to speak in which circumstances. In a text-to-speech application, a computer will not be able to handle typographical errors, misspellings, or ungrammatical constructions, and abbreviations will also present problems. Listening accurately is difficult for the reasons given above. Humans do not usually speak the way we write, and idiomatic language can be tricky even for other humans from different parts of the world. Much of human speech requires contextual clues for comprehension, and it would be nearly impossible to program a computer with every contextual clue in the human experience. Most of us were familiar with HAL when we were growing up. Many of us are familiar with the Star Trek: TNG character Data and the Star Wars character C-3PO. It's fascinating to imagine a world where computer technology has advanced to the point where those characters could really exist, but it seems unlikely to me that computers will ever be truly fluent in receiving and producing human conversational speech. References: Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2011). An introduction to language (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth. Disappearing Languages 2/23/2012 Language embodies culture in that speakers of a language often use language -especially specific dialects -- "as a means of positive group identification" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 443). Language may reflect ethnic groups, socio-economic groups, and even gender groups. Language contains prestige dialects that are used by those who are in positions of social, 360 A Journey Through My College Papers economic, or political authority; and language contains banned or taboo words that are not socially acceptable, as well as euphemisms to replace taboo words in polite speech. "A language dies and becomes extinct when no children learn it" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 518). No children may learn a given language for any of several reasons. The last speakers of a language may die, leaving no one to pass the language on to any children. The native speakers of a language may choose not to speak the language due to political pressures, thus preventing the children hearing and learning the language. A minority language may give way to a dominant language over time, eventually dying out due to disuse. A language may also die out as a spoken language but be retained as a written and/or ceremonial or liturgical language, as happened with Latin and Hebrew (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, pp. 518-519). Any language may become extinct if it is not used and passed on to new generations. Unfortunately, the loss of a language is the loss of part of a culture and a cultural identity. Linguists record and preserve the world's languages, and attempt to reconstruct dead languages, in order to understand human history, and to preserve a record of current human languages for future generations. Understanding the development of language can help scientists to understand how humans developed language, and how humans spread across the globe and interacted with other groups of people. The evolution of languages gives evidence of the social values of the times during which a language changed, as changing morphology, syntax, and lexical changes connect modern languages to earlier protolanguages and to related sister languages. It is as important for linguists to record and understand the world's languages as it is for anthropologists to continue the search for early ancestors of modern humans. By studying the past, and by recording the present for future generations, we are better able to understand ourselves, those around us, and those who came before us. Language is part of the human identity, and preserving a record of that identity is of great importance. References: Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2011). An introduction to language (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth. Reconstructing Proto-Indo-European 2/23/2012 The existence of a larger, older family of languages than the Romance languages and the Germanic languages, called the Proto-Indo-European languages, can be seen in the closely-related beginning consonants in equivalent words in Romance and Germanic languages. In English, we have the word "fish," which begins with a /f/. The German word for the same noun is "fisch," which also begins with a /f/. "[W]here an English word begins with f, the corresponding word in a Romance language often begins with p" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 491. The French and Spanish words for "fish are, respectively, "poisson" and "pescado," and the Latin word is "piscis." "We posit a /p/ rather than an /f/ [in Proto-Indo-European words] because more languages show a /p/ in these words" (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 491). The Indo-European probably came out of Africa into western Asia, then spread westward across Europe. The two daughter languages of Indo-European, Romance and Germanic, split from each other, probably due to geographical divisions. "[T]he main event in the spread of the Western Branch of [Indo-European] languages was the initial spread of farming out of the Near East, providing a population 'wave' ... that swamped out the languages of hunter-gatherer groups, speaking non-Indo European languages, that had previously existed in the area" (Adams & Otte, n.d., para. 2). Undergraduate Series 361 We know that the proto-language divided into related language groups because the Romance group and the Germanic group maintain sound correspondences even into modern times. From this, we know that the Indo-European, as a cultural or ethnic group, did not stay in one place. The people traveled and established new groups over the western part of the Eurasian continent, displacing or absorbing earlier occupants of the same areas. We know the IndoEuropean spread in this manner because we can trace the similarities among the various languages that are believed to have descended from the Proto-Indo-European group. References: Adams, J. & Otte, M. (n.d.). Did Indo-European languages spread before farming? Current Anthropology [Electronic version]. Retrieved from http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/Indo2.html Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2011). An introduction to language (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth. Picturing the First Writing 2/27/2012 Modern Western writing finds its roots in the earliest societies of Africa. When humans first think to record events of their lives by carving or painting images on rocks and on cave walls, writing is born. This first pictorial writing gives rise, over many generations, to systematic picture writing, called hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs, in turn, evolve into alphabets that are used by many languages today. “[I]t is through Ancient Egypt that the Western world shares an important legacy with Africa: the emergence … in Egypt of a form of writing from which all modern scripts are genetically descended” (Abraham, 2011, para. 3). Many experts believe that the European Phoenician alphabet is the mother of all modern scripts, but archaeological evidence suggests that the Phoenician alphabet also has its roots in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Although written language developed independently in human cultures all over the world, modern writing is a descendant of pictorial communications in ancient Africa. The first evidence of writing, or of recording ideas and events in a lasting, visual manner, is found about 15,000 BCE, when cave drawings first appear. “Cave art, called petroglyphs … are literal portrayals of life at that time” (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 541). Petroglyphs of realisticallyrendered animals, people, and the activities of ancient people provide a vivid record for modern scientists of ancient human cultures. “The ability to record thoughts and sounds goes far back in human antiquity” (Houston, 2004, p. 223). The recording of ideas in pictures or in organized writing illustrates the creativity of the human mind, and a desire to keep a permanent record of ideas that may be passed on to future generations. These pictorial communications, or petroglyphs, represent whole words and ideas with individual pictures. The meaning of a painting or etching of a running stag with antlers is concrete, meaning a running stag with antlers. As far as can be ascertained, it is not yet a representation of an abstract idea. “Pictographic writing has been found throughout the world, ancient and modern: among Africans, Native Americans including the Inuits of Alaska and Canada, the Incas of Peru, the Yukagirians of Siberia, and the people of Oceania” (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 542). Pictographic records have been identified in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, where writing systems appear to have developed independently in parallel with one another. Regardless of geography, humans have a desire to make lasting records of the events of their lives. Stephen D. Houston (2004) writes that “script origins … occur in moments of societal change: the Olmec decline, the institution of expansive dynastic control in Egypt, city-state administration in Mesopotamia, the 362 A Journey Through My College Papers appearance of Shang” (p. 239). No doubt, the first occurrences of petroglyphs in Africa also take place is periods of societal change, as proto-humans become fully-aware humans and begin to build human civilization. Archaeological evidence shows that early man may communicate through drawings before he uses verbal language. Arthur J. Evans (1903) makes the claim that “Man drew before he talked” (p. 51). In modern humans, verbal language comes naturally for young children and written language must be learned with some effort. Even in modern humans, however, young children and persons with developmental disabilities that limit the acquisition of spoken language will draw to express thoughts and emotions. “Engraved patterns on the side of ostrich eggs dating back to the Stone Age could be the oldest form of written communication known to man … The etchings, thought to be 60,000 years old, were used to mark the eggs, which had been turned into water flasks by hunter-gatherers in Africa” (Alleyne, 2010, paras. 1-2). These etchings date to the period in which Homo neanderthalensis lived in northern Africa. Anya Luke-Killam (2001) writes that “any speech production capabilities in Homo neanderthalensis would have been severely limited by the physiology specific to that species” (p. 1). Also living in Africa at this time are Homo erectus and Homo habilis. According to Luke-Killam (2001), “it is not clear that Homo habilis fossil brain evidence is sufficient enough to claim that this hominid had languagelike skills. Likewise, fossil brain evidence does not clearly indicate that Homo erectus had definite language abilities” (p. 2). The ostrich egg etchings, then, are evidence that written language exists in northern Africa before humans acquire the physical ability to use verbal language. Sumerian cuneiform writing and Egyptian hieroglyphic writing appear at roughly the same time in human history. About 4,000-3,000 BCE, both of these systems flourish. “Over the centuries the Sumerians simplified and conventionalized their pictography. They began to produce the symbols of their written language by using a wedge-shaped stylus that was pressed into soft clay tablets” (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 543). The wedge-shaped marks are a more refined, reproducible form of picture writing, with each symbol representing an object or an idea. Similarly, “Egyptian hieroglyphics made up a formal writing system used by the Ancient Egyptians that contained a combination of pictographs … and ideographs … that later evolved into a phonetic … script” (Abraham, 2011, para. 4). The Egyptians use highly stylized images to represent objects and ideas, which become syllabic writing. Where petroglyphs only record objects and their interactions, cuneiform and hieroglyphics carry human expression further by representing ideas. Each symbol in cuneiform or in hieroglyphics represents a word or a part of a word. Two or more symbols may be required to represent a single thought, and the same individual symbol may occur in two or more words with very different meanings. Dr. Konrad Tuchscherer asserts that every modern script descends from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic traditions: “’Every modern script is descended genetically, in some way … from the ancient Egyptian script tradition,’ says Dr Konrad Tuchscherer, associate professor of history and director of Africana Studies at St John's University in New York” (Abraham, 2011, para. 24). Tuchscherer’s claim excludes Chinese and other East Asian scripts. He holds that, although cuneiform and hieroglyphics occur concurrently in history, cuneiform dies out and hieroglyphics remain as the ancestor of written language. Dr. Gunter Dreyer and his team of German archaeologists support this claim with their research that shows that “the world's earliest examples of writing were … from Africa, an estimated 500 miles south of the Nile Delta and dating to the 33rd century BCE” (Abraham, 2011, para. 29). From this origin in Egyptian hieroglyphics, written language then moves north to the Phoenicians. The Phoenician alphabet, which is often identified as the source of modern writing, grows out of Egyptian hieroglyphics about 1,500 BCE. The Phoenicians refine earlier pictographic writing into a consonantal alphabet. With this new language, symbols represent Undergraduate Series 363 discrete sounds. The symbols, which may now be called letters, may be combined in limitless ways to produce a limitless number of words. This new alphabet allows a broader expression of human thought through writing, as any spoken words may now be written. There are still limits to written language, however, as vowel sounds are not depicted in the West Semitic syllabary of the Phoenicians. The same combination of consonants may have several different meanings, depending on the vowel sounds that are inserted between the consonants. The letters of the Phoenician alphabet reflect the sounds of verbal speech in the Semitic world. The limitation on the consonantal alphabet is eased about 1000 BCE when the “Ancient Greeks borrow the Phoenician consonantal alphabet” (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p.553). The Greek alphabet includes letters that represent discrete vowel sounds, as well as consonants. Greek words include the required vowels in their spelling, so each word is distinct. The reader no longer needs to divine which vowels the writer intended to include between the consonants in order to understand the meaning of a word. Including clear vowel sounds in the Greek alphabet reflects the changing sounds of verbal language as written language moves around the eastern end of the Mediterranean from north-eastern Africa to southern Europe. Recent archaeological discoveries in Greece confirm the use of writing in Europe in this period. “Archaeologists have found a clay tablet bearing the earliest known writing in Europe, a 3,350-year-old specimen that is at least 150 years older than other tablets discovered in the region” (Maugh, 2011, para. 1). “Found in an olive grove in what’s now the village of Iklaina … the tablet was created by a Greek-speaking Mycenaean scribe between 1450 and 1350 B.C.” (Than, 2011, para. 3). Maugh and Than both discuss the same discovery, made in the summer of 2010, of a small, clay tablet that is found is the remains of an ancient fire in Iklaina, Greece. The tablet is inadvertently preserved when it is burned in a rubbish heap, thus firing the clay and making it strong and hard. The tablet can be read, and is written in a Greek language called Linear B, which “is related to the older hieroglyph system used by the ancient Egyptians” (Than, 2011, para. 18). The discovery of this tablet is physical evidence that Greek writing descends from Egyptian hieroglyphs, which, in turn, descend from ancient petroglyphs. Approximately 750 BCE, “Etruscans borrow the Greek alphabet” (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 553). In the spring of 1881, “the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston received … [an] interesting little unguent vase or perfume bottle” (Norton, 1881, p. 165). The jar is important because it is a piece of Etruscan pottery from Corneto, Italy. On the jar is a series of Etruscan letters that Signor Gian Francesco Gainurrini interprets as “M I M U L U K A V I I E S I” (Norton, 1881, p. 165). The letters, a facsimile of which appears in the article about the jar, are plainly visible, and where the interpretation shows a “U,” the original inscription contains a character that looks like an English “Y.” “Signor Gamurrini reads the words composing the inscription, Mi mulu kaviiesi, and translates them, … ‘I am Mulus, or Mulvius, the son of Cavius’" (Norton, 1881, pp. 165-166). The Etruscan writing is rendered left to right, just as modern English, French, and related languages are written. The spelling of “kaviiesi” appears to give the clue that Mulus is the son of Cavius, using an inflectional morpheme to indicate the relationship. This Etruscan inscription shows the use of both consonants and vowels to produce written words. The Greek and Etruscan alphabets are both known as epichoric alphabets, which means that they are “peculiar to a limited area” (Epichoric, 2012, para. 1). It is interesting that the inscription is written as a single word, without spaces or symbols to indicate where one word ends and the next word begins. Also, the letters are all majuscules – what are modernly called capitals or upper-case letters – and that there are no minuscules, or lower-case letters in use. This lack of minuscules is because “minuscule or lower case letters first appeared sometime after 800 AD” (Ager, 2012, para. 3). At the time the Etruscan unguent jar was crafted, there was not yet a distinction drawn by the use of two different forms of the same letter. 364 A Journey Through My College Papers Features of modern writing develop in Greek and Etruscan writing. “Around 500 BC the direction of writing changed to horizontal lines running from left to right … [and] [d]iacritics to represent stress and breathings were added to the [Greek] alphabet in around 200 BC” (Ager, 2012, para. 4). Modern European languages are written horizontally across the page, running from left to right. Many modern languages, including French, Spanish, and Greek continue to use diacritic marks to indicate stress or to give particular letters special sounds. About 500 BCE, “Romans adapt the Etruscan/Greco alphabet to Latin” (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 553). The Roman, or Latin alphabet is used to this day, and “[m]ost European alphabets use Latin (Roman) letters, adding diacritic marks to accommodate individual characteristics of a particular language” (Fromkin, et. al., 2011, p. 553). Latin letters are familiar to every person who reads and writes modern English. While the letters may be rendered in many decorative fonts that may include added curlicues, whorls, serifs, and any number of decorative features, the letters remain intelligible to English readers. The many artistic flourishes that may be added to Latin letters do not change the meanings of the letters. The cuneiform and hieroglyphic systems of the past must be rendered with great precision, avoiding any extraneous marks, or the written message will be changed. Although diacritic marks may change the meaning of certain letters of the Latin alphabet, artistic flourishes neither add nor subtract meaning. Culture, unlike artistic flourishes, does change the meaning of words written with Latin letters. While the letters of Beowulf are the same letters as those used to write the Declaration of Independence, the sounds associated with the letters has changed dramatically over time. As verbal vocabularies and language sounds change over time, the spelling of written words also changes. Spelling is irrelevant in verbal speech, which is based entirely on sound and inflection, but written language requires conventions of spelling to express the sounds of verbal language in a way that will be intelligible to readers. The progression of the spelling of various words according to the way they sound in spoken language at a given period may be observed by examining the words at the ends of rhymed couplets in the poetry of Chaucer and of Shakespeare. While the words may not appear to rhyme in modern English, it is clear that they did rhyme, or sound alike, in Middle English. Alphabets descending from Egyptian hieroglyphics through the Latin alphabet continue to evolve into the modern era. The minuscule letter, which is the most common form of the letters of the modern English alphabet, was introduced in the 8th century CE as the “Carolingian minuscule letter” (The origins of abc, 2010, para. 35). Majuscule and minuscule forms of the same letter share the same sound. A word may be written using any combination of majuscules and minuscules without changing the meaning of the word, and there have been periods in the history of written English when either form of a letter might be used interchangeably in a manuscript. In modern English, there are rules and conventions for the use of majuscules, which are now called capitals. Capital letters are used only in specific ways in modern English, and minuscules, or lower-case, letters, are used for the majority of English writing. With the advent of the Internet and digital communications, there is a growing trend to reintroduce certain pictographic symbols in modern, written communication. These symbols, which are usually called emoticons, are reminiscent of the Egyptian hieroglyphics from which modern writing descends. They are made from series of punctuation marks and a few letters, and some are fairly complex. The most common are the smile and the wink. The smile is made with a colon and a closing parenthesis, and some computer programs with translate that combination into a pictogram of a circle containing two eyes and a smiling mouth: . The wink is similar, using a semicolon in place of a colon: ;). As online social networking sites and chat rooms flourish, these modern pictograms or hieroglyphics become more and more common. Many younger Internet users use more complex pictograms in their communications, such as a heart to indicate a feeling of love from the writer of a message to the reader of the message: <3. A pictogram the purpose of Undergraduate Series 365 which appears to be a mystery to adult users, but which is popular among young users, is the shark: (^^^). As written language continues to evolve, it is possible that these, or similar, pictograms may enter the alphabet or the written lexicon as formal expressions of written ideas. Although written language developed independently in human cultures all over the world, modern Western writing is a direct descendant of the petroglyphs of north-eastern Africa. The Phoenician alphabet, which is often given as the mother of all modern scripts, has its roots in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Ancient petroglyphs may be created by early humans who have not yet acquired the physiological capacity for articulate speech. The concrete ideas contained in petroglyphs are distilled by the Sumerians and the Egyptians into systems of stylized images that represent syllables; Sumerian cuneiform writing dies out, leaving Egyptian hieroglyphic writing as the ancestor of modern writing. The Phoenicians borrow the Egyptian hieroglyphics and create a consonantal alphabet that uses letters instead of syllabic symbols to create written words. Later, the Greeks borrow the Phoenician alphabet and add letters to represent vowel sounds. The Etruscans carry the Greek alphabet into Italy, where it becomes the Latin alphabet that is still used in many modern languages, including French, Spanish, and English. Over time, letters are added to and subtracted from alphabets to accommodate the sounds of languages, and some modern languages use diacritic marks to indicate stress. As spoken and written languages continue to evolve, alphabets may also continue to evolve. Specialized symbols used in Internet communications, called emoticons, may one day be accepted letters of an expanded alphabet. References Abraham, C. (2011). Africa had its own writing systems! New African, 509, 82-87. Retrieved from ProQuest database. Ager, S. (2012). Greek alphabet. Retrieved from http://www.omniglot.com/writing/greek.htm Alleyne, R. (2010, March 2). Ostrich egg markings could be earliest form of writing. The Daily Telegraph, 7. Retrieved from ProQuest database. Epichoric. (2012). Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epichoric Evans, A. J. (1903). Pre-Phoenician writing in Crete, and its bearings on the history of the alphabet. Man, 3, 50-55. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2840854 Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2011). An introduction to language (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth. Houston, S. D. (2004). The archaeology of communication technologies. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33, 223-250. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25064852 Luke-Killam, A. (2001). Language capabilities of Homo erectus & Homo neanderthalensis. Retrieved from http://www.lllf.uam.es/~clase/acceso_local/LgCapabili.pdf Maugh, T. H. (2011, April 3). Preserved tablet rewrites history of ancient Greece. Tulsa World, A12. Retrieved from ProQuest database. Norton, C.E. (1881). An ancient Etruscan unguent jar. The American Art Review, 2 (10), 165-166. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20559876 Than, K. (2011, March 30). Ancient tablet found: Oldest readable writing in Europe. National Geographic News [Electronic version]. Retrieved from https://talesfromthelou.wordpress.com/tag/athens-archaeological-society/ The origins of abc. (2010). Retrieved from http://ilovetypography.com/2010/08/07/wheredoes-the-alphabet-come-from/ 366 A Journey Through My College Papers ENG 317: International Voices Reflection on Artistic Expression in Your Everyday Life 3/1/2012 My family lives in an eclectic culture, made up of contributions from the many ethnic groups that live together here in Metro Detroit. Even so, I come from a much more conservative culture, and that is evident in much of my life. I grew up in a very, very white community in southern Vermont. We are the descendants of English immigrants who came to America in the 1500s, and of Irish immigrants who came to America during the famine in the 1800s. That is the culture that shaped my childhood, and that is still evident in the sturdy, round, hardwood table that dominates my kitchen, and in the couch covered with well-squashed, decorative pillows and handcrocheted afghans. It is reflected in the Vermont landscape, painted by my grandmother, that hangs in my living room. Our connection to family, and to our heritage, may be seen in the many family photos that hang on the walls, and in the cluster of coats of arms of notable ancestors above my desk. The digressions from the culture of my childhood are a counterpoint in the aesthetics of our home. A terracotta Buddha shares the living room with a soapstone statue of Saint Francis of Assisi, and each represents a part of my family's spiritual and cultural journey. A Western dragon hangs from the ceiling opposite a large mosaic of medieval Constantinople, and again, each represents an expression of the personal journeys of the members of our nuclear family. Just last week, my husband and I bought a car. We have been driving a 1998 conversion van. It is large, bulky, and unpleasantly tan. The car we bought is a 2010 Chevrolet HHR. It is bright, cherry red with a black interior. We bought a car because we needed better gas mileage for my husband's daily two-hour commute; we bought that particular car because it is cute and classy, and because we won't be embarrassed to park it at our church on Sundays. It represents our view of our place in our society, and our yielding to a middle-class American culture that equates bulky, old vans with low social status, and new, stylish cars with higher social status. I have one piercing in each earlobe. "The act of piercing is often part of a ritual change of status" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 114). I got my ears pierced when I was 12 years old, as a sign that I had passed from being a little girl to being a young woman. I love jewelry, and I wear a variety of earrings. Dangling earrings, usually matched with a necklace, are my favorite, and it is rare that I leave the house without putting in a pair of earrings. When I need to be modestly dressed, I am most likely to wear a pair of diamond solitaires that my cultural background tells me are "innocent" or "respectful" jewelry. The rest of the time, I enjoy big jewelry in bold colors. This is a departure from the behavior of the culture in which I grew up, which valued small, delicate, understated jewelry. I have a fear of getting something as permanent as a tattoo, but I do wear makeup. Just as it is rare for me to go our without jewelry, so is it rare for me to go out without eye shadow, mascara, and a spritz of cologne. "Rituals and ceremonies often require people to wear certain kinds of makeup, clothing, or hairstyles" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 111). Special events call for more makeup, and I went so far as to buy acrylic fingernails for my wedding two years ago. I felt a cultural imperative to wear powder, blush, and lipstick, as well as to hide my short, ragged nails with sleek, pink ones. I will also admit to hiding the encroaching gray in my hair with dye, and to getting regular haircuts to maintain a short, fluffy hair style that projects an image of youth. All of these decorative efforts are part of our American culture, in which makeup and haircuts identify our positions in a social order. Undergraduate Series 367 For special events, such as carnivals and festivals, my sons still like to wear face paint. The girls in their classes like to get glittery fairy wings painted on the sides of their faces, from their eyes to their temples, but the boys prefer to have Western dragons painted on their cheeks. These artistic expressions are not for everyday life, just for public festivals, and my sons choose dragons to express their personal interest in all things medieval and/or fantasy. They see dragons as symbols of strength, courage, and honor. "World-wide travel, large-scale migrations, and increasing access to global networks of communication mean ...a kaleidoscopic mix of traditional practices and new inventions" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 110). While the authors are referring to body art, the same is true of food. A normal menu in our home, over a two-week pay period, includes at least one night of homemade sushi, at least one night of Mexican or Tex-Mex foods made at home, at least one meal of German or Polish sausages with fried potatoes, and at least one pot roast or meat loaf that recalls the culture of my own childhood. We live in an eclectic community, and our diet reflects the eclectic culture in which we live. Whereas I could not have told the difference among Thai, Japanese, and Middle Eastern foods when I was a child, my sons know the difference, and when we eat out, they request the ethnicity that they prefer at the moment. They know the difference between shawarma and kafta, and between sushi maki and sashimi, all of which were outside my experience until just three years ago. References: Hirschberg, S., & Hirschberg, T. (Eds.) (2012) One world, many cultures. (8th ed.). United States: Pearson Education, Inc. Reflection on Artistic Expression in Your Everyday Life: Food 3/1/2012 The foods my family chooses to eat reflect not only where we are now, but also where we came from and the experiences that we have had. I grew up in a very, very white community in southern Vermont. We are the descendants of English immigrants who came to America in the 1500s, and of Irish immigrants who came to America during the famine in the 1800s. As a result, I never had what my family would call "ethnic" food until I was in my mid-teens. The closest we came to Chinese food was a can of La Choy. Dinner was usually meat loaf, baked chicken, or fish sticks. There was little variation, and the food was rarely seasoned with anything more than salt and pepper. This bland, predictable diet reflected our English heritage, and our Puritan past. As we grow, our personal cultures may change. Meeta Kaur experienced this as she went through a personal identity crisis in college (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, pp. 61-64). Her inner change was brought on by the outer pressures of American life. Outside forces can change our cultural experiences in a variety of ways. When I was in my early 30s, my children and I lived in North Carolina. Life had brought sharp economic changes, and affording good food was difficult. Our diet during those years reflected the culture in which we found ourselves: poor, Southern, and the white minority in a largely black and brown population. Meals included a lot of beans, especially pinto beans, which had not been part of my childhood experience. Biscuits smothered in a thick, peppery, white gravy -- with a bit of sausage when finances permitted the luxury -- were a staple. Chicken was inexpensive there, and ham was surprisingly cheap, so those were the meats of my children's first years. Poverty in the American South is a culture in itself, and these carbohydrate-heavy meals were part of that culture. Now, in my early 40s, life is different for my family. We live in a moderately affluent suburb of Detroit, although we are at the lower end of the local middle class. The racial mix here 368 A Journey Through My College Papers is the most even of my experience, with white, brown, black, and every shade in between living and working together. I am able to raise my children in a very different culture from that in which they began life. "World-wide travel, large-scale migrations, and increasing access to global networks of communication mean ...a kaleidoscopic mix of traditional practices and new inventions" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 110). While the authors are referring to body art, the same is true of food. A normal menu in our home, over a two-week pay period, includes at least one night of homemade sushi, at least one night of Mexican or Tex-Mex foods made at home, at least one meal of German or Polish sausages with fried potatoes, and at least one pot roast or meat loaf that recalls the culture of my own childhood. We live in an eclectic community, and our diet reflects the eclectic culture in which we live. Whereas I could not have told the difference among Thai, Japanese, and Middle Eastern foods when I was a child, my sons know the difference, and when we eat out, they request the ethnicity that they prefer at the moment. They know the difference between shawarma and kafta, and between sushi maki and sashimi, all of which were outside my experience until just three years ago. Just as our diet reflects an eclectic cultural identity, so does our home. Although our furnishings are generally Western, out living room includes both a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi and a terra cotta Buddha, as well as models of various Western dragons built by our sons, paintings that I have made in a medieval French style, and many tools and accessories associated with our reenactments of the medieval period and of the French and Indian War. It is a hodgepodge of Western and Eastern, of traditional and eccentric aesthetic elements that all combine to express our family identity. My ancestors came from a very clear, distinct culture: that of English gentry and nobility. I still treasure that connection, but my culture is new and different. I have become something of a chameleon, adapting to the many ethnic contributions that make up my family's culture as they come along. I will never be mistaken for anything but the daughter of an aristocratic New England family, but I embrace the variegated culture in which I now live. References: Hirschberg, S., & Hirschberg, T. (Eds.) (2012) One world, many cultures. (8th ed.). United States: Pearson Education, Inc. Artistic Expression and Culture 3/1/2012 Meeta Kaur's autobiographical story about her struggle for personal identity presents a strong connection between the aesthetic, the everyday, and culture (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, pp. 58-67). As a Sikh, Kaur's hair is an expression of the aesthetic in her life. Great care is taken with the grooming of a person's hair in her culture, and long hair is considered the aesthetic ideal for both males and females. Kaur grows up in the United States, where her family's culture is often eclipsed by the prevailing American culture. Most Americans cut their hair, and a child's first haircut is a milestone from infancy to young childhood for most American families. For Kaur, cutting a child's hair is unthinkable. The long, thick, black hair is shampooed and combed with great attention, and the hair is the individual's connection to the spiritual in the world. When Kaur cuts her hair in college, the effect is almost something from a fairy tale. With the loss of her long hair, Kaur loses her personal identity and her self-worth, and she also dishonors her family. After a period of searching, Kaur returns to the practices of her culture, which she learned in childhood. As her hair regains its length, she regains her identity and restores her self-worth. Kaur's everyday life is deeply tied to the aesthetic of her hair because of her Sikh culture. She Undergraduate Series 369 does not realize how deeply ingrained is her culture until she goes against the beliefs and traditions of her culture by cutting her hair. Like Kaur's story, Saira Shah's story shows how a family will cling to the aesthetic of its traditional culture when the family is surrounded by an alien culture (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, pp. 382-386). Shah's father uses the artistic expression of telling story's to establish a connection for his children in England with the culture they left behind in Afghanistan. "My father understood the value of stories ... we were never allowed to forget our Afghan background" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 383). He also uses the artistic expression of cooking traditional Afghan foods to strengthen his children's connection to the family's cultural heritage. Shah and her siblings helped prepare their father's Afghan recipes, and it was only in adulthood that she learned that her father had adapted his culture to the culture around him such that his recipes "diverged subtly from their originals ... [but] tasted indistinguishable from the originals" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 384). The stories and the recipes that Shah's father passed on to his children in everyday life connected the children to their cultural heritage through the aesthetic of oral tradition, and through the aesthetic of creative family cooking extravaganzas. The cooking created good, solid memories of family times for the children to carry into adulthood and, possibly, to pass on to their own children. The art of oral storytelling is a very powerful tool for connecting people to the past, and for implanting the essence of culture in their imagination and personal identity. Kaur's mother and Shah's father each worked hard to weave her or his cultural heritage into the subconscious identities of Kaur and Shah by making specific, aesthetic aspects of each culture a part of everyday life. References: Hirschberg, S., & Hirschberg, T. (Eds.) (2012) One world, many cultures. (8th ed.). United States: Pearson Education, Inc. Rebellion and Personal Identity 3/5/2012 Each person grows up with the teachings of his or her parents or primary care-givers. For some, the teachings of childhood are filled with deep, cultural and religious significance. For others, the teachings are intended to help the child to set aside cultural beliefs and practices in order to assimilate into the dominant culture. Regardless of which kind of teachings a child receives, the child’s identity is shaped by the beliefs or by the priorities of the child’s parents. At some point, a child goes through a transitional time that is often fraught with personal crises. During this period, the child is likely to rebel against the teachings of childhood in order to find his or her personal identity. Meeta Kaur’s journey through youthful rebellion to the discovery of her personal identity is a reflection of a similar journey in the life of each person in every culture. Kaur’s autobiographical story, Journey by Inner Light, describes four distinct stages in her journey toward the realization of her personal identity. When she is a child, Kaur’s mother teaches her the beliefs and behaviors of a Sikh woman. Just as most children are not aware that they are learning cultural traditions when their parents tell them stories or help them establish grooming practices, so Kaur is unaware that the daily ritual of washing her hair and of grooming her long, thick hair is inculcating Sikh cultural beliefs and practices. “Mama piles the strands of hair atop my head and squeezes out more shampoo. She beams as she sculpts my hair into a temple” (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 59). Kaur describes her mother’s artistic expression as well as her early understanding of the cultural significance of the ritual grooming when she 370 A Journey Through My College Papers writes of her lathered hair as a temple. When my mother washed my long, dark hair when I was a little girl, she piled it atop my head, just as Kaur’s mother does with Kaur’s hair. I always thought my mother was building fairytale castles out of my hair, but Kaur describes the hair sculpture as a temple. It is an early indication that her mother is already teaching Kaur that her spiritual identity resides in her thick, unshorn hair, as though it resides in a temple. When Kaur is a teenager, she discovers the religious background for the aesthetic of her long hair. During her visits to India, she learns that her hair has a symbolic function. “I learn, in preserving this natural uniform, that I commit to the equality between men and women, rich and poor, black and white, Muslim and Christian” (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 60). Kaur’s mother chose a spiritual and a moral path for her young daughter, and Kaur faces that path as she discovers its historic and cultural context during her early teenage years. Whereas the child Kaur immerses herself in the look and feel of her hair and of her mother’s hair, the teenage Kaur begins to discover that the aesthetic is accompanied by a moral responsibility. “I follow my pleasures and passions as a young adolescent American girl who has bought into the illusions of this world” (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 61). Kaur does not feel the religious teachings as part of her personal identity; she is influenced more by the dominant culture that surrounds her daily life than by the family culture that her mother teaches her. Many young women rebel against their mothers when they reach their late teens and early twenties. Kaur is no different. She is strongly influenced by American culture, and she is under enormous social pressure to fit in with other women of her own age. She has lived all of her life according to the cultural and moral dictates of her mother, and she needs to find her own path in life. “[S]omething about my hair feels stale, like old bread. It is ancient, musty, and tired” (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 61). This is the only way Kaur knows to express that her mother’s teachings feel outdated and irrelevant in Kaur’s life. Her hair is the outward symbol of her Sikh heritage, and its heavy length binds her to a culture that is chosen for her before she is old enough to choose for herself. She makes the agonizing decision to cut her ties to her mother’s culture and beliefs by having her hair cut. Just as Kaur rebels against the life path that her mother has chosen for her, so did I rebel against the life path that my mother chose for me. My mother scripted my life from my birth to the anticipated birth of my own children. To rebel against the identity that my mother chose for me, I opted not to attend college after high school, and to join the military instead. Like Kaur’s rebellion, my rebellion involved cutting hair that fell below my waist; my pixie-style military haircut was an aesthetic symbol of my rebellion. Just as Kaur’s mother is deeply disappointed in and hurt by Kaur’s decision to cut off the hair that connects her to the spiritual forces of her world, so was my mother deeply hurt by and disappointed in my decision to throw away my education and social training for the coarse, crude, rough life that she believes military service to be. The method of rebellion is different in Kaur’s life and in my life, but each act of rebellion is the beginning of an adult journey of self-discovery. When a young woman rebels against her mother and against her cultural heritage, there is often a period of depression which is not unlike the period of mourning that follows a death. Kaur experiences this dark period of transition. “I have no center, so I drift out to sea without direction or guidance. I lose my connection to myself and to the world. I lose my connection to a deeper sense of who I am” (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, pp. 63-64). For some young women, rebelling against the teachings of childhood frees them to follow a new course in life. For Kaur, her rebellion leaves her without an independent course. Over a period of time, she begins to adopt for herself the rituals and habits that were once thrust upon her by her mother. She is able to discover that her inner identity is that of a Sikh woman, not because her mother says it is so, but because Kaur experiences that it is so. Kaur’s youthful rebellion allows her the freedom to return to her cultural roots unencumbered by the uncertainty of whether her identity comes from her mother or from within herself. She discovers that the aesthetic of long, thick hair is a beautiful Undergraduate Series 371 reminder of her connection to herself, to her culture, and to her world. “My hair becomes witness to all the love and atrocities in the world” (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 66). Kaur’s journey through youthful rebellion to personal, inner identity is complete, and she is free to embrace her culture as her own. Her hair is a symbol of her culture and of her identity, a deeply meaningful aesthetic presence in her everyday life. Like Kaur, I also found freedom after the dark transitional phase of my rebellion against my mother. I embraced the culture of my youth and returned to religious practices from which I had strayed. I left the military and began a family, and I have returned to school to pursue a career in education, just as my mother planned that I should do. Rebellion allowed me to discover that my inner identity is not so much different from the identity that my mother strove to create for me during my childhood. Kaur and I are like so many other young women around the world. We rebelled against our mothers and our cultures in a journey that, ultimately, shows us that we are the women that our mothers wished us to be. Each person is connected to his or her culture by beliefs and practices that are represented by the aesthetics of everyday life. Changing the artistic expression in a person’s life, whether by cutting one’s hair or by donning a military uniform, gives one the freedom to discover whether one’s beliefs and life path come from outside teachings or from an inner identity. Reclaiming the practices, rituals, and artistic expressions of one’s youth is an affirmation of the discovery of one’s personal and cultural identity. The journey is different for each individual, but each journey is similar to all of the personal journeys of young people around the globe. Each person’s connection to his or her culture and identity is represented in the artistic expressions of everyday aesthetics. References Hirschberg, S., & Hirschberg, T. (Eds.) (2012) One world, many cultures. (8th ed.). United States: Pearson Education, Inc. Language, Perception, and Artistic Creation 3/8/2012 Language shapes and describes our world views and our experiences of ourselves and of the world. Just as Amy Tan notices the effect of her childhood language on her writing, I notice the effect of my childhood language on how I write the first sentence of this discussion (Tan, 1990). I feel compelled by the formal English of my childhood to insert a few words into my rewording of the discussion prompt. Writing less formally makes me uncomfortable, just as reading informal writing makes me uncomfortable. This is because it is not only language that shapes a person's perception of the world; it is which language is dominant in a bilingual speaker or which dialect of a language is dominant in a unilingual speaker. A bilingual or multilingual speaker is influenced by the language in which he or she is thinking at the moment when an event occurs. Professor Lera Boroditsky (2011) of Stanford University writes that "linguistic differences influence how people construe what happened and have consequences for eyewitness memory" (para. 14). Whether a person is thinking in a language that uses nonagentive forms for verbs, such as Spanish or Japanese, or whether that person is thinking in a language that is very specific in regard to interpersonal relationships or directional orientation, such as Chinese or Kuuk Thaayorre, has a deep impact on the memories that person will have of a given event. Language defines experiences and memories because different languages and different dialects make an individual more or less aware of various details of an experience. 372 A Journey Through My College Papers In discussing the non-standard form of English that dominated her childhood, Amy Tan (1990) writes: "That was the language that helped shape the way I saw things, expressed things, made sense of the world" (para. 6). The language to which she refers is neither English nor Chinese, but a form of English that follows, to some extent, the syntax of Chinese. This childhood language allows her to form vivid mental images based on brief phrases, but it limits her ability to form analogies between disparate subjects in English (Tan, 1990, para. 15). Language informs an individual's perception of the world, and an individual's vision of the world and of the many relationships in the world determines the artistic expressions of the individual. Artistic expression is found in every place where humans live, and the forms of artistic expression vary from one cultural group to another. The way is which humans perceive numbers, colors, spirituality and religion or lack thereof, aesthetic beauty, and relationships between humans and the world and among humans influences the way those perceptions are expressed through the arts. References: Boroditsky, L. (2011, Feb.). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62-65. Retrieved from EBSCO Host database. Tan, A. (1990). Mother Tongue. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/13297165/Mother-Tongue-By-Amy-Tan-I-Am-Not-A The Meanings of Words 3/8/2012 In "My Name," Esperanza discusses her feelings about her name, and about her Mexican heritage. She describes her name as "sadness, ... waiting ... A muddy color ... like sobbing" (Cisneros, 1984, para. 1). Translated into English, Esperanza means hope, but the author sees her name as something negative, even as something ugly. She is a Mexican woman, and she has a Spanish name. Too often, in the United States, individuals with Mexican heritage are seen as lower-class. The advent of Dora the Explorer has made Spanish a bright, positive language for many modern American children, but for Esperanza, being Latina is probably colored by earlier stereotypes of cheap domestic help and illegal border crossings into California and Texas. Even if those stereotypes do not apply to Esperanza and her family, she still feels the social stigma of her native culture and language. Esperanza explores possible substitutes for her name. She considers names that have more positive connotations than have Esperanza. Lisandra comes from "Alexandros, a Greek name meaning 'Protector of men'" (Lisandra, 2010, para. 1). Maritza is a Hebrew name that means: "Wished-for child" (Maritza, 2010, para. 1). Each of these names has a positive meaning, just as hope is a positive meaning of Esperanza, but neither Lisandra nor Maritza is a Spanish name, so neither name carries the social stigma attached to Americans of Mexican descent. I have difficulty relating to the author's feelings about the English language in this essay based on my own experience with English. I relate to her feelings only through my interaction with others. I am forcing myself to think back to when my sons and I were the only non-Hispanic, white family in our neighborhood when we lived in North Carolina. I had several Mexican and Puerto Rican friends there, as well as some who were born in the Dominican Republic. They each spoke Spanish as a native language, and they spoke English with varying degrees of fluency. Those who were more fluent in English, and who were either very white or very black in skin tone, were treated better in the community than were those who spoke more "broken" English and who had distinctive, brown, Mexican features. Just as Amy Tan interacts with the world on her Undergraduate Series 373 mother's behalf when standard English is needed, so did I often see and hear Lily interact with state agencies, doctors, and others on behalf of her mother and step-father (Tan, 1990, paras. 913). Lily's English is very clear, but her mother speaks very little English, and it often required every scrap of very broken Spanish that I possess to communicate with her. I saw in those interactions that my friends' language, culture, and ethnicity influenced their lives and their social status. For myself, as I mentioned in my first paragraph, I was raised in a family in which formal English was the norm. My father and each of my grandmothers took pains to correct our speech whenever we made mistakes. My mother, a teacher and a pastor, saw to it that our writing was formal, as well. I am aware of these influences, but it takes conscious effort to relax my speech. Errors in writing disturb me, and I must force myself to overlook them when I communicate online. English is my only language, even though I know a smattering of several other languages. I have been accused of being elitist in my speech, and I won't refute it because I know that I was taught to be so. References: Cisneros, S. (1984). My Name. The House on Mango Street, 25-27. New York: Vintage Books. Retrieved from http://theliterarylink.com/mangostreet.html Lisandra. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.babynamer.com/lisandra Maritza. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.babynamer.com/Maritza Language and Personal Identity 3/12/2012 Language is an integral part of life for nearly every person on the planet. Language is an important way in which individuals express needs, wants, hopes, dreams, and fears. Infants hear language while they are still in the womb, and their first years are spent absorbing language. The words of an individual’s language represent the cultural beliefs and ideas of the group to which he or she belongs. An individual’s native language is closely tied to his or her sense of personal identity. In “My Name,” the narrator discusses the cultural significance of her name, and how that culture relates to her personal identity. She is called Esperanza, which is the Spanish word for hope. Her name has a beautiful, positive meaning in her native language, but Esperanza does not live in a place where Spanish is the dominant language, so she does not associate the positive meaning of her name with her personal experience and identity. Esperanza lives in the United States, where English is the primary language, and where native speakers of Spanish are often viewed as second-class citizens at best. Esperanza describes her name as "sadness, ... waiting ... A muddy color ... like sobbing" (Cisneros, 1984, para. 1). Her experience as a Mexican woman in the United States has literally colored her perception of her own name, so that she thinks of her name in terms of a dirty, brown color. Esperanza’s family comes from Mexico, where Spanish is the dominant language, so it is natural that she has a Spanish name. It is likely that her Mexican parents gave her a Spanish name in order to provide her with a connection to her cultural heritage. Esperanza describes the “Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving” (Cisneros, 1984, para. 1). Her father’s desire to listen to the music of his native culture suggests that Esperanza’s family values that culture, and that her parents intended her name to be a source of cultural strength and pride for her. Instead, Esperanza’s view of her Mexican heritage is probably colored by stereotypes of cheap domestic help and illegal border crossings into California and Texas. Even if 374 A Journey Through My College Papers those stereotypes do not apply to Esperanza and her family, she still feels the social stigma of her native culture and language in her Spanish name. “[I]n Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like silver” (Cisneros, 1984, para. 5). Esperanza is aware that her name is not negative in Spanish, but she lives in an Englishspeaking culture, apart from the original culture of her parents and her ancestors. She is unable to see herself as the softly glowing, silver hope that her parents intend her to be when they name her. Instead, her identity reflects the sad, waiting, brownness of a Mexican woman in a predominantly white world. Her personal identity is connected to the white stereotype of Mexican women, and to the hopeless waiting for something better that accompanies the stereotype. Esperanza connects her Spanish language and heritage with the negative stereotypes that surround her. She wishes to change her identity not by changing her personal outlook on her life, or by changing her own actions and activities, but by changing her name. Esperanza is a Spanish name, and she wishes to escape the Mexican identity that her Spanish name creates for her. She looks to languages that have positive associations for white Americans for possible replacements for her name and her personal identity. “I ... would like to baptize myself under a new name, ... as Lisandra or Maritza” (Cisneros, 1984, para. 5). Lisandra comes from "Alexandros, a Greek name meaning 'Protector of men'" (Lisandra, 2010, para. 1). Maritza is a Hebrew name that means: "Wished-for child" (Maritza, 2010, para. 1). Esperanza thinks that changing the language associated with her name will change her personal identity from the sadness and waiting of her Mexican heritage to a stronger, more positive – perhaps more educated or more civilized – identity with the culture of Greece or that of Israel. By choosing a name from the Greek language, Esperanza may hope to create a personal identity that reflects the heroes of Classical Greece. The Greek language is the language of Homer and of Aesop, and it does not carry the stigma of underpaid housemaids and day laborers in American cities. By choosing a Hebrew name, Esperanza may hope that a connection to the Bible and to Biblical places and stories might define her personal identity. Esperanza’s personal identity comes not from her name, as she believes, but from the social stigma attached to her linguistic and cultural heritage. Esperanza’s personal identity would be filled with hope and beauty if it was defined by her Spanish name. Instead, her personal identity is one of sadness and of the dark, dull colors of a marginalized race. Spanish has become for Esperanza a symbol of loss and oppression in the United States, instead of the symbol of beauty, color, and celebration that it was for her Spanish ancestors. Underlying the stereotype of a Mexican woman, however, Esperanza has hopes and dreams. Beneath the identity that she accepts for herself from the culture around her, Esperanza embodies the identity of hope that her name provides. Esperanza dreams of her great-grandmother, whose name she shares. She refers that earlier Esperanza as “a wild, horse of a woman” (Cisneros, 1984, para. 3). The young Esperanza dreams of escaping her name and of creating a new identity with a new name. Esperanza’s dreams demonstrate that she has not given up and resigned herself to a sad, muddy social stigma. She has hopes for her own future, and for the identity that she can find for herself. An individual’s sense of personal identity is closely tied to his or her native language. Esperanza attaches great importance to the power of language to define identity. She wishes she could change the language of her name in order to create a more positive identity for herself. Her language defines her culture, and her language influences how she interacts with the dominant culture in which she lives. References Cisneros, S. (1984). My Name. The House on Mango Street, 25-27. New York: Vintage Books. Retrieved from http://theliterarylink.com/mangostreet.html Lisandra. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.babynamer.com/lisandra Undergraduate Series 375 Maritza. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.babynamer.com/Maritza The Past’s Presence Today: Historical Representations in Art and Literature 3/15/2012 "The Convocation," by Marjane Satrapi, and "Reading Lolita in Tehran," by Azar Nafisi, both present the lives of female students in Iran, and each offers a view of how the history and culture of Iran impact the activities of women. Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel describes her experiences as a new student at a college of arts in 1989. She uses both words and pictures to show how young, Persian women express their individuality even while wearing the required robes and scarves of their culture. The young women are moving into the modern world under the garments of their traditional world, and "year by year, women were winning an eighth of an inch of hair and losing an eighth of an inch of veil" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 75). Even as the young women are slowly gaining personal freedoms, however, the college still maintain the traditional segregation of male students from female students. "[A]t the main campus ... girls and boys had to take different staircases, while where we were, everyone used the same staircase" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 77). Also, Satrapi and her male friend, Reza, must avoid being seen together in her car, or risk expulsion from school. At Satrapi's arts college, the relatively greater freedom of expression experienced by artists helps the students move forward in history, if only by increments. Persian laws that promote the chastity of women give way in tiny ways to modern practices of climbing a unisex staircase. Satrapi has modern ideas about the traditional garments of her gender, and she risks severe punishment to express her views in an assembly about moral conduct. She is fortunate that the representative of The Islamic Commission who talks to her about her modern views is also beginning to move forward in history, and that he is willing to entertain a compromise that preserves the historic values of the Persian culture while allowing women certain freedoms to assist in personal and artistic expression. Nafisi's introduction to her book offers a glimpse of her experiences as a teacher in Iran in 1995. The students who met at Nafisi's home to study literature "were all women-to teach a mixed class in the privacy of my home was too risky, even if we were discussing harmless works of fiction" (Nafisi, 2004, para. 1). Historical taboos against men and women who are not related to one another socializing in mixed-gender groups are still strong in Iran, and Nafisi could get into a lot of trouble if she had a single male meet with her female students. Nima, who takes the photographs that Nafisi describes in her text, is different because he is married to one of the women, and so is not a threat to the other women. Nafisi's students take the opportunity of being in her private home to remove their anonymous, black robes and scarves and to express their individuality in the clothes that they wear under the robes. These women are unable to use artistic expression to reveal their personal identities to the world at large, but they use creative expression for themselves by wearing colors and styles of clothing that empress their personalities under their traditional garments. "Against the tyranny of time and politics, imagine us the way we sometimes didn't dare to imagine ourselves: in our most private and secret moments, in the most extraordinarily ordinary instances of life, listening to music, falling in love, walking down the shady streets or reading Lolita in Tehran. And then imagine us again with all this confiscated, driven underground, taken away from us" (Nafisi, 2004, para. 16). Iran has a history of oppression against women, and Nafisi and her students escape from that oppression for brief moments during their Thursday gatherings. 376 A Journey Through My College Papers Both Satrapi and Nafisi show young women escaping the historic oppression in Iran through very limited personal, artistic expression. Satrapi studies art and stands up for making small changes that improve the lives of female students. Nafisi teaches literature and allows her students the freedom of individual clothing choices in her home. Each writer shows how the historic oppression of women in Iran is slowly losing its hold on young, Persian women, while it still holds sway with the Iranian establishment. References: Hirschberg, S., & Hirschberg, T. (Eds.) (2012) One world, many cultures. (8th ed.). United States: Pearson Education, Inc. Nafisi, A. (2004). Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. Retrieved from http://www.enotalone.com/personal-growth/5201.html Audience Reception and the Influences of History and Culture 3/15/2012 Audience awareness of the historical and cultural circumstances in Iran in the 1990s is important for an understanding of the significance of Azar Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran." If a reader is not aware of the historic oppression of women by Persian authorities in Iran, the meaning of the two photographs that Nafisi discusses in her text is lost. Also, the cultural background of the audience influences audience reception of the characters in Nafisi's work; a Middle Eastern audience is likely to be offended by Nafisi's descriptions of the individual personalities and experiences of her students but a Western audience is likely to appreciate the descriptions and to be offended by Persian cultural restrictions that do not allow a male student to join the discussions at Nafisi's home. Nafisi describes two photographs that were taken on her last night in Tehran. In one photo, she and her students are dressed in the robes and scarves that are required by law. The other photo shows the women in Western dress. "Each has become distinct through the color and style of her clothes, the color and the length of her hair; not even the two who are still wearing their head scarves look the same" (Nafisi, 2004, para. 4). To a Western audience, the second picture is appealing; it allows each woman to express her individuality and her sense of artistic expression through her physical appearance. To an Eastern audience, the second picture is offensive and may embarrass the audience in its openness. The second picture triggers Nafisi's memories of the young women it depicts, and she shares those memories in her text. Each young woman has a distinctive appearance, which is hidden by the required garments in the first picture. Nafisi shares the cultural background of her students, and she covers herself in concealing robes and scarves when she is in public, just as they do. She is aware of the prohibitions of her culture, so she does not risk allowing a young, single man to participate in the gatherings in her home. To a Western audience, it seems as though the young man should have been allowed to join the group, but an awareness of the historical and cultural influences in Iran reveals that including him would be too great a danger for Nafisi to take the risk. My own reactions to art and literature are influenced by my Western heritage. More specifically, my preferences in art and literature, and my reactions to the same, are shaped by my childhood in a white, rural village in northern New England. When I read Nafisi's text, the part of me that has grown up and moved out into the world understands the juxtaposition of historic gender oppression with individual artistic expression. The part of me that is forever connected to my childhood upbringing is offended that Nafisi needs to worry about whom she invites into her Undergraduate Series 377 home. As a Western woman, I grew up in a cultural of personal freedom; growing up in walking distance of Bennington College (a liberal arts college with a large hippie population) in the 1970s taught me to embrace individual academic achievement and artistic expression. Understanding the historic and cultural context of a piece of literature, of visual art, or of performance art is critical to understanding the significance of the piece in question. Writers and artists include clues to history and culture, usually intentionally, but even unintentionally, and it is important for audience understanding of a work of literature or of art for the audience to be able to recognize those clues. References: Nafisi, A. (2004). Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. Retrieved from http://www.enotalone.com/personal-growth/5201.html Identity Within and Without 3/19/2012 Each person has at least two identities: the inner, personal identity that is created by the individual’s hopes, dreams, and ideas; and the outward, public identity that is like a veneer, and that is created by society’s beliefs, expectations, and stereotypes about the individual and about the individual’s ethnicity, origin, language, and other factors. Amy Tan, of “Mother Tongue,” and Esperanza Cordero, of “My Name,” each describe experiences that illustrate how language and culture influence each woman’s personal and public identity. Neither Tan nor Esperanza is a native speaker of English, but each of their stories suggests that they are each fluent in English as a second language. Amy is a young woman of Chinese descent, and Esperanza is a young woman of Mexican descent; each young woman’s parents speak their native language at home. In the United States, both Chinese immigrants and Mexican immigrants have experienced hardships as a result of their inability to use Standard English. Like Amy and Esperanza, many women in America, for whom English is a second language, are faced with the social stigma of being lowerclass, unintelligent, and unimportant in society, which shapes both their public identities and their personal identities. English-speaking Americans tend to treat linguistic differences “as a single sociolinguistic process reflecting the perception of social norms ... [and] variants associated with nonprestigious groups may become stigmatized and avoided” (Irvine, 1985, p. 558). Women who do not speak fluent English have historically taken jobs as farm laborers, as domestic help, and as workers in manufacturing plants, because they lack the English fluency needed to obtain more prestigious, professional employment. This is especially true for Chinese women and for Mexican women. “Chinese ... worked in large numbers in the mines and on the railroads ... they turned to the agricultural sector as their main source of occupation ... or specialize in those occupations rejected by or noncompetitive with the whites” (Wong, 1980, p. 511). The assumption among English-speaking Americans, especially among those of white, Western European descent, is that these non-prestigious jobs represent the identities of the women who work in them. Because the jobs that are often done by women who speak broken or limited English are low-paying jobs of the lower class, the women who work in these jobs are believed to be lower-class citizens. The assumption becomes a stereotype, which is then applied to any person who does not speak Standard English. The stereotype, then, becomes part of the public identities of these individuals. In “My Name,” Esperanza feels the public stereotype of Mexican-Americans as lowerclass people. She discusses her feelings about her name, and about her Mexican heritage. She describes her name as "sadness, ... waiting ... A muddy color ... like sobbing" (Cisneros, 1984, 378 A Journey Through My College Papers para. 1). The images of sadness and of dirt represent the lower-class stereotype with which Esperanza lives. It is the identity that society has created for her. Esperanza is aware that the stereotype is based on the linguistic source of her name. She is a Mexican woman, and she has a Spanish name. Esperanza “would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza” (Cisneros, 1984, para. 5). Lisandra is a Greek name, and Maritza is Hebrew. Neither Greek nor Hebrew has the negative social stigma that is attached to Spanish. Esperanza believes that she can change her public identity if she can escape the stigma of her Spanish language. Although Esperanza is a fictional character, her story illustrates how society’s perceptions of her language influence her sense of identity. This reflects “Puerto Rican women’s Spanish narratives showing internalization of majority attitudes toward them” (Urciuoli, 1995, p. 536). Even her inner, personal identity is shaped by these influences as she struggles with her dislike of her name, and with her feelings about the fate of her great-grandmother, after whom she is named. “She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow” (Cisneros, 1984, para. 4). Esperanza seeks to create a personality that does not include watching her life from the sidelines. Esperanza wishes to create an inner personality that is active and vital, and that is able to escape the stigma of being lower-class. Amy Tan (1990) recognizes that she uses more than one form of English. “Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use” (para. 3). Tan uses a blended form of English and Chinese, with some code switching, and with some grammar from each language, in her communication with her family. This form of English is part of her personal, inner identity, and it gives her access to the rich imagery of the Chinese language. In professional and academic associations, however, Tan uses Standard English. By allowing Standard English to describe her public identity, Tan overcomes the lower-class stigma of being Chinese-American because English-speaking professionals hear a social equal when she speaks Standard English. Esperanza and Tan provide examples of how people who speak English as a second language (ESL) are treated in society. A 1975 study “found a strong relationship between the race and perceived socioeconomic status (SES) of ... children ... and the teachers' expectations for their academic success or failure: white children and children of perceived high status were more often chosen for success” (Boocock, 1978, p. 7). Chinese and Mexican children, and children of other non-white groups, are often the ESL students in America’s schools. As the study shows, teachers tend to have lower expectations for these students, so that the students find themselves in a lower social class even in school. “This process is a challenge for members of stigmatized, negatively valued groups, who may attempt to dissociate themselves” (Howard, 2000, p. 369). Esperanza’s desire to assume a non-Spanish name is an example of her dissociation from her Mexican heritage in her outward identity. Some non-fluent speakers of English are professionals with excellent educations and post-graduate degrees in their native languages and countries of origin. Additionally, jobs that Western society equates with the lower class are honorable, upper class professions in other societies. “Chinese tradition holds that the businessman is beneath the scholar, farmer and laborer. Only the soldier was below the merchant” (Wong, 1980, p. 517). ESL individuals who were middle-class or upper-class workers in their original cultures are forced to choose how the clash between that past and the stigma of the American lower class impact their identities. Like Esperanza, who equates her Spanish name with sadness and with waiting, many ESL persons allow lower-class stereotypes to define their identities. Along with the stigma of being lower-class citizens, women like Tan and Esperanza contend with the social stigma of being unintelligent because they do not speak fluent English, and “language often serves as a key indicator of ethnic identity” (Schnittker, 2002, p. 58). Englishspeaking Americans tend to judge intelligence based on a woman's fluency in Standard English. Undergraduate Series 379 ESL women are judged to be unintelligent because they lack English fluency, regardless of their actual intelligence. “People act in ways that are taken as ‘having’ a language, which is equated to ‘belonging’ to an origin group” (Urciuoli, 1995, p. 525). Having Spanish or Chinese as a primary language contributes to a person’s cultural identity, and carries with it the stigmas associated with that culture. In the United States, many languages, as well as regional dialects of English, are associated with a lack of intelligence. Tan, who is a well-educated, intelligent, Chinese-American woman, describes her mother’s intelligence: “She reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker, reads all of Shirley MacLaine's books with ease--all kinds of things I can't begin to understand” (Tan, 1990, para. 6). Tan’s mother is treated as though she is unintelligent when she deals with medical professionals because she does not speak fluent English, but she is an intelligent woman. Tan speaks fluent English in professional situations, such as academic presentations, so her intelligence will not be masked by the blended ChineseEnglish of her childhood. “Of the formal adaptations associated with acculturation, language use is perhaps the most prominent” (Schnittker, 2002, p. 58). In the United States, non-English individuals are usually encouraged to learn English. In the past, non-English children were forced to abandon their native languages and to speak only English in school. Children who do not adapt to English are stigmatized as unintelligent, and they also face the stigma of being trouble makers or of being lower-class citizens, as discussed above. In her story, Tan describes using a form of broken English at home, and she comments “there are other Asian-American students whose English spoken in the home might also be described as ‘broken’ or ‘limited’” (Tan, 1990, para. 17). Not only individuals who speak English as a second language, but also those who speak certain English dialects, such as the “Redneck” dialect of the American South, Ebonics, or urban ghetto dialects, are treated as unintelligent because they are not fluent in Standard English. “Students in every ethnic group are allowed to misinterpret feedback on their level of effort and achievement, but the process is stronger among ... Spanish-surname students” (Boocock, 1978, p. 11). This misinterpretation may be a factor in Esperanza’s desire to have a non-Spanish name. She does not mention her surname in her story, but she discusses the linguistic source of her given name. ESL students with Spanish names are allowed to believe that they are unintelligent because they are not fluent in Standard English. The social stigma of being unintelligent can become self-fulfilling in some individuals whose outward identity is defined by the language-based stereotype. When the outward identity of being unintelligent persists, the individual may begin to believe the stereotype, and to adopt an inner identity that rejects the individual’s true intelligence in favor of society’s view of non-English speakers. In addition to being stigmatized as being lower class and being unintelligent, ESL individuals in American society are treated as though their ideas and concerns are unimportant because the women lack English fluency. They can be dismissed by English-fluent professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, because of the women's broken English. Esperanza discusses her great-grandmother’s feelings of being unimportant. “She [was] sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window” (Cisneros, 1984, para. 4). Esperanza’s outward identity includes the sense of watching life from a window and not being important enough to influence the events of her life. Esperanza’s inner identity rejects that role, and seeks to be empowered in her own life. “Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do” (Cisneros, 1984, para. 5). Esperanza chooses to shape her inner identity with personal strength and the ability to choose her own path. By choosing to adopt a non-Spanish name, she also seeks to change the outward identity that society assigns to her. Tan describes the stigma of unimportance associated with not speaking fluent English: “when I was growing up, my mother's "limited" English limited my perception of her. I was 380 A Journey Through My College Papers ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say ... the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her” (Tan, 1990, para. 8). Her mother’s outward identity is defined by her broken English. She is not taken seriously in society because she does not speak the prestigious Standard English. In order to be taken seriously as a writer, Tan develops fluency in English. Her inner identity includes her childhood shame over her mother’s perceived unimportance, and she perfects her formal English so that her outward identity will be that of a person of importance and value in society. Like many women in America who do not speak English as their first language, Tan and Esperanza are faced with the social stigma of being lower-class, unintelligent, and unimportant in society. Society’s stereotypes and social stigmas define the outward identities of these women. Each of these women has learned to speak and to write fluent Standard English so that she will be taken seriously in society. Esperanza rejects her native language, creating an inner identity that sets aside the social stigma of being a Spanish-language Mexican-American. Tan, on the other hand, chooses to embrace the broken Chinese-English of her mother and of her childhood, once she has already attained an outward identity as a famous writer. Her inner identity includes the rich imagery of her Chinese language heritage. Society’s perceptions of an individual are often shaped by the language in which the individual communicates with the world. The individual’s response to these outward perceptions form the individual’s outward identity. The outward identity does not necessarily define a person’s inner identity. Just as Tan embraces the broken English of her childhood as part of her inner identity, so can any individual choose to accept or to reject any part of his or her culture, and of society’s perceptions, in defining his or her personal, inner identity. References Boocock, S.S. (1978). The Social Organization of the Classroom. Annual Review of Sociology, 4, 1-28. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2945963 Cisneros, S. (1984). My Name. The House on Mango Street, 25-27. New York: Vintage Books. Retrieved from http://theliterarylink.com/mangostreet.html Howard, J.A. (2000). Social Psychology of Identities. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 367-393. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/223449 Irvine, J. T. (1985). Status and Style in Language. Annual Review of Anthropology, 14, 557-581. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2155606 Schnittker, J. (2002, March). Acculturation in Context: The Self-Esteem of Chinese Immigrants. Social Psychology Quarterly, 65 (1), 56-76. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3090168 Tan, A. (1990). Mother Tongue. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/13297165/Mother-Tongue-By-Amy-Tan-I-Am-Not-A Urciuoli, B. (1995). Language and Borders. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 525-546. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2155948 Wong, M.G. (1980). Changes in Socioeconomic Status of the Chinese Male Population in the United States from 1960 to 1970. International Migration Review, 14 (4), 511524. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2545425 Undergraduate Series 381 Research on an Aesthetic Movement 3/22/2012 The Iranian women's movement is a recent development. Before the 1979 revolution in Iran, women had Western-style rights in marriage and divorce, and they were not veiled. "For decades, Iranian women had been unveiled, had divorce and marriage rights, had the right to choose a husband, rather than have one chosen for them, and were very visible in public life. And then, almost overnight, it changed" (Lyden & Ardalan, 2009, para. 2). When the Ayatollah Khomeini came into power in Iran in 1979, women were forced to wear the gowns and veils that are required by Islamic law, and most human rights of women were removed. In the 1990s, women in Iran, and women who left Iran to live in the West, began to resist the oppression of Iranian women. This is the Iranian women's movement. Iranian women today resist oppression against them, but "they see feminism as a western and secular struggle that holds little value for them or their society" (Stewart, 2001, para. 8). They do not equate resisting oppression with feminism. Persian social customs require women to be modest and secretive about their personal lives. "Modesty and secrecy prevented Iranian women from recording our life narratives until recently" (Goldin, 2004, para. 12). Memoirs and other biographical literature by Iranian women assists the Iranian women's movement by giving Iranian women a voice in the world. Women often have difficulty using literature to express their experiences because family members threaten them with harm if the women write about family experiences or members of their families. Iranian women in the West are better able to write about conditions in Iran because they are separated from the oppression in their native country. In 1979, many young women were part of the revolution in Iran. Lyden and Ardalan (2009) quote the well-known Iranian author, Azar Nafisi: "I was one of the dissenters. I was very, very active in the student movement here" (para. 11). In 2004, Nafisi wrote Reading Lolita in Tehran, which helps Western audiences to understand something of the oppression experienced by women in Iran. In her book, Nafisi describes a group of female students who met for discussions in her home: "Splashes of color separate one from the next. Each has become distinct through the color and style of her clothes, the color and the length of her hair; not even the two who are still wearing their head scarves look the same" (Nafisi, 2004, para. 4). The colors and the individual styles of the women are concealed by the robes and veils they are required to wear in public; wearing clothing of their own choice under the veils is part of the young women's resistance to the oppression of women in Iran. Resisting oppression in secret is the Iranian women's movement. Unlike the women's movement in the United States, in which women held marches and demonstrations, making a lot of public noise about their need and desire for equality with men, the women's movement in Iran is quiet, modest, and subtle on the outside. Iranian women have a long history of being private about their views, and secretive in their dealings with the world. These cultural traits are being maintained as "year by year, women were winning an eighth of an inch of hair and losing an eighth of an inch of veil" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 75). Restoring the freedoms of Iranian women is "not just about women's rights, but Iran's ancient tradition of human rights" (Lyden & Ardalan, 2009, para. 25). Many Iranian women helped to overthrow the Westernized Shah and to bring a return to traditional Islamic practices in Iran. In doing so, they lost many human rights and freedoms that had been supported by the Shah in the decades before 1979. References: Goldin, F. (2004). Iranian women and contemporary memoirs. Persian Heritage. Retrieved from 382 A Journey Through My College Papers http://www.iranchamber.com/culture/articles/iranian_women_contemporary_memo irs.php Hirschberg, S., & Hirschberg, T. (Eds.) (2012) One world, many cultures. (8th ed.). United States: Pearson Education, Inc. Lyden, J. & Ardalan, D.I. (2009). Despite odds, women's movement persists In Iran. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100039579 Nafisi, A. (2004). Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. Retrieved from http://www.enotalone.com/personal-growth/5201.html Stewart, D. (2001). In search of Islamic feminism: One woman's global journey. Asian Journal of Women's Studies, 7(4), 132. Retrieved from ProQuest Central. Analyzing a Literary Work in Relation to Sociopolitical Contexts and Movements 3/22/2012 In Reading Lolita in Tehran, Azar Nafisi illustrates how the Iranian women's movement is regaining ground that was lost after the 1979 revolution. The One Million Signatures Campaign identifies the necessary elements of social change as: "Public Sensitivity, Awareness, legal protection, Open and Candid discussion ... and Continued Education" (Farokhnia, 2009, para. 5). Nafisi's story encompasses all of these elements except legal protection. By writing about the young women who met in her home for literary discussions, Nafisi promotes both awareness of the conditions of women in Iran, and public sensitivity to these condition. She opens her story with a discussion of two photographs of herself with her students. In one picture, each of the women is swathed in the required hijab; in the other, the same women have removed the hijabs, and each woman's individual personality is expressed in her hair and clothing choices. "Splashes of color separate one from the next. Each has become distinct through the color and style of her clothes, the color and the length of her hair; not even the two who are still wearing their head scarves look the same" (Nafisi, 2004, para. 4). The juxtaposition of these two photographs illustrates how women in Iran are oppressed and effaced by the anonymity of the hijab, while women in Iran quietly assert their individual ideas and personalities in secret, under the robes and veils. Nafisi's story represents the element of continued education. "In the fall of 1995, after resigning from my last academic post ... I chose seven of my best and most committed students and invited them to come to my home every Thursday morning to discuss literature" (Nafisi, 2004, para. 1). Nafisi is no longer teaching in a formal, academic environment, but she continues to encourage learning and academic discussion in the privacy of her home. By allowing -- or even encouraging -- her students to removed their hijabs while discussing literature in her home, Nafisi encourages open and candid discussion among the young women. Nafisi's group includes a poet, a comedienne, and a painter. Each of the seven young women is a unique individual, who brings her personality to the discussions. Nafisi evokes public sensitivity to the plight of women in Iran by discussing not only the women in the photographs, but also one young woman who is not pictured. "Nassrin ... is not in the photographs ... my tale would be incomplete without those who could not or did not remain with us. Their absences persist, like an acute pain that seems to have no physical source" (Nafisi, 2004, para. 11). Iran is not a safe place for women in the Iranian women's movement, and Nafisi's story suggests that Nassrin is not simply gone from the group, but that she is permanently gone. Nafisi is an Iranian woman who writes about Iranian women and about life in Iran. "Through politics, literature, religion and poetry, women's voices have at times been like roars, Undergraduate Series 383 and at others, like whispers of dissent" (Lyden & Ardalan, 2009, para. 1). Nafisi's voice has become a roar for the women's movement as she has become a best-selling writer; the interpretation of Reading Lolita in Tehran into a motion picture by Industry Entertainment and Nick Wechsler Productions has made her story available to a vast, Western audience. Nafisi does not push for loud, fast, radical changes in Iran, as much as she encourages the young women in her literature group to expand their thinking and to express their individuality in safe, careful ways. References: Farokhnia, S. (2009). Challenges of the Iranian women’s movement – old & new. Retrieved from http://www.changeforequalityca.org/English/ChallengesIranianWomenMovement.html Lyden, J. & Ardalan, D.I. (2009). Despite odds, women's movement persists In Iran. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100039579 Nafisi, A. (2004). Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. Retrieved from http://www.enotalone.com/personal-growth/5201.html Comparing Satrapi and Nafisi May 1, 2013 There are many ways to tell a story, and to increase public awareness of a social concern or a political movement. An author may write an essay, a poem, or a novel to get the message out. Each literary genre presents a different aspect of a situation and appeals to a different audience. While “Convocation,” by Marjane Satrapi, and Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, illustrate similar cultural and political themes, the two stories are from different literary genres and appeal to different Western audiences. “Convocation” is part of a graphic novel. This is a literary form that appeals to modern, young audiences in the West and in the Far East. In order to follow the dialogue and narration, the reader must move back and forth between and among dialogue bubbles. This back-and-forth movement of the eyes resembles the movement that occurs when one watches and listens to a conversation between or among two or more people in a face-to-face setting. Using this format allows Satrapi to draw the audience into the story and to allow the audience to experience the events of the story as though the reader is present in the story. In contrast, reading Lolita in Tehran is written in a traditional, narrative form. The reader follows Nafisi’s thoughts and experiences through the smooth flow of one paragraph following another in a logical progression. This literary form appeals to more mature, Western audiences that are more comfortable with writing that is presented in an essay format. The different literary styles of the two stories are also evident in the illustrations, or lack thereof, in the two works. As a graphic novel, “Convocation” is heavily illustrated. The depictions of the people and places of the story are rendered in black-and-white, with no grayscale images to soften the lines of the illustrations. The drawings are simple, with little detail in the features of the characters, but they evoke strong emotions for the story by their stark lines. Reading Lolita in Tehran does not contain visual images or illustrations. The imagery of the story is presented through Nafisi’s evocative descriptions of her subjects, and of her experiences. “Next to Manna is Mahshid, whose long black scarf clashes with her delicate features and retreating smile” (Nafisi, 2004, para. 6). The reader sees the strong contrast between the black scarf and the girl’s delicate features. In both stories, the audience is called to feel the difference between the cultural and legal restrictions of Iran and the personal identities of the young, female characters by the use of black and white, or harsh and delicate, imagery. While the two stories differ in the ways 384 A Journey Through My College Papers in which they present imagery to the audience, each story upholds the elements of the Iranian women’s movement by offering to the audience public sensitivity to and awareness of the conditions of women in Iran (Farokhnia, 2009, paras. 4-5). “Convocation” and Reading Lolita in Tehran are both autobiographical stories, each of which illustrates some of the challenges associated with being a young woman in Iran. “September 1989. I was finally a student” (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 74). “In the fall of 1995, after resigning from my last academic post, I decided to indulge myself and fulfill a dream” (Nafisi, 2004, para. 1). “Convocation” is set in 1989, while Reading Lolita in Tehran is set in 1995. Each story takes place in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution of 1979, and each story illustrates the oppression of Iranian women that exists since the fall of the Shah. “Convocation” is written as a story of a specific chain of events, including follows the classic plot order of exposition, complication, climax, falling action, and denouement. The main complication of the story is the assembly, at which officials dictate how female students should dress. The climax comes at the end of the assembly, when Satrapi’s character speaks out against the increased oppression of female students and is then “summoned by the Islamic Commission” (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 80). The denouement comes when Satrapi is allowed to help find a compromise that will give women some freedom while still observing the modesty requirements of her culture. Reading Lolita in Tehran is an introspective memoir of Nafisi’s final group of students as she remembers the individual qualities of each young woman. The story does not follow the classic plot order; it is the musings of a woman in exile as she looks at a pair of photographs that represent the outward oppression and the inner individuality of Iranian women. In each story, the author expresses the ways in which the female characters express themselves through different hair style and clothing choices under the required hijabs. Each story has one male student who is not allowed to associate socially with the female characters, thus making the point that males and females are segregated in modern, Iranian culture. Although “Convocation” is a graphic novel and Reading Lolita in Tehran is an introspective essay, the themes of female oppression and of secret female expression of personal aesthetics are the same from one story to the other. Each story raises public sensitivity to and awareness of the plight of young women in Iran, and each provides a degree of “candid discussion” of the issues faced by young, Iranian women (Farokhnia, 2009, para. 5). By telling similar stories in such dissimilar literary forms, Satrapi and Nafisi appeal to a wider, Western audience than can be reached through a single literary medium. References Farokhnia, S. (2009). Challenges of the Iranian women’s movement – old & new. Retrieved from http://www.changeforequalityca.org/English/ChallengesIranianWomenMovement.html Hirschberg, S., & Hirschberg, T. (Eds.) (2012) One world, many cultures. (8th ed.). United States: Pearson Education, Inc. Nafisi, A. (2004). Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. Retrieved from http://www.enotalone.com/personal-growth/5201.html Identity Within and Without May 1, 2013 Each person has at least two identities: the inner, personal identity that is created by the individual’s hopes, dreams, and ideas; and the outward, public identity that is like a veneer, and that is created by society’s beliefs, expectations, and stereotypes about the individual and about the Undergraduate Series 385 individual’s ethnicity, origin, language, and other factors. Amy Tan, of “Mother Tongue,” and Esperanza Cordero, of “My Name,” each describe experiences that illustrate how language and culture influence each woman’s personal and public identity. Neither Tan nor Esperanza is a native speaker of English, but each of their stories suggests that they are each fluent in English as a second language. Amy is a young woman of Chinese descent, and Esperanza is a young woman of Mexican descent; each young woman’s parents speak their native language at home. In the United States, both Chinese immigrants and Mexican immigrants have experienced hardships as a result of their inability to use Standard English. Like Amy and Esperanza, many women in America, for whom English is a second language, are faced with the social stigma of being lowerclass, unintelligent, and unimportant in society, which shapes both their public identities and their personal identities. Linguistic differences may be as small as speaking a regional or class-based dialect of the predominant language of one’s geographic area, or they may be as large as speaking a language that is entirely different from the local language. English-speaking Americans tend to treat linguistic differences “as a single sociolinguistic process reflecting the perception of social norms ... [and] variants associated with nonprestigious groups may become stigmatized and avoided” (Irvine, 1985, p. 558). In the United States, Standard English is the prestige dialect of English; the social status of an individual is often determined in large part by how well he or she speaks Standard English, or by how much his or her linguistic ability deviates from Standard English. Even in cultural groups in the United States that value dialects other than Standard English, many members of a group will strive to attain fluency in Standard English in order to compete in the professional job market. Individuals who do not speak fluent English have historically taken jobs as farm laborers, as domestic help, and as workers in manufacturing plants, because they lack the English fluency needed to obtain more prestigious, professional employment. This is especially true for Chinese women and for Mexican women. “Chinese ... worked in large numbers in the mines and on the railroads ... they turned to the agricultural sector as their main source of occupation ... or specialize in those occupations rejected by or noncompetitive with the whites” (Wong, 1980, p. 511). The assumption among English-speaking Americans, especially among those of white, Western European descent, is that these non-prestigious jobs represent the identities of the women who work in them. Because the jobs that are often done by women who speak broken or limited English are low-paying jobs of the lower class, the women who work in these jobs are believed to be lower-class citizens. The assumption becomes a stereotype, which is then applied to any person who does not speak Standard English. The stereotype, then, becomes part of the public identities of these individuals. When the stereotype persists over several generations, individuals will often assume the public identity of being lower-class citizens as part of their inner, personal identities. When this happens, it becomes very difficult for the individual to overcome the lower-class stigma to rise to a more prestigious level of society. In “My Name,” Esperanza feels the public stereotype of Mexican-Americans as lowerclass people. Her feelings about her language and about her cultural heritage are colored by the actions and reactions of the people around her. She discusses her feelings about her name, and about her Mexican heritage. She describes her name as "sadness, ... waiting ... A muddy color ... like sobbing" (Cisneros, 1984, para. 1). The images of sadness and of dirt represent the lowerclass stereotype with which Esperanza lives. It is the identity that society has created for her. Esperanza is aware that the stereotype is based on the linguistic source of her name. She is a Mexican woman, and she has a Spanish name. Esperanza “would like to baptize myself under a new name, a name more like the real me, the one nobody sees. Esperanza as Lisandra or Maritza” (Cisneros, 1984, para. 5). Lisandra is a Greek name, and Maritza is Hebrew. Neither Greek nor Hebrew has the negative social stigma that is attached to Spanish. It is not only her own Spanish name that Esperanza dislikes. “But in Spanish my name is made out of a softer something, like 386 A Journey Through My College Papers silver, not quite as thick as sister's name Magdalena--which is uglier than mine” (Cisneros, 1984, para. 5). Esperanza acknowledges that there is some beauty in her name when it is considered in a Spanish context, even though her name depresses her when considered in an English-dominated, American context. She dislikes her sister’s name even more than she dislikes her own name. Esperanza believes that she can change her public identity if she can escape the stigma of her Spanish language. Although Esperanza is a fictional character, her story illustrates how society’s perceptions of her language influence her sense of identity. This reflects “Puerto Rican women’s Spanish narratives showing internalization of majority attitudes toward them” (Urciuoli, 1995, p. 536). Even her inner, personal identity is shaped by these influences as she struggles with her dislike of her name, and with her feelings about the fate of her great-grandmother, after whom she is named. “She looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow” (Cisneros, 1984, para. 4). Esperanza thinks of her great-grandmother as being imprisoned by the dictates of her Mexican heritage, which is represented in Esperanza’s life and in her ideas by her Spanish language. Esperanza seeks to create a personality that does not include watching her life from the sidelines. Esperanza wishes to create an inner personality that is active and vital, and that is able to escape the stigma of being lower-class. Amy Tan (1990) recognizes that she uses more than one form of English. “Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use” (para. 3). Tan uses a blended form of English and Chinese, with some code switching, and with some grammar from each language, in her communication with her family. This form of English is part of her personal, inner identity, and it gives her access to the rich imagery of the Chinese language. In professional and academic associations, however, Tan uses Standard English. By allowing Standard English to describe her public identity, Tan overcomes the lower-class stigma of being Chinese-American because English-speaking professionals hear a social equal when she speaks Standard English. Esperanza and Tan provide examples of how people who speak English as a second language (ESL) are treated in society. A 1975 study “found a strong relationship between the race and perceived socioeconomic status (SES) of ... children ... and the teachers' expectations for their academic success or failure: white children and children of perceived high status were more often chosen for success” (Boocock, 1978, p. 7). Chinese and Mexican children, and children of other non-white groups, are often the ESL students in America’s schools. As the study shows, teachers tend to have lower expectations for these students, so that the students find themselves in a lower social class even in school. These expectations are often self-fulfilling prophecies for ESL students, who often achieve lower grades and less-prestigious adult employment because they have learned not to expect anything better from themselves. “This process is a challenge for members of stigmatized, negatively valued groups, who may attempt to dissociate themselves” (Howard, 2000, p. 369). Esperanza’s desire to assume a non-Spanish name is an example of her dissociation from her Mexican heritage in her outward identity. She seeks to achieve a higher social status, and to improve her own sense of self-worth, by eschewing her native language and assuming a new name from a language with fewer negative social connotations. Although individuals who do not speak fluent English may be viewed as lower-class citizens in the United States, many of these individuals do not come from the lower classes in their countries of origin. Some non-fluent speakers of English are professionals with excellent educations and post-graduate degrees in their native languages and countries of origin. Additionally, jobs that Western society equates with the lower class are honorable, upper class professions in other societies. “Chinese tradition holds that the businessman is beneath the scholar, farmer and laborer. Only the soldier was below the merchant” (Wong, 1980, p. 517). ESL individuals who were middle-class or upper-class workers in their original cultures are forced to choose how the clash between that past and the stigma of the American lower class impact their Undergraduate Series 387 identities. Like Esperanza, who equates her Spanish name with sadness and with waiting, many ESL persons allow lower-class stereotypes to define their identities. Along with the stigma of being lower-class citizens, women like Tan and Esperanza contend with the social stigma of being unintelligent because they do not speak fluent English, and “language often serves as a key indicator of ethnic identity” (Schnittker, 2002, p. 58). Englishspeaking Americans tend to judge intelligence based on a woman's fluency in Standard English. ESL women are judged to be unintelligent because they lack English fluency, regardless of their actual intelligence. “People act in ways that are taken as ‘having’ a language, which is equated to ‘belonging’ to an origin group” (Urciuoli, 1995, p. 525). Having Spanish or Chinese as a primary language contributes to a person’s cultural identity, and carries with it the stigmas associated with that culture. In the United States, many languages, as well as regional dialects of English, are associated with a lack of intelligence. An English-speaking individual from America’s Deep South, or from many ethnic enclaves in urban centers, may be judged to be unintelligent because his or her regional or ethnic dialect of English deviates from Standard English in much the same way that an ESL individual may be judged to be unintelligent. Tan, who is a well-educated, intelligent, Chinese-American woman, describes her mother’s intelligence: “She reads the Forbes report, listens to Wall Street Week, converses daily with her stockbroker, reads all of Shirley MacLaine's books with ease--all kinds of things I can't begin to understand” (Tan, 1990, para. 6). Tan’s mother is treated as though she is unintelligent when she deals with medical professionals because she does not speak fluent English, but she is an intelligent woman. Tan speaks fluent English in professional situations, such as academic presentations, so her intelligence will not be masked by the blended Chinese-English of her childhood. “Of the formal adaptations associated with acculturation, language use is perhaps the most prominent” (Schnittker, 2002, p. 58). In the United States, non-English individuals are usually encouraged to learn English. In the past, non-English children were forced to abandon their native languages and to speak only English in school. In many American schools, students are still required to participate in full-inclusion classrooms with English as the primary language for all students, regardless of the individual’s English fluency. Children who do not adapt to English are stigmatized as unintelligent, and they also face the stigma of being trouble makers or of being lower-class citizens, as discussed above. They are often viewed as trouble-makers because of their linguistic difficulties, or they are passed over as not being worth the teacher’s time and effort. In her story, Tan describes using a form of broken English at home, and she comments “there are other Asian-American students whose English spoken in the home might also be described as ‘broken’ or ‘limited’” (Tan, 1990, para. 17). Not only individuals who speak English as a second language, but also those who speak certain English dialects, such as the “Redneck” dialect of the American South, Ebonics, or urban ghetto dialects, are treated as unintelligent because they are not fluent in Standard English. “Students in every ethnic group are allowed to misinterpret feedback on their level of effort and achievement, but the process is stronger among ... Spanish-surname students” (Boocock, 1978, p. 11). This misinterpretation may be a factor in Esperanza’s desire to have a non-Spanish name. She does not mention her surname in her story, but she discusses the linguistic source of her given name. ESL students with Spanish names are allowed to believe that they are unintelligent because they are not fluent in Standard English. The social stigma of being unintelligent can become self-fulfilling in some individuals whose outward identity is defined by the language-based stereotype. When the outward identity of being unintelligent persists, the individual may begin to believe the stereotype, and to adopt an inner identity that rejects the individual’s true intelligence in favor of society’s view of non-English speakers. In addition to being stigmatized as being lower class and being unintelligent, ESL individuals in American society are treated as though their ideas and concerns are unimportant because the 388 A Journey Through My College Papers women lack English fluency. They can be dismissed by English-fluent professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, because of the women's broken English. Esperanza discusses her great-grandmother’s feelings of being unimportant. “She [was] sorry because she couldn't be all the things she wanted to be. Esperanza. I have inherited her name, but I don't want to inherit her place by the window” (Cisneros, 1984, para. 4). Esperanza’s outward identity includes the sense of watching life from a window and not being important enough to influence the events of her life. Esperanza’s inner identity rejects that role, and seeks to be empowered in her own life. “Yes. Something like Zeze the X will do” (Cisneros, 1984, para. 5). Esperanza chooses to shape her inner identity with personal strength and the ability to choose her own path. By choosing to adopt a non-Spanish name, she also seeks to change the outward identity that society assigns to her. Tan describes the stigma of unimportance associated with not speaking fluent English: “when I was growing up, my mother's "limited" English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she had to say ... the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not take her seriously, did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her” (Tan, 1990, para. 8). Her mother’s outward identity is defined by her broken English. She is not taken seriously in society because she does not speak the prestigious Standard English. In order to be taken seriously as a writer, Tan develops fluency in English. Her inner identity includes her childhood shame over her mother’s perceived unimportance, and she perfects her formal English so that her outward identity will be that of a person of importance and value in society. Like many women in America who do not speak English as their first language, or who lack the linguistic competency to speak fluent Standard English, Tan and Esperanza are faced with the social stigma of being lower-class, unintelligent, and unimportant in society. Society’s stereotypes and social stigmas define the outward identities of these women. Each of these women has learned to speak and to write fluent Standard English so that she will be taken seriously in society. Esperanza rejects her native language, creating an inner identity that sets aside the social stigma of being a Spanish-language Mexican-American. Tan, on the other hand, chooses to embrace the broken Chinese-English of her mother and of her childhood, once she has already attained an outward identity as a famous writer. Her inner identity includes the rich imagery of her Chinese language heritage. Society’s perceptions of an individual are often shaped by the language in which the individual communicates with the world, and by the fluency with which the individual speaks the dominant language of the local culture. The individual’s responses to these outward perceptions form the individual’s outward identity. The outward identity does not necessarily define a person’s inner identity. Just as Tan embraces the broken English of her childhood as part of her inner identity, so can any individual choose to accept or to reject any part of his or her culture, and of society’s perceptions, in defining his or her personal, inner identity. References Boocock, S.S. (1978). The Social Organization of the Classroom. Annual Review of Sociology, 4, 1-28. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2945963 Cisneros, S. (1984). My Name. The House on Mango Street, 25-27. New York: Vintage Books. Retrieved from http://theliterarylink.com/mangostreet.html Howard, J.A. (2000). Social Psychology of Identities. Annual Review of Sociology, 26, 367-393. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/223449 Irvine, J. T. (1985). Status and Style in Language. Annual Review of Anthropology, 14, 557-581. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2155606 Undergraduate Series 389 Schnittker, J. (2002, March). Acculturation in Context: The Self-Esteem of Chinese Immigrants. Social Psychology Quarterly, 65 (1), 56-76. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3090168 Tan, A. (1990). Mother Tongue. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/13297165/Mother-Tongue-By-Amy-Tan-I-Am-Not-A Urciuoli, B. (1995). Language and Borders. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 525-546. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2155948 Wong, M.G. (1980). Changes in Socioeconomic Status of the Chinese Male Population in the United States from 1960 to 1970. International Migration Review, 14 (4), 511524. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2545425 Personal Reflection on Global Culture 3/29/2012 Globalization is evident in my life in the things I buy and use, in the foods I eat, and in the many non-English signs I see in many public places. As I look around my desk area, there is a Dynex television, which was made by the Xiamen Overseas Chinese Electronics Company. My MyTouch phone was made by the Chinese company, Huawei. The shirt I am wearing says "Made in India," while my trousers say "Made in Taiwan." Many of my children's toys are made in various Asian countries, as well. Global trade has made all of these things available to our Western culture, and most of us use foreign-made products every day. Even producing this post involves a keyboard that was made in Thailand, a mouse that was made in China, and a monitor that was made in Taiwan; I was pleasantly surprised to see that the computer itself was made in Irvine, California. My family eats a wide variety of foods that would not be available, or even known to us, without globalization. I am preparing homemade sushi for tonight's dinner, using nori (roasted seaweed), gari (pickled ginger), and miso (a soup) that I buy online from three different companies in Japan. We regularly eat foods from Mexico, India, the Middle East, Italy, Poland, Japan, China, and Thailand. We learn the native names of the foods we eat, and sometimes the customs for how to eat them. Yesterday, I took a friend's 3-year-old daughter for lunch. Because she watches Dora the Explorer, she knew what a warning sign that was printed in Spanish meant when I read it to her. She knew that "cuidado piso mojado" meant to be careful because the floor was wet. She comes from an English-only home, and knows no speakers of Spanish, but our global culture has taught her to recognize a Spanish warning. My personal cultural identity is a blend of English, Irish, and Scot. Growing up, I was not exposed to other cultures beyond the influence of pizza and spaghetti, and my mother's idea of Chinese food was opening a can of La Choy chicken chow mein. Certainly, we had things that were made in other countries, but we were not actively aware of other cultures. As I grew up, my awareness of global influences increased. A Japanese-American classmate shared the packages of snack foods that her grandmother sent from Japan. A Nigerian-American family in my church was my first contact with racial hatreds (from the white members, not from the Nigerians). An Indian-American (subcontinent) classmate had to defend his right not to be called African American based on his skin color. As an adult, my enriching involvement in an extended family of Hispanics added to my awareness. On the other hand, my family being physically and verbally attacked by black neighbors who told us to go back to the white neighborhoods where we belonged was a very negative experience that added to my cultural awareness. Each of these events has contributed to my cultural identity. Today, I interact with very few non-whites, simply 390 A Journey Through My College Papers because I live in a fairly white suburb, but there are Chinese, Hispanics, African Americans, and others in my church, with each of whom I am very pleased to interact on a social level. I appreciate the wide variety of inexpensive products that globalization has made available, but I find the loss of products made by local craftsmen to be a challenge to my sense of balance in the world. I appreciate the many non-local foods that we eat, but I feel a similar challenge to balance when fresh, local foods are hard to find or expensive to buy. I deeply value the friends I have made who came from other cultures, and I have learned important lessons from even the most difficult interpersonal encounters. If I'm really honest, I would be willing to give up a lot of the cheap, foreign-made things in my life if I could replace them with local products. I yearn for the age of barter, and many of my close associates still use barter and trade among ourselves. I feel like the Ladakhis in our reading: "In the traditional culture, villagers provided for their basic needs without money ... Now, suddenly, as part of the international money economy, Ladakhis find themselves ever more dependent" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 192). I feel dependent on money, and my experiences have taught me that dependence is a weakness that hinders and harms the dependent person. My family responds to the challenges that we face by using more locally-crafted products, made from natural materials, and by eating less processed food than we used to eat. It is an opportunity to examine our lives, and to make some positive changes that will increase our personal senses of independence. References Hirschberg, S., & Hirschberg, T. (Eds.) (2012) One world, many cultures. (8th ed.). United States: Pearson Education, Inc. Artistic Representations of the Effects of Intersecting Cultures 3/29/2012 In "China Chic: East Meets West," by Valerie Steele and John S. Major, the clash between cultures is evident in the efforts of the Western missionaries to convince the Chinese that "the practice [of foot binding] was 'barbaric,' unhealthy, and oppressive to women" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 421). For a millennium before that point, the practice of binding the feet of Chinese girls "simultaneously provided reassurance about their social status, proper gender relationships, and Chinese identity" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 419). When the Western missionaries arrived, this cultural tradition was overturned in a relatively short time. Imposing Western ideas on the Chinese produced conflict among the Chinese as part of the society adopted the Western ideas and another part continued to embrace the female-oriented customs. The Chinese survived many clashes with other Eastern cultures over the course of a millennium without substantial harm to the practice of foot binding, but intersecting with Western culture ended the practice, although the Qing dynasty did try to forbid the practice. Reading this article reminded me of a fairy tale by Frances Hodgson Burnett, called "The Story of Prince Fairyfoot." In the story, big feet are a sign of beauty, while tiny feet are considered ugly. The title character seeks magical help from the fairies to make his feet large. He finds a pool that will change his feet, but discovers that he prefers his natural foot size at the end of the story. (Burnett, 1888). Traditions and cultures serve to shape personal identity. Just as Burnett's characters define their personal identities based on the size of their feet, so, too, did Chinese women define their identities based on the sizes of their feet, and so did Western women define their identities by how near they could come with corsets to "the sixteen-inch waist" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 420). When Chinese women interacted with the West, they Undergraduate Series 391 had to give up the practice of foot binding and allow the natural growth of their feet, because "China could be strengthened vis-à-vis the West, if only Chinese women became stronger physically" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 421). Western influence on Chinese culture changed Chinese culture to be more like that of the West. The practice of foot binding "hindered national efforts to resist western imperialism" (Hirschberg & Hirschberg, 2012, p. 421). The use of the word "imperialism" has a strong, negative connotation. It implies that the West intended to conquer China to add China to an empire, rather than to work with China as global partners that could share ideas and cultures. The word causes the reader to look unfavorably on the West's interaction with China, so that the intersection of cultures becomes Western interference in Chinese culture. Alternatively, the article refers several times to the pain suffered by Chinese women, and it refers to the women whose feet have been modified as being crippled. Crippled is another word with strongly negative connotations, as a crippled person is somehow inferior to a person who is whole and healthy. While "imperialism" suggests that the influence that ended foot binding was bad, "crippled" suggests that the practice itself was bad. By presenting both viewpoints, the article gives a fairly balanced view of the practice and of its demise. References Burnett, F.H. (1888). The story of Prince Fairyfoot. Little Saint Elizabeth and Other Stories. Retrieved from http://www.online-literature.com/burnett/3044/ Hirschberg, S., & Hirschberg, T. (Eds.) (2012) One world, many cultures. (8th ed.). United States: Pearson Education, Inc. ENG 318: Creative Writing Sharing and Writing Events from Our Lives 5/7/2012 Loss is one thing that is shared by every person on the planet. Some losses are relatively minor, such as the loss of a baby tooth in early childhood. Other losses are much larger, and affect our lives in more profound ways. I experienced my first profound loss in April of 1985, when I was in the tenth grade. That was when my best friend left me alone in the world. One morning he was in my life, and the next morning he was gone forever. More than a quarter of a century has passed, and the tears still well up in my eyes and in my heart when I allow myself to recall the moment when I learned that Rick's mother had found his body in his father's den, the gun still in his hand, dead. Rick's suicide impacted every relationship in my life, if only for a time. The first morning after he died -- I learned about it several hours before my classmates because his father worked with my step-father -- I withdrew even from myself. I walked the halls of the high school, seeing friends huddled together in weeping clusters, but I was unable to cry. I was unable to feel. I walked across campus to my first class, which was in a building away from the rest of the school. I heard the principal announce Rick's death over the public address system. When the principal called for a moment of silence, my grief erupted from somewhere deep inside. I don't remember arriving at the classroom; I only remember sobbing hysterically. I wept through the entire first class. I couldn't think a single coherent thought. Only vaguely do I remember walking back across campus to the biology lab. I could not stop crying. The students who sat near me took me out of class and called a ride to take me home. Three girls who had only been friendly 392 A Journey Through My College Papers acquaintances until then stayed with me in the office until the ride arrived. Later, I realized that they were real friends: the kind of friends I could depend on in a crisis. My friendships and my associations with my peers changed after Rick's death. I discovered that he was my only real connection to the circle of people with whom I had been the closest during that school year. After watching Rick's girlfriend flirt with his friends at his funeral, I was too disgusted to associate with her or with them. I became close to Rick's parents, who had always been very kind to me. I'm still in contact with his mother to this day. I drifted without a circle of friends for several months while I grieved the loss of my closest friend. Like most teens, I had felt virtually indestructible before Rick's death. Experiencing the death of a friend my own age was a stunning revelation about the tenuous nature of life. I discovered that there are shadows in the world. Over the course of many years, I discovered that this first experience of deep loss interfered with my ability to form and maintain healthy relationships. I have had to work hard to overcome this influence and to form a healthy, adult relationship. I believe this story is worthy of a creative work because the experience of loss is universal. Readers can connect with the emotions of loss, and can find hope for their own loss experiences in my recovery from grief and despair. Reading a creative work about a teenage girl's experience of loss in her friend's suicide can help a reader to "access the past and connect it to the present and the future" (Thiel, 2005, p. 8). References Thiel, D. (2005). Crossroads: Creative writing exercises in four genres. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Reading and Critiquing Creative Writing 5/10/2012 The central idea of "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is that creative expression is not the cause of madness; creative expression is an outlet by which a writer avoids madness and remains sane. In the essay, Gilman discusses why she wrote her story. The mental problems she suffers before she follows a doctor's instructions to stop writing include fatigue and melancholy, but they do not include madness. When she stops writing, she approaches "so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over" (Thiel, 2005, p. 395). Avoiding creative expression pushes her to the brink of madness. This is one point of support for the thesis of the essay. A second point is that Gilman's return to writing is a "narrow escape" from madness (Thiel, 2005, p. 395). When she resumes her normal work of writing, she reclaims her personal direction and power, which are anchors for her sanity. Gilman's third supporting point is that her doctor "altered his treatment of neurasthenia" after reading her story (Thiel, 2005, p. 395). Reading "The Yellow Wallpaper" helps the doctor understand his error in recommending that Gilman give up writing. The tone of the essay is at once explanatory and triumphant. Gilman explains her reason for writing her story, and her final words express her satisfaction at the result of her writing: "and it worked" (Thiel, 2005, p. 395). The conclusion of the essay is effective, in that it makes the reader want to read the original story to see how and why the story worked. The author's successful escape from madness and her ability to help others by influencing the practices of the specialist encourage the reader that creative expression is useful and valuable. Undergraduate Series 393 The introduction encouraged me to keep reading in that it piqued my interest in Gilman's experiences. She presents two opposing views of her original story: one that claims the story could cause madness, and one that praises the story's "description of incipient insanity" (Thiel, 2005, p. 394). I might encourage the author to elaborate somewhat on the details of the three months during which she followed the doctor's instructions to abstain from writing, but I would make such a suggestion with caution, as too much added detail might interfere with the flow of the essay. References: Thiel, D. (2005). Crossroads: Creative writing exercises in four genres. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Sheltered May 1, 2013 “Are you bleeding on any part of your body?” The question brings me back to the present moment. I am sitting in a chair next to a large, cluttered desk in a small, crowded office. It is the middle of July. The tall, slim, blonde woman sitting at the battered, grey, steel desk is being very kind to me, but she has to ask her questions. It’s a fair question, since this is a domestic violence shelter, but it isn’t a question I was expecting to answer. The truth is, even though I visited the shelter a few days ago, and I asked the questions I could think of, I really don’t know what to expect here. My fingers move to the seeping wounds that hide under my hair, on my scalp, as I nervously answer the question. In my mind, I wonder whether bleeding will help secure my place here, or whether it will make me too great a risk to be admitted to the shelter. I take a deep breath, glance around the room, and decide to be honest. “Yes, I’m bleeding on my scalp. I pick the scabs when I get nervous or upset, so they don’t really heal.” Karen, the intake worker, makes a note in the file on the desk in front of her, but she doesn’t comment. She glances at me from the corner of her eye as she writes. She has more questions, which swirl together and blur in my mind. As I answer them, I find myself trying to explain that it was my mother-in-law’s boyfriend, not my husband, who caused me to bring my children to this place. Karen asks more questions, trying to understand. Since this is a domestic violence shelter, Karen assumes that I have been abused by my husband or boyfriend. She isn’t used to the idea of domestic abuse by anyone else. Taking my sons to a shelter is at once humiliating and empowering. It is humiliating because taking such a step makes me feel that I have failed as a parent. I am unable to give them the safe, stable home that they deserve. Even the other residents of the shelter look at me as if I should have done better for my children. I take comfort in the feeling of empowerment that almost drowns out the humiliation. I am not allowing that crazy, drunk, stoned, violent, little man to hurt my children again. I am taking them out of his reach, beyond his power to make good his threat to kill my younger son. I am making a decision for my family; I am no longer allowing my husband and his family to control me. The afternoon of questions in the intake office is a beginning. My sons and I are given a bedroom in the shelter, and we are able to sleep in peace and safety. During the days, we learn to live without fear. I take classes and take part in counseling sessions to help me assert control in my life. I take responsibility for my decision to leave the abuse and to take my children to a shelter, despite the social stigma that attaches to victims of domestic abuse. 394 A Journey Through My College Papers We stay at the shelter for a mere seventeen days, but it feels like we are there for months. Because I am working hard and cooperating with the shelter’s programs, I am rewarded with placement in the transition program. My sons and I are given an apartment in a decent neighborhood. The worker assigned to our case helps me enroll in college, and she helps me secure a part-time job as a peer tutor. I have not worked in many years, and earning my own money is an affirmation of the personal power that I am learning to embrace. I learn to form healthy relationships with other adults who are not abusive, and I make real friends for the first time since I met my husband. I file for divorce, and it is granted on my fortieth birthday; I celebrate my birthday with my victory in the courtroom. I feel like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis as I emerge into the world. During the ten months in the transitional apartment, I blossom in several ways. I enjoy my classes and my work as a tutor, and I experience personal success for the first time in many years. I rediscover art, which was a focus in my life before I met my husband and had children. Painting is a catharsis for me, and I am prolific during these months. I begin to walk where I need to go, since I do not yet have a car. Walking gets my heart pumping and gives me energy. Walking also helps me begin to lose the weight that represents the emotional burdens of the years of abuse and fear, and it frees me to seek new paths in my life. Church and school both provide opportunities for personal growth, and I shed my past solitude and loneliness as I develop healthy relationships with both women and men. Through counseling at the shelter and a divorce care program at my church, I learn not to choose again a relationship with a man like those in my past, and to expect better in my life. Many people tell me that I should not talk about my time in the shelter. People who mean well say it is shameful to go to a domestic abuse shelter, and I will be unable to go forward in life if people in my life know that I have this experience. I know that people who say these things want to help, and that they believe what they say. They are wrong. I am not ashamed of having stayed in a shelter. I am proud of my decision to take my children out of fear to safety. Like my ancestors who braved the North Atlantic in ships to seek safety and a better future in America during the Irish famine, I brave social degradation to give my children hope for a safe, successful future. There is no shame for a mother in making her children safe, or for a woman in reclaiming her personal power and dignity. These are the things I accomplish by taking my children to the shelter. The shelter experience changes me in ways I never imagined while I existed in the bonds of fear and abuse. When I remarry, my husband is a man who cares about what I think and how I feel. He is a man who loves my sons, and who does everything in his power to protect them and to help them grow into good, decent, successful men. I continue to succeed in college, and I plan a future that includes a graduate degree, which was beyond my dreams for so many years. I become an advocate for domestic violence shelters and for the families that find refuge in such places. I watch with pride as my sons turn their shelter experience into compassion for classmates they see in fear, pain, and loneliness; the shelter changes the boys just at it changes me. Taking the step from abuse to shelter is one of the most important actions in my life. Moving from fear to strength, from impotence to empowerment, from hopelessness to a promising future is like moving out of deep shadows into the light and warmth of the sun. Thinking About Plots, Tension, and Conclusions 5/17/2012 In "The Wife's Story," by Ursula K. LeGuin, the classic, human horror story of the werewolf is told in reverse. Until the end of the story, when the male wolf becomes a man by the Undergraduate Series 395 light of the noonday sun, the tale is almost indistinguishable from iconic werewolf tales. The young couple meets, lives together, and has children. When the father behaves strangely and frightens the children, the mother worries and protects her children. When the husband becomes what his kind fears the most, the pack comes to the family's rescue and destroys the threat. This could just as easily be a story of a father who becomes secretive and abusive in a realistic, human family without the overtones of fantasy and myth. In werewolf tales and in many incidents of domestic abuse, the man (female werewolves are a relatively modern re-interpretation of the tale) seems to be good, loving, and innocent, but he changes in ways the woman or the family do not expect and cannot accept at first. The couple in "The Wife's Story" face very simple obstacles at first to their happiness as a couple. The wife's sister moves out of the home the two females share so the couple can be together. Other obstacles are not overcome so much as they are overlooked, as is common in any story in which a character changes from an innocent to a monster. "He's come back late, and worn out, and pretty near cross for one so sweet-tempered -- not wanting to talk about it" (Thiel, 2005, p. 239). The husband's uncharacteristic behavior is an obstacle to his relationship with his wife and family, but the wife makes excuses for the behavior, not wanting to look behind the behavior to find the truth. LeGuin's use of reverse details in the setting of the story give clues to the plot. "Always it happens in the dark of the moon" (Thiel, 2005, p. 239). Werewolves change in the light of the full moon. The dark of the new moon is the opposite lunar phase, and it is in the absence of the moon when the husband changes. Similarly, the husband wakes while the family sleeps during the day, whereas a classic werewolf is abroad in the night: "he gets up because he can't sleep, and goes out into the glaring sun, and goes off all alone" (Thiel, 2005, p. 239). At the moment of exposition, the sun is bright once again while the family sleeps. These details are subtle enough to be missed during a first reading of the tale, but they are clear markers for the plot with close reading. The tale ends with the pack killing the husband under the noonday sun, while he is in his human form. Just as humans kill the wolf in the classic werewolf story, the wolves kill the one who threatens their society by being dangerously different. An alternate ending to the story, which might appeal to modern, human society, with its emphasis on politically-correct, non-violent stories, is one in which the fleeing man escapes the pursuing pack. The man, naked and terrified as the alien, human instincts overpower his natural, canine faculties, stumbles into an open gardening shed at the edge of a human village, frantically pulling the door shut and dropping the latch into place. As the members of his pack attack the closed door, making the thin walls of the shed tremble, the man huddles in a ball, his obscenely naked arms wrapped about his too-long, hairless legs. He tries to howl his fear, frustration, and defiance of those who would kill him for his curse, but all that comes out is a thin, weak, human wail that ends in wracking sobs. The man cowers in the shed all the rest of the long, bright day, watching as narrow beams of light grow shorter and darker near the chinks between the boards in the shed's walls. As the sun sets and the cool sliver of moon rises, the pack retreats back to its dens, the wife's sister making her way to the family's den to comfort the man's family. As the wolf-man falls into an exhausted sleep, his features shift, his face lengthening as his feet shrink back to their proper form. His hair returns, covering the hated man-flesh. When he has rested, he pushes the latch with his nose and springs free of the cramped shed that reeks of man-scent. He knows that he cannot return to his family or he will be killed the next time the moon is dark, so he lopes away in the familiar, comforting darkness to seek a place where he can live in lonely solitude. He must do this, so his children can grow up in safety. I actually prefer LeGuin's original ending, but I recognize that an ending in which the tortured man disappears from society to protect his wife and children is appealing. He is 396 A Journey Through My College Papers transformed from a monster that must be eliminated to a tragic hero who puts love of his family before his own happiness. References Thiel, D. (2005). Crossroads: Creative writing exercises in four genres. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Maypole in Vermont May 1, 2013 My roots run deep in the rich, dark soil, tendrils spreading out beneath the forest floor, twining with the living roots of the many trees and plants that share my home. I am young, as trees go, and the sweet, cool, living water that mingles with the life of the soil refreshes me, gives me strength, and helps me to grow straight and strong. The tips of my roots tingle as they reach outward, growing longer and more complex as I grow taller and spread my branches wide above the forest floor. The sun shines on the forest, and my leaves greedily lap up the warm, life-giving rays. There have been many days of cold darkness, when even the light of the sun has been feeble and pale, and has not warmed the leaves. I shudder as I remember those recent days when my branches were stark skeletons against a chilly, grey sky. My fresh, green leaves, newly unfurled in the sun's tender warmth, tremble as I shudder, and the gentle music they make as they rustle against each other reminds me that the cold time has ended, giving me renewed peace and joy. My thoughts turn from the past cold to delight in warmth and new life. As the leaves drink in the light of the sun, the cool water of life that flows up from my spreading roots turns thick and sweet. My veins throb with the force of creation as the sap in my veins spreads energy from my strong, even trunk to the tiniest, newest leaves bursting tender and green from the purple buds on my smallest, youngest twigs. The wind whispers softly through the forest, a gentler face of the violent, frigid gales that whipped my branches in the cold time. I am strong and confident, and my trunk sways with the rhythm of the swirling currents. The swish and shush of leaves rubbing against each other sings with the whoosh and whirl of the music of the wind. Undergraduate Series 397 I am immersed in peace and contentment. My life is just beginning, and the future stretches out before me, pregnant with possibilities and promises of glorious growth amid my sister trees and the multitude of plants of the forest. “Papa! Papa, come quick! That’s the tree! That’s the prettiest, perfectest tree in the forest!” A strange, piping voice shatters the singing stillness as the warm sun curves across the highest point of the impossibly high sky. The effort to focus on one small, noisy, human creature is unpleasant, as I cannot stretch myself out to communicate with earth and trees, sun, wind, and sky when I must gather my senses into my center to pay attention to this intruder. “Why, Azubah, that really is a fine, young tree.” The deeper, calmer voice comes from a larger human. It rubs its leafless twigs against my smooth, silver trunk. There is unfamiliar warmth in the strangely soft twigs, and I feel an odd sense of dread. More of the small humans come out from between my sister trees, their strange, rootless trunks split grotesquely in two to allow them movement over the earth. The small humans squeal and screech as they surround my trunk, all of their strange, soft twigs grasping at me at once. Suddenly, the larger human makes a sound and the small humans move back into the forest. Sure that the humans need my attention no longer, my senses flow back into the comforting, familiar rhythms of the earth and sky. The pain is sudden and unexpected. The human’s steel cuts deeply into my tender bark, slicing through delicate veins filled with sap, parting first my harder, outer wood, coming to rest in the softer, sensitive, heartwood just above the place where the rich earth shelters my hidden roots. I feel the sweet, clear sap leaking from my veins, bleeding out across the smooth, deadly steel. I shudder and cry out in silent agony to the surrounding forest, but there is no help against the humans. I gasp, shuddering my twigs and leaves, as the steel is pulled out of my trunk. The gash is horrible. Why am I being hurt? What have I done but give cooling shade and breathe out the toxic oxygen that the humans crave to breathe? The second strike cuts deeper than the first. My heartwood bleeds life-giving sap that will now never reach the fresh, green leaves at my crown. I have no time to think of the pain as the axe – yes, that is the name of the human’s weapon, as I have heard in the thoughts of older trees, an axe – bites deeply again, and yet again. Small pieces of my bark, my sapwood, my heartwood fly away from the gaping wound at my base. Droplets of sap spatter into the air, falling on the moss and grasses at my feet. With each strike, I feel my life-force ebbing, my strength draining away from me. I can no longer feel the roots that twine with mine, because my roots are being severed from my trunk. The sun seems to darken as fewer and fewer of my tender leaves feel its warmth. “Watch out, girls! Don’t let it fall on you!” The larger human shouts to the small ones in a voice that is deep for his kind, but that sounds shrill in my raw, mindless agony. It is over. The last cut of the axe breaks the last, tenuous connection between my trunk and my roots. I fall to the forest floor, crashing through the branches of my sister trees, but no longer able to feel their cries of pain and outrage. I am alone within myself, cut off from the earth, the sun, the sky, and all that which has been my world since my first sprout put forth my first, hesitant root into the earth. The silence of my solitude is deafening, and I fear that I will go mad. I am living wood, but I have no real life now that I have lost my connection to the forest. The small humans swarm over my trunk, climbing onto it, shrieking their triumph over my noble form. I try to ignore the humiliation. Before reason can begin to assert itself, the agony begins again. The axe bites into my trunk just below my majestic crown. I shudder and retreat as deeply into my living core as I can as the horrible carnage continues. My crown is severed from my trunk, cutting off the last whisperings of twigs and leaves, forever stilling the music of my foliage. Again I scream my silent pain and anger to the universe, and again there is no help. When my crown is gone, the axe chops away my branches until there is nothing left of me but a 398 A Journey Through My College Papers naked, bleeding, mutilated trunk. The forest floor is littered with pieces that were part of me hardly a heartbeat before. The larger human lifts my trunk with his – hands. Some random, rational bit of me remembers that the old trees tell that the humans call their branches arms and their twigs hands. It lifts my top end from the ground, and the smaller ones join together to lift my bottom end. I hand suspended in the air among them, not even allowed the final mercy of resting with my branches and leaves on the forest floor. The humans carry me out of the forest, passing between the sister trees whose selves I will never touch again. The humans move me to a small, open meadow, surrounded by large, strange forms that are built of the bodies of oaks and pines, maples and cedars. I shiver at my core to be surrounded by the dead remains of so many once-living trees. Many humans surround the meadow. More emerge from the structures made from the dead trees. They all shout and cry out to the humans that carry me. Other hands take me from the small humans and I am carried to the center of the meadow. “Oh, Papa, will they put it up now? Is it time, Papa?” “Mama, Mama, Look! They got a pole!” “The pole! Townsend’s got us a pole!” There are too many voices shouting about a pole. What is a pole? As the pain slowly deadens in my gruesome wounds, confusion wells up in me. Why has this happened to me? What will the humans do to me? What is a pole? Dizziness engulfs me as the humans raise me upright. I have no time to wonder what they are doing now, or to examine the new wave of fear that washes through me. They drop me, upright, into a hole in the earth. The hole is not deep, and it is just wide enough to encircle my trunk. The humans shovel moist, living earth into the hole, filling all of the spaces around my bark. The earth is cool, and a surge of hope overtakes me. I struggle to reach out, to extend new roots into the earth, as I did when I first sprouted from the seed so long ago. My straining is in vain. My severed veins have sealed, and will never again draw water from the earth or touch the grasses and plants that grow in the earth around me. The veins at my top are closed, as well, and will never again send out buds to unfurl into tender leaves that drink in the rays of the sun. Something new is happening. One of the humans places something close beside my trunk. Revulsion fills me as I recognize that this, too, like the larger structures, is made from the dead wood of once-living trees. The human climbs to the top of the dead thing. Without warning, new agony fills me. The human is pounding a long, cold stick of biting steel into the center of the top of my ravaged trunk. Long vines fall from the steel stick to hang about my trunk, coiling in piles on the earth at my base. “Mama, look at the ribbons! They look like flowers!” One of the tiniest humans squeals and points at the vines. The pounding has stopped, and I am free to notice that the tiny human is right. The vines are the colors of buttercups, violets, primroses, and other flowers of the forest and the meadow. Have the humans given me new leaves to mock me? Is the earth about my rootless base to taunt me for what has been stripped from me? “Azubah, Mary, Maggie, hurry and get in the circle.” Three of the small humans who carried my trunk from the forest join a circle of their kind about my base. All humans look more or less alike, but these are nearly identical to each other. They look like huge reflections of the delicate lilies-of-the-valley that carpet the forest floor. Each one bends to the earth, a strange echo of the way the lilies dip to the earth when they are heavy with new at the rising of the sun after the short darkness. The pain fades as I focus out of my core, reaching toward these humans. Each human in the circle picks up one of the – ribbons. The tiny human called the vines ribbons. The circle spreads out, and each small human is strangely connected to me through the ribbons. The tiny one runs toward me, and a large one places a chunk from an ancient tree against Undergraduate Series 399 my base. The ancient one is not quite dead, although all of her roots and branches are gone, and there is hardly any moist sap left in her living wood. The tiny one climbs onto the ancient one’s remaining bit of trunk. “Hail the Queen of the May!” Nearly every human shouts at once, surprising me with the life-giving force that flows among them in this moment. “Ruthie, smile for the camera. You’re the Queen of the May,” calls the one called Azubah. All of the small humans turn to face one of their kind, and a tiny sun explodes from an object I do not know. The ones holding the ribbons begin to move about my trunk in a dizzying display. Some circle about me one direction, while the rest circle the other direction. As they go round and round, they move closer to my trunk. I realize that I am being covered with a pattern of flower colors as the ribbons weave together about me. I feel the life and the energy of the dancers, and I hear music deep in my core such as I never thought to hear again. I discover that I have been severed from my life in the forest so that the humans can celebrate life and draw strength from the earth, from the sun, from the colored ribbons, and from me. Suddenly, I know what a pole is. I am the pole. I am the center of a celebration of life. I feel the ancient one affirming my discovery as the last glimmer of life seeps from her bit of trunk into the living earth. I am living wood. I am part of the world, even though I have become apart from the world. I am the pole. I am wrapped in life, in love, and in hope for the future. Analyzing Poetic Structure 5/22/2012 Paul Laurence Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask" is written in the iambic pattern, with "an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable" (Thiel, 2005, p. 128). All but two of the lines have four beats (eight syllables) each, making the poem essentially iambic tetrameter. Two identical lines break this pattern, appearing as the final lines of the second and third stanzas. These two lines, written in iambic dimeter, are proclamatory lines: "We wear the mask!" (Thiel, 2005, pp. 296 and 297). These two lines are the repeated refrain of the poem. The poem is written as a rondeau, having "13 lines divided into three stanzas ... not including the refrains" (Thiel, 2005, pp. 143-144). The first and third stanzas each have five lines, while the second stanza has three lines, conforming to the structure of a rondeau. The poem also conforms to the rondeau in that it has "two rhymes ... [and] the pattern is: aabba, aabR, aabbaR" (Thiel, 2005, p. 144). The rhymes in this case are the -ies or -ise sound and the -ile sound. The mask is the primary metaphor in the poem. It refers to the outward demeanor of each person as he or she interacts in society, and to the way in which one's outward demeanor conceals, or masks, one's inner thoughts, dreams, hopes, feas, and turmoils. "With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,/ And mouth with myriad subtleties" (Thiel, 2005, p. 296). The smile is the mask that is shown to the world; it hides the pain of loss and heartbreak. At the same time, the torn heart is another use of imagery, in that it describes the way the heart feels when a person suffers loss, but it does not allude to an actual, physical, bloody heart. "We smile, but O great Christ, our cries/ To thee from tortured souls arise" (Thiel, 2005, p. 296). This pair of lines employs apostrophe, as Dunbar appeals to Christ, thus "addressing something not usually spoken to" (Thiel, 2005, p. 30). Christ is often addressed in prayers, but is not present to engage in ordinary conversation. "Why should the world be over-wise" (Thiel, 2005, p. 296). This line displays personification as the author gives "human characteristics to something nonhuman" in the form of the world (Thiel, 2005, p. 30). 400 A Journey Through My College Papers "We sing, but oh the clay is vile" (Thiel, 2005, p. 296). The clay is a metaphor for mortal existence, and it alludes to the creation of Adam from a lump of clay in the book of Genesis in the Bible. The author calls the clay vile because humanity is viewed as being corrupt and imperfect. It is this inner corruption that is hidden by the mask of outward appearances. The theme of the poem is that man, or humanity, is corrupt, hurting, and in other ways unpleasant on the inside, so humanity adopts an outward appearance and demeanor that is more pleasant in an attempt to hide the unpleasantness. "We wear the mask that grins and lies" (Thiel, 2005, p. 296). The outward appearance or demeanor is the mask. It is unclear whether the refrain is a proud declaration of the ability to hide inner feelings and faults; whether it is a statement of unity in that every person presents a different outward identity from his or her inner identity; whether it is an admission of a shared shame for having to hide behind the mask and not reveal too much of one's true self; or whether the refrain is a cry of pain because the inner self must be concealed from society. "Nay, let them only see us, while/ We wear the mask" (Thiel, 2005, p. 296). Humanity hides its reality behind a facade of pleasantness. References Thiel, D. (2005). Crossroads: Creative writing exercises in four genres. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Three Poems by Debbie May 22, 2012 Tommy A tiny flutter, a growing inside, The first hint of the life to be, Growing and changing day by day, A round swell proclaims your coming. Heart beating, thid-thud, thid-thud, Form shifts and changes, Fingers and toes wiggle and grow, Life quickens within now. Rolling, kicking, pressing ribs, The swelling belly grows and ripples, Tiny eyes, ears, nose, and lips, A flutter becoming you. Heart beats, lungs pump, Growing, growing, larger each day, Soon now, patient waiting, Radiating joy in life. It’s time, it’s time! Eager to burst forth, you push To no avail, too large! Fear engulfing, life must be, You finally arrive In an operating room. Perfect fingers, perfect toes, Perfect eyes, ears, lips, and nose, Undergraduate Series 401 Perfect miracle, my child, My son. You are born. Escaping the Famine Across the waves from shore to shore, Huddled so close in fear and shame, To build new lives, hunger no more – America, whisper the name. We leave our homeland, The children of Eire, We sail to the West, To America Storm-swept, wave-beaten, illness falls, Fresh water fails, parched lips, we cry For help, for the children, hope calls We sail on to our destiny. We leave our homeland, The children of Eire, We sail to the West, To America Ship comes to shore, voyage is past. Some left to sleep beneath the waves, A new life beginning at last, Thanking God who most of us saves. We leave our homeland, The children of Eire, We sail to the West, To America Green, rolling hills like Eire we left, Home, food, new life, safe once again, Arrived on hope’s shore not bereft, But blessed with the future we gain. We leave our homeland, The children of Eire, We sail to the West, To America 402 A Journey Through My College Papers Child Song Child of the age of old, In your wonderland of gold, Love comes sweetly with the dove From our Father up above. Morning cries hopeful yearning And the child life is learning. Now you age to elder man Live life well while yet you can, Find life’s love before the knell Sounds with Heaven's tolling bell. Evening cries in mourning song For a man who did no wrong. Once home on this earthly plane Rise to Heaven’s heights again; God in splendor bids you come To your everlasting home. Suns and moons turn days to night, Life and death reflect God’s light. Understanding Dialogue and Character 5/31/2012 The word choice in Marilyn Nelson's sonnet, "Chosen," reveals that Diverne is an African American woman, and that she is probably in the American South in the nineteenth century. Her ethnic origin is indicated in lines 6 and 7: "Pomp Atwood might have been another man:/ born with a single race, another name" (Thiel, 2005, p. 307). It is confirmed that she is the African American, not Pomp's father, in the final words of the poem: "And his whip" (Thiel, 2005, p. 307). An African American man would not have used a whip on a white woman, but a white man might well have used a whip on an African American woman. The difference in economic status between Diverne and the man is shown by the descriptions of their houses. He comes "out of a twelve-room house" (Thiel, 2005, p. 307). This indicates that he is a person of wealth and privilege. Her home is a "close shack" with a "cornshuck pallet" (Thiel, 2005, p. 307). The description of her house indicates that it is small and poor. The description of her bed confirms the impression of poverty, as she has only a pallet on the floor, filled with corn husks, instead of an actual bed with a mattress. The word choice shows that Diverne is a submissive personality when she excuses rape. The poem insists that she was not raped while using her terror and his whip to show that she was raped (Thiel, 2005, p. 307). She is a loving mother, despite the circumstances of her son's birth, as Pomp is "her life's one light" (Thiel, 2005, p. 307). The man is revealed as a dominant personality with a cruel streak as he uses his whip to force Diverne to have sex with him. Her terror helps to define his cruelty. The conflict in the poem is not the rape itself, but the racial issue. It is revealed in lines 6 and 7: "Pomp Atwood might have been another man:/ born with a single race, another name" (Thiel, 2005, p. 307). If Diverne and the man had both been white or had both been African American, then the rape would have been the primary conflict. Since Pomp is revealed to be biracial, race is the primary conflict. The power of a white man to force himself on an African Undergraduate Series 403 American woman who lived on his property, not even ten feet from the main house, and who was probably his slave, gives the woman no choice in whether or not to have sex. She does have the power to end her own life, but not to control what happens in her life. Diverne's feelings about the conflict are expressed in the first three lines of the poem: "Diverne wanted to die, ... She wished so hard, she killed part of her heart" (Thiel, 2005, p. 307). She did not want the man to force himself on her. She was a victim because of her race. The man's feelings about the conflict, which he probably couldn't recognize as a conflict, are expressed in lines 10-12 as he "ran to her/ close shack ... to leap/ onto her cornshuck pallet" (Thiel, 2005, p. 307). He runs and leaps, eager to do what he will to Diverne. He sees no obstacle to his will, and he does not seek permission for what he does. Despite the violence of his conception, Pomp's birth gives Diverne hope. "Pomp was their/ share of the future" (Thiel, 2005, p. 307). The mixed-race child has a life in the future, and Diverne would not have this child if she had not been raped by the white man. Some good comes out of evil. References: Thiel, D. (2005). Crossroads: Creative writing exercises in four genres. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Sheltered – Revised June 5, 2012 “Are you bleeding on any part of your body?” The question brings me back to the present moment. I am sitting in a chair next to a large, cluttered desk in a small, crowded office. It is the middle of July. The tall, slim, blonde woman sitting at the battered, grey, steel desk is being very kind to me, but she has to ask her questions. It’s a fair question, since this is a domestic violence shelter, but it isn’t a question I was expecting to answer. The truth is, even though I visited the shelter a few days ago, and while I was here I asked the workers all of the questions I could think of, I really don’t know what to expect here. My fingers move to the seeping wounds that hide under my hair, on my scalp, as I nervously answer the question. In my mind, I wonder whether bleeding will help secure my place here, or whether it will make me too great a risk to be admitted to the shelter. I take a deep breath, glance around the room, and decide to be honest. “Yes, I’m bleeding on my scalp. I pick the scabs when I get nervous or upset, so they don’t really heal.” Karen, the intake worker, makes a note in the file on the desk in front of her, but she doesn’t comment. She glances at me from the corner of her eye as she writes. She has more questions, which swirl together and blur in my mind. As I answer them, I find myself trying to explain that it was my mother-in-law’s boyfriend, not my husband, who caused me to bring my children to this place. Karen asks more questions, trying to understand. Since this is a domestic violence shelter, Karen assumes that I have been abused by my husband or boyfriend. She isn’t used to the idea of domestic abuse by anyone else. Taking my sons to a shelter is at once humiliating and empowering. It is humiliating because taking such a step makes me feel that I have failed as a parent. I am unable to give them the safe, stable home that they deserve. Even the other residents of the shelter look at me as if I should have done better for my children. I take comfort in the feeling of empowerment that almost drowns out the humiliation. I am not allowing that crazy, drunk, stoned, violent, little man 404 A Journey Through My College Papers to hurt my children again. I am taking them out of his reach, beyond his power to make good his threat to kill my younger son. I am making a decision for my family; I am no longer allowing my husband and his family to control me. The afternoon of questions in the intake office is a beginning. My sons and I are given a bedroom in the shelter, and we are able to sleep in peace and safety. During the days, we learn to live without fear. I take classes and take part in counseling sessions to help me assert control in my life. I take responsibility for my decision to leave the abuse and to take my children to a shelter, despite the social stigma that attaches to victims of domestic abuse. We stay at the shelter for a mere seventeen days, but it feels like we are there for months. Because I am working hard and cooperating with the shelter’s programs, I am rewarded with placement in the transition program. My sons and I are given an apartment in a decent neighborhood. The worker assigned to our case helps me enroll in college, and she helps me secure a part-time job as a peer tutor. I have not worked in many years, and earning my own money is an affirmation of the personal power that I am learning to embrace. I learn to form healthy relationships with other adults who are not abusive, and I make real friends for the first time since I met my husband. I file for divorce, and it is granted on my fortieth birthday; I celebrate my birthday with my victory in the courtroom. I feel like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis as I emerge into the world. During the ten months in the transitional apartment, I blossom in several ways. I enjoy my classes and my work as a tutor, and I experience personal success for the first time in many years. I rediscover art, which was a focus in my life before I met my husband and had children. Painting is a catharsis for me, and I am prolific during these months. I begin to walk where I need to go, since I do not yet have a car. Walking gets my heart pumping and gives me energy. Walking also helps me begin to lose the weight that represents the emotional burdens of the years of abuse and fear, and losing the weight frees me to seek new paths in my life as I begin to look and feel healthier than I have been in years. As I walk along the tree-lined streets of the small, mid-western town where my life is changing, my heart, mind, and spirit begin to walk new paths of safety, confidence, and personal peace. Church and school both provide opportunities for personal growth, and I shed my past solitude and loneliness as I develop healthy relationships with both women and men. Through counseling at the shelter and a divorce care program at my church, I learn not to choose again a relationship with a man like those in my past, and to expect better in my life. Many people tell me that I should not talk about my time in the shelter. People who mean well say it is shameful to go to a domestic abuse shelter, and I will be unable to go forward in life if people in my life know that I have this experience. On the first Wednesday evening after arriving at the shelter, I go to the Divorce Care group at church. Phyllis, the moderator of the group, takes me aside. “Sweetie, I know you’re at the shelter. I’m real proud of you for gettin’ out of that awful place, but you gotta be careful about tellin’ folks where you an’ the kids are. Folks won’t understand. Just tell ‘em y’all moved outa there. ‘Kay?” I look at Phyllis in hurt surprise. She works in the church office, so she knows that three of the ministers helped us move to the shelter. I expected her to be supportive, but she sounds like my mother, who told me just last night, on the phone, that I should hide the fact that we are staying in the shelter. I can’t find words to answer Phyllis, any more than I could find words to answer Mom, so I just nod, shrug defeatedly, and slip into one of the chairs that form a circle in the middle of the room. I know that people who say these things want to help, and that they believe what they say. I know that Mom and Phyllis are trying to help me in their way. They are wrong. I am not ashamed of having stayed in a shelter. I am proud of my decision to take my children out of fear Undergraduate Series 405 to safety. Like my ancestors who braved the North Atlantic in ships to seek safety and a better future in America during the Irish famine, I brave social degradation to give my children hope for a safe, successful future. There is no shame for a mother in making her children safe, or for a woman in reclaiming her personal power and dignity. These are the things I accomplish by taking my children to the shelter. The shelter experience changes me in ways I never imagined while I existed in the bonds of fear and abuse. It teaches me that I have the inner strength to overcome obstacles in my life. It shows me that I am a valuable human being, and that I should be proud of who I am. It reminds me that I can love and be loved without giving up freedom and safety. When I remarry two years later, my husband is a man who cares about what I think and how I feel. He knows what I have experienced, and he loves me as I am now. My husband is a man who loves my sons, and who does everything in his power to protect them and to help them grow into good, decent, successful men. He tells me in everything that he does that the people who put me down were wrong, that the people who pressed me to hide my shelter experience were wrong, and that I am good, right, and loveable. Taking the step from abuse to shelter is one of the most important actions in my life. Moving from fear to strength, from impotence to empowerment, from hopelessness to a promising future is moving out of deep shadows into the light and warmth of the sun. Maypole in Vermont – Revised June 5, 2012 (Photo: Fletcher, 2012, p. 35). My roots run deep in the rich, dark soil, tendrils spreading out beneath the forest floor, twining with the living roots of the many trees and plants that share my home. I am young, as trees go, and the sweet, cool, living water that mingles with the life of the soil refreshes me, gives me strength, and helps me to grow straight and strong. The tips of my roots tingle as they reach outward, growing longer and more complex as I grow taller and spread my branches wide above the forest floor. The sun shines on the forest, and my leaves soak up the warm, life-giving rays. There have been many days of cold darkness, when even the light of the sun has been feeble and pale, and has not warmed the leaves. I shudder as I remember those recent days when my branches were stark skeletons against a chilly, grey sky. My fresh, green leaves, newly unfurled in the sun's 406 A Journey Through My College Papers tender warmth, tremble as I shudder, and the gentle music they make as they rustle against each other reminds me that the cold time has ended, giving me renewed peace and joy. The tiny birds rest on my branches, the newly-hatched youngest ones piping hungrily for their parents to bring them worms and insects. The parent birds chirp and twitter the same songs that they have sung in my branches since I was a very young sapling. My thoughts turn from the past cold to delight in warmth and new life. As the leaves drink in the light of the sun, the cool water of life that flows up from my spreading roots turns thick and sweet. My veins throb with the force of creation as the sap in my veins spreads energy from my strong, even trunk to the tiniest, newest leaves bursting tender and green from the purple buds on my smallest, youngest twigs. The wind whispers softly through the forest, a gentler face of the violent, frigid gales that whipped my branches in the cold time. I am strong and confident, and my trunk sways with the rhythm of the swirling currents. The softly sighing swish and shush of tender leaves rubbing together sings a harmony for the whirling whoosh and whisper of the wind over my branches. I am immersed in peace and contentment. My life is just beginning, and the future stretches out before me, pregnant with possibilities and promises of glorious growth amid my sister trees and the multitude of plants of the forest. “Papa! Papa, come quick! That’s the tree! That’s the prettiest, perfectest tree in the forest!” A strange, piping voice shatters the singing stillness as the warm sun curves across the highest point of the impossibly high sky. The effort to focus on one small, noisy, thing is unpleasant, as I cannot stretch myself out to communicate with earth and trees, sun, wind, and sky when I must gather my senses into my center to pay attention to this intruder. “Why, Azubah, that really is a fine, young tree.” The deeper, calmer voice comes from a larger thing with a crown of oddly dark leaves. It rubs leafless twigs at the end of its disturbingly flexible branches against my smooth, silver trunk. There is unfamiliar warmth in the strangely soft twigs, and I feel an odd sense of dread. More of the small things come out from between my sister trees, their strange, rootless trunks split grotesquely in two to allow them movement over the earth. The smaller thing squeal and screech as they surround my trunk, all of their strange, soft twigs grasping at me at once. Suddenly, the first thing makes a sound and the smaller things move back into the forest. Sure that the intruders need my attention no longer, my senses flow back into the comforting, familiar rhythms of the earth and sky. My roots touch the roots of cheerful maples, confident oaks, and aloof pines. I feel the fainter thoughts of the grasses and flowers on the forest floor. My consciousness drifts peacefully into a future that has no end. The pain is sudden and unexpected. The thing cuts deeply into my tender bark, slicing through delicate veins filled with sap, parting first my harder, outer wood, coming to rest in the softer, sensitive, heartwood just above the place where the rich earth shelters my hidden roots. I feel the sweet, clear sap leaking from my veins, bleeding out across the smooth, deadly object in the thing’s branches. I shudder and cry out in silent agony to the surrounding forest, but there is no help against the hateful attacker. I gasp, shuddering my twigs and leaves, as the source of my pain is pulled out of my trunk. The gash is horrible. I am shocked and confused. Why am I being hurt? What have I done but give cooling shade and breathe out the toxic oxygen that the humans crave to breathe? The second strike cuts deeper than the first. My heartwood bleeds life-giving sap that will now never reach the fresh, green leaves at my crown. I have no time to think of the pain as the axe – yes, I clutch at the name of the thing’s weapon, as I have heard in the thoughts of older trees, an axe – bites deeply again, and yet again. Small pieces of my bark, my sapwood, my heartwood fly away from the gaping wound at my base. Droplets of sap spatter into the air, falling on the moss and grasses at my feet. With each strike, I feel my life-force ebbing, my strength Undergraduate Series 407 draining away from me. I can no longer feel the roots that twine with mine, because my roots are being severed from my trunk. The sun seems to darken as fewer and fewer of my tender leaves feel its warmth. “Watch out, girls! Don’t let it fall on you!” The attacker shouts to the small ones in a voice that is deep for its kind, but that sounds shrill in my raw, mindless agony. It is over. The last cut of the axe breaks the last, tenuous connection between my trunk and my roots. I fall to the forest floor, crashing through the branches of my sister trees, but no longer able to feel their cries of pain and outrage. I am alone within myself, cut off from the earth, the sun, the sky, and all that which has been my world since my first sprout put forth my first, hesitant root into the earth. The silence of my solitude is deafening, and I fear that I will go mad. I am living wood, but I have no real life now that I have lost my connection to the forest. The small things swarm over my trunk, climbing onto it, shrieking their triumph over the felling of my noble form. I try to ignore the humiliation, but it is difficult. Before reason can begin to assert itself, the agony begins again. The axe bites into my trunk just below my majestic crown. I shudder and retreat as deeply into my living core as I can as the horrible carnage continues. I cling to the life and consciousness that rest in the liquid sap that remains in my veins. In a small corner of my mind, apart from the horror of being severed from my roots, I wonder how long my living core will remain. My crown is severed from my trunk, cutting off the last whisperings of twigs and leaves, forever stilling the music of my foliage. Again I scream my silent pain and anger to the universe, and again there is no help. When my crown is gone, the axe chops away my branches until there is nothing left of me but a naked, bleeding, mutilated trunk. With each branch that is severed, more sap is lost, and the final death comes closer. The forest floor is littered with pieces that were part of me hardly a heartbeat before. I hear the birds, but only in the flat, empty way in which I hear the rootless ones. The murmuring voices of trees, grass, moss, flowers, and the earth itself are silent to me. I hear only sounds, not the living consciousness of the world. The destroyer of life lifts my trunk with its – hands. Some random, rational bit of me remembers that the old trees tell that these things with the two trunks that are not rooted in the earth call their branches arms and their twigs hands. It lifts my top end from the ground, and the smaller ones join together to lift my bottom end. I hang suspended in the air among them, not even allowed the final mercy of resting with my branches and leaves on the forest floor. Desperately, I try once more to connect to the life and rhythm of the forest, but I find nothing but death and deafening silence. I am carried out of the forest, passing between the sister trees whose selves I will never touch again. My murderers move me to a small, open meadow, surrounded by large, strange forms that are built of the bodies of oaks and pines, maples and cedars. I shiver at my core to be surrounded by the dead remains of so many once-living trees. I have heard of such abominations, but I never believed that the stories could be true. Many two-trunked things surround the meadow, the leaves of their tiny crowns the color of the sun, of the moon, of the soil, and of the dead leaves that fall from the branches of the maples at the end of the hot time. More of these rootless things emerge from the structures made from the dead trees. They all shout and cry out to the ones that carry me. Other hands take me from the small ones and I am carried to the center of the meadow. “Oh, Papa, will they put it up now? Is it time, Papa?” “Mama, Mama, Look! They got a pole!” “The pole! Townsend’s gone an’ got us a pole!” There are too many voices shouting about a pole. I am disoriented, frightened, and terribly alone. What is a pole? As the pain slowly deadens in my gruesome wounds, the sap 408 A Journey Through My College Papers drying into thick, golden scabs, confusion wells up in me. Why has this happened to me? What will the humans do to me? What is a pole? Dizziness engulfs me as I am raised upright. I have no time to wonder what my tormentors are doing now, or to examine the new wave of fear that washes through me. They drop me, upright, into a hole in the earth. The hole is not deep, and it is just wide enough to encircle my trunk. The hateful things shovel moist, living earth into the hole, filling all of the spaces around my bark. The earth is cool, and a surge of hope overtakes me. I struggle to reach out, to extend new roots into the earth, as I did when I first sprouted from the seed so long ago. If I can reach the life force in the earth and grow new roots, I may yet live. I strain desperately to find life, but my straining is in vain. My severed veins have sealed, and will never again draw water from the earth or touch the grasses and plants that grow in the earth around me. The veins at my top are closed, as well, drying quickly in the hot, midday sun; I will never again send out buds to unfurl into tender leaves that drink in the rays of the sun. I force myself to focus on the meadow around me. Something new is happening. One of the rootless ones places something close beside my trunk. Revulsion fills me as I recognize that this, too, like the larger structures, is made from the dead wood of once-living trees. The small one climbs to the top of the dead thing. Without warning, new agony fills me. It is pounding a long, cold stick of something harder than wood and sharper than stone into the center of the top of my ravaged trunk, biting through the scabs of dried sap into my still-moist heartwood. Long vines fall from the stone stick to hang about my trunk, coiling in piles on the earth at my base. “Mama, look at the ribbons! They look like flowers!” One of the tiniest two-trunked ones squeals and points at the vines. The pounding has stopped, and I am free to notice that the tiny one is right. The vines are the colors of buttercups, violets, primroses, and other flowers of the forest and the meadow. Have my attackers given me new leaves to mock me? Is the earth they have packed about my rootless base to taunt me for what has been stripped from me? “Azubah, Mary, Maggie, hurry and get in the circle.” Three of the small ones who carried my trunk from the forest join a circle of their kind about my base. All humans look more or less alike, but these are nearly identical to each other. They look like huge reflections of the delicate lilies-of-the-valley that carpet the forest floor. Each one bends to the earth, a strange echo of the way the lilies dip to the earth when they are heavy with new at the rising of the sun after the short darkness. The pain fades as I focus out of my core, reaching toward these rootless ones and finding only that which I can see and hear, without and connection to their lives or their thoughts. Each one in the circle picks up one of the – ribbons. The tiny one called the vines ribbons. The circle spreads out, and each small one is strangely connected to me through the ribbons. It is the first connection I have felt since I was severed from my roots, and I cling to it. The tiny one runs toward me, and a large one places a chunk from an ancient tree against my base. The ancient one is not quite dead, although all of her roots and branches are gone, and there is hardly any moist sap left in her living wood. Seeing this ancient one with so little living sap left in her veins fills me with fear as I remember that I will die the forever death when the last drops of life have dried from my veins. The tiny one climbs onto the ancient one’s remaining bit of trunk. “Hail the Queen of the May!” Nearly every rootless one shouts at once, surprising me with the rush of life-giving force that flows among them in this moment. “Ruthie, smile for the camera. You’re the Queen of the May,” calls the one called Azubah. All of the small ones turn to face one of the two-trunked ones, and a tiny sun explodes from an object I do not know. The ones holding the ribbons begin to move about my trunk in a dizzying display. Some circle about me one direction, while the rest circle the other direction. As they go round and round, they move closer to my trunk. I realize that I am being covered with a pattern of flower colors as the ribbons weave together about me. I feel the life and the energy of the moving, Undergraduate Series 409 swaying, swirling, rootless ones, and I hear music deep in my core such as I never thought to hear again. I discover that I have been severed from my life in the forest so that the humans can celebrate life and draw strength from the earth, from the sun, from the colored ribbons, and from me. Suddenly, I know what a pole is, and I am flooded with joy in this knowledge. I am the pole. I am the center of a celebration of life. I feel the ancient one affirming my discovery as the last glimmer of life seeps from her bit of trunk into the living earth, leaving her dry and dead at my base. I am living wood. I am part of the world, even though I have become apart from the world. I am the pole. I am wrapped in life, in love, and in hope for the future. The sacrifice of my life brings new life to these strange, two-trunked, rootless ones, and I am content. References Fletcher, Z. T. (2012). Zoa has her way. (p. 35). Bloomington, IN: Wordclay. Tommy – Revised June 5, 2012 A flutter, growing inside, The first hint of life to be, Growing and changing day by day, Round swell proclaims your coming. Heart beating, Thid-thud, thid-thud, Form shifts and changes, Fingers and toes wiggle, grow, Life quickens now. Rolling, kicking, pressing ribs, Belly, swells, ripples, Tiny eyes, ears, nose, and lips, A flutter, becoming you. Heart beats, lungs pump, Growing, growing, Larger each day, Soon now, patient waiting, Radiant joy. It’s time, it’s time! Eager to burst forth, you push, No! You are too large! Fear engulfing me, Life must be, You arrive In an operating room. Perfect fingers, perfect toes, Perfect eyes, ears, lips, and nose, Perfect miracle, my child, My son. You are born. 410 A Journey Through My College Papers Escaping the Famine – Revised June 5, 2012 Across the waves from shore to shore, Huddled so close in fear and shame, To build new lives, hunger no more – America, whisper the name. Leaving home we quest, The children of Eire, We sail to the West, America there. Storm-swept, wave-beaten, illness falls, Fresh water fails, parched lips, we cry For help, for the children, hope calls We sail on, for future we try. Leaving home we quest, The children of Eire, We sail to the West, America there. Ship comes to shore, voyage is past. Some left to sleep beneath the waves, A new life beginning at last, Thanking God who most of us saves. Leaving home we quest, The children of Eire, We sail to the West, America there. Green, rolling hills like Eire we left, Home, food, new life, safe once again, Arrived on hope’s shore not bereft, But blessed with the future we gain. Leaving home we quest, The children of Eire, We sail to the West, America there! The Child‘s Sonnet – Revised June 5, 2012 Child of the age of old, Undergraduate Series 411 In your wonderland of gold, Love comes sweetly with the dove From our Father up above. Morning cries hopeful yearning And the child life is learning. Evening cries in mourning song For a man who did no wrong. Once home on this earthly plane Rise to Heaven’s heights again; God in splendor bids you come To your everlasting home. Suns and moons turn days to night, Life and death reflect God’s light. Reflection on Creative Writing June 5, 2012 Creative writing is an important means of communicating ideas and events to readers in an informal manner. It allows readers to experience the emotions of an event or to relate to a concept in ways that are not facilitated by formal, academic writing. There are numerous genres within creative writing, of which this course focuses on three: non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. Each writer has one or more genres that are easy or comfortable for that writer, as well as one or more genres that give the writer more difficulty. Understanding which genre or genres are easy and which genre or genres are difficult is important for any writer, as well as understanding why a given genre is easy or difficult, in order to help the writer grow and improve. Of the three genres in this course, I find that I most easily write non-fiction. While I enjoy creating fictional stories in my mind, for my own enjoyment, I feel a greater sense of personal fulfillment when I am able to recount stories of real people and actual events. There is a great deal in real life that is fascinating when explored through literature, and sharing the amazing stories of true events helps readers to understand and appreciate what has happened in the past. Exploring the lives of real people, even if they are not major players in the history of society, reveals a great deal about the human condition, about human relationships, and about how and why societies and cultures flourish or fail. I love to write these stories, especially when they are accounts of my life that I am writing for the future, or when they are accounts of the lives of my ancestors that I piece together from the fragmented records of their lives that have survived. Knowing the facts of what happened in a true story of the past helps to shape the plot of a story that I choose to write. Knowing who was related to whom in what way, where the people lived or traveled, and what happened in the people’s lives provides a framework for a story. For me, writing fiction can be cumbersome because I try to create characters, settings, plots, and conclusions that are unique, but writing non-fiction flows smoothly because the underlying architecture of the story is already set by history. Revision is an essential part of good creative writing. Pouring out the words of a first draft is essential for getting the story or poem onto the paper or the computer screen, but editing that first draft refines the story or poem into something more palatable for a reader. The hardest thing for me, when revising either prose or poetry, is paring down the words to remove 412 A Journey Through My College Papers distractions while adding or maintaining the right words to convey the meaning and emotion of the piece. When I write descriptively, I tend to over-use adjectives and adverbs, and it is difficult to choose which words to keep, which words to discard, and which words to replace with other words. I believe my greatest strength in creative writing is my use of descriptive language to present a setting, a character, or a bit of action. I like to use a variety of words, and I try to avoid unintentional repetition in my writing. I believe that another of my strengths in writing is my willingness to get to know the story and the facts behind my story, especially when writing nonfiction. Accurate details in writing help readers to experience the story beyond reading the written words. My greatest weakness in creative writing is in creating believable dialogue. I have a lot of difficulty writing informal conversations and using regional or ethnic dialects. I try to pay attention to dialogue when I read, in hopes of gaining some insight into how to create a unique voice for each of my characters. The hardest part of that, for me, is using idioms in conversation. I write from the specific cultural group in which I grew up, and with the childhood influence of British children’s novels, in which the language is often very proper. I am aware of this weakness in my writing, and I try to work past it when I write. In order to improve my dialogue writing, I also listen to the way people speak, not just to the things they say. I try to be aware of diction and pronunciation, as well as to the speed with which individuals speak. I hope these activities will help me in my writing, and I plan to keep practicing until I improve in this area. Understanding that non-fiction is the easiest genre in which I write, and that fiction is more difficult for me is important in helping me focus on my strengths and improve my weaknesses. Poetry, which is not discussed above, falls between non-fiction and fiction for me, and the ease with which I write poetry depends directly on how I feel about the subject about which I write. Recognizing my strengths and weaknesses in writing, which span all of the genres with which I am familiar, allows me to focus on areas in which I need improvement. The peer review process has allowed each student in this class to experience the writing of several other writers, and to benefit from the insights and experiences of other students. I believe that working with other students in a writing workshop environment has given me a fresh view of writing and of the writing process that I can carry forward into my educational and professional career. Finding Stories and Poems – Mining for Ideas by Reading Literature 6/7/2012 A number of years ago, I started to write a fantasy novel that was centered around a character I used to play AD&D (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons). As I wrote, I believed that I was writing a unique story of my own. It was only after I had completed about ten chapters that I realized that my story paralleled Hawkmistress by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Hawkmistress had been one of my favorite novels during my teen years, and I had read it several times. I had not realized that Bradley's novel had given my the idea for my own story, but it is clear to me, in retrospect, that the idea for my story came to me as a result of reading Bradley's work. Looking back at that story, it was Bradley's plot of a young woman being forced into marriage with a much older man, escaping the marriage and running away, and making an independent life for herself that inspired my writing. While the details about the characters, the setting, and the adventures in my story are very different from those in Bradley's story, the foundational plot is very similar to Bradley's plot. Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" could be converted into modern America. Rather than setting the story in a 19th-century, English town house, I would set the story in a Undergraduate Series 413 penthouse or high-end condo in New York City's Upper East Side. The main character is the young, dilettante executive assistant to an elderly, retired multi-millionaire who lives as a recluse due to advanced age and failing health. The young man proceeds through much of the action from the original story in a bright, ultra-modern setting, slipping into madness as tending to the old man’s whims and infirmities pushes him over the edge. To add interest, the old man might have a private collection of hunting trophies, preserved by a taxidermist, with the glass eyes of the animals and birds always reflecting the young man's activities in the apartment and reminding him of the old man's blind, glass eye. The glass eyes of the animals and the old man's glass eye would echo the eyes of the old man in Poe's story: "One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture -- a pale blue eye, with a film over it" (Thiel, 2005, p. 276). When the young man finally snaps and kills his employer, he can't hide the body under the floorboards in a modern apartment, so he might hide the body in or under one of the stuffed trophies, or he might wrap it up and put it down the garbage chute. When the New York police arrive to question the young man about complaints by neighbors over the noise of the murder, or about a smell coming from the apartment, or even because the old man failed to show up at a charity event and was reported missing, the young man could play out the final scenes of the original story. "No doubt I now grew very pale: -- but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased -- and what could I do?" (Thiel, 2005, p. 276). At this point, the young man could see the gleaming, glass eyes of the stuffed trophies accusing him of his crime. Perhaps the eyes of the one large animal, possibly a bear, in which he has hidden the body, seem to follow him as he moves around the room, trying to deflect the questions of the NYPD, until he finally cracks. It would be a nicely ironic connection to the original story if the old man had a stuffed vulture near the chair where he most liked to sit, so that the vulture's eye unnerved the young assistant throughout the story. Translating the madness of dark-paneled, heavily-draperied, 19th-century England to brightly white-and-chrome, window-walled, 21st-century New York brings the story up to date, showing that the theme is still relevant, and that the murder and madness are still horrifying and thrilling across the generations. References: Thiel, D. (2005). Crossroads: Creative writing exercises in four genres. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc. Peer Review and Revision Process 6/7/2012 This is the first class in which I have experienced the peer review process since I finished high school in 1987, and it has been an interesting experience. Receiving feedback from multiple sources gives me a clearer view of my writing, and of the areas of my writing that will benefit from revision. I can edit my own work for technical errors in spelling, punctuation, etc., but editing my own work for content, clarity, and fluidity is more difficult. Reading the comments and the suggestions of my peers helps that process. Reading my classmates' work allows me to see other approaches to the writing assignments. Each writer has a personal style, and reading several pieces on a given topic or theme helps me develop and refine my own style. Seeing how other students approach descriptions, dialogue, and other parts of writing gives me ideas for improving my own writing, and helps me be more aware of the strengths and weaknesses in my writing. Reading the work of my peers helps me recognize that I still have difficulty writing dialogue. I read the dialogue in my peers' work, and I see that my own dialogue lacks originality and authenticity because it is stiff and formal in many cases. 414 A Journey Through My College Papers I revise as I write, as well as after I write. Only rarely do I write a piece without concurrent revision. Once I finish a piece, I go over it for technical details first, correction spelling and punctuation errors. I read over the work, then shift words, sentences, and paragraphs to improve the flow of the piece. The hardest part of the process, for me, is trimming down extraneous details and adding in elaborating details without making the writing too sparse or too heavy. My revision process is often very much like that of Eugene Ionesco: “They came out very quickly. A few tiny details I changed, but I wrote them like that ... I hardly ever change it” (Calonne, 2006, p. 155). I often make very few revisions, other than correcting typographical errors. Until the past year, my writing and revision was similar to that of Samuel Beckett; I wrote in longhand on paper, then revised my work as I typed it into the computer. "First he wrote in longhand, then he typed them ... Things change between longhand and typing" (Calonne, 2006, p. 158). I'm still not entirely comfortable writing and revising my work entirely on the computer, but I'm learning to adapt to the technology. References: Calonne, D. S. (2006). Creative writers and revision. Revision: History, Theory, and Practice. (pp. 146-176). Anderson, SC: Parlor Press. Retrieved from http://wac.colostate.edu/books/horning_revision/chapter9.pdf ENG 438: Literary Theory Introduction to Literary Analysis 6/13/2012 The major modes of critical theory that are covered in our text are new criticism, readerresponse criticism, structuralist and deconstructive criticism, historical criticism, postcolonial criticism, cultural studies, psychological criticism, political criticism, and feminist criticism. Historical and postcolonial criticism and cultural studies are presented as a group, and feminist criticism is presented as a subset of political criticism. New criticism and reader-response criticism are opposite approaches to examining literature. "New Criticism focuses attention on the work itself, not the reader or the author or anything else" (Lynn, 2011, p. 17). "Reader-response criticism starts from the idea that the critic's interest ultimately ought to be focused on the reader rather than the text itself or the author" (Lynn, 2011, p. 19). New criticism, then, guides the reader through a close reading of the work being analyzed, while reader-response criticism guides the reader by focusing on the reader's reactions to the work being analyzed. New criticism relies more heavily on the "oppositions, tensions, ambiguities" of a piece (Lynn, 2011, p. 18). Reader-response criticism relies on how those factors influence the reader's response to the piece. New criticism considers the unity of a piece, and how the elements of the piece contribute to that unity. Reader-response criticism is not focused so much on unity as it is on the way the elements of a piece work to guide the reader's reactions and responses to the piece by addressing the reader's anticipated expectations of the piece. Psychological criticism resonates with me the most of the major modes of critical theory. I am fascinated by the way writing reveals aspects of the human condition and of human society, even when a story appears to be devoid of deeper meaning on an initial reading. Writers embed emotions and conflicts in their writing, whether or not they intend to do so, and psychological criticism allows those emotions and conflicts to be examined by the literary analyst. Psychological criticism reveals the archetypes of society and of human relationships, hopes, and Undergraduate Series 415 fears by examining the diction of a piece to find patterns of imagery and symbolism. A writer's word choice reveals what the writer is thinking, and what messages the writer is trying to convey through the writing, particularly in the choice of descriptive words and phrases. References: Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Analysis of Here at “The New Yorker” 6/13/2012 In the psychological analysis of Brendan Gill's Here at "The New Yorker," Lynn discusses the connection between Gill's text and Freud's Oedipus complex. Lynn identifies Miss Gould as representing Gill's mother in the story, which is an element of the story that I did not see before I read the analysis. Another element that I missed on first reading the story is the editor, Botsford, as a representation of Gill's father. Both Miss Gould and Botsford are authority figures in Gill's world, and the psychological analysis makes that dynamic clear. A third element I did not notice is the phallic nature of the dangling modifier. Instead of being the sword-like symbol usually associated with this term, the modifier dangles as Miss Gould's editing renders Gill "impotent and emasculated" (Lynn, 2011, p. 31). Additional phallic symbols are identified in the analysis, including the dolphin and the pen, combining with the dangling modifier to express Gill's "fear of castration" in the form of losing his personal power (Lynn, 2011, p. 31). Each analysis of Gill's essay is effective in its own way. I think the most effective mode of analysis, in this case, is the deconstructive analysis. When I first read the story, my initial reaction was that working at "The New Yorker" tears down a writer's confidence and forces writers to accept a sort of mediocrity in which their own work is never good enough, and in which they must sacrifice their original, creative writing to the will of the editors. No matter what they write, the writing is never quite good enough. The deconstructive analysis highlights this sense of the powerlessness of the writers. "In the end, both writer and editor are defeated by their inability to control their language" (Lynn, 2011, p. 24). For a writer, controlling written language is the focus of life. Finding himself wholly unable to really control the language of his writing is crushing for Gill. The analysis shows how efforts to improve a written work fail, despite all of the rules and conventions that control the construction of formal writing. References: Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education New Criticism and Unification 6/21/2012 New Criticism works to find meaning in a text by examining the "tensions, ironies, paradoxes, oppositions, ambiguities" in the text (Lynn, 2011, p. 45). The new critic assumes that literature that is worth reading is made of a series or a sort of cloud of conflicts and juxtapositions. The diction of the writing is important for identifying and relating the concepts or images that are in conflict with one another. In Lynn's analysis of the film, Napoleon Dynamite, he points out the conflict between Napoleon being a hero and Napoleon being ridiculous. He also shows the conflict in being a "forbidding hero ... [and a] great object of derision" (Lynn, 2011, p. 47). The 416 A Journey Through My College Papers concepts of being a hero and being ridiculous are in opposition with each other, and the adjective "forbidding" seems incongruous as it modifies the noun "hero." Conflicting images like these are at the heart of New Criticism, and the new critic seeks to connect the discrete conflicts in a literary work to the main theme of the work, unifying the conflicts. Lynn's New Criticism analysis of Here at "The New Yorker" is effective at showing the unity of the work by examining the paradoxical concepts and images of the piece. The concept that "sometimes 'right is wrong'" is a unifying theme for the piece (Lynn, 2011, p. 19). This concept is echoed in the imagery of the dolphin "diving skyward" and Gill's "progress downward," as Lynn explains in his analysis (Lynn, 2011, p. 19). These oxymorons pave the way for the key oxymoronic truth of the story: that "the story itself is resolved by the notion of a correct error" (Lynn, 2011, p. 19). The unity is found as each element of imagery points to the main theme of the piece. References: Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Reader-Response and Rhetorical Tradition 6/21/2012 According to L. Kip Wheeler (2012), of Carson-Newman College, "Rhetoric is the ancient art of argumentation and discourse" (para. 1). As argument, it is a way of convincing others to adopt or agree with a particular opinion or point of view. As discourse, it is not only expounding one's own ideas, but also listening to and considering the opinions and views of others on the same subject. Steven Lynn (2011) writes that "Rhetoric is concerned primarily with how to generate a response ... in such a way as to elicit the desired reaction" (p. 69). Rhetoric, in relation to reader-response criticism, is the writer's use of words, images, and structure in a piece to influence the reader's anticipated response to the work. Reader-response criticism approaches literature from the responses that the literature elicits from its readers, not so much on the clear, defined unity of a piece that is the hallmark of New Criticism. Whereas New Criticism examines the literature itself, without regard for how the literature will impact the reader, reader-response criticism examines how the rhetoric in literature affects individual readers. Recognizing the comparison between reader-response criticism in literature to rhetoric in other writing genres does help clarify what is expected of reader-response criticism. Not only explaining how a literary work affects a reader, but also identifying why the work has that particular effect is the purpose of reader-response criticism. Considering the parallel with classical rhetoric helps the reader-response critic to examine the language and structure of a piece and how these elements contribute to the reader's experience of the work. References: Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Wheeler, L.K. (2012). Rhetoric. Retrieved from http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/resource_rhet.html Undergraduate Series 417 Forgiving My Father June 25, 2012 In “forgiving my father,” by Lucille Clifton, the daughter releases her deceased father from the failings in his life so that he can rest at peace in his grave beside the daughter’s mother. While the poem reads like a litany of faults recited by an embittered daughter, the list of the father’s failings is a purging that allows his debt to be forgiven once it has been recounted. Since the father is dead, there is no point in preserving his indebtedness. The daughter does not merely set aside the hurts that she and her mother suffered at her father’s hands; by forgiving his debt in her life, she erases the debt entirely. There are repeated references to the father being deceased, even though the opening lines of the poem suggest that the daughter is coming to her father for money to pay the week’s bills: “it is friday. we have come/ to the paying of the bills” (Lines 1-2) (Lynn, 2011, p. 55). The first suggestion that the father is dead is in lines 3 and 4: “you have stood in my dreams/ like a ghost” (Lynn, 2011, p. 55). Referring to the father as a ghost in line 4 foreshadows the end of the poem, with the father in a coffin: “you lie side by side in debtors' boxes/ and no accounting will open them up” (Lines 22-23) (Lynn, 2011, p. 55). Lying “side by side” suggests lying in graves, while the reference to “debtors’ boxes” suggests poor or low-cost coffins (Lynn, 2011, p. 55). In line 20, the daughter calls the father “old dead man” (Lynn, 2011, p. 55). Again, this refers to the father being dead and beyond the daughter’s ability to find satisfaction for the wrongs against her mother. Emphasizing the father’s death are references to the father running out of time to fulfill his obligations. In line 4, the father is “asking for more time” from his daughter (Lynn, 2011, p. 55). More specifically, it is his ghost that asks for more time, seeking to complete in death the tasks that he leaves incomplete in life. Traditionally, a ghost is the spirit of a person who has died without completing some important task in life. The symbolism of the ghost in this poem, asking for more time, indicates that the father needs more time to settle his debts with the mother and the daughter. In lines 8 and 9, the daughter tells the father’s ghost: “there is no more time for you. there will/ never be time enough daddy” (Lynn, 2011, p. 55). The father has no more time to settle his debts. Unless his debts is forgiven, and thus erased, he is destined to remain a ghost, haunting the daughter’s dreams in his quest to find more time to settle his debts. The daughter’s forgiveness frees the father to be at rest, and to cease haunting her dreams. While it is likely that, in life, the daughter does approach her father for money to pay the bills each week, once her mother dies, standing in for her mother, as suggested in lines 6 and 7: “my mother's hand opens in her early grave/ and i hold it out like a good daughter,” the poem is about paying the social and moral debts of life in death (Lynn, 2011, p. 55). Not only does the daughter hold the father accountable for paying the mundane, financial bills of life, but the daughter holds the father accountable, on her mother’s behalf, for the father’s social and moral obligations to the mother and the daughter. In life, the father is not equal to the expectations of life. In the first two lines, the daughter tells the father: “it is friday. we have come/ to the paying of the bills” (Lynn, 2011, p. 55). This is in opposition with: “you are the pocket that was going to open/ and come up empty any friday” (Lines 17-18) (Lynn, 2011, p. 55). The daughter does not expect the father to pay his worldly bills, or to meet his moral and social obligations to his family after his death. He is responsible for the bills, and for the debts in his life, but he does not have the means to meet his debts. Only through the daughter forgiving the father’s debts can he be free of his debts and obligations, since he cannot pay his debts. 418 A Journey Through My College Papers The words “collecting” and “accounting” in lines 21 and 23 echo the word “payday” in line 5 (Lynn, 2011, p. 55). These are financial terms in which the debts that are collected on accounts are paid on payday. The father’s habitual failure to pay a debt, and the suggestion that the failing crosses generations, is illustrated in line 12 by the description of the father as the “only son of a needy father,” and by the description in line 20 of the father as “daddy old pauper” (Lynn, 2011, p. 55). Needy and pauper are terms of poverty that illustrate the inability to pay a debt. The daughter says that the father is not able to pay not only his financial debts, but also his moral debts. The debts of a dead man’s life cannot be paid from the grave, but they can be forgiven by those to whom they are owed. The daughter forgives her father’s moral debts, allowing his ghost to rest as his body rests in a grave beside the mother. The daughter is able to break the cycle of needy fathers and sons by giving forgiveness instead of clinging needily to the wrongs of the past. The accounts no longer need to be collected, because they are forgiven. References Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Structuralist Theory 6/28/2012 A signifier is simply a word or a set of words that express an image. Signified is "the concept that the signifier is pointing to" (Lynn, 2011, p. 104). Any word or image that directs a reader to a particular concept is a signifier. No word really has meaning unless it is paired with the concept represented by the word. In structuralist theory, the signifier and the signified are used to determine the structure of a literary work. It is necessary for the reader to understand what is signified in order to understand how and why the particular signifier is used in the piece. If a writer describes an object as "black," the reader might get one idea of what the object looks like. If the same object is described as "glittering jet," or as "ebony," the reader is likely to get an entirely different visual image of the object, depending on which description is used and on the reader's understanding of the terms. "Black," "glittering jet," and "ebony" are each a signifier for the appearance of a thing. The image or concept that each word or phrase conjures for the reader is the signified of the signifier. I do think that understanding the difference between the signifier and what is signified helps to decipher the meaning of a text. The word, or signifier, may not mean much on its own, but it takes on layers of meaning when its one or several signifieds are attached to it. Also, while the writer might intend a particular concept when choosing a word or a phrase, the experiences of the reader ultimately control what is really signified by the signifiers in a piece. For example, if I write the word "turnip," most readers will visualize a root vegetable. Depending on the reader's experiences, it may be a large, lumpy, tan vegetable that yields a yellowish-orange pulp when boiled as food; or it may be a smaller, white vegetable with a purplish top that can be used as a substitute for potato in stews and pasties. In my family, and in our circle of friends, Turnip is the nickname of an active, curly-haired, blonde, blue-eyed preschooler, whose siblings are Spud and Squish. (I use their real names so seldom that I don't even remember them most of the time.) My point is that the concept, or signified, the reader perceives from the signifier depends on context and experience. "We're having Turnip for supper" and "We're having turnip for supper" mean two very different things. Undergraduate Series 419 References: Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Deconstructing The New Yorker Cartoon 6/28/2012 The cartoon shows a woman who appears to be preparing a meal. She is holding an electric mixer in a bowl of something, and there is what might be a dead chicken on a plate. The man appears to be adjusting the position of a framed picture that is hanging from a nail in what may be presumed to be a wall. The caption reads: "Am I hanging the painting on the wall ... or is the wall hanging itself on the painting?" (Lynn, 2011, p. 106). Looking more closely at the cartoon, one may see that the lines that represent the strings or wires that should support the painting appear to be slack. Is the nail even supporting the painting's weight? If the nail is not supporting the weight of the painting, then the painting is not hanging on the wall and, at the same time, the wall is not hanging on the painting. Of course, the reader knows that it is absurd to think that a wall could be hanging on a painting at all, but it is common to say that the rust/paint/posters/etc. is all that is holding an object together. While this sort of expression is usually said sarcastically, or tongue-in-cheek, it could be applied to a wall hanging on a picture. If the picture holds the wall together, literally or metaphorically, then the wall might be hanging on the picture. © The New Yorker Collection, 1992, Stephanie Skalinsky from cartoonbank.com. All Rights Reserved. 420 A Journey Through My College Papers “If we choose to say one thing, we are leaving out another thing. And there is always a gap, a space in the text, that the reader cannot ultimately fill in” (Lynn, 2011, p. 107). In the case of the cartoon, the gap that cannot be filled in is whether or not the picture is essential to holding the wall together, whether physically or aesthetically. If the picture is essential, then the wall might be said to be hanging on the picture. If, however, the picture is merely an ornament on the wall, then the picture might be said to be hanging on the wall. There is another possibility, however. With the apparently slack line over the nail, might not the man be removing the painting from the wall? The reader has not seen the wall before or after the scene in the cartoon, so there is no way of knowing whether the painting was on the wall before the scene and was gone later, or whether the painting is added during the scene. Additionally, the painting might have been on the wall all along, and the man is merely adjusting the straightness or crookedness of its placement on the wall. Along with all of this is the anthropomorphication of the wall. The action of the man and the action of the wall are in opposition in the question. The man does not ask, "Am I hanging the painting on the wall or am I hanging the wall on the painting?" The question gives life, movement, and choice to the wall. Is the wall equal in some way to the man? Does the wall get a say in what hangs upon it, or a choice as to upon what it will hang itself? The question is silly, of course, since the wall is an inanimate object, just as is the painting, but the man's question implies something different. Not mentioned in the caption is the woman's response to the man. There is a thought bubble coming from her head that contains what might be an asterisk. What is the woman thinking? Her eyebrow is raised, and her eyes are shifted toward the man without turning her head to actually look at him. Is she considering the utter absurdity of his question? Is she wondering why he is hanging or adjusting a picture right above her head while she is preparing food? Oops. I just re-read the assignment, but I'm going to let the preceding stand as I answer the questions. The caption is an example of deconstructionist perspective because the question addresses two opposing ideas and gives each concept consideration, even though the second option is ridiculous. Yes, the cartoon can be critiqued using deconstruction, in my opinion, as I did above. (I must read the directions more carefully.) Before playing with this cartoon, I didn't think I liked deconstruction, but deconstructing the cartoon was fun. I like the option to explore meanings beyond the obvious. Some potential meanings are absurd, and can probably be disregarded, but looking at the absurd can make the real meaning of a piece clear. It can also reveal some of the subconscious thoughts of the writer that unintentionally get buried in a text, as well as revealing some of the reader's unconscious or subconscious reactions to a piece. In some cases, deconstruction might even reveal subtexts that are intentionally buried in a piece, such as a political or religious agenda, that might not be revealed by ordinary reading. References: Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Something Is Wrong In London July 2, 2012 There is something wrong in London. The common people are sad, angry, and in pain. The social institutions upon which they build their lives are tarnished and damaged. The Church, which is a symbol of God’s light in the world, is blackened, so that God’s light is diminished or Undergraduate Series 421 obscured. The walls of the Palace, which protect the people from the depredations of the world, run with the blood of its soldiers. The institutions of the family, marriage and children, are likewise besmirched. The marriage coach, which carries the newly married couple from the wedding into married life, is replaced by the image of a hearse, which carries the deceased for burial. The newborn infant cries, shedding tears that are cursed, suggesting a lifetime of suffering. In his poem, “London,” William Blake speaks out against this decay of the social institutions in the city of London, England, at the end of the eighteenth century. Blake opens his poem with references to London’s charters: “I wander thro' each charter'd street, / Near where the charter'd Thames does flow” (Lines 1-2) (Lynn, 2011, p. 129). What does it mean to be chartered in eighteenth century London? The use of the term in relation to London’s streets refers to “a document, issued by a sovereign or state, outlining the conditions under which a corporation, colony, city, or other corporate body is organized, and defining its rights and privileges” (Charter, n.d., para. 1). This defines the streets of London as being established by a strong social convention. The use of the term in relation to the Thames has a different meaning, since the organization and privileges of a river cannot really be defined by edict. Instead, the chartered nature of the Thames probably refers to its use as a primary means of transportation in and to the city: “of or pertaining to a method of travel in which the transportation is specially leased or hired” (Charter, n.d., para. 11). The streets of London are chartered by sovereign mandate, and the waters of the Thames are chartered for transportation in the city. Both the streets and the river serve society. The idea that something is very wrong in the city of London is presented in Blake’s observations as he walks the city’s streets: “And mark in every face I meet/ Marks of weakness, marks of woe” (Line 3-4) (Lynn, 2011, p. 129). Every person Blake sees shows weakness and sadness. The faces of the common people reflect the health and prosperity of a city, and the faces of the people of London reflect the troubles of the city. This is echoed in the universal description Blake gives in lines 5 through 8: “In every cry of every Man,/ In every Infant's cry of fear,/ In every voice, in every ban,/ The mind-forg'd manacles I hear” (Lynn, 2011, p. 131). Blake speaks of every man, of every child, and of every voice, suggesting that the trouble in the city is so widespread that he does not see any person whose face reflects the health and prosperity that one would expect to find in a powerful city like London. It is important to realize that Blake is walking the streets of London, not the halls of its palaces and mansions. The men and children he is seeing are the common folk, not the privileged nobles and sovereigns who create the charters and who issues bans against various actions and activities of the populace. They are also not the privileged clergy in the churches and cathedrals of London, who issue bans of a different sort: the announcements of a coming marriage, one of the three key institutions of society. Blake considers only the common man. By grouping all men, all children, and all voices of the city, Blake suggests a brotherhood among the common people. Michael Ferber (1978) writes that “Blake may have believed universal brotherhood to be imminent ... If he did, he did not despair, or despair long, when it failed to appear, but returned to his labor on its behalf” (p. 447). Blake moves from the universal identification of the people of London to a more specific examples. In lines 9, 11, and 14, Blake identifies three individuals who are signifiers of London’s lower class, the Chimney-sweeper, the hapless Soldier, and the youthful Harlot (Lynn, 2011, p. 131). The Chimney-sweeper is technically part of London’s working class, but he is the lowest example of his class. He makes his living clearing the filth from inside the chimneys of London, and is himself covered in filth as a result of his labors. His literal unclean condition represents the spiritually unclean aspects of the city that appall the Church in line 10 (Lynn, 2011, p. 131). The Church of London’s eighteenth century is more concerned with its own wealth and with the support of the ruling establishment than it is with the plight of the dirty common people of with the fearful cries of the city’s children. Blake sees the dirty laborer, who is 422 A Journey Through My College Papers excluded by the ruling class, and includes the Chimney-sweep and those like him in his universal brotherhood. The Soldier is described as hapless, meaning unlucky or having ill fortune, which is more evidence that something is deeply wrong in London. The Soldier’s blood runs on the Palace walls, suggesting that he defends the city, and especially the nobility, but that he is shut outside of the seat of government to fend for himself. He sighs his resignation that his blood goes unremarked by those within the Palace, but Blake sees the Soldier’s sacrifice and counts him in the fraternity of common folk who are overlooked by those who rule. Blake does not exclude the women of London from his brotherhood, as the noble class overlooks women. “But most thro' midnight streets I hear/ How the youthful Harlot's curse” (Lines 13-14) (Lynn, 2011, p. 131). The youthful Harlot is a young prostitute, and she is a signifier for all young women who are forced by circumstance to labor among the lowest classes of society in order to survive. Christine Roth (2012) MA Director of the University of Washington, Oshkosh, writes that eighteenth-century prostitutes, or harlots, in London are “primarily young, single women, between the ages of 18 and 22” (para. 3). That a young woman is compelled by the conditions of society to engage at such a young age in dangerous work that is banned by the church, and that causes her to be unclean in the eyes of both church and state, is a strong indicator that something is dreadfully wrong in London. Blake identifies the three key institutions of society in lines 10, 12, and 16: the Church, the Palace, and Marriage. The concept of state government is signified by the Palace, while the concept of family is signified by Marriage. The damage to these institutions, as described in the introduction to this paper, shows the deep damage that has been done to London society. The wealthy, privileged, ruling class of both government, embodied by the Palace, and the Church, is set apart from the everyday existence of the common person. The men, women, and children who live in the streets of the city of London are sad, frightened, hurting, and angry. The Harlot curses her condition, and the curse “Blasts the new born Infant's tear,/ And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse” (Lines 15-16) (Lynn, 2011, p. 131). The anger of the common person, constrained by “mind-forg'd manacles” causes lasting harm to the people of London, down to the youngest new-born baby (Line 8) (Lynn, 2011, p. 131). Manacles are restraints that are used on prisoners. Manacles forged in the mind, then, are thoughts that bind one’s actions or imprison one from within. Beliefs can be manacles, imposed by the institutions of society but applied by the individual’s mind. The poverty and social strata of London impose psychic restraints on the people of the city. Thus bound, it is almost impossible for the Chimney Sweep, the Soldier, or the Harlot to escape the social bonds of his or her social position and move to a higher, cleaner, more desirable level of society. These “mind-forg’d manacles” are what is wrong in London (Line 8) (Lynn, 2011, p. 131). The universal cries point to these bonds. The dirty laborer, the wounded soldier, and the fallen women of the city illustrate the power of these mental restraints. The common people of London have been bound, like prisoners, by the idea that the common person must remain common and wretched, and that the elite class will remain above and apart from the masses. The people know that they are prisoners in society, just as the convict knows that he is bound by the steel manacles around his wrists, but, like the convict, the people can see no way to free themselves. The Church is blackened by the corruption of spiritual values. The Palace is bloodied by the sacrifices of those who faithfully defend what they can never attain. Marriage and family lead not to joyous life, but to death. Something is wrong in London. Blake shows the reader the decay of the social institutions in the city of London, England, at the end of the eighteenth century. The universal fraternity that Blake anticipates is trapped in the manacles of social traditions and beliefs that trap the poor in everdeeper poverty. The manacles must be broken, and the social institutions of government, religion, Undergraduate Series 423 and family must be restored to balance, so that the cries of every voice may be cries of brotherhood, not of bondage. References Charter. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/charter Ferber, M. (1978). Blake's idea of brotherhood. PMLA, 93(3), 438-447. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/461865 Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Roth, C. (2012). "The great social evil": Victorian prostitution. Retrieved from http://www.english.uwosh.edu/roth/Prostitution.htm Distinguishing Between Historical and Biographical Theories 7/5/2012 Biographical criticism seeks to understand the life and experiences of the author in order to better understand a literary text. It also uses an author's writings to gain a better understanding of the author, and of the author's motivations for writing the text. "[B]iographical criticism offers to help us understand both the work and its creator, as we relate one to the other" (Lynn, 2011, p. 140). Historical criticism, on the other hand, explores not the author's life, but the historical events that take place around the time and place in which the author is writing. "Historical criticism considers how military, social, cultural, economic, scientific, intellectual, literary, and (potentially) every other kind of history might help us to understand the author and work" (Lynn, 2011, p. 142). History is the written, or textual, representation of the events of the past; it is not the past. It is a record of putative facts that provides context for literature. While there are clear differences between biographical criticism and historical criticism, as one focuses on the microcosm of the author's life and the other focuses on the macrocosm of the events and influences of time and place, there are also similarities between the two modes of analysis. In particular, biographical criticism is a sort of subset of historical criticism, since biographical information about the author is a textual representation of the author's life, not the author's actual life. Biographical criticism and historical criticism each rely on the factual reliability of the textual records of the subjects that they explore. Whether I would choose a book based on biographical criticism or a book based on historical criticism of a given literary text would depend on what I hoped to gain from reading the book. If I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of the life, experiences, ideologies, and motivations of the author, then I would choose the biographical book. If I wanted to gain a better understanding of the local, regional, or world events that shaped society's experiences, ideologies, and motivations, or of how those events interacted with each other and impacted society, then I would choose the historical book. In general, I think I would be more likely to select books of historical criticism than I would be to select books of biographical criticism, because I tend to want to know about history and its influences. References: Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education 424 A Journey Through My College Papers Marxism versus Postcolonial Theory 7/5/2012 Postcolonial studies examine how a history of European colonization impacts cultural and ethnic groups that have been colonized in the past. Whereas Marxist criticism concentrates on the relationship between workers and the elite classes, postcolonial criticism concentrates on the relationship "between dominant and subjugated cultures, races, and ethnic groups" (Lynn, 2011, p. 156). Workers in Marxist criticism are distinct from subjugated races (usually in African and Asian lands) in postcolonial criticism. That said, there is also a strong parallel between the workers and the subjugated races. In each case, analysis deals with the relationship of an oppressed group and the group of oppressors. In Marxist criticism, the proletariat is oppressed by the bourgeoisie, and in postcolonial criticism the native cultures of lands outside of Western Europe are oppressed by Empire (usually British, French, or Spanish, but arguments could be made to include the postcolonial literature of the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, or any other empire that colonized and oppressed other ethno-cultural groups). In general, I find postcolonial theory to be more interesting than Marxist theory. I acknowledge that this may be a knee-jerk reaction to the ideology promulgated by Karl Marx. While I am sympathetic to the plight of the common laborer, being a member of the unemployed working class myself, I am more interested in reading about the results of and recovery from imperial domination in subjugated countries. Classism exists in nearly every culture, to one extent or another, and the basic story of the struggle of the working class is more or less the same from medieval English fiefs to modern America, Russia, China, etc. The struggle of previously colonized peoples to reassert or reinvent their cultural identity after a period of colonial occupation is interesting, and seems to be unique from one group to another. Each group assimilates or rejects different aspects of the former colonies while rediscovering, reclaiming, or recreating different aspects of the original culture of the group or region. This rebirth and recovery is beautiful and fascinating, even if it occurs by means of the ugliness of warfare and revolt. Even groups like Japanese-Americans who were detained during World War II might be classified as postcolonial cultures, with the American government being the subjugating power and the descendants of the detainees attempting to redefine their cultural identities after the removal of government oppression. References: Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Celebrating Ecstatic Life July 9, 2012 Emily Dickinson is the elder daughter, and middle child, of an affluent, Puritan, Massachusetts family. Aífe Murray (1999) writes that the “Dickinsons were among the most prominent families in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts ... they were, for generations, social and civic leader” (p. 701). Dickinson receives a classical education beginning in the local primary school and continuing with a seven-year stay at Amherst Academy. Like the Lily in line two of her poem, Dickinson passes assuredly through the early years of her life (Lynn, 2012, p. 98). While Emily Dickinson’s poetry is often described as being morbidly devoted to discussions of death, “Through the Dark Sod” is a celebration of life and of growth. Undergraduate Series 425 The second half of the 19th century is a time of growth for the United States, and it is also a time of growth for Emily Dickinson. During her childhood, the United States learns from John L. O’Sullivan that it “has a "manifest destiny" to occupy the North American continent” (Mintz, 2012, para. 128). “Through the Dark Sod—as Education—/ The Lily passes sure—“ (Lines 1-2) (Lynn, 2012, p. 98). Just as the lily passes through the sod as it comes into being, so is the United States growing as it expands westward. At the same time, Dickinson is growing and emerging as a young woman through her education at Amherst University. Dickinson’s education is a key part of her life, and the men who influence her education are pivotal characters in her life. George F. Whicher (1934) writes that “not one man, but several men in succession were of great importance to her ... tenderly as she was attached to them all, the relationship that she demanded of each in turn was not that of lover, but of teacher ... Four men were explicitly recognized by Emily Dickinson as her ‘tutors’” (Whicher, 1934, p. 3). Murray (1999) writes that Dickinson and her sister “did not marry and remained at the family home their entire lives” (p. 704). Dickinson, then, never married, and there is no record of her having any romantic relationships; her intellectually intimate connections with her several mentors are as close as she comes to having relationships with men. In her poem, Dickinson identifies the Dark Sod with Education: “Through the Dark Sod—as Education—“ (Line 1) (Lynn, 2012, p. 98). The speaker in the poem moves through education into life just as the lily growing in the field moves through the dark soil as it grows. As Dickinson identifies her entry into life through her education, the men who lead her education are part of the dark sod through which she passes, nourishing her intellect. The speaker in Dickinson’s poem does not fear emerging through education into life. “Feels her white foot—no trepidation—/ Her faith—no fear—“ (Lines 3-4) (Lynn, 2012, p. 98). The speaker is sure and confident in her growth and development. While the date on the poem is uncertain, only placing it sometime before her death, the affirmative nature of these lines suggests that it is from an early part of Dickinson’s life. Beginning with the death of a cousin, Sophia Holland, in her teens, Dickinson is affected by a series of deaths, apparently resulting in her seclusion through her later life, and possibly causing her to experience depression. These deaths include two of her mentors, Benjamin Franklin Newton and Leonard Humphrey, and her mother. The faith and lack of trepidation evinced by Dickinson’s speaker echo the faith and conviction of American expansionists during her lifetime as they spread the idea of Manifest Destiny across the American West and beyond. Similarly, both black slaves and American women emerge through the dark sod into the light of freedom with faith that precludes fear during this time. The American Civil War of 1861-1865 brings an end to slavery in America, and former slaves emerge to freedom as the lily emerges from the sod. In the next decade, Susan B. Anthony promotes women’s suffrage in the United States. The suffrage movement helps American women emerge through the dark sod of social oppression to the freedom of voting and having a voice in government. The oppressed in Dickinson’s time move into freedom, and Dickinson moves into adulthood, with faith and without fear, just as “The Lily passes sure—/ ... no trepidation—/ ... fear—“ (Lines 2-4) (Lynn, 2012, p. 98). The second half of Dickinson’s poem celebrates mature life after the emergence from the sod. “Afterward—in the Meadow—/ Swinging her Beryl Bell—/ The Mold-life—all forgotten— now—/ In Ecstasy—and Dell—“ (Lines 5-8) (Lynn, 2012, p. 98). The Meadow, for the Lily, is the place where life occurs. It is the setting of life’s experiences. For Dickinson, who is a recluse in her adult life, the setting of life is her family’s ancestral home on Main Street in Amherst, Massachusetts. The setting for her inner life, however, is much broader, as she corresponds with many friends and acquaintances that she does not see in person. The reference to the “Beryl Bell” is difficult to define (Line 6) (Lynn, 2012, p. 98). Beryl is a semi-precious gem that is usually green, but that may be blue, yellow, or pink. It is an odd 426 A Journey Through My College Papers description for a lily, which is often assumed to be white, especially in poetry. The white lily that is associated with death and burials, however, is not the only kind or color of lily. Lilies come in a wide range of colors, including green, yellow, pink, and orange. A beryl bell probably refers to the yellow trout lily or dogtooth violet, which Gerry Williamson (2011) identifies as a wild lily that grows in Massachusetts and that has a bell-shaped, yellow blossom. Swinging the beryl bell, then, refers to the Lily living freely in the meadow. For the United States in the late 19th century, swinging the beryl bell refers to the country reaching its maturity as it expands to cover the continent from east to west. As the nation spreads its influence through manifest destiny, the lily spreads out its golden, or beryl, petals. The Mold-life has multiple meanings. In the Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper (2012) defines mold: “loose earth ... since late (Christian) Old English, ‘the earth of the grave.’ ... to knead, shape ... Figurative sense (of character, etc.) is from c.1600” (paras. 3-4). For the Lily, the Mold refers to the earth, or the Dark Sod of the poem’s opening line. For Dickinson’s speaker, it is the period of education, during which her intellect is molded by her teachers and mentors while her identity is molded by her family life and social life. For the nation, as for the speaker, the Mold-life is the period of formation. With the Civil War and with the westward expansion of Manifest Destiny, the United States is formed and molded into the modern nation that exists in Dickinson’s later years. The Lily forgets the Mold-life in line 7, moving beyond the difficulties and darkness that give it shape. Dickinson’s speaker, likewise, moves past the difficulties of growing up, forgetting the troubles of her young life as she moves through adulthood. After the Civil War, as Reconstruction redefines the United States, the troubles of slavery and rebellion are set aside to allow the nation to blossom into its modern form. The past that molds a person or a nation is not truly forgotten, but it is allowed to fade into the past so that growth and prosperity may be allowed to happen. The final line of Dickinson’s poem makes clear the fact that this is a poem of celebration. “In Ecstasy—and Dell—“ (Line 8) (Lynn, 2012, p. 98). Ecstasy is extreme happiness or pleasure. The Lily lives in the Meadow in Ecstasy. In 1854, Emily Dickinson writes in a letter to the Rev. Edward Everett Hale of Worcester, Massachusetts: “Mr. Newton became to me a gentle, yet grave Preceptor, teaching me what to read, what authors to admire, what was most grand or beautiful and nature, and that sublime lesson, a faith in things unseen, and in a life again, nobler and much more blessed” (Quoted in Whicher, 1934, p. 5). One of the four tutors who deeply influence Dickinson’s education and life teaches her the joy of a faith in eternity. This allows her to experience ecstasy in life, knowing that what comes after life is “nobler and much more blessed” (Quoted in Whicher, 1934, p. 5). For the nation, the end of the Civil War and the coming of the Industrial Age represent as sort of ecstasy. The United States moves exuberantly into the future, leaving the past behind. Through this poem, Dickinson celebrates her life, which takes place in a turbulent and formative period of America’s history. Although Dickinson “protested that she was not to be identified with the speaker in the first person of her verses,” her life and experiences are reflected in the eight brief lines of this poem (Whicher, 1934, p. 3). Dickinson rises through the dark sod of a rich and intellectually nourishing education that molds her mind and her personal identity. Her faith is a blessed and noble afterlife allows her to face life with sureness, and without fear, and to experience the ecstasy of her mature life. She sets aside the experiences that form her and devotes her adult life to the writing of letters and poems, of which “Through the Dark Sod” is just a small example. Because of her affluent childhood, Dickinson receives the excellent education that allows her to write memorable poetry. Dickinson breaks free from the dark sod and celebrates the ecstasy of life and growth. Undergraduate Series 427 References Harper, D. (2012). Mold. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mold Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Mintz, S. (2012). A chronology of American History: 19th century. Digital History. Retrieved from http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/chron19.cfm Murray, A. (1999). Miss Margaret's Emily Dickinson. Signs, 24(3), 697-732. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3175323 Whicher, G.F. (1934). Emily Dickinson's earliest friend. American Literature, 6(1), 3-17. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2919683 Williamson, G. (2011). US Wildflower's database of yellow wildflowers for Massachusetts. Wildflowers of the United States. Retrieved from http://uswildflowers.com/wfquery.php?State=MA&Color=Yellow Psychological Analysis 7/12/2012 A basic knowledge of Freud's theories, and of the theories of other well-known psychological theorists, aids in critical creativity and brings about a potentially richer analysis because such an understanding opens the text for consideration of the unconscious contributions to the work by the author. Using psychological theory to analyze a work of literature allows the reader to consider how the writing represents the oppositions among the writer's id, ego, and superego, especially in regard to the speaker's repressed desires, fears, and impulses. Psychological analysis also considers how the literature presents the writer's or the speaker's isolation from events, or even the denial of the existence of certain events and circumstances. Freud's theories assume that "the unconscious is inherently sexual" (Lynn, 2012, p. 193). By projecting a character's motivations on another character, or by projecting the writer's motivations on his or her speaker, sexual ideas may be revealed. Similarly, displacing a speaker's concerns to a different subject, or reversing a situation by attributing a speaker's feelings to the object of those feelings can reveal sexual and other psychological undertones in a literary work. Using the theories of Freud and of other theorists, such as Jung, Klein, and Sullivan, to examine and expose the conflicts in a literary work allows the reader to suppose things about the writer and about the message of the work based on the characters, the setting, and the dialogue in the piece. As Lynn (2012) illustrates with his analysis of Hamlet's soliloquy in Hamlet, Act IV, scene vi, examining the text in light of Freud's psychological theories reveals a great deal about the emotional conflicts in the title character, and discovers possible reasons for Hamlet's hesitation about killing Claudius (pp. 203-205). When Freud's Oedipus complex is applied to the text, Lynn finds that Hamlet "finds at some deeper level himself excited and unable to be enraged at Claudius for carrying out his own deep-seated wish" (Lynn, 2012, p. 206). While theorists other that Freud have somewhat different ideas about psychological theory, most theories are based on Freud's work, and any theorist's ideas may be used to reveal underlying themes and conflicts in literature. Recognizing these themes and conflicts, and identifying them in a text, leads to a richer analysis of the work. References: Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education 428 A Journey Through My College Papers Gender Based Theories and Stereotypes 7/12/2012 Feminist, post-feminist, gender, and queer theories challenge preconceived stereotypes by "disrupting comfortable patterns of thinking" (Lynn, 2012, p. 222). Feminist theory "is concerned with the status of women" (Lynn, 2012, p. 221). Women, in literature and in history, are often portrayed as weaker and less intelligent than men, as inferior to men, and as needing the control and protection of men. Women are often portrayed as either wholly innocent and helpless, or as evil and seductive; rarely, in literature, are women portrayed as well-developed characters equal or superior to men. Post-feminist theory goes beyond the feminist agenda of establishing gender equality; it "focused on the distinctive needs of women" (Lynn, 2012, p. 221). Post-feminist theory seeks to open people's thinking to different representations of both men and women in society, and to people of either gender taking on roles that are traditionally biased to the other gender. Gender theory, as a separate theory, does not seem to be addressed in the text, but the difference between sex (a scientific fact) and gender (as determined by social and psychological forces) is presented. Sex identifies male from female, and is a chromosomal or physical attribute. Gender includes men, women, bisexuals, trans-sexuals, and homosexuals, and is not clearly definable as a generalization. Queer theory addresses homosexuals and other non-heterosexual orientations and their representation in literature. Queer theory states that "dividing humankind into stereotypical men and women can be problematic since there is no simple genetic or hormonal or physiological test that will clearly divide all humans into 'male' and 'female'" (Lynn, 2012, p. 223). These different theories have the potential to open a text to deeper meaning when the roles of the sexes and gender roles that are presented or omitted from a work are considered according to these theories. I believe that, in some cases, these theories do open the door to overanalysis. In particular, a reader may apply language from modern feminist or queer theories to texts that are written before the modern usages of some words come into play. In the text, Lynn (2012) applies the modern, homosexual usage of "gay" to Samuel Johnson's 1746 poem (p. 242). This is an appealing interpretation for some readers, especially when Lynn (2012) identifies "the gay alcove" (Line 9) with a homosexual coming out of a closet (pp. 235, 242). The use of "gay" to mean "homosexual" "begins to appear in psychological writing late 1940s, evidently picked up from gay slang and not always easily distinguished from the older sense ... a male prostitute using gay in reference to male homosexuals (but also to female prostitutes) in London's notorious Cleveland Street Scandal of 1889" (Harper, 2012, paras. 2-5). The usage exists in 1889, and comes into common parlance in the 1940s, but does not exist when Johnson is writing in 1746, so applying the usage to the poem appears to me to be serious over-analysis of the work. While much of literature has a gender bias, and feminist theory might be appropriately applied to many works, it is important to consider the historical and cultural contexts of literary works when applying modern theories and concepts. References: Harper, D. (2012). Gay. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=gay Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Undergraduate Series 429 Symbolic Serpents July 16, 2012 Exploring the significance of snakes and dragons in the poetry of Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore helps the reader appreciate each author’s understanding of personal power. Snakes and dragons represent power. The snake represents masculine power as a phallic symbol. The dragon, in Western tradition, represents a different form of masculine power: the power of the warrior. The snake’s power is insidious, dominating the less-powerful through stealth as it “The Grass divides as with a Comb –“ (Line 5) (Dickinson, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 211). The dragon’s power is honest and direct, “a symbol of the power of Heaven” (Line 4) (Moore, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 212). Dickinson’s “A Narrow Fellow in the Grass” illustrates Freud’s “feminine Oedipus attitude,” which Jung later calls the Electra complex (Cherry, 2012, para. 3). Moore’s “O to Be a Dragon” is a yearning to escape from the prison of powerlessness that is defined by the Freudian Oedipus complex and the Jungian Electra complex. Both Dickinson and Moore present responses to the masculine power structure of their time period. Whereas Dickinson’s speaker, a boy, is incapacitated by his encounter with masculine power in the form of a snake in the grass, Moore seeks to attain power of her own in the form of a dragon. The different ways in which Dickinson and Moore view serpents and write about serpents in their poetry informs certain differences between the two authors. If the reader identifies each poet’s speaker with the poet herself, it is possible to learn about each poet through her poem. In the case of Dickinson, it is reasonable to postulate this identification, as Dickinson “anthropomorphizes ... the snake ... Identifying herself with them, she identifies them with her” (Gillespie, 1973, p. 262). While Moore’s identification with her speaker lacks similar support, it is reasonable to assume that a writer’s unconscious contributes to the choice of words and phrases because of the influence of the id, which is “largely the territory of the unconscious” (Lynn, 2012, p. 195). as a result, it is possible to gain a deeper understanding of the poets through the diction and syntax of their poetry. Snakes and dragons are traditional symbols of evil, especially in Western cultures. According to Biblical tradition, a snake, or a serpent, tricked the first people in creation into committing the Original Sin. Western tradition "emphasizes the negative side of their [dragons’] power and energy; the dragon-foe became synonymous with Satan and has come to symbolize evil" (Snyder, 2011, para. 3). Both snakes and dragons are serpents. Traditionally, humans fear serpents, especially in Western cultures. “[T]he dragon is what remains of our instinctive reaction to the three most deadly predators for our primate ancestors: the snake, the eagle and the large cat” (Glaser, 2009, para. 3). Dickinson’s poem deals with the ancient, instinctive fear of the snake directly; Moore deals with the ancient construct of the dragon that represents humankind’s earliest adversaries. In Dickinson’s final lines, she reveals that she does fear the serpent: “But never met this Fellow/ Attended or alone/ Without a lighter breathing/ And Zero at the Bone —“ (Lines 2124) (Dickinson, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 212). Unlike Dickinson, Moore does not fear the serpent. For her, the serpent is not the snake, but the dragon. “O to be a dragon,/ a symbol of the power of Heaven” (Lines 3-4) (Moore, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 212). Moore challenges the common stereotype of the dragon as a creature of evil when she equates it to Heavenly power. Moore sees the dragon as a noble creature. Her final line, “Felicitous phenomenon” (Line 6), describes being a dragon as a lucky and unusual occurrence (Moore, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 213). Whereas Dickinson is rendered numb and powerless by her fear of the snake, Moore is empowered by her reverence for the dragon. Freud’s Oedipus complex is the “desire to do away with the father and join with the mother” (Lynn, 2012, p. 194). The feminine Oedipus attitude, or Electra complex, is “a 430 A Journey Through My College Papers psychoanalytic term used to describe a girl's sense of competition with her mother for the affections of her father” (Cherry, 2012, para. 1). The two complexes are opposite sides of the same coin, with the Oedipus complex applying to boys and the Electra complex applying to girls. Freud maintains that one or the other of these complementary complexes is present in every child. When the complex continues, “repression happens ... eventually creating psychological trouble” (Lynn, 2012, p. 194). Alternatively, the complex is destroyed “by the boy’s perception that is father is superior,” allowing healthy psychological growth to occur (Lynn, 2012, p. 194). This is equally applicable to destroying the Electra complex when the girl perceives that the mother is superior. Dickinson, spending much of her life as a recluse and having no romantic connections, represses many of the desires that are natural for a woman. Her continuous repression manifests in the fear of the phallic symbol of the snake that is evinced in her poem. “A narrow Fellow in the Grass/ ... A spotted shaft is seen –“ (Lines 1, 6) (Dickinson, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 211). In Dickinson’s poem, the narrow shaft is a clear reference to a male erection, representing the most primal exercise of power by one human over another. The “Whip lash/ Unbraiding in the Sun” (Lines 13-14) presents the image of a whip, which is yet another phallic symbol (Dickinson, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 212). Upbraid comes from the Old English “up ‘up’ + bregdan ‘move quickly, intertwine’" (Harper, 2012, para. 1). “[W]hen the snake looks to the poet much like a ‘Whip lash / Unbraiding in the Sun,’ the image is both aural and visual. If, when stationary, the creature looks as if it were ‘unbraiding,’ we are to recall the aptness of describing the moving snake as the lashing out of a whip” (Monteiro, 1992, para. 3). The lashing whip is not only a strongly phallic symbol, it also suggests keeping the weaker person in a subservient state through the power of the whip. A whip is used to make animals obey their masters, and during the time of slavery, it is used to make the slaves work for their master and to punish any slave that defies his or her master. The whip, then, is a symbol of power that is to be feared. While upbraiding means scolding in modern usage, its etymology reinforces the serpentine image of the snake in the grass. Snakes are known to move quickly, and the side-to-side movement of a snake’s body along the ground may be described as intertwining with the grass through which it passes. The lines of the poem, then, have a double meaning. Dickinson is describing the snake moving quickly when she, as the boy in the poem, encounters it. Additionally, the poet displaces the scolding power of her mentors to the snake in the grass. The snake exerts power over the boy by scolding and by behaving like a whip. In Dickinson’s life, a series of male authority figures, including four male tutors and mentors, exert power over the author (Whicher, 1934, p. 3). The snake in the grass illustrates the power that these male mentors have in Dickinson’s life, subtly exerting masculine power over the weaker poet. The boy in Dickinson’s poem challenges the snake by attempting to grab it, exerting the boy’s power over the snake. When he finds the snake scolding him, the boy reaches out, but “When stooping to secure it/ It wrinkled, and was gone –“ (Lines 15-16) (Dickinson, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 212). Again, the comparison of the snake to a penis is apt. When the power of the oppressor, represented by the snake, is resisted by the oppressor’s target, the oppressor’s forcefully erect penis shrivels to a small, weak, wrinkled shadow of its power. Just so, the snake wrinkles up into nothing and is gone when the boy tries to pick it up. This reversal of the power balance between Dickinson and the male power structure allows the poet to explore the possibility that she might be able to challenge the status quo. In doing so, Dickinson attempts to destroy the Electra complex, represented as the Oedipus complex of the boy in her poem. Assuming the aspect of a boy in her poem allows Dickinson to protect herself mentally through displacement. She projects her fears and hopes onto the boy, allowing him to face the masculine power of the snake. Having the snake wrinkle up and go away allows her to explore how it feels to overcome that power without putting herself at risk by facing the masculine power Undergraduate Series 431 that orders her own life. For Dickinson, “Nature is narrow, constricting, like a coffin (or a snake). Anything ‘straight’ is distasteful, because ‘numbing’" (Gillespie, 1973, p. 261). The straight, narrow shaft of the snake is a negative image for Dickinson, but reducing the image to something wrinkled and inconsequential, as the boy does, releases Dickinson’s unconscious from the numbing fear of the snake’s power. Moore’s poem suggests that the desire to have the power of a dragon is a wise desire, as the opening lines name the putative wisest man in the Bible: “If I, like Solomon,.../ could have my wish—“ (Lines 1-2) (Moore, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 212). Moore does not claim to possess the wisdom of Solomon; Moore intellectualizes her desire for power by musing that she would choose that power if she was wise. The suggestion in the poet’s wish is that she does not believe she is wise enough to express such a wish, thus repressing her inner desire for power. “[T]he dragon is a fighter, a serpent, and in mythic terms, an insatiable warrior” (Martin, 1984, p. 192). Unlike Dickinson, who views power in terms of the elusive snake, Moore views power in terms of a courageous warrior. The speaker in Moore’s poem wishes to assume that power and to become a powerful warrior. Unlike Dickinson, whose male role models exert considerable power in her life, Moore has few male role models. She is raised by her grandfather after her father is committed to a mental hospital before her birth (Liukkonen, 2008, para. 3). Moore’s conflict with her mother, as defined by the Electra complex, then, is in competition for the affection of her grandfather in the absence of her father. In associating a dragon with good instead of with evil, it may be that Moore is in denial about the true nature of the creature that she selects as a symbol of power. “O to be a dragon,/ a symbol of the power of Heaven” Lines 3-4) (Moore, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 212). Another possibility is that Moore experiences reaction formation in regard to dragons, believing or hoping that, if she says they are symbols of Heaven, then they are good. If she is experiencing reaction formation, it is likely to be a manifestation of her id as her inner dragon contending with her ego as it tries to make her good. “In western literature dragons symbolize intense passion and represent the battle knights must fight against immorality” (Snyder, 2011, para. 3). Using this image, the dragon is the unconscious passions of Moore’s id, and the knight is her ego, wielding her personal power to prevent her falling into immoral behavior. If the symbolism is applied universally, the dragon represents the repressed passions of humanity, and Moore’s wish is that people could release those inner passions and embrace the power of honest expressions of desire and emotion. Moore’s desire to be a dragon is a mask for the desires of her id. She wishes to be bold and powerful in the world. She desires to be a warrior who can fight for herself to establish herself as a powerful individual. Because women are only beginning to have power in society in Moore’s lifetime, a woman is forced to repress her desires. Moore’s ability to express in writing the desires that she represses in society suggests that she has successfully destroyed her Electra complex and is establishing a healthy mental identity for herself as a strong individual. In contrast to Moore’s evident desire to be a bold, warrior-like dragon, she expresses her desire to be “at times invisible” (Line 5) (Moore, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 213). Sometimes, power lies not in being seen, but in the ability to be unseen or unnoticed by those by whom one may be oppressed. Moore does not wish to be invisible all the time; she does not desire to cease to exist in society. Instead, she desires to be invisible at times. It is reasonable to assume that the times at which she wishes to be invisible are those times that she chooses to go unnoticed, not those times at which she is overlooked or ignored by others. The former option allows Moore to assume personal power in her life, while the latter choice abdicates her power to the oppression of others. Both Dickinson and Moore explore the concept of size in their poetry. Dickinson compares the relatively large size of the snake’s shaft at the height of its power to the small size it 432 A Journey Through My College Papers assumes when it wrinkles up with the loss of its power to frighten the boy. For Dickinson, size has a direct correlation to power and to self-image. When she feels powerful, she is large and purposeful, like the snake that parts the grass. When she feels others exerting power over her, she is small and wrinkled in on herself, like the snake that is threatened by the boy’s attempt to grab it. For Moore, size is a lesser concern. The dragon may be “of silkworm/ size or immense” (Lines 45) (Moore, quoted in Lynn, 2012, pp. 212-213). A silkworm is very, very small, but it has the power to spin threads that are immensely strong. Moore acknowledges this potential for great power to come in a small size, but she does not rule out the value and power of a very large dragon. “Since antiquity, dragons have represented the vast primal forces that support the material realm” (Snyder, 2011, para. 2). Large or small, Moore appears to be wishing for these vast forces, not for a vast physical form, when she wishes to be a dragon. While Moore, like Dickinson, never married, women in general take into themselves the vast primal forces when they create life through procreation. It is possible that Moore wishes to take on the power to mold primal forces through motherhood. A mother’s body appears small, like a silkworm, as childbearing begins, but attains what many women consider to be immense size before the baby is born. The desire to produce life is an unconscious drive that is imprinted in every woman, and Moore may be regretting her decision to remain childless. Certainly, many women who have no children yearn to take on the vast power of nature to reproduce, even if that desire is repressed in favor of striving for other kinds of personal and social power. Dickinson suggests that she gets along with some parts of nature, thus intensifying the image of the fear that she feels for the snake. It is not all of nature that frightens her, just as not all of society frightens her. It is the snake that numbs her with fear, just as she is rendered powerless by the oppressive power that is exerted over her life. Dickinson is known to consider the things of nature to be “narrow, constricting, like a coffin " (Gillespie, 1973, p. 261). Nevertheless, she writes: “Several of Nature's People/ I know, and they know me --/ I feel for them a transport/ Of cordiality –“ (Lines 17-20) (Dickinson, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 212). These lines are in denial of her usual reactions to nature. As such, they reinforce her conflict with the snake, and with the power that it represents. Dickinson and Moore have very different relationships with the serpents that they choose for their poetry. In “A Slender Fellow In the Grass,” Dickinson encounters the snake unintentionally. It surprises her as “His notice sudden is –“(Line 4) (Dickinson, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 211). The suddenness of the encounter is frightening for Dickinson, who comments that she “never met this Fellow/ Attended or alone/ Without a lighter breathing/ And Zero at the Bone –“ (Lines 21-24) (Dickinson, quoted in Lynn, 2012, p. 212). Every encounter with the snake leaves Dickinson afraid. The masculine power of the snake numbs her ability to respond, just as surely as do freezing temperatures. She feels the cold of fear and powerlessness in her bones, at the core of her being. In “O to Be a Dragon,” on the other hand, Moore is, or seeks to be, the dragon. She assumes the power of the dragon, taking on, accepting, and claiming the dragon’s power as her own. Whereas Dickinson is overcome by the masculine, phallic power of the snake, Moore is empowered by the masculine, warrior power of the dragon. The symbolic serpents in the poems of Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore provide a basis for understanding how each poet relates to personal power and to the power structures that surround her life. Through an understanding of these two poems, and of how Freud’s Oedipus complex and Jung’s Electra complex relate to the lives of Dickinson and Moore, the reader is able to appreciate how living in fear of oppressive, masculine power structures can influence the expression of a person’s unconscious desires and fears. Dickinson encounters power as something to be feared; Moore embraces power as something to be sought in life. The snake in the grass and the mighty dragon are two sides of a single coin, with incapacitating fear on one side and Undergraduate Series 433 wondrous possibilities on the other side. A serpent may be a snake, or it may be a dragon. Just as Dickinson and Moore each respond differently to the serpent, each person is free to choose whether to be powerless with fear or to be empowered by wisdom and courage. References Cherry, K. (2012). What is the Electra complex? Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/eindex/g/def_electracomp.htm Gillespie, R. (1973). A circumference of Emily Dickinson. The New England Quarterly, 46(2), 250-271. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/364117 Glaser, E. (2009). Dragons in our genes: An examination of the collective unconscious. Retrieved from http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/4148 Harper, D. (2012). Upbraid. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=upbraid Liukkonen, P. (2008). Marianne (Craig) Moore (1887-1972). Retrieved from http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mmoor.htm Lynn. S. (2011). Texts and contexts: Writing about literature with critical theory. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Martin, T. (1984). Portrait of a writing master: Beyond the myth of Marianne Moore. Twentieth Century Literature. 30(2/3), 192-209. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/441113 Monteiro, G. (1992). Dickinson's a narrow fellow in the grass. The Explicator, 51(1), 20. Retrieved from ProQuest Database. Snyder, M. (2011). Dragon dreams. Retrieved from http://whiteknightstudio.blogspot.com/2011/11/dragons.html Whicher, G.F. (1934). Emily Dickinson's earliest friend. American Literature, 6(1), 3-17. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2919683 ENG 380: Literary Research Literary Experiences 7/26/2012 As an English major, I have had a good deal of academic experience with literary criticism, beginning in my first composition course in my freshman year. Nearly every class has required the analysis of one or several pieces of literature, sometimes individually, and sometimes in relation to one another. As a reader, I have experienced literature in a variety of genres almost since birth, and I read almost constantly. My kindergarten teacher was surprised when I read Little Women during my time in her classroom; I learned to read around the age of three. I enjoy reading classical literature, especially British literature of the Victorian period, and I enjoy prose, poetry, and plays alike. As an adult, I continue to read both serious literature and light, recreational literature. Most of my experiences with literature have been positive, and there have only been a few books in the course of my life that I have been unwilling to finish reading. As a student, however, some literary experiences that were positive when I first read the assigned literature have become negative as I have been assigned to read and analyze the same short stories over and over again. "A Rose for Emily" is the prime example of this transformation from a positive literary experience to a negative experience through repetition; I have encountered this story in no fewer than five classes at this point. 434 A Journey Through My College Papers It is hard to identify a single piece of literature as my favorite work, but I think I can say that a fairly obscure work, The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, is my all-time favorite. It runs a close race with the science fiction cult favorite, Stranger In a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. The Little White Horse is a fairy tale that features strong, female characters who must end a feud that is perpetuated by stubborn, proud, male characters. Stranger In a Strange Land pokes fun at many human and societal foibles, and it has just always appealed to me since I first read it at age 12. Each literary theory discussed in our text is appealing in specific settings and for certain texts, but the most appealing to me, over all, is psychoanalytic criticism, which we studied in my last class as psychological criticism. "Psychoanalytic criticism focuses on a work of literature as an expression in fictional form of the inner workings of the human mind" (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 2054). Psychoanalytic criticism is revealing on several levels, as it can reveal details about the speaker of a poem or about the characters in a work of prose, about the writer of the work, and about the reader or hearer of the work. The striving between the id and the ego as it relates to a character's actions and expressions in literature is fascinating, and often reveals something of the writer's inner struggles. The way the reader interprets seemingly insignificant parts of a work of literature exposes the reader's desires, hopes, and fears, of which the reader may not even be consciously aware. References: Kirszner, L. G. and Mandell, S. R., eds. (2010). Literature: Reading, reacting, writing. (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Experience with Library Resources 7/26/2012 I use scholarly sources in my academic assignments in every course. Most written assignments require at least a few scholarly sources, and some discussion assignments also require scholarly sources. Over all, I am comfortable with finding sources for my academic work. There are times when it is difficult to find authored, peer-reviewed sources for particular topics and positions, but persistence usually results in success. When using sources outside the Ashford library, I am usually comfortable finding reliable sources and excluding inappropriate sources from my research. The most challenging part of locating, evaluating, and using scholarly materials in my writing is that some topics are not covered extensively in scholarly sources, so finding materials can be difficult at times. Another, related challenge can be sifting through the irrelevant materials that come up in a library search to find those particular articles that are relevant. The one thing about my research abilities that I would like to improve is my ability to construct effect search strings, both for library searches and for broader searches of the Internet. When doing research for my assignments, I usually begin with the Ashford library. I prefer to use JSTOR or ProQuest for most of my research, and I am not very familiar with most of the other library databases. Sometimes, I also use Google to search for additional materials to support my writing. I usually use keywords in my searches, although Google allows the researcher to pose a question and obtain a list of sites that may answer the question. I don't usually use the "author" or "subject heading" options, as I don't usually know those things when I begin a search. I sometimes use the suggested topics in ProQuest if my initial search does not bring me the material I need. Undergraduate Series 435 To determine whether or not an article will be useful to my research, I begin by reading the abstract, if one is provided. Sometimes, I search within the article for a particular keyword to determine whether or not the article will be useful to me. Most often, I need to read or skim the text of the article before I can decide whether or not the article will be helpful in writing my paper. Relating my ideas and arguments from those expressed in my sources varies from paper to paper. I usually use quotes or summaries from source texts to illustrate my points, or to more clearly articulate an idea that I share with another writer. Sometimes, source materials help to explain my ideas, and sometimes I present opposing ideas from two sources to support my ideas and to refute opposing ideas. Psychoanalytical Theory in Literary Criticism July 30, 2012 Within each piece of literature, there exist clues to guide the reader to a deeper understanding of the literary work, of the author of the work, and even of the inner workings of the individual reader. Using psychoanalytical theory to analyze a work of literature allows the reader to consider how the writing represents the author’s repressed desires, fears, and impulses. Psychoanalytical analysis also considers how the literature presents the author’s isolation from events or even the denial of the existence of certain events and circumstances through identification of the inner workings of the mind. Modern psychoanalytic theory, based largely on the work of Dr. Sigmund Freud, provides the literary critic with a guide to discovering, revealing, and examining the truths that are hidden in literary works. “After 1950, psychoanalytic critics began to emphasize the ways in which authors create works that appeal to readers’ repressed wishes and fantasies” (Murfin & Ray, 1998, para. 3). In addition to appealing to and revealing the unconscious desires of a work’s anticipated audience, authors reveal their own unconscious desires in their writing. The key components of psychoanalytical theory are the struggle among Freud’s Id, Ego, and Superego; Freud’s understanding of the unconscious; and literature as a representation of the inner workings of the mind. Psychoanalytic theory is a useful tool for evaluating literary works to gain a richer understanding of the work, the author, and the reader. One of the key components of psychoanalytic theory is Freud’s concept of the Id, Ego, and Superego. The id is “[t]he part of the mind that determines sexual drives and other unconscious compulsions that urge individuals to unthinking gratification (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 2055). Opposing the id is the superego, which “seeks to repress the demands of the id and to prevent gratification of basic physical appetites” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 2055). The ego balances the primal needs of the id and the civilizing demands of the superego (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 2055). Freud is well-known for his attention to sexual desires as the primary need of the id. Psychoanalytical theory applies Freud’s Oedipus complex to literature by seeking images in the text that reveal the author’s unconscious sexual fantasies and desires. These images provide the critic a richer understanding of the writing, as well as insights into the minds of the author and the reader. Freud “believed that literature could often be interpreted as the reflection of our unconscious life” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 2054). Psychoanalytical theory works from this belief and seeks images in a text that will provide an illustration of the author’s unconscious life. “[L]iterary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author” (Delahoyde, n.d., para. 1). Even when an author is not writing autobiographically, the speech and behavior of the author’s characters and the descriptions of settings and events are usually imbued with some of the author’s personality, desires, and fear. In analyzing a literary work, the critic 436 A Journey Through My College Papers discovers clues to his or her own unconscious life by recognizing that the critic’s identification and interpretation of the images in a work is informed by the critic’s unconscious. By projecting the author’s motivations on the characters of a literary work, sexual ideas may be revealed in the work. Similarly, displacing the author’s concerns to a subject in a literary work, or reversing a situation by attributing feelings to the object of those feelings can reveal sexual and other psychological undertones in the work. "An unconscious dynamism ... begins to influence the writer and even often imposes upon him forms of expression which he does not intend to use consciously" (Von Franz, 1980, p. 119). The author’s unconscious life leads to the more complex inner workings of the human mind, which are a combination of the conscious and the unconscious, and which are populated by the id, the ego, and the superego, and which manifest in projection, displacement, and other literary techniques. Psychoanalytical criticism of literature “focuses on a work of literature as an expression in fictional form of the inner workings of the human mind” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 2054). By creating a fictional representation, the author is able to explore an array of concepts in a non-threatening venue, and the literary critic is able to sift the original, inner thoughts from the writing. “A ... concept so important to literary critics ... is the Oedipus complex” (Knapp, 2004, para. 6). The representation of inner thoughts and ideas often exposes elements of Freud’s Oedipus complex in literature. The Oedipus complex is drawn from the famous story of a young man who kills his father and marries his mother, and it represents for Freud the primary inner conflict for any person. “The complete complex postulates a pre-oedipal desire for both parents ... which must be transformed in the Oedipus complex in the interest of solid ego formation.” (Donovan, 2002, para. 1). Literary critics using the psychoanalytical theory seek images in texts that reveal the character’s or the author’s struggle to overcome the urge to remove the same-sex parent in order to form an intimate bond with the other parent. The author may not be aware of his or her Oedipal inclinations, but with attentive close reading, the literary critic is able to uncover hidden truths that may be translated into universal truths about the human condition. By so doing, the critic achieves a deeper understanding of the literary work, of the author’s inner thoughts, and of the reader. Through use of Freud’s theories of the unconscious; identification of the elements of the id, ego, and superego; and recognition of the Oedipus complex underlying literary texts; psychoanalytic theory is a useful tool for evaluating literary works to gain a richer understanding of the work, the author, and the reader. The literary critic identifies symbols and images in a literary work that reveal the author’s unconscious desires and fears. The struggle of the ego to balance the desires of the id and the superego informs the literary critic about the author’s struggle with his or her personal identity and with his or her balancing of primal needs and civilized responsibilities. The psychoanalytical critic is able to reveal the tricks of repression, displacement, isolation, reversal, attribution, and other factors to identify themes, ideas, and messages that are hidden in a literary work. Understanding the psychological messages in a literary work leads to an understanding of the author of that work. This understanding can guide the critic to deeper selfawareness. References Delahoyde, M. (n.d.). Psychoanalytic criticism. Retrieved from http://public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/psycho.crit.html Donovan, S.K. (2002). Overcoming Oedipal exclusions. Philosophy Today, 46, 128. Retrieved from ProQuest database. Kirszner, L. G. and Mandell, S. R., eds. (2010). Literature: Reading, reacting, writing. (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Undergraduate Series 437 Knapp, J.V. (2004). Family-systems psychotherapy and psychoanalytic literary criticism: A comparative critique. Mosaic : a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, 37(1), 149-166. Retrieved from ProQuest database. Murfin, R. & Ray, S.M. (1998). Definition of psychoanalytic criticism. Retrieved from http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/poetry/critical_define/crit_psycho.html Von Franz, M. (1980). Analytical psychology and literary criticism. New Literary History, 12(1), 119-126. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/468809 Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper 8/2/2012 When I read Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," I feel a sense of horror. I am horrified to watch a decent, middle-class woman's decline from simple melancholia to complete insanity. Before reading Gilman's subsequent essay, I believed Gilman's writing to be a new, feminist incarnation of the work of Edgar Allen Poe, since her account of the narrator's suffering is reminiscent of the madness that is found in many of Poe's stories. Upon reading "Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper," however, I realize that Gilman's story is a highly autobiographical sketch of her own experience with the so-called rest cure that was popular in the late 19th century. The narrator of Gilman's story tells her audience that "there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression -- a slight hysterical tendency ... So I take phosphates ... and am absolutely forbidden to 'work' until I am well again" (Kirszner, 2010, p. 460). This description of the beginning of the narrator's troubles is paralleled in Gilman's essay when she writes: "For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia -- and beyond ... I went ... to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure ...he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to ... "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived" (Gilman, 1913, p. 10). Just as Gilman is told never to write again, so she writes the same restriction for her main character. The story allows Gilman, after she has abandoned the rest cure and has resumed writing, to explore what could have been her fate had she compliantly adhered to the psychological treatment that she received from her doctor. Understanding Gilman's essay that explains the purpose of her story helps the reader to understand the story. It is not a story meant to entertain and excite stories in the manner of one of Poe's stories. Instead, "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a cautionary tale about the dangers of allowing the mind to be idle, as well as the dangers inherent in living too solitary a life. Gilman's narrator is sequestered in a bedroom in a secluded house in the country. She has very limited contact with anyone, even with her own child, who is kept from her so she can rest: "[T]he baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wallpaper" (Kirszner, 2010, p. 465). The narrator is so isolated that she begins to see a woman in the wallpaper of her room, and in the garden outside her window. Graham Stokes (2000) writes that "We are social creatures. All people need human contact ... It is crucial to wellbeing" (p. 109). In the absence of human contact, the narrator's mind creates an entity with whom she can socialize. The entity, taking the form of the woman behind the flowers on the wallpaper, eventually takes over the narrator's mind as madness overtakes her. In her real life, Gilman writes that she "came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over" (Gilman, 1913, p. 10). She escapes her isolation and thus recovers her sanity. She writes the story of how her treatment might have ended "to save people from being driven crazy" (Gilman, 1913, p. 10). 438 A Journey Through My College Papers Both Gilman and her narrator are told to cease working and not to write as part of trying to treat their emotional difficulties. Both the real woman and the fictional character are forced to repress their creative urges and to allow their minds to grow fallow. In writing about Gilman's story, Conrad Shumaker (1985) writes: "By trying to ignore and repress her imagination, in short, John eventually brings about the very circumstance he wants to prevent" (p. 590). By not allowing her imagination to be repressed for long, and by writing about her experience, Gilman avoids the circumstance of madness that she writes for her narrator. References: Gilman, C.P. (1913). Why I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (1899). Retrieved from http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/yellowwallpaper.pdf Kirszner, L. G. and Mandell, S. R., eds. (2010). Literature: Reading, reacting, writing. (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Shumaker, C. (1985). "Too terribly good to be printed": Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper". American Literature, 57(4), 588-600. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Stokes, G. (2000). Challenging behaviour in dementia : A person-centred approach. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Exploring the Ashford University Library Databases 8/2/2012 In researching my response to this week's first discussion, I performed two separate searches. The first was for general information about Charlotte Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper. I used EBSCOhost for the search, using the term "The Yellow Wallpaper by Gilman" in the first search box. I used the fourth result as a source for my discussion. I used the titles and types of the results to eliminate the first three results. Once inside my chosen result, I simply read the article to find relevant information. My second search on EBCSOhost used the term "human need for social contact." This returned only two results, of which I chose the second. Since the chosen text is a full-text e-book, I began by using the "search within" option to find "social contact," then selected "Social and Human Contact Needs" from the several occurrences on the term in the text (Stokes, 2000, p. 109). I repeated both searches using Google. The search for "The Yellow Wallpaper by Gilman" returned about 256,000 results. Among the top ten results were entries for Wikipedia, Sparknotes, and E-notes, each of which is an inappropriate source site. The Google search for "human need for social contact" was remarkably better than I expected, with the only Wikipedia entry being an article that connects Charlotte Gilman to the lack of social contact, which would be a useful connection if it appeared in a credible source (Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 2012). Using the database provided a shorter, more concise, more relevant list of sources for each of my searches than did using Google for the same searches. For a literary search like these, the library databases are more useful and efficient than using a more general search engine. Additional information from the search engines might be useful to add details to a literary paper, but the search engines would not be my first choice for this sort of project. In writing a paper on a current events topic or a popular culture topic, on the other hand, it is useful to use a search engine to get more recent information than is available in a library database. The advantages of using a library database are peer-reviewed sources and not needing to sift through pages of noncredible sources to find appropriate sources for a paper. The main Undergraduate Series 439 disadvantage is that the databases rarely have the most current information on new developments in technology and culture. The advantages of using a general search engine include easy access to up-to-the-minute information about science, technology, politics, and culture. The greatest disadvantage is the profusion of non-credible wiki sites, blogs, and personal websites that lack appropriate supporting documentation. References: Charlotte Perkins Gilman. (2012). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman Kirszner, L. G. and Mandell, S. R., eds. (2010). Literature: Reading, reacting, writing. (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Stokes, G. (2000). Challenging Behaviour in Dementia : A Person-centred Approach. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Critical Analysis of Gilman’s Gothic Allegory August 6, 2012 Greg Johnson’s “Gilman's gothic allegory: Rage and redemption in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’" argues that the true theme of The Yellow Wallpaper is the repressed rage of a 19thcentury woman who is subject to the patriarchal society of her time, and the woman’s redemption from repression through the creative outlet of writing. The complete APA citation for the article is: Johnson, G. (1989). Gilman's gothic allegory: Rage and redemption in "The Yellow Wallpaper". Studies in Short Fiction. 26(4), 521-530. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. The thesis of Johnson’s article addresses the larger question of the submissive role of women under the dominance of a male-centered social structure, as well as the question of the rebellion of women against social repression through artistic expression. I find the article’s argument convincing in that it clearly expresses the social inequality of men and women in late 19th-century America. The author provides an anecdote from the real life of Emily Dickinson’s mother that illustrates the rage and rebellion of a woman who is repressed by the rule of her husband, and the author goes on to identify the parallels between Mrs. Dickinson’s experience and the experience of the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper. Barbara A. Suess (2003) writes that “Gilman's story chronicles how women have been socially, historically, and medically constructed as not only weak, but sick beings” (para. 2). This identification of women as weak and sick supports the depiction of 19th-century American women’s inequality with men of their period. In his article, Johnson assumes that both Mrs. Dickinson and Gilman’s narrator are somewhat depressed, middle-class women who submit to the control of their husbands. The assumption is supported by John S. Bak (1994) when he writes: “By placing her in this room, John, the narrator's husband, resembles the penal officers of the eighteenth-century psychiatric wards or penitentiaries” (para. 10). Representing men as penal officers identifies men as authority figures who control the women in their society. The reference to a mental ward or a prison further supports the idea that women are weak or unruly, and that they need to be controlled by men. The author further assumes that rebellion through artistic expression serves to free women from patriarchal repression. Writing about the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper, Johnson (1989) writes: “An experienced writer, she understands the healing power which inheres in the act of writing” (p. 527). Writing, as an artistic expression, is a source of healing for the narrator, and it is a means of escaping the control of her husband. 440 A Journey Through My College Papers A third assumption is that the male-dominated, physical world is a world of daylight, reason, and structure, while the female-centered, inner world is a world of nighttime darkness, fanciful imagination, and disorderly fantasy. “Two of the story's major structural devices are its contrasting of the husband's daylight world and his wife's nocturnal fantasy, and the religious imagery by which she highlights the liberating and redemptive qualities of her experience” (Johnson, 1989, p. 523). Barbara Hochman (2002) also comments on the dichotomy between the masculine and the feminine in The Yellow Wallpaper: “The narrator’s ‘‘romantic’’ sensibility is elaborated through many details in the text, and it has often been seen as part of the contrast between her and her husband, a contrast sharply drawn along stereotypical gender lines” (p. 95). This supports Johnson’s assumption of a contrast between masculine and feminine and between practical and romantic or fanciful. The difference between male and female is key to the feminist theme of the story, and Conrad Shumaker (1985) also addresses this point in regard to the wider society in America: “Woman is often seen as representing an imaginative or ‘poetic’ view of things that conflicts with ... the American male's ‘common sense’ approach to reality” (pp. 589590). This also supports Johnson’s assumption that the masculine is realistic and that the feminine is imaginative. The primary critical approach in the article is feminist theory, supported by historical and biographical theory and by psychoanalytical theory. These theories are appropriate for a discussion of the social position of women in The Yellow Wallpaper, and for a discussion of the feminine mind and the narrator’s descent into madness and escape from repression through writing and through her madness. Historical and biographical theory are appropriate for explaining the social and culture setting in which The Yellow Wallpaper takes place, and for relating the experiences of Gilman’s narrator to Gilman’s own life experiences. A discussion of this article will contribute to my discussion of the feminist and psychoanalytical themes in The Yellow Wallpaper. The article presents strong arguments about the role of women in the story’s setting of time and place, and the discussion of repression, rage, and redemption contributes to an understanding of the psychology of the story. I am till refining my final thesis, but I expect it to address the feminist and psychological themes in the story, and how each theme informs the other. As such, the theme and argument of this article will support and illustrate my thesis. Given the relationship between my tentative thesis and the thesis of this paper, I will need to connect the patriarchal repression of women and the artistic rebellion of women against repression to my discussion of the feminist aspects of the story. I expect to use this article to support my discussion of the psychoanalytical images in the story and how those images describe the psychological damage caused by social isolation and creative repression. In particular, I expect to use Johnson’s (1989) discussion of The Yellow Wallpaper as a sign of the Gilman’s narrator using her writing to subvert the authority of her husband and to escape from both her physical prison and her social prison by continuing to write in secret (p. 527). Ultimately, despite the creative outlet of her writing, Gilman’s narrator merges with her hallucinations and escapes into madness; exploring this degeneration with the help of Johnson’s article will help illustrate my thesis about the psychoanalytical aspects of the story. References Bak, J. S. (1994). Escaping the jaundiced eye: Foucaldian panopticism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. Studies In Short Fiction, 31(1), 39-46. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Hochman, B. (2002). The reading habit and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. American Literature, 74(1), 89. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Johnson, G. (1989). Gilman's gothic allegory: Rage and redemption in "The Yellow Wallpaper". Studies in Short Fiction. 26(4), 521-530. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Undergraduate Series 441 Shumaker, C. (1985). "Too terribly good to be printed": Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper". American Literature, 57(4), 588-600. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Suess, B. A. (2003). The writing's on the wall: Symbolic orders in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. Women's Studies, 32(1), 79. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Doing More with Google 8/6/2012 I used Google Scholar for this assignment, and I was quickly frustrated. I used "The Yellow Wallpaper by Gilman" as my search string, just as I used it in EBSCOhost when doing my initial research this weekend for my final paper. The first article that looked useful was the sixth result on the page. When I clicked it, it brought up a JSTOR article. Since I don't have a personal JSTOR account, I was forced to follow the prompts to use Ashford's account, which resulted in accessing the library through the Student Portal after about twice as many clicks as it usually takes to access the library. I did, finally, arrive at a full-text version of Lanser's (1989) article. The second result that looked useful took me to http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00497878.1986.9978632 where I was directed to a page that requires $169.00US to access the full text of the article. Beate Schöpp-Schilling's article looks like it could provide valuable insights into the feminist themes of The Yellow Wallpaper. She writes: "Elaine Hodges ... praises it [The Yellow Wallpaper] as a feminist document 'which directly confronts the social politics of the male-female, husband-wife relationship'" (p. 284). Unfortunately, having accessed the article through Google Scholar, I was again denied access to the full article on JSTOR unless I went through the Ashford Library, which is not the point of an exercise in using a Google product. Greg Johnson's article about the story (1989), which I analyzed in my week 2 written assignment, and which I originally found in the Ashford Library is on the first page of results in Google Scholar, but the link leads to the abstract only, with no option to view the full text (Johnson [Abstract], 1989). Other articles that I have already located in the Ashford Library for use in my final paper also come up in Google Scholar, but again there is either the JSTOR issue or a requirement to pay for access to the documents. The same is true for each of the new articles in the search results that look interesting and relevant to my topic: they require JSTOR access or they charge an access fee. I cannot adequately determine the theses of the articles that were returned from my search, as I have been unable to read most of the articles. The materials that I found using Google Scholar have not contributed to my view of The Yellow Wallpaper in any meaningful way because it has been so hard for me to find relevant articles that can be accessed as full-text documents. Using EBSCOhost through the Ashford Library over the weekend, I readily identified seven good sources for my final paper, but using Google Scholar seems like an impossible task to me -- and it is rare that I refer to any research project as impossible. I'm sure that Google Scholar may be a useful tool for many searches, but it is an impediment to my research for the final paper. References: Johnson, G. (1989). Gilman's gothic allegory: Rage and redemption in "The Yellow Wallpaper". Studies in Short Fiction. 26(4), 521-530. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. 442 A Journey Through My College Papers Johnson, G. (1989). Gilman's gothic allegory: Rage and redemption in "The Yellow Wallpaper" [Abstract.]. Studies in Short Fiction. 26(4), 521-530. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/facpubs/1938/ Lanser, S.S. (1989). Feminist criticism, "The Yellow Wallpaper," and the politics of color in America. Feminist Studies, 15(3), 415-441. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177938 Schöpp-Schilling, B. (1975). "The Yellow Wallpaper": A rediscovered "realistic" story. American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, 8(3), 284-286. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27747979 Research and Response 8/9/2012 The Things They Carried, as presented in our text, is a series of excerpts from a larger story about the Vietnam War. Set in the jungles around My Lai, the excerpts deal with a platoon of men at Than Khe. The author, Tim O'Brien, draws from his experiences as a soldier serving in the My Lai region from 1968-1970 as he writes about the physical and emotional baggage carried by the men. He lists myriad physical items that the men carry, and intersperses the physical items with weighty emotional baggage that may be more significant than all of the actual "things." O'Brien's experiences as a soldier who was drafted to fight in Vietnam help shape the story that he tells. In an interview with Martin Naparsteck, O'Brien says: "In my own particular case, I hated the war in Vietnam and didn't want to go. I had no desire to test my capacity to charge a bunker; I had no desire to do that. Some guys did. And I never really understood it, from the moment of basic training. Why would guys want to die? Take the chance of dying? I just didn't get it ... and the writing probably echoes that" (Naparsteck & O'Brien, 1991, pp. 4-5). O'Brien's characters reflect his hatred for the war in Lavender's fear, Cross's clinging to imagined love, and Kiowa's reaction to Lavender's death. While the lists of physical objects carried by the men seem to dominate the story, the intangible weights of fear, superstition, guilt, and disbelief are by far the most weighty things in the story. The Vietnam War is not actually a war in legal or political sense because it was never declared a war by the United States government, but this detail is irrelevant to the men who fight the war. "United States involvement in the Vietnam War lasted from the early 1960s until the mid 1970s" (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 473). The events in The Things They Carried take place about 1970, near the midpoint of the conflict. Some of the items listed in the story, such as KoolAid, Dr. Scholl's foot powder, and Kodachrome photographs, illustrate the time period from the standpoint of the world beyond the war (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, pp. 473-474). C rations, a PRC-25 radio, and lists of various firearms illustrate the military time period with the Vietnam-era technology of war. Reading "An interview with Tim O'Brien" added to my understanding of The Things They Carried because it offers the author's own thoughts and perspectives on the war in his own words. It is not another researcher's interpretation of O'Brien's life experiences, but his own expression of those experiences. When asked about the characters in the story, O'Brien replies: "'Speaking of Courage,' [a chapter of The Things They Carried] for example, came from a letter I received from a guy named Norman Bowker, a real guy, who committed suicide after I received his letter," and when asked whether O'Brien knew Bowker, whose name is used in the story, he replies "Yeah, in Vietnam" (Naparsteck & O'Brien, 1991, p. 7). Realizing that O'Brien's story is based on experiences that he had near My Lai, and on people he knew in the war, adds a sense of realism to my understanding of his story. Undergraduate Series 443 My middle brother served in Vietnam around the same time that O'Brien and Bowker served there, and The Things They Carried brings to my mind the few stories he sometimes tells about the war. Like the characters in the story waiting around for the helicopter to take Lavender's body away, my brother (also named Tim) describes many periods of just sitting and waiting in the jungle. For me, my brother's experiences are another source of context for O'Brien's story, as he could be describing my brother's experiences as easily as he describes his own experiences. References: Kirszner, L. G. and Mandell, S. R., eds. (2010). Literature: Reading, reacting, writing. (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Naparsteck, M. & O'Brien, T. (1991). An interview with Tim O'Brien. Contemporary Literature, 32(1), 1-11. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1208335 Poetry Analysis "ABC" 8/16/2012 "ABC" by Robert Pinsky is a fascinating, short poem. It is written in free verse, with neither rhyme nor meter. The poem consists of exactly 26 words. The first letter of each word is a different letter of the alphabet, arranged in alphabetical order. This ordering of the words suggests the inescapable order of life that is represented in the text of the poem. The poem states that "Any body can die" (Line 1) (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 885). It then goes on to lament the sad circumstances under which many people die, and the speaker's assumption that not many people die happy, leaving "joy,/ Knowledge, love" behind them (Lines 2-3) (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 885). The voice of the poem is anonymous. It is not clear that the speaker is the author, so the reader has the impression that the poem expresses universal truths about life, death, happiness, and despair. If Pinsky had written the poem in a first-person voice or a second-person voice, the sense of universality would be absent, and the poem would not have the emotional impact that it has with the anonymous voice. "ABC" expresses the ideas of happiness and despair, which echo the title of his first book: Sadness and Happiness. Barry Goldensohn writes that "a Modernist myriadmindedness emerges clearly in Pinsky's first book ... Sadness and Happiness" (Goldensohn, 2009, para. 2). This idea of the myriad mind encompasses the anonymous voice and reinforces the universality of the poem. The tone of the poem is reflective, as suggested by the word "evidently" in the first line (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 885). This qualifier keeps the opening statement from being the pronouncement of an absolute truth, even though the poem suggests a universal truth. Pinsky seems to make definite statements about life and death, and about death by suicide, and it is easy for the reader to overlook the thoughtful qualifier of "evidently." The final three lines of the poem are puzzling. "Sweet time unafflicted,/ Various world:/ X = your zenith" (Lines 6-8) (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 885). A zenith is defined as "the highest point" (Zenith, n.d., para. 2). "Sweet time unafflicted" appears to describe the time after death, when the deceased is no longer afflicted by the difficulties of life that caused his or her suicide, as described in line 4: "Need oblivion, painkillers" (Line 4) (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 885). "Various world" also describes a life after death, as a world that varies from the world in which the deceased lived. The "X" is the most puzzling part of the poem; the letter needs to have meaning in the poem beyond filling the required space in the alphabet, because the letter is equated to the zenith, or highest point. If the X is assumed to represent the crossing out of an afflicted life, then death by suicide is represented as the highest point of a person's life. 444 A Journey Through My College Papers Happily, Pinsky does not paint a completely black picture in his poem. The speaker does not say that no one has a happy life and death, only that "Few/ Go happily, irradiating joy,/ Knowledge, love" (Lines 1-2) (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 885). These few words offer the hope that life can be happy, and that the reader may be among the few who escape the need for quick oblivion. The even, orderly arrangement of the poem supports the happy, loving, knowledgeable life of the few, just as it illustrates the progression of all lives to death. References: Goldensohn, B. (2009). Myriad minded: The poetry of Robert Pinsky. American Poetry Review, 38(1), 33-35. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Kirszner, L. G. and Mandell, S. R., eds. (2010). Literature: Reading, reacting, writing. (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Zenith. (n.d.). Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged. (10th ed.). Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/zenith The Value of Critical Theory in Literary Analysis 8/21/2012 The use of critical theory adds to one's ability to make skillful judgments about literature because critical theory forces the reader to examine the literature more closely than would usually be involved in a surface reading of literature. A given literary work may lend itself more to some of the forms of critical theory than to other forms. The literary critic needs to decide which of the forms of critical theory may best be applied to a piece of literature in order to draw out the deeper meaning in the work. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper lends itself to several critical theories. A psychological or psychoanalytical analysis of the story might address the imprisonment imagery of the bars on the nursery windows and the perceived bars in the design of the wallpaper. It might also address the description of the wallpaper as having broken necks and bulbous eyes (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.462). A deeper psychoanalytical analysis of the work might explore the Electra Complex elements in the narrator's relationship with her husband who is a parental figure in the story. A feminist analysis of the same story might address the infantilization of the narrator by her husband and the way the characterization of the wife as a child reflects the “nineteenth-century equation of non-maternal women ... with helpless children” (Johnson, 1989, p. 524). The same discussion might include a discussion of the husband's control over the narrator as he imposes the rest cure and orders her not to work. The analysis might discuss how women occupy a submissive role in the patriarchal society of 19th century America. A reader-response analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper might focus on how the reader responds to the American Gothic style of the story. The reader-response critic might discuss feelings of horror evoked by the descriptions of the country mansion and of the woman caught behind the design of the wallpaper. This critical theory focuses on how the reader is affected by the literature, so the critic might write about how the description of the narrator's descent into madness elevates the reader's heart rate and produces a feeling of suspense and anticipation. Two or more critical theories may be combined to develop a deeper understanding of a given work. In my final paper, I am combining psychological theory and feminist theory. Historical or biographical analysis can create a deeper understanding of a feminist or other cultural analysis. In each critical theory, the reader is forced to perform a deep reading of the literary work in order to expose the elements that relate to the critical theory that is being used. Undergraduate Series 445 References: Johnson, G. (1989). Gilman's Gothic allegory: Rage and redemption in "The Yellow Wallpaper". Studies in Short Fiction. 26(4), 521-530. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Kirszner, L. G. and Mandell, S. R., eds. (2010). Literature: Reading, reacting, writing. (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Analyzing The Yellow Wallpaper August 21, 2012 Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is a semi-autobiographical American Gothic novel with vivid psychological and psychoanalytical imagery and a powerful feminist message. Gilman uses the traditional Gothic literary devices of the “distraught heroine, the forbidding mansion, and the powerfully repressive male antagonist” to frame her indictment of patriarchal marginalization of women and of women’s issues (Johnson, 1989, p. 522). The narrator is distraught by the forced inactivity of the rest cure for which she is taken to a country mansion by her authoritarian husband. In an article in American Literature, Barbara Hochman (2002) explains how The Yellow Wallpaper represents contemporary concerns that women read in order to escape their lives. This escapism is illustrated in Gilman’s book as psychological markers and feminist themes in the story work together to present a theme of escape from repression, escape from imprisonment, and escape from an unfulfilling life. The Yellow Wallpaper is rich with symbolism and imagery. The narrator of the story seeks, and ultimately finds, escape from physical imprisonment, from a forced state of infantilism that is imposed by her husband and by the patriarchal society of 19th century America, from the perceived scrutiny of the floral elements of the wallpaper that gives the story its title, and from her own identity. The narrator experiences physical, mental, and emotional imprisonment at the hands of her husband, John, and his sister, Jennie. Throughout the story, the upstairs nursery bedroom is represented as a prison. The floral design on the yellow wallpaper appears, to the narrator, to be bars imprisoning the woman the narrator imagines to be behind the lurid, floral design. “At night in any kind of light ... it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it as plain as can be” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.467). The narrator, who is imprisoned by the maledominated culture of 19th century, middle class America and by the confines of the isolated upstairs bedroom of an isolated country estate, projects the image of a prison onto the design of the wallpaper in the room that serves as her physical prison. In her furtive writings, the narrator states that “it is the pattern that keeps her so still” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.467). She imagines that the design on the paper keeps the imaginary woman behind the design still in the same way that her husband imprisons her intellectually by commanding that she be still and not do any writing or work while she experiences the rest cure. The patterned prison does not keep the woman still, however, as Gilman writes: “The front pattern does move ... The woman behind shakes it!” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.468). This reflects the narrator shaking the bars of her intellectual prison by continuing to write in secret. The imprisoning bars in the wallpaper mimic the actual, physical, metal bars on the windows of the nursery room. The bars are mentioned throughout the story, reinforcing the idea that the narrator is imprisoned and needs to escape. The narrator reports that “the windows are barred for little children,” and she later mentions “the barred windows, and then the gate at the head of the stairs” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, pp.461-462). John S. Bak writes: “By placing her in this room, John, the narrator's husband, resembles the penal officers of the eighteenth-century psychiatric wards or penitentiaries” (Bak, 1994, para. 10). It is noteworthy that the narrator sees 446 A Journey Through My College Papers the bars as a means of containing children in the room, and not as a means of punishing a criminal, making the nursery more like the psychiatric ward than the penitentiary. Women in her class and culture are treated as children by their society, but they are not seen as evil or as wrong-doers. Late in the story, Gilman writes: “To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.470). This suggestion of suicidal thoughts again signals the unifying theme of the narrator’s need and desire to escape from the nursery room and, presumably, from her life of repression under male control. Just as the narrator seeks escape from imprisonment in her physical surroundings, she also seeks escape from a kind of repression exerted by her contemporary society. She experiences enforced infantilism at the hands of her husband, John. John does not infantilize the narrator in order to be cruel to her; as Greg Johnson (1989) writes, “he is merely following the nineteenthcentury equation of non-maternal women ... with helpless children” (p. 524). The narrator is seen to be treated as a child because the room in which she lives is meant to be a nursery. She is kept in the nursery, but the baby is not. Although John shares the nursery with his wife, she is often kept there by herself while he is away from the house on business, so it is as though she is confined in the nursery by herself. In addition to placing his wife in the nursery, John forbids the narrator to do any work. This is a primary feature of the rest cure, but it also casts the narrator in the role of a child who does not work for the support of her family. The narrator experiences forced dependence on her husband and his sister, who take parental roles in the narrator’s life. These circumstances reinforce the narrator’s need for escape; she seeks to escape from the childlike role assigned to her by her husband and by society, and she seeks to escape from the restrictions on her work. The infantilizing of the narrator progresses in her own mind until she is reduced to crawling on the floor like a young child. The narrator writes: “here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.471). Gilman describes a mark or smooch on the wall where the narrator’s shoulder has rubbed the design off the paper as she crawls about the room (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.468). Gilman’s narrator anthropomorphizes the floral elements of the yellow wallpaper. These elements represent the scrutiny society makes of lives of women, and especially of creative women and of women who are not obedient to their husbands. The narrator is one such woman; her writing informs her creative nature and her surreptitious continuation of her writing informs her marital and feminine disobedience. While she is not scrutinized by members of contemporary society while she is sequestered in the country mansion, her internal feelings of guilt at violating the rules of her society cause her to imagine that the wallpaper watches her. Gilman writes that “the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.462). Bak (1994) discusses the scrutiny the narrator experiences from the eyes that she perceives in the wallpaper (para. 10). The narrator seeks to escape the scrutiny of the wallpaper and, by extension, the suffocating scrutiny of society and the behavioral requirements of society, when she systematically tears the wallpaper from the walls of the nursery throughout the story. The narrator expresses how society’s scrutiny represses women when she says of the pattern on the wallpaper: “it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads ... the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.468). The narrator’s anthropomorphizing of the pattern on the wallpaper assumes a darker aspect when the narrator writes: “when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.461). The word choice in describing the pattern as committing suicide is significant because it again reinforces the narrator’s need to escape from the nursery and from the repressive, patriarchal society that the room and its wallpaper represent. “This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had!” Undergraduate Series 447 (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.462). Not only does the narrator watch the wallpaper, the watches the narrator. This indication of the narrator’s growing paranoia indicates her declining mental state. It also indicates that she feels trapped by the scrutiny of the wallpaper and that she recognizes that being trapped is something undesirable. The narrator experiences a break with reality in the course of the story, which represents an escape from her ordinary life. She begins to relate to the woman she perceives behind the wallpaper. “I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that ... front design” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.463). At first, she only perceives the woman vaguely. At this point, the woman in the wallpaper is a completely separate entity from the narrator. As the narrator’s need for escape increases, she begins to associate herself more and more deeply with the woman. “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.465). The narrator knows on an unconscious level that she is trapped by society and by her controlling husband, but she is unable to escape her physical reality. Instead, her imagination starts to have the woman in the wallpaper try to escape from behind the floral design with its watchful eyes. The woman shakes the pattern of the wallpaper just as the narrator wishes she could shake herself free of the patriarchal controls of society. As the narrator entertains the imaginary idea of escape, she becomes more hopeful for her own escape. “I think that woman gets out in the daytime! ... I’ve seen her!” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.468). The narrator projects her desire for escape onto the woman, and the narrator imagines that the woman has become free of her imprisonment, if only for short periods. This coincides with the narrator’s periods of escaping her husband’s control by writing during the day when he is away at his work. “The wife in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ escapes by denying one self and merging with another--physically safe, but insane, at least for the moment, in her nurseryprison” (Delashmit & Long, 1991, para. 3). While physical escape from contemporary society and from the constraints of her own life is impossible for the narrator, she is able to find escape in the imaginary woman in the wallpaper. Bak (1994) writes that “the madness to which Gilman's narrator is led ... paradoxically frees as it destroys” (para. 20). The narrator seeks freedom at any cost, even contemplating suicide at times, and the destruction of her sanity is a small price to pay for her escape from imprisonment. “I’ve got a rope up here ... If that woman does get out and tries to get away, I can tie her! ... I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.470). The narrator first claims that she will tie up the woman, but she has tied up herself instead. In fact, she has done exactly what she says she will do, since she has become the woman and by tying herself she has also tied up the woman. This also connects to the earlier suicide image of jumping out the window and finding escape from life by ending her life. The narrator’s identification with the woman in the wallpaper is complete when she declares: “I’ve got out at last ... in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p.471). In an article in Women’s Studies, Barbara A. Suess writes: “Jane is no longer Jane, floundering in what she perceives as an orderless world. Instead, Jane is the woman who fought her way out from behind the oppressive bars of the outside pattern” (Suess, 2003, para. 37). Through her complete identification with the woman, the narrator has achieved freedom in her own mind. Physical reality is no longer relevant for her since she has succeeded in tearing the wallpaper from the walls and releasing the woman who was trapped behind the paper. The narrator cannot remove the constricting bonds of her maledominated society, but she has succeeded in symbolically freeing herself by destroying the wallpaper that represents, in her mind, her imprisonment. Shawn St. Jean (2002) describes The Yellow Wallpaper as “a story exposing patriarchal oppression” (para. 35). The story addresses the feminist issues of a woman’s status in society and of the patronization of women and women’s creative efforts by a repressive, male-dominated society. “The story, then, is ... an effective indictment of the nineteenth-century view of the sexes” 448 A Journey Through My College Papers (Shumaker, 1985, p. 598). The narrator in Gilman’s story is controlled by her husband, John, who iconically represents male-dominated society in 19 th century America. Shumaker writes that “the story does indeed raise the issue of sex roles in an effective way, and thus anticipates later feminist literature” (Shumaker, 1985, p. 589). John tells his wife where to live and what she may and may not do. He suppresses her creative urges by denying her need to write to express herself. The control exerted by the narrator’s husband becomes a prison from which she must escape. “With its dominant pattern, its subordinate pattern, and its emerging image of a woman behind bars, the wall-paper has often been seen to represent the ‘patriarchal text’ in which literary women —in fact, all women—are trapped” (Hochman, 2002, p. 91). The narrator represents all middle class women in 19th century America and her husband represents all men in contemporary society. When John controls his wife, the reader sees that the patriarchal society of the time controls the behavior of women, and that women are trapped by that control. “Woman is often seen as representing an imaginative or ‘poetic’ view of things that conflicts with (or sometimes complements) the American male's ‘common sense’ approach to reality” (Shumaker, 1985, pp. 589-590). The narrator is forced to endure a rest cure, presumably to combat the effects of postpartum depression, which has not yet been defined in this period. She is required to desist from writing, and to be quiet and undisturbed. Her creative and imaginary impulses and expressions are dismissed by the dominating male. “He laughs at me so about this wallpaper! ... he said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 462). When the husband discovers that the narrator is unsettled by the pattern of the yellow wallpaper, he laughs at her as a parent might laugh at a child who fears a monster under the bed. By dismissing the narrator’s ideas as fanciful, the husband asserts his superior social position and forces her into an inferior social role. This creates the situation from which the narrator must escape, as she is forced by the conventions of her society to submit to the superiority and the authority of her husband. “I ... am absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until I am well again” (Kirszner & Mandell, 2010, p. 460). Following the pattern of social conventions, the narrator’s husband treats her as a weak person, incapable of making decisions. “John’s view of his wife as fanciful serves his effort to dismiss her ideas, keep her from creative work, and confine her to domestic functions” (Hochman, 2002, pp. 95-96). John’s insistence that his wife not do any work not only creates and reinforces the prison from which she must escape; it also provides her with the means of achieving her escape. The narrator sees that her work is dismissed as unimportant, something she can just give up, but she resists this control by her husband. She continues to write the story of her imprisonment, chronicling her own descent from depression to true madness. This rebellion against the patriarchal authority of her husband is the first step in the narrator’s escape. It is a model for women of her class to emulate as they seek to overthrow, or to escape, the yoke of repression in their male-dominated society. The Yellow Wallpaper uses vivid psychological and psychoanalytical imagery and a powerful feminist message to present a theme of women’s need to escape from imprisonment by their patriarchal society. The narrator’s identification with the woman in the wallpaper is also symbolic of her identification with women of her class in the greater society beyond the confines of the country mansion. She experiences the scrutiny of society through the perceived scrutiny of eyes in the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. Her isolation from social contact and the forced cessation of her writing add layers of repression to her life, forcing her to find escape in madness when she is unable to find physical escape from the nursery of the country mansion or social escape from male domination. The Yellow Wallpaper is a cautionary tale against the subjugation of women by men, against the repression of women’s creative expressions, and against the dangers inherent in the social isolation associated with the 19 th century rest cure. Undergraduate Series 449 References Bak, J. S. (1994). Escaping the jaundiced eye: Foucaldian panopticism in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. Studies In Short Fiction, 31(1), 39-46. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Delashmit, M., & Long, C. (1991). Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. Explicator, 50(1), 32-33. Retrieved from EBSCOhost Hochman, B. (2002). The reading habit and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. American Literature, 74(1), 89. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Johnson, G. (1989). Gilman's Gothic allegory: Rage and redemption in "The Yellow Wallpaper". Studies in Short Fiction. 26(4), 521-530. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Kirszner, L. G. and Mandell, S. R., eds. (2010). Literature: Reading, reacting, writing. (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning. Shumaker, C. (1985). "Too terribly good to be printed": Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper". American Literature, 57(4), 588-600. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. St. Jean, S. (2002). Hanging 'The Yellow Wall-Paper': Feminism and textual studies. Feminist Studies, 28(2), 397. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Suess, B. A. (2003). The writing's on the wall: Symbolic orders in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. Women's Studies, 32(1), 79. Retrieved from EBSCOhost. Fall Semester, 2012 ENG 341: Studies in Literary Genres Parables, Fables, and Tales 9/5/2012 In parables, which are "often religious or spiritual in nature", the tone is usually serious and didactic (DiYanni, 2008, p. 30). The lack of details that could detract from the lesson of the parable, such as personal names, in Luke's The Prodigal Son from the lack of details, lends to the didactic nature of the story. When Luke writes: "A certain man had two sons", he does not tell where the father and sons live, when they live, or anything about their lifeways (DiYanni, 2008, p. 27). He leaves it open for the reader to imagine any father with two sons, so that the reader can understand the moral of the parable without hindrance. Since the story is a parable, it has universal application and appeal, which would be diminished if the story identified too closely with any one person, place, or culture. In fables, which are "brief stories that point to a moral", the tone is usually lighter than that of the parable, and it is often satirical (DiYanni, 2008, p. 43). In Aesop's The Wolf and the Mastiff, the tone is first set with the wolf and the dog taking roles that might otherwise be assigned to two people. The animals interact in a way that creates a mental image of two men meeting: a scruffy, scrawny outcast or outlaw, and a comfortably well-situated city guard or police officer. The moral, "Better starve free, than be a fat slave", shows that the true life situations of the wolf and the dog are rather the reverse of what they appear to be at the start of the story (DiYanni, 2008, p. 44). The wolf is free to live his life, while the dog is the slave of his human masters. Another of Aesop's fables, The Ant and the Grasshopper, also casts the grasshopper and the ant in the roles of people. This anthropomorphizing of animals as human-like characters is a very common feature of fables, which makes the stories and their morals more appealing to readers. This fable teaches a serious moral lesson in a light and whimsical manner. When the 450 A Journey Through My College Papers grasshopper asks, "Why bother about winter?", the reader can see that the silly creature is setting itself up for disaster (Aesop, n.d., para. 4). In tales, which relate "strange or fabulous happenings", the tone is harder to define (DiYanni, 2008, p. 44). The tone may be serious, as with a parable, but it is more likely to be lighter and more intimate than the tone of a parable. A tale draws the reader into the story to provide entertainment, and it may not contain a clear lesson. Petronius' The Widow of Ephesus, is a story that tells a secret about a woman who is first pathetic, and later clever. It begins as a tragedy, with a serious tone, but ends as a romantic comedy, with a light tone, when the widow tells her lover, "better far, I say, to hang the dead than to kill the living" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 46). The widow saves the life of her lover by having her dead husband's body hung on the cross in place of the missing body of a thief. References: Aesop. (n.d.). The ant and the grasshopper. Retrieved from http://aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?sel&TheAntandtheGrasshopper&&antgrass.r am DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. The Short Story 9/5/2012 Plot and structure are crucial elements of fiction because they are the devices around which a story is constructed. The plot is the series of events through which the story unfolds, with "a sequence of incidents that bear a significant causal relationship to each other" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 49). Without the causal relationship, the account might be a sort of history, but it would not be a story plot. The plot usually follows a predictable pattern, with an introductory bit, called the exposition; a bit of crisis or complication that builds tension and interest in the story; a climax, where the tension peaks and a significant event in the story occurs; a period of falling action, where the tension eases away; and a conclusion, resolution, or denouement, which wraps up the threads of the story and provides closure. The "structure is the design" of the story (DiYanni, 2008, p. 50). It includes the patters of the story. "Plot directs us to the story in motion, structure to the story at rest" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 51). The structure gives a story its balance and order, and it guides the reader through shifts of scene or focus in the story. Frank O'Connor's (1931) Guests of the Nation follows the classic plot order of exposition, complication, climax, falling action, and denouement. Chapter one provides the exposition, introducing the characters, suggesting the setting through oblique references to being in Ireland, and indicating the time period through mention of the "German war" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 53). The complication of possibly needing to execute prisoners who have become friends is introduced in chapter two. The tension of the rising action stretches out in chapter three as the Irish guards take the English prisoners to be executed. The climax of the story begins in chapter four, with the two executions filling different roles in the story. The execution of one prisoner is the climax, but the execution of the second prisoner leads into the falling action, providing something of an anticlimax. The final quarter of chapter four is the denouement. The dead men are buried, and the story slows to a close. The structure of Guests of the Nation provides the tempo of the story. The beginning of the story is slow, building the relationships among the characters over the course of the first half Undergraduate Series 451 of the story. Hawkins' argumentative nature is contrasted with Belcher's quietly accepting nature. Noble and the narrator are shown to be sympathetic with the prisoners, while Donovan is shown to be more distant. The tempo quickens as the first execution approaches, and then it drops off abruptly between the two executions. The tempo drifts slowly to a stop at the end of the story. Margaret Atwood's Happy Endings is not so much a story as a spectrum of related stories. Each option represents a sort of alternate reality option. Each lettered option follows the classic plot structure in miniature. The structure of the six separate stories into one story is the key to this piece. Part A has almost no real plot, although the story moves from getting married, through getting settled, climaxing with the birth of children, falling through retirement, and concluding with death. Part B has interesting action, with complications that make the reader keep reading. Part C is similar in tension levels to B, and its complications keep the reader engaged. The same is true of the subsequent parts, and several of the parts have the potential for being strung together to form a longer story with multiple mini-climaxes. Happy Endings has a clear point: each of the stories ends with the death of the characters, but it is "the stretch in between" that the makes the stories interesting to read (DiYanni, 2008, p. 291). Each plot in the story is different from the other plots, but each plot has the same resolution. The overarching resolution of Happy Endings is the acknowledgement that it is the body of the story between the exposition and the denouement that makes a story worth reading. References: DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Short Stories 9/12/2012 DiYanni (2008), in his glossary, describes point of view as: "The angle of vision from which a story is narrated" (p. G-7). There are several points of view that may be used in a story. Point of view may be first person, with the narrator telling a story about events in his or her life. It may be third person, with the narrator telling a story from outside the story. In either case, the point of view may be limited to the knowledge of a single character, which is called limited omniscience, or it may be omniscient, with knowledge of what is going on in the minds and feelings of all of the characters. "[W]ith an objective point of view, the writer shows what happens without directly stating more than readers can infer from its action and dialogue" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 77). William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is told from the point of view of the town as an entity. No specific individual is identified as the first person plural narrator who begins the story: "When Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 79). The point of view is limited, with the telling of the story confined to the actions, dialogue, and physical descriptions in the story. The reader is not told what is happening in Emily's mind; her motives must be inferred from her words and actions. When Emily buys the arsenic, the narrator does not reveal what she is thinking or feeling; instead, the narrator describes what the druggist can see: "She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag ... Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 82). In the context of the story, the reader may infer that Emily buys the arsenic to kill Homer Barron, especially when the narrator writes: "Homer Barron was back in town. A neighbor saw the Negro man admit him at the kitchen door 452 A Journey Through My College Papers at dusk one evening. And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 83). Again, the limited omniscience of the narrator allows only a description of events, not any insight into what Homer, the Negro servant, or anyone else thinks of the events. Using a limited omniscient, plural first person point of view allows Faulkner the build up the suspense of the story. The reader must draw conclusions from the action and dialogue, and must revise those conclusions as more of Emily's life story unfolds. Even at the end of the story, when the townspeople find a man's body, "in the attitude of an embrace ... rotted beneath what was left of a nightshirt," it is not clearly stated that Emily uses the arsenic to murder Homer (DiYanni, 2008, p. 84). The true horror of Emily's life is revealed in the final two sentences: "Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in our nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 84). The first person plural narrator, being the townspeople of the anonymous town in which Emily lives and dies, does not break the pattern of limited omniscience to relate the emotional responses of those who find the hair, and the reader is left to consider the horror of how and why such a hair is found in such a place with a long-dead corpse. References: DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Literary Terms 9/13/2012 In his glossary, DiYanni (2008) defines irony as: "A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature" (p. G-5). Irony can take several forms, including verbal irony, irony of situation, dramatic irony, and ironic vision. In verbal irony, what is said is the opposite of what is meant. Similarly, in irony of situation, what appears to be is opposite to what really is, or what happens is the opposite of what is expected to happen. In ironic vision, the tone of a work of literature suggests the opposite of how the writer presents characters and events in the work. DiYanni (2008) defines a symbol as: "An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself" (p. G-8). Symbolism can be difficult to identify in a work of literature, and can represent something different for one reader than it does for another reader, depending on the reader's experience. In "The Rocking Horse Winner," the love between the mother and Paul is illustrated by the symbol of the wooden rocking horse, which represents the mother's feeling of being unlucky contrasted with Paul's feeling of being lucky with horse races. It is ironic that, when the parents are seemingly unable to provide enough money to support the family, their young son uses his toy horse to help him to raise money to support his parents and his sisters. Rather than being guided by his parents, he follows the guidance of the family's gardener, providing another irony in the story. Late in the story, the mother reveals to Paul that her family, and his by extension, "has been a gambling family" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 108). It is implied that the family has been unsuccessful in the past, leading to the mother's financial woes, but Paul is a successful gambler and makes good money with his wagers. When Paul arranges for his mother to have a comfortable income from his winnings, and then allows her to have the full sum of five thousand pounds at once, the family's need for money, ironically, increases, instead of decreasing. Paul's love and care for his mother feeds her appetite for expensive things and makes the situation worse when he means to Undergraduate Series 453 make the financial situation better. The end of the story is ironic, as well, as Paul dies from the emotional frenzy of winning seventy thousand pounds for his family. Paul's love for his mother has pushed him to provide enough money for her to live on, but it has resulted in his death. In "Heaven-Hell," the Indian clothing and foods are symbols of the Bengali life that the family left in Calcutta. Early in the story, they are symbols that build the family, drawing Pranab into Usha's family circle. The names used by Pranab and by Usha's family to denote specific degrees of kinship also symbolize the life the characters knew before arriving in America. "I was taught to call him Pranab Kaku ... he called my father Shyamal Da .. and he called my mother Boudi, which is how Bengalis are supposed to address an older brother's wife" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 244). When Pranab meets Deborah, her loose hair and American dress clash with Boudi's traditional, Bengali braid and sari. The food in the story is symbolic. When Boudi feeds Pranab leftover curried mackerel and rice, she is drawing him into her Bengali household; when Deborah thoughtfully serves fish to Usha's parents at the wedding in place of the beef that she knows they do not eat, Boudi feels alienated and marginalized. Years later, Usha's family is invited to Thanksgiving dinner with Pranab and Deborah, and the traditional turkey dinner is a symbol of Pranab's acceptance of his American wife's culture and customs and his desertion of his original Bengali culture and customs. For the Thanksgiving celebration, Usha's clothing is symbolic of her family's culture: "I was furious with my mother for making a scene before we left the house and forcing me to wear a shalwar kameez" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 253). Usha has grown up as a BengaliAmerican, not as a Bengali girl, and her change from the shalwar kameez into American clothes after dinner is important: "Deborah gave me a pair of her jeans and a thick sweater and some sneakers, so that I looked like her and her sisters ...in the jeans I'd had to roll up and in which I felt finally like myself" (DiYanni, 208, p. 254). Usha feels like herself in American dress and is uncomfortable with the Bengali culture that her mother forces on her. At the end of the story, it is ironic that Deborah turns to Boudi for comfort when Pranab leaves Deborah for another Bengali woman. Boudi falls in love with Pranab early in the story, and feels that Deborah has stolen Pranab from her, and now Deborah feels that the other woman has stolen Pranab from Deborah. Deborah does not turn to her own mother and sisters for comfort, but to Boudi. References: DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Elements of Poetry – Part One 9/19/2012 In Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess," the voice is a dramatic monologue, spoken by the Duke of Ferrara to an ambassador. Browning uses the duke's monologue to construct a sinister tone by having the duke tell the representative of his prospective bride about the duke's last duchess. The duke explains how his last duchess did not properly appreciate him when he says: She thanked men, -- good! but thanked Somehow -- I know not how -- as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody's gift (DiYanni, 2008, p. 513). The duke goes on to tell the ambassador how the duke repays his last duchess for her lack of attention and appreciation by ordering her death: "I gave commands;/ Then all smiles stopped 454 A Journey Through My College Papers together. There she stands/ As if alive" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 513). The Duke of Ferrara tells the ambassador these things by way of warning the ambassador of how his last duchess died and how his next duchess can expect to be dealt with if she is not attentive enough to the duke. In William Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud," the denotation and connotation of the daffodils in line four are quite different from each other. The denotation of the daffodils is a large cluster of yellow flowers. Dictionary.com defines daffodil as: "a bulbous plant, Narcissus pseudonarcissus, of the amaryllis family, having solitary, yellow, nodding flowers that bloom in the spring" ("Daffodil," 2012, para. 1). Daffodils are common, spring flowers, that are easily recognized by contemporary and modern audiences. The connotation of the "golden daffodils;/ ... Fluttering and dancing in the breeze" is of a crowd of the beautiful, wealthy society people of Wordsworth's time (DiYanni, 2012, p. 519). As Wordsworth's speaker wanders through life alone, he sees beautiful people dancing and frolicking near a lake, and he is reminded of lovely, golden flowers waving in the breeze. The repetition of daffodils at the end of the poem again denotes flowers, but it again connotes wealthy people. As an educated man, Wordsworth knows the popular Greek myth of Narcissus, and calling the idle rich daffodils is a play on the flower's scientific name, which references the self-adoring Narcissus in both the genus and the species. In "First Death in Nova Scotia," Elizabeth Bishop uses a range of white imagery to represent the innocence of the dead child and to represent the coldness of death. Little Arthur's childish innocence is suggested by "one lily of the valley" that Arthur is given to carry with him to the grave (DiYanni, 2008, p. 525). The lily image is repeated in the final stanza, reinforcing Arthur's innocence, "clutching his tiny lily" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 526). The lily of the valley is a very small, white, bell-shaped flower that grows quietly in solitary, shaded places. As one of the smallest lilies, it is more appropriate than the more usual, funereal, Easter lily for a child's funeral. White imagery that represents Arthur's childlike innocence also includes a description of Arthur as an unfinished doll, or child's toy: Arthur was very small. He was all white, like a doll that hadn't been painted yet ... Jack Frost had dropped the brush and left him white, forever." (DiYanni, 2008, p. 526). Jack Frost is meant to bring the color of life into little Arthur's cheeks, but the child is white in death, and will always look like an unpainted porcelain doll. The white imagery that represents the coldness of death is winter imagery. A stuffed loon on a marble table is on "his white, frozen lake," which is repeated in the second and third stanzas (DiYanni, 2008, pp. 525-526). The ermine robes of the royal party and the "ermine trains" are references to thick, white fur, often dotted with black, that comes from the ermine, a member of the weasel family (DiYanni, 2008, p. 526). The wintry clothing of white fur evokes an image of white, and it is followed in the same, and final, stanza with "the roads deep in snow" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 526). When a person dies, the body becomes cold, and it is then placed in a cold grave under the earth. The ice and snow in the poem describe the coldness of Arthur's body in death, and the silent cold of the grave. Another white image that is only suggested and is easy to miss is "a little frosted cake" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 526). A small cake is usually frosted with sweet, white, sugar frosting, which is an ironic addition to the poem because small cakes suggest children having happy parties, but Arthur cannot take part in any more parties because he has died. In the sonnet, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day," William Shakespeare uses the poetic convention of simile to compare his subject, who is probably a woman, to the various aspects of a day in summer. He does dot say that his subject is a summer's day; rather, he says that Undergraduate Series 455 his subject is "more lovely and more temperate" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 606). Similarly, in the sonnet, "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun," Shakespeare employs simile to compare aspects of his subject to an array of items. Rather than use metaphor to speak of his subject's lips as coral, he uses simile to compare her lips to coral: "Coral is far more red than her lips' red" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 849). Interestingly, Shakespeare does not compare his subject favorably with the beautiful items in his poem; he contrasts the subject's features against the beauty of coral, snow, roses, and perfumes (DiYanni, 2008, p. 849). References: Daffodil. (2012). Dictionary.com. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/daffodil DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Elements of Poetry – Part Two 9/20/2012 Emily Dickinson's poem, "Because I could not stop for Death," is allegorical. It tells the story of the journey from life to death, and from the physical world to eternity. In lines 9-13, Dickinson writes: We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess -- in the Ring -We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain -We passed the Setting Sun -Or rather -- He passed Us -- (DiYanni, 2008, p. 541). The School and the Children represent youth, innocence, and learning about life. As the speaker travels in Death's carriage, she (for the speaker's clothing establishes the speaker as female) reviews the progress of life. The gazing grain suggests maturity, since grain is only able to "gaze" when it ripens out of its budding stage into ripe kernels in its maturity. Thus, the speaker sees her life move from the innocent play of childhood past the maturity of ripened grain. The setting sun symbolizes the end of life, as the light of day dies and is replaced with the darkness of night. The sun passes by Death's carriage, and the speaker rides on beyond the end of life. In lines 17-20, Dickinson writes: We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground -The Roof was scarcely visible -The Cornice -- in the Ground -- (DiYanni, 2008, p. 541). The house in the ground is the grave in which the speaker is buried after death. A new grave appears to be a swelling of the ground as the earth is piled atop the coffin in the grave. That the cornice of the roof, which is the top-most projection of a house, is in the ground, further indicates that the house is a grave, which is entirely underground. That the grave is represented by a house indicates that the speaker envisions an on-going life after death; she does not need a house if there is no more living to do. The house is a symbol of safety and security, where the speaker's spirit may rest at ease for eternity. 456 A Journey Through My College Papers I, "Towhomitmayconcern," Sonia Sanchez uses syntax to control the pace of the poem. There is very little punctuation to slow the pace of the longer lines, and the periods that are used break the poem into just five sentences. The shortest sentence is just one word: "man" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 846). The isolation of the single word gives it strong significance, as the speaker addresses, identifies, and perhaps describes her subject. The reader is forced by punctuation to pause a moment and to notice the man. Sanchez uses variable line length to control the pace of her free-verse poem, as well. The reader moves quickly along the longer lines, building tension, and then is forced to slow down or to pause on the shorter lines, giving the shorter lines force and power. The two two-word lines of the poem are warnings, filled with menace by the energy generated by the rapid pace of the longer lines that precede them: "this time" and "watch out" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 846). "[T]his time" warns the subject of the poem that he (the man of line 8) will experience the speaker's punishment this time, suggesting that he has not experienced it before. The reader stops on the line, and feels the definitive nature of the words. It didn't happen last time, but it will happen this time. "[W]atch out" is a warning. It is two unpunctuated words, standing alone, and it is a warning. The tone is imperative. The prevailing meter of Anne Sexton's "Her Kind" is iambic tetrameter, but Sexton varies the meter to move the poem along. The caesuras in many of the lines force the reader to pause to reflect or to absorb the descriptions of the witch and the speaker's identification with the witch, as in the first two lines: "I have gone out, [//] a possessed witch,/ haunting the black air, [//] braver at night" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 563). The caesuras divide these two lines into four distinct ideas, giving the reader a moment in each line and at the line stop to notice that the phrases may be rearranged into "I have gone out, haunting the black air" and "A possessed witch, braver at night." This subtle use of meter gives the reader an insight into the mind of the speaker that might be missing without the brief pauses. There are two instances of enjambment without line stops in the poem: In lines 3-4, Sexton writes, "I have done my hitch/ over the plain houses" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 563). In lines 17-19, she writes: "survivor/ where your flames still bite my thigh/ and my ribs crack where your wheels wind" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 563). In each case, the lack of punctuation at the end of the line invites the reader to read on without pausing, thus increasing the pace and intensity of the poem for those lines. Both the caesuras and the enjambments influence the rhythm of the poem, slowing the pace for the caesuras and hastening the pace for the enjambments. Langston Hughes' "I, Too" has a generally rising, hopeful tone because of the preponderance of iambs and anapests in the poem. Hughes uses dactyls, a trochee, and a solitary stressed syllable in lines 12-14 to give those lines a sober, serious tone, as the speaker considers how his masters will treat him in the future: "Say to me,/ Eat in the kitchen,/ Then" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 708). Throughout most of the poem, Hughes uses a combination of iambs and anapests to give the speaker's words and ideas a sense of strength and courage. The self-identified "darker brother" speaks of a day when he will be recognized and accepted by the masters of his country (DiYanni, 2008, p. 708). The speaker identifies how he is oppressed, but he expresses his response to oppression in positive terms that resonate in the iambic and anapestic rhythm: "But I laugh,/ And eat well,/ And grow strong" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 708). The words "laugh," "well," and "strong" are stressed, making each line a strong, declarative statement, so that the three lines together express the speaker's confidence and certainty that things will be different and better in the future. References: DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Undergraduate Series 457 Images of Brotherhood and Death September 22, 2012 Edgar Allen Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado represents Poe’s frustration and sense of personal insult at being refused membership in the Freemasons as reflected in the character Montresor and as illustrated by the copious Masonic imagery found in the story. Dan Burnstein (2009), co-author with Arne de Keijzer of Secrets of the Lost Symbol, writes in an article celebrating Poe’s bicentennial birthday, that “few will realize, or be told by their teachers, that The Cask of Amontillado has Freemasonry and also anti-Mason history at the heart of it”(para. 3). Poe uses Masonic imagery that includes and incorporates death imagery to create an atmosphere of horror to further the plot of vengeful murder, and also to foreshadow how the murder is to be committed. While the Masonic imagery of the story is obscure to many modern readers, who have little knowledge of or connection with Freemasonry, “Nineteenth-century readers would have understood most or all of Poe’s Masonic references” (Burnstein, 2009, para. 5). A discussion of this imagery provides insight to and understanding of the anti-Masonic message in The Cask of Amontillado. A surface reading of The Cask of Amontillado gives the reader reason to believe that Montresor’s madness, or his over-reaction to a perceived slight, is the cause of Montresor’s murder of Fortunato. Montresor perceives that Fortunato “ventured upon insult,” which becomes the basis for Montresor’s decision to murder Fortunato (DiYanni, 2008, p. 144). The specific insult suffered by Montresor is his exclusion from membership in the Freemasons, which mirrors Poe’s denial when he seeks such membership. In a 2012 article, Ross Bonander says, of Freemasonry, that “[e]xclusion is an insult, and those not in the know must learn the secret” (para. 1). Poe suffers insult at the hands of the Freemasons when “the Masons refused to consider him for membership” (Shelokhonov, 2012, para. 31). Taking these three facts together, Montresor’s insult at the hands of Fortunato reflects Poe’s insult at the hands of the Freemasons, so that Montresor’s revenge on Fortunato is Poe’s revenge on the Freemasons, which he is unable to exact in real life. Poe gives the reason for Montresor’s murder of Fortunato as the story begins: “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge” (DiYanni, 2008, p. 144). As happens in many friendships, Montresor experiences or perceives various injuries from Fortunato before the opening of the story; these injuries are not identified, and Montresor admits that he can bear injury from Fortunato. Insult is the thing that Montresor cannot bear, and The Cask of Amontillado tells the story of Montresor’s revenge against Fortunato for a very specific but not explicitly identified insult. The insult is clearly one of great significance in that Montresor deems necessary the murder of his friend to redress the insult. Understanding the insult that Montresor perceives or believes that he has received from Fortunato is the key to understanding the anti-Masonic subtext of The Cask of Amontillado. “Exclusion is an insult, and those not in the know must learn the secret” (Bonander, 2012, para. 1). Bonander refers to exclusion from membership in the Freemasons, and his comment addresses the insult Fortunato has done to Montresor. Fortunato attempts to identify himself to Montresor as a Mason, hoping that Montresor will recognize his gesture and give an appropriate response (DiYanni, 2008, p. 146). In Freemasonry and in Masonic-affiliated fraternities, there are specific, unique signs, verbal passes, and hand grips to identify on Mason or member of an affiliated fraternity to another; each such sign has a specific, unique gestural or verbal response that must be given to establish Masonic identity. Montresor fails to give the required response to Fortunato’s gesture, replying instead with improvisation as Montresor displays the trowel to identify himself 458 A Journey Through My College Papers as a Mason. Fortunato is intoxicated from the carnival celebration, so he is incautious and accepts Montresor’s counterfeit symbol as proof that the two mem share Masonic brotherhood. This exchange establishes Fortunato’s identity as a Freemason, which is something to which Poe himself aspires, but from which Poe is excluded, and is shows Montresor’s willingness to deceive his friend and to impersonate a Freemason. The insult that Montresor suffers from Fortunato, then, reflects Poe’s experience of insult when he is from membership in the Freemasons. Bonander (2012) goes on to write that “[m]iserable people need to blame others for their misery, and who better than a loose confederacy of do-gooders gathered around precepts like wisdom, strength and beauty” (para. 19). This further reflects Poe’s exclusion from the Masons, which is projected onto Montresor, whom we may assume from the insult he suffers and from his imitation of a Freemason has been excluded from the Freemasons. Montresor is miserable because of the perceived insult of exclusion and expresses his misery by taking the life of Fortunato, the closest representative of the group that has wronged Montresor. There is a second Freemason-related insult that Montresor could perceive to be done to him by Fortunato: the insult of too-honest speech. “Most Masons did not hesitate to speak their minds, even if it meant challenging a higher power-or a friend. Perhaps this straightforwardness is what gets Fortunato into trouble with Montresor in Poe's story” (Moss & Wilson, 1997, para. 6). While it is likely that Fortunato’s insult to Montresor is related to membership in the Freemasons, it is also possible that the insult perceived by Montresor is Fortunato’s frank speech at a time when polite conversation is often circumspect and filled with euphemisms. In this second possible scenario, the insult to Montresor still involves the Freemasons, because it is Fortunato’s membership in the Order that prompts Fortunato’s plain speech. Montresor, then, kills Fortunato for being a Freemason, because being a Freemason causes Fortunato to speak freely. The insult of exclusion from the Freemasons is one aspect of anti-Masonic imagery in The Cask of Amontillado. The Masonic idea that all Freemasons are social equals, regardless of their relative statuses in the world at large, is another way in which Poe employs Masonic imagery to present an anti-Masonic message. As discussed in an article by Elena V. Baraban (2004), Poe’s descriptions of Montresor and of Fortunato during the carnival scene at the beginning of the story serve to establish the relative social standing of the two men, with Fortunato’s masquerade of a classical fool serving to set him below Montresor’s social station while Montresor’s elegant black cloak serves to elevate his social station above that of Fortunato (p. 54). Masonic imagery in the story serves as a social leveler between men, and Montresor’s false assumption of the role of a Mason is another attempt to level the social differences between him and Fortunato. Poe presents Montresor and Fortunato as members of the same level of society, relating to each other as equals. While Montresor comes from a wealthy and powerful family, as evidenced by the extensive burial vaults under his palazzo and by his possession of a coat of arms that the reader is led to believe is hereditary, Montresor’s comments to Fortunato reveal that Montresor no longer enjoys the social standing that he once had. Fortunato, on the other hand, is identified as a man who possesses wealth and power in the present; there is a social gap between the two men. Masonic imagery in the story serves as a social leveler between men, and Montresor’s false assumption of the role of a Mason is another attempt to level the social differences between him and Fortunato. While the setting of The Cask of Amontillado is not clearly identified, Montresor’s roquelaire sets the time at the end of the 18th century, and Montresor’s references to Italians and to the catacombs of Paris suggest that the action takes place in Italy or in France, not in England or in America. In this setting, relative social status is important, and a man of lesser status may not touch or compel a man of higher status. At the same time, the rise of the newly rich and the decline of the ancient nobility confuse the issue of relative social status. ”Fortunato ... was a man to be respected and even feared ... The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped Undergraduate Series 459 dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap and bells ... Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting on a mask of black silk, and drawing a roquelaire closely about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo” (DiYanni, 2008, pp. 144-145). “The black mask and cape worn by Poe's Montresor and the court jester's costume favored by Fortunato were both popular as well ... a carnival setting serves as a stark contrast to the dark underworld of Montresor's vaults in the short story” (Moss & Wilson, 1997, para. 3). The contrasts between the levity of Fortunato as a fool and the gravity of Montresor as the executioner, and between the levity of the carnival and the gravity of the burial vaults illustrate the inequality of social roles in the story. The lighter elements of foolishness and carnival bear less significance than bear the weightier, grave elements of the executioner and the burial vaults, thus giving Montresor a temporary, superficial superiority to Fortunato. Montresor tells Fortunato, “You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was” (DiYanni, 2008, p. 145). Poe’s word choice is noteworthy as he describes his interaction with Fortunato. First, Montresor acknowledges that Fortunato is a powerful, but Fortunato wears a carnival costume that casts him in the role of a fool. In contrast, Montresor wears a silk mask and a fine cloak, casting him in the role of a nobleman. Montresor’s costume is also reminiscent of the costume of an executioner, which foreshadows Fortunato’s death for the careful reader. Second, Montresor suffers Fortunato to hold Montresor’s arm and to compel Montresor to the Montresor palazzo. Social rules do not permit a man of lesser status to touch a man of greater status, and it is nearly impossible for two men to have fully equal social status. Montresor’s suffering, then, identifies his social status as higher than Fortunato’s status; if Fortunato is of greater social status than is Montresor, then there is no occasion for Montresor’s suffering the interaction. Montresor’s family is older than is Fortunato’s, as suggested by Fortunato’s reaction to the age and size of the Montresor vaults, but Fortunato has greater wealth than has Montresor. Montresor, therefore, has greater social status than has Fortunato, but Fortunato has more apparent social status than has Montresor. As a Freemason, Fortunato shares equal social status with all other Masons; in representing himself as a Mason, Montresor attempts to share the social leveling of Freemasonry. “A line in the Fellow Craft degree of Masonic ritual informs the brother that the mason’s tool, the level, reminds us that ‘we are traveling along the level of time, to that undiscover’d country, from whose bourn no traveler returns’” (Hodapp, 2010, p. 52). The Masonic level reflects the leveling of social status between Montresor and Fortunato. When Fortunato inadvertently identifies himself to Montresor, under the influence of drink, as a Mason, Montresor takes advantage of Fortunato’s error to masquerade as a Mason. The masquerade is a clever reminder that the story is set during carnival, and that the men assume roles that are not their own. By claiming membership in the Freemasons, of which Fortunato is a member, Montresor levels, or equalizes, the two men’s respective social statuses in a way that is impossible in the ordinary society of his time, but that is automatic among Master Masons. This leveling is illusory, since Montresor is not actually a member of the Masonic brotherhood. Along with the suggested Masonic imagery of the level, Poe uses the physical imagery of the Masonic trowel. “Montresor shows Fortunato his sign, a trowel. Soon Fortunato is walled up by that trowel” (Henninger, 1970, p. 37). Montresor presents his trowel as false proof of his membership in the Freemasons when Fortunato demands proof of the same. “’Producing a trowel from beneath the folds’ of his cloak, Montresor mocks Fortunato’s membership in the Order of Masons” (Baraban, 2004, p. 54). The trowel becomes not only a false sign of a leveling of social roles between the two men, but also a tool that allows Montresor to rise above Fortunato by controlling life and death for Fortunato. Montresor’s mocking of Fortunato’s Masonic membership is a further example of Poe’s anti-Masonic imagery and message in the story. It expresses Poe’s feeling of frustration at being excluded from Masonic membership. 460 A Journey Through My College Papers Montresor opens several bottles of wine to share with Fortunato as the men pass through the Montresor vaults. The bottle that Fortunato tosses upward when he offers a sign to identify himself to Montresor as a Mason is “a flagon of De Grâve” (DiYanni, 2008, p. 146). “By making Fortunato try De Grâve, Poe ‘no doubt means a pun on the word ‘grave’ ... for Montresor the drink has been from the outset a secret, figurative reference to death itself and in promising a taste of Amontillado, he has ... been speaking of Fortunato’s destruction” (Baraban, 2004, pp. 55-56). Montresor offers Fortunato the grave as Montresor leads Fortunato to the grave in which Fortunato is to be buried alive. The Montresor vaults are filled with the death imagery of bones and skeletons that are associated with Masonic imagery. Without [the] historical context [of Masonic ritual], this tale is simply another example of Poe’s skillful manipulation of gothic effects–the praise usually given in commentary on the tale” (Burnstein, 2009, para. 5). The Masonic associations of the death images in the story add a dimension of mystery associated with the secretive society of Freemasons to the Gothic horror of the tale. The nitre in the vaults is an image of death, since “Saltpeter, also called Nitre ... [is formed] by exposing heaps of decaying organic matter mixed with alkalis (lime, etc.) to atmospheric action,” with the decaying organic matter understood to be the bodies that are left to decompose in the ancient burial vaults (Lotha, 2012, paras. 1-2). In addition, the niche in which Montresor confines, and then walls in, Fortunato is suggestive of a Masonic chamber of reflection, of which Mark Stavish (2002) writes: “It is only in solitude that we can deeply reflect upon our present or future undertakings, and blackness, darkness, or solitariness, is ever a symbol of death” (para. 2). Dan Burnstein (2009) writes that Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado “embodies a cultural narrative about democratic values” (para. 5). While this is a reasonable assessment of the story, based on the leveling of social statuses in the story, the more prevalent theme of the story is the Freemason-related death imagery that runs throughout the text. As Montresor leads Fortunato through the burial vaults under the Montresor palazzo, the two men pass walls and piles of bones and skulls. “We passed through walls of piled bones ... [the crypt’s] walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris” (DiYanni, 2008, p. 146). Montresor calls Fortunato’s attention to the nitre on the walls of the caverns and passages, making an oblique reference to a Masonic story involving lime, which will be presented in this discussion. “’[B]ut observe the white web-work which gleams from these cavern walls’ ... ‘Nitre?’ he asked ... ‘Nitre,’ I replied ...’The nitre!’ I said; ‘see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults ... The drops of moisture trickle among the bones’” (DiYanni, 2008, pp. 145-146). Lime is a component in the production of nitre, which also includes organic matter such as human remains. The piled bones in the vaults are popular symbols of death; Poe uses the bones to create a sense of horror as Montresor leads Fortunato into the realm of the dead. The nitre on the walls of the cavern gleams white in the light of the men’s torches in the otherwise dark ossuary. Nitre is formed in the burial vaults when lime is mixed with decaying human remains, creating a slick, gleaming, macabre patina on the walls of the vaults. The gleaming white in the darkness is eerie, and a deeper understanding of its source reinforces the horror of the scenes. Editor of the Journal of the Masonic Society, Christopher L. Hodapp (2010), writes in one of his several Freemason-centered books: “The skull has appeared for centuries as a common symbol of mortality ... in various degrees of Masonic ritual ... skulls and death imagery are more plentiful in some jurisdictions outside of the U.S.” (Hodapp, 2010, pp. 52-53). The Cask of Amontillado is set outside of the United States, probably in Italy or France, where skulls and bones as death imagery are common in contemporary Masonic temples and rituals. Hodapp’s research and expertise in Masonic imagery and ritual supports Poe’s use of the piled bones along the walls Undergraduate Series 461 of the vaults, and especially of those used to conceal Fortunato’s crypt, as Masonic imagery in Poe’s anti-Masonic horror tale of revenge. Montresor calls Fortunato’s attention to the gleaming, white nitre on the walls of the caverns that make up the Montresor vaults. The nitre connects to Masonic imagery as it relates to a story associated with the Travelling Masons, a branch of Freemasonry: “[S]everal artists were supping ... at Florence ... their table was placed near a heap of lime, in which a trowel was sticking. One of the guests seized the trowel, and threw ... some lime into the mouth of another guest, exclaiming, at the same time: 'The trowel! the trowel!” (Macoy, 1989, p. 386). The lime that is thrown from the trowel, a Masonic tool and symbol that is also significant in The Cask of Amontillado, is a component of the nitre that runs through Montresor’s burial vaults and Fortunato’s final resting place. Lime is a toxic substance as identified by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) Pesticide Database that causes coughing and shortness of breath when inhaled. If ingested, as suggested in the story of the trowel of lime, the chemical causes abdominal pains and vomiting, as well as skin burns around the mouth (“Signs and Symptoms,” 2010, table 1). “Saltpeter, also called Nitre ... [is formed] by exposing heaps of decaying organic matter mixed with alkalis (lime, etc.) to atmospheric action” (Lotha, 2012, paras. 1-2). The composition of the nitre in the vaults, as is discussed above, adds a macabre horror to the story as the reader envisions the “moisture trickl[ing] among the bones” of the decaying bodies in the vaults (DiYanni, 2008, p. 146). Lime, which connects to the Freemasons and the Masonic symbol of the trowel, mixes with the decaying organic matter in the human remains in the vault to create the eerily gleaming whiteness of nitre on the cavern walls. Poe’s knowledge of the inhalation factors of nitre, which is composed of lime, is evident in his description of Fortunato’s onset of coughing in the vaults (DiYanni, 2008, p. 145). Nitre, then, is a Masonic-related death image as nitre and lime themselves are toxic, and as lime combines with decaying corpses to form nitre. Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado reflects Poe’s sense of insult at being denied membership in the Freemasons and channels that sense of insult through Montresor’s quarrel with Fortunato, using Masonic imagery of social equality and death imagery of bones, burial vaults, and dripping nitre to weave a tale of horror and suspense. The many images of Freemasonry and of death, both subtle and overt, contribute to Poe’s anti-Masonic message as he uses his story to express his personal sense of insult at his exclusion from membership in Freemasons. The Cask of Amontillado is set in a time and place in which social equality is not a familiar concept, but the Freemasons, represented by Fortunato, practice absolute social equality within their brotherhood. Montresor is the antithesis of a Freemason as he strives for social superiority over Fortunato by murdering the latter; as he prevaricates to impersonate a Freemason with Fortunato in the vaults; and as he does willful violence against the helpless Fortunato by murdering the same. Poe’s use of Masonic imagery indicates that he has a good, working knowledge of the symbols, rituals, and history of the Freemasons. His subtle use of the nitre in the vaults is an example of Poe’s ability to tie obscure details together, as he incorporates the nitre into his prevailing, anti-Masonic theme. References Baraban, E.V. (2004). The motive for murder in "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe. Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, 58(2), 47-62. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1566552 Bonander, R. (2012). 5 Things you didn't know: Freemasons. Retrieved from http://www.askmen.com/entertainment/special_feature_200/200_special_feature.ht ml Burnstein, D. (2009). Happy 200th birthday: Edgar Allan Poe. Retrieved from http://secretsofthelostsymbol.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/happy-200th-birthday- edgarallan-poe/ 462 A Journey Through My College Papers DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Henninger, F.J. (1970). The bouquet of Poe’s Amontillado. South Atlantic Bulletin, 35(2), 35-40. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3197006 Hodapp, C.L. (2010). Deciphering The Lost Symbol: Freemasons, myths and the mysteries of Washington, D.C. Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press. Lotha, G. (2012). Saltpetre. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/519935/saltpetre Macoy, R. (1989). A dictionary of Freemasonry. New York, NY: Outlook Book Company, Inc. Moss, J. & Wilson, G. (1997). “The Cask of Amontillado”: Events in history at the time the short story takes place. Retrieved from http://www.answers.com/topic/the-cask-ofamontillado-events-in-history-at-the-time-the-short-story-takes-place Shelokhonov, S. (2012). Biography for Edgar Allan Poe. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000590/bio Signs and Symptoms of Lime Poisoning. (2010). Retrieved from the PAN Pesticides Database at http://www.pesticideinfo.org/Detail_Chemical.jsp?Rec_Id=PC35220#Symptoms Stavish, M. (2002). The chamber of reflection. Retrieved from http://www.hermeticinstitute.org/docs/chamber.pdf Elements of Drama: Characterization 9/26/2012 In the first two acts of A Doll House, Henrik Ibsen gives clues to the character of Torvald Helmer, but Ibsen does not provide a physical description of the character. From Torvald's comments to his wife, Nora, the audience learns that Torvald has the common nineteenth-century attitude that women are silly, frivolous beings that must be humored and protected. Torvald calls Nora "my little lark ... [and] my squirrel" (DiYanni. 2008, p. 1106). While a modern audience might find this character trait to be chauvinistic and condescending, a contemporary audience is more likely to find that Torvald is a good husband who indulges his wife's desires while protecting her from the world and from her own folly. In the context of the play, this paternalistic protectiveness is a positive trait. In the early scenes, Torvald is also shown to be a man who is careful with money, and who is improving his financial status by taking a better job than the one he has had up to the time of the play. He believes in making his own fortune, and in being his own man, as the audience learns when he tells Nora, "No debts! Never borrow! Something of freedom's lost -- and something of beauty, too -- from a home that's founded on borrowing and debt" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1107). Torvald is a hard worker, as evidenced by the amount of time the audience is aware of him spending in his study and going over papers for the job he will soon start. At the end of Act I, the audience learns something of Torvald's moral character and compassion when he tells Nora, "Almost everyone who goes bad early in life has a mother who's a chronic liar ... I literally feel physically revolted when I'm anywhere near such a person" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1124). Torvald shows a strong moral sense in his feelings against liars and deception. His strong statement about being revolted indicates that he has little compassion for a person who lies. Specifically, Torvald tells Nora that Krogstad's past crime is forgery, a very specific sort of lying, which Torvald can accept under limited circumstances: "I'm not so heartless that I'd condemn a man categorically for just one mistake ... Plenty of men have redeemed Undergraduate Series 463 themselves by openly confessing their crimes and taking their punishments" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1123). By the end of the play, Torvald is still paternalistically protective of Nora. He places honor above love as he says, "I'd gladly work for you day and night, Nora -- and take on pain and deprivation. But there's no one who gives up honor for love" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1152). Torvald is willing to disown Nora for her lies until his honor is no longer threatened; only then is Torvald able to forgive Nora, resuming his protective attitudes. When Nora decides to leave Torvald, he is unable to believe that she can live without him He pleads with her to stay with him, only now realizing that she might not actually need him to care for her. I don't believe Torvald is capable of sharing the kind of marriage that Nora describes at the end of the play. I think he wants to believe he is capable of doing so, but I don't think he really sees her as an equal, adult person with whom to share a life. He says, "For a man there's something indescribably sweet and satisfying in knowing he's forgiven his wife ... she's become his wife and his child as well. From now on that's what you'll be to me -- you little, bewildered, helpless thing" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1149). A man does not go from proclaiming his wife as his child to accepting his wife as his equal partner in the few minutes that comprise the closing scenes of the play. References: DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Elements of Drama: Imagery, Symbolism, and Allusion 9/27/2012 There are several visual details that serve as symbols in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House. Among these are a packet of macaroons, the family's Christmas tree, and the door to the study. Both the macaroons and the study door appear at the beginning of the first act, and recur throughout the play: "Drawing a bag of macaroons from her pocket, she eats a couple, then steals over and listens at her husband's study door ... Putting the macaroon bag in her pocket and wiping her mouth" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1106). Macaroons are small, sweet pastries, which are common enough in contemporary society to be easily recognized. The confection is an indulgence that is favored by children and by the wealthy, and is made ground almonds or coconut, sugar, and egg whites. In the play, the sweets are a secret indulgence for Nora, with which she disobeys her husband and even lies to him: HELMER: Hasn't nibbled some pastry? NORA: No, not at all. HELMER: Not even munched a macaroon or two? NORA: No, Torvald, I assure you, really -- (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1108). As the play progresses, the macaroons are connected with additional lies and deceptions, symbolizing the fraud that Nora commits by forging her father's name on a loan document, and also symbolizing Nora's rebellion against Torvald's control of her. NORA: ... (Taking the bag out of her pocket) Dr. Rank, a little macaroon on that? RANK: See here, macaroons! I thought they were contraband here. NORA: Yes, but these are some that Kristine gave me. MRS. LINDE: What? I --? 464 A Journey Through My College Papers NORA: Now, now, don't be afraid. You couldn't possibly know that Torvald had forbidden them ... And I'll also have one, only a little one -- or two, at the most (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1116). The bag of macaroons is the same bag that is in the first scene, before Kristine Linde is introduced. Nora admits that she is not allowed to have the sweets and blames her friend for their presence. Once again, the macaroon is a symbol of Nora's deception and a symbol of her rebellion against her husband. At the end of the second act, Nora's rebellion comes into the open just before her original deception comes to light when Nora sends the maid for champagne and macaroons to go with dinner, in Torvald's presence: "And some macaroons, Helene. Heaps of them" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1138). As the audience sees Nora's rebellion become more open, her final rebellion against her husband is foreshadowed by the heaps of macaroons. The study door, which appears in the first quote, above, is a symbol of the division between Torvald's world of business and serious matters and Nora's world of domestic activity and frivolous ideas. Nora cannot -- or does not, in the play -- cross through the door into Torvald's study, but Torvald passes freely into Nora's living room whenever he pleases to do so. The door is a symbol of Torvald's authority and of Nora's inferiority, even within her home. Only near the end of Act II does Nora use the study door against Torvald, thus beginning to break away from his control of her: "She goes and bolts HELMER'S door" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1136). Nora does not enter the study, but the door that has symbolized Torvald's control of Nora's actions now allows Nora to control Torvald for a short time. The Christmas tree is a symbol of Torvald and Nora's marriage. In Act I, before anyone knows about Nora's deceptions, the Christmas tree is fresh and alive. Nora decorates the tree with flowers and candles that symbolize light, hope, and happiness. At the beginning of Act II, the Christmas tree "stands stripped of ornament, burned-down candle stubs on its ragged branches" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1124). The Helmer marriage begins to fall apart in Act II as Nora becomes more and more frightened about what she has done. The bright, fresh Christmas tree of Act I is replaced by the used-up Christmas tree of Act II, which stands on the stage throughout the act as a reminder that things are going wrong in Nora's world. Act III begins with the words, "Same scene," which suggest that the Christmas tree remains in the room, since there is no mention that the tree has been removed, despite other changes in the room being listed in the setting (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1139). In this act, Nora stands as her own person and leaves Torvald after the details of her forgery and subsequent deception are revealed. The Helmers' marriage is a burned-out shell of what it has been for eight years, just as the bedraggled tree with its candle stubs is a shell of its glory. References: DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Elements of Drama: Plot and Character 10/4/2012 Nils Krogstad, Dr. Rank, and Kristine Linde are all characters from the Helmers' past as well as in their present. Krogstad provides a focus for much of the drama of the play. He is Nora's counterpart and her moral mirror. Krogstad abets Nora's rebellion against her husband by providing her a loan of money without Torvald's permission, becoming a knowing party to her deception when he discovers that Nora forged her father's signature on the loan document. Krogstad is also a forger, and he forces Nora to understand what she has done. Krogstad's past Undergraduate Series 465 association with Torvald has colored Torvald's opinion of the man, and it is while speaking of Krogstad that Torvald reveals his feelings about liars: "Almost everyone who goes bad early in life has a mother who's a chronic liar ... I literally feel physically revolted when I'm anywhere near such a person" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1124). Krogstad's past relationship with Kristine gives a slight gloss of romantic comedy to a play that is otherwise more of a tragic drama. Dr. Rank is the man Nora wishes Torvald could be. Dr. Rank is attentive to Nora and has time to indulge her ideas. Dr. Rank treats Nora more like a social equal than does Torvald. In the end, Rank expresses his love for Nora to Nora. Dr. Rank provides a bit of dramatic irony in that Nora was able to save Torvald's life when he was seriously ill, but Torvald does not treat Nora as an equal, but Nora is unable to save the life of Dr. Rank, who does treat her as an equal. Kristine is an example of an independent woman. She is Nora's childhood friend, but the two women have very different life experiences. Where Nora is pampered, Kristine has to work. Kristine is the adult woman against whom Nora's childish life is measured. Ibsen arouses the audience's curiosity by revealing only small parts of the plot at a time. The full details of Nora's deception with the loan and the forgery are revealed in small pieces, leaving the audience to wonder what will be revealed next. The tempo of the play varies from a slow, sedate opening to a faster, busier point when Kristine, Krogstad, and Rank all visit Nora in rapid and somewhat overlapping order. The first act closes with a slower scene between Nora and Torvald, then the tempo in Act II picks up again with Nora and Kristine discussing Dr. Rank, only to be interrupted by Torvald. The pace slows again as Nora flirts with Rank and Rank reveals to her his secret, then slows briefly as Rank leaves. In general, scenes with Nora and Torvald are slow, suggesting the monotony of their life, and scenes with Nora and Krogstad have a rapid tempo that underlines the tension and conflict between the two characters. Changes in tempo indicate changes in emotion throughout the play. The final scene is slow as Nora tells Torvald she is leaving him. The slow tempo allows the audience to absorb the sense of tragedy as the marriage ends. References: DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. Thinking Critically about Drama: the Contemporary Significance of Ibsen 10/4/2012 I believe Nora's decision to leave her family is the right decision for her by the end of Ibsen's play. Divorce is not as common in Nora's world as it is in the modern world, but it is not unheard-of, and it is necessary for the Helmers. I would have the opposite opinion if I thought there was the slightest reasonable chance that Torvald is willing to change to make his marriage work, but I do not believe that is the case. When Torvald suggests to Nora, "But couldn't we live here like brother and sister," he reveals that he does not understand what Nora wants from their marriage (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1152). I had a little trouble when I first thought about Nora leaving her children; as a mother, the six weeks each summer when I have to give up my sons nearly destroys me. After some thought, I realize that Anne-Marie is more of a mother to the children than is Nora, and the children will be better off with their children's maid than they would be with Nora, so Nora's behavior in leaving her children is also the correct choice for the situation. Since Ibsen is the playwright, it seems reasonable to accept his assessment of his play as representing what he has in mind in the play. Kristine's independence and Nora's final decision to seek independence illustrate the women's rights issues in the play. Looking deeper, however, Dr. 466 A Journey Through My College Papers Rank's choice to die alone, with dignity, addresses a human rights concern about personal choices and quality of life. Certainly, women's rights are encompassed within the sphere of human rights, and A Doll House need not address one issue to the exclusion of the other. Krogstad's right to redeem his past wrongs by trying to build a new and better life also illustrates the human right to personal and social redemption. Within the social limits of his day, Ibsen seems to be addressing human rights in his play, including women's rights as a major theme of the piece. References: DiYanni, R. (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill. PSY 372: Educational Psychology Week 1 Journal October 6, 2012 There have been many instances in my educational career in which teachers have provided encouragement and personal validation by praising my work. A notable example comes from my freshman composition and analysis course at Olney Central College. Professor Payne, who prefers to be called Kelly, remains one of my favorite teachers. She makes time for conversations with her students outside of class, and is interested in her students’ lives and interests. My final project in Kelly’s class was a research project on marriage forms around the world, comparing the relative merits of monogamy and polygamy and exploring the various types of polygamy. Her written comment on the final paper is one of the most encouraging comments I have received in the course of my education. She wrote: “Really fabulous work! By far, the most thoroughly researched, persuasive argument I’ve seen in ENG 1121. The time & effort you put into this final paper (indeed, the entire project) is clear to see – and it’s been a joy watching it develop over the days & weeks. Well done!” (K. Payne, personal communication, March 31, 2009). Kelly’s written praise made, and still makes, me feel successful and important. A student needs positive feedback – oral, written, and non-verbal – to encourage the student to keep going. School can be challenging and stressful for a student at any stage of education from kindergarten to post-doctoral studies. While I find it useful to be shown where I have made a mistake in my work, it is the positive encouragement that helps me continue to move forward through the many courses that are required t reach my educational goals. As a parent, I remember how I feel when my work is praised, and I try to remember to praise my children’s efforts and accomplishments at least as often as I criticize their errors. As a future teacher, I plan to do the same thing. Each student has positive attributes that can be foci for praise and encouragement that will encourage the student to work to his or her best ability to succeed as a learner. I know that I will need to correct students for errors in order to help them learn, but I will provide my students with praise and positive feedback to support and uplift them. I will use both verbal and written praise and encouragement with my students. Along with verbal and written praise, a teacher encourages learning and positive student attitudes with open, encouraging body language. Whenever possible, I will step out from behind my desk or podium to remove the physical barrier between my students and me. This will encourage my students to interact with the lesson and to participate in classroom discussions and projects. In the same vein, I will make an effort not to cross my arms in front of my body to avoid erecting a barrier with my body language. I will smile and nod to encourage students who ask Undergraduate Series 467 questions or add to discussions in class. If the classroom environment allows it, and especially if I am teaching younger students, I will move about the classroom as I teach, thus making myself accessible to students to encourage them to participate in discussions and activities. Just as effective parenting benefits from a positive outlook on the part of the parent, so does effective teaching benefit from a teacher’s positive outlook and accessibility to his or her students. Praise, encouragement, and smiles help teachers uplift students so the students are motivated to succeed. Effective Teachers 10/11/2012 One characteristic that competent, and perhaps outstanding, teachers possess is a strong and deep knowledge and understanding of the subject matter being taught. In table 1.1, drawing from information for the INTASC, LeFrançois (2011) identifies this knowledge of subject matter as understanding "the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s) he or she teaches" (p. 6). This characteristic of competent teachers calls to mind an example that my mother tells from her days as a college student at a teacher's college. She was taking calculus, but the instructor assigned to teach the class had not himself taken calculus while he was a student. My mother says that it was very clear that the instructor was struggling to keep ahead of his students in the assigned text. As a result, she did not learn calculus well, and was unable to teach it to her students when she taught high school during my childhood. On the other hand, I have been fortunate to have many teachers who are passionate about the subjects they study, and who know a great deal about their subjects beyond the limits of the assigned texts. These teachers inspire students to attain knowledge of the subject matter, as well, and to look beyond the lessons for more information and enrichment in the subject at hand. A second characteristic of competent and outstanding teachers is an understanding of child development and an ability to apply that understanding to the process of teaching. This characteristic is important because teachers who understand how children develop understand "that concepts of proportion cannot easily be taught to 7-year-olds, nor can conservation of volume be taught to 5-year-olds" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 56). In other words, teachers who understand child development understand what is appropriate to teach to students at different ages and how to teach different age groups. One of the most common examples of how teacher beliefs impact student learning involves gender stereotypes. Many teachers expect male students to excel in math and science, but not in reading and writing, while expecting the opposite achievements for female students. Similarly many teachers expect white students to achieve better grades in school than are achieved by black of Hispanic students. LeFrançois (2011) writes that "[b]oys receive more instructional time, more attention, even more praise and encouragement [than do girls] ... they are also more often reprimanded and punished" (p. 39). Gender inequity is a belief that denies students the opportunity to reach their full potentials by limiting their opportunities for success. References: LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. 468 A Journey Through My College Papers Educational Psychology 10/11/2012 Student gender is important to educational psychology in large part because of the common stereotypes regarding gender and different subject matter. "Stereotypes about the different abilities and interests of boys and girls may well lead teachers to treat them differently and to expect them to perform differently" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 36). It is important for teachers to conscientiously avoid promoting gender stereotypes, and to encourage students of both genders to excel in every subject. Teachers should not allow gender stereotypes to be used as excuses for aggressive behavior in male students, or as excuses for not "getting" subjects that are usually associated with the opposite gender. At the same time, it is important for teachers to be sensitive to the learned gender roles of students, and to accept that some gender roles are related to students' home cultures and cannot be fully overcome in the classroom. As a female teacher, I will need to be on guard against calls to allow male students to be more disruptive and less attentive than their female counterparts. As a mother of two boys, I have taken a lot of criticism for allowing my sons to have baby dolls and doll houses in their preschool years, and for teaching them to cook and to sew and do fiber crafts as they approach adolescence. As a female student, I was belittled for wanting to take wood shop, and for being more interested in the science club than in going out for cheer leading. I hope I will take these experiences into the classroom with me to help me remember that it's okay for boys to be sensitive, artistic readers and for girls to be athletic scientists if that is what they want to do. Understanding psychosocial stages in childhood and adolescence is important for a teacher because children learn in different ways at different ages and stages of development. "[T]eachers can do a great deal to enhance self-concept. They can also do much to facilitate the adolescent's occasional struggles with issues of identity" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 44). In order to help students develop a strong self-concept and to help students establish identity, a teacher needs to understand the psychosocial stage of a student in order to understand how the student thinks and reasons, and what developmental crisis the student may be dealing with. Also. understanding psychosocial stages helps a teacher to understand how a student processes information and ideas so the teacher can shape the teaching to fit the student's stage of thinking and understanding. A good example of this is illustrated in Figure 2.6, which shows how a student's perception of conservation develops over the course of several years during Erikson's industry versus inferiority stage or Piaget's intuitive and concrete operations stages. A teacher who understands the psychosocial stages will recognize that trying to get a 6-year-old student to grasp the concept of conservation of area is not appropriate, but asking a 10-year-old student to understand the same concept is reasonable. Another example is my elder son, who just turned 12 years old. He is at the later end of Erikson's industry versus inferiority stage. While his personal interests, when his peers are not present, include art, writing, and cooking, he adapts his behavior in the company of his peers to playing violent video games, wearing a hood to hide his face almost everywhere he goes, using bad language, and resisting parental authority. He does this to "interact with and be accepted by peers" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 41). It is important for teachers to recognize these efforts to fit in, and to encourage and praise students as the students seek to find identity through assimilation in the culture of their peers and through partial or total dissociation from the culture of their parents. References: LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Undergraduate Series 469 Intelligence 10/18/2012 When I took the I.Q. test from IQ Test Labs this week, I got the same score that I have got on every I.Q. test I have taken since I was first tested at age 12 (31 years ago): 131 with average score for all test takers being 100, and classified as gifted. The analytical report from this test reads, in part: "You have the ability to think critically, conceptualize ideas and form your own conclusions. Your ability to think in patterns and to produce order out of chaos enables you to handle complexities and see logic in everything" (Full analytical report, 2012, para. 5). Based on the consistency of the score and on this part of the analysis, I do agree with the results of this I.Q. test. In general, I am in favor of I.Q. testing for students as a means of assessing appropriate placement of students in school and vocational programs. In the past, I was concerned about the problem of socio-economic bias in group I.Q. tests, based of discussions I heard between my mother (then a high school special education teacher) and other adults about tests that were designed to favor students from upper-middle-class and upper-class, white, English-speaking backgrounds. The test I took this week appeared to be less biased than others I have taken in the past. From our text, I have learned that my earlier impression that there is a variety of I.Q. tests was accurate. I learned that there are different kinds of intelligence, and that I.Q. tests do not usually assess many of these intelligences. "Most of our test focus on mathematical, linguistic, and logical tasks" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 80). My experience with I.Q. testing, and with standardized testing in general, is mostly in line with the text, as I have been aware that I.Q. tests address only those areas that can be represented in a pencil-and-paper test. If a parent asked me what I thought about I.Q. testing, I would respond in support of I.Q. testing. I would be sure to caution the parent that the test is not a comprehensive assessment of a student’s complete intelligence, talents, and abilities, but that it is a useful tool for predicting academic ability. "There is a relatively high correlation between measured IQ and performance in school" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 82). A parent needs to know that the I.Q. test is a valid tool in the teaching-learning process, but the parent should be aware that I.Q. testing has limits, and that the parent, teacher, and student should also consider the student's kinesthetic, naturalistic, and interand intra-personal intelligences when considering educational plans and goals for the student. References: Full analytical report for Debbie Barry. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.intelligencetest.com/test/1.php?ID=106238&Email=dkbarry2010@gma il.com LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Intellectual Exceptionality 10/18/2012 Some of the common characteristics of gifted students include "a significant advantage in intelligence, creativity, or motivation -- or, most likely, all three" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 109). Specific ways in which a teacher could accommodate the needs of a student who is gifted in the mainstream education classroom include ability grouping, individual academic acceleration, student enrichment activities, tutors, mentors, and individualized education plans (IEPs) (LeFrançois, 2011, pp. 110-111). Encouraging brainstorming and creating a "supportive 470 A Journey Through My College Papers classroom climate" are also ways a teacher can accommodate giftedness in the classroom (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 114). Some of the ways in which both high achieving students and students with disabilities are served in the mainstream classroom include the social benefits of "increased peer acceptance and decreased rejection of students with disabilities by their peers; mutually beneficial social interactions between students with and without disabilities; and the learning of socially appropriate behaviors by students with disabilities" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 117). In this quote, "exceptionalities" can be substituted for "disabilities" with equal accuracy, since talented and gifted students are often socially isolated in the same ways as are those who are disabled. Other ways the mainstream classroom serves students with disabilities is that "inclusion often has clear academic benefits for learners with disabilities" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 117). Gifted and talented students and students with disabilities are often best served by a partial inclusion plan that allows the students to be integrated in the mainstream classroom for part of the day and that allows students to be segregated into smaller groups outside the mainstream classroom for academic enrichment activities or for special assistance and services, as required by the individual students. Gifted and talented students need to be allowed and encouraged to accelerate or enhance their learning, while disabled students need to be able to work at a slower pace or to have special assistive support and technologies to address their disabilities. References: LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Intelligences, Correlations, and A.D.H.D. October 22, 2012 Educational psychology includes, among other topics, the study of intelligence and of exceptional learners. Within the sphere of intelligence and exceptionality, it is important to consider the educational implications of the views of intelligence advanced by Cattell, Sternberg, and Gardner; the difference between correlation and causation; and the most important symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (A.D.H.D.). Raymond Cattell “makes a distinction between two kinds of capabilities: fluid abilities and crystallized abilities” (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 76). Fluid abilities can deteriorate with age, and are intrinsic abilities that are not affected by the external factors of experiences of cultural differences. Crystallized abilities, on the other hand, tend to increase with age and reflect those external factors. Cattell’s theory, developed with John Horn, “suggests that intelligence is composed of a number of different abilities that interact and work together to produce overall individual intelligence” (Cherry, Fluid intelligence, 2012, para. 2). Robert Sternberg stresses the importance of “successful intelligence—as opposed to measured IQ (or psychometric intelligence)” (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 77). His theory suggests that intelligence is more closely related to those abilities that result in a successful life than to those abilities that can be measured with a standard intelligence test. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences “proposed that there are eight intelligences, and has suggested the possible addition of a ninth known as ‘existentialist intelligence’” (Cherry, Gardner’s theory, 2012, para. 2). LeFrançois (2011) identifies these eight intelligences as: “logical-mathematical, linguistic, musical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, naturalistic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal” (p. 79). Undergraduate Series 471 Some of the educational implications of the theories of Cattell, Sternberg, and Gardner include the difficulties inherent in measuring and understanding intelligence in students. Standard group and individual intelligence tests are limited by virtue of being pen-and-paper tests. Such tests tend to measure Cattell’s crystallized abilities and Gardner’s logical-mathematical and linguistic intelligences while ignoring fluid abilities, successful abilities, and all the rest of Gardner’s intelligences. As a result, the special abilities of students may be overlooked in the school setting. In particular, students who are gifted in music, art, sports, or other areas that are not measured by intelligence tests may not be identified to receive services for gifted and talented students. Understanding the various kinds of intelligence and learning abilities is not sufficient for a teacher. Teachers and others involved in the educational process need to understand why correlation does not prove causation in regard to intelligence and intelligence testing. Correlation exists between two things or events when there is any connection between them. “If one variable causes another, there will be a high correlation between the two” (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 83). This does not mean that all correlations are the results of causation, or that one variable in a correlation must always cause the other variable to be so. Often, there is an appearance of causation in a correlation when no causation is present; such a situation is a correlation fallacy. For teachers, it is important to understand that, while “[t]here is a relatively high correlation between measured IQ and performance in school,” a high IQ does not guarantee high performance in school and a lower IQ does not guarantee low performance in school (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 82). Each student is unique and has individual challenges and individual advantages that contribute to the student’s relative success or failure in school. Along with an understanding of intelligences and abilities, a teacher needs to understand, identify, and address different types of learning disorders in the classroom. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (A.D.H.D.) is perhaps the single most common learning disorder in American schools today. The most important symptoms of A.D.H.D. are: “excessive general activity for the child’s age; difficulty in sustaining attention and apparent forgetfulness; and impulsivity (tendency to react quickly, difficulty taking turns, low frustration tolerance)” (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 126). A student who is unable to sit still, to remain focused on the lesson, and to stay on-task with assignments and other tasks may be identified as having A.D.H.D., but it is important that a teacher use care when making such an identification because “[o]verdiagnosis may well be a function of the most apparent features of ADHD” (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 126). A.D.H.D. is more common in male students than in female students, and a great many students are medicated in school, using specific categories of stimulant medications to achieve a paradoxical sedative effect to help affected students to focus. Intelligence tests provide a limited measure of student intelligence, while ignoring other factors of intelligence that help students to succeed in life or that define students as gifted or talented. A deeper understanding of intelligence, as defined by Cattell, Sternberg, and Gardner, helps teachers and other adults involved in education to identify and serve gifted and talented students who do not achieve high scores on standard intelligence tests. Understanding the difference between correlation, in which two things are related to each other, and causation, in which one thing causes another thing, in important for teachers. It is especially important to understand that high or low I.Q. scores are often correlated with achievement in school, but the scores do not cause such achievement. One of the most prevalent learning disabilities is A.D.H.D., which is characterized by excessive energy and activity, inability to focus and to remember things, and impulsivity. Teachers need to be aware of the symptoms of A.D.H.D., and to be prepared to make accommodations in the classroom to help students with A.D.H.D. to achieve their educational potential. 472 A Journey Through My College Papers References Cherry, K. (2012). Fluid intelligence vs. crystallized intelligence. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/a/fluid-crystal.htm --. (2012). Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/educationalpsychology/ss/multiple-intell.htm LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Reinforcement and Conditioning 10/25/2012 Reflecting on my educational experience, there are many examples of classical and operant conditioning that were implemented in the classroom. As far back as preschool (I went to an academic preschool that was run by Bennington College), the attitudes, facial expressions, and vocal inflections of my teachers were stimuli of classical conditioning that elicited responses in my attitudes and behavior. Because of the welcoming, encouraging, friendly manners of my teachers between my 2nd and 5th years of life, I learned to expect school to be a positive experience, and I learned to love learning. I learned to dislike my teacher and to dislike second grade, however, because my teacher was always cross and snappish. I learned later that she went through a divorce that year, but I still experience strong, negative emotions when I think about second grade. Other classical conditioning involved the school bell system. When the bell rang, we all ran inside if we were outside, or we all got up to leave if we were at our desks. In third grade, while we were studying electricity, many students fitted our desks with tiny light bulbs, bells and buzzers with batteries and switches. One boy had a bell that sounded just like the school bell, and many students got up from their desks when he rang his bell, even in the middle of a lesson, until the teacher finally took the bell away. Operant conditioning, which involves both positive and negative reinforcement for behaviors, was common during my primary and secondary education. "A stimulus is a positive reinforcer if it increases the probability of a response occurring when it is added to a situation. A negative reinforcer has the same effect when it is removed from the situation" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 155). Aversive reinforcement seems to be more memorable in the long run, as I remember most clearly those incidents of operant conditioning that were designed to make undesirable behaviors stop. One incident was in seventh grade English class. The teacher always returned test papers face-down. On a particular occasion, she placed my test paper face-up and announced in a loud voice that I had got an F. It was known that I always got As, and her announcement got my attention, embedded itself as a memory, and provided the motivation of humiliation for me to never let that happen again. As long as I returned to getting As and stopped getting Fs, she would stop announcing my grades. Another example of operant conditioning, again involving aversive stimuli, was school gym class. I am not, and never have been, athletic, but gym teachers don't always understand that. One teacher would yell at me, taunting me for doing poorly, in an attempt to make me do well. I saw the method work with some classmates who were able to do well to escape the taunting, but I was never able to perform well enough to escape her tongue. These two examples were both painfully humiliating, and each of these made the rest of high school more difficult for me than it should have been. Other examples of operant conditioning involve positive reinforcements. In third grade, the teacher gave students small, decorative, potted plants for successful memorization and recitation of multiplication tables and for other memory work. I had a large window garden in my bedroom at the end of that year, and the memorization stayed with me. In ninth grade earth Undergraduate Series 473 science, if a student's grade for the term was high enough, the student did not have to take the final exam for the term. This was positive incentive to do well in class. A particularly memorable example of punishment that I experienced in elementary school was the result of a reward that went wrong. It is an example of "castigation; sometimes called presentation punishment" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 155). As a reward for my high grade in reading, I was allowed to read aloud books into a tape recorder to give to students who had trouble reading. A teacher was in the small room with me as I read, and that made me nervous. As a result of my nervousness, I accidentally juxtaposed two words as I read. The teacher stood up and slapped the stop button on the recorder, yelling at me that I was careless and stupid to read the words wrong like that. This was a punishment, not a negative reinforcement, because I was not allowed to try again and to improve my reading aloud, but just taken back to the classroom, where my regular teacher was told in front of the class how I had failed. Each of these incidents impacted my learning. In the English class, I worked more diligently than ever, and never again got a grade lower than a B in any English class. In gym, I was very discouraged, and my ongoing inability to improve caused me to give up and not care about gym. To this day, I dislike any physical activity where anyone can watch and judge my performance. In contrast, my memorization and math skills have always stayed good, and I worked hard to always please the teacher who gave me the plants. I worked so hard in earth science that not only did I not have to take the final exam for the year, but I was allowed to write the exam for my classmates. As a result of the reading incident, I never wanted to read aloud in class, or even to speak out much. It took many years for me to learn to like reading aloud again, and I still experience panic if I hear myself mispronounce or stumble over a word while reading aloud. References: LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Reciprocal Teaching 10/25/2012 In the YouTube video, “Watch & Learn: Text Comprehension," the students assume responsibility for helping one another learn by asking each other questions about the material they are reading, and by discussing and clarifying any words that may be unfamiliar to members of their reading group. The students use the four steps of reciprocal teaching: asking a question, clarifying the meanings of unfamiliar words, summarizing to find the main idea of the reading, and making predictions from the reading (WETA Public Television, 2008). These four steps of reciprocal teaching are strategies that allow teachers to prepare their students for student-run discussions. The strategy of opening a discussion with a question about the reading allows the students to start thinking and to analyze for themselves what they have read. The questions can be of any degree of complexity in order to match the learning level of the students. Starting a discussion with a question instead of with a declarative statement holds students' attention and leads them to find answers and to generate their own questions. The second strategy, of having the students clarify word meanings among themselves, empowers the students by encouraging them to teach one another. A student who is unsure of a meaning learns from his or her peers, which is less threatening than learning by direct instruction from a teacher, so the meanings will stay with the students longer and with greater clarity. 474 A Journey Through My College Papers The third strategy, of finding the main idea of the reading by summarizing the reading, allows students to consider what they have read and to work out the main ideas as a group. Students are more likely to remember the main ideas and to have increased reading comprehension when they figure out the main ideas than when a teacher tells them the main ideas. The fourth and final strategy, of making predictions from the reading, calls on students to develop and use critical thinking skills and to apply what they have already read to what they anticipate will come later. This strategy encourages students to think logically about the reading, and requires that they understand the reading in order to make reasonable and accurate predictions. Used together, these steps or strategies of reciprocal teaching can increase reading comprehension because students are immersed in and interact with the reading in a peer setting. The students use articulation, reflection, and exploration to achieve a deeper, more meaningful understanding of the reading, which results in longer retention of the reading (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 200). Reciprocal teaching helps diverse learners because students work together to arrive at comprehension of the reading. Where one student's language, reading skills, or other abilities may be weak, other students with stronger abilities can help the student to understand the discussion. Each student contributes individual abilities and experiences to the discussion in a non-threatening setting. References: LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. WETA Public Television. (Producer) (2008). Watch & learn: Text comprehension [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbnwBVrJVdY IDEAL Problem-Solving 10/25/2012 My example for a problem that can be used to illustrate the IDEAL problem-solving strategy comes from a real-life conversation this week with my son, Robby. Robby is saving up to buy a new bicycle. Since he lives in a region with heavy winter snowfalls, he has decided to shovel driveways to earn the money he needs. The bicycle that he wants costs $169.97 plus 6% sales tax. His parents will not allow him to charge more than $10 per house to shovel. Robby expects to shovel driveways three afternoons each week this winter. Robby usually spends $1.69 plus 10 cents deposit for a lemonade and $1.99 plus 6% tax for a slice of pizza each Saturday, which will come out of his earnings. Robby needs to figure out how many driveways, at minimum, he needs to shovel this winter to buy the bicycle in the spring, and how many weeks he will need to shovel. The primary learning outcome for this problem is calculating sales tax by multiplying percentages and decimals. Additional math skills are also required, including adding and subtracting decimals. My solution: The five steps of IDEAL problem solving are: "Identify problems and opportunities[,] Define goals and represent the problem[,] Explore possible strategies[,] Anticipate outcomes and Act[, and] Look back and Learn" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 194). My solution to the problem, using these five steps, is: Undergraduate Series 475 1. Identify: The problem that Robby needs to solve is three-fold: 1) how many driveways will he need to shovel, 2) how much will his weekly snack take away from his earnings, and 3) how many weeks will he need to work to achieve his goal. 2. Define: Robby's goals are: 1) Determine how much the bicycle will actually cost, including the tax. 2) Determine how much the weekly snack will cost, including the bottle deposit and the tax on the pizza. 3) Determine how many driveways he can shovel in one day. This may require an estimate or an assumption. 4) Determine how many weeks of steady work it will take to earn the money. 5) Determine how many driveways he needs to shovel to earn the money he needs. 3. Explore: Robby's possible strategies include estimating each of the above math problems and calculating each of the problems. The best solution to this problem uses algorithms to solve the math problems. The estimate required in the third goal requires heuristics, or a "best educated guess" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 196). 4. Anticipate and Act: Robby needs to produce math equations to solve his problem, as follows: 1) Cost of the bicycle: $169.97. Sales tax: 6%. Total cost of the bicycle: a) First, calculate the sales tax. $169.97 x 0.06 = $10.1982. Round the tax to 10.20. b) Next, add the tax to the cost of the bicycle. $169.97 + $10.20 = $180.17. 2) Cost of the lemonade: $1.69. Amount of the deposit: $0.10. Cost of the pizza: $1.99. Tax on the pizza: 6%. Total cost of the weekly snack: a) First, calculate the total cost of the drink. $1.69 + $0.10 = $1.79. b) Next, calculate the total cost of the food. i) First, calculate the tax. $1.99 x 0.06 = $0.1194. Round the tax to $0.12. ii) Next, add the cost of the food. $1.99 + $0.12 = $2.11. c) Third, add the cost of the drink and the cost of the food for the total cost. $1.79 + $2.11 = $3.90. 3) Estimate, based on experience from last year, that Robby can shovel 3 driveways per day. 4)Robby earns $10.00 per driveway and can shovel 3 driveways per day. $10.00 x 3 = $30.00 per day. $30.00 per day at 3 afternoons per week: $30.00 x 3 = $90.00. a) Subtract the weekly snack from the weekly earnings. $90.00 - $3.90 = $86.10. b) Cost of the bicycle with tax: $180.17. Weekly earnings: $86.10. $180.17 / $86.10 = 2.092. Round the result up to 3 weeks. 5) Driveways per week: 3 driveways per afternoon, working 3 afternoons per week: 3 x 3 = 9. 9 driveways per week for 3 weeks: 9 x 3 = 27. However, Robby really only needs to work for 2 weeks plus one driveway to earn his money: $86.10 per week for 2 weeks: $86.10 x 2 = $172.20. Add $10.00 for one driveway: $172.20 + $10.00 = $182.20. Robby needs to shovel 19 driveways to earn his bicycle, with $2.03 left over. 5. Look back and Learn: Looking back over the IDEAL steps, Robby will learn a lot of math involving decimals and percents. He will learn how his regular spending affects how he saves for 476 A Journey Through My College Papers special purchases, which will serve him well when he goes to buy a house or a car in another ten years or so. He will learn that the ticket price of an item is not always the true price of the item, and that he needs to allow for taxes and other fees when planning a budget. References: LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Memory 11/1/2012 Understanding how memory work impacts education in several ways. By understanding memory, teachers are able to help students retain information through rehearsal of material, to help students develop strategies for elaboration of learned material, and to help students organize information to maximize memorization (LeFrançois, 2011, pp. 216-217). Also, by understanding how forgetting relates to memory, teachers can provide memory aids for students in the classroom. Sensory memory can be used to enhance learning in the classroom through the use of visual aids; through songs, poems, and sayings; and through kinesthetic activities such as touching or manipulating objects or dancing or using rhythmic motions in conjunction with learning. Using aromas in the classroom can provide students with sensory retrieval cues because "our memories for odors appear to be astonishingly stable and long lasting" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 213). Instruction that requires the use of short-term memory and of long-term memory may involve analyzing and summarizing literature or other reading in the classroom. Short-term memory includes semantic encoding of words and phrases in the reading (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 212). Long-term memory of material that is read allows the student to "remember the gist" of the reading to summarize the main idea of the reading (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 214). Aids for memory can be included in instruction. To avoid memory loss caused by fading, teachers can "[p]rovide opportunities for repetition and rehearsal" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 220). In other words, teachers can assign drills for spelling words, math functions, lists, etc.. Teachers can avoid repression of memories by students by avoiding emotional traumas in the classroom and by providing positive, nurturing classroom experiences. Teachers can avoid the danger of interference with memories by teaching students with an eye to transfer of learning, showing students how new learning is similar to or different from old learning and how new and accumulated learning can be applied to new situations. Teachers can overcome retrieval cue failure by providing students with specific retrieval cues and mnemonic devices to aid memory. Finally, teachers can combat distortion of memories by emphasizing "the most important and most salient features of what is to be learned" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 220). When I am required to commit facts to memory, I usually resort to a great deal of repetition and rehearsal. I also try to find a pattern in what I am memorizing. For instance, if I need to memorize a speech, I look for groupings of words or phrases, and remember that I need to know this set of four things, then this set of three things, then this set of five things, for example. If I can associate facts with specific visual images, I am more likely to remember those facts, as well. References: LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Undergraduate Series 477 Preferred Learning Style 11/1/2012 In order to best answer the question of what is my preferred learning style, I went to learningstylesonline.com to take a learning styles inventory assessment similar to the one mentioned in Psychology For Teaching (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 247). According to the inventory, my three highest scores are 18/20 in verbal and 17/20 each in visual and solitary (Learning Styles Inventory, 2012, table 1). I agree with this assessment, as I do learn best with visual and verbal cues, and I prefer solitary learning and activities to group activities in many cases. Therefore, my preferred learning style is visual-verbal. The educational approaches that are most compatible with the visual-verbal learning style involve a lot of reading and writing, which is why the online education structure at Ashford has been so effective for me. Also, I benefit from pictures, graphs, maps, and graphic representations. Personally, that usually means I benefit from doodling during lectures, making diagrams in the margins of my texts and notebooks, and using several different colors of highlighters in my textbooks and in my notes. The third strong factor in my learning style is that of the solitary learner. Working on my own, rather than in groups, works best for me. I can work in a one-onone situation, but I tend to fade into the background in groups. The traditional classroom, complete with direct instruction, has always been the most comfortable setting for my learning needs except that I have often been held back by teaching that is geared to the lowest-performing students. A gifted and talented classroom situation works better for me, allowing me to read and write work at my own pace. Ideally, I prefer to work in a well-lit but not overly-bright space with little or no background noise. I prefer to work with printed books and to write and draw on paper rather than reading and writing on a computer, but I am becoming more comfortable with typing my work on a keyboard. I work best when I am able to get up to use the restroom and to get a drink of water when needed. A quiet learning environment with opportunities for restroom breaks and adequate hydration increases my ability to learn because it reduces physical and mental distractions in my learning environment. Being able to work without distractions allows me to focus on my work, which increases my arousal and thus increases my motivation to learn. In addition, for me, learning and achieving high marks in education satisfies my self-esteem needs as identified by Maslow (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 252). The greatest obstacles to the creation of my ideal learning environment are the demands of life outside the classroom. I do not live in a cloister, where I could devote the majority of my time to study; rather, I am a housewife and a mother, and I often have squabbling children, noisy television, and other distractions in the background. These are presently unavoidable. In a brickand-mortar school setting, large group classrooms or lecture halls can seldom be avoided, so working in silence and solitude is not realistic. In many settings, working at my own pace is also precluded by curriculum-based instruction and this situation is also fairly unavoidable. References: Learning styles inventory. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.learning-stylesonline.com/inventory/results.php LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. 478 A Journey Through My College Papers Week 4 Journal November 5, 2012 Educational psychology has been an interesting and engaging course for me. Much of the course work has been a review of topics that were introduced in earlier psychology courses, especially introduction to psychology and child and adolescent development. The most engaging assignments for me were the week two examination of intelligence tests and the week four exploration of learning styles. These two assignments were engaging for me in large part because each one involved an interactive test that tells me more about myself. The learning styles assessment that I used in week four was not required for the assignment, but it seemed necessary to me in order to have a clear understanding of my learning style and of what the elements of my learning style mean for my actual learning and teaching. Self-discovery is an important aspect of education, and these two tests helped me to achieve a measure of selfdiscovery. Since most of the course work has been a review of prior learning, there has not been a lot of new material for me. Reciprocal instruction was new for me, as I had not previously heard it called by that name or defined so clearly. The concept itself was familiar from my experiences with my children’s schools, but I was not previously aware that it was actually a structured method of instruction. I hope that I will you my knowledge of the stages of development, of intelligence testing and exceptionalities, and of learning styles to help my students be effective, successful learners. By remaining aware of the stages of development, including adult development that I learned in my adult development course and that will be more useful in teaching college students than will be stages of child development, I will be able to present topics at an appropriate level for my students to understand and retain what I teach them. I will be able to use examples and activities that are relevant to my students’ level of development. Intelligence testing will help me place my students in appropriate groups when needed so that each student’s needs are met. Being aware of special needs students and of gifted and talented students will help me at any level of teaching, from early childhood education through teaching college, since there are exceptional students at both ends of the learning spectrum at all levels of education. Recognizing exceptionalities in the classroom will allow me to accommodate the needs of my students. Similarly, recognizing and identifying different learning styles among my students will allow me to meet their special learning needs more effectively and to help students to be more successful learners. Writing this journal requires evaluating my work so far in this class. The grade book shows that I have scored 100% in everything that has been graded so far. In which activities have I excelled and in which activities could I have done better? My grade to date suggests that I have excelled in each assignment so far. No assignment has been accomplished without effort, reading, and thought, however. Achieving good grades does not mean that the grades have come easily. I think that is something I need to remember when I am teaching: good grades do not always mean that the work is easy, just as bad grades do not always mean that the work is hard. I need to be aware of, and to reward, the efforts that students put into their work, and I need to evaluate whether students need more or less challenging work or more or less motivational assistance to achieve. Understanding how students develop and learn is valuable. Even though much of the course has been review, it is valuable learning because review strengthens learning. I appreciate being reminded of past learning so that I will be successful in my future teaching career. Undergraduate Series 479 Corporal Punishment Debate 11/8/2012 After reading the text and watching the CBS Report, “Corporal Punishment in Schools," I do not believe that corporal punishment is an appropriate means of behavior management in schools. This belief also reflects my own experiences as a student in public schools in the 1970s and 1980s, and my experiences as a parent of two boys who are now in middle school. Corporal punishment evokes fear, anger, and distrust in students, each of which responses is an impediment to effective learning. Students are distracted from learning when they fear corporal punishment. Corporal punishment results in "lowered self-esteem, social withdrawal, [and] increased aggressiveness ... [and] corporal punishment simply does not work" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 298). Corporal punishment does impact a child's psychological development. Along with reduced self-esteem and increased aggression, corporal punishment leads to "increased maladjustment and misbehavior" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 298). Corporal punishment is physical violence, and educators who use corporal punishment in schools model physical violence to their students, who are likely to emulate and recreate this behavior in the future. A student who is not inclined toward violence may instead respond by becoming fearful and withdrawn, and is likely to learn to fear and to distrust authority figures. Corporal punishment does not align with the humanistic, democratic, behavioristic, or eclectic management models presented in our text. The most severe punishments in our text include time-outs, suspensions, and expulsions. It should be noted, however, that reprimands do align with the models in our text, and that care should be taken that reprimands are not allowed to become abusive; verbal abuse is just as damaging to a student's ability to learn and to a student's psychological development as is physical abuse or corporal punishment, and it is more difficult for a student to successfully challenge and overcome a situation of verbal abuse than a situation of physical abuse. My personal opinion is that an eclectic blend of the democratic and the behavioristic models of management works the best in most situations. A combination of teacher-directed rules, a token reward system, judicious use of time-outs, modeling acceptable behaviors and values, and instilling students with beliefs and values that lead to intrinsic rewards for desired behaviors fosters an effective learning environment for students. References: LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. To Test or Not to Test? 11/8/2012 In today's educational culture, testing does still matter, but different types of testing are more or less appropriate for assessing different types of learning and achievement. Assessment and measurement are valid tools for teaching and learning because educators cannot determine which students are ready to move on to learning new material unless the educators are able to assess and measure the students' understanding of material that has already been taught. Both objective testing and essay tests are useful for assessing students' understanding and for measuring student's progress. Whether or not there is a better way to evaluate students' needs than by testing is a controversial question. I believe that performance-based assessments are more effective for 480 A Journey Through My College Papers evaluating the needs of individual students than are standardized tests. Performance-based assessments "provide more authentic, direct appraisals of student competence" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 328). Performance-based assessment takes into account different learning styles and exceptionalities that are rarely addressed in standardized testing. A teacher can design effective instruction by basing said instruction on experience from previous years' classes, but the most effective instruction plans are based on assessments of students prior to teaching. Pre-tests help a teacher know what the students already know so the lesson can address new material without leaving out instruction that the students are missing. If a pre-test shows that the majority of students know the material, valuable instructional time can be saved by not re-teaching the material; this also reduces potential behavioral problems associated with student boredom. In order to create effective instruction, I will use pre-tests, or formative testing, to assess what the students know and what they need to learn. Since most schools require standardized testing, I will use prescribed tests to evaluate what my students need to learn. Here in Michigan, students are required to take two weeks of standardized tests, called the MEAP (Michigan Educational Assessment Program) each year at the beginning of October. As required in my state, I will use the results of the MEAP in my instruction planning. That said, I object to most highstakes testing in schools. My personal experience is that teachers in my area spend all of September teaching students to take the MEAP. Students who spend much of their classroom time learning to take high-stakes tests are not learning critical thinking skills, problem-solving skills, and other higher learning that they need to be successful, creative members of society. As our text reports, "teaching-to-the-test has some negative effects. These include a 'dumbing down' and a 'narrowing' of the curriculum" (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 336). References: LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Intelligence Tests and Student Placement November 12, 2012 Standardized testing, including intelligence testing, is a popular and useful tool for placing students in appropriate educational programs. A student’s I.Q. (intelligence quotient) is a measurement of the student’s intelligence as compared with other students of the same age. Thus, I.Q. can be used to help identify gifted and talented students and to identify students with learning disabilities. Many researchers and educators are now arguing against the use of intelligence testing for student placement. Arguments against the testing include psychological and emotional harm to students, racial bias in the tests themselves, and the limited scope of tests that address very few types of intelligence instead of assessing the whole student. Despite the popularity of I.Q. tests, they are no longer the best or most effective way to identify and to place exceptional students. Annotated Bibliography Access to Curriculum. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.educationrightscenter.org/Access_to_Curriculum.html This article, produced by the Education Rights Center at Harvard University School of Law, discusses how standardized testing, including intelligence or I.Q. testing, is used to determine the placement of students in ability tracking programs in schools. The article discusses Undergraduate Series 481 some of the problems associated with ability tracking and with placement of students based on standardized test scores, including unequal quality of education between higher tracks and lower tracks and a tendency for low-income and minority students to be placed in lower ability tracks. This article contributes to my knowledge and understanding of the way intelligence testing and other standardized testing contributes to students’ educational experiences by clarifying some of the common pitfalls associated with depending on test scores for student placement. The article offers specific, concrete lists of advice for parents to help parents ensure that their students are assigned to appropriate ability tracks, and to ensure that students in lower ability tracks receive a quality of education equal to that found in higher tracks. This advice helps me form a better understanding of the options that are available to students and their families. Understanding that standardized testing, including intelligence testing, is not an infallible criterion for ability tracking is important to understanding the use of such testing. This article is well-written, although several typographical errors are evident. The article is written to assist families and, as such, it is a useful article. There is no clear evidence of the research behind the assertions in the article, so its credibility is based more on its provenance as a product of Harvard University than on its basis in research. The article confirms information in the course text about the effectiveness of inclusive classrooms as opposed to ability tracking for students. The article supports LeFrançois’ assertion that intelligence testing can be used for predicting student success, not by agreeing with LeFrançois that intelligence testing is a useful tool for placing students, but by stating that ability tracking based on early intelligence testing can influence a student’s self-esteem and future success. A Place to Start: Is My Child Gifted? (2004). Retrieved from http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10112.aspx This article, prepared by The Davidson Institute for Talent Development, discusses the various tests and other methods of assessment that are used to place students in gifted and talented (GT) programs. The article specifies that intelligence testing is not the most effective means of determining student placement because IQ tests are not designed for identifying students at the extremes of the IQ scale. The latter half of the article is a list of questions to help parents choose an appropriate professional to assess students for the GT program. This article contributes to my understanding of the uses of testing, especially intelligence testing, in identifying and placing gifted and talented students. The article helps me better understand the ineffectiveness of intelligence tests for this sort of assessment and placement. This article is well-written for use by families of gifted and talented students. It is wellresearched, being based on the opinions of a panel of experts who are identified within the article and are listed at the end of the article. Like the Harvard University article, this article shows that intelligence testing is not the best way to place students in ability-based programs. The article mentions portfolios and tests of creativity, thus echoing LeFrançois’ discussion in chapter ten of the course text of portfolios as tools for student motivation and student assessment. Cohen, P. (2012, Nov 04). I.Q. rising. New York Times. Retrieved from ProQuest database. Cohen’s article in the New York Times focuses on how and why American intelligence has risen over the last several decades. She also discusses how social and technological changes cause children’s vocabularies to improve more slowly than the vocabularies of their parents since the 1950s. 482 A Journey Through My College Papers The article contributes to my understanding of intelligence and why intelligence testing may not be the most effective method of assessing students. It makes me aware that social and cultural factors influence what students know, and so influence how students score on intelligence tests and similar tests. The article is clearly written in language that is appropriate for a broad range of readers. The article reports the research results of social scientist James R. Flynn, but does not appear to include any additional research. The vocabulary shifts discussed in this article appear to relate to LeFrançois’ discussion in chapter three of the course text about crystallized abilities and successful intelligence. Crystallized abilities include information found on vocabulary tests such as the vocabulary tests that Flynn uses in his research. Successful intelligence involves those abilities that allow one to succeed in life, and students’ use of communications technology, which is essential to success in modern America, has eroded students’ active vocabularies. Glaser, S. (1993, Jul 30). Intelligence testing. Retrieved from http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/vollarj/intelligence_testing.htm Glaser’s article discusses the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of intelligence testing for academic and employment placement. The article presents many of the problems inherent in using intelligence tests for student placements, and offers as alternative assessment tools the portfolio system and performance testing. The article includes a long and detailed history of intelligence research and testing in America, as well as a timeline of events associated with intelligence testing. This article gives me a clearer understanding of how and why intelligence testing developed as part of the American education system. The article clarifies points about the relative ineffectiveness of intelligence testing for student placement, and presents arguments both for and against this use of intelligence testing. The article is well-written, clear, and comprehensive. It is well-researched and includes an extensive list of footnotes along with an impressive bibliography. The article cites several studies with large samples that provide credible evidence for the author’s assertions. Glaser’s article includes a great deal of discussion of the work of Howard Gardner, paralleling the material on multiple intelligences that is found in chapter three of the course text. Glaser’s treatment of multiple intelligences, and of the need to find other means than intelligence testing for assessing students whose strengths are in different intelligences, amplifies my understanding of LeFrançois’ discussion of the topic. LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. LeFrançois’ text provides the basis for my understanding of intelligences and the educational applications of intelligence testing. The text explains traditional views of intelligence and presents alternative views of intelligence, including Gardner’s multiple intelligences. The text explains ability tracking, especially in regard to gifted and talented students and to students with learning disabilities. Machek, G. (2012). The role of standardized intelligence measures in testing for giftedness. Retrieved from http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/giftednessTesting.shtml This article, prepared for Indiana University to assist parents of gifted and talented students in obtaining appropriate assessment and placement of their students, asserts that the results of intelligence tests are good predictors of academic success while also asserting that Undergraduate Series 483 intelligence testing should not be the sole criterion for identifying and placing gifted and talented students. The article begins with a discussion of intelligence, focusing on Gardner’s multiple intelligences, and then provides advice for parents on how to have their students evaluated for giftedness and talent. The discussion of multiple intelligences reinforces my understanding of the concept and of the need to use other methods than just intelligence testing to assess students. The advice for parents regarding the process many schools use to assess students for gifted and talented programs helps me understand that such assessment is not a simple matter of administering a multiple choice test; there is a long and involved process involved with assessment. The article is generally well-written, but it directs readers to many links to other Internet pages for further information on the topics that are presented, rather than incorporating all of the information in a cohesive paper. The article is well-researched and includes a brief but credible bibliography. In-line citations enable readers to references the works cited, including wellrecognized sources that include Gardner and Plucker. Machek’s discussion of Gardner’s multiple intelligences and of the need for more involved methods than intelligence testing for assessing students echoes LeFrançois’ discussion of Gardner’s theories in chapter three of the course text and of alternative methods of assessment in chapter ten of the text. Considering the actual process by which schools assess students for placement in educational programs increases my understanding of the learning for the course, including a clearer understanding of the role of intelligence testing in American schools. Rogers, D. (2011). The ups and downs of children's IQs. The Times Educational Supplement, (4968), 14. Retrieved from ProQuest database. Rogers’ brief article explains a British study in which a group of students takes an intelligence test in early adolescence and then takes a second intelligence test four years later. Each student has a brain scan at the time of each testing. The results show that students’ IQ can rise or fall significantly over that four year period, and that the changes correlate with grey matter development over that time. The article adds to my understanding of the role of intelligence testing in assigning placement of students in school programs. I was not aware of the possible fluctuation of a student’s IQ, or of the correlation with grey matter development, before reading the article. The article is well-written, using language appropriate for reading by the general public. The research sample is quite small, but it appears that the research is done well and is reported appropriately. The article also refers to a much larger, earlier study that has a very large sampling and that covers approximately fifty years instead of four years. While the earlier study seems to refute the four-year study, the article identifies several factors that make the conditions of the two studies too different for a valid comparison. The findings in the article reflect LeFrançois’ discussion in chapter two of the course test regarding the physical development of the brain and the specialization of different areas of the brain. The article mentions that verbal skills are controlled by the left motor cortex, while certain non-verbal skills are controlled by the anterior cerebellum. The study is also supported by Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, as discussed in chapter two of the course text. The students in the four-year study are in the concrete operations stage of development when they are first tested, and they have reached the formal operations stage of development by the time of the second testing; this may help to account for some of the changes in the students’ IQ results over this period. Sortino, D. (2012, Apr 01). Close to home: Children, IQ testing and true intelligence. The Press Democrat. Retrieved from ProQuest database. 484 A Journey Through My College Papers Sortino’s brief article expresses his opposition to intelligence testing for young students. The article cites the Larry P. v. Riles lawsuit over the racial bias of intelligence testing in California to support the argument. The negative emotional and psychological impact of intelligence testing on young students is also cited. This article reinforces my thinking that intelligence testing, while popular as a placement tool in education, is not necessarily the best placement tool to use with young students. The article is written by a retired educator in response to a request by a parent to have a young student take an IQ test, and this gives me a more personal perspective on the testing practice. The article is written with emotion, and is reasonably well-written. While the article mentions a 1966 study and the California lawsuit, no formal research citations are given, and there is no bibliography of sources cited. The article appears to be written based on the author’s personal knowledge as an educator. The article discusses labeling students based on IQ scores, which LeFrançois discusses briefly in chapter four of the course text. Sortino addresses racial biases that LeFrançois’s barely gloss over, so Sortino’s article adds to my learning about the drawbacks of intelligence testing for young students. Summary The research regarding the use of intelligence testing and other, similar tests to identify and place gifted and talented students and students with learning disabilities, and to track students by ability within the classroom, is overwhelmingly against such testing. Assigning I.Q. scores to students as identifying labels is psychologically damaging to young students, as discussed by Sortino (2012). In addition, I.Q. testing is considered by many to be racially and culturally biased, favoring students from white, middle-class backgrounds and discriminating against minorities and low-income families. Glaser (1993) illustrates the racial and socioeconomic bias of I.Q. testing when she writes that “tests of black and white children from different socioeconomic status (SES) repeatedly find that low-SES white children score as high as high-SES black children” (para. 51). Intelligence testing is shown to be less effective for identifying gifted and talented students than was previously believed because I.Q. tests do not measure all types of intelligence. Methods other than traditional I.Q. test, including portfolio assessment and performance testing are shown by the research to be more accurate, effective means of identifying exceptional students whose special talents and intelligence cannot be measured by a written test of verbal and math skills. Similarly, intelligence testing is not the most effective means of predicting future success in life beyond academia. While such predictions, based on I.Q. scores, are often self-fulfilling, many individuals who score low on I.Q. tests are very successful in life and pursue successful careers, while many individuals who score high on I.Q. tests are not successful in life and are unable to achieve success in careers. This is, in part, because I.Q. tests do not take into account Sternberg’s successful intelligence, which is identified in the course text as “the use of an integrated set of abilities needed to attain success in life, however an individual defines it, within his or her sociocultural context” (LeFrançois, 2011, p. 77). In many cases, however, students who are identified as having high I.Q. scores are more highly motivated and encouraged by parents and teachers to be high achievers in life, while students who are identified as having low I.Q. scores have few educational enrichment opportunities and are discouraged from trying to do better in life than their scores suggest for them. When students are motivated or discouraged based on their I.Q. test scores, then the tests are an accurate predictor of future success because students live up to or down to their test scores. The role of intelligence testing in education, and especially in the identification of gifted and talented students, is important to my professional goals as a teacher. It will be important for Undergraduate Series 485 me to be able to identify students who need additional educational challenges as well as to identify those students who need academic support because they are less-strong learners. By the time students reach me, in my intended role as a college teacher, most will already have been tested and tracked in primary and secondary schools. It is my hope that it will not yet be too late to identify and to cultivate students with high potential who may have slipped through the cracks earlier in their education. It will be important for me to see the individual talents of my students, and not only to rely on test scores. My deepened understanding of the role of intelligence testing in educational placement and the research on this topic apply to my personal goals as my personal goals intersect with my professional goals. My goal is to teach, whether in a formal classroom or as a parent to my sons. Understanding the educational psychology associated with I.Q. testing and student achievement helps me prepare to work with students. I am able to apply my knowledge of multiple intelligences when assessing educational needs, recognizing that I.Q. testing provides only a partial description of a student’s abilities and potential. In my current role as a mother to two pre-teen boys, both of whom are at the cusp between the concrete operations stage and the formal operations stage of development, understanding the different methods of assessing ability, giftedness, and talent helps me provide more effective support for my sons’ continuing education. My deepened understanding of the shortcomings of I.Q. testing, which I previously held in very high regard, helps me to be more aware of my sons’ other intelligences, creativity, athletic ability, and personal talents. This empowers me to encourage them to find ways to follow their dreams and talents to achieve success in life. Whatever may be my professional successes and achievements, helping my sons to achieve their potentials is the greatest achievement I can ever experience. While I have learned, through research and study, that intelligence testing is only a part of the equation in evaluating students’ abilities and in placing students in appropriate educational programs, knowing is not enough. In order for this learning to be of value, I must find ways to use my knowledge in my personal life and in my professional life. Many schools still rely heavily on I.Q. tests as the primary, or even as the sole, means of sorting students into ability groups and special programs. As a teacher, I will be required to follow the directives of my school and my school district, whether I teach in primary schools, secondary schools, or college programs. My expanded understanding of the alternatives to I.Q. testing requires that I become an advocate for educational reform if I find myself limited by policy to use I.Q. testing and similar testing and restrained from evaluating students by the more holistic methods of portfolio evaluation and performance testing. These two alternatives have emerged from my research and study as the most effective means of assessing true learning and mastery of learning, and of identifying students’ talents that may elude traditional testing. Intelligence testing is not the most effective method for identifying and placing gifted and talented students in the education system. I.Q. scores become labels that motivate high achievers to higher achievement, and that discourage low achievers from trying to achieve anything better. Students who take I.Q. tests at a young age are not well-served, as their brains and associated intelligences are still developing; their intelligence scores may fluctuate significantly through their school years, but they can become trapped in ability tracking based on early I.Q. scores. Assessments and evaluations that consider multiple intelligences, and that allow students to be evaluated based on portfolios or on performance of learned skills are better methods of identifying and evaluating gifted and talented students and students with high potentials. References Access to Curriculum. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.educationrightscenter.org/Access_to_Curriculum.html 486 A Journey Through My College Papers A Place to Start: Is My Child Gifted? (2004). Retrieved from http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10112.aspx Cohen, P. (2012, Nov 04). I.Q. rising. New York Times. Retrieved from ProQuest database. Glaser, S. (1993, Jul 30). Intelligence testing. Retrieved from http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/vollarj/intelligence_testing.htm LeFrançois, G. (2011). Psychology for teaching (11th ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Machek, G. (2012). The role of standardized intelligence measures in testing for giftedness. Retrieved from http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/giftednessTesting.shtml Rogers, D. (2011). The ups and downs of children's IQs. The Times Educational Supplement, (4968), 14. Retrieved from ProQuest database. Sortino, D. (2012, Apr 01). Close to home: Children, IQ testing and true intelligence. The Press Democrat. Retrieved from ProQuest database. ENG 497: English Capstone Literary Periods 11/20/2012 The oldest major literary period is the Old English period, also called the Anglo-Saxon period, which covers the years 450 to 1066 CE. This period is characterized by a "juxtaposition of church and pagan worlds ... [and] heroic warriors who prevail in battle" (Aguirre, 2010, p. 1). The Middle English period, covering the Norman Conquest in 1066 to 1500, is characterized by moral tales and morality plays that are designed to "instruct the illiterate masses in morals and religion" (Aguirre, 2010, p. 2). The Early Modern, or Renaissance, period spans the years 1500 to 1660, and is characterized by a shift in literary focus from religious concerns to temporal concerns. The Neo-Classical period covers the years 1660 to 1785. It is characterized by "an emphasis on reason and logic" (Aguirre, 2010, p. 4). The Romantic period, spanning 1785 to 1832, includes the Industrial Revolution and is characterized by a preponderance of nature images. The Victorian Age is a literary period covering the years 1832 to 1901 and it is marked by "the conflict between those in power and the common masses of laborers and the poor" (Aguirre, 2010, p. 6). Modernism covers the first half of the 20th century, from 1901 to 1945, including the two world wars. This period is characterized by "a new self-consciousness about modernity and by radical formal experimentation" (1890-1940s Modernism, 2007, para. 1). Postmodernism runs from the end of the modern period to the present. It is characterized by "a mixing of styles ... in the same text; discontinuity of tone, point of view, register, and logical sequence; apparently random unexpected intrusions and disruptions in the text; a selfconsciousness about language and literary technique, especially concerning the use of metaphor and symbol, and the use of self-referential trope" (1940s-Present Postmodernism, 2007, para. 2). The postmodern period is as chaotically eclectic as is modern culture, and it embraces more literary experimentation than do earlier periods. I believe a literary period is defined, in large part, by changes in the ways in which people express themselves. A literary period reflects what is socially important during that period, such as the move from rural poverty to modern poverty, the classism of the Industrial Revolution, the rise of feminism and of racial equality, and calls for social justice. A literary period may be Undergraduate Series 487 defined by military or political events, but only insofar as those events define the things people think about. A literary period may be long (the Old English period covers over six centuries), or it may be relatively short (the Modern period covers only about four decades). Literary periods may be defined by centuries, but such a simplistically arbitrary division does not consider social and cultural concerns and changing modes of expression. Each literary period has a fairly recognizable voice, which speaks for the issues and values of its time, and a new literary period forms when that voice changes. References: 1890-1940s modernism. (2007). The American Novel. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/modernism.html 1940s-present postmodernism. (2007). The American Novel. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americannovel/timeline/postmodernism.html Aguirre, J.E. (2010). Timeline and characteristics of British literature. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/jeaguirre/timeline-and-characteristics-of-britishliterature-5512725 The Canon Wars 11/20/2012 The literary canon affects the study of literature because the canon determines what most students of literature will study. Many students are not even exposed to works that fall outside the canon, so their knowledge of the literature of a period is limited to and molded by the works that are part of the canon. This results in students of literature being conversant with the same texts with which their colleagues are conversant, and it allows students to focus on only those texts that they can expect their colleagues and their students to encounter. The negative of this is that the canon limits the imaginations of students by not exposing them to a wide variety of literature that is outside the canon. Most literature in the canon is written by white men, and students who study only those works in the canon miss out on the writings of women and of non-white writers. I think having a canon is a positive, because the canon ensures that all literature students will be exposed to a standardized list of important literature. I think the canon needs to be updated and expanded over time to include outstanding and exemplary writings by minority writers, but that care needs to be taken in such an undertaking so that the quality of the canon is not diluted by the inclusion of works just for the sake of representing women and non-white writers. Each work in the canon must meet the high standards of literature that already exist in the canon. When determining which works are included in the literary canon and which are not, care should be taken to ensure that the quality of the works is considered and that the race and/or gender of the author is not a primary consideration. Each work should stand on its own merits when its author is anonymous. Whitla (2010) identifies several features of literature including "its power to stimulate and move feelings and emotions ... express[ing] the continuing core of humanity ... express[ing] the aesthetic value of beauty ... [teaching] general principles and larger truths ... [and] foster[ing] ... an appreciation ... but also a healthy skepticism [of what one reads]" (p. 9). I believe works that are included in the canon should include these features. Literature in the canon should be iconic, representing the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of humanity through its works. 488 A Journey Through My College Papers References: Whitla, W. (2010). The English handbook: A guide to literary studies. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell. The Making of the Canon November 26, 2012 There are many things to consider when choosing which works will be included in the official, literary canon, and when examining a particular literary work to determine whether or not to include it in the canon. Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” is a very short work of fiction from the end of the 19th century. It is written at the very end of the Victorian period, and it reflects some of the social issues of its day. William Whitla (2010) identifies among the features required for inclusion in the literary canon an ability to arouse the reader’s emotions, an expression of aesthetic beauty, and an expression of “general principles and larger truths” (p. 9). “The Story of an Hour” is included in the canon of literature for academic study because it meets all of these requirements with simple sophistication and evocative imagery. The reader is moved to compassion for Louise Mallard when reading the account of her response to her husband’s death in a railway accident. The reader is concerned for Mrs. Mallard’s health from the opening sentence of the story, which reveals that “Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble” (DiYanni, 2008, p. 38). Chopin does not burden the reader with details about the nature of the heart trouble; the simple statement is enough to stimulate the reader’s concern and to draw the reader into Mrs. Mallard’s life. Later, the reader discovers that Mrs. Mallard is not mourning the loss of her husband so much as she is discovering and celebrating her own freedom as a widow. A single woman in Victorian society is controlled by her father and her other male relatives. A married woman is controlled by her husband. Only a widowed woman is free to control her own life and to make her own decisions in this culture, and Mrs. Mallard realizes that she is “Free! Body and soul free!” (DiYanni, 2008, p. 40). The reader moves from concern, through grief and the fear of the future, to rejoicing with Mrs. Mallard’s freedom. The story ends with the reader’s feeling of irony and sadness as Mrs. Mallard dies from the shock of losing her new-found freedom when her husband arrives home alive and well. Chopin’s descriptions in “The Story of an Hour” are simple expressions of aesthetic beauty. Mrs. Mallard’s confining room looks out over an expanse of natural beauty: “She could see ... the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air ... There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds” (DiYanni, 2008, p. 39). As Mrs. Mallard discovers her freedom and the beginning of her new life, the reader is introduced to images of freedom in the sky and clouds, and images of the new beginnings of spring. The descriptions are simple and uncluttered, allowing the reader to experience the beauty of the scene through Mrs. Mallard’s eyes. Mrs. Mallard is, herself, an example of aesthetic beauty, as the reader discovers in Chopin’s description of her: “She was young, with a fair, calm face” (DiYanni, 2008, p. 39). The description is minimal, using very few words, and the simplicity itself creates an image of feminine beauty. It is unnecessary for the reader to know Mrs. Mallard’s hair color or eye color; knowing that she is young, fair, and calm is enough. Chopin’s simple descriptions of beauty are skillfully rendered, thus fulfilling the aesthetic requirement for inclusion in the canon. “The Story of an Hour” uses the details of Mrs. Mallard’s experiences to draw attention to greater truths about the society in which she lives. Mrs. Mallard is presented throughout the story with the formal title that signifies her married state. Only her sister uses Mrs. Mallard’s given name, and then Josephine uses the name only in private as she calls through the keyhole. In Undergraduate Series 489 Victorian culture, only intimate family members address one another by their given names, and then only in private. In public, formal address is required by social convention. Thus, Mrs. Mallard is identified as her husband’s wife, not as an independent woman. Mrs. Mallard’s relief and private joy at discovering that she is a widow draws the reader’s attention to the plight of women in Victorian society, as described above. Only as a widow can a woman of good social status be in control of herself and her own life. This feminist theme is important as the Victorian period comes to a close and the modern era looms on the literary horizon. By its inclusion in the literary canon, “The Story of an Hour” makes accessible to readers the conditions of Victorian women, and the feeling of Victorian women that they wish to be freed from repression by their male relatives. Mrs. Mallard welcomes freedom more than she mourns her husband because her husband represents her repression under the rules of her society. “The Story of an Hour” is included in the literary canon because it evokes a range of emotions from its readers, because it expresses aesthetic beauty in a few simple words, and because it uses the story of one woman’s experience to describe the condition and desires of women in Victorian society. The story itself is very brief, and might escape notice if it was not included in the literary canon; as a part of the canon, Chopin’s story allows readers to gain a better understanding of women’s role in Victorian society, and of how women welcome the freedom of widowhood in Victorian society. The simple writing does not impede the reader’s access to Mrs. Mallard’s dawning joy or to her shock at being deprived once again of her freedom when she discovers that her husband lives. The descriptions of the freedom outside the window contrast with the confinement of married life, and allow the reader to understand how much the Victorian wife longs for freedom from male repression. “The Story of an Hour” belongs in the canon to bring awareness of feminist concerns to the students who read the canon. References DiYanni, R. (Ed.). (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Whitla, W. (2010). The English handbook: A guide to literary studies. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell. Considering Gender in A Doll House 11/29/2012 In A Doll House, Henrik Ibsen uses stereotyped gender attributes to characterize Nora and Torvald. Nora and Torvald, as a married couple in the late Victorian period, are foils, each representing "binary oppositions of men and women, male and female" (Whitla, 2010, p. 292). Torvald, as the patriarch of the family, represents authority, power, and financial responsibility, and he takes on a parental role over his wife. In the first scene of the play, Torvald asks Nora, "Has the little spendthrift been out throwing money around again?" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1106). With this one sentence, Ibsen identifies Torvald as the fiscally-conscious spouse, and as the patronizing male parent figure. Using masculine traits to identify the primary male character as strong and controlling is typical for nineteenth century literature. Nora, as the wife in the family, represents submission to authority, weakness, and illogical caprice. Nora is the mother of three young children, but she is still cared for by the children's maid, who was Nora's mail during her childhood. Nora has no real maternal responsibilities, and she functions very much as another child in the family. Nora's interactions with Krogstad, from who she borrows money in the back story of the play, identify her as weak 490 A Journey Through My College Papers and foolish. These attributes are typically associated with feminine characters in the literature of the period. In the final scene of A Doll House, Ibsen reverses the gender roles of Nora and Torvald, surprising the audience with this departure from literary norms. Nora tells Torvald that she is leaving him, saying, :I have to stand completely alone, if I'm ever going to discover myself ... From here on there's no use forbidding me anything. I'll take with me whatever is mine. I don't want a thing from you, either now or later" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1150). Nora addresses Torvald from a position of calm strength, employing reason and invoking her unique humanity. These strong behaviors are normally associated with male characters in literature. In response to learning that his wife is leaving him, Torvald first attempts to reassert himself as the patriarchal figure in Nora's life, saying, "O, you blind, Incompetent child! ...Why can't you understand your place in your own home?" (DiYanni, 2008, pp. 1150-1151). A typical, feminine response is for Nora to yield to the masculine pressure that is exerted against her, but Nora remains strong and determined. Since masculine and feminine roles are binary oppositions in literature, Torvald is unable to remain strong in the face of his wife's strength. As she assumes the masculine traits of strength and reason, Torvald succumbs to the corresponding feminine traits of weakness and emotion. He says, "You no longer love me ... Can you tell me what I did to lose your love?" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1151). In the final moment of the play, Torvald "sinks down on a chair, face buried in his hands" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1153). In this moment, Torvald is the weak, emotional, feminine character, despite being a man, and Nora, who resolutely stands for herself and leaves an unhealthy relationship, is the strong, logical, masculine character, despite being a woman. By introducing familiar, expected gender roles throughout his play and then inverting the roles at the conclusion of the action, Ibsen comments on the fallacy of the perceived roles of men and women in literature. A man need not always be strong, logical, and responsible, and a woman need not always be week, emotional, and foolish. Each sex is capable of experiencing the stereotypical traits of both genders. A woman can be strong and competent. A man can be weak and irrational. Ibsen broadens his audience's experience and understanding of the relationship between men and women, and between masculine and feminine. References: DiYanni, R. (Ed.). (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Whitla, W. (2010). The English handbook: A guide to literary studies. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell. Writing an Annotated Bibliography 11/29/2012 I first encountered the annotated bibliography in my freshman year of college, in the fall, 2008, semester of composition I. Since then, I have written many annotated bibliographies in the various courses that lead to my degree in English. I have written annotated bibliographies for several of the courses in my social sciences with an education concentration major, as well. Writing annotated bibliographies has given me practice summarizing the main points of the articles I have used in my research for numerous papers. It has helped me to identify which articles have been worth keeping for use in my writing and which articles I have needed to discard from my research. If an annotated bibliography was not required in a course, I might or might not create one, depending on the subject of a paper and the complexity of the research which I collected for Undergraduate Series 491 the project. I usually prefer to read articles, collect quotes that may be useful in the final writing, then eliminate those articles that do not yield useful information. I suppose this process is not too dissimilar to writing an annotated bibliography, since both efforts require reading research and evaluating the relevance and usefulness of specific articles for the research in question. I do recognize that an annotated bibliography requires the researcher to clearly identify how the article relates to the proposed thesis, and it also requires the researcher to clearly state the credibility or lack thereof of each article that is annotated. These steps are less defined in my preferred method, and I might use an annotated bibliography if I feel the need to clearly define these aspects of my research. Literary Research 12/6/2012 The most current trends discussed in the text are poststructuralism and postmodernism, each of which is a form of literary analysis that began in the first half of the last century. Poststructuralism includes deconstruction, which seeks meaning in what is missing from or inconsistent in a text. As Whitla (2010) writes: "A deconstructive reading ... foregrounds those very elements that critical readers have been taught to either ignore or explain away" (p. 279). Postmodernism uses similar ideas, "decentering ... the subject ... Now the 'I' does not refer to an author as an individual, but is an absent center" (Whitla, 2010, p. 282). Examining the absent in deconstruction and experiencing an absent subject in postmodernism both point to social trends, especially in America, of recognizing and elevated the absent or marginalized members of society and previously suppressed and repressed ideas in modern literature. Literary research is rather different from literary criticism. Current trends and methods in literary research involve comparing and contrasting texts within and across or between genres to find deeper meaning in a primary text. Referring to the assigned text for information on current trends and methods in literary research is difficult, since the assigned chapters address reading strategies and critical practice, but they do not address literary research. With that caveat in mind, literary research has changed in recent years because of the growing popularity and power of the Internet. Nearly every college and university now provides students access to online databases such as JSTOR, EBSCOhost, and ProQuest, which offer collections of articles and other scholarly texts that can be used to explicate and expand upon the themes of primary texts. A variety of online sites offer full-text versions of primary texts, as well as secondary texts that discuss primary texts and that are useful to students who are studying the texts. There are a number of major sites for texts, including Project Gutenberg and Google Books, that "cover major documents in philosophy, history, and literature from the ancient world to the modern age" (Whitla, 2010, p. 41). Personally, while I am a huge proponent of printed books -- on paper most of the time, but on vellum or parchment when I can get them -- I have not used the research facilities of a brick-and-mortar library since I acquired reliable Internet access. Searching an electronic archive is faster than browsing through the stacks, even though there is a serious aesthetic loss of the smell of well-used books. Skimming an article with the search function on the computer is faster than visually skimming a full text. Deep immersion in the books that discuss a topic has been replaced by the sterile economy of finding information quickly and anonymously. References: Whitla, W. (2010). The English handbook: A guide to literary studies. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell. 492 A Journey Through My College Papers Literary Analysis of “Who’s Irish” 12/6/2012 Gish Jen's "Who's Irish" is written in 1998 and set in an unidentified American town. It is a postmodern text that overturns the idea that Chinese immigrants are lazy and that they are inferior to white, Irish Americans. Jen's theme is the binary opposition between the narrator's Chinese heritage and work ethic and the Irish heritage and lack of work ethic of her daughter's husband and his family. "I am work hard all my life, and fierce besides ... My daughter is fierce too, she is vice president of the bank now" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 235). The narrator contrasts herself with her daughter's husband and his brothers, saying, "every one of them is on welfare, or socalled severance pay, or so-called disability pay. Something. They say they cannot find work, this is not the economy of the fifties" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 236). Jen writes as the narrator thinks and speaks, in broken English, suggesting that the narrator is inferior to her white neighbors, but it is the narrator's Chinese relatives who work hard and their Irish in-laws who are unemployed and supported by society. The contrast between traditional, Chinese child-rearing and modern, American childrearing is a prominent theme of the story. "It is inside that she [Sophie] is like not any Chinese girl I ever see ... All my Chinese friends had babies, I never saw one of them act wild like that" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 238). The Chinese grandmother expects the three-year-old Sophie to be wellbehaved like the Chinese children with whom the grandmother is familiar. Sophie's ChineseAmerican mother and her Irish-American father are indulgent about their daughter's behavior and support their daughter instead of her grandmother, the narrator. This contrast between the two cultures from two different generations on two different continents illustrates how modern society has become less interested in the values of the past and has attached a newer, deeper value to creativity and self-expression. At the end of the story, the narrator's efforts to care for Sophie in the park instead harm the child. With this scene, Jen suggests that the old ways, represented by the Chinese grandmother, are harmful to the modern ways, represented by Sophie. Sophie's parents keep her away from her grandparents after this, suggesting that traditional customs and methods should be set aside in favor of modern, American lifestyle choices. The grandmother is too old to climb into the hole to get Sophie out, indicating that the narrator and her generation are becoming obsolete. Finally, the Chinese narrator goes to live with Sophie's Irish, paternal grandmother. The two elderly women come from different cultures, but they come from the same time period, and they are able to keep each other company while their children and their shared granddaughter go on without the interference of past customs, traditions, and expectations about the way people should live and the way children should behave. The entire story is a commentary on the way in which modern society sets aside traditional customs and cultures. Modern children are allowed, and even encouraged, to be wild. Women support husbands who do not work. Traditional values about gender roles, work ethics, and the behavior of children are supplanted by new ideas. References: DiYanni, R. (Ed.). (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Undergraduate Series 493 Examining Gender in A Doll House December 10, 2012 Throughout much of English language literature, gender and sex are equated with specific human traits. Strength is male and weakness is female. Men are stable and women are capricious. Logic is masculine and imagination is feminine. Often, a literary character can be identified as being male or female simply based on the character’s behavior or on the ways in which other characters respond to the character in question. “One of the most obvious issues that Ibsen brings to his audience is that of late nineteenth-century gender roles” (Parker, 2003, para. 1). Ibsen uses stereotypical gender attributes in his characterization of Nora and Torvald throughout the body of A Doll House, and then abruptly reverses the stereotypes in the final moments of the play to show that inner strength and weakness are functions of being human, not functions of gender. “When A Doll's House debuted, its ending -- perhaps the most celebrated in modern drama – shook the foundations of fin-de-siècle domesticity” (Westgate, 2004, p. 502). Domestic life is centered around the supposed stability of the gender roles of Victorian society; fin-de-siècle refers to the final years of the 19th century, or the end of the Victorian age. “The play is set in the 19th century, and it explores the unequal gender roles of the time” (Sukhoterina, 2011, para. 3). Men are men, running businesses and commanding households; women are women, yielding to their male relatives, tending to the homes, and raising the children. Including Nora and Torvald, there are six major characters in A Doll House. Three major characters are women and three major characters are men. The female characters are Nora, Mrs. Linde, and Anne-Marie; and the male characters are Torvald, Dr. Rank, and Krogstad. This balance of gender roles is intentional, and each character’s role in the story contributes to the final revelation that women can be strong, men can be weak, and strength and weakness are human traits, not gender traits. “In many cases, ‘manly ideals’ (courage, dignity, seriousness) were elevated to ‘human ideals’ and female ideals (gentleness, kindness, active sympathy) were desirable only in the home ‘and certainly not in literature’” (Nash, 1996, p. 561). Nora and Torvald represent the stereotypical ideals of their respective genders throughout much of the play while Mrs. Linde, Dr. Rank, Anne-Marie, and Krogstad foreshadow the final message of the play by displaying personality traits outside the stereotypes. Among the traits associated with women in Victorian society are physical, mental, and moral weakness; mental and emotional instability, and a tendency to be fanciful, imaginative, or illogical. These are parts of the female ideals that are deemed to be undesirable outside the home. As Ibsen’s leading female role, Nora embodies all of these traits until the final minutes of the play. “Ibsen conceived of Nora as a woman trapped in a patriarchal society” (Otten, 1998, p. 512). As such, Nora is portrayed as weak, unstable, and imaginative. As is common in Victorian society, “Nora is more of a possession and an amusement than a companion to her husband” (Parker, 2003, para. 2). In the opening scene, Torvald establishes for the audience his ownership of Nora as a pet when he says, “Is that my squirrel rummaging around? ... When did my squirrel get in?” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1106). Torvald uses several similar, diminutive nicknames for Nora in the opening scene, also calling her a lark and a spendthrift (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1106). In addition, Torvald “takes her by the ear,” thus establishing physical as well as emotional and financial control of Nora (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1106). By accepting Torvald’s pet names and physical control, Nora exhibits her feminine weakness. An important, feminine weakness in the Victorian age is society’s requirement that men be responsible for the legal and financial affairs of women. “Nora could not borrow any money without her husband’s consent. On the other hand, a husband could do whatever he pleased with 494 A Journey Through My College Papers property that was his wife’s before the marriage” (Parker, 2003, para. 6). The inability to enter into a contract forces artificial weakness on Nora; habitual weakness of this nature can lead to a woman believing that her weakness comes from the nature of her gender, and can cause her to forget that her weakness in imposed by society. Victorian society assumes that women are mentally and emotionally unstable, and that they are given to unpredictable or impulsive behavior. When Nora arrives home with her Christmas shopping and gives the delivery boy a generous tip, she is displaying the impulsivity of her gender (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1106). Interestingly, if a man gives the same amount for a tip, he is not characterized as impulsive in Victorian society but as generous and philanthropic. While creativity in running a household is valued in the Victorian age, imagination, flights of fancy, and illogic are undesirable traits that are associated with the feminine. As Nora’s personal drama begins to overwhelm her in the course of the story, Nora imagines seducing Dr. Rank then imagines taking her own life (Ibsen, 1879, pp. 1132, 1139). Her imaginings are examples of her feminine instability. “Feminists and others have pointed out that Nora plays the role of coquette throughout to gain empowerment in a male-dominated world” (Otten, 1998, p. 515) Related to emotional and mental instability is moral instability, which is evident in Nora’s habit of lies and deceptions. A fairly innocent example of Nora’s lies is the macaroons that she smuggles into the house, eats secretly, and tells Torvald she has not eaten (Ibsen, 1879, pp. 11061108). She lies about the macaroons again when she accuses Mrs. Linde of bringing the pastries into the house and giving them to Nora (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1116). This minor deception is a backdrop for Nora’s larger, darker lies about forgery and borrowed money throughout the story. Kristine Linde does not fit the stereotype of a Victorian woman controlled by a patriarchal society. Mrs. Linde is introduced as an old friend of Nora’s whom Nora has not seen in a number of years. Mrs. Linde is a widow, which frees her from many of the constraints of her society against women. Mrs. Linde is able to live on her own, to make her own decisions, and to enter into contracts. She is strong in contrast with Nora’s weakness, and it is interesting to note that “it is only because she is widowed that Mrs. Linde is allowed to work outside her home” (Parker, 2003, para. 5). Mrs. Linde’s strength is a subtle foreshadowing of Ibsen’s message at the end of the play that a woman can be strong. Mrs. Linde is practical in contrast with Nora’s fanciful behavior. Mrs. Linde recognizes this difference between the two women and she asks Nora, “Nora, Nora, aren’t you sensible yet?” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1110). By this question, Mrs. Linde suggests that Nora can overcome her feminine imagination and become a strong, sensible woman. It is only later, at the end of the play, that Nora accepts the possibility and becomes sensible and strong herself. Mrs. Linde is a practical woman in contrast to Nora’s impracticality. Women of Victorian society are often occupied with needlework. Nora’s activity consists of “needlework, crocheting, embroidery, and such” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1110). Mrs. Linde, who makes her own way as an independent woman, spends her time on practical knitting, which prompts Torvald to criticize her by saying that knitting “can never be anything but ugly” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1143). Mrs. Linde is a former schoolmate of Nora’s, but Mrs. Linde is more mature than is Nora. Whereas Nora’s childish behavior has been cultivated as part of her role as a Victorian wife, Mrs. Linde has gained maturity by supporting an invalid mother and young brothers, and later by supporting herself as a widow (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1111). The experiences that have given Mrs. Linde maturity have also given her a strength that supports Nora’s strength in the final scenes of the play. Anne-Marie is the Helmers’ children’s maid. She is an older woman, and she was Nora’s maid when Nora was a child. Nora is a servant, so her activities are controlled by society, but as a children’s maid in a good household she is not under the direct control of a male relative and thus has more autonomy than has Nora. Anne-Marie is a mother who gave up her presumably Undergraduate Series 495 illegitimate child many years ago to become Nora’s maid. She made a difficult but practical decision for her child, whom she gave “to strangers” to raise (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1125). The decision was practical for Anne-Marie, as well, as she could not find respectable employment as a single mother, but as a childless woman she is able to be both Nora’s maid and maid to Nora’s children in their turn. Male traits of strength, stability, and logic or reason are valued in Victorian society. These traits are typically associated with men, and their occasional presence in women is often ignored or glossed over. Torvald is a stereotypical example of the strong, stable, rational male. “Torvald is in charge, society's darling and the male head of the household” (Johnston, 2000, para. 31). As stated above, Torvald exhibits strength in opposition to Nora’s weakness. Torvald is in charge of his home and his family, and he controls all of the money. Torvald weakens Nora with pet names, as illustrated above. He calls her a squirrel and a lark. “These [pet names] all go to show how he views Nora’s relationship to him. He never consults her on matters of any importance and leaves almost no responsibility to her” (Parker, 2003, para. 2). Torvald’s strength is also reflected in society’s opinion of him and of how he conducts his marriage and his other affairs. Torvald, like many men of his society, derives pleasure and prestige from society’s view of him. “[A]n important component in these feelings is the social satisfaction [Torvald] derives from having a beautiful young wife all to himself, someone he can parade around in front of other men as his trophy, arousing their jealously when he takes her away from the party to gratify the sexual stimulation he has gained by her public dance” (Johnston, 2000, para. 21). It is understood in Victorian society that Nora does not exhibit herself of her own accord, but only as a representation of her husband’s desires and his strength and control in her life. Torvald represents stability in opposition to Nora’s impulsivity. “[Torvald] only sees it as his duty to look after [Nora’s] best interests by being her provider and making sure she has nothing to worry about. This was the accepted position of the day” (Parker, 2003, para. 5). Torvald has a prestigious position at a large bank, and he has held a respectable job before the bank job. Torvald tells Nora that “it’s so gratifying to know that one’s gotten a safe, secure job, and with a comfortable salary” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1108). Torvald’s economic security parallels the security of his social position and his reputation. This stability is represented throughout the play by the inner sanctum of Torvald’s study, which is entered only by men, and by the work that Torvald attends to over the holiday. In Victorian society, men are considered to be reasonable and logical in contrast with the fanciful imagination of women. Torvald’s dispassionate dismissal of Krogstad from the bank to protect the bank’s reputation is an example of Torvald’s calm reason. Dr. Rank is an older gentleman who is close friends with both Torvald and Nora. He is a respectable man of good reputation and apparent wealth, but he does not fit the complete stereotype of a Victorian man. Dr. Rank is not strong; he is weakened by illness and the awareness of imminent death. He tells Nora in confidence that the illness that is taking his life is an inherited disease, and that Dr. Rank is “serving time for my father’s gay army days ... the unhappy bones that never shared in the fun” (Ibsen, 1879, pp. 1130-1131). Both the illness and the willingness to confide in another man’s wife are indications that Dr. Rank, despite being a man, is not strong. In addition, Dr. Rank expresses his feelings to Nora when he tells her that Torvald is not the only man “[w]ho’d gladly give up his life for you ... [and] I’ve loved you just as deeply as somebody else” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1132). In the Victorian age, it is not usual for a man to express tender emotions. That Dr. Rank is able to do so supports Torvald’s emotional expressions at the end of the play, which illustrate that a man can have and express emotions. Nils Krogstad is a widower with young children. Although being a widow bestows strength on a Victorian woman, being a widower is a liability for a Victorian man. Men in 496 A Journey Through My College Papers Krogstad’s society are not trained or equipped to raise children, so he is forced into a position of weakness by his bereavement. Krogstad is further weakened by scandal that attaches to his name. He tells Nora, “a good many years ago, I did something rather rash ... every door was closed in my face from then on” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1119). Losing his reputation in society forces on Krogstad weakness and instability. Krogstad is a man who is able to express emotion. When he is reunited with Mrs. Linde, he tells her, “When I lost you, it was as if all the solid ground dissolved from under my feet” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1140). Krogstad’s emotional expression, paired with that of Dr. Rank, supports Torvald’s ability to express emotion at the end of the play. After establishing Nora and Torvald as stereotypical examples of gender-associated personality traits, Ibsen reverses gender roles. He does this to make the point that he has been alluding to throughout the pay in the supporting characters of Mrs. Linde, Dr. Rank, Anne-Marie, and Krogstad, that strength and weakness, stability and impulsivity, logic and fancy are all human traits. Ibsen shows that these traits are held and displayed equally by both women and men, and that neither gender has a monopoly on any one human trait. Torvald’s role is reversed in the final scenes as he expresses a range of emotions from anger to love to despair. When he reads Krogstad’s letter about Nora’s deceptions, Torvald flies into a rage, blaming Nora for ruining Torvald’s life and reputation (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1147). When Torvald realizes that Krogstad no longer plans to make Nora’s deception public, Torvald forgives Nora and expresses his tenderness toward her (Ibsen, 1879, pp. 1148-1149). As the play closes, Torvald realizes that he has lost Nora, and he sits alone, “face buried in his hands” in despair (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1153). Torvald has realized that he is not in control of his own life since Krogstad has the power to ruin him. Torvald is not in control of Nora since Nora has walked out on Nora and the children. Torvald is weak, emotional, and broken. In other words, he is human. Nora discovers that “her gender role was an obstacle to her personal fulfillment” (Urban, 1997, para. 2). Nora’s gender roles reverse with this discovery and she becomes rational and strong. After the dance and after learning of Dr. Rank’s death, Nora talks seriously to Torvald about their life and their marriage. She tells him, “You don’t understand me. And I’ve never understood you either – until tonight” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1149). Nora is calm and rational in the face of Torvald’s protests in the conversation. Even her decision to leave her husband and her children and to go into the world on her own is a logical, rational, mature decision in the best interests of the entire family. In talking honestly with Torvald, and in following through with her decision to leave her home and her family, Nora exhibits great strength. “Nora must go out into the world and educate herself, which, in the context of the play, means to support herself” (Urban, 1997, para. 12). Nora faces the greatest unknown of her life; as a Victorian woman, Nora has been controlled and protected, first by her father and then by her husband, for her whole life. Now, Nora sets out to support herself and to take responsibility for her life. She begins by resisting Torvald in a serious matter for the first time in their marriage. She has resisted him in small ways by spending money and by indulging in sweets, but resisting Torvald’s efforts to keep Nora from leaving home requires a different strength from Nora. “[Nora] was aware of the male ego and did not want Torvald to feel threatened so she played dumb most of the time. The fact was that not only was she more capable than him but was also more than a match for him intellectually” (Rakshit, 2010, para. 7). Because strength is a human trait, not a gender-defined trait, Nora’s strength was always inside her, and she calls upon it in the final scene. She is no longer so concerned with bolstering Torvald’s ego as she is with discovering her own identity as an independent individual. Torvald and Nora epitomize the stereotypes of their genders throughout the play so that the reversal of their gender roles in the final scene will have a significant impact on the audience, demonstrating that inner strength and weakness, stability and impulsivity or caprice, and logic and Undergraduate Series 497 imagination or fancy are human traits, not gender traits. “Unfortunately discrimination on the basis of gender is prevalent in many cultures and societies till this present day” (Rakshit, 2010, para. 1). Ibsen teaches an important truth through the story of a family’s collapse over the three days of the Christmas holiday. Men can be weak and women can be strong. Women can be rational and men can be emotional. Men and women can be logical, illogical, reasonable, and fanciful. The stereotypes imposed by society on masculine and feminine genders need not define each individual within the society, and each person has and exhibits a wide range of personal traits that together describe the unique individual. There is no special honor to strength, rationality, and reason, and there is no special shame attached to weakness, impulsiveness, and imagination. Each trait is a facet of humanity; humanity would be lessened by the exclusion of any one of these traits in one gender or the other, and humanity is strengthened by the inclusion of strength and weakness, stability and caprice, rationality and imagination in each and every individual, regardless of gender. References Ibsen, H. (1879). A doll house. Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.), 1105-1153. New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Johnston, I. (2000). On Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Retrieved from http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/ibsen.htm Nash, J. (1996). Gender roles and sexuality in Victorian literature by Christopher Parker. Victorian Studies, 39(4), 560-562. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3828945 Otten, T. (1998). How old is Dr. Rank?. Modern Drama, 41(4), 509-522. Retrieved from EBSCOHost. Parker, B.D. (2003). Gender issues in A Doll’s House. Retrieved from http://www.charminggeek.net/words/docs/ADollsHouse.pdf Rakshit, I. (2010). A feminist reading of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. Retrieved from http://suite101.com/article/gender-and-status-of-women-in-society-as-portrayed-inliterature-a251751 Sukhoterina, Y. (2011). 'A Doll's House' explores gender roles of the 19th century. The South End. Retrieved from http://thesouthend.wayne.edu/article/2011/10/039a_doll039s_house039_explores_g ender_roles_of_the_19th_century Westgate, J.C. (2004). A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. Theatre Journal, 56(3), 500-502. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25069492 Final Paper Progress 12/12/2012 With the draft of my paper submitted at the end of week three, I am nearly done with my final paper. I don't like to submit partial drafts, so I wrote a full first draft for that assignment. Now, I am waiting for feedback on the draft so I can use Dr. Henry's markups to polish my paper for final submission. The actual writing of the paper went very smoothly and I encountered few frustrations because I was thinking about and mentally working out my thesis and my supporting discussion from the beginning of class. My topic is the use of gender roles in Ibsen's A Doll House, so my outline included sections for female gender roles, male gender roles, and Ibsen's reversal of gender roles at the end of the play. Constructing an outline, then sorting into it the quotes I gathered from 498 A Journey Through My College Papers my preliminary research and from the primary text was a huge help to keeping my thoughts in order and my writing on track. One of the most important things in a final paper that I think may be overlooked in the struggle to gather and synthesize research is making sure the paper is well-written. In today's world, it seems to be exceptionally easy for writers to be too casual in their spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Even a well-researched paper will not be well-received if it has sloppy spelling and sentence construction, so I try to pay particular attention to these technical details. Microsoft Office Word has a very useful grammar and spelling check function that helps avoid the errors that can draw attention away from a strong argument through weak writing. As a result, my suggestion to any writer is to pay close attention to the details of formal writing to support and to showcase a strong argument and painstaking research. Language and Literary Studies 12/13/2012 In reading chapter 8 of our text, I learned a few linguistic terms to which I had not previously been exposed. "Enthymeme" sent me searching in online dictionaries for a definition, and then for a refresher on the meaning of "syllogism," before I read a few lines further in the text and discovered that an enthymeme is "an argument that omits a premise or conclusion when the speaker can predict that the audience will supply the missing stage of the argument, so that the conclusion will follow logically" (Whitla, 2010, p. 232). This is a concept that I will need to explore in greater detail before I feel comfortable with the construction. The outline of the six paragraphs of a classical argument is fascinating to me. I hope that learning the structure of this sort of document will help me to recognize it when I find it in literature, which will enhance my understanding of such an argument. A review of alliteration, assonance, and anaphora is especially useful to the study of literature, as it is important to notice these patterns and to recognize the significance of the messages being transmitted by these schemes. Linguistics can be used to analyze a text in a variety of ways. The diction, syntax, and euphony in a text can identify class and regional distinctions (Whitla, 2010, p. 240). Simpler words and phrases can suggest a lower class while more complex words and phrases can suggest a higher socio-economic class. Levels of language can also indicate class and educational distinctions, registers can influence the sound of language in a text, and dialects can represent geographical regions and socio-economic classes (Whitla, 2010, p. 241). Poe's "The Black Cat" uses a variety of figures of speech. The narrator identifies his drinking problem by referring to "the Fiend Intemperance ...for what disease is like Alcohol! ... fumes of the night's debauch .. plunged into excess ... drowned in wine ... [and] half stupefied, in a den of more than infamy" (DiYanni, 2008, pp. 138-139). Each of these references illustrates for the reader that the narrator's drinking is a negative thing in his life: even that it is evil, as he calls it a fiend and a disease. The narrator uses similar figures of speech to refer to the second cat: "I avoided the creature ... a brute beast ... the hot breath of the thing upon my face ... an incarnate nightmare ... the crafty animal ... still my tormentor came not ... I had walled the monster up within the tomb" (DiYanni, 2008, pp. 140-143). The diction and syntax of the final example are ironic since the narrator refers to the cat as the monster when it is actually the narrator himself who is the monster who has murdered the first cat and the wife and has then walled up his wife's body and slept soundly after the deed. The level of language in "The Black Cat" is generally fairly high, using vocabulary that identifies the narrator as a member of the upper-middle class. The register of the language is also Undergraduate Series 499 high, so that the prose of the story has a poetic quality. Poe personifies concepts by beginning certain nouns with capital letters, as in Perverseness, Man, and Law, thus imbuing these ideas with a greater importance for the reader than the words would have if they were not capitalized. Poe foreshadows the murder and its final discovery from the beginning of the story by writing in the first paragraph: "Yet, mad am I not -- and very surely do I not dream. But tomorrow I die, and today I would underben my soul" (DiYanni, 2008, p. 137). The arrangement of words, or the syntax, in these two sentences is poetic in the placement of the verbs and of the negative modifier "not." A more usual expression would be: "I am not mad, and very surely I do not dream. I will die tomorrow, and I would unburden my soul today." Poe's version is more musical, and by his placement of "not" in the two phrases he draws attention to the madness and to the sense that the narrator is dreaming. References DiYanni, R. (Ed.). (2008). Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Whitla, W. (2010). The English handbook: A guide to literary studies. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell. Reflecting on the Course 12/17/2012 Through this English capstone course, and through my other English courses at Ashford, I have gained a more detailed understanding of the various theories of critical analysis. I was unfamiliar with deconstructionism when I began my studies, and other theories were familiar in hazily defined ways. I now feel comfortable applying a range of diverse critical theories to literary analysis. Going forward, I plan to apply my current knowledge to continuing education as I apply for graduate programs. I am currently torn between a graduate program for rhetoric and composition and a graduate program for linguistics. In either program, I will be able to use the concepts that I have learned while building toward my undergraduate degree. My ultimate goal is to teach entry level college English, especially composition and remedial English skills for adult students. I have been exposed to a wide range of literature in my courses -- some very familiar to me and some wholly new to me -- which will help me to teach students about analyzing existing literature and about creating their own, original literature. While I have gained valuable information in the course of my studies, I regret that there has been very little instruction in pure writing. I have enjoyed the many literary analyses that I have written, but I would feel more confident about going on with my personal and professional goals if I had received more instruction and practice in professional writing for academic publication, which will be a critical component of my graduate school experience. Still, I have had a great many opportunities to write in these courses, and that has helped me develop writing habits that should be helpful as I go forward. All of my English textbooks will remain in my personal library as resources for future study and for personal reading for pleasure. There are many, many stories, poems, and plays in these anthologies that did not factor in my course work, and I look forward to exploring this additional literature at my own pace. 500 A Journey Through My College Papers Examining Gender in A Doll House December 17, 2012 Throughout much of English language literature, gender and sex are equated with specific human traits. Strength is male and weakness is female. Men are stable and women are capricious. Logic is masculine and imagination is feminine. Often, a literary character can be identified as being male or female simply based on the character’s behavior or on the ways in which other characters respond to the character in question. “One of the most obvious issues that Ibsen brings to his audience is that of late nineteenth-century gender roles” (Parker, 2003, para. 1). Ibsen uses stereotypical gender attributes in his characterization of Nora and Torvald throughout the body of A Doll House, and then abruptly reverses the stereotypes in the final moments of the play to show that inner strength and weakness are functions of being human, not functions of gender. “When A Doll's House debuted, its ending -- perhaps the most celebrated in modern drama – shook the foundations of fin-de-siècle domesticity” (Westgate, 2004, p. 502). Domestic life is centered on the supposed stability of the gender roles of Victorian society; fin-de-siècle refers to the final years of the 19th century, or the end of the Victorian age. “The play is set in the 19th century, and it explores the unequal gender roles of the time” (Sukhoterina, 2011, para. 3). Men are men, running businesses and commanding households; women are women, yielding to their male relatives, tending to the homes, and raising the children. Including Nora and Torvald, there are six major characters in A Doll House. Three major characters are women and three major characters are men. The female characters are Nora, Mrs. Linde, and Anne-Marie; and the male characters are Torvald, Dr. Rank, and Krogstad. This balance of gender roles is intentional, and each character’s role in the story contributes to the final revelation that women can be strong, men can be weak, and strength and weakness are human traits, not gender traits. “In many cases, ‘manly ideals’ (courage, dignity, seriousness) were elevated to ‘human ideals’ and female ideals (gentleness, kindness, active sympathy) were desirable only in the home ‘and certainly not in literature’” (Nash, 1996, p. 561). Nora and Torvald represent the stereotypical ideals of their respective genders throughout much of the play while Mrs. Linde, Dr. Rank, Anne-Marie, and Krogstad foreshadow the final message of the play by displaying personality traits outside the stereotypes. Among the traits associated with women in Victorian society are physical, mental, and moral weakness; mental and emotional instability, and a tendency to be fanciful, imaginative, or illogical. These are parts of the female ideals that are deemed to be undesirable outside the home. As Ibsen’s leading female role, Nora embodies all of these traits until the final minutes of the play. “Ibsen conceived of Nora as a woman trapped in a patriarchal society” (Otten, 1998, p. 512). As such, Nora is portrayed as weak, unstable, and imaginative. As Parker (2003) describes, as is common in Victorian society, Nora’s husband does not view her as an equal but rather an “amusement” or “possession” (para 2). In the opening scene, Torvald establishes for the audience his ownership of Nora as a pet when he says, “Is that my squirrel rummaging around? ... When did my squirrel get in?” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1106). Torvald uses several similar, diminutive nicknames for Nora in the opening scene, also calling her a “lark” and a “spendthrift” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1106). In addition, Torvald “takes her by the ear,” thus establishing physical as well as emotional and financial control of Nora (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1106). By accepting Torvald’s pet names and physical control, Nora exhibits her feminine weakness. An important, feminine weakness in the Victorian age is society’s requirement that men be responsible for the legal and financial affairs of women. “Nora could not borrow any money without her husband’s consent. On the other hand, a husband could do whatever he pleased with Undergraduate Series 501 property that was his wife’s before the marriage” (Parker, 2003, para. 6). The inability to enter into a contract forces artificial weakness on Nora; habitual weakness of this nature can lead to a woman believing that her weakness comes from the nature of her gender, and can cause her to forget that her weakness is imposed by society. Victorian society assumes that women are mentally and emotionally unstable, and that they are given to unpredictable or impulsive behavior. When Nora arrives home with her Christmas shopping and gives the delivery boy a generous tip, she is displaying the impulsivity of her gender (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1106). Interestingly, if a man gives the same amount for a tip, he is not characterized as impulsive in Victorian society but as generous and philanthropic. While creativity in running a household is valued in the Victorian age, imagination, flights of fancy, and illogic are undesirable traits that are associated with the feminine. As Nora’s personal drama begins to overwhelm her in the course of the story, Nora imagines seducing Dr. Rank then imagines taking her own life (Ibsen, 1879, pp. 1132, 1139). Her imaginings are examples of her feminine instability. “Feminists and others have pointed out that Nora plays the role of coquette throughout to gain empowerment in a male-dominated world” (Otten, 1998, p. 515) Related to emotional and mental instability is moral instability, which is evident in Nora’s habit of lies and deceptions. A fairly innocent example of Nora’s lies is the macaroons that she smuggles into the house, eats secretly, and tells Torvald she has not eaten (Ibsen, 1879, pp. 11061108). She lies about the macaroons again when she accuses Mrs. Linde of bringing the pastries into the house and giving them to Nora (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1116). This minor deception is a backdrop for Nora’s larger, darker lies about forgery and borrowed money throughout the story. Kristine Linde does not fit the stereotype of a Victorian woman controlled by a patriarchal society. Mrs. Linde is introduced as an old friend of Nora’s whom Nora has not seen in a number of years. Mrs. Linde is a widow, which frees her from many of the constraints of her society against women. Mrs. Linde is able to live on her own, to make her own decisions, and to enter into contracts. She is strong in contrast with Nora’s weakness, and it is interesting to note that “it is only because she is widowed that Mrs. Linde is allowed to work outside her home” (Parker, 2003, para. 5). Mrs. Linde’s strength is a subtle foreshadowing of Ibsen’s message at the end of the play that a woman can be strong. Mrs. Linde is practical in contrast with Nora’s fanciful behavior. Mrs. Linde recognizes this difference between the two women and she asks Nora, “Nora, Nora, aren’t you sensible yet?” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1110). By this question, Mrs. Linde suggests that Nora can overcome her feminine imagination and become a strong, sensible woman. Nora can accomplish this by not relying on being the coquette to get what she wants, but instead finding that inner self-confidence to finally be who she is, or at least to figure out who she is as an individual. It is only later, at the end of the play, that Nora accepts the possibility and becomes sensible and strong herself. Mrs. Linde is a practical woman in contrast to Nora’s impracticality. Women of Victorian society are often occupied with needlework. Nora’s activity consists of “needlework, crocheting, embroidery, and such” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1110). Mrs. Linde, who makes her own way as an independent woman, spends her time on practical knitting, which prompts Torvald to criticize her by saying that knitting “can never be anything but ugly” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1143). This comment on the relative aesthetics of embroidery and knitting showcases Torvald’s and, initially, Nora’s penchant for relying on the surface of things, maintaining the proper image, rather than developing the substance of one’s character. Mrs. Linde is a former schoolmate of Nora’s, but Mrs. Linde is more mature than is Nora. Whereas Nora’s childish behavior has been cultivated as part of her role as a Victorian wife, Mrs. Linde has gained maturity by supporting an invalid mother and young brothers, and later by supporting herself as a widow (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1111). The experiences that have given Mrs. Linde maturity have also given her a strength that supports Nora’s strength in the final scenes of the 502 A Journey Through My College Papers play. Anne-Marie is the Helmers’ children’s maid. She is an older woman, and she was Nora’s maid when Nora was a child. Anne-Marie is a servant, so her activities are controlled by society, but as a children’s maid in a good household she is not under the direct control of a male relative and thus has more autonomy than has Nora. Anne-Marie is a mother who gave up her presumably illegitimate child many years ago to become Nora’s maid. She made a difficult but practical decision for her child, whom she gave “to strangers” to raise (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1125). The decision was practical for Anne-Marie, as well, as she could not find respectable employment as a single mother, but as a childless woman she is able to be both Nora’s maid and maid to Nora’s children in their turn. Ultimately, Anne-Marie become the surrogate mother to the Helmer children when Nora leaves her home, and her children, at the end of the play. Male traits of strength, stability, and logic or reason are valued in Victorian society. These traits are typically associated with men, and their occasional presence in women is often ignored or glossed over. Torvald is a stereotypical example of the strong, stable, rational male. “Torvald is in charge, society's darling and the male head of the household” (Johnston, 2000, para. 31). As stated above, Torvald exhibits strength in opposition to Nora’s weakness. Torvald is in charge of his home and his family, and he controls all of the money. Torvald weakens Nora with pet names, as illustrated above. He calls her a squirrel and a lark. “These [pet names] all go to show how he views Nora’s relationship to him. He never consults her on matters of any importance and leaves almost no responsibility to her” (Parker, 2003, para. 2). How well Torvald really “controls” the money in the family is suspect. Nora knows that she is playing the game of the coquette; at one point, she remarks to Mrs. Linde about never telling Torvald what Nora has been doing, for fear it would “upset the balance” of their relationship. It seems unlikely that Torvald really knows or sees that he is being manipulated, as such knowledge would completely shatter his view of Nora as the stereotypical, weak-minded female. But again, his failure to see what’s right in front of him all along perhaps hints that, just as society glosses over strength or logic in women, society also assumes their presence in men? Torvald’s strength is also reflected in society’s opinion of him and of how he conducts his marriage and his other affairs. Torvald, like many men of his society, derives pleasure and prestige from society’s view of him. “[A]n important component in these feelings is the social satisfaction [Torvald] derives from having a beautiful young wife all to himself, someone he can parade around in front of other men as his trophy, arousing their jealously when he takes her away from the party to gratify the sexual stimulation he has gained by her public dance” (Johnston, 2000, para. 21). It is understood in Victorian society that Nora does not exhibit herself of her own accord, but only as a representation of her husband’s desires and his strength and control in her life. This idea is reinforced when, after the party, Torvald instructs Mrs. Linde to look at Nora because he thinks she is worth looking at. Nora’s success at the party is a direct reflection on Torvald, so they must leave the party after her dance, before that image is tarnished, and then he determines her worth. Torvald represents stability in opposition to Nora’s impulsivity. “[Torvald] only sees it as his duty to look after [Nora’s] best interests by being her provider and making sure she has nothing to worry about. This was the accepted position of the day” (Parker, 2003, para. 5). Torvald has a prestigious position at a large bank, and he has held a respectable job before the bank job. Torvald tells Nora that “it’s so gratifying to know that one’s gotten a safe, secure job, and with a comfortable salary” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1108). Torvald’s economic security parallels the security of his social position and his reputation. It is vital to him that image be maintained; he is horrified that people might think he would succumb to “outside influence” or, even worse, that his wife could actually influence his opinions on important matters. This stability is represented throughout the play by the inner sanctum of Torvald’s study, which is entered only by men, and by Undergraduate Series 503 the work that Torvald attends to over the holiday. In Victorian society, men are considered to be reasonable and logical in contrast with the fanciful imagination of women. Torvald’s dispassionate dismissal of Krogstad from the bank to protect the bank’s reputation is an example of Torvald’s calm reason. Dr. Rank is an older gentleman who is close friends with both Torvald and Nora. He is a respectable man of good reputation and apparent wealth, but he does not fit the complete stereotype of a Victorian man. Dr. Rank is not strong; he is weakened by illness and the awareness of imminent death. He tells Nora in confidence that the illness that is taking his life is an inherited disease, and that Dr. Rank is “serving time for my father’s gay army days ... the unhappy bones that never shared in the fun” (Ibsen, 1879, pp. 1130-1131). Both the illness and the willingness to confide in another man’s wife are indications that Dr. Rank, despite being a man, is not strong. In addition, Dr. Rank expresses his feelings to Nora when he tells her that Torvald is not the only man “[w]ho’d gladly give up his life for you ... [and] I’ve loved you just as deeply as somebody else” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1132). In the Victorian age, it is not usual for a man to express tender emotions. That Dr. Rank is able to do so supports Torvald’s emotional expressions at the end of the play, which illustrate that a man can have and express emotions. Nils Krogstad is a widower with young children. Although being a widow bestows strength on a Victorian woman, being a widower is a liability for a Victorian man. Men in Krogstad’s society are not trained or equipped to raise children, so he is forced into a position of weakness by his bereavement. Krogstad is further weakened by scandal that attaches to his name. He tells Nora, “a good many years ago, I did something rather rash ... every door was closed in my face from then on” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1119). Losing his reputation in society forces on Krogstad weakness and instability. Krogstad is a man who is able to express emotion. When he is reunited with Mrs. Linde, he tells her, “When I lost you, it was as if all the solid ground dissolved from under my feet” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1140). Krogstad’s emotional expression, paired with that of Dr. Rank, supports Torvald’s ability to express emotion at the end of the play. After establishing Nora and Torvald as stereotypical examples of gender-associated personality traits, Ibsen reverses gender roles. He does this to make the point that he has been alluding to throughout the pay in the supporting characters of Mrs. Linde, Dr. Rank, Anne-Marie, and Krogstad: that strength and weakness, stability and impulsivity, logic and fancy are all human traits. Ibsen shows that these traits are held and displayed equally by both women and men, and that neither gender has a monopoly on any one human trait. Torvald’s role is reversed in the final scenes as he expresses a range of emotions from anger to love to despair. When he reads Krogstad’s letter about Nora’s deceptions, Torvald flies into a rage, blaming Nora for ruining Torvald’s life and reputation (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1147). When Torvald realizes that Krogstad no longer plans to make Nora’s deception public, Torvald forgives Nora and expresses his tenderness toward her (Ibsen, 1879, pp. 1148-1149). As the play closes, Torvald realizes that he has lost Nora, and he sits alone, “face buried in his hands” in despair (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1153). Torvald has realized that he is not in control of his own life since Krogstad has the power to ruin him. Torvald is not in control of Nora since Nora has walked out on him and the children. Torvald is weak, emotional, and broken. In other words, he is human. Nora discovers that “her gender role was an obstacle to her personal fulfillment” (Urban, 1997, para. 2). Nora’s gender roles reverse with this discovery and she becomes rational and strong. After the dance and after learning of Dr. Rank’s death, Nora talks seriously to Torvald about their life and their marriage. She tells him, “You don’t understand me. And I’ve never understood you either – until tonight” (Ibsen, 1879, p. 1149). Nora is calm and rational in the face of Torvald’s protests in the conversation. Even her decision to leave her husband and her children and to go into the world on her own is a logical, rational, mature decision in the best interests of the entire family. Nora tells Torvald: “I’m a human being, no less than you – or anyway, I ought 504 A Journey Through My College Papers to try to become one” (DiYanni, 2008, p. 1151). This comment demonstrates that Nora believes that her most important, most paramount duties are human duties—not duties defined by her gender. In talking honestly with Torvald, and in following through with her decision to leave her home and her family, Nora exhibits great strength. “Nora must go out into the world and educate herself, which, in the context of the play, means to support herself” (Urban, 1997, para. 12). Nora faces the greatest unknown of her life; as a Victorian woman, Nora has been controlled and protected, first by her father and then by her husband, for her whole life. Now, Nora sets out to support herself and to take responsibility for her life. She begins by resisting Torvald in a serious matter for the first time in their marriage. She has resisted him in small ways by spending money and by indulging in sweets, but resisting Torvald’s efforts to keep Nora from leaving home requires a different strength from her. “[Nora] was aware of the male ego and did not want Torvald to feel threatened so she played dumb most of the time. The fact was that not only was she more capable than him but was also more than a match for him intellectually” (Rakshit, 2010, para. 7). Because strength is a human trait, not a gender-defined trait, Nora’s strength was always inside her, and she calls upon it in the final scene. She is no longer so concerned with bolstering Torvald’s ego as she is with discovering her own identity as an independent individual. Torvald and Nora epitomize the stereotypes of their genders throughout the play so that the reversal of their gender roles in the final scene has a significant impact on the audience, demonstrating that inner strength and weakness, stability and impulsivity or caprice, and logic and imagination or fancy are human traits, not gender traits. “Unfortunately discrimination on the basis of gender is prevalent in many cultures and societies till this present day” (Rakshit, 2010, para. 1). Ibsen teaches an important truth through the story of a family’s collapse over the three days of the Christmas holiday. Men can be weak and women can be strong. Women can be rational and men can be emotional. Men and women can be logical, illogical, reasonable, and fanciful. The stereotypes imposed by society on masculine and feminine genders need not define each individual within the society, and each person has and exhibits a wide range of personal traits that together describe the unique individual. There is no special honor to strength, rationality, and reason, and there is no special shame attached to weakness, impulsiveness, and imagination. Each trait is a facet of humanity; humanity would be lessened by the exclusion of any one of these traits in one gender or the other, and humanity is strengthened by the inclusion of strength and weakness, stability and caprice, rationality and imagination in each and every individual, regardless of gender. References Ibsen, H. (1879). A doll house. Literature: Approaches to fiction, poetry, and drama (2nd ed.), 1105-1153. New York, NY: McGraw Hill. Johnston, I. (2000). On Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Retrieved from http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/introser/ibsen.htm Nash, J. (1996). Gender roles and sexuality in Victorian literature by Christopher Parker. Victorian Studies, 39(4), 560-562. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3828945 Otten, T. (1998). How old is Dr. Rank?. Modern Drama, 41(4), 509-522. Retrieved from EBSCOHost. Parker, B.D. (2003). Gender issues in A Doll’s House. Retrieved from http://www.charminggeek.net/words/docs/ADollsHouse.pdf Rakshit, I. (2010). A feminist reading of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. Retrieved from http://suite101.com/article/gender-and-status-of-women-in-society-as-portrayed-inliterature-a251751 Sukhoterina, Y. (2011). 'A Doll's House' explores gender roles of the 19th century. The South Undergraduate Series 505 End. Retrieved from http://thesouthend.wayne.edu/article/2011/10/039a_doll039s_house039_explores_gender _roles_of_the_19th_century Westgate, J.C. (2004). A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. Theatre Journal, 56(3), 500-502. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25069492 Spring Semester, 2013 EDU371: Phonics Based Reading & Decoding Literacy Statistics 1/10/2013 As Jeannie Eller discusses in the FUNdamentals Instructional Video DVD, every reader needs a solid foundation on which to learn reading skills (Eller, 2000). Eller addresses adult literacy students in her introductory lesson, referring to students who may have driven 35 MPH in a 30 MPH zone, or who may have gone through the "10 items of less" register with 11 items (Eller, 2000). Clearly, these examples apply not to child learners, but to adult learners. Adult literacy is a serious concern in this country, and the National Assessment for Adult Literacy (NAAL) reports that approximately 11 million American adults are illiterate, scoring below the Below Basic level when tested for literacy (Miller, McCardle, Hernandez, 2010, p. 102). Adult illiteracy is not just a matter of social stigma for the illiterate adult; adult illiteracy poses significant health and safety problems as the illiterate are unable to read and understand information associated with basic health care, employment-related materials, and public signs and notices. In addition, the children of illiterate adults are at greater risk of being illiterate because they lack reading support in the home. The educational strategies presented in Eller's video instruction series are useful for teaching adult students, as well as traditional elementary aged children, to read. Adult students can move from identifying objects by looking at shapes, colors, and pictures to reading the actual words and gaining a better understanding of their world through reading. In a 2009 study by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), researchers learned that American fourth grade reading test scores showed no improvement between 2007 and 2009, and showed only four points total improvement from 1992 to 2009 (Nagel, 2010, para. 4). A concurrent study by the NAEP on eighth grade reading scores showed only one point of improvement from 2007 to 2009, with a total of four points improvement from 1992 to 2009 (Nagel, 2010, para. 3). The slow or nonexistent rise in reading test scores suggests that a new teaching approach is needed to prevent currently low-achieving students from becoming part of the adult illiteracy problem later in life. Eller's fundamental approach to decoding reading through an understanding of the 44 sounds of English and the 70 phonographs that represent those sounds can help students become fluent readers and writers of English (Eller, 2000). Students in fourth and eighth grades are not too old to learn to use phonetics to decode reading and to thus raise test scores across the board. References Eller, J. (2000). Fundamentals: A research-based, phonics tutorial learn to read program. Chandler Heights, AZ: Action Reading. Miller, B., McCardle, P., & Hernandez, R. (2010). Advances and remaining challenges in adult 506 A Journey Through My College Papers literacy research. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 43(2), 101-7. doi.: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022219409359341 Nagel, D. (2010) NAEP: Reading scores flat at grade 4, up slightly at grade 8. The Journal [Electronic version.] Retrieved from http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/03/24/naepreading-scores-flat-at-grade-4-up-slightly-at-grade-8.aspx Reading and Writing Instruction 1/10/2013 The history of reading education in America has been closely tied to the fluctuations of politics. Two schools of thought have been at opposite ends of a swinging pendulum: phonicsbased education and whole-language education (Nichols, 2009). In her FUNdamentals Instructional Video, Eller (2000) dismisses the whole language approach as unwieldy and promotes a study of phonics that allows students to decode any English words without the need to memorize thousands of words that must be recognized by sight. Nichols (2009) defines phonics as: "a word analysis skill that breaks words into their constituent parts and sounds" (para. 5); this definition coincides with Eller's description of the system. In the course of American educational history, the pendulum has swung back and forth between the two schools of reading education, with each change from one method to another promoted as being new and original. The current trend seems to be a return to phonics education, which allows students to achieve greater fluency in less time than is required for whole language education. The Four Blocks Literacy Model presents educational research on reading instruction. Patricia and James Cunningham and Richard Allington, researchers for Four Blocks, report that most American schools adopt research-based reading and writing instruction and that phonics and phonemic instruction are useful for giving students a firm foundation for learning to read fluent English (Cunningham, Cunningham, Allington, 2002). While Eller (2000) suggests that phonics instruction is equally effective for any student from the earliest grades through late adulthood, Cunningham, Cunningham, and Allington (2002) report that phonics instruction is not effective for reading instruction beyond the first grade (p. 2). Cunningham, et. al. (2002), resist the recommendation that phonics instruction should be completed by the end of the second grade, however, citing the many complicated words that students encounter beginning in third grade as a reason for continuing phonics education in conjunction with a study of morphology throughout a student's education (p. 3). A report by the National Right to Read Foundation recommends to use of phonemics and phonics education in teaching students to read (Federally Funded Research, n.d.). These recommendations are based on research conducted over a period of 30 years by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and the related Project Follow Through Study (Federally Funded Research, n.d., para. 1). The research in these studies does not support the whole language instruction that is often at odds with phonics instruction, to the point that whole language instruction is not even mentioned in the report. It appears, from this education research, that American reading instruction is again at the phonics end of the pendulum of education history. References Cunningham, P.M., Cunningham, J.W. & Allington, R.L. (2002). Research on the components of a comprehensive reading and writing instructional program. Retrieved from http://www.wfu.edu/education/fourblocks/ComLitInstr(Specific).doc Undergraduate Series 507 Eller, J. (2000). Fundamentals: A research-based, phonics tutorial learn to read program. Chandler Heights, AZ: Action Reading. Federally funded research: Principles of reading instruction based on the findings of scientific research on reading. (n.d.) Retrieved from The National Right to Read Foundation website at http://www.nrrf.org/nichd.htm#brp Nichols, J.B. (2009). Pendulum swing in reading instruction. Rivier Academic Journal, 5(1) [Electronic version.]. Retrieved from www.rivier.edu/journal/ROAJ-Spring-2009/J257Nichols.pdf Literacy Standards 1/17/2013 The Literacy in Learning Exchange is an online resource to help teachers give support and find support for discovering and utilizing new methods for teaching reading and writing and for improving literacy in the United States (Dunsmore, 2012). This support is useful for teachers who work to meet or exceed the core standards for literacy in each state and as defined by the National Center for Literacy Education (NCLE), which makes available the Literacy in Learning Exchange website. The state of Arizona has been instrumental in developing literacy standards that help ensure that students are prepared to succeed as college students and as members of the workforce when they complete high school. An Internet search for literacy standards shows that similar programs are in place in every state in the nation. Eller's foundation of phonics-based reading skills in FUNdamentals is one of many similar reading instruction programs that help teachers and students to reach the minimum standards of literacy. Phonics instruction helps students to achieve required literacy for success. The document that lays out Arizona's standards for English language arts (ELA) for kindergarten states: "Reading Process consists of the five critical components of reading, which are Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary and Comprehension of connected text. These elements support each other and are woven together to build a solid foundation of linguistic understanding for the reader" (Strand 1, 2012, para. 1). These components reflect the teaching on Eller's instructional video, in which we learn about phonemics (how sounds make words), phonics (how letters are symbols that represent sounds), and fluency (sliding from sound to sound more quickly to blend sounds and form words) (Eller, 2000). In the CDs assigned for this week, our students learned the foundation of reading by learning the /ah/, /buh/, /cuh/, and other sounds and by forming these sounds into words. Students then learned to recognize and to reproduce the letters or symbols that represent these sounds to enable the students to read printed text. The games and songs on the CDs reflect the creative teaching methods that are encouraged by the Literacy in Learning Exchange. Applying reading skills to play, to music, and to other areas of interest reinforces literacy education. These same lessons from the CDs meet Arizona's standards for literacy, including: "Recognize that print represents spoken language and conveys meaning ... Start at the top left of the printed page, track words from left to right, using return sweep, and move from the top to the bottom of the page ... [and] Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters" (Strand 1, 2012, PO 1-6). Eller's CDs explain how letters represent sounds. They teach and remind students to move across the page from left to right and from top to bottom. They teach students to combine sounds to make words and to print words using the letters that represent the sounds (Eller, 2000). 508 A Journey Through My College Papers References Dunsmore, K. (2012). Welcome to the Literacy in Learning Exchange. Retrieved from http://www.literacyinlearningexchange.org/blog/welcome-literacy-learning-exchange Eller, J. (2000). Fundamentals: A research-based, phonics tutorial learn to read program. Chandler Heights, AZ: Action Reading. Strand 1: Reading process (Kindergarten). (2012). Reading Standard Articulated. Retrieved from the Arizona Department of Education Website at http://www.azed.gov/standardspractices/files/2011/09/rdgstrand1final.doc Reading Instruction Theory 1/17/2013 There is a variety of methods of reading instruction, each with its proponents and its detractors. Based on a 2001 study in Brazil teaching Brazilian children to read Portuguese, the most effective method appears to be phonics-based instruction. The researchers in this study report: "Following 3 months of phonics instruction, kindergarten students could read unfamiliar words and they did not show any evidence of a partial alphabetic phase" (Cummings, Dewey, Latimer, & Good, 2011, para. 5). While this study deals with the teaching of Portuguese, the findings can be applied to the teaching of English to similar-aged students in the United States. Phonics instruction focuses on teaching students to use the sounds associated with letters to read and understand written language. In the first two of Eller's instructional CDs, assigned for this week, students learn to recognize sounds first, then to associate the sounds with the letters that symbolize those sounds. Students "write" words using pictures that represent letter sounds such as an apple for /ah/, a book for /buh/, and a can of cola for /cuh/ (Eller, 2000). Later in the lessons, Eller has students associate the pictures and the sounds with the letters that the students will encounter when reading texts. Using sounds in this way allows students to decode unfamiliar words as the students encounter words in reading. In addition to phonics instruction, other methods of reading instruction are: look and say, language experience approach, and context support method. The look and say method requires students to memorize and recognize lists of common words and sentences by sight. The producers of Teaching Treasures Publications report that the look and say method of reading instruction "denies the students the tools used in the Phonics system but teaches them to learn through rote memorization" (Look and Say, 2012, para. 5). The language experience approach to reading instruction involves the student drawing a picture and the teacher writing a sentence under the picture to express the idea of the picture. Teaching Treasures Publications offers this example: "Your student may draw a picture of Dad in the car. In that case you would write underneath the drawing; Dad is in the car" (Language Experience Approach, 2012, para. 1). The student is expected to draw many pictures, each of which is captioned by the teacher. The pictures are eventually gathered into a book that the child reads over and over to learn to read. The context support method of reading instruction can be combined with any of the other methods to encourage students to learn to read. It involves using books on subjects that appeal to the student to hold the student's attention. Students learn simple words about their favorite subjects while teachers read longer sentences on the same topic. Ann Duffy, Jill Anderson, Cheri Durham, and Amy Erickson (2003) report that, in a 1998 study, "99% of teachers of grades K-2 reported that they viewed teaching phonics in their classrooms as being essential or important" (para. 4). In the same report, Duffy, et. al., (2003) report that there is "little research on the effectiveness of the use of decodable texts ... such as 'The Undergraduate Series 509 fat cat sat on the mat'" (paras. 6-7). Decodable texts use related sight words to help students learn word groups. In the example given, students are learning the sound /at/. Eller's method of teaching students to sound out words allows students to read beyond memorized lists of words and to tackle complex, unfamiliar words, as in her example of the word "fantastic" in the instructional video (Eller, 2000). References Context support method. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.teachingtreasures.com.au/homeschool/reading-methods/context-supportmethod.html Cummings, K.D., Dewey, E.N., Latimer, R.J., & Good, R.H.. (2011). Pathways to word reading and decoding: The roles of automaticity and accuracy. School Psychology Review, 40(2), 284-295. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/878143959?accountid=32521 Duffy, A.M., Anderson, J., Durham, C.M., Erickson, A., et. al. (2003). Responding to the rhetoric: Perspectives on reading instruction. The Reading Teacher, 56(7), 684-687. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/203277835?accountid=32521 Eller, J. (2000). Fundamentals: A research-based, phonics tutorial learn to read program. Chandler Heights, AZ: Action Reading. Language experience approach. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.teachingtreasures.com.au/homeschool/reading-methods/language-experienceapproach.html Look and say. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.teachingtreasures.com.au/homeschool/readingmethods/lookandsay.html Week 2 Assignment January 21, 2013 Teaching with CDs 1 and 2 was a challenge because the disks took a long time to load and had frequent pauses resulting from the loading process. This created distractions for Robby as he attempted to follow along with the recorded instruction. The concept of calling letters by their sounds, such as /ah/, /nuh/, /muh/, and /ku-suh/, instead of by their names was unfamiliar to Robby, but Eller’s explanation of why this is necessary added to his phonemic awareness and helped him adjust to the new format. Robby resisted the sound /ku-suh/, but he made the adjustment to the unfamiliar sound. Despite ongoing struggles with ADHD, Robby was engaged by the varied activities on the disks. The first disk introduced the sounds of the letters in the alphabet, and reinforced these sounds with pictures and with recitation drills (Eller, 2000). Following the order of the alphabet by pointing to the picture cards helped with making the mental switch from the symbols of the letters that Robby learned in school to the sounds of the letters that facilitate phonics education. One difficulty with the cards was that some of the pictures were obscure and difficult for Robby to associate with their sounds and letters; these included the Ethel card for /eh/, the itch card for /ih/, and the doctor card for /ahh/ (Eller, 2000). Identifying words that were spelled with the pictures from their cards was an effective way of breaking up the handwriting drills, and Robby enjoyed the challenge of these exercises. Since he is already a strong reader, most of the activities were too simple for him, and seemed to make him feel self-conscious, but the puzzles and games helped him connect to the lessons as he listened to them on the CDs. Also, while he was confused about the reason for the lesson about 510 A Journey Through My College Papers the origins of letter symbols, he did enjoy that segment and it held his attention (Eller, 2000). At the end of the segment, I was able to see him moving from confusion to understanding. Using board games to reinforce the phonics lessons is an effective strategy for teaching phonics. Like many students, Robby tired of the drills with the cards and the workbook pages quickly, but the opportunity to compete in a game engaged his imagination. It also reinforced counting and following directions, along with reinforcing the phonics instruction. During this week, Robby and I played the first four games in the FUNdamentals program. Three of the games each use a die and two pawns, which is similar to many board games played by children. In “First Steps,” Robby practiced recognizing sounds from the pictures that he learned on his flash cards (Eller, 2000). This was the only game on disk 1, and I kept Robby focused on the lessons early on the disk by promising him the game near the end of the session. Anticipation of a reward is a strong inducement for him to stay on task. The first game on disk 2, “Keys to Reading,” helped Robby move from associating sounds with pictures to associating sounds with symbols, or printed letters (Eller, 2000). This game also encouraged keyboarding skills, which are essential to modern communications and literacy. Robby enjoyed this game and asked to play it several times. “Aah Buh Cuh Bingo” was Robby’s favorite game this week. He used M&Ms as bingo markers, and he was allowed to keep the M&Ms after successfully completing the game. We played bingo several times, until I ran out of candy. Since Robby doesn’t get candy often, the promise of a chocolate treat after the game helped him focus on his task. The final game for this week, “Shortcuts for the Super Highway,” involved the concept of taking a consequence in exchange for gaining an advantage, which is an important lesson for Robby (Eller, 2000). Disk 2 built on the material Robby learned on disk 1 and introduced more complex concepts. Adding shortcut letter combinations /an/, /en/, /in/, /on/, and /un/ made reading words with these sound combinations smoother, and Robby understood the concept of shortcut sounds easily. When Eller (2000) instructed Robby to underline shortcut sounds in a list of words on a page of the workbook, we had to make a small adjustment. Robby found that underlining with pencil made the page too cluttered and too difficult for him to understand. Instead, he used a pink highlighter to mark the shortcut sounds, which helped Robby to see and recognize shortcut sounds in the words on the page. Robby uses this method in school, too, because the bright color helps focus his attention, which is impaired by ADHD. Including handwriting drills with reading lessons was helpful to Robby. While he is a good reader, his handwriting needs work, and he recognizes this need. He worked hard to form his letters according to Eller’s verbal instructions and according to the examples in the workbook (Eller, 2000). The handwriting system that uses tails on the letters to aid in the shift from printing to cursive was unfamiliar to Robby, who learned in school to make letters with straight lines and no serifs. He caught on quickly, and worked hard to keep the slant of his letters even. Handwriting is a particular challenge for Robby because he is left-handed, and teachers in his various schools have tended to focus on the right-handed students. References Eller, J. (2000). Fundamentals: A research-based, phonics tutorial learn to read program. Chandler Heights, AZ: Action Reading. Undergraduate Series 511 Decoding Skill Teaching Methods 1/24/2013 Intensive and systematic phonics instruction is the decoding skill teaching method represented by Jeannie Eller's (2000) Action Reading program. Intensive and systematic phonics instruction teaches students to read by beginning with the most basic understanding of the sounds of letters of the alphabet and combining those sounds to form words. In a paper prepared for the Michigan English Language Arts Framework Project, Constance Weaver (1997) wrote that "systematic phonics at the very beginning tends to produce generally better reading and spelling achievement than intrinsic phonics, at least through grade three" (para. 4). As an example of systematic phonics instruction, the lessons on this week's CDs from Eller's FUNdamentals program (2000) build on the letter sounds that were taught on the first CD of the series and on the shortcut sounds and the combination sounds on the second CD. The sounds /ah/ and /nuh/ became the shortcut sound /an/ and the letters representing the sounds /tuh/ and /huh/ were combined to form the sound /th/. In the third and fourth CDs, which we are using this week, Eller continues to build on these skills and also introduces the concept that the second vowel in a word makes the first vowel say its name. Thus, /ai/ is a long a sound, /ee/ is a long e sound, etc.. In contrast to intensive and systematic phonics instruction, intrinsic and embedded phonics require students to pick up phonics skills while memorizing sight words. Jefferey M. Jones, M.D. (1995) criticizes intrinsic and embedded phonics instruction. He explains that students learn to read "using context, pictures, syntax and structure analysis clues to predict unknown words [and] using fix-it strategies such as word skipping or substituting words" (para. 4). He refers to these reading strategies as guessing and bluffing (Jones, 1995, para. 4). Echoing Dr. Jones' reaction to intrinsic and embedded phonics, Angela Dorman (2000) wrote in the Edmonton Journal: "I found that children today are being taught to guess at words" (para. 9). In a study for the National Institutes of Health, Barbara Foorman (n.d.) stated that: "children receiving direct instruction with phonics were at the 42nd percentile on a standardized test of reading, whereas children receiving an embedded (incidental) phonics approach were at the 23rd percentile (if the teachers were trained by the researchers) or at the 21st percentile (if the teachers were trained by the district)" (Cited in Thomas, 1996, para. 4). Based on these findings, intrinsic and embedded phonics instruction is not as effective a decoding skills teaching method as is intensive and systematic phonics instruction. References Dorman, A. (2000, Mar 12). When your youngster can't read and school doesn't help. Edmonton Journal. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/252707445 Eller, J. (2000). Fundamentals: A research-based, phonics tutorial learn to read program. Chandler Heights, AZ: Action Reading. Jones, J. M. (1995, Oct 19). Parents favor phonics because it works. Madison Capital Times. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/395097966?accountid=32521 Thomas, C. (1996, May 30). The coming phonics revolution in education. Los Angeles Times Syndicate. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/381134852?accountid=32521 Weaver, C. (1997). On research on the teaching of phonics. Retrieved from http://www.heinemann.com/shared/onlineresources/08894/08894f2.html 512 A Journey Through My College Papers Instructional Techniques 1/24/2013 There are a number of different instructional techniques for teaching spelling in early elementary grades. Patrick Groff (1995) writes that students who receive phonics-based instruction have fewer spelling errors than have students of whole-language instruction (paras. 11.1-11.3). Phonics instruction, such as Jeannie Eller's (2000) Action Reading program, teach students to recognize how letters and sounds interact to form words. In this week's CDs, for example, Eller (2000) teaches students that the second vowel in a word makes the first vowel say its name, whether the two vowels are adjacent to each other, or whether the silent "Ethel on the end" gives the earlier vowel in the word its name, or its long vowel sound. Similarly, Eller (2000) teaches students about combinations of consonants, such as those that form the shortcut sounds /th/, /sh/, /ch/, and /wh/, and the vowel-consonant shortcuts sounds /ar/ and /or/ and the soundalike shortcuts /er/, /ir/, and /ur/, and /ui/, /ue/, and /ew/. Learning these rules of written English help students to spell words when they write, as well as to sound out words when they read. A very different spelling instruction technique in the earliest grades is inverted spelling. This is not so much a matter of actual instruction, but of letting young students write words the way they sound. Andrew Gottesman (1993) quotes teacher Jyl Barnabee about the reason for allowing this spelling technique: "All they hear are sounds. That's why you can encourage them to write more and more and more" (para. 18). The idea is that students will begin by recognizing the first and last consonants of a word and will eventually fill in the missing consonants and then the vowels, possibly over a year or two of schooling, so that "'KD' might become 'KLOSD' and then 'CLOSSED' and finally 'CLOSED'" (Gottesman, 1993, para. 24). Similarly, there are a number of instructional techniques for teaching vocabulary at all grade levels. In this week's CDs and companion workbook, Eller (2000) uses pictures to help students identify words and build vocabulary. For example, after learning the shortcut sounds /sh/, /ch/, and /th/, students select one of a pair of pictures each for the words "ship," "bench," "fish," "brush," and "path" (p. 26). Students use lists of words, identifying specific sounds and shortcut sounds, and applying the rules to make vowels say their names, at the same time adding these words to their vocabularies. The recommended article on vocabulary instruction for this assignment, from Pearson Education, presents a number of techniques that teachers can use to help students learn vocabulary. Students can add to their vocabularies through conversation and through reading materials that include complex and unfamiliar words in contexts that help students grasp the words' meanings (Building vocabulary, 2013, paras. 8-10). Sandip Wilson (2006) agrees with this method, writing that "vocabulary is learned through exposure to different situations and activities, and the informal learning from the context of personal reading, reading aloud, and conversation is one area for instruction" (para. 3) Other techniques presented by Pearson Education include word hunting and word sorting activities, building word webs, and deconstructing complex words to understand their parts (Building vocabulary, 2013, paras. 24-25). It is important to note that Pearson Education cautions against the traditional practice of teaching students lists of vocabulary words out of context, whiting: "Researchers have found that teaching dictionary definitions of words out of context does not enhance the comprehension of a text containing those vocabulary words" (Building vocabulary, 2013, para. 12). Vocabulary instruction is meaningful and is the most effective when vocabulary is taught in a context to which students can relate so that vocabulary words have memory tags that help students access word meanings when the students encounter the words in text or in oral communications. Undergraduate Series 513 References Building vocabulary. (2013). Pearson Education, Inc. Retrieved from http://www.teachervision.fen.com/skill-builder/teaching-methods/48607.html Eller, J. (2000). Fundamentals: A research-based, phonics tutorial learn to read program. Chandler Heights, AZ: Action Reading. Gottesman, A. (1993, Oct. 28). Educators praise `invented spelling'; detractors unconvinced. Chicago Tribune. Las Vegas Review, 14B. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/259905134 Groff, P. (1995). Ideology and empiricism in spelling instruction. Journal of the Simplified Spelling Society, J18, 7-10. Retrieved from http://www.spellingsociety.org/journals/j18/ideology.php Wilson, S.L. (2006). Teaching vocabulary in all classrooms. (3rd ed.). New England Reading Association Journal, 42(2), 42-43. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/206037584 Zutell, J. (1996). The directed spelling thinking activity (DSTA): Providing an effective balance in word study instruction. The Reading Teacher, 50(2), 98-98. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/203268083 Week Three Assignment January 28, 2013 Working this CDs 3 and 4 was a continuing challenge because the disks continued to take an extraordinary amount of time to load and Eller’s teaching was disrupted by the loading. Robby persevered in the lessons, however. He was better able to anticipate what he needed to do in the lessons than he was in the first week of the program because Eller (2000) was consistent in the ways in which she presented the materials. The third disk of the series continued the combination sounds, or two-for-one sounds, that were introduced at the end of the second disk. Robby and I played the tic-tac-toe game using /ch/ and /sh/, and each of us said the sound as we took each turn. We also played the tiddlywinks game, which looked very much like a dart board (Eller, 2000). Since both Robby and I were having trouble flipping the light, foam playing pieces onto the board, we instead rolled the die onto the board, proceeding to score the game as though we were using the game pieces. This helped Robby avoid frustration so he could focus on the game, which also gave him practice in math as he kept score for the game. Introducing /ar/, /or/, and the homophonic /er/, /ir/, and /ur/ added to Robby’s collection of sounds, and he added the associated cards to his set. The names of the children in the pictures were more confusing for Robby than they were helpful, since the pictures do not explicitly represent the sounds. This continued to be an issue as children’s pictures were introduced to represent /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ on disk four (Eller, 2000). Decoding words using the pictures that represented sounds continued to help hold Robby’s intention in the second week of the program, just as the challenge of solving the puzzles helped him in the first week. Using puzzles and substitution codes helped make the work interesting for Robby. He enjoyed solving the puzzles and circling the correct picture to represent the word that was spelled by the pictured sounds. One issue that came up in this activity on both disks three and four was that Robby found some of the word pictures to be vague, and he often chose the picture because he knew the other picture in the pair did not fit the word that he had sounded out. 514 A Journey Through My College Papers Robby continued to use the highlighter when marking shortcut sounds in the workbook while using disks three and four. When working with /er/, /ir/, and /ur/ on page 34 of the workbook, Robby used three different highlighter colors to help him keep track of the shortcuts that had different spellings but the same sound (Eller (2000). The handwriting drills that Eller (2000) continued to include in the exercises for each new sound helped Robby work on improving his handwriting. Robby went back and forth between printing and cursive, but was otherwise well-focused when working on the writing drills. Robby was more distracted than helped by the songs on disk four, which he felt to be silly and childish. Part of the problem was that the CD continued to have difficulty loading each track, so the songs were fragments and hard to follow. If the CD had loaded more readily, the songs would probably have been more engaging and more effective for Robby’s learning. Robby did well with the concept that “when two vowels go walking, the first vowel does the talking” (Eller, 2000). This was only an issue when a pair of vowels was preceded by a “qu,” as in “queen.” The letter “u” in these words made Robby want to make the “ee” cause the “u” to say its name, so we had to discuss how the “q” has to be followed by the “u” in English so the “q” can make its /kwuh/ sound. Robby was resistant to doing the various activities associated with card 14. He was selfconscious about clapping or buzzing in place of saying the vowel sounds. He was also resistant to doing the jumping jacks and other physical activities associated with the sound review on disk three and the head-shoulders-knees-toes activity on disk four. The latter activity reminded him too strongly of a preschool song that he learned when he was two years old, and the association caused him discomfort when it came up in this course. Robby did well with the concept of “Ethel on the end,” successfully identifying the silent /e/ that made the vowel before it say the first vowel’s name. Similarly, he did well with understanding that /e/ says its name at the end of a word with no other vowels, and that /o/ says its name when it appears at the end of a word. Marking vowels with arrows to indicate which vowels make which other vowels say their names was easy for Robby. However, Robby did not want to underline shortcuts, circle two-forones, and divide syllables in the same words in which he had to draw the arrows. With Robby’s ADHD, using too many symbols on a single word was distracting, so I let him leave out those markings as long as he marked the elements that were part of the lesson on which he was working. References Eller, J. (2000). Fundamentals: A research-based, phonics tutorial learn to read program. Chandler Heights, AZ: Action Reading. Systemic Phonics Curriculum 1/31/2013 Studies indicate that research-based systemic phonics curriculum is beneficial for students who are learning how to read (Manyak, 2008, para. 1; Manyak & Bauer, 2008, para. 2; National Institutes of Health, 2000, para. 2). Manyak (2008) writes that phonics instruction develops phonemic awareness and "has a positive effect on the students' word reading" (para. 2). Phonemic awareness is of particular importance in reading instruction. Students learn to recognize the sounds that make up words. In Eller's (2000) CD set and companion workbook, students learn to put sounds together to make words before they learn to use letters and letter combinations to write words. Eller (2000) introduces multi-letter phonemes by presenting shortcuts and two-forUndergraduate Series 515 one sounds. In disks 5 and 6 this week, Eller (2000) continues to introduce new phonemes in groups that help students understand the relationships between and among phonemes. While working with more reading comprehension exercises, Eller (2000) introduces the /e/ sound of "y" and the silent "gh" in the /i/ sound of "igh" and the /a/ sound of "eigh". Phonemes that sound almost alike but are spelled differently are introduced, as in "au" and "aw" for /aw/ and "ou" and "ow" for /ow/. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) (2000) writes that "explicitly and systematically teaching children to manipulate phonemes significantly improves children's reading and spelling abilities" (para. 10). Eller's (2000) program begins with the sounds represented by individual letters and systematically adds phonemic groups to build students' phonemic awareness and reading abilities. Systemic explicit phonics instruction is shown to be effective for teaching students to read quickly and fluently. Starfall is one of many systemic explicit phonics programs, just as is Eller's (2000) Action Reading such a program. The producers of Starfall write in their address to educators: "As your children master speech sounds, they will be able to apply them to letters in predictable ways" (para. 4). This is the same as Eller's method with the instructional CDs and workbook. Over the past weeks, we have taken our students through a systematic program of learning sounds, learning to combine sounds to form words, and learning to combine words to form sentences. Each CD has built on the previous lessons until, this week, our students are reading sentences and paragraphs for comprehension. The NIH supports systematic phonics instruction, based on a Congressional study of how children learn to read, and they write: "[R]esearch literature provides solid evidence that phonics instruction produces significant benefits for children from kindergarten through 6th grade and for children having difficulties learning to read" (para. 11). It is gratifying that the NIH promotes phonics instruction through 6th grade, instead of through 2nd or 3rd grade as is usually recommended, because students need to learn to read more words and more complex words as they complete elementary school and move up into middle school and high school. Using systematic explicit phonics instruction helps students master these new and harder words quickly and smoothly, just as it does for students who are just learning to read. References Dear educators. (2012). The Starfall Store. Retrieved from http://www.starfall.com/n/Ninfo/educators.htm Eller, J. (2000). Fundamentals: A research-based, phonics tutorial learn to read program. Chandler Heights, AZ: Action Reading. Manyak, P.C. (2008). Phonemes in use: Multiple activities for a critical process. The Reading Teacher, 61(8), 659-662. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/203286198 Manyak, P.C., & Bauer, E.B. (2008). Explicit code and comprehension instruction for English learners. The Reading Teacher, 61(5), 432-434. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/203280438 National Institutes of Health. (2000, Apr. 13). National reading panel reports combination of teaching phonics, word sounds, giving feedback on oral reading most effective way to teach reading. National Institutes of Health News. Retrieved from the US Department of Health and Human Services website at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/news/releases/pages/nrp.aspx?from=reading 516 A Journey Through My College Papers Principles for Reading Success 1/31/2013 While some websites offer as many as ten or twelve essential components of reading instruction, there are five components of reading instruction in our current program of study. These five components are: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. These five components build upon each other to produce successful, independent readers. First, students need to gain phonemic awareness by understanding that words are made up of sounds. In the Action Reading program, Eller (2000) establishes phonemic awareness by introducing and combining sounds before she allows students to connect the sounds to the letters of the alphabet. Phonics builds on phonemic awareness by connecting the sounds or phonemes with the letters that represent the sounds in written English. This system works for any alphabetic language. Once a student gains phonemic awareness and masters systematic explicit phonics, the students gains fluency and reads quickly and smoothly. As students read with fluency, they develop a sense of the meanings of words and develop a vocabulary that helps them understand what they read. With the expansion of a student's vocabulary and understanding of words comes his or her comprehension of what he or she reads through understanding how the meanings of individual words, the arrangement of words, and the use of punctuation work together to give meaning to sentences, paragraphs, and longer works of writing. In disks 5 and 6 of Eller's (2000) Action Reading this week, students move into more reading comprehension exercises. The workbook pages are filled with sentences and paragraphs that allow students to use the phonics skills they have built over the past few weeks so they can read a paragraph and then answer questions about the content of the paragraph. Students have been learning to slide the sounds together in words, and to slide together the sounds of words to make sentences, thus improving their reading fluency so they can gain reading comprehension and reading enjoyment. Phonemic awareness, then, is "the understanding that spoken words are made up of separate units of sound that are blended together when words are pronounced" (Learning Point Associates, 2004, p. 4). Katlyn Joy (2013) explains that phonemic awareness "begins when children identify sounds in their spoken language and how it occurs in written language in words" (para. 2). The separate units of sound are called phonemes, and a phoneme may be represented by a single letter or by a set of two or more letters. For example, "ate" and "eight" are homophones, or words that sound alike: /a/ /tuh/. A student learns to recognize that the sounds /a/ /tuh/ represent each of these words. "Man" is represented by the sounds /muh/ /an/. Phonics is "a set of rules that specify the relationship between letters in the spelling of words and the sounds of spoken language" (Learning Point Associates, 2004, p. 12). Joy (2013) explains that students "learn the alphabet and the corresponding sounds and sound combinations and begin to connect the letters and sounds" (para. 3). At this point, students who gained phonemic awareness of /a/ /tuh/ learn to associate the sounds with the letters that represent the sounds. In systematic explicit phonics instruction, such as that used in Jeannie Eller's (2000) Action Reading, the student learns the simpler representation of the sound and then builds on that understanding to learn the more complex representation of the sound. So, a student would first learn that /a/ /tuh/ is represented by the letters "ate," then later would learn about vowel pairs and how the "i" makes the "e" say its name and the "gh" is silent so that "eight" also represents the sounds /a/ /tuh/ and has a different meaning. Fluency is "rapid word recognition that free[s] up space in the reader’s working memory for use in comprehending the message of the text" (Learning Point Associates, 2004, p. 17). At this point, the student is "no longer slowly sounding out each sound but has gotten to a point of so quickly recognizing the word in print on a page" (Joy, 2013, para. 4). Reading is easier when the Undergraduate Series 517 reader is able to apply phonemics awareness and phonics knowledge to words with little or no effort, and fluent readers are more like to do more reading than are non-fluent readers. According to Learning Point Associates (2004), there are four kinds of vocabulary: listening, speaking, reading, and writing (p. 22). A student may have greater listening and speaking vocabularies than he or she has reading and writing vocabularies. As babies develop, their listening vocabulary grows first, then they later add to their speaking vocabularies from their listening vocabularies. When students begin to read, they apply their listening vocabularies to the words that they are learning to read. Writing vocabularies usually come last, and they build on all of the other vocabularies. More simply, Joy (2013) defines vocabulary as "a sense of the meanings of words," which is enough of a definition for most people (para. 5). As students encounter and learn more words, their vocabularies expand. Learning Point Associates (2004) writes: "Comprehension involves constructing meaning that is reasonable and accurate by connecting what has been read to what the reader already knows and thinking about all of this information until it is understood" (p. 30). This is a complex way of saying that reading comprehension is understanding what is read. Joy (2013) writes: "Comprehension is the key stage of reading because without the understanding of what is read, reading is useless" (para. 6). As a reader masters phonics, gains fluency, and builds a growing vocabulary, he or she understand more of what is read and gains reading comprehension. With increased reading comprehension, the reader is able to communicate with others and to learn any subject that is written in the reader's language. Reading success depends not just on phonemic awareness and phonics instruction, but on building on that foundation to achieve fluency and comprehension in reading. Usually, writing or printing will be learned concurrent with reading, so the successful reader has the tools to be a successful communicator, as well. References Eller, J. (2000). Fundamentals: A research-based, phonics tutorial learn to read program. Chandler Heights, AZ: Action Reading. Joy, K. (2013). The 5 Principles of Reading for Preschoolers. Retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/info_12041850_5-principles-reading-preschoolers.html Learning Point Associates. (2004). A closer look at the five essential components of effective reading instruction: A review of scientifically based reading research for teachers, 1-45. Retrieved from http://www.learningpt.org/pdfs/literacy/components.pdf Week Four Assignment February 4, 2013 With CD 5, Robby continued to work with vowels and added the vowels’ cousin y, enjoying the idea that y is “tricky and sly” (Eller, 2000). Robby progressed quickly through the exercises in the workbook; he understood the rule that y says /i/ when there is no other vowel in the word, and that y says /e/ when there is another vowel in the word, even though that rule was not explicitly taught to him in school. Robby enjoyed the reading comprehension exercises, and he was very successful until he got too confident and tried to answer the questions without reading the stories. We had to talk about following directions and about reading the entire story before answering the questions. I explained to him that these comprehension exercises are not just about learning to read: they are also good practice for the sort of standardized tests that he will need to take in high school and college. Robby was frustrated with his inability to answer the question about comfortable shoes 518 A Journey Through My College Papers on page 69 of the workbook without reading the preceding story, but he calmed down and tried again when he understood that college placement tests require comprehension samples like the ones in the book (Eller, 2000). Robby was having more ADHD symptoms than usual when we did CD 5, which made it difficult for him to focus on the work. Robby did not like the singing games associated with card 14 (Eller, 2000). He resisted card 14 during CDs 3 and 4, as well, and he expressed that clapping and buzzing in place of saying the vowels was confusing for him. In order to help Robby remain receptive to the rest of the teaching, I put card 14 away and did not make him do those drills this week. Robby benefitted from the breaks to do jumping jacks and toe touches during the lessons on CD5. The physical exercise helped reduce his ADHD symptoms and helped him focus on the stories and the comprehension questions. When he got restless, we paused the disk and let him walk around and get a drink of water, which also helped. Robby continued to do well with the stories and reading comprehension questions on CD 6. We did this disk on a snow day, when Robby was out of school and wanted to play outside, but he worked hard and was much more focused than he was for CD 5. These behavioral concerns came from his ADHD, not from Eller’s (2000) Action Reading program, but they affected how Robby responded to the lessons. If Robby had been an actual beginning reader, these concerns would have impacted his learning for the sessions. Reflecting on this helped me recognize that I will need to keep students’ learning differences in mind when I teach in the future. Robby was very confused by question 2 on page 71 of the workbook: “If ‘ow’ is at the end of a word it might sound like [ ] umbrella. [ ] Arlene. [ ] Otis” (Eller, 2000, p. 71). Robby thought the answer had to have an ending sound that matched one of the sounds of “ow.” I explained that the question was looking for the /o/ in Otis; having the words spelled out was confusing for Robby after having used the pictures of the umbrella for /uh/, of the girl Arlene for /ar/, and of the boy Otis for /o/. Once I showed him the examples on the story and added a few other words that end in the /o/ sound of “ow,” he was able to continue working. Robby grew up with more than 44 sounds in English because of the region in which I grew up. When he encountered “aught” and “ought” on page 72, he pronounced them /aw/ /tuh/ and /aah/ /tuh/, as he learned those sounds in early childhood (Eller, 2000, p. 72). He did not pronounce them both alike as Eller (2000) did on the CD. I explained to him that regional pronunciations of English sometimes have more or fewer than the 44 sounds that Eller (2000) mentioned on the first disk. Teaching Robby the /ing/, /ang/, /ong/, and /ung/ sounds was difficult because he objected to Eller’s (2000) characterization of the sounds as Chinese. Robby felt that Eller (2000) was making fun of the Chinese ethnic group and of its language, and he did not want to continue the lesson. At school, Robby was learning about cultural awareness and about political correctness, so he had difficulty accepting the reading lesson. Once he calmed down, however, Robby enjoyed the ringing sounds game on card 15. It was easier for him to accept /ing/, /ang/, /ong/, and /ung/ as bell sounds than as Chinese sounds. Although CD 6 ended with page 98 of the workbook, Robby did not want to leave the last few pages incomplete. He completed the final four pages without the CD, exploring the silent w, k, and p in the sounds /ruh/, /nuh/, ans /suh/ on page 99, and the silent g in /nuh/ and the silent h in /guh/ on page 100 (Eller, 2000, pp. 99-100). Since Robby was already a strong reader, he was able to go through the /fuh/ of ph and the /sh/ of the several letter combinations on page 101 (Eller, 2000, p. 101). Undergraduate Series 519 References Eller, J. (2000). Fundamentals: A research-based, phonics tutorial learn to read program. Chandler Heights, AZ: Action Reading. Diagnosis and Assessment Principles 2/7/2013 Continuous student assessment is necessary so that teachers are equipped to diagnose students' reading levels and any learning differences that can affect a student's learning. Assessment can take many forms, from standardized tests and other written tests of a student's knowledge to performance evaluations to portfolios. In describing the unique challenges associated with assessing students in a non-graded, multi-age school, Sue Beth Arnold, Barbara Kidwell, and David Rossman (1998) expressed student assessment needs that apply to any learning environment: "[I]n order to describe students' academic progress, we need to know their initial level of functioning, what they currently know and can do, and what they need to be able to do to reach certain benchmarks" (para. 2). These are the goals of every educator who uses assessments to diagnose student learning: to determine the student's beginning level, to determine what the student already knows, and to determine what the teacher needs to do to help the student achieve desired learning goals. Early and continuous assessment allows students to be placed in the correct educational programs from the beginning of their education, including programs for gifted and talented students and programs for students with learning delays and learning disabilities. Continuous assessment allows teachers to adjust teaching and materials to meet students' needs. Effective student assessments lead to appropriate selection of materials to be used in the classroom and in other educational settings. In a 2013 article, the National Council of Teachers of English (2013) write: "Creative teachers take advantage of opportunities to use materials which do not lend themselves to the formal selection process e.g., current newscasts, television programs, articles, student writing samples, or materials for short-term projects" (para. 23). These materials are used to support and augment instruction based on traditional text books, work books, and student hand outs. Materials must be selected with the age and background of the student in mind, as reading materials must be age-appropriate. John F. Haskell (1978) reminds educators that "[w]hen choosing texts for use in the language classroom, your goal is to select passages that challenge the students without being too difficult" (para. 1). Student materials should allow students to practice their previous learning while challenging students to expand their learning in non-threatening increments. To do this, materials should increase in difficulty gradually rather than abruptly. References: Arnold, S.B., Kidwell, B. & Rossman, D. (1998). Multiage assessment: One school's plan. Primary Voices K - 6, 6(2), 36-43. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/221698737?accountid=32521 Haskell, J.F. (1978). Assessing reading difficulty. Classroom Practices in Adult ESL. Retrieved from http://collections.infocollections.org/ukedu/en/d/Jm0031e/7.1.html National Council of Teachers of English. (2013). Guidelines for selection of materials in English language arts programs. Retrieved from http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/selectingelamaterial 520 A Journey Through My College Papers Practicum Experience 2/7/2013 I used the first six CDs of Eller's (2000) Action Reading program with my 11-year-old son, Robby, who is in the sixth grade this year; I did not have a younger reading student available to me. Compressing the program into the three weeks allowed by the structure of our course worked for Robby, as he is already a strong reader, but I got the impression that a true beginning reader would read to spend a great deal more time with each instructional unit than Robby was able to spend with the program. This imitated the findings of Francesca Pomerantz and Michelle Pierce (2004) that "time constraints and instructional materials often interfered with the content and methods their former students wished to use" (para. 3). Teachers often find that they need to spend less time on each unit than the teachers would like in order to meet the requirements of the educational system. Robby did well with the Action Reading materials. Robby has ADHD, and often has trouble staying focused on given tasks, by Eller's (2000) CDs held his attention for the most part. The codes and puzzles in the workbook, in which Robby had to figure out what word was represented by a series of sound cards, or in which Robby had to match cards to numbers to insert the needed sounds in words and sentences, made the Action Reading program interesting for Robby. Robby had to make some adaptations to the Action Reading exercises in the workbook. Underlining, circling, and otherwise marking letters within a word was alright in the earliest parts of the program, but as soon as there were two or more markings on a given word, Robby's ADHD kicked in and the words became too confusing for him to read them. To solve this problem, Robby used different colored highlighters to replace the various pencil markings. He uses this adaptation in school, as well. Robby was able to decode the text when it was marked with colors instead of with pencil marks. Adaptations like this are important for teachers who have students with learning exceptionalities, and my experience with Robby and the Action Reading program will help me in future teaching situations where students need to use different methods to reach the goals of instruction. The songs in Eller's (2000) Action Reading program really annoyed Robby because they are intended for much younger learners. Music and songs are an excellent way to help students learn, especially when rote memorization is desired, but songs, like reading materials, need to be age-appropriate for the students. Robby enjoyed the reading comprehension stories, even though he felt that some were too young for him. The examples made him think in order to arrive at the correct answer in several cases. Robby and I discussed how standardized tests that he will need to take in high school and for college placement often include reading comprehension exercises like the ones in Eller's (2000) workbook. Dorothy Suskind (2007) studied the practicum experiences of a group of student teachers. She found that their challenges in the classroom included "how will they integrate authentic writing experiences into the school day; how will they utilize multilevel text into instruction; and how will they address the unique needs of every learner in their future classroom" (para. 16). Beginning with the handwriting exercises in Eller's (2000) workbook, Robby worked on writing alongside reading in the Action Reading workbook. Looking back to my freshman year of college, during which I spent ten hours over a period of several weeks working in a third grade classroom at East Richland Elementary School in Illinois, I remember the challenges of working with students in the same grade who were at very different reading levels. In that setting, I spent a lot of one-on-one time with students at lower reading levels, listening to them read aloud from Undergraduate Series 521 books that matched their reading levels and helping the students correct their pronunciation and improve reading fluency. I watched students write stories and reports about their families, homes, and experiences, and about the stories they read for language arts, social studies, and science. Such writing activities integrated authentic writing experiences into their learning. With the Action Reading program, Robby had no such opportunity to apply authentic writing to the reading included in the program. I believe my practicum experience would have been enhanced if Eller's program had included guiding the student through creating writing instead of only copying sentences that were provided. Robby enjoyed the games in the Action Reading program, and they provided welcome breaks from phonics and handwriting drills, even though phonics were included in the games. Using games in education is a useful way for students to "un-school" for brief periods through the school day, learning without being aware of or stressed about learning. References: Eller, J. (2000). Fundamentals: A research-based, phonics tutorial learn to read program. Chandler Heights, AZ: Action Reading. Pomerantz, F., & Pierce, M. (2004). From literacy methods classes to the real world: Experiences of PreService teachers. New England Reading Association Journal, 40(2), 55-62. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/206037284 Suskind, D.C. (2007). Going public: NCLB and literacy practices in teacher education. Language Arts, 84(5), 450-455. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/196875205 Reflections on Teaching Action Reading February 11, 2013 Jeannie Eller (2000) produced the Action Reading program titled “FUNdamentals” to teach students to read using a combination of phonemic awareness and phonics. The word “FUN” was capitalized in “fundamentals” to stress that students who used the Action Reading program to learn to read had fun with the lessons and the activities included in the program. For the practicum portion of my studies in phonics based reading and decoding at Ashford University, I worked with my younger son, Robby. Robby was eleven years old when we worked through the Action Reading audio CDs and consumable workbook. He was a student in middle school, and he read at a 9th grade reading level, which made authentic teaching and learning of beginning reading and writing challenging for Robby and for me. Robby’s struggles with diagnosed ADHD also posed challenges during the program, which are described in this paper. Robby completed the first six of the eight CDs included in the course over a period of three weeks. He completed the lessons on one CD per day, and he worked on the program during two days of each of the three weeks. Each CD required about an hour and a half for Robby to complete when he worked steadily, but he needed two or more hours on each of several occasions because he paused the program when he needed more time. Robby used a workbook, flash cards, game sheets, a six-sided die, and two game pieces, all of which came packaged with the set of audio CDs, to complete the lessons and exercises in the program. Robby’s experience with Jeannie Eller’s (2000) Action Reading program was positive and successful; had he been a true beginning reader, Robby would have gained the necessary phonemic awareness, phonics tools, and beginning vocabulary and comprehension skills to learn to read English quickly and with fluency. Teaching with CDs 1 and 2 was a challenge because the disks took a long time to load and had frequent pauses resulting from the loading process. This created distractions for Robby as 522 A Journey Through My College Papers he attempted to follow along with the recorded instruction. The concept of calling letters by their sounds, such as /ah/, /nuh/, /muh/, and /ku-suh/, instead of by their names was unfamiliar to Robby, but Eller’s explanation of why this is necessary added to his phonemic awareness and helped him adjust to the new format. Robby resisted the sound /ku-suh/, but he made the adjustment to the unfamiliar sound. Despite ongoing struggles with ADHD, Robby was engaged by the varied activities on the disks. The first disk introduced the sounds of the letters in the alphabet, and reinforced these sounds with pictures and with recitation drills (Eller, 2000). Following the order of the alphabet by pointing to the picture cards helped with making the mental switch from the symbols of the letters that Robby learned in school to the sounds of the letters that facilitate phonics education. One difficulty with the cards was that some of the pictures were obscure and difficult for Robby to associate with their sounds and letters; these included the Ethel card for /eh/, the itch card for /ih/, and the doctor card for /ahh/ (Eller, 2000). Identifying words that were spelled with the pictures from their cards was an effective way of breaking up the handwriting drills, and Robby enjoyed the challenge of these exercises. Since he is already a strong reader, most of the activities were too simple for him, and seemed to make him feel self-conscious, but the puzzles and games helped him connect to the lessons as he listened to them on the CDs. Also, while he was confused about the reason for the lesson about the origins of letter symbols, he did enjoy that segment and it held his attention (Eller, 2000). At the end of the segment, I was able to see him moving from confusion to understanding. Using board games to reinforce the phonics lessons was an effective strategy for teaching phonics. Like many students, Robby tired of the drills with the cards and the workbook pages quickly, but the opportunity to compete in a game engaged his imagination. It also reinforced counting and following directions, along with reinforcing the phonics instruction. During this week, Robby and I played the first four games in the FUNdamentals program. Three of the games each used a die and two pawns, which was similar to many board games played by children. In “First Steps,” Robby practiced recognizing sounds from the pictures that he learned on his flash cards (Eller, 2000). This was the only game on disk 1, and I kept Robby focused on the lessons early on the disk by promising him the game near the end of the session. Anticipation of a reward was a strong inducement for him to stay on task. The first game on disk 2, “Keys to Reading,” helped Robby move from associating sounds with pictures to associating sounds with symbols, or printed letters (Eller, 2000). This game also encouraged keyboarding skills, which are essential to modern communications and literacy. Robby enjoyed this game and asked to play it several times. “/Aah/ /Buh/ /Cuh/ Bingo” was Robby’s favorite game this week. He used M&Ms as bingo markers, and he was allowed to keep the M&Ms after successfully completing the game. We played bingo several times, until I ran out of candy. Since Robby does not get candy often, the promise of a chocolate treat after the game helped him focus on his task. The final game for this week, “Shortcuts for the Super Highway,” involved the concept of taking a consequence in exchange for gaining an advantage, which was an important lesson for Robby (Eller, 2000). Disk 2 built on the material Robby learned on disk 1 and introduced more complex concepts. Adding shortcut letter combinations /an/, /en/, /in/, /on/, and /un/ made reading words with these sound combinations smoother, and Robby understood the concept of shortcut sounds easily. When Eller (2000) instructed Robby to underline shortcut sounds in a list of words on a page of the workbook, we had to make a small adjustment. Robby found that underlining with pencil made the page too cluttered and too difficult for him to understand. Instead, he used a pink highlighter to mark the shortcut sounds, which helped Robby to see and recognize shortcut sounds in the words on the page. Robby uses this method in school, too, because the bright color helps focus his attention, which is impaired by ADHD. Undergraduate Series 523 Including handwriting drills with reading lessons was helpful to Robby. While he was a good reader, his handwriting needed work, and he recognized this need. He worked hard to form his letters according to Eller’s verbal instructions and according to the examples in the workbook (Eller, 2000). The handwriting system that used tails on the letters to aid in the shift from printing to cursive was unfamiliar to Robby, who learned in school to make letters with straight lines and no serifs. He caught on quickly, and worked hard to keep the slant of his letters even. Handwriting was a particular challenge for Robby because he is left-handed, and teachers in his various schools have tended to focus on the right-handed students. In the second week of the activity, CDs 3 and 4 continued to take an extraordinary amount of time to load and Eller’s teaching was disrupted by the loading. Robby persevered in the lessons, however. He was better able to anticipate what he needed to do in the lessons than he was in the first week of the program because Eller (2000) was consistent in the ways in which she presented the materials. The third disk of the series continued the combination sounds, or two-for-one sounds, that were introduced at the end of the second disk. Robby and I played the tic-tac-toe game using /ch/ and /sh/, and each of us said the sound as we took each turn. We also played the tiddlywinks game, which looked very much like a dart board (Eller, 2000). Since both Robby and I were having trouble flipping the light, foam playing pieces onto the board, we instead rolled the die onto the board, proceeding to score the game as though we were using the game pieces. This helped Robby avoid frustration so he could focus on the game, which also gave him practice in math as he kept score for the game. Introducing /ar/, /or/, and the homophonic /er/, /ir/, and /ur/ added to Robby’s collection of sounds, and he added the associated cards to his set. The names of the children in the pictures were more confusing for Robby than they were helpful, since the pictures do not explicitly represent the sounds. This continued to be an issue as children’s pictures were introduced to represent /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/ on disk four (Eller, 2000). Decoding words using the pictures that represented sounds continued to help hold Robby’s intention in the second week of the program, just as the challenge of solving the puzzles helped him in the first week. Using puzzles and substitution codes helped make the work interesting for Robby. He enjoyed solving the puzzles and circling the correct picture to represent the word that was spelled by the pictured sounds. One issue that came up in this activity on both disks three and four was that Robby found some of the word pictures to be vague, and he often chose the picture because he knew the other picture in the pair did not fit the word that he had sounded out. Robby continued to use the highlighter when marking shortcut sounds in the workbook while using disks three and four. When working with /er/, /ir/, and /ur/ on page 34 of the workbook, Robby used three different highlighter colors to help him keep track of the shortcuts that had different spellings but the same sound (Eller (2000). The handwriting drills that Eller (2000) continued to include in the exercises for each new sound helped Robby work on improving his handwriting. Robby went back and forth between printing and cursive, but was otherwise well-focused when working on the writing drills. Robby was more distracted than helped by the songs on disk four, which he felt to be silly and childish. Part of the problem was that the CD continued to have difficulty loading each track, so the songs were fragments and hard to follow. If the CD had loaded more readily, the songs would probably have been more engaging and more effective for Robby’s learning. Robby did well with the concept that “when two vowels go walking, the first vowel does the talking” (Eller, 2000). This was only an issue when a pair of vowels was preceded by the letters “q” and “u” as in “queen.” The letter “u” in these words made Robby want to make the double vowels in the word cause the “u” to say /u/, so we had to discuss how the letter “q” has to 524 A Journey Through My College Papers be followed by the letter “u” in English so the letter “q” can make its /kwuh/ sound. At the end of the discussion, Robby understood that the letter “u” did not count as a vowel when it was paired with the letter “q.” Robby was resistant to doing the various activities associated with card 14. He was selfconscious about clapping or buzzing in place of saying the vowel sounds. He was also resistant to doing the jumping jacks and other physical activities associated with the sound review on disk three and the head-shoulders-knees-toes activity on disk four. The latter activity reminded him too strongly of a preschool song that he learned when he was two years old, and the association caused him discomfort when it came up in this course. Robby did well with the concept of “Ethel on the end,” successfully identifying the silent letter “e”/ that made the vowel before it say the first vowel’s name: /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, or /u/. Similarly, he did well with understanding that the letter “e” says its name, /e/, at the end of a word with no other vowels, and that the letter “o” says its name, /o/, when it appears at the end of a word. Marking vowels with arrows to indicate which vowels make which other vowels say their names was easy for Robby. However, Robby did not want to underline shortcuts, circle two-forones, and divide syllables in the same words in which he had to draw the arrows. With Robby’s ADHD, using too many symbols on a single word was distracting, so I let him leave out those markings as long as he marked the elements that were part of the lesson on which he was working. With CD 5, Robby continued to work with vowels and added the vowels’ cousin, the letter “y”, enjoying the idea that the letter “y” is “tricky and sly” (Eller, 2000). Robby progressed quickly through the exercises in the workbook; he understood the rule that the letter “y” says /i/ when there is no other vowel in the word, and that the letter “y” says /e/ when there is another vowel in the word, even though that rule was not explicitly taught to him in school. Robby enjoyed the reading comprehension exercises, and he was very successful until he got too confident and tried to answer the questions without reading the stories. We had to talk about following directions and about reading the entire story before answering the questions. I explained to him that these comprehension exercises were not just about learning to read: they were also good practice for the sort of standardized tests that he will need to take in high school and college. Robby was frustrated with his inability to answer the question about comfortable shoes on page 69 of the workbook without reading the preceding story, but he calmed down and tried again when he understood that college placement tests require comprehension samples like the ones in the book (Eller, 2000). Robby was having more ADHD symptoms than usual when we did CD 5, which made it difficult for him to focus on the work. Robby did not like the singing games associated with card 14 (Eller, 2000). He resisted card 14 during CDs 3 and 4, as well, and he expressed that clapping and buzzing in place of saying the vowels was confusing for him. In order to help Robby remain receptive to the rest of the teaching, I put card 14 away and did not make him do those drills for the rest of the week. Robby benefitted from the breaks to do jumping jacks and toe touches during the lessons on CD5. The physical exercise helped reduce his ADHD symptoms and helped him focus on the stories and the comprehension questions. When Robby got restless, we paused the disk and let him walk around and get a drink of water, which also helped. Robby continued to do well with the stories and reading comprehension questions on CD 6. We did this disk on a snow day, when Robby was out of school and wanted to play outside, but he worked hard and was much more focused than he was for CD 5. These behavioral concerns came from his ADHD, not from Eller’s (2000) Action Reading program, but they affected how Robby responded to the lessons. If Robby had been an actual beginning reader, these concerns Undergraduate Series 525 would have impacted his learning for the sessions. Reflecting on this helped me recognize that I will need to keep students’ learning differences in mind when I teach in the future. Robby was very confused by question 2 on page 71 of the workbook, which is worded as follows: “If ‘ow’ [sic] is at the end of a word it might sound like [ ] umbrella. [ ] Arlene. [ ] Otis” [brackets included in the original] (Eller, 2000, p. 71). The names of the sounds were spelled out as words in the workbook question instead of being shown as /uh/, /ar/, and /o/, as shown in the quote, and that confused Robby. Robby thought the answer had to have an ending sound that matched one of the sounds of the letters “o” and “w” in sequence in the spelling of the required answer. I explained that the question was looking for the /o/ in “Otis”; having the words spelled out was confusing for Robby after having used the pictures of the umbrella for /uh/, of the girl Arlene for /ar/, and of the boy Otis for /o/. Once I showed him the examples in the story and added a few other words that end in the /o/ sound of the letter combination “o” and “w,” he was able to continue working. Robby grew up with more than 44 sounds in English because of the region in which I grew up. When Robby encountered “aught” and “ought” on page 72, he pronounced the sounds as /aw/ /tuh/ and /aah/ /tuh/, as he learned those sounds in early childhood (Eller, 2000, p. 72). He did not pronounce them both alike as Eller (2000) did on the CD. I explained to him that regional pronunciations of English sometimes have more or fewer than the 44 sounds that Eller (2000) mentioned on the first disk. Teaching Robby the /ing/, /ang/, /ong/, and /ung/ sounds was difficult because he objected to Eller’s (2000) characterization of the sounds as Chinese and he resisted the lesson as it was presented. Robby felt that Eller (2000) was making fun of the Chinese ethnic group and of its language, and he did not want to continue the lesson. At school, Robby was learning about cultural awareness and about political correctness, so he had difficulty accepting the reading lesson. Once he calmed down, however, Robby enjoyed the ringing sounds game on card 15. It was easier for him to accept /ing/, /ang/, /ong/, and /ung/ as bell sounds than as Chinese sounds. Although CD 6 ended with page 98 of the workbook, Robby did not want to leave the last few pages incomplete. He completed the final four pages without the CD, exploring the silent letters“w”, “k”, and “p” in the sounds /ruh/, /nuh/, ans /suh/ on page 99, and the silent letters “g” in /nuh/ and “h” in /guh/ on page 100 (Eller, 2000, pp. 99-100). Since Robby was already a strong reader, he was able to go through the /fuh/ of the letter combination “p” and “h” and the /sh/ of the several letter combinations on page 101 (Eller, 2000, p. 101). Through his use of the Action Reading program, Robby gained the necessary phonemic awareness, phonics tools, and beginning vocabulary and comprehension skills to learn to read English quickly and with fluency, and he reinforced reading and handwriting skills that he already possessed as an advanced reader. The activities in the program were able to be modified to accommodate Robby’s learning differences without a substantial change in the lessons as Eller (2000) presented them. While many of the lessons were designed with traditional-age beginning readers in mind, the reading and handwriting skills that were taught in the program were also suitable for teaching older beginning readers or for helping English-as-a-second-language (ESL) learners learn to read English. Through my work with Robby and the Action Reading program I gained practicum experience that will help me in future teaching jobs. I had to learn to adapt lessons and exercises so they would suit my student’s learning differences. I had to keep Robby on task while also allowing him adequate time to achieve understanding of the lessons. I had to work within time constraints to complete the practicum activity in the allotted three weeks; this was a very important concept, as there will be times in my future teaching when I will have to push through academic units more quickly than I will wish to do in order to meet the requirements of a school or 526 A Journey Through My College Papers a school district. My practicum experience in the phonics based reading and decoding course taught me skills that I will carry into my future personal and professional experiences. References Eller, J. (2000). Fundamentals: A research-based, phonics tutorial learn to read program. Chandler Heights, AZ: Action Reading. EDU360: Philosophy of Education The Faculty Debate 2/14/2013 “It is late Wednesday afternoon and classes have been dismissed at West High School. A few students remain in the music practice rooms preparing for the upcoming music contest. The sound of a whistle in the gym echoes down the hall. The faculty workroom is also empty, except for three teachers engaged in a heated discussion. Ms. Nichols, who has taught introductory chemistry for nine years, appears upset over the school district’s new policy concerning electives. She makes a passionate argument to her colleagues, alleging that it is a mistake to allow students a choice in determining their own program of study. She believes adolescents are not capable of making such choices and that they will opt for the easiest and least demanding courses. Mr. Lopez, who has taught courses in sociology and psychology for four years, attempts to argue an opposing viewpoint. He counters that adolescents, and even very young children, are capable of making high-quality educational decisions.” Ms. Nichols is expressing the existential education theory, in which a teacher must "[g]uide [a] learner in self-development" (Stallones, 2011, p. 49). She believes that students are children who require adult guidance in making important decisions. Mr. Lopez is expressing the pragmatic philosophy, in which "children are inherently curious and ... their education should consist primarily of exploring their world" (Stallones, 2011, p. 42). He believes that students have a natural desire to learn, and that they will choose classes that will facilitate their exploration and discovery of the world. Ms. Nichols' assertion is valid in that children, including high school students, are still developing in many ways. The Partnership for a Drug-free America (2013) reports that the uneven development of the brain from "early adolescence through their mid-20s" causes students to be more likely than older adults to make poor decisions and to take unnecessary risks (para. 1). Since students cannot be counted on the make appropriate, well-considered choices, parents and educators should guide students in making decisions about courses and electives that they should take. Parents and educators may use scaffolding to help students develop the critical thinking skills that are necessary for choosing academic and elective courses, so that the students' brains may develop more evenly and may produce more neural pathways to access decision-making knowledge and skills in the future, but the adults must continue to guide and support the students. Mr. Lopez, who has a background in sociology and psychology, should be aware that, although students are curious and wish to learn, the students cannot be depended upon to make responsible choices until they are older. While it may be appropriate to discuss academic choices with students, it is the responsibility of parents and educators to make decisions for the students. Undergraduate Series 527 References: Partnership for a Drug-free America. (2013). "Adolescent brain and behavior." A Parent's Guide to the Teen Brain. Retrieved from http://teenbrain.drugfree.org/science/behavior.html Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. The Functions of Schools 2/14/2013 It is my belief that schools exist to inculcate reading, writing, grammar, rhetoric, mathematics, science, history, geography, and arts to students. Although I recognize the benefits to modern society, I do not believe that schools should be centers of social work or health care, as they seem to be in many places. That being the case, in an effort to provide quality education within the bounds of a fixed budget, I would advocate a back-to-basics program in the schools. This would not eliminate physical education, but it would require sports programs to acquire outside financial sponsorship in the community. Likewise, it would not eliminate chorus/choir or music theory and appreciation, but it would require school bands to seek outside financial sponsorship, as well. I would advocate moving driver's education to an extracurricular activity and charging a reasonable fee for students to take the course. Where I live now, vocational technology is a necessary program, but I would recommend concentrating vocational students in a separate, dedicated facility beginning with grade 9 or 10, continuing their math and language arts classes but otherwise focusing on technical training. In my area, outside Detroit, that would be likely to involve automotive subjects, construction skills, engineering, and computer technologies. In a rural area, such as where I lived in western Virginia, vocational education would be more likely to include agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry, mining and resource management, forestry, and related topics; many school districts there have already implemented this sort of change. While the core academics of English language arts, mathematics, and general sciences and social studies are important for all students, advanced classes in any or all of these subjects and in foreign languages are generally intended for college preparatory students. Every student should have the opportunity to attend college, but not every student needs to attend college to be successful in life. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, and some engineers need college. Construction workers, retailers, food service workers of various types, automotive specialists, transportation specialists, sanitation specialists, forestry workers, parks and recreation workers, and many others are poorly served by being forced to perform in college preparatory classes. With that in mind, I would make all except English language arts and general mathematics (through algebra or geometry) optional for students desiring to pursue technical training for a non-college track. I believe that arts and music are essential to education. Aesthetically pleasing environments stimulate creativity and higher reasoning, and improve memory development and retrieval. While a fixed budget does not allow for the professional beautification on a boxy school building, visual arts classes can be allowed to design and paint murals in hallways, stairwells, cafeterias, libraries, other common areas, and even in classrooms and on the outside of school buildings. Such projects can be combined with literature studies, cultural studies, and even math and science to reinforce learning. 528 A Journey Through My College Papers Motivation to Learn February 18, 2013 When I was in my early twenties, I experienced a crisis of faith. As the daughter of a Congregationalist pastor, I had learned my religion well, but my personal beliefs were at odds with the theology of my religion. In order to address this crisis of faith, I employed three of the basic activities of philosophy: synthesis, speculation, and analysis (Stallones, 2011, p. 14). This process took several years, since gathering data for me required leaving the denomination of my childhood and acquiring personal experience of other faith paths. I spent time studying and practicing nature-based Pagan religions. I spent a year studying for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) in the Catholic Church, while participating actively in the prayer and worship of a local Roman Catholic Church. I spent several months studying and worshipping with the local Jewish community at a synagogue. For several years, I visited a variety of churches of different Christian denominations. I also spent time not attending or participating in any organized religion. I gathered data from each of my experiences in an act of synthesis, although I was not then aware of that meaning of the word. During the times without organized religious observance, I engaged in speculation about God and gods, about mortality and immortality, and about the existence of good and evil in the world. Finally, and after each new experience along the way, I engaged in analysis. I compared and contrasted the religions I had experienced after leaving the Congregational church to the beliefs and practices of my childhood church. I decided which aspects of my religious experiences were valid in my life, and which aspects I would set aside. In the end, through a combination of synthesis of experiences and beliefs, speculation about what constituted truth for me, and analysis of the information that I gathered through synthesis and speculation, I arrived at a personal statement of faith and a personal description of how I need to practice faith to achieve personal fulfillment. This process led me not back to my childhood church, but to the American Episcopal Church, in which I have been active and happy for a number of years. The four habits, or activities, of the philosopher’s task are synthesis, which involves gathering information from various sources; speculation, which involves considering ideas that cannot be tested by the senses; analysis, which involves questioning and examining ideas and information; and prescription, which involves choosing a course of action (Stallones, 2011, pp. 1416). The most valuable of these activities for teachers are synthesis and analysis, each of the four activities is necessary in the classroom. Synthesis is important for the teacher because effective teaching requires drawing on multiple sources for information and for methods of transmitting information to students. A teacher needs to be able to draw information and ideas from traditional textbooks, from the literary canon, from popular media, from the experiences of other educators and of members of the community, from other educational disciplines, and even from the teacher’s students. Analysis is important for the teacher because analysis allows the teacher to examine information from various sources and to use critical thinking to bring the more accurate and pertinent data into the classroom. A teacher also instills the habit of analysis in his or her students, teaching the students to apply critical analysis in a variety of real and hypothetical situations in the classroom. I believe it is important for me, as a future teacher, to have an understanding of philosophy. In general, I am a realist; I believe that “important truths about reality can be learned from observing the natural world” (Stallones, 2011, p. 9). At the same time, I recognize that there are truths beyond the reach of the natural world and of logical enquiry, so I am at least partly an idealist. I am not certain that any person is wholly an idealist or wholly a realist, but only that a given person may be more inclined toward one group or the other. I am open to discovering that truths beyond the natural realm may be described or explained by logic and science in the future; Undergraduate Series 529 at the same time, I am open to the idea that some truths are just too big to be apprehended by human thought and science, and so must be left to the realm of the supernatural. References Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Where Do You Stand? 2/21/2013 The results of my Educational Philosophies Self-Assessment are as follows: Information Processing: 23; Cognitivism/Constructivism: 21; Progressivism: 20; Perennialism, Behaviorism, and Humanism: 18 each; and Essentialism: 17 (Educational philosophies selfassessment scoring guide, 2013). There is not a huge spread from the highest of my scores to the lowest, which suggests to me that I have an eclectic educational philosophy that is dominated by information processing. The official results, however, indicate that my personal educational philosophy is in the information processing group. Information processing "explains how a given body of information is learned and suggests strategies to improve processing and memory" (Educational philosophies selfassessment scoring guide, 2013, para. 6). As long as this philosophy is not required to stand alone as the total of my educational philosophy, I do agree that I favor facilitating the learning of new information and the retrieval of information from long-term memory. To that end, I prefer a teaching approach that provides as many connections as possible to the learning so retrieval of information can be as easy and reliable as possible. This does seem to fit the definition for the information processing philosophy. My formal education began at age 2 with a full-day, academic preschool, and continued through the public school system in Vermont. My education was structured along the lines of Thomas Jefferson' free, public schools that taught "reading, writing, arithmetic, and English, along with classical and American history" (Stallones, 2011, p. 66), but it was also strongly influenced by the liberal education system of ancient Greece. Beginning at an age when some children are still mastering walking and talking, my friends and I were taught reading, writing, mathematics, and the beginnings of history and science, along with the arts and games associated with early childhood centers. This was an early liberal education. My public elementary school had one classroom per grade, and was structured along the lines of the common school. Jefferson's proposed subjects for schooling follow the liberal education tradition, and I received an early liberal arts education throughout kindergarten and elementary school. These same traditions carried into my education at the public high school, where the division between students studying vocational arts and students studying liberal arts resembled the description of slave schools and free schools in ancient Greece (Stallones, 2011, p. 58). My personal educational philosophy does not fully mesh with the results of the selfassessment, above. My personal philosophy, like my own childhood experience, blends the educational proposals of Thomas Jefferson with the ancient Greek liberal arts education for all young students and for students who plan to enter professions that require higher liberal arts educations, and vocational arts educations for those older students who plan to pursue professions in skilled trades and service professions. Based on that, I suppose I must choose the liberal arts educational philosophy and the Socratic method of teaching. The liberal arts education of ancient 530 A Journey Through My College Papers Greece are identified as: "grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music" (Liberal Arts Education, 2012, sidebar). While I recognize that the list needs to be adjusted for modern times, I still agree that grammar or language arts, the dialectic of reasoning (thesis and antithesis), the rhetoric of persuasive argument, the geometry and arithmetic of mathematics, astronomy and other physical sciences, and music and other aesthetic arts need to be taught to all young students to give them a solid educational foundation. Social studies and languages are also needed. The Socratic method of questioning ideas should be a part of each of these studies, as the student will learn more effectively if he or she reasons through learning instead of just memorizing and regurgitating information. Formulating my personal philosophy of education, and learning to refine and articulate that philosophy, will impact my future students by allowing me to understand not only what the curriculum requires me to teach, but also why I choose to teach and what I want my students to gain from my teaching. References: Educational philosophies self-assessment scoring guide. (2013). Retrieved from http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/ed416/scoringguide.html Liberal arts education. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.rollins.edu/academics/liberalarts.html Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Performance Pay versus Tenure 2/21/2013 I find myself assigned to the group that supports performance-based teacher pay. Performance-based teacher pay requires teachers not only to teach, but to teach well. Teachers whose students routinely fail to achieve high scores on standardized tests and other assessments are paid at a lower rate than those teachers whose students routinely score well on such tests. In order to achieve the best pay possible for their work, then, teachers in a performance-based teacher pay system will work hard to teach students as much information as they can teach and to teach the information as effectively and as efficiently as possible. Teachers in this kind of system have a strong, external motivation to succeed as teachers by helping their students achieve as learners. A teacher with performance-based pay will not allow students to fall behind, and will work hard to be sure the lowest-achieving students in each class meet or exceed the minimum requirements for the grade. Economic incentives are strong motivators for high performance, in teaching as in other professions. According to Beth Lewis (2013), a teacher with ten years of experience in California, "Incentivized teachers will work harder and produce better results ... The simple possibility of extra cash would most likely translate into smarter teaching and better results for our children" (para. 6). Performance-based pay is the norm for most professions in the United States today, but "85 percent of school districts nationwide still use the outdated uniform single-salary schedule that pays teachers like factory workers" (Van Beek, 2012, para. 3). Teachers who know they will be rewarded for more successful teaching will work harder to achieve success in the classroom by helping their students become successful learners. Jared Stallones (2011) notes that "[s]ome states experimented with incentive pay to attract teachers into the areas needed, but teachers’ unions generally oppose such differential pay schemes" (p. 104). Despite the opposition by teacher's unions, differential pay that rewards successful teachers with performance-based teacher pay benefits teachers, students, and the community. When teachers are given tangible incentives to teach well, students learn more and Undergraduate Series 531 retain more of what they learn. Students then grow up to be stronger, better-prepared citizens who are able to have a positive impact on society. References: Lewis, B. (2013). Pros and cons of merit pay for teachers: Should teachers be rewarded for performance like everyone else? Retrieved from http://k6educators.about.com/od/assessmentandtesting/a/meritypay.htm Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Van Beek, M. (2012). Merit-based teacher pay rewards everyone. Retrieved from http://www.mackinac.org/17130 Effective Teachers February 21, 2013 If I must choose between pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge for the most important knowledge for a teacher, I will choose pedagogical knowledge. In actuality, I agree with J. J. Schwab that teachers need to have “pedagogical content knowledge” (Stallones, 2011, p. 106). Schwab’s idea combined both pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge, acknowledging that both kinds of knowledge are essential for a teacher. Content knowledge is “a deep and thorough understanding of the subjects they [teachers] teach” (Stallones, 2011, p. 106). It is important for a teacher to have this degree of understanding if possible. However, there is a difference between knowing a subject and being able to transmit that knowledge to students. If a teacher has content knowledge but lacks pedagogical knowledge, then the teacher will be unable effectively to transmit that knowledge to his or her students. Student learning is greatly impaired when an expert in a field of study is unable to impart his or her knowledge to others. Pedagogical knowledge is “the knowledge and skills required to effectively teach” (Stallones, 2011, p. 106). A teacher with strong pedagogical knowledge can teach any subject about which he or she has or can obtain information. A teacher may lack deep content knowledge, but the teacher can read just ahead of the students in the text and effectively teach the information to students. The teaching will lack substance when it occurs in this way, and often students can recognize when a good teacher lacks deep knowledge of the subject being taught, but students will learn more from a teacher who possesses pedagogical knowledge and lacks content knowledge than they will learn from a teacher who possesses content knowledge and lacks the pedagogical knowledge with which to impart the content knowledge. In most cases, teachers possess both some content knowledge and some pedagogical knowledge. In a few wonderful cases, a teacher will possess an abundance of each of the two kinds of knowledge. Those latter cases are when the best teaching and learning take place. A teacher with deep content knowledge and a strong grasp of pedagogy will inspire students to learn and to seek additional learning in the subject. That is the sort of teacher I hope to be. I have been the teacher who knew how to teach my students, but who had to struggle to learn the content ahead of having to teach it because I was given a class and a text and I was simply told to teach the text so the students would pass the six unit tests and the final, comprehensive exam. It was a daunting challenge to teach content with which I was not deeply familiar, but because pedagogical knowledge is just slightly more necessary than is content knowledge, I was able to teach the material to my class and to see each of my students pass each test in turn. So, if I must say that either pedagogical knowledge or content knowledge is the most important knowledge for a teacher, my choice must be pedagogical knowledge. 532 A Journey Through My College Papers References Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Why I Wish to Become a Teacher February 21, 2013 I wish to become a teacher for several reasons. First, I love learning and knowledge, especially reading, and I have a strong desire to share that love of learning with others. I feel an almost physical pain when I encounter someone who can learn but who has not had access to good teachers to impart learning. Second, I wish to teach so that the knowledge and skills of the past may be preserved and passed on in the future. In my experiences with historical reenactment, I have been exposed to amazing literature, art, and culture that are in danger of being forgotten and lost in time. As long as I can teach others about the knowledge from the past, I can help keep history alive and vibrant for the future. Third, I wish to teach because I have a strong urge to nurture and to help others, and teaching is an aspect of nurturing the mind and the spirit of the student. I want to equip others with the skills and knowledge not only to survive in the world, but also to succeed and to thrive in the world. Learning, especially literacy, is the key to moving beyond survival to success and personal enrichment. I was blessed with having many very good, caring, effective teachers at each level of my education. It is difficult to choose a favorite teacher from among the many. If I must choose just one, however, it must be Robert A. Hutchins. Mr. Hutchins was my eleventh grade English teacher, he was my twelfth grade writing seminar teacher, and he was also the faculty advisor for the school’s literary magazine, on which I worked in my senior year of high school. Mr. Hutchins cared about each student, and he went to the trouble of getting to know each student as a person. Mr. Hutchins recognized my love for English, and especially for creative writing, and he went out of his way to nurture that interest in me. He encouraged me to write, and he was always available to read my work, even when it was not for his class. He gave me the freedom to be creative and to explore literature and writing. I was last in his class in 1987, but he and I still correspond with each other. I know this is not a unique situation for him, because he used to tell our classes about letters he had received from his alumni over the twenty or more years of his teaching before our classes. Mr. Hutchins seemed to believe that each student is an individual, and that each individual needs to be able to discover his or her own, personal gifts and talents. He seemed to believe that the purpose of teaching was to give his students a foundation on which to build personal knowledge and scholarship, and also to expose students to ideas that would inspire his students to seek more ideas and more educational experiences. As an English teacher, Mr. Hutchins provided a lot of experiences with literature. We read novels, short stories, poems, and plays. Mr. Hutchins took our class to the North Shore of Boston to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream performed in an outdoor amphitheater. He encouraged us to memorize, analyze, and present to the class works by modern poets. He passed out random pictures that he clipped from magazines and had us write vivid, descriptive papers about what the images looked like and what the images meant or made us feel. In Mr. Hutchins’ class, I was motivated to learn by his positive feedback, by his encouragement, and by his evident passion for the material that we learned from him. He had taught in that same classroom since before I was born. When I last spoke to him, several months ago, he still teacher English in that same room. He has eschewed advancement in order to teach Undergraduate Series 533 teenagers to love literature and writing. His example was motivation to learn then, and it still is today. I hope I will be able to bring some of Mr. Hutchins’ passion for literature and passion for teaching to my own teaching. Thanks to him, I have seen what a really good teacher is, and I have seen him inspire students to learn. I plan to teach English at the junior college level, and I will follow his example by allowing my students to express their creativity as far as the prescribed curriculum allows. I will be enthusiastic about the literature that I teach, and about the unique responses that each class of students will bring to the discussion of literature. I have seen that teaching can be a lifelong vocation, not just a job that lasts a few years and serves as a stepping stone for administrative, and later to political, advancement that I have seen from some other teachers. Historical Foundations of Education in America February 25, 2013 Society has grown and changed over decades and centuries, and schools have always been part of that growth and change. Although the concerns of society shift from one generation to another, some core ideas of education persist over time. From the teaching of John Comenius in the 17th century to modern schools in the 21st century, teachers and principals continue to put the needs of students first. An examination of the careers of three American principals from the 1960s, the 1980s, and the 2000s shows that the basic philosophies of education are similar across the decades, but that the concerns facing the principals of the 21st century are quite different from the concerns of principals in the mid-20th century. Charlotte C. Beamer was the principal of Margaret Beeks Elementary School in Blacksburg, Virginia, from 1963 to 1971. During her career, Beamer exhibited a tendency toward the humanistic philosophy of education. Humanistic is defined in Philosophy of Education as: “Having to do with human beings” (Stallones, 2011, p. 79). In a 1989 interview, Beamer spoke of the goodness of the teachers, students, administrators, and parents with whom she worked during her term as principal. She said, “I wanted teachers to be free to use techniques that they were familiar with using and techniques that they felt free to use and they felt comfortable, because I don't think any person, principal or anyone else, can go in and tell a teacher this is the best way to teach something” (Charlotte Beamer Interview, 1989, para. 16). Throughout her interview, Beamer stressed the importance of considering the needs of the individual, both the teachers under her leadership and the students under her care. In the description of humanism, the Educational Philosophies Self-Assessment Scoring Guide (2013) states that “people are free to act but must be responsible; behavior is the consequence of human choice” (para. 6). Beamer addressed student behavior in her interview, stating that “most discipline problems comes through the lack of the instruction, that's the reason they misbehave” (Charlotte Beamer Interview, 1989, para. 62). Beamer clearly attributed behavior problems in young children, who are not yet fully capable of making choices for themselves, to the choices of teachers who do not provide adequate or appropriate teaching for their students. Beamer also believed in the progressive philosophy of education. In the words of the Educational Philosophies Self-Assessment Scoring Guide (2013), she expressed her desire for students to “be active and learn to solve problems by experimenting and reflecting on their experience” (para. 4). Beamer discussed her feeling that students should have less paper work in the classroom, saying: “You get away from stimulating a good discussion with children in the classroom, listening to their ideas, letting them express their opinions whether they have any facts 534 A Journey Through My College Papers to back up that opinion. So, what? At least let them give it. Really stimulate communication in the classroom” (para. 54). Beamer wanted students to learn through dialogue and through exploring their own ideas, which is very similar to the Socratic method of asking students open-ended questions to stimulate critical thinking. Beamer’s primary concerns centered around bureaucracy and paper work that took up most of her time as a principal. Along with her concerns that students had to do too much paper work in the form of work sheets that made the students work in isolation from each other, Beamer’s administrative paperwork isolated her from the teachers and students of her school by forcing her to remain in her office for much of each day. Beamer’s concerns about paperwork connect to her humanistic approach, since the enforced isolation imposed by paperwork at all levels prevented human interaction among students, among teachers, and between Beamer and the students and teachers in Margaret Beeks Elementary School. Ethel S. Haughton was a principal at a combined elementary and middle school in Oil City, Arkansas. Spurred by her experiences with an African-American student at a school that primarily served military families at the beginning of racial integration in the 1960s, Haughton developed a progressive philosophy of education that she carried through her career as a principal until her retirement in the early 1990s. In her interview, Haughton stated: “I firmly believe that our school systems should be for all children ... every child has the right to obtain an education” (Interview, 1995, para. 61). Haughton’s career spanned the period from the beginning of racial integration in education to the early 1990s, when every child in the United States has the opportunity to receive a free education. Haughton’s belief that every child should receive an education aligns with the progressive focus on the child. Stallones (2011) describes progressive education as “characterized by integrated curriculum designs, social learning activities, and learning by direct experience” (p. 80). Haughton describes the way she and her teachers organized the curriculum in the school to shift the instructional focus to the needs of the students and teachers: “in math in the elementary, and did away with a-lot of the books ... we went into a science lab situation with science ... we began doing more with the novels, moving away from basils [basics]” (Interview, 1995, para. 19). Removing the text books and allowing students to learn through laboratory activities and through literature combines the child-focus of progressivism with the human growth perspective of humanism, which was also evident in Haughton’s educational philosophy. In this way, the philosophy of Haughton in the 1980s was similar to the philosophy of Beamer in the 1960s. Haughton’s primary concern as a principal, like Beamer’s concern two decades earlier, was the paper work associated with her position. When asked to comment on the problems she encountered, Haughton replied: “Oh... paperwork!. ... Through the eight years that we, the eight or nine years that I was in the principalship, I saw the paperwork continue to grow and grow and grow ... we spend a tremendous amount of time just taking care of paperwork” (Interview, 1995, para. 63). In addition, Haughton identified the efficiency of curriculum and instruction as a matter of concern in her school while she was the principal. Haughton’s concern with paper work was very similar to Beamer’s concern, but Haughton’s concern with the efficiency of curriculum was different from Beamer’s experiences. Beamer felt that the teachers worked together to make curriculum run smoothly, but Haughton worked in a very large school district where curriculum was less efficient. Arthur Jacoby was the principal of the The Urban Family Center (UFC) Mini-School on Henry Street, on the Lower East Side, in New York City until his retirement in the early 2000s. Jacoby’s philosophy of education was that schools and educators bring about social change, which identifies him with the progressive philosophy of education. The UFC Mini-School was a special middle school that operated inside a shelter for homeless families and families that were victims of domestic violence. Jacoby’s work at UFC was designed not only to educate the students, but also Undergraduate Series 535 to equip them with skills, knowledge, and motivation to break out of the cycle of homelessness and violence and to become productive members of society. In a 2008 interview, Jacoby said: “teachers have a much greater chance of influencing students than counselors ... as an administrator at Henry Street my orientation was to bring about real change” (Arthur E. Jacoby Interview, 2008, para. 6). Jacoby’s philosophy also included the humanist philosophy of education, in which he and his teachers treated students as individuals and respected their individual experiences. Because of the special conditions of the UFC Mini-School, Jacoby’s students came to the school with a variety of personal tragedies, traumas, and experiences that required special, individual attention and encouragement to help each student reach his our her potential for growth and development. Jacoby’s issues as a principal were very different from the concerns of Beamer and Haughton. Beamer and Haughton were most concerned with paper work, but Jacoby was more concerned with transitory students who might be in the school for only a few weeks or months while their families were in the shelter. These students lacked continuity in their lives and educations. In addition, Jacoby had to deal with violence in the school, not so much from the students as from the batterers who had caused the families to enter the shelter and who would bring continuing violence into the shelter and the school. Unlike the schools of Beamer and Haughton, Jacoby’s school had to deal with social workers on the staff, and there was a greater need in Jacoby’s school to help students overcome traumas by celebrating every accomplishment. Whereas Beamer and Haughton found paper work to be their greatest concern as principals, Jacoby hardly mentioned paper work in his interview. Across the decades of the 1960s, the 1980s, and the 2000s, the ways the three principals discussed issues related to student learning were often similar. Like Beamer in the 1960s and Haughton in the 1980s, Jacoby combined progressivism and humanism in his term as a school principal. While the educational philosophies of the three principals were similar, the times in which they taught were different. Beamer discussed issues of student learning as very satisfying and gratifying for her. Her primary goal was to help her students achieve their potential. Haughton’s discussion was similar to Beamer’s discussion, except that Haughton’s educational practices in the 1980s were impacted by her experiences of racial integration in the 1960s. Haughton had interacted with students who had been denied an education prior to integration, so her focus was on ensuring that every child received an education. Jacoby was a principal in the inner city after the turn of the 21st century, and his discussion was very different from the discussions of Beamer and Haughton. Jacoby discussed education in terms of social change and helping students overcome experiences of violence in their lives. If Beamer was sitting in the back of a classroom today, she would observe that students have moved from the isolation of text books and work sheets to the deeper isolation of virtual education with computers, tablets, and other digital devices in even the youngest classrooms. At the same time, she would observe that students do more group work and have more freedom of movement in the classroom than was usual in her time. Haughton, observing a modern classroom would make similar observations to those made by Beamer. Haughton would be less surprised by the use of computers in the classroom than would be Beamer. Both principals would notice that schools today emphasize the needs of the students. Jacoby’s classroom was not far removed from the classrooms of today. Jacoby would notice the accommodations for learning differences, for English Language Learners (ELL), and for intervention by social workers for students at risk. John Amos Comenius was a great educator who lived in the Czech Republic from 1592 to 1670. Comenius’ educational philosophy was not far different from the philosophies of the principals Beamer, Haughton, and Jacoby. “Comenius devoted himself to studying, improving, and establishing better ways of educating than he had experienced” (Schwarz & Martin, 2012, para. 3). Comenius believed in a progressive philosophy of education that included holistic 536 A Journey Through My College Papers learning, development of the individual, a focus on personal experience, and the education of all children (Schwarz & Martin, 2012, para. 2). Modern educational practices draw extensively from the educational ideas of John Comenius, who “laid out a comprehensive school system starting with young children attending a kindergarten-like classroom, proceeding through elementary and secondary schools, and concluding with college and university” (Stallones, 2011, p. 63). Some of the core similarities between Comenius’ educational ideas and modern teaching practices are shown in the Venn diagram, below. As can be seen in a comparison of Comenius and modern education, and in the educational philosophies of Beamer, Haughton, and Jacoby, central teaching practices remain largely unchanged over time. Every so often, society will experiment with an educational practice or system that departs from proven methods, but such experiments are generally short-lived. The persistence of teaching practices over decades and centuries is a product of the success of these teaching practices. Education that is focused on the needs of the child and that takes into account the individuality of the student is successful. Students learn more effectively when they are safe, happy, and engaged in the subjects being studied, and so progressive, humanistic education promotes efficient and effective learning. While educators must adapt to changing social concerns, from racial integration to widespread domestic violence and homelessness to immigration and ELL students, the basic ideas of education remain the same. Educators from generation to generation teach successfully by remaining aware of the needs of their students and by putting their students first. References Arthur E. Jacoby Interview. (2008). Retrieved from http://www.library.unlv.edu/faculty/research/principalship/printview.php?recId=510 Undergraduate Series 537 Charlotte Beamer Interview. (1989). Retrieved from http://www.library.unlv.edu/faculty/research/principalship/interview.php?recId=477&ter m= Educational philosophies self-assessment scoring guide. (2013). Retrieved from http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/ed416/scoringguide.html Interview. (1995). Retrieved from http://www.library.unlv.edu/faculty/research/principalship/interview.php?recId=165&ter m= Schwarz, G., & Martin, J. (2012). Comenius: Dead white guy for twenty-first century education. Christian Scholar's Review, 42(1), 43-56. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1114118531 Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Case Study: Evolution of Theories of Learning 2/27/2013 After reading the case study about Mr. Brandt making students who don't turn in homework stay in from recess to copy states and capitols, I am impressed with his approach (Stallones, 2011, p. 133). For many students, sitting still through recess is a time to rest and relax, not a punishment. I was a student who was often corrected for sitting still during recess, so I would have loved that disciplinary method. In my elementary school, the favorite punishment for missing homework was very similar to Mr. Brandt's method: we were made to stay in the classroom and copy spelling lists, writing each spelling word ten times. For misbehavior, the punishment was to stay in and copy sentences that varied depending on the offense; traditional choices such as "I will not tell lies" or "I will not hit other students" were common. I do think the method I grew up with, which is essentially the same as Mr. Brandt's method, is an acceptable punishment for missed work and poor classroom behavior. One of the strengths of the suggested approach of teaching good behavior by using content as a punishment is that replacing play with work effectively extinguishes poor behavior in most students. Recess becomes a reward for being good and for doing the work that is required of the student. Losing the reward of recess is incentive for good behavior. Another strength of the approach is that students who experience the punishment reinforce learning. Copying states and capitols or copying spelling lists may not replace the missing work (i.e. math or science homework), but it does teach the student something. Repetition reinforces long-term memory of the content that is being copied. In a study of students learning Japanese as a second language, Mori and Shimizu (2007) report that "students considered rote memorization most effective and metacognitive strategies least effective" for learning the new language (para. 1). While rote memorization does not replace critical thinking, rote memorization does build a knowledge base. One of the weaknesses of the suggested approach is that it takes away time for physical activity that is important for students. Students need the release of active play during recess to revitalize them, and to wake them up for learning later in the day. Pellegrini and Bohn (2005) cite the cognitive importance of the social aspects of recess for students: "positive social and emotional development is crucial to successful cognitive performance and adjustment to school" (para. 10). A punishment that removes recess may make a child less able to concentrate on learning toward the end of the school day because the student's cognition is impaired by the lack of social activity. Reporting on a 1995 study of the effect of recess on children's attention in school, Pellegrini and Bohn (2005) write: "in all experiments that children were more attentive after than before recess" (para. 19). Another weakness of the approach is that the content associated with the punishment 538 A Journey Through My College Papers does not replace the content in the missing work. A student who regularly stays in to copy states and capitols for missing math homework, for example, may memorize the states and capitols but may fall behind in math. I like this approach in general, but there are details I would change. With my sons at home, unacceptable behavior often results in the offender having to write an essay of one or two pages explaining why what he did was wrong, what impact his behavior had on another person or the family, and how he should change his behavior in the future. We only buy college-ruled paper, so they have plenty of room to write, and spelling, grammar, and handwriting count. For students who are old enough for this option, from first or second grade up, I would use this exercise to fill the time of the lost recess, and I would require that the missing work be turned in for a reduced maximum grade the next school day. I believe this alteration in the suggested method will promote critical thinking skills and writing skills at the same time it is discouraging unacceptable behavior and encouraging good behavior in students. I believe Skinner's operant conditioning approach to behaviorism is the philosophical approach I believe is best able to help teachers address classroom management issues. Stallones (2011) reports that behaviorism views learning as "nothing more than memorizing and repeating a response to a particular stimulus" (p. 124). Teachers need to provide appropriate stimuli to encourage good behavior and to extinguish unacceptable behavior in order to manage behavior issues in the classroom. Students will respond to the stimuli of losing recess and of being made to do extra work by adjusting their behavior and acting in ways that avoid repetition of the punishment. In most cases, students require multiple repetitions of a stimulus to learn the appropriate response, so a given student may lose several recess periods before changing his or her behavior, but the student will change his or her behavior to avoid the punishment and obtain the reward. References Mori, Y., & Shimizu, H. (2007). Japanese language students' attitudes toward kanji and their perceptions on kanji learning strategies. Foreign Language Annals, 40(3), 472-490. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/216010338 Pellegrini, A.D. & Bohn, C.M. (2005). The role of recess in children's cognitive performance and school adjustment. Educational Researcher, 34(1), 13-19. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/216899660 Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Case Study: Assessment 2/27/2013 Alec Hulbert is a new sixth-grade teacher at Thomas Jefferson Middle School. Alec took advantage of the days before school began to review the records of the 20 students who would be in his class. He was pleased to see that most of the students were performing at or above grade level on the standardized tests in reading comprehension, science, and mathematics. During the first week of school, Alec randomly asked students questions related to the last unit they had covered in the fifth grade to determine what knowledge and skills had been mastered and what might need to be reviewed. Alec was surprised when it became clear that most of the students had mastery of little more than the most basic facts. To get a more accurate assessment of student knowledge and skills, Alec developed a diagnostic assessment that he administered the following Monday. The results were disappointing. They indicated that the class Undergraduate Series 539 as a whole did not perform at the level that would have been expected given their scores on the state standardized assessment. In the case study, Mr. Hulbert used two distinct types of informal assessment to determine how much learning hi new sixth grade students had retained from their fifth grade classes. The first informal assessment Mr. Hulbert used was asking the students random questions about their prior learning. This is usually a good way to survey what an individual or a group knows. It is unclear from the case study whether Mr. Hulbert directed a given question to one student at a time or whether he queried the class as a whole and selected respondents from those students who volunteered by raising their hands. Another possibility is that Mr. Hulbert could have queried the class as a whole and allowed students to call out answers. Each of these three variations is an acceptable method of informal assessment of a group of students, and each yields different results. In the first approach, the teacher asks a question of one student at a time. Unless the teacher asks the same question of every student in the class, which would be prohibitively time consuming, the teacher may miss students who know the correct answer, which skews the teacher's assessment of the knowledge of the class. In the second approach, only students who know the correct answer, or who think they know the correct answer, will volunteer to respond. This means the teacher does not find out what the other students know or do not know. Also, shy students may have the correct answer but may not volunteer to respond. The third approach is similar to the second, except that the teacher may hear more responses than if the teacher calls on individual volunteers to respond. Again, those students who are unsure of the answer or who are shy are unlikely to respond. The second informal assessment Mr. Hulbert used was a diagnostic assessment that he developed and then administered to the students. The benefit of this method is that the teacher can see what each student knows about each question on the assessment. It is unclear whether Mr. Hulbert used multiple choice questions, short answer questions, or other items on his diagnostic assessment. Multiple choice questions allow students a better chance of getting the right answer by guessing than do fill-in-the blank, short answer, essay, or label-the-diagram questions, and each different type of question provides the teacher with a different amount of information about the students' knowledge. I believe it is likely that the students scored well on the standardized tests given the previous year because of the intensive coaching that students often receive prior to high-stakes testing. Along with teachers "teaching the test," students are often encouraged to cram for standardized tests, committing information to short-term memory, but not learning the material well enough for learning to survive in long-term memory over the several weeks that students usually have for summer vacation between grades. If I was Mr. Hulbert, I would use the results of the diagnostic assessment to plan for instruction and improved student learning by designing a review of the prior learning that students did not retain, which would take a few days or up to a week or two of the school year before beginning the subject matter for the current grade. Depending on how much material the class as a whole needed to relearn, I would try to combine the review material with new material wherever the prior learning had relevance to the required new learning. If only a few students were behind, I might set up tutoring or review classes before or after school or during the lunch (while eating, not taking away lunch) for the group of students that needed the review. These are methods that I have seen used effectively in my sons' schools. I would also plan my teaching of the current year's material to ensure that the students learned the material fully during the year so there would be little or no need for the students to cram for the test at the end of the year. I would also work with students to develop good study practices so their learning will be imprinted not only on the shortterm memory that is needed to pass unit tests, but also on the long-term memory that will carry over to the next grade. These methods would be effective because they would first accomplish the 540 A Journey Through My College Papers repair to learning that is needed to transition from the previous grade, and they would then equip students for deeper learning of the new subject matter The Social and Cultural Contexts of Education 2/28/2013 There are a number of ways in which differing cultural values impact student achievement and educational attainment. One of these is the difference between urban and rural communities, which have different tempos for life and often have different moral bases. In many cases, rural communities tend to be more conservative than are urban communities, and the rural communities tend to favor traditional ideas and traditional morals. Urban communities are often more liberal and progressive, and tend to favor the introduction and exploration of new ideas and more open moral stances. Suburban communities often feature urban views on new ideas coupled with more rural approaches to moral issues. Adjusting teaching to particular communities requires an awareness of these differences. Socioeconomic status (SES) is also an important cultural concern for teachers. As Stallones (2011) reports, "children who live in poverty develop academic skills more slowly than those who do not" (p. 156). Teachers need to be aware of classes from high or low SES groups, and of classes with a mix of students from different SES groups. In addition, racial or ethnic differences impact student learning. "Children from ethnic and racial minorities spend considerably more time consuming media, especially television, than do white children" and "young people who consume more than 16 hours of media per day, are more likely to earn poor grades in school" (Stallones, 2011, p. 155). Unfortunately, in many areas, non-white students are also more likely to be low-SES students than are white students. Teachers also need to be aware of religious and faith-based differences among students in their classrooms. Some religious groups deny scientific teachings and certain aspects of history, while other religious groups are tolerant or accepting of such teachings. In my personal experience, there is also a need for teachers to be aware of potential tensions between members of the three "book" religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) and the growing population of students from Pagan backgrounds who may focus on nature, on the occult, or on other supernatural ideas. The Internet, including social media, has a mixed impact on learning. As noted above, "young people who consume more than 16 hours of media per day, are more likely to earn poor grades in school" (Stallones, 2011, p. 155). That is a definite drawback to students interacting with the Internet and social media. On the other hand, the Internet allows students access to vast quantities of information to which they would not have access in a non-Internet environment. Students have access to new and different ideas about the world and world issues, and they are able to interact with people in many different places and cultures on a real-time basis that has both great benefits and significant drawbacks when compared to the pen-and-paper pen pals of students in past generations. Social media can be a benefit to learning when it is used to interact with others for collaborative learning, but social media can be an addictive distraction from learning activities. Social media have the unfortunate tendency to promote poor communication skills, in the form of misspelled words, poor grammar, excessive expletives, and various abbreviations, all of which can migrate into students' academic communications and written work. As a teacher, I could mitigate any influences from cultural issues or from the Internet and social media that might be perceived as negative by using negative instances as teachable moments to help students achieve an understanding of and tolerance for cultural differences. I could encourage students to use the Internet and social media to research cultures in question and Undergraduate Series 541 to explore the similarities and differences between and among different cultures, both in the local community and in the world. I could make use of the time students like to spend with media, giving them educational games to replace games with little educational value. I could also reduce the time students spend in media-induced isolation by require face-to-face team or group projects. For certain cultural concerns, such as low-achieving students from low-SES or ethnic homes, I could use a partner or buddy system to support and scaffold the low-achieving students to higher levels of achievement, using higher-achieving buddies to help the low-achieving students to improve their learning. As do most teachers, I would suggest that parents of young students read aloud to their children. I would suggest to parents of all students that they have the students read aloud to the parents, and that the parents be involved in the children's homework and projects. I would recommend that parents limit children's time spent with media, and that parents supervise Internet and social media time to guide students to use these media to enhance learning. I would strive to make parents aware of the cultural diversity in the classroom, perhaps through cultural awareness open houses, and ask parents to discuss cultural diversity with their students. In our local elementary school and middle school, the Hispanic community hosts an annual festival in each building. The festivals are open to students, families, and the community, and they promote cultural understanding and acceptance. Each of the schools also holds a world cultures open house each year, where students present cultures from each of the six continents (always excluding Antarctica) to students, families, and the public. The students research assigned cultures in small groups, then produce posters, traditional foods, handicrafts when possible, and approximations of traditional dress. Students sometimes find traditional music on the Internet, and they make extensive use of the Internet to research and produce their displays. These festivals are something I would like to carry into my classroom if I end up teaching in the elementary or secondary school system, and I can see possibilities for carrying it into my intended school level in the junior or community college. A culturally responsive teacher recognizes and acknowledges the legitimacy of each culture represented in the teacher's classroom, school, and community. The teacher uses the cultural experiences and personal knowledge of culturally diverse students to inform and enrich the learning environment. The teacher includes literature, music, and art from a variety of cultures in the classroom, avoiding a culturally homogeneous classroom that ignores "non-dominant" cultures. This includes incorporating multicultural literature and resources in the curriculum. The culturally responsive teacher actively guides students to accept and acknowledge the cultural diversity in their learning environment, and attempts to help students bridge the differences between their home cultures and their school culture. The teacher would "incorporate everydaylife concepts, such as economics, employment, consumer habits, of various ethnic groups" (Culturally Responsive Teaching, 2002, para. 3). This would support and validate the cultural diversity of the students. References Culturally responsive teaching. (2002). Retrieved from http://www.intime.uni.edu/multiculture/curriculum/culture/teaching.htm Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. 542 A Journey Through My College Papers Aligning a Personal Philosophy of Education with Curriculum February 28, 2013 My results for the Birmingham Grid for Learning - Multiple Intelligences (Secondary) Assessment are shown in the figure below. According to the graph, my strongest area of intelligence is logical intelligence, followed closely by intrapersonal intelligence. My weakest area of intelligence is musical intelligence, followed closely by kinaesthetic intelligence (Birmingham Grid for Learning, 2013). I am surprised that my linguistic intelligence is behind both my naturalistic intelligence and my visual/spatial intelligence, as I would have expected my linguistic intelligence to be among my highest areas of intelligence, if not the highest. In the words of the Birmingham Grid for Learning summary (2013), I enjoy and tend to be good at “reading, writing and talking about things” (What are Multiple Intelligences?, 2013, para. 5). This is why I would have expected my linguistic intelligence score to be higher than the graph indicates. I do not tend to prefer mathematics, although I am good at math and I enjoy doing the grid-style logic puzzles. This probably explains why I scored so high for logical intelligence. I wholeheartedly agree that I lack musical intelligence. I love to sing, but I have no talent for it. I can only follow a tune that I hear, not carry a tune on my own. While I can differentiate among many values of colors, I am hard-pressed to identify what instrument I am listening to, aside from the piano or drums. On the other hand, I am surprised that my kinaesthetic intelligence score is so low because I spend a great deal of time working with my hands, making a variety of handicrafts, and I enjoy building things. I suppose my utter lack of traditional athleticism Undergraduate Series 543 contributes to my low score in this area, since tests don’t ask about obscure physical activities like archery and kneading bread dough, or about my favorite moving activity: spinning yarn from wool on a drop spindle, which requires a lot of hand and arm motion. This is an example of the way the contexts of students’ lives can affect test scores, “as different students bring to the test very different background experiences and knowledge” (Stallones, 2011, p. 148). I don’t like to walk or run because of residual effects of a congenital dislocated hip and the effects of a back injury twenty years ago, which is part of my personal background experience, so the questions on the survey about walking and jogging negatively influenced my kinaesthetic intelligence score. Similarly, I agree that I am short on interpersonal intelligence. I tend to be a solitary introvert most of the time. I break out of that for short periods at certain kinds of parties, but I tire of crowds and social activity quickly. I suffer from social anxiety disorder, so large crowds and crowds in enclosed spaces tend to give me panic attacks. On an academic and business front, I tend to prefer to work alone, and team activities make me very anxious. In the middle, even before linguistic intelligence, I find naturalistic intelligence and visual/spatial intelligence on the graph. I am surprised that I scored so high on naturalistic intelligence, since I tend to be an indoor person. The summary reports for naturalistic intelligence: “You will like the world of plants and animals and enjoy learning about them” (What are Multiple Intelligences?, 2013, para. 11). My extensive reading on nearly every subject with which I come in contact and my interest in science probably influenced my score in this area. The visual/spatial intelligence score may relate to my activities as an artist. Whether my interest in art elevated my score or whether my visual/spatial intelligence influences my art is hard for me to say. Over all, while some of the scores on my graph are a surprise to me, I find on reflection that I agree with the assessment. The one area I did not address above is my intrapersonal intelligence, and that comes into play in my reflection on my scores. Intrapersonal intelligence is how I know my own strengths and weakness and how I know myself. I do keep a diary of sorts, although I tend to gather my postings from my social media into a journal that I then annotate with additional thoughts and reflections and augment with scrapbook-type additions of event tickets, playbills, special receipts, etc. It is a reflection of my life and my ideas, and represents what is important to me. I fully agree with my high score for intrapersonal intelligence, because I have developed a strong awareness of self through my life experiences. References Birmingham grid for learning. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.bgfl.org/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/results/results_a ction.cfm Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. What are Multiple Intelligences? (2013). Retrieved from http://www.bgfl.org/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/what.cfm The Impact of Educational Philosophies and Theories March 4, 2013 The lesson plan, All About Me Unit, contains a long list of individual lesson plans that are intended to teach first grade students beginning literacy through self-awareness. The lesson plan, written by Laura (no last name given), is published on Teachers.Net on the World Wide Web at http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/1140.html. In addition to literacy skills, the lesson teaches the math skills of graphing, grouping, and counting; aesthetic awareness through art in the form of drawing activities; and the social skills associated with working on a group project. 544 A Journey Through My College Papers The lesson plan is an example of the axiology philosophy of education. Jared Stallones (2011) writes that “children learn best by exploration and inquiry driven by their own interests” (p. 7). The All About Me lesson plan appeals to a child’s personal interests by focusing the student’s attention on his or her own name and information about the individual student before drawing each student’s information into the community of the classroom through group activities. In addition, axiology includes the study of aesthetics and the lesson plan employs aesthetics by having the students draw self portraits and other illustrations to represent to student’s self image. The lesson plan mirrors the existentialist theory of education. In describing existentialism, Stallones (2011) writes that “[d]eveloping an authentic, satisfying sense of self is seen as the main task of learning” (p. 127). In the class graph portion of the lesson plan, students print their names on index cards, count the letters in their names, and then work as a group to create a graph that shows how many students’ names contain how many letters (All About Me Unit, 1999, paras. 4-5). In the class data portion of the lesson plan, each student prints his or her name on a piece of paper and draws a self portrait under the name. The students assemble the papers on a large poster, and then the class counts how many boys are in the class, how many girls are in the class, and how many students are in the class (All About Me Unit, 1999, paras. 7-8). In the class book portion of the lesson plan, each student completes a fact sheet about himself or herself, and then the sheet is attached to a large sheet of paper with a photo of the child; the child adds illustrations to the paper, then all of the pages for the class are bound together into a class book (All About Me Unit, 1999, paras. 9-11). Each of these activities requires the student to learn through a study of self, beginning with personal identity embodied by a name and including representations of self in self-portraits and in fill-in-the-blank fact sheets. The lesson plan also includes pragmatist elements as the pragmatist theory of education states that “learning is a social activity also implies a relationship between teachers and learners” (Stallones, 2011, p. 126). Each of the self study activities of the lesson plan also includes the concept of the student as a part of a community, with the students and teacher in a relationship among them. In graphing the lengths of students’ names, the students are drawn into a relationship with one another. In sorting the students by gender for counting and then counting the students as a group, the students are engaged in the social activity of inclusion. In collecting the personal stories of the several students into a class book, the students are made parts of a community that lives and works together in the context of the shared classroom. The All About Me Unit lesson plan has several strengths. First, the lesson plan serves as a way for young students to introduce themselves to their class without the social pressure of having everyone focus on one student at a time. This can help students overcome anxiety and shyness as they add their names, self-portraits, and pages to the group activities. Second, the lesson plan combines elements of multiple academic subject areas in each activity. The class graph and class data activities combine language arts and math by having the students write their names and then use counting, sorting, and graphing. The class book activity includes more advanced language arts skills in the form of questions for which students must read questions and write out responses. Each activity includes art and aesthetics to some extent, with the greatest instance being the self portraits. Third, the lesson plan provides an opening to begin cultural diversity education as students may have unfamiliar names with ethnic origins or may have nonEnglish names. Self portraits may show various skin tones, hair colors and styles, and eye colors. The class book may include preferences, interests, and hobbies that represent a variety of cultures. Using these activities as a beginning for cultural diversity acceptance is a strength of this lesson plan. There are very few things I would change in this lesson plan. The class graph activity includes the instructions: “Then have the children come up as you call the numbers and glue their name going up the side. They then color in the number of boxes to match the number of letters in Undergraduate Series 545 their name” (All About Me Unit, 1999, para. 5). Instead of putting the names on the side and coloring squares on the graph, I might let each child’s index card become a unit in the graph by adding the name cards directly into the graph in the appropriate columns based on the number of letters in each names. This would help the students connect their names directly to the graph data, instead of asking students to understand the abstraction of colored blocks representing their names. This would not be such a concern for older students, but it might be too abstract for incoming first grade students. Over all, this is an interesting, engaging lesson plan. It has several advantages and few drawbacks. This lesson plan could be repeated with older students who might enjoy going back over their past class books in future years and comparing the books of younger grades to older grades. The activities encourage the students’ self images and self expression. References All about me unit. (1999). Retrieved from http://teachers.net/lessons/posts/1140.html Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Curriculum Change 3/7/2013 Curriculum should be designed to meet the needs of society insofar as curriculum produces informed, responsible citizens to lead society into the future. In addition, curriculum should be designed to promote and to perpetuate the underlying values and principles of society, such as democracy (or other valued government structure), integrity, self-reliance, and a work ethic, among other possibilities. Curriculum should meet the needs of individual students by encouraging students to discover truths about themselves and about the world around them. In addition, curriculum should meet the needs of the individual student by providing the student with an academic foundation upon which the student can build his or her education throughout life. John Locke addressed this idea of providing a foundation of learning hen he argued that "the first task in educating children is to teach them the prerequisite basic literacy skills and to instill in them a love of learning" (Stallones, 2011, p. 173). My primary subject area is English. While it is my intent to teach at the college level, the current and ongoing debate in early English education between proponents of phonics-based reading instruction and whole language reading instruction is of key importance to my subject area at this time. Proponents of phonics education argue that students must learn the phonemes that make up words and learn the symbols (letters and letter combinations) that represent those phonemes to enable students to sound out and read any word in English. Proponents of the whole language option argue that students need to memorize frequently-occurring sight words and to use context to figure out unfamiliar words that they encounter while reading. A third group argues that phonics and whole language methods should be combined when teaching young children to read English Which method of reading instruction prevails in my students' early educations will influence the way the students read and the way they approach learning new words and ideas. As a result, I will need to be sensitive to the educational differences among my students when I teach college English. Legally, curriculum prescription should be a state matter, not a federal matter. The tenth amendment to the United States Constitution (1791) states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people" (para. 1). The power to mandate curriculum for schools is not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution, nor is such power prohibited by the 546 A Journey Through My College Papers Constitution to the various states, so the determination of curriculum should be a state matter. My personal opinion is that there is a need for a federally-mandated core curriculum, to which states can add elective courses as they see fit, because the increase in mobility in the United States has resulted in many students experiencing a variety of curricula as they move from place to place. This fractured experience of core curricula does not well serve students' academic needs; the adoption of federal curriculum requirements would make transitions from state to state easier for students. One of the forces that will have the largest influences on curriculum in the next twenty years will be "a need to shift from an industrial model of schooling to one that focuses on equipping students for a knowledge economy" (Barber & Mourshed, 2009, p. 11). This will require that, rather than requiring students to absorb a large amount of information through direct teaching, schools will need to encourage critical thinking and exploration of ideas. Another force that will have a large influence on curriculum is the ongoing globalization of world markets and the accompanying increase in cultural diversity in American classrooms. Students from various cultural backgrounds will have different educational needs from their classmates as they bring different information processing abilities to school. Stallones (2011) writes that "[t]o be effective, curriculum must be tailored to the unique needs of its recipients" (p. 195). In the coming decades, curriculum will increasingly need to take cultural diversity into account. A third force that will have a large influence on curriculum is information technology, including the Internet, but also including information technologies such as the Cloud, Android phones and tablets, and other devices that we may not yet fully envision. The way students access and interact with information, as well as students' social activities through social networking sites and systems, will influence the way curriculum needs to be designed and implemented. This has already had a large influence on American education in the last two or three decades, and it is difficult to accurately predict how information technology will impact curriculum in the next two decades. Teachers can prepare for the changes in curriculum in several ways. One way is to shift the focus in the classroom from rote learning of traditional information to dynamic explorations of literature, history, cultural issues, math, science, and technology. Equipping students to seek answers, to synthesize information and ideas from multiple sources, and the apply critical thinking to solving problems and to understanding the world will help teachers prepare for the changes in curriculum. Another way in which teachers can prepare for the changes is to learn about the cultures represented in their classrooms and about the different ways in which students in different cultures learn. For example, I have a friend who lives in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. She and her husband are Australian citizens who live in the Middle East for employment reasons. They recently adopted three young adolescent girls from Ethiopia. The girls are learning English well, but they are having a hard time with other subjects because they grew up with a time system that includes only "now," "before," and "later" (K. Schmidt, personal communication, February 10, 2013). They have been unable, in the past year, to grasp the concept of time measured by clocks and calendars. A cultural learning difference of this sort will wreak havoc in an American classroom if the teacher is not aware of the differences his or her students bring to the table. A third way in which teachers can prepare for curriculum changes is to anticipate the changes by beginning to integrate new communications technologies in the classroom. This anticipation of future uses of technology is already underway. On this morning's news, I heard a story about a new tablet called Amplify. The tablet uses an Android operating system that "has been heavily modified for its use in the classroom, with remote access to disable certain applications, the option to send mid-lesson quizzes, and even an, 'Eyes on teacher' warning on the screen should the student’s attention wander" (Boxall, 2013, para. 3). This is just one example of the way technology will impact the presentation aspect of curriculum in coming years. Undergraduate Series 547 References Barber, M. & Mourshed, M. (2009). Shaping the future: How good education systems can become great in the decade ahead. Education Practice [Electronic version.], 1-44. Retrieved from http://www.mckinsey.com/locations/southeastasia/knowledge/Education_Roundtable.pdf Boxall, A. (2013, March 6). News Corp pushes its way into the classroom with educational Amplify tablet. Retrieved from http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/amplify-tabletannounced-for-schools/ Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. U.S. Constitution - Amendment 10. (1791, December 15). Retrieved from http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_Am10.html Issues Surrounding Curriculum Development 3/7/2013 Parents, community members, and local leaders should have some input in what is taught in local classrooms, but the final determination of what is taught should be left to professional educators. While parents and others may have the best interests of the students at heart, many parents and community members lack the education and training to make informed decisions about what should be taught and how teaching should be conducted. Teachers, educators, and other professionals select curricula that serve the needs of the student population and of the school, which is necessary to serve the differentiated learning needs of diverse classrooms. Parents do have the option of controlling their children's curriculum by placing students in private schools or even by home schooling students, but the majority of students are still served by the public school system in which education professionals need to determine and control the curriculum. It is inappropriate for all students to be taught the same curriculum. Undifferentiated education does not take into account the differenced learning of students, whether differenced by physical, mental, or learning disabilities; by cultural diversity, or by simply different individual rates of learning. Teaching all students the same curriculum means requiring that all students achieve the same level, which is the goal with much of the high-stakes testing associated with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and Race to the Top (RTTP). Alfie Kohn (2001) writes that "declaring that everyone must reach the same level is naïve at best, cynical at worst, in light of wildly unequal resources" (para. 2). The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (2006) promotes a balanced approach to education, instead of a uniform approach. In a 2006 pamphlet, the department writes: "Reaching the needs of all learners does not mean providing the same instruction, for the same amounts of time, in exactly the same way, to all students" (para. 2). Effective education of diverse students needs to be differentiated education that takes into account the strengths, weaknesses, and other experiences and cultural diversities of the students. Teaching religious studies is different from teaching religion. The former suggests a study of various religions and faiths, which promotes cultural awareness and helps to inform studies of history, literature, and other topics. The latter suggests the indoctrination of students in a particular religion or faith system, such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or Wiccan. American public schools should teach students about world religions as part of an education in cultural awareness, but teaching a specific religion has no place in a secular, public school. There are many sectarian schools available for families who wish to have their children taught the precepts and practices of a given religion, and most sectarian schools offer scholarships so that financial distress does not block students from attending those schools. Public schools serve diverse populations with students who represent a variety of religions and faith traditions all studying together. Teaching any one religion in public schools would marginalize students of 548 A Journey Through My College Papers other faiths and those with no religious affiliation and would promote the students of the taught religion as superior to other students. It is better for public schools to not teach any religion, except in terms of a cultural study, so that no student is elevated above the rest and no student is left out. At the same time, schools should not require that students of any faith refrain from wearing or displaying religious symbols unless all students are prohibited from such displays; allowing some religious displays while banning others is a covert curriculum that teaches that the allowed religion is superior to other religions. This is a difficult situation, because the First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the rights of students to freely express their religious beliefs by wearing religious symbols such as crosses, crucifixes, and the Star of David. If students are allowed to wear these symbols, then Islamic, Wiccan, Buddhist, and other religious symbols must also be allowed in school. Teaching comparative religion and world religion classes in schools creates a better awareness of cultural diversity in students so that students are not threatened by non-Judeo-Christian faith symbols that are currently banned in many schools. References Kohn, A. (2001). One-size-fits-all education doesn’t work. Boston Globe [Electronic version.] Retrieved from http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/onesize.htm NC Department of Public Instruction. (2006). Reaching the needs of all learners. Retrieved from http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/curriculum/whatworks.pdf Elements of Curriculum Content and Delivery March 7, 2013 The key elements of curriculum content are a combination of those that make up the ancient liberal arts and those that help students prepare for college and careers. In other words, students at all levels should be taught grammar and reading, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy or the sciences in general. These courses, which depend on essentialist teachings, create a foundation on which the student may build his or her individual education. In addition to these subjects, students should be taught history, geography, a second language, and drawing or visual arts. From kindergarten through fifth or sixth grade, these courses are sufficient for most students. As students progress into secondary education, students who plan to attend college or university should continue to learn these subjects; students whose academic progress does not suggest college or who plan to go into the skilled trades or other work after secondary school should continue to study reading, writing, and math, but should exchange some or all of the other subjects for vocational or technical classes that will prepare the students to enter trade school or apprenticeships or to enter the work force. This differentiation of instruction would be best served by magnet schools, in which “the assembly of students based not on economic status, ethnicity, or neighborhood, but on a common interest” (Stallones, 2011, p. 199). Teachers should use a blend of direct teaching and teacher-facilitated student exploration to teach the liberal arts subjects. Some subjects, such as the various maths, spelling, and foreign languages, are most effectively taught be direct teaching. The sciences, social sciences, arts, and vocational subjects may be better taught by student explorations and integrated instruction of related subject matter. Vocational subjects and the arts, in particular, should involve as much hands-on work from the students as is possible since these are not theoretical subjects that can be learned through reading and lectures. All students, regardless of race, creed, culture, gifts, or disabilities should be taught to their greatest potential. Some students require different learning environments and opportunities Undergraduate Series 549 than are required by other students, and student diversity should be taken into account whenever possible in education. Grouping students by their interests, as is done in magnet schools, is an excellent way of optimizing the educational experience for all students. Students who plan to attend college should be taught subjects that prepare the students for college-level courses with an emphasis on college-level writing. Students who are drawn to the arts, including music and dance, should have the opportunity to receive special education in their chosen disciplines. Students who are drawn to skilled trades, such as carpentry, plumbing, and automotive topics, should be able to study those subjects. The same applies to students who wish to go into agriculture, sanitation, cosmetology, and any number of other areas. In every case, continuing education in reading, writing, and math should be required for every student in every program, because these are skills that every adult needs to use in daily life. My feelings about what should be taught, how it should be taught, and to whom it should be taught is a combination of essentialist and pragmatist philosophies. I believe that there are certain things that every person must know in order to be considered an educated person. This is essentialist. I also believe that “children learn best by doing” (Stallones, 2011, p. 178). This is pragmatist. Along with these, I subscribe to the Aristotelian belief that students can discover truths by studying the world around them, and I believe that students should always be encouraged to explore their world. I believe in using the Socratic method of engaging students in conversation with open-ended questions to make students think for themselves and work out the solutions to problems. All of this combines to make my thoughts about education rather eclectic, much like the eclectic student population that I hope one day to teach. References Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Facing the Future of Education 3/14/2013 Expansive school choice options will affect public schools because public school funding is based on student enrollment and the transfer of students from public schools to the numerous schooling alternatives takes funding away from the public schools. Stallones (2011) writes: "Public school funding is based on the number of students enrolled, while private schools are supported primarily by tuition" (p. 261). I see this issue every week on my local morning news as the Detroit Public School (DPS) system struggles to increase student enrollment in public schools. DPS has launched a recruiting campaign over the last few years to draw students back to public schooling from private schools, charter schools, and home schooling. Because of the competition for educational funding, DPS has been forced to clean up a lot of its schools, while at the same time closing many others and consolidating the public school population in the remaining, renovated school buildings. DPS is just one example of a situation that affects schools across the country. Expansive school choice options force public schools to improve their image, their curriculum, and their extra-curricular and co-curricular offerings to entice students to enroll in public schools; without student enrollment, public schools lost federal funding and school districts are forced to close under-populated schools. This competition for enrollment is good for public schools because the public schools are forced to keep up with the academic and other offerings and standards of alternative schooling options, which results in a better education for the students who are enrolled in public schools. Choosing a public school education or an alternative educational choice for students can pose difficulties for parents. Kirk Anderson (2006), in an article on school choice, writes: 550 A Journey Through My College Papers "Parents may actually be justified in sending their children to the kind of school they would prefer not to exist. So parents don't necessarily have to choose between principle and practice" (para. 4). There are several actions that can be taken to increase the likelihood that parents will make informed choices as they select the school for their children. First, schools need to make available to parents literature about the mission statement and annual yearly progress (AYP) of each school, presented in terms that are intelligible to the general population, not couched in academic language that may be outside the experience of many parents. Second, parents need to avail themselves of the information resources that are offered by the various schools that serve students in their areas. These resources may be print media, but electronic media make information accessible to many more parents more quickly and easily than do print media. Third, school districts may offer school choice fairs, similar to job fairs, where schools and home schooling groups can present information to parents. A school choice fair allows parents to learn about and to compare and contrast multiple schools at once. Fourth, before making a schooling choice, parents need to take time to really consider what they want from their children's education, what they want to avoid for their children, and what their children's strengths and interests are. This thought process helps inform parents' school choice. The Academy of Waterford is a public charter school that is familiar to me because one of my best friends is preparing to send her daughter to kindergarten there next year. The school's mission statement, as given on the school website, is to "enhance the future by providing opportunities for all students to learn by engaging in educational and entrepreneurial activities" (Academy of Waterford, 2013, para. 2). The school, which serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade, strives to prepare students to succeed in the world of business and to become part of the global economy. The school is organized into traditional age-based grades in classrooms with a 25:1 student to teacher ratio (School Flyer, 2013, p. 2). The school runs according to the pragmatic philosophy, which is evident because the students learn through social experiences and hands-on projects in business and entrepreneurship. The student population is drawn primarily from a middle-class, suburban neighborhood in Metro Detroit, with some ethnic diversity. The school's student flyer is printed in Spanish on one side and in English on the other side, suggesting that the school serves a multilingual student population. Home schooling has both advantages and disadvantages for students. Since many of my friends home school their children, I used Facebook to poll their experiences. While many people who support public schools decry home schooling for its lack of socialization for students, the home schooling families I talked to cite the richness of socialization as a benefit of home schooling. Kimberly Jacobs writes: "My kids get lots of opportunities to interact with many different kinds of people and have a wide variety of experiences" (Personal communication, March 13, 2013). Similarly, Skye Savage writes: "In the real world, and even on a typical playground, kids are meant to interact with people of all ages, exposing them to older children with more mature behaviors, and younger children with less mature behaviors. This leads them to a richer developmental experience, where they learn to to mimic better problem solving skills (older kids) and deal with less rational people (younger kids)" (Personal communication, March 14, 2013). Home schooling allows students to learn among people of varied ages and experiences, which better prepares students for life in the real world of adulthood. Another advantage of home schooling is the opportunity for parents to choose the curriculum for their children and to include or exclude specific materials to suit the family's beliefs and traditions. Parents have the option of using a rigid curriculum that mimics the public school experience, of using no set curriculum and allowing students to learn naturally through life experiences by unschooling, or to choose anything in between. Home schooling is also advantageous for families with unusual scheduling issues, such as families that do a lot of traveling that would interfere with traditional school attendance. Another advantage of home schooling is the freedom from "sexualization and peer pressure" (S. Undergraduate Series 551 Savage, personal communication, March 14, 2013). Skye has two daughters, as does Kimberly Jacobs, and in each family the freedom from gender-based peer pressure allows the girls to develop strong personal identities where they are not held back by their gender. A disadvantage of home schooling is that it often requires a remarkable commitment of time and energy from the parent or other adult who is responsible for the bulk of the teaching. Unfortunately, society does not yet fully accept home schooling as a valid option, which leads to another disadvantage. Gina Melton, who home schools her teenage children, writes: "So far, the only downside has been when local authorities and school districts aren't supportive" (Personal communication, March 14, 2013). There is a tendency for neighbors to misunderstand home schooling families and to report as truant students who are seen to be at home during the traditional school day. A third disadvantage of home schooling is that students are often unable to earn traditional high school diplomas and must take the General Educational Development (GED) examination to prove that they have completed the academic requirements for their states or districts. Many colleges, employers, and the military often consider the GED to be less valid than a high school diploma, which can become a barrier to higher education and employment. This is slowly changing, however, as states change the requirements for college admissions to be less discriminatory toward home schoolers. The New York State Board of Regents enacted changes in 2004 that "will enable a homeschool student to be treated as any other applicant seeking admission to a community college or university in New York. The rules have been changed to provide several different options for homeschool students to demonstrate satisfactory evidence of their preliminary (high school) education" (Breakthrough for homeschoolers, 2004, para. 7). With these changes, SAT and ACT scores are considered, rather than whether the student has a diploma or a GED certificate. Over the next ten years, I see technological advances enabling even greater parental choice in education. Many charter schools already offer online options for students. Several years ago, my sons were enrolled in an online charter school here in Michigan that was run by the K12 system of online schools. As technology advances, I see the probability that more and more schools will use teleconferencing and virtual classrooms not only for home schooling, but also to project teaching into classrooms so that several schools in a district can benefit from the teaching of a single teacher or other expert in a subject. Students in many schools already have access to textbooks and other materials on the Internet and in formats that can be accessed through personal electronic devices such as tablets and cell phones; I see a growth in this sort of information access, possibly to the exclusion of paper books from future classrooms. As technology advances, students may have the opportunity to receive progressive educations through the use of computer programs that allow students to progress through curricula at their own paces, with slower students receiving additional support through programs that offer additional practice. Social media, such as Facebook, already allow students to connect with and learn from people all over the world, and I believe this trend will continue and grow in the next ten years. Students will have access to cultural and scientific information that was undreamed of when their parents were in school. References: Academy of Waterford. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.charteracademies.com/academy-ofwaterford/index.htm Anderson, K. (2006). How not to be a hypocrite: School choice and the morally perplexed parent. The Journal of Educational Thought, 40(1), 97-100. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/213814123 Breakthrough for homeschoolers seeking admission to New York colleges. (2004). Retrieved from http://www.hslda.org/Legislation/State/ny/2004/BoardRegentsDraftRegulation/default.as p 552 A Journey Through My College Papers School Flyer. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.charteracademies.com/academy-ofwaterford/pdfs/school-flyer.pdf Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Why Do We Teach? March 16, 2013 Education should serve the needs both of the individual and of society. If education serves only the individual, then society will collapse under the weight of hedonistic anarchy, as the individual will not be prepared to be a useful member of society, or to care about the needs of others and of society. If education serves only society, without regard for the individual, then the society will be composed of disaffected individuals whose needs have not been met and whose curiosity and creativity have been neglected. As Stallones (2011) writes: “[A] well-educated population is a social good as well” (p. 248). When education serves both the individual and society, then the individual will thrive and grow and society will be preserved and perpetuated by the educated individuals. As the individual’s curiosity and creativity are nurtured by the school system, so will the individual use his or her gifts, talents, and learning for the betterment of society as a whole. While the efficient delivery of content appears appealing in the face of ever-larger class sizes, schools should, so far as is possible, be more concerned with individual learning differences. The phrase “learning differences” does not refer only to those students with mental disabilities or learning disabilities, but also with those students who are gifted and talented, and also to those students whose academic ability is in the average range but who simply learn the same content better in one way than in another. If individual learning differences are not recognized and accommodated in the schools, then students are apt to be left behind those who learn more quickly. Also, those who are gifted and talented may not develop gifts and talents that can benefit society in the future. The world would be a much poorer place if the gifts and talents of Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Raphael, Einstein, Copernicus, Beethoven, and so many others had been unrecognized and suppressed by the weight of standardized testing of efficiently delivered classroom instruction. Each student should have the opportunity to learn to his or her greatest potential, and should be able to learn in the way that serves the individual student best, whether through reading texts, listening to lectures, watching presentations, or working hands-on with projects. Inspiring surroundings affect learning because, as the phrase implies, such surroundings inspire students. Students who are taught in a well-lit space with colorful visual aids are more likely to learn well than are students who are taught in dark, windowless rooms with industrial gray walls and few visual aids. Light and color stimulate the brain, as do classical music and aromas such as lemon and peppermint. When the brain is stimulated, the student is more awake and alert for learning, and the brain creates more connections for memory and recall. For most Western students, columns, crown moldings, sculpture niches, and other decorations reminiscent of classical Greek and Roman architecture serve as inspiring surroundings for learning. Modern, factory-style school buildings with low ceilings, dull walls, and little aesthetic relief do not, of themselves, serve as inspiring surroundings, so teachers in such school settings need to use light and color to brighten classrooms and other school spaces to inspire students to learn. Technology affects learning in several ways, both positive and negative. One of the positive effects of technology on learning is the vast increase in access to information that comes with computer technology and the Internet. Students are able to research topics that might not be available in school or public libraries. Students can monitor current world events in real time. Undergraduate Series 553 Students can communicate with other students, experts in many fields, and others through email, text messaging, social network sites, and even through video conferencing. In addition, students’ individual learning styles and rates can be accommodated with Internet technology, which allows students to learn at their own pace without holding back other students in their classes. Among the negative effects of technology on learning is the lowering of student grades. "[Y]oung people who consume more than 16 hours of media per day, are more likely to earn poor grades in school" (Stallones, 2011, p. 155). Students are often distracted from learning by the lure of television, video games, and the many applications on their tablets, cellular phones, and other personal devices. Students view content that does not encourage them to practice critical thinking, so their education suffers. Social media and text messaging corrode students’ writing skills as students use an entire new language of abbreviations and phonetic spellings to communicate with their peers. Even the program with which I am writing this contributes to academic laziness as it prompts me to correct spelling and grammar errors as I type, freeing me, and students who use this and similar software, from the need to have strong spelling and basic grammar skills. References Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. A Personal Philosophy of Education March 18, 2013 A teacher’s personal philosophy of education is unique to the individual, but it is informed by philosophical activities and theories that can be clearly identified and articulated as parts of the whole. Stallones (2011) defines a philosophy of education as “applying philosophical methods and tools to the theory and practice of education” (p. 16). As a future teacher of collegelevel basic English and composition, with a specialization in remedial English instruction for nontraditional students returning to the classroom as adults, I apply these methods and tools to describing my personal philosophy of education. The seven philosophies of education identified by Oregon State University for its Educational Philosophies Self-Assessment are: information processing, cognitivism and constructionism, progressivism, perennialism, behaviorism, humanism, and essentialism (Educational philosophies self-assessment scoring guide, 2013). Information processing is the educational philosophy that considers how the individual mind interprets, remembers, and retrieves information. Cognitivism and constructivism are taken together and deal with how the student responds to and acts upon experiences in the real world. The progressivist philosophy considers the student instead of the subject matter being taught. Perennialism focuses on the great ideas and values of Western civilization as the most important subjects to teach to develop the intellect. Behaviorism uses aspects of operant conditioning to teach students appropriate behaviors and to discourage unacceptable behaviors. The humanist philosophy deals with helping students achieve their highest human potential. Essentialism promotes teaching a core of basic knowledge and skills and often favors direct instruction over other teaching methods. My personal philosophy of education is an eclectic blend of the first three philosophies, and also including aspects of the remaining four philosophies. The overall purpose of education is to prepare children to be responsible, productive, compassionate adults, and to preserve and perpetuate the best aspects of society while using the worst aspects of society as examples of what students should not do. The concept of education goes back to the dawn of human history with adults teaching children the skills needed for life through example and hands-on practice, and with the history and spirituality of each group of people being taught to children through stories, music, and art. In modern times, children still 554 A Journey Through My College Papers learn a great deal from stories. Author Theodor Seuss Geisel, writing under the well-known pseudonym Dr. Seuss, wrote many books for children. In his 1978 book, I can Read with my Eyes Shut, Geisel wrote: “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn the more places you’ll go” (Cited in Hollister, 2011, para. 2). This endorsement of education encourages children to learn to read and to read as much as possible to gain knowledge that will give them success in life. While education can be acquired almost anywhere, teaching each child individually is not feasible in the modern world. Schools began to form as soon as it became desirable to teach students in groups instead of teaching them individually. Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum taught groups of students in ancient Greece as far back as 400 B.C.. I believe that schools are essential in an industrial society in which the majority of adults work outside the home and children need to receive efficient, uniform educations to prepare them to join the industrial workforce. In our post-industrial world, schools are also centers for social development, for developing students’ attitudes and beliefs about social justice, and places where children can be warm and safe and can get decent food and some health care while their parents work. This last purpose of modern schools is heart breaking, but it is a reality that cannot be ignored. In order to eliminate this use of schools, schools teach students the knowledge and skills needed for the students to build better lives for themselves and their children, and to contribute to solving social problems that lead to poverty and hunger. While everyone needs to be educated, not everyone needs to be educated in the same way. Just as medieval European society had different types of education for people in different career paths, modern students can benefit from different kinds of education. Every student should learn reading and writing, mathematics, and some history and science. Once these basics are mastered, however, students should be able to receive specialized instruction, with some learning vocational skills and others learning advanced academic subjects to prepare them for careers in education, law, medicine, and religion. This is not a popular viewpoint in the present political climate, but schools that offer vocational specialization are becoming more and more prevalent. Magnet schools and charter schools allow students to specialize in music, art, drama, business, health care, and even aviation technologies. There will always be a need for general education schools and for college preparatory schools, but diversifying education through special interest schools promises to provide a brighter future for today’s students. Of the classical educational philosophies, secular idealism seems to be the closest match with my personal philosophy. In particular, my philosophy is similar to that of Immanuel Kant, who “sought to bridge the divide between Idealists and Realists” (Stallones, 2011, p. 44). According to Liz Jackson (2007), Kant promoted the importance of the individual and of interactions between individuals in education (p. 336). Kant believed that the individual needed to have the freedom to speak freely and to explore ideas and concepts. He is quoted as saying: “It is only through the efforts of people of broader views, who take an interest in the universal good, and who are capable of entertaining the idea of a better condition of things in the future, that the gradual progress of human nature towards its goal is possible” (Cited in Jackson, 2007, p. 340). I agree that people in society need to develop broad views of the world, and that it is the purpose of education to develop such broad views. Individual freedom to learn in the manner that is best suited to the learner is required for this. In order to best achieve individual learning, an eclectic blending of information processing, cognitivism, and progressivism is necessary so that teachers understand how the student’s mind works and how the student responds to the world, and that teachers also consider the individual student’s needs, gifts, interests, and talents. While I embrace the idea of concentrating on the needs of the individual in education, there is a definite role for education in society, as well. Education serves society first by preparing each new generation of students to take its place as the next generation of adults in society. Undergraduate Series 555 Children need to be taught how to be productive, successful adults, and to do whatever good they may do for society as a whole. Education produces young adults who are prepared to contribute to society. Education also serves society by perpetuating the culture of the society through teaching children the literature, history, and arts of the culture. As modern times bring people of many cultural backgrounds together in an eclectic society, education helps students learn to understand and embrace cultural diversity, and to pass on aspects of the several cultures of the society as one larger, diverse culture. In the United States, education serves society by instilling democratic ideals in students and by teaching students to use the democratic process to solve problems. As a teacher of college students, and especially of adults who return to college after being away from formal education for a period of time, my role is to facilitate my students’ learning. As a teacher of English, it is my role to help students learn to read deeply to find meaning in texts and to employ rhetoric and grammar to write effectively. For non-traditional students, my role will also be to help the students develop an academic mindset that will enable the students to learn. One of the most important responsibilities of a teacher of any age group or grade level is to facilitate student explorations and inquiries that result in student learning. A teacher must be responsive to the individual learning styles of his or her students, and must take care to employ a variety of teaching methods that will help the greatest number of students achieve their greatest learning potentials. In today’s world, prospective teachers must be prepared to deal not only with the requirements of teaching academic subjects, but also with the requirements of facing a culturally diverse classroom. It is important for teachers to have a working knowledge of subject matter and to be conversant with pedagogy, but the greatest challenge for many teachers is facing a class of students from a variety of ethnic, socio-political, and socio-economic cultural backgrounds, as well as students with a variety of native languages, and also students with physical, mental, and learning disorders. Teachers must be taught to be sensitive to multicultural classrooms, and to avoid trying to assimilate students into a single, dominant culture in the classroom. Teachers must learn to respect different beliefs, traditions, and learning styles, and to teach in such a way that no student feels excluded on the basis of his or her culture. The role of the student in education appears simple, but is actually fairly complex. On the surface, the student’s role in education is to learn what he or she is taught. This is not, however, a sufficient description of the student’s role. In some ways, the student is a consumer and education is a service. Frances M. Hill (1995) of The Queen's University in Belfast, United Kingdom, writes of education as a service and students as consumers: “One distinctive aspect of services is that consumers are often part of the production and delivery processes” (para. 4). This is a good description of the role of the student in education: the student participates with the teacher to produce the education that the student receives and the student participates in the delivery process of education to the student. To participate in the production of education, the student shows up for class, brings the necessary books and materials to class, studies and works on projects and assignments, and participates with the teacher and with other students in discussions and explorations that support the material being taught. The student participates in the delivery process by paying attention, by asking questions to clarify information, and by studying. Working on projects that require research and hands-on activities also help the student participate in the delivery of education to the student. The student has an additional role in education. Just as teachers must be prepared to teach a culturally diverse student population, so must the student participate in the cultural diversity in the classroom. In order to prepare to be part of adult society, the student must learn to accept and respect diverse cultures, and to move beyond cultural differences to work with other students in the process of being consumers of the service of education. 556 A Journey Through My College Papers Not every student is intrinsically motivated to learn. Heather Voke (2002) write that “research attests that students are most likely to be engaged in learning when they are active and given some choice and control over the learning process—and when the curriculum is individualized, authentic, and related to students' interests” (para. 1). Students who are interested in learning, and who are curious to find out about the world or some aspect of it, are motivated to learn, but common teaching methods often stifle this motivation. The lack of student motivation can be seen in the results of a recent study of student dropout rates. “One recent study showed a 5% high school dropout rate for gifted students compared with a 5.2% dropout rate for non-gifted students” (Phillips, 2008, para. 2). Teachers have the power to motivate students by presenting subject matter in ways that engage the interests and attention of the students. The specialized schools discussed above offer an opportunity for students to pursue an education in subjects in which they are interested, thus providing students with the motivation to learn. There is no one, ideal curriculum that can serve all students at the same time. Various curricula are necessary to meet the needs of a diverse student population. An ideal curriculum would have to address the individual learning styles, cultural backgrounds, interests, and personalities of all of the students who would be taught the curriculum, and such a curriculum would be too complex for any teacher to present it effectively. While an ideal curriculum is impossible, there are certain things that should be included in any curriculum in the United States. Curriculum should meet the needs of society by teaching students how to become informed, responsible citizens who will be the leaders of the future, and it should motivate students to become those informed, responsible citizens. Curriculum should also promote and perpetuate the values and principles of American society, inculcating students with the concepts of democracy, independence, and a strong work ethic. In the early years of a child’s education, curriculum should include reading, writing, history, geography, mathematics, life science, physical science, art, and music. Each student should receive a firm foundation in these subjects, blending perennialist literature and ideas with more recent literature and ideas from a variety of cultures. In the middle years of education, the curriculum should be structured such that students can begin to specialize in subjects in which they are interested. The curriculum needs to expand to include an array of vocational subjects designed to promote college and career readiness. In the later years of high school, curriculum should be as specialized as possible for several college and career paths so that students are best equipped to enter the adult world. Schools should be structured into three general learning periods to coincide with the three levels of curriculum previously discussed. The three groups that I believe would work best, based on my own educational experiences, are ages 3 through 7 in one school, ages 8 through 12 in another school, and ages 13 through 18 in a third school. Within each school, I believe the best, most natural organization for effective instruction is to have non-graded, multi-age groupings in which students work together to learn the various subjects that are taught at the given level. Whenever possible, a classroom should have no more than 20 or 25 students at one time so that the teacher can give each student as much individual attention as possible. This is an organic, natural method of teaching that is usually found in home school situations. The older students help the younger students learn. In so doing, the older students develop a deeper understanding of the subject matter. In such situations, the overt curriculum of the various subjects can be taught effectively, and the covert curriculum of working together and of each student learning at an individual pace will also be taught. Working in multi-age groups prepares students for the adult world better than does traditional classrooms in which all of a student’s peers are the same age as the student. Standardized testing to assess student learning is likely to remain the norm for at least another generation, and it may prevail in American schools for much longer than that. In Finland, Undergraduate Series 557 students were shown on the 2000 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) to be “the best young readers in the world” (Hancock, 2011, para. 7). This is significant because “[t]here are no mandated standardized tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school” (Hancock, 2011, para. 9). It is my view that American schools should be run more like Finnish schools when it comes to student assessment and eliminate the majority of high-stakes, standardized testing. In addition, final exams that cover an entire semester or year of teaching are not effective assessments of student learning. Keith O’Brien (2010) writes: “Across the country, there is growing evidence that final exams – once considered so important that universities named a week after them – are being abandoned or diminished, replaced by takehome tests, papers, projects, or group presentations” (para. 4). I agree with this trend toward assessing students throughout the year with smaller tests, papers, and projects. Performance assessments allow students to show what they have retained in long-term memory and the assessments allow students who may not be good at taking written tests to showcase their talents and abilities. When I am teaching, I may be forced by the school to use standardized tests, in which case I will do so. As a college English teacher, I will assess students by assigning papers to be written outside of class, papers to be written in class with advance preparation, and impromptu papers to be written in class. I will also use a quiz at the end of each unit, in which I will use multiple-choice questions as seldom as possible. Short-answer questions and short-essay questions are better measures of authentic learning in an English composition class than a standardized test can be. I will know that my students have learned when they produce thoughtful papers that are on-topic and that are relatively free of errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. My philosophical beliefs about education will influence my work as an educator by making me aware of and sensitive to the needs of my individual students. My belief that a teacher should understand how a student’s mind works will drive me to present information in multiple formats that take into account Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences; it is likely that I will ask students to complete a learning styles inventory, such as the one found online at http://www.learning-styles-online.com/inventory/results.php . The results of the inventory will help me to present subject matter in ways that help my students to learn. My belief that students learn by acting upon and responding to the world will drive me to expose my students to research opportunities and to ask my students to reflect on their research. Over all, my belief that education should focus on the student will guide me to seek my students’ learning exceptionalities and to encourage each student to reach his or her greatest potential in learning and in life. My personal philosophy of education is an eclectic blend of several different philosophies. Because of this, I am able to adapt to a variety of teaching situations, and to apply the concepts of various philosophies in my teaching. The purpose of education is to prepare students to be responsible, productive members of society, and to preserve and perpetuate the important thoughts and ideals of the society. As such, education simultaneously serves both the individual student and the society. Teachers and students have specific roles to play in education, and neither group functions effectively without the other group. Teachers facilitate student learning and students participate as consumers in their education. Curriculum should be structured to give every student a firm foundation in basic subjects and to allow students to diversify their educations according to their strengths and interests. Instruction should feature the organic learning associated with mixed-age groups so that learning can be accomplished naturally and so that students retain as much education as possible. Assessment, similarly, should be a natural process of performance evaluation instead of the artificial standardized testing that is prevalent in the United States today. In practice, I expect that I will have to accept teaching conditions that do not fit perfectly with my philosophy of education. In doing so, I will model adaptability and acceptance of philosophical differences for my students. 558 A Journey Through My College Papers References Educational philosophies self-assessment scoring guide. (2013). Retrieved from http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/ed416/scoringguide.html Hancock, L.N. (2011). Why are Finland's schools successful? Smithsonian Magazine [Electronic version]. Retrieved from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-AreFinlands-Schools-Successful.html Hill, F. M. (1995). Managing service quality in higher education: The role of the student as primary consumer. Quality Assurance in Education, 3(3), 10-21. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/213732977 Hollister, T. (2011). Words of wisdom from Dr. Seuss. Retrieved from http://hobnobia.net/content/content/words-wisdom-dr-seuss Jackson, L. (2007). The individualist? The autonomy of reason in Kant’s philosophy and educational views. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 26(4), 335-344. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11217-007-9045-3 Learning styles inventory. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.learning-stylesonline.com/inventory/results.php O'Brien, K. (2010, October 3). The test is canceled. The Boston Globe [Electronic version]. Retrieved from http://keithob.com/stories/the-test-iscanceled/?/stories/2010/11/the_test_is_can.html/ Phillips, S. (2008). Are we holding back our students that possess the potential to excel? Education, 129(1), 50-55. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/196417832 Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of education. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Voke, H. (2002). Motivating students to learn. Student Engagement, 28 [Electronic version]. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/policypriorities/feb02/num28/Motivating-Students-to-Learn.aspx EDU 490 Interdisciplinary Capstone Critical Thinking 3/28/2013 In 2011, Foundation for Critical Thinking defined critical thinking: "Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action" (Defining Critical Thinking, 2011, para. 3). The definition is complex because the concept and the activity of thinking critically are complex. In order to think critically, it is necessary to set aside preconceived ideas about the subject at hand and to draw information and ideas from multiple perspectives. Thinking critically requires the thinker to challenge assumptions until and unless those assumptions are substantiated by credible evidence. In this class, I plan to model critical thinking by seeking information from credible authorities before making statements on the topics we will discuss. I will seek, and cite, information that will inform my views and that will clarify my understanding and communication of ideas and concepts. When I am teaching my future students, I will attempt to foster critical thinking by asking them to engage in critical analysis of the texts that I will assign. I will teach my students about informal logic and logical fallacies so that they will be better prepared to seek deeper meaning in the literature and other media that we use in class and that they encounter in life. Scott Jaschik Undergraduate Series 559 writes that "32 percent of students each semester do not take any courses with more than 40 pages of reading assigned a week, and that half don't take a single course in which they must write more than 20 pages over the course of a semester" (Jaschik, 2011, para. 8). I will strive to assign rigorous, but reasonable, amounts of reading and to require a substantial amount of writing from my students. Since it is my intent to teach college freshman English and/or composition, I expect to be able to achieve this goal. References Defining critical thinking. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/definingcritical-thinking/766 Jaschik, S. (2011). ‘Academically Adrift’. Inside Higher Ed [Electronic version]. Retrieved from http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_large_numbers_of_college _students_don_t_learn_much Mr. Rodriguez 3/28/2013 [Part One] Angel Rodriguez has been teaching 5th grade for six years. He considers himself an enlightened teacher. Colleagues often remark on his classroom management skills, ability to relate to all learners and his drive to know what it is that each learner knows and is able to do. Mr. Rodriguez credits most of his teaching ability to his understanding of how students learn. Each day before class, Mr. Rodriguez prepares for his learners by reflecting on his own teaching practice. As the students enter the room he asks them to stand and repeat the phrase, “I am here today as an active participant and learner. I will do my very best to collaborate with my peers, give my personal best and discover new knowledge. Today is a great day to learn something new.” [Part Two] After direct instruction, Mr. Rodriguez asks students to get into groups. Mr. Rodriguez provides avenues through group work to tap into the individual modalities of learners. He assigns roles to each group member as follows: speaker, a note taker/visual aid analyst, a public relations reporter, and a time keeper. [Part Three] After group work, Mr. Rodriguez asks students to return to their seats and answer three questions from the lesson on an exit slip before being excused to lunch. After lunch, he meets with individual students while the rest of the class is reading silently. During the meetings Mr. Rodriguez works with each individual student and reviews their completed exit slip to determine which concepts were understood and why. He then helps any struggling student understand the concepts. (Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab, & Walton, 2012, p. 6) In part one of this example, Mr. Rodriguez credits his teaching ability to understanding how students learn because not all students learn in the same way and it is important for a teacher to recognize learning differences in order to teach effectively. "Student’s cognition will vary depending on their individual life experience, biology, and environment. A classroom with learners at a variety of developmental stages means the teacher must provide a variety of instruction" (Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab, & Walton, 2012, p. 4). Mr. Rodriguez recognizes 560 A Journey Through My College Papers that some students learn best from direct instruction, while others learn best by reading the material, and still others learn best by hands-on activities and role-play. By being aware of learning differences and multiple intelligences, Mr. Rodriguez is able to incorporate many different teaching methods in his daily routine, resulting in effective teaching for the greatest number of his students. A possible benefit that comes from daily reflection on teaching practice is that the reflection tends to prevent teachers getting into a teaching rut. By daily reflection on teaching practice, the teacher is able to evaluate what is working and what is not working, and to adjust his or her teaching accordingly. In the example, Mr. Rodriguez's uses the daily mantra, "I am here today as an active participant and learner. I will do my very best to collaborate with my peers, give my personal best and discover new knowledge. Today is a great day to learn something new" (Kajitani, et. al., 2012, p. 6). This mantra relates to verbal anchoring because the daily repetition ingrains the words in the minds of his students. The words of the mantra express positive attitudes and positive expectations for the students who recite the mantra, and the mantra gives the students an emotional anchor to the classroom and to learning, leaving negative thoughts and expectations outside the classroom as much as possible. Through daily repetition, the students assimilate the positive attitude of the mantra into their personal mindsets, equipping them to be better, more successful students. In part two of the example, Mr. Rodriguez uses group work to create a flexible learning environment and to serve as an avenue to tap into the varied learning modalities of his students. The small-group setting allows flexibility because students are not sitting at their desks absorbing direct instruction; the students are able to move about and to interact with each other. Students are able to express their ideas, and students are able to learn from each other's perspectives on the group work. Mr. Rodriguez assigns a different responsibility to each student, presumably drawing on each student's strengths to facilitate each student's learning of the subject at hand. This allows more vocal students to speak in the groups while quieter students are able to observe and to absorb learning without the stress of having to speak out as much. In part three of the example, students answer questions on exit slips, which Mr. Rodriguez discusses with each student individually after lunch. Along with the written exit slips, Mr. Rodriguez could ask questions of the class or of individual students. He could use a variation of Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, or another game format to assess student knowledge. He could use a multiple-choice quiz of the material instead of the exit slips, which sound like fill-in-the-blank or short answer questions from the description provided. He could have students work individually or in groups to put together visual or oral presentations or computer-based slide shows or other presentations based on the learning. Mr. Rodriguez is creating a personalized learning experience for each of his students by discussing with each student, individually, the responses on the exit slips each day. In addition, he is providing a personalized learning experience for each student by presenting opportunities for learning in different learning modalities each day. By recognizing, identifying, and facilitating the multiple intelligences and learning styles of his students, he allows each student to learn in the way that is best for that student. By interacting with each student individually, he is empowering each student by affirming the student's self-worth and the student's sense of being valued as an individual by his or her teacher (an authority figure with the power to strengthen or to break down a student's self image). References Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Undergraduate Series 561 Chapter One Synthesis February 18, 2013 No two students learn in precisely the same way. Differences in student cognition are influenced by a number of factors, including the student’s home environment and culture, past experiences, sense of personal identity, and physical development of the brain. Teachers need to be sensitive to these factors, and teachers can best help students utilize or overcome mental and emotional baggage by developing personal relationships with their students, by effectively communicating with their students, and by providing consistency for their students within the classroom. Along with the personal factors of environment and experiences, there are cultural and generational factors that influence learning. The baby boomer and generation X generations include most of America’s teachers, while the millennial and net generations make up most of the current and future generations of students in America’s schools. Each of the four named generational groups is influenced by the cultural and political events of its time, resulting in different ways of thinking and of dealing with authority, work ethic, scholarship, and personal responsibility and entitlement. Teachers need to be aware of and to understand these learning differences in the new generations in order to teach effectively. As millennial and net generation students spend more time alone, using new information technologies to explore the world and to learn, teachers need to facilitate students’ learning more than actively teach information to students. Students look to teachers and other authority figures to help the students make decisions, which is a change from the attitudes of baby boomers and members of generation X, who grew up wary of authority figures and willing to challenge authority. (Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab, & Walton, 2012). References Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Ms. Valdera 4/3/2013 Part One After receiving her teaching credential, Maria Valdera accepts a job teaching summer school, which will run from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. for one month. The goal of the class is to improve the reading level of the participants. Although the students in the class will be entering 6th grade at the beginning of the next school year, it has been determined that all of the students are currently reading at or around the 3rd grade level. While the summer school class size is much smaller (10 students) than a normal class (32 students), all of the students in the class are enrolled in the course because they did not do well over the last school year. In addition, at the end of their 6th grade year, these students will be entering middle school, where the curriculum is regarded to be much more challenging, and taught at a faster pace. Part Two After speaking with the school’s principal, Ms. Valdera meets with the school’s attendance clerk, who gives her copies of the students’ attendance records from the past year. She notes that 5 of the 10 students enrolled in the upcoming class were absent at least 30 days (out of 180 total) last year. Ms. Valdera is also able to search the cumulative folders of each of the students, as well as their report card histories (See Table 2.1, below and in Chapter Two of your text). 562 A Journey Through My College Papers End of 5th State Test Student Grade Reading Reading Results* Grade Juan A. D Below Basic Lindsey Far Below F J. Basic Tyler D. Teacher Comments Nice kid. Quiet. Tries really hard. Talks out in class a lot. Can’t seem to sit still in her seat. Hums to himself in class and does not seem to pay attention. Decent reader, but does not complete homework. Enjoys participating in class discussions; however, received several suspensions for fighting last year. C- Below Basic D Below Basic F Far Below Basic Polite, respectful young man. Very funny. Vy L. F Below Basic Absent a lot. Parents seem uninvolved in Vy’s life, as she often takes care of several younger siblings. Jazzeel H. C Below Basic Works hard. Learning English. Tamika P. D Basic Has trouble staying at her desk. Often finds reasons to wander around the room. Usually returns to her seat immediately when asked to. Eugenia K. DeShawn M. Far Below Disinterested and bored. Has trouble staying awake in class. Basic Julia S. F Below Basic No comments available. *On the state reading exam, students are ranks as Advanced, Proficient, Basic, Below Basic, and Far Below Basic. Part Three Two days before the class begins, Ms. Valdera calls the home of each of the students on her roster. First, she introduces herself to the parents, and lets them know exactly why their child will be attending summer school. She lets them know that the students will have homework every night, and asks the parents to provide a quiet, safe place for the student to complete it. She also tells the parents that she will call them on any morning that the homework has not been completed. Next, she speaks to the student, and introduces herself, and tells him about the upcoming class, as well as the supplies he will need to bring to class each day. She also asks the student what his favorite hobby is, and the name of the best book he has ever read. Based upon her conversations with the students, Ms. Valdera goes to the school library, and checks out as many of the “favorite books” as are available. She displays them on a shelf in her classroom, so the students will make a connection with books they have already read, and already enjoy. She then decorates one of the walls in her classroom with a sign that says, “Activities We Love,” and posts pictures of activities students cited as their favorite hobbies. Throughout the summer, Ms. Valdera plans to refer to as many of these activities as possible while the class is discussing the readings. She knows that having a visual reminder of the activities on the wall will help both the teacher and students remember what they are, and incorporate them into the daily curriculum. Carlos R. F Undergraduate Series 563 On the first day of class, Ms. Valdera begins with a discussion of why the students are attending the summer school class, and acknowledges their need to improve their reading skills. She firmly sets the tone of the class, explains the procedures and routines that they will be using, as well as the behavior expectations and consequences. The class then begins on their first activity… In the case study provided in the text, before the summer school class begins, Ms. Valdera should attempt to learn what she can about the learning styles of her ten students (Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab, & Walton, 2012, pp. 31-32). She can do this by talking with the students' regular teachers, and by contacting the students' parents. She should also find out whether any of her students have IEPs or 504 plans, in case that information does not make it to the summer school program. Ms. Valdera should find out whether any of the students are ELL students, as well. Along with the students' most recent teachers and the students' parents, Ms. Valdera should speak to the school principal, or to other school staff involved with school discipline, to learn what these authorities know about the students. Such individuals may have valuable information about the students' behavior concerns and about socio-economic and/or domestic concerns that may affect the students' learning. Based on the information given in Table 2.1, above, the only thing all ten students have in common is the need to take a summer reading class. Two students are identified as being quiet or polite. Two students are identified as trying hard. Two students have difficulty keeping still physically, and two students have trouble keeping still vocally. Two students do not pay attention in class in one way or another. There are numerous differences among the ten students. One student appears to be an ELL student, as he or she (I can not be sure based on the name) is learning English. One student has a problem with violent behavior. One student is raising her own siblings while in 5th grade. One student has trouble staying awake, which may suggest a lack of adequate rest or sleep at home. One student exhibits no signs of trouble except a failing grade. To engage her students and tap into their interests, Ms. Valdera should devote the first part of the first day of summer school to activities that help her get to know her students and that help break the ice among her students. One possibility is to have the students sit in a circle and introduce themselves, naming a favorite sport or hobby. Another is to have each student draw a picture of a favorite activity and of a least-favorite activity, and to write a caption for each picture, then to share the pictures with the class. Ms. Valdera could take a few minutes to talk privately with each student while the others are drawing their pictures. There are several name songs available for classes to use; I would suggest using the "I Have a Friend" song on Dr. Jean Feldman's website as a means of getting to know students (Feldman, 2009, song 6). In order for the getting-to-know-you activities to lead into the work of the class, Ms. Valdera could ask each student to name a favorite book the student has read and to explain why the student liked the book. Given the varied learning styles of her ten students, Ms. Valdera can design several types of lessons for her students. In order to appeal to both auditory and visual learners, she can read aloud to the class while the students follow along with a book or a printed text. She can also project the pages of the class text onto a screen or a Smartboard and use a cursor or a laser pointer to follow along as she reads. She can also have students take turns reading aloud while the others follow along. Ms. Valdera can have students act out the scenes they are reading in order to serve the auditory and the kinesthetic learners. She can also have the students take short breaks to walk around the perimeter of the room, do simple calisthenics, or dance between periods of reading. Since each class is four hours long, she will want to vary the activities every 15-30 minutes in order to hold the attention of her students. If the physical education or health department has them 564 A Journey Through My College Papers available, Ms. Valdera might make exercise balls available for Lindsey and Tamika to sit on so these students can stay at their desks and have some physical movement at the same time, thus reducing distractions during class. In order to keep the students' level of engagement high, Ms. Valdera might wish to arrange the ten desks in a circle instead of in rows, so the students can see each other and can see her. If a screen or Smartboard is in use, a horseshoe arrangement might be better. Since this is a reading class, it might be good to have some floor space with beanbags and/or cushions where the class can sit more comfortably for silent reading or for reading aloud by turns. If students are going to pair off to read to each other or to discuss an assignment, placing desks so that each pair faces each other, or so two desks are side-by-side and facing opposite directions will provide the best face time for each pair of students. With long class periods every day for a month, varying the arrangement of seating by the hour or by the day will be effective for maintaining high student engagement. Rearranging the desks at the end of the hour can also serve as a motion break between sessions of sitting, and it will help the students claim some responsibility for their learning environment. References: Feldman, J. (2009). Name songs. Retrieved from http://www.drjean.org/html/monthly_act/act_2010/07_Jul/ Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Teaching Challenges 4/4/2013 When I was doing my ten-hour practicum during my freshman year, working in a third grade class, I experienced a teaching challenge that might serve for this discussion. I was in the classroom at the start of the day on a Friday, and the regular teacher was out. The substitute did not know the morning routine, so she asked me to handle the first hour, after which the students would divide up to go to "specials" (art, phys ed, music, reading support), and I would return to the college for my classes. The morning routine involved the students entering the classroom, doing pre-assigned chores without prompting, then completing the daily worksheet at their desks. When the bell rang, I counted heads and wrote the number on the whiteboard. Following the daily routine, I called on a student to go to the board and represent the number of students by drawing coins on the board. I then asked for a show of hands of students who had brought lunch from home, counted hands, and wrote that number on the board. The students calculated how many students would be eating hot lunch so the count could be reported to the kitchen. As soon as that was done, I went over the worksheets with the class. This is where the challenge came in. I read each question aloud, using the opaque projector to display the question on the board. The students raised their hands to answer the questions. For the first question, I called on a girl, M, to respond. She gave the correct answer and I wrote it on my sheet, projecting the answer on the board. As soon as I looked up from writing, I saw that the happy, productive atmosphere of the room had been replaced by a sullen attitude. Only M looked happy. I asked the next question, and only M raised her hand. I called on a couple of others anyway, but they each refused to answer, so I called on M again. She again gave the correct answer. This went on for several more questions. Finally, the bell rang and the students formed their lines to leave. One boy, T, stayed behind. He told me the class was angry with me for calling on M. He said the regular teacher Undergraduate Series 565 made a point of not calling on her because she lorded it over the others whenever she had a right answer. T said I should have called on anyone except M, and the class wouldn't cooperate with me because of it. I sent T to his specials class, then told the substitute what T had said. She and I each wrote a note to the regular teacher, reporting what had happened. In response to the teaching challenge, I first must say that I disagree with the practice of intentionally excluding a student who raises his or her hand. Had I been the regular teacher in that class, I would have dealt with M's attitude early in the year by teaching all of the students about fair play and about being good winners and good losers. Rather than punish M for her attitude, I would have rewarded students who were "caught" being good winners and good losers. The school already had a system of "BUG tickets" (Being Uncommonly Good) that the students could save up and spend on tangible rewards, similar to using green stamps, and I could have used the BUG program for this purpose. As a temporary student teaching assistant, in the class for an hour a week for ten weeks, I was not aware of the underlying problem. Not being the regular teacher, or even the substitute teacher, I was on unsteady footing with this situation. There are several things I could have done, even with the short time I had in the classroom, to try to solve the challenge. When I realized that the mood of the class had changed, I should probably have stopped to find out what was wrong. At the least, I should have done so when the problem persisted and worsened. It might have been a good idea to switch to another activity for a short time, to give the students a chance to relax, and to go over the morning work later. It might have been useful to get the students out of their seats to do some sort of moving activity to defuse the tension in the room. I did hear from the regular teacher later. He apologized for the episode and confirmed what T had told me. He admitted that he needed to find a better solution for the problem with M. Chapter Two Case Study Scenarios April 8, 2013 Case Studies: Sarah is a 7th grade math teacher at a small middle school that serves a farming community. She has worked at the school for four years and has learned that it is a community that thrives on three things: family, farming, and football. Every boy growing up in town has aspirations of varsity football glory, but most will end up spending their lives working the family farm. Walking into her third period class on the first day of school, she finds herself faced by 18 rambunctious teenagers. Even scarier, 15 of them are boys. As she begins the year, Sarah wants to grab her students’ attention by providing an engaging introduction to the practical value of math. Her first unit of the year introduces the adding and subtracting of fractions and she wants to build on the knowledge her students already have acquired, both in and out of school. Megan recently accepted a job as a first year kindergarten teacher in a community that is primarily Hispanic. A majority of her students are second language learners and many have parents who do not speak English. Megan has never spoken a second language, ignoring two years of high school French that left her conversational but not very confident. She is worried and anxious about how best to bridge the language gap in her classroom. As she prepares for her first year as a teacher, she wants to be sure she does as much as possible to help make the transition easier and to facilitate clear communication between her and her students/their parents. Steve is in the middle of his tenth year as an honors high school social studies teacher. As part of a unit on the Vietnam War, he is having his students read The Things 566 A Journey Through My College Papers They Carried, a Vietnam-focused novel. His specific interest is in conveying to students the social, economic, and cultural influence that the war had on people at home. As a culminating assignment to the three-week unit, he asks students to create a portfolio comprised of a number of smaller assignments that are to be completed during the reading. The portfolio is to include a journal entry written as one of the book’s characters, a photograph of one scene from the book, a letter home written by one of the characters, and five reading logs completed at various points during the reading. Steve wants to ensure that his students stay on track during the assignment and that they are not allowed to procrastinate and finish the assignment at the last minute. Eunice teaches 10th grade English in a suburban high school. Her third unit of the school year is focused on the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a book that she has taught many times, but the last time she did she was less than pleased with the results. As an end of unit assessment, she had students write an essay discussing how one specific character in the novel changes. While she did receive one or two fantastic essays last time around, the majority of her students seemed unable to analyze with the amount of depth she had hoped for. Many of her students ended up with C’s or worse on the essay and in many cases it impacted their overall course grade. This time around, she is hoping to improve results by properly frontloading the assignment and making her expectations more clear. After collecting the essays, Eunice is pleased with the overall organization and the amount of insight provided by the students. Unfortunately, she finds that many students have issues with spelling and grammar that need correcting. In the case of Sarah, who teaches 7th grade math in a farming community that favors football, a specific strategy to activate the prior knowledge of Sarah’s students would be to begin by asking for a show of hands of those students who played on the school football team last year. After counting hands, Sarah’s students can create a fraction of last year’s players out of the total class. If Sarah knows about football, as I do not, then she can use her knowledge of positions, scoring, and last year’s game schedule to create other fractions that the students will be eager to add and subtract. If Sarah does not know about football, then her students will be eager to teach her about the game by discussing positions, scoring, and so forth, which will also yield fractions for the students to work with. Sarah can use the same method to identify farmers among her students and to use types of farms, livestock, crops, and other farm information to get students talking about and working with fractions. Sarah’s students are the best resource Sarah can use to gain a further understanding of the students’ existing knowledge base. “Tapping into prior knowledge helps students make connections, thus greatly enhancing the meaning of any new information presented” (Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab, & Walton, 2012, p. 25).Sarah can use a written pre-teaching assessment to gain a better understanding of her students’ prior knowledge of math, including a review of 6th grade math and a preview of 7th grade math. Sarah should also review her students’ grades from the previous year and any comments made by previous teachers, especially previous math teachers. Sarah might try playing math games with the students at the beginning of the year, as well, to help her assess her students’ existing knowledge base. In order to immediately engage the class, Sarah might combine what she knows about her students and the community by setting up a project in which the students use fractions to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of local football teams, including the home team, and to make predictions for the coming football season. The students could then continue to use their knowledge of fractions to analyze the teams, plays, and scores of the games during the season. Megan is a first year kindergarten teacher in a primarily Hispanic community. In order to determine what level of language capabilities her students have, Megan might start the year with a Undergraduate Series 567 variation on the picture walk idea. She can use pictures of a number of common objects, perhaps taken from magazines or from coloring books, and she can ask the students to identify the objects in English. Since the students are entering kindergarten, it is likely that only a portion of the class has been in a classroom environment before. Megan might try to contact area daycare centers to ask about the students’ language capabilities, but that is unlikely to be helpful. It might be more useful for Megan to spend a little bit of time talking and listening to each child individually, asking each student to tell her about his or her interests and family. “ELL is the fastest growing group of students in the United States today” (Kajitani, et. al., 2012, p. 43). On the first day of class, Megan can begin by telling the students that she does not speak Spanish, and inviting the students to teach her Spanish as she teaches them English. Young children love to teach, and most students will be pleased with the opportunity to exchange knowledge. Megan might also employ realia, sending notes home before the first day of school asking each student to bring in an object to share with the class (Kajitani, et. al., 2012, p. 46). On the first day, Megan could have the students sit in a circle and take turns sharing their objects, using English to tell about the objects as much as possible. In addition, Megan might choose to embrace a bilingual classroom environment, despite not knowing Spanish herself, and might prepare the classroom by labeling as many objects as possible in both Spanish and English. On the first day, she could have a parent come to read the Spanish labels (avoiding contamination of accents in language acquisition by using a native speaker to pronounce the words), then read the corresponding English labels. She could then play a game with the children, finding and identifying objects as she calls out the names of the objects in either language. There are many opportunities to include aspects of her students’ language and culture in Megan’s plans for the school year. She can find books that are written in both Spanish and English, such as many of the Dora the Explorer picture books, or books in English about Hispanic children and their culture. She can continue to use bilingual labels in the classroom. She can use Hispanic music, dance, costumes, and foods, especially around various holidays, to give added meaning to her lessons. She can encourage her students to preserve their native language and customs and not try to assimilate the students into Anglo-American culture, while still teaching the students about American history and traditions. She can also invite Hispanic family members to come to class to share stories, crafts, foods, and other cultural details with the students. In my sons’ elementary school, there was a large Hispanic population. The school hosted a Hispanic Culture Festival each year that featured costumes, music, dance performances, storytelling, and Hispanic foods. Megan might try a mini version of the festival in her kindergarten class. One of my elder son’s favorite memories from elementary school is the day one of the Hispanic grandmothers came to school and taught the 3rd grade class to make authentic tamales in the classroom. She had the students help wrap the tamales in corn husks. Megan could have a family member of one of her students teach the children to make tamales, chocolate (Spanish hot cocoa), or other authentic foods or crafts. Steve’s honors high school social studies unit on The Things They Carried covers a three week period with several different assignments during the period. In order to ensure that the students stay on track during the assignment, Steve can establish a timeline for completion of the various stages of the portfolio. Each of the items in the portfolio can be set as a milestone of the assignment. Milestones are “specific factors that will be completed en route to fulfilling the final goal” (Kajitani, et. al., 2012, p. 36). In particular, the five reading logs should be given completion dates on the timeline, and Steve could require that each student complete one of the three larger items (the journal entry, the photograph, and the letter home) in each of the three weeks of the unit. Steve could check the portfolios each week to be sure that the completed work is present. By breaking the portfolio assignment into milestones set along a timeline, Steve can make a large project more manageable. 568 A Journey Through My College Papers At the outset of the Vietnam unit, Steve has a responsibility to ensure that his expectations are clear to all of his students. Steve should go over the assignment carefully, perhaps handing out a printed outline that shows the parts of the assignment, and also outlining the assignment on the board. He needs to be sure that each student understands what he means by a journal, a photograph, a letter home, and a reading log. Steve needs to provide each student with a copy of a rubric for the assignment, possibly including separate rubrics for the several parts of the assignment, so each student has a clear understanding of what is required in each part of the assignment and how each part of the assignment and the whole assignment will be graded. Steve needs to allow the students to ask questions to clarify the assignment in their own minds, as well. Steve might enlist the help of other teachers on campus by asking the art teachers to help the students create their photographs. He might work with English teachers who might be willing to cover The Things They Carried as literature assignments concurrent with the social studies assignment, which would give the students a deeper understanding of the story. Steve could enlist parental support at home to help students reach each checkpoint by sending home a description of the assignment, including the timeline and a list of milestones. He could ask parents to talk to their students about the assignment, and to remind students of reading requirements and due dates. Parents could help students create photographs from the story, in particular. In the course of this assignment, Steve might also enlist the help of community members by bringing in Vietnam veterans from the American Legion or other veterans’ group to talk to the students. This firsthand information could bring authenticity to the journals and letters that the students produce as they hear about the veterans’ experiences in their own words. Eunice is teaching To Kill a Mockingbird to her 10th grade English class, and she is discovering too many problems with spelling and grammar errors in her students’ essays. In presenting the assignment of writing an essay discussing how one specific character in the novel changes, Eunice can give students a detailed rubric that tells how the assignment will be graded. She can draw the students’ attention to the portion of the rubric that deals with mechanics, and explain the importance of using correct spelling and grammar in their essays. Eunice can give the students sample sentences with poor spelling and grammar and can have the students correct the sentences to see how they need to write for their essays. It may be appropriate for Eunice to devote one or two class periods to a review of basic grammar and commonly misspelled words, as well as to reminding students that phonetic spellings that are common on social media sites on the Internet, and in text messages, are not appropriate in academic writing. Eunice can use targeted feedback and revision to help remediate those students who struggle with the project. She can require students to turn in a rough draft of the assignment before the final assignment is due. She can provide targeted feedback in the margins, making corrections or suggestions regarding spelling and grammar as well as content and style. She can then tell her students that they need write final drafts of their essays, incorporating the comments that she made on their rough drafts. Along with corrections and suggestions, Eunice can encourage students who are doing good work by making positive comments in the margins. All of Eunice’s comments and suggestions must be written constructively, to help each student succeed, and she should avoid negative comments about the students as she makes corrections to their work. Eunice can properly recognize those students who contributed exceptional work by including specific praises in the comments on their final essays. By being specific, Eunice can encourage her students to continue to produce exceptional work. In addition, she can keep samples of exceptional work, or copies of such work, to hold up as examples for future classes. Kajitani, et. al., (2012) write: “[O]nce students have mastered the content, have them teach that content to another class!” (p. 39). Eunice can recognize the exceptional work of her students by asking them to come back to teach other students what they have learned. Undergraduate Series 569 References Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Chapter Two Synthesis April 8, 2013 Students learn in a variety of ways that can be sorted into three learning groups: visual learners, auditory learners, and kinesthetic learners. Visual learners prefer to watch their teachers, watching videos, reading text, and taking notes. Teachers can help visual learners by using a print-rich environment, color-coding information, and including illustrations, charts, and diagrams in lessons. Auditory learners prefer to listen to lectures and discussions. Teachers can help auditory learners by reading aloud to the class, including music in lessons, and allowing students to talk and discuss lessons during class. Kinesthetic learners prefer to work hands-on and to move about while learning. Teachers can help kinesthetic learners by providing opportunities to move about the classroom, including exercises or dance in the lesson, and providing plenty of hands-on projects. Each student brings prior knowledge to his or her learning, including personal beliefs, experiences, cultures, and ways of relating to the world. Teachers need to tap into students’ prior knowledge and to find ways to relate to students and their interests in order to engage students and help them learn. Teachers can use a K-W-L chart to help students relate what they already know to what they want to learn, and to record what they have learned at the end of a lesson or unit. Teachers use targeted feedback, practice, and applied learning to help students improve. They use timelines and milestones to help students stay on track, and to break up large assignments or goals into manageable pieces. Teachers may use a variety of alternate forms of assessment to evaluate student learning, in addition to traditional written tests. Students with special learning needs include students with IEPs and students in the GATE program, as well as ELL students and students from diverse ethnic backgrounds and students at risk. Teachers are able to make accommodations to help students in these special categories to learn. It is important for teachers to recognize and respond to the unique needs and abilities of their students. (Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab, & Walton, 2012). References Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Michael Alvarez 4/11/2013 Overview Michael is a 15-year-old native Spanish-speaking student in a 9th grade ELL (English Language Learners) class of 23 students in a suburban California public school. He has been in the United States and attending school for the past three years, having emigrated from Mexico City with his parents and two younger siblings. Problem While Michael speaks English well – he is skilled in the face-to face conversational fluency known as BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) - he struggles with reading and writing English. He manifests his frustration in a variety of ways including, but not limited to: 570 A Journey Through My College Papers routinely arriving late to class; failing to complete homework assignments; interrupting his teacher when she is explaining an upcoming assignment; refusing to participate in collaborative groups. Michael’s openly disruptive behavior is impacting other students in the class. Three Spanish-speaking students (two males and one female) have begun conversing across the classroom with Michael in Spanish. Key Players  Ms. Watkins, Michael’s ELL teacher. In addition to two ELL classes, Ms. Watkins also teaches three sections of Advanced Placement English Language.  The other ELL students in the class, each of whom is at a different level of Englishlanguage mastery.  Sabrina, Michael’s 8 year old sister.  Victor, Michael’s 11 year old brother. Contributing Factors  Michael is currently repeating all of his classes – except for Introduction to Algebra – that he failed the previous year;  At 15, he is older than most of the students in his ELL class;  Several students in Michael’s ELL class have expressed to Ms. Watkins their discomfort with Michael’s behavior;  Michael’s sister Sabrina is fluent in reading, writing and speaking English. Sabrina is currently placed at grade level in a 3rd grade mainstream class.  His brother Victor is also moving toward full fluency in English. Victor is currently at grade level in a 6th grade ELL class.  Michael is working part-time job after school and on Saturdays and is unable to attend remediation or support classes;  Michael’s parents have not attended Back-To-School night and have not responded to Ms. Watkins’ e-mails and phone messages. In the case of Michael Alvarez and his disruptive behavior in the classroom, I would choose a behaviorist approach because behaviorism claims that "learning requires an external change in a student’s behavior that can be observed" (Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab & Walton, 2012, p. 60). Michael's behavior needs to undergo an observable, external change in order for him to succeed in class and to stop making his teacher and classmates uncomfortable. In order to select strategies that would work best to improve Michael's classroom behavior and participation, it would be helpful to understand Michael's motivations. Michael spoke Spanish for the first 12 years of his life; although he is conversationally fluent in English, having Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS), there is probably a cognitive gap that keeps Michael from being comfortable with academic English. Based on this assumption, I would use a few strategies at once with Michael. One strategy would be to use a system of rewards and punishments to condition Michael's behavior in the classroom. The exact nature of the rewards and punishment would require a better familiarity with Michael than the scenario provides, but which I would probably have as his regular teacher. Rewards for good behavior might involve coupons that Michael could spend in an in-class "store" for tangible rewards. This is a popular reward in lower grades, but could be made appealing for a teen. Punishments should include removing Michael from the classroom when he becomes disruptive and placing him in a space with no other students and no distractions except his class work. Many schools have short-term isolation or detention rooms for this purpose. Another strategy would be to try to help Michael bridge the gap between his conversational English and his academic English. Academic English is different from conversational English, and it can be confusing for ELL students. Michael might Undergraduate Series 571 need some sheltered instruction in English to scaffold him to the level of his classmates. It might be helpful to enlist Michael's younger brother, Victor, to help Michael at home, as well. Michael might be embarrassed to let his much younger sister, Sabrina, help him, both because of the age difference and because of cultural issues regarding gender relations. A third strategy, which the teacher has already tried without success, would be to involve Michael's parents in a discussion with Michael about his behavior in class. Ms. Watkins might want to enlist the help of a Spanish teacher to contact Michael's parents in case a language barrier is the reason she has been unable to make contact with them. Depending on their English proficiency, they may feel intimidated by speaking to an English language teacher. In order to encourage Michael to complete and submit assignments on time, I would try to engage Michael's internal motivation by having a frank discussion with him about why it is important to do these things. This is a conversation I already have on a regular basis with my own sons: explaining to them that they need to turn in work on time because they will need to have that habit in the workplace. At a job, in the adult world, schedules and deadlines are definite, not relative, and an employee who does not complete work on time will be fired. Since Michael already has a job, I would use that to draw the parallels for him. I would also remind him that failing in school and being held back can negatively impact future employment and earning potential. The same conversation would also help encourage Michael to establish personal learning goals, as higher learning is usually associated with better and more lucrative employment. I would also seek to discover Michael's personal dreams and goals, and work the potential for success in achieving his dreams and goals into the conversation. Michael's parents should be involved in supporting Michael's learning goals. Ms. Watkins needs to determine why they seem to be uninvolved. His parents can work with his employer to give Michael more time for study and for remediation and tutoring. They can ensure that he completes assignments, and that he takes completed assignments to school on time. They can talk to Michael about how his behavior impacts his future prospects. Michael's siblings appear to have adapted to the American school system better than Michael has done. If he is willing to have their help, Victor and Sabrina can help Michael understand assignments, assuming that a cognitive gap is contributing to him not completing assignments. They can also appeal to him as their big brother, reminding him that he is the example they need to be able to follow, and that he needs to set a good example for them in school. References Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Scenario 4/11/2013 Last month, I participated in Career Day at my sons' school. I was a volunteer assigned to assist a local yoga instructor who was presenting to the students. Each presenter was given a classroom or other space, and the 7th grade students (for whom the event was given) each received a "class" schedule for the morning. Each session was 20 minutes long, with a 5 minute break between sessions for students to move between classrooms. The yoga presentation was set up in the front of the library, in an area with many windows, that was partitioned off from the rest of the library with temporary screens. The yoga instructor had the students sit in a long oval on the floor while she spoke to them for about 5 minutes about yoga and asked them what they already knew or thought about 572 A Journey Through My College Papers yoga. She then spent 10 minutes taking the students through a series of basic yoga exercises while she moved among them, and ended by having the students lie still on their backs for 2 minutes before teaching them a traditional word of parting used by yoga practitioners. In the third session, there were two girls who talked to each other throughout the session. They sat closer together than the instructor asked them to sit, and they were continually petting and stroking each other's arms, shoulders, and backs during the session. If this happened in my classroom when I was the teacher, I would want to stop the girls' behavior without significantly disrupting the class, and without drawing undue attention to their behavior. Public displays of affection, without regard to gender, are not permitted in the local school. My first response, as I moved among the students, would be to very gently move the students farther away from each other and to tell each one very quietly that the behavior was unacceptable and needed to stop. If they returned to the behavior after I moved on to other students, my next response would be to separate the girls entirely, quietly guiding one of them to the far side of the room. If the students persisted by moving back together and resuming the behavior, I would quietly escort them out of the room and send them to the office under the supervision of whatever staff member or adult volunteer was available. While the students were breaking a written rule of the school, if they responded appropriately to the first intervention, I would not report the violation to the office unless the administration or other appropriate authority asked me about it directly. At 12 years old, hormones and emotions are confusing enough, and the recent publicity regarding marriage equality and gay rights only adds to students' curiosity, so I would try to have some compassion if they corrected their behavior. If I had to go to the second response and the students then responded appropriately, I would hesitate to report the violation, but I would keep the students after class to talk about the incident, to ask why they were behaving as they were, and to determine whether they understood that they were breaking the rules. Depending on their responses and attitudes, I might let it go, as above, or I might report the violation. If I had to resort to removing the students from the class, there would certainly be a report and the students would face disciplinary action from the office. Chapter Three Case Study Scenarios April 15, 2013 Case studies: Shelley teaches a 7th grade Math class at a small 7-12 school in a rural area of Nebraska. The school she teaches at has a total student population of 185 students, and her 7th grade math course includes every 7th grade student. As a result, she has a room filled with various ability levels, from struggling through advanced. Her highest achieving student Nathaniel is routinely bored with the lessons as his skill level is far above the other students in the course. Shelley has tried a variety of techniques to engage Nathaniel, and has spoken on multiple occasions with him about how impressed she is with his abilities. Still, Nathaniel has become withdrawn and lately has even taken to acting out in class, something that he never has done before. Suzie teaches 5th grade math at a suburban elementary school. She prides herself on her creativity in the classroom and constantly works to include paired and group activities to keep her students engaged. Still, she has to lecture her students from time to time and lately has found that her students seem bored or distant when she is speaking in front of them. As a student, Suzie was always responsible and attentive so her first reaction is to become frustrated with the work ethic of her students. Ultimately, she Undergraduate Series 573 realizes that it is her professional responsibility to find ways of engaging her students while also delivering the information she feels they need. On Wednesday, she plans on lecturing her students for 30 minutes about how to calculate the area of shapes. Her worry is that they will tune out again, and she will need to reteach the concepts later. Shannon has been teaching elementary school math for twenty years and, over time, she has developed her own methods of teaching, classroom management, and planning. For the first time in her career, she is switching schools due to a transfer in her husband’s employment and so will be starting fresh with a new group of teachers and a new school. As part of the opening week of school, she will be meeting in a four hour session with the other math teachers to discuss the year. She is anxious about how she will fit in with them, both personally and professionally. As a result, she has been preparing a list of questions that she can ask so as to ease her transition into the group. She has mapped out her own first month of school, but she wants to map the curriculum with her colleagues to make sure that they are unified as the school year begins. Mike is a 9th grade English teacher at a city in downtown Phoenix. In his class of 25 students, 22 have lived in Phoenix for their entire lives. As his third unit of the year, Mike decides to read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck with his students and begins by teaching his classes about farming and life on early 20th century ranches. He knows that most of his students will not be familiar with the setting of the story: 1930’s rural California farmland. He provides them with relevant vocabulary and prepares a PowerPoint presentation that goes over the basics of John Steinbeck’s life and 1930’s American history. He spends several days ensuring that his students know the meanings of the words and gives them a quiz on the material on the 4th day. Nearly every student fails. Mike is extremely disappointed by the results and decides to look back on his planning to determine what went wrong. Nathaniel is a high achieving student who is not being sufficiently challenged in Shelley’s 7th grade math class in a rural Nebraska school. Shelley needs to discover strategies to engage Nathaniel in her class. One strategy that Shelley might try is allowing Nathaniel to accelerate beyond the rest of the class, working ahead in the textbook as far as he is able to go without direct instruction. This is the exact method my 7th grade math teacher used when I was in Nathaniel’s place. She allowed me to work ahead at my own rate as long as I continued to do Alevel work. I answered the problems presented at the end of each unit in the text to assess my learning. A second method Shelley might try, which was also my own teacher’s second method with me, would be to allow Nathaniel to help or tutor classmates who are falling behind the rest of the class. Scaffolding his classmates’ learning will engage Nathaniel in the work the class is doing and will also reinforce Nathaniel’s own learning. “The teacher skilled in differentiation taps those students who have mastered a specific skill or concept as instructors and guides for those students who need the knowledge of the group to scaffold their learning” (Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab, & Walton, 2012, p. 70). By having Nathaniel help instruct other students, Shelley would be using differentiation to maximize learning in her classroom. A third method Shelley might use to engage Nathaniel is to have a conversation with him about his role in her class. As her highest achieving student, Nathaniel may be a role model for his classmates. If he begins to act out in class, lower achieving students may follow his lead and act out as well. Shelley can impress upon Nathaniel the need for him to continue to be a positive role model for the other students, thus enlisting his support for her classroom management and for his classmates’ continued learning. Suzie’s suburban 5th grade math class has trouble focusing on the lesson when direct instruction by lecturing is required. A plane geometry lesson in calculating the area of shapes gives Suzie the opportunity to use the strategy of including kinesthetic instruction with her lecture. 574 A Journey Through My College Papers Kajitani, et. al., (2012) recommend that teachers provide “ongoing opportunities for kinesthetic learning” (p. 73). Instead of just lecturing at the front of the class while students take notes, Suzie can have the students calculate the areas of shapes at their desks as she teaches each method. This is one strategy that my geometry for elementary majors professor used during my freshman year of community college. For each shape, the students should apply the teaching immediately and calculate the area. Shapes may be drawn on worksheets, or manipulatives may be used to add more kinesthetic learning to the lesson. Another strategy Suzie could use would be to connect the area lesson to real life. “When students understand the ‘why’ of your lesson, they will engage more fully and more deeply in the learning” (Kajitani, et. al., 2012, p. 73). Instead of just talking about the areas of rectangles, Suzie might talk about finding out how much carpeting is needed to cover the floor of a room. The area of a circle might become the amount of mulch needed for a round flower bed. The specific examples should come from the students’ lives in order to tap their prior knowledge and to engage their interest. A third strategy might be to change things up by sending the students home with the lecture notes and a written assignment and then spending class time going over the assignment to see what parts of the lesson the students understood and what parts Suzie needs to review with the students. For the first two strategies, Suzie can use a traditional, written assessment to find out whether the teaching strategy worked. She can have students calculate the areas of shapes on a printed test, or she can have them complete a lab by calculating the areas of various objects around the classroom. The third strategy has assessment built in, since Suzie will go over the homework with the students and will learn right away whether or not the students understand the work, allowing her to reteach immediately, if needed. Shannon needs to learn to work with a new staff of teachers when she moves from one school to another. She needs to find strategies to ensure alignment of her teaching practices with the standards and with the other teachers at the new school. Shannon and her new colleagues should spend part of their four-hour planning session discussing the content to be taught in each grade. Shannon needs to be aware of what she is expected to teach her students. If possible, Shannon might wish to review the lesson plans of her predecessor to find out what she should be teaching, at what level, and at what pace. A second strategy Shannon and her colleagues might use is to discuss the state and local standards that must be met, and how individual teaching methods and methods of classroom management fit with the standards. Shannon needs to find out whether her established methods are compatible with the requirements in her new school. Shannon and her new colleagues should establish a written schedule for reviewing curriculum mapping, and they should establish a standard format for presenting data to the group. Kajitani, et. al., (2012) write that “all teachers must hold to the same data-collection timetable” (p. 77). A third strategy would be for Shannon to be paired with a teacher who has been at the school for some time and who can act as her mentor as she adjusts to the new school environment. This mentor could answer Shannon’s questions about local standards and about any known background on her students, their siblings, and their home situations, which can help Shannon transition into the group of teachers. A mentor gives Shannon an anchor so she doesn’t feel adrift in her new assignment until she can integrate herself with the faculty and the local school culture. Mike’s attempt to prepare his 9th grade English class in Phoenix to understand the setting for Of Mice and Men has not succeeded because he has failed to impress upon his students the relevance of the lesson. Kajitani, et. al., (2012) write that “classroom success is predicated on knowing as much as possible about your students: their interests, their learning styles, their prior knowledge” (p. 63). As a constructivist teacher, Mike has failed to take into account his students prior knowledge or, in this case, their lack of prior knowledge of the subject. Mike’s students are from the desert, and they have no personal context for understanding rural Californian farm country. According to constructivist theory, Mike needs to address the misconceptions his students are likely to have about depression-era California farms. Mike might employ modern Undergraduate Series 575 technology to take the students on a virtual tour of the setting for the book. He might have the students view films taken in 1930s California to familiarize them with the difference between their environment and Steinbeck’s setting. Mike needs to make the material relevant to the students, and providing them with lifeless vocabulary and facts did not work with his students. In order to better align with a constructivist philosophy of education, Mike needs to concentrate more on how the students learn than on what they learn. “Good teaching can be as much about unlearning as it is about learning—getting students to recognize and correct their misconceptions” (Kajitani, et. al., 2012, p. 63). He needs to bridge his students’ cognitive gap as he taps their prior knowledge and previous learning and corrects the misconceptions that block them from acquiring new learning. Mike might invite speakers who remember the 1930s to speak to the class, or he might try to arrange a field trip to a museum to give the students a better understanding of the book. Mike needs to give special consideration to the students’ socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds that are very different from the socio-economic and cultural backgrounds of Steinbeck’s characters and setting. Students in 21st century Phoenix are unlikely to have an instinctive grasp of the conditions of life in rural California during the Great Depression of the 1930s. When Mike makes the story and its setting relevant for the students, they are more likely to understand the lesson. References Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Chapter Three Synthesis April 15, 2013 The three learning theories are behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. Behaviorism is concerned with how students interact with their environments, and it involves an observable change in behavior to reflect learning. In behaviorism, students learn through a combination of modeling, shaping, and cueing. Cognitivism is concerned with how students think. It emphasizes meaningful effects and transfer effects that make information easier to learn and that take into account students’ prior learning. Constructivism is concerned with effecting changes in a student’s thought processes. Constructivist teachers are more concerned with how students learn than by what they learn. Constructivism requires teachers to know their students’ backgrounds, both their home lives and cultural backgrounds and their backgrounds in prior learning. Differentiated learning is concerned with classrooms that include a range of student ability levels and teaching each student well. Differentiated instruction is individualized to meet the educational needs of each student, including individualized instruction and assessment. Students in differentiated classrooms learn the relevance of the subjects, which helps them to learn the subjects. Formative assessments help evaluate learning in a differentiated classroom, as does allowing students to be creative in demonstrating their learning. Teachers need to develop lesson plans. While teachers can work from existing plans, each teacher develops plans that best suit the teacher, the students, and the lesson being taught. Students need to know why a lesson is taught in order to be engaged with the lesson. Lesson plans should make students be active, not passive, learners, and should enable students to apply their learning after the lesson. Teachers should engage in curriculum mapping with colleagues to ensure that questions are addressed, to ensure appropriate lesson content, to align with required standards, and to maintain a timetable for assessment. 576 A Journey Through My College Papers Students require internal and external motivations to keep them engaged in learning. Honest exchange of ideas and respect in the classroom help establish good relations between teachers and students to foster learning. Students need to know the goals and relevance of learning, how they will learn, and when and how learning will be assessed. Good classroom management helps students stay on track to maximize learning. (Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab, & Walton, 2012). References Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Scenario and Strategies 4/16/2013 During my freshman year of college, I worked as a tutor in the learning support department of my community college. One of the jobs I would like to have in the future is tutoring college students and adult learners, so this was useful experience for me. One of my students was a man in his late 20s or early 30s who had been at the community college for over five years, according to my supervisor. When he was assigned to me, he was taking a business communications course. I had two significant issues while working with this student, each of which could arise again in a future classroom or tutoring situation. The first issue involved academic integrity. The student's writing skills were very limited, and he had significant difficulties with spelling, punctuation, grammar, and cohesion in his writing. Officially, I was assigned to tutor him to improve his writing skills. Unofficially, my supervisor told me to do anything necessary to make him pass the course so he could move forward. She said I should completely rewrite his work and have him turn in my writing as his, if that was what it took. Doing this would have been a blatant violation of the school's academic integrity policy, as it would have been bald-faced cheating. For several weeks, I tried to tutor the student. I helped him revise his work, but I did not do it for him. Finally, under pressure to do the student's work for him so he could pass the class, I reported the situation to the dean of students at our college. Faculty and staff asking one student to cheat for another student is always unacceptable, and must always be reported to the school's authorities as designated in the school handbook or other policy document. The second issue involved sexual harassment and stalking. As I was tutoring this particular student, he began to make me uncomfortable. He would follow me in the corridors of the school and he would be standing outside the door whenever I left a classroom. When I used the library or the computer lab, he would sit or stand across from me and just stare at me, even if I changed seats. I asked him to leave me alone outside our tutoring sessions. On several occasions, he approached me and made up-and-down hand gestures near his groin, asking me personal questions associated with the gesture. I asked him to stop and told him I was uncomfortable. Several times, I reported this behavior to my supervisor and she told me he was a special needs student and that I needed to give him leeway. I asked to be relieved of my assignment with the student, and my request was granted. The behavior continued to escalate. Finally, with the support of a professor, I went to the dean's office to report the behavior. The dean interviewed quite a few witnesses, including other women who had experienced the same behavior from the student and the same reaction from the supervisor. The student was instructed to stay at least 10 feet away from me in the corridors and not to be in a classroom with me (we did not share any classes); if he failed to comply, he would be expelled immediately. Undergraduate Series 577 I am satisfied with my responses to the two issues, and I would respond the same way again if I was asked by my school's administration (the equivalent of my tutoring supervisor) to cheat for a student. If a student, regardless of gender, stalked me as a teacher and/or practiced sexual harassment , then the first response is to ask the student to stop. The next response is to report the behavior to the designated authority at the school. In rare cases, it may be necessary to report escalating behavior to law enforcement. If the student is a minor, it is appropriate to add the step of addressing the behavior with the parents before reporting it to the school authorities, unless the behavior poses imminent danger that precludes taking the time for the extra step. In that case, the parents must be notified as soon as possible. A student does not have to be an adult to pose a danger to a teacher or to a classmate. The same responses I would use for stalking and sexual harassment also apply to bullying. Any behavior that produces an uncomfortable or fearful school environment for students, teachers, staff, or others in the school environment must be addressed before the behavior escalates to acts of violence. Anna Martin 4/17/2013 Part One Anna Martin is a young teacher, in her second year of teaching and first year in a second grade class. She has had great success working with students and she makes great connections with her students. On Monday, Anna found her district benchmark scores in her mailbox. These district benchmark tests are given three times a year, and they measure student growth on a series of standards based areas. The benchmark assessments include a math test, a special math problem solving assessment, a long reading exam, and a writing prompt. In her report she found a set of charts with all the students’ scores in columns across the page. The writing scores, however, weren’t on the chart because the teachers will be scoring those at the next staff meeting. The charts are an array of colors; with red scores indicating students who are below target, green for those who have made the district target, and blue for those students who are working above grade level. Unfortunately, this time there is much more red and it seems like the students didn’t make “district growth.” Part Two Anna decided to take the benchmark scores home and look for signs of hope. The district gave her an Excel file and her first step was to sort the students from highest score to lowest. “What will sorting do for me?” she asked. She already had the students organized in reading and math groups by their academic levels. But she remembered how huge the chart seemed. She feels a bit overwhelmed and wondered if there was better way to organize this list. Part Three Anna decided to focus on one area, the reading test. First, she sorted the students by overall reading score. By doing so, she saw some persistent problems: Vocabulary and Word Analysis, or for another group of students, problems in Reading Comprehension, and for some students they showed problems in both areas. For the past two months, Anna has followed the district adopted text book and put students in small reading groups based on reading level. The groups had worked through the intervention materials. The textbooks seemed to only ask the students comprehension questions that asked the students to answer questions about what happened. 578 A Journey Through My College Papers Anna looks at the Excel file and realized that the district test didn’t tell her anything except which student was low, which was high, or who was in-between. She wondered how she could get more information about how her students were trying to comprehend this material. Part Four Anna decided she needed to get the students more directly involved. She wondered if she was using the teacher’s edition too much and thought about how she was responding when students made mistakes. She had posted the reading strategies on a wall she pointed to them when they made a mistake, and told them to focus on the skills. She told them a lot what they were doing right and what they were doing wrong. She thought about what else in the past month she could have done to see these patterns emerging. Lastly, before heading for the solace of a frozen yogurt, she wondered what her students would think, if anything, if she asked them about these results. The assessment Anna has received is a benchmark assessment. Its value lies in its ability to show Anna how her students perform relative to the grade-level expectations for the subjects represented. Anna can use the assessment to determine which students are at, above, or below grade level in specific subjects, and can use this information to adjust her teaching to bring all of the students up to or above grade level. The feedback on a benchmark assessment is intended for the teacher. The assessments are "given at set times through the year to determine progress to date on key standards or long term learning goals" (Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab & Walton, 2012, p. 95). According to the case study, Anna has her students grouped by academic levels in reading and math. In order to make better use of the math scores on the benchmark assessment, she might sort the math scores according to these preset groups of students to determine whether or not the students are grouped appropriately. She could use the results of such a sorting to adjust the composition of the students' ability groups. The final result Anna is probably trying to achieve is using the assessment results to improve the effectiveness of her teaching and to ensure that all of her students meet or exceed expectations for the year. Some of the underlying causes that might have caused the particular results for Anna's students might include multiple intelligences, the structure of instruction in the classroom, and Anna's attention to district standards in her teaching. Multiple intelligences among students can produce skewed test results for auditory and kinesthetic learners, who do not always perform as well as visual learners on written tests. Other forms of assessment might be more accurate evaluations of the learning of these students. As a new teacher, Anna might need to rethink the way she presents information in the classroom to help her students understand and retain the information. If more students than previously are below grade level so that the students are not achieving district growth, Anna might need to review the district's standards and to adjust her lesson plans to better align with the district. Other considerations might be external to the classroom, as with students in recent crisis situations resulting from the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings or the Boston Marathon explosions. A large number of students in a class might have lower than expected scores if testing occurs soon after a local or regional trauma, simply because they are hurt, afraid, or otherwise distracted. In reviewing the assessment results, Anna should consider whether this is a possible factor. It might be helpful for Anna to consider what proportion of her students have IEPs, are GATE or ELL students, are from refugee or itinerant families, or have suffered a recent trauma, as above. Most of these factors should already be available to Anna, and the rest should be available from the office or the counseling office. Past scores for individual students might also be useful, if available, and should be in student files or in the office. Undergraduate Series 579 To find out what she should be teaching her students, Anna should check with other teachers on her team and in the school, as well as with the district. District and local standards should be available to help Anna realign her teaching as needed. Anna should also be using a variety of formative assessments in the classroom to track her students' learning and to help her make adjustments in her teaching to keep all of her students at or above grade level. If I was helping Anna, I might ask her how the distribution of scores on the benchmark assessment aligns with her current grouping of students by academic levels? What additional instruction or scaffolding might be needed for students with low test results to bring them up to the level of district growth? If Anna speaks with her students about the assessment results, as I believe she should do, she might want to ask the students whether they are surprised by their test results, and whether it is a good surprise or a bad surprise. Her students are very young, so it is essential to keep the concepts and language of such questions simple, but second grade students should be able to tell their teacher whether they think they are doing well or poorly, and what they think might help them learn more effectively. These are questions Anna could ask her students. Before the next district benchmark, Anna might gather evidence of student learning in the form of student portfolios and interactive student logs. These alternative forms of assessment are likely to provide a more accurate picture of how the students are performing, and it levels the field a bit for students who are strong learners but who are not strong visual learners or takers of standardized tests. The most important information Anna can get from her teammates at tomorrow's meeting is a better understanding of district and local standards. It might also be useful to learn whether her students' results are similar to or different from the results in other second grade classrooms, and how her students compare to other grades in the school in relation to district growth. As a new teacher, Anna can also get advice from more experienced teachers about ways of improving her students' performance on the next district benchmark. In regard to standardized testing in general, while I appreciate the value of measuring benchmarks, I do not feel that standardized tests are a good measure of actual learning because of the many factors that such tests cannot measure. I think Anna should take the benchmark assessment as an indicator of student achievement in the measured areas, but that she should not take it as the sole authority on her students' learning. She should rely more heavily on a variety of formative and summative assessments in her classroom for that. References Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Chapter Four Synthesis April 19, 2013 Assessment, whether formative or summative is essential to teaching because it helps teachers, administrators, parents, and students understand what the students have learned, what the students still need to learn, and how teaching should be adjusted to help the students learn. The key elements of assessment are balance, purpose, and neutrality. Balance is achieved by using a variety of kinds of assessment to get a clear picture of learning. Purpose is essential because each assessment must have a clear purpose for it to be used. Neutrality ensures that each student is assessed without bias on the part of the teacher or the administration so that intentional or inadvertent discrimination is avoided. Assessment is feedback, and it may be intended to inform 580 A Journey Through My College Papers the student, the teacher, the district, or the parents; each intended audience requires a different form of feedback. Feedback to students must be constructive, and it must support communication between the student and the teacher. Assessment plans are designed from the top down, beginning at the district and culminating in the classroom. Assessment helps teachers formulate learning goals for students. Teachers need to give students clear examples of what students are expected to produce for assessment. Learning goals are then used to create meaningful assessments, and then the results of the assessments must be clearly communicated. Including students in designing assessments empowers them. Backward design of assessments starts with the assessment and then builds curriculum planning to support the assessment. Instruction requires understanding what is to be learned, learning the required skills, and then applying the learning. Standardized testing helps educators make decisions to improve student learning. Benchmark testing helps teachers track how their students compare to grade level expectations at set points through the year and to adjust teaching accordingly. Standardized testing is extremely expensive, and it covers only a small portion of student learning; it cannot measure many types of learning. (Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab, & Walton, 2012). References Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Chapter Four Case Study Scenarios April 22, 2013 Case studies: Eileen teaches elementary school math at a small school near Burlington, Vermont. Most of her students come from wealthy families who live in suburban Burlington and who come to class very prepared skill-wise for the teaching that takes place in her classroom. As a final project, she wants each of her students to present one of the concepts from the term to the rest of the students. Within their presentation, she wants each student to define the concept, give an example of it, and present a real world situation where the concept would be useful. She also asks each student to speak for at least two minutes. When she assigns the presentation, she wants to be certain that students understand the requirements of the assignment and how specifically they will be assessed. She also wants parents involved throughout the entire process. Kate teaches at a Kindergarten near Boston at a school that serves one corner of Boston’s downtown population. Most of the students in her all day class are AfricanAmerican and the school itself is located downtown and surrounded by the Boston cityscape. With Thanksgiving approaching, Kate wants to devote time in class to the history of Thanksgiving and how the holiday relates to American history. On one specific day of class, she decides to focus on the importance of the first meal. As one element of her instruction, she plans to teach students how to create turkeys using their hands. Megan teaches a sixth grade art class in a small school near Austin, TX. Most of her classes have 15-20 students of varied skill levels, cultures, and socio-economic backgrounds. Some of access to computers and technology, but many live in homes where technology is not readily accessible. She wants to find a way to embrace the varied backgrounds of her students in a project, and begins planning a multimedia project that requires students to share a specific element of their culture with the class in a 2-3 minute presentation. While she wants Undergraduate Series 581 every student to put in the same amount of work, she also wants to give students a choice of projects. In all cases, she wants all presentations to include a creative visual element of some kind, a short speech that details how this element of each student’s culture has impacted them individually, and a brief history/timeline of the cultural element. Kevin is a middle school U.S. History teacher in a suburban school near Philadelphia. Many of his students are children of Professors or other employees of nearby Penn University. As a result, many of his students have already been introduced to the many historic sights in and around Philadelphia. As a project to finish the quarter, Kevin wants to have each student visit a local historical landmark and teach the class about it. Before they present to the entire class, he wants to make sure that they are prepared and that they have a chance to practice their presentation. Specifically, he wants to make sure that all students are prepared to talk about the landmark’s history, their experience visiting it, and that they sound professional and prepared. Unfortunately, he does not have class time to listen to every student in class to make sure they are prepared. In order to ensure that her students are prepared to present one of the math concepts from the year to the rest of the class, Eileen needs to give her students at least three specific resources. The most obvious resource Eileen can provide is the text book that she used for the course. Each student can refer to the text for explanations of the concepts that have been covered in the class. A second resource Eileen can make available is the Internet. Students can access the Internet at school if they do not have access at home. There are many websites that offer math concepts and examples that the students might use. One example of such a website is Math Goodies (2013) at http://www.mathgoodies.com/lessons/toc_vol3.html. A third resource Eileen could provide for the students would be access to art supplies and various manipulatives in the classroom that the students could use to produce visual aids to demonstrate the math concepts. As the students present their projects, Eileen can be certain she is actually assessing what she claims to be assessing by using a rubric that she has provided to and explained to her students before the beginning of the project. A rubric is “a set of grading descriptions organized by a scoring scale, detailing a hierarchy of achievement” (Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab, & Walton, 2012, p. 99). Using a rubric removes subjectivity and potential teacher biases from the grading of the projects. Eileen can also use the rubrics to give the students specific feedback on their presentations. She can do this by writing her observations on the rubric during each presentation, and then having a one-on-one conference with each student after all of the presentations are completed to discuss the student’s rubric and Eileen’s observations about his or her presentation. Another option would be to write observations on each rubric and hand the rubrics back to the students with their presentation grades and written feedback, similar to the way many Ashford professors use rubrics to provide specific feedback to students. Kate wants to have her kindergarten class create hand turkeys as part of a unit on the history of Thanksgiving. As a pre-assessment of the students’ knowledge, Kate could ask her students what a turkey looks like. Based on the age of her students, she might prompt them to describe a turkey’s head and neck, its body, its legs, and its tail. While the work is being completed, Kate should move about the room and look at the turkeys that the students are producing. Kate might have all of the students use one method of making a hand turkey, or she might invite creativity by suggesting several methods. For example, Kate might have each student trace his or her hand on a sheet of paper, with the fingers spread out, and then color the thumb to be the turkey’s head and color the fingers to be the feathers of the turkey’s tail. Another option would be the have each student use poster paint to make a handprint on a sheet of paper, with the fingers spread out as before, and then to paint the details of the turkey on the handprint. A third option would be to have each student trace his or her hand three times (once each on three 582 A Journey Through My College Papers different colors of paper), spread as before, and then cut out the hand shapes and glue them to a sheet of paper to form a fan of feathers, then cut a circle to glue on for the body and other shapes to glue on for other details as desired. A summative assessment should involve a simple rubric that Kate explained to her students at the start of the project. If all of the students were to use one method, the rubric could indicate how they followed directions, how neat their work was, and whether they completed all aspects of the project. If greater freedom of creativity was allowed, then the rubric should include all of those aspects plus a section related to creative expression. In order to include a creative visual element, a discussion of the element’s importance, and a brief history/timeline of the cultural element, Megan might offer her students three specific choices for their art projects. One choice might be to create a poster or multi-media collage that presents aspects of the student’s particular culture. Megan could encourage her students to include images that create a timeline or suggest a historical narrative from past to present in the poster or collage. The student could then present the piece to the class, pointing out each part of the piece while talking briefly about how each element of the culture represented on the poster has impacted the student. A second choice might be to construct a model or a diorama that shows the history of a culture or a cultural element. A then-and-now model might be a good project. Again, the student can point out the differences between past and present while explaining how the cultural element impacts his or her life. A third choice might be to make a video using digital devices such as cell phones, tablets, or video cameras, which might belong to the school or to individual students or their families. The students could then include costumes, music, and dance to present their cultures. The speech might be included as the narrative on the video, which would be helpful for students who might be uncomfortable talking in front of a group of people but might be able to talk to a camera or recording device. Kevin needs to find a way to let his students practice their presentations about the historic sites of the Philadelphia area without using the class time to hear each student practice individually. The best solution to this would be to use student pairs or groups of no more than four students each. Within each group or pair, each student could give his or her presentation to the other members of the group. The students should use the same rubric that will be used for the official presentations to assess the practice presentations. By using groups or pairs, Kevin can drastically reduce the amount of class time because several students are practicing their presentations at one time. The only drawbacks to this are that students may be distracted by other presentations going on at the same time and students might not be able to practice the appropriate vocal volume when practicing in small groups. If Kevin has access to a space where the groups could be spread out more, such as a gym, that might help. In good weather, he might take the class outdoors to reduce the distraction of too many voices practicing in an enclosed space at one time. Kevin might take advantage of this sort of group practice session to do a peer review assessment. Kajitani, et. al. (2012), explain the peer review assessment: “Pairs or groups of students are graded not on the task but on how well the group followed the process and provided supportive, helpful feedback” (p. 107). The peer review is not part of or essential to the final presentations, but Kevin should not waste the opportunity to assess the students’ ability to work together and to support each other. At the end of the group practice, each student should have one or more rubrics with specific feedback from his or her peers from which he or she can improve the presentation that will be made to the whole class. References Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Math Goodies. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.mathgoodies.com/lessons/toc_vol3.html Undergraduate Series 583 Joseph Hanson 4/24/2013 Overview: Joseph Hanson lives in a small community in southern California with a school district that serves approximately 4800 students. He is a parent of two boys and one girl. His oldest son is academically gifted and filled with a love of learning that’s evident regardless of who his teacher has been along the way. His daughter is academically satisfactory but has found great success as a three sport athlete in high school. While she has yet to connect with her teachers in a way that challenges her, the coaches in all three of her sports have acted as terrific mentors as they encourage her to pursue athletics at the college level. Joseph has been pleased with the success of his oldest son and daughter, but his concerns and energy have been focused on his youngest son Kyle. Along with his wife he has been actively engaged in his education and has worked diligently to support the educational progress of all students as they volunteers on a weekly basis at school. Joseph and his wife had hoped that their presence on campus would allow them to develop meaningful partnerships with the staff in a way that would lead to better support for Kyle, but unfortunately that has not been the case. Problem Kyle, while struggling academically, would not be a student that you might classify as “special needs.” Because of this, he has not qualified for any special interventions. All of his teachers have felt that he is the cusp of proficiency and will most likely make it. The problem is that he never does. He is the classic case of a subsatisfactory student academically that masquerades as “proficient”. After numerous appeals to support Kyle and students like him are ignored, Joseph decides to attend a school board meeting in search of answers. Upon attending the school board meeting, Joseph receives a copy of the district’s strategic plan. He reads about the priorities to support gifted students in gaining scholarships to college, and plans to improve all athletic facilities in a way that “can make our town proud!” As the board meeting gets underway, the agenda that has been advertised to the community focusing on the new district’s bullying policy and data driven intervention plan, has now been replaced with a single topic agenda dedicated to approving the new salary increase for all district staff members. Joseph leaves the meeting appalled. He goes out in search of answers to questions like:  How are citizens with no understanding about education elected in the first place?  What is expected to take place at a board meeting and how much can a citizen expect to be accomplished by a district whose board meets once a month?  What steps can a parent take to be a part of school-wide solutions at the site level? After participating on a school site council for a year, Joseph has decided that his role on the council is simply to approve budgets that the principal and district were supportive of in the first place. Because of his lack of fulfillment in the process, he decides to run for the school board. His positive spirit resonates with the community as the vast majority of the voters select him as the newest member of the board of five. From the beginning of his term in office, Joseph’s proposals to his colleagues as well as district office personnel appeared to be ignored. His suggestions about how to offer more autonomy to the seven schools within his district are replaced with ideas on how to 584 A Journey Through My College Papers mandate uniform steps to ensure that all teachers within each school are participating in the same curriculum that are aligned to state standards. In spite of the data that shows that this approach has not worked for the last 15 years, the subjective opinions of the rest of the board always win over. It hasn’t taken long for him to notice that there are no specific methods for how decisions are made by the board, and he is surprised at how willing the superintendent is to go along with the recommendations of the elected officials. During a private conversation over breakfast, the superintendent confides in Joseph about his frustration with the board. He shares of the progressive ideas that he has for the district and about the steps that he wants to take to develop exceptional success for every student. Finally, this well educated superintendent with a doctorate degree shares that he is considering leaving the district in search of a venue that might allow him to be more progressive and move beyond the small town politics that are encouraging mediocrity. He shares about his exhaustion in dealing with the day to day scandals, complaints, and politics of education. He, like Joseph, wants to be a part of a community in search of better ways to support their neediest students through approaches that are focused on data and results. Joseph Hanson wants to find better ways to support the neediest students in a school district that places most of its focus on college-bound GATE students and on athletic programs. One of the most obvious issues at the district level is the lack of focus on meeting the needs of all students in the district. Joseph has appealed to the school repeatedly to support Kyle and other students who are struggling but who do not qualify for extra support as special needs students. The school's inability or refusal to address the problem is another issue, which appears to exist at both the local level and the district level. The school board's inability or unwillingness to stick to an agenda that addresses bullying and intervention, instead focusing on salary increases for district staff, is another issue. Salaries belong on the agenda, but should have been scheduled on the published agenda, not allowed to usurp the time allotted for the important issue of bullying. The problems Joseph observes on the local and district levels appear to stem from a greater interest in serving the needs and wants of the board and the staff than in serving the needs of the students in the schools. There is a sense of complacency in the scenario, which can lead to administrative inertia in which no one with the power to effect change expends the effort needed to do so. One of the key issues that are impeding the success that Joseph and the Superintendent want for the community is the desire of the board to keep all of the schools on exactly the same path together, without allowing individual schools to creatively form cultures that respond to the needs of their students. Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab, and Walton (2012) write that "[t]here is no one-size-fits-all model in schooling ... [and] [b]efore a school can be innovative, it must first adopt a spirit of innovation" (p. 133). The school board and the district staff appear to believe the one-size model works in the district; they lack the spirit of innovation that is needed to allow them to embrace the changes that Joseph and the Superintendent wish to make. Another key issue is the sense of defeatism exhibited by the Superintendent. He has given up trying to change things in his district and is considering moving out of the area and leaving the mess for the next Superintendent. Until that move happens, the Superintendent is giving in to the board, rather than exerting any leadership or authority to guide the board toward making progressive decisions in the best interests of the students. Because this board is absent of any systems that guide their decision making, one of the first protocols I would set up is a list of rules regarding how agendas are set up and how they are followed, to prevent board members replacing agenda items at will. Undergraduate Series 585 To generate and implement forward thinking solutions for the district, I would bring several stakeholders into the mix. I would try to bring in representatives of the PTA/PTO to represent the concerns of the parents in the district. As has been done in our local school district, I would bring in a student representative from the student government of each school to represent the interests of the students and to offer a uniquely fresh perspective on the issues facing the schools. If bullying and other violent activities are a problem in the district, I might try to bring in a law enforcement representative. If I was Joseph, I would respond to the Superintendent's frustration and consideration to leave the district by encouraging the Superintendent to stay at his post. I would encourage him to stop taking a passive role with the board, and to start being proactive for the students and teachers in the district. I would point out to the Superintendent the many parents and community members who share his vision for progressive change, and I would encourage him to network with those community members and groups that support forward thinking in the schools. I would remind him that by leaving the district he would not solve any of the problems, but would leave all of the problems for his successor and would empower the local and district representatives to continue their myopic approach of forcing the schools of the district into an unproductive lockstep. References Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Case Study Scenarios 4/24/2013 Case Studies: Simon teaches 11th grade English in a wealthy community outside of New York City. He has taught at the same school for ten years, and has increasingly found technology to be a frustration in the classroom. At this point, all of his students have cell phone, iPods, or both. While he does his best to monitor their use in the classroom, he knows he is not always able to catch students sending text messages or using the internet during class. He has become increasingly frustrated and fed up with the amount of instructional time lost to these devices. Recently, a colleague mentioned to him that the technology in his classroom might actually be used for good. He has never considered this notion, instead focusing on the distractive nature of the devices. Simon begins to think of ways to harness the power of technology in his classroom and decides to try to include elements of social networking in his unit on The Great Gatsby. He assigns each student a character and has them create a Facebook page for the character, complete with their background information and interests. He then asks the characters to interact via Facebook, even going so far as to have them use their cell phones in class to update the pages. To Simon, the results are incredible. His students are engaged and their posts are thoughtful and reflect an understanding of the text. He hears students in the hallway talking about the book in a way he never has before. As a result, he is shocked when he returns to his classroom and finds a message from an irate parent who is furious that he is letting students use their phones during class. In the message, the parent tells him that he will be meeting with the Principal to discuss Simon’s unprofessionalism. Matt teaches U.S. History at Brookville East High School outside of Nashville, TN. Brookville is known for its boys’ basketball team, a tradition that dates back to the 586 A Journey Through My College Papers 1970’s when their superstar Guard led the team to four straight state championships. This year, the team has been getting a lot of publicity, mainly because the son of that 1970’s star has just begun his high school basketball career. He has also started his high school academic career, and he is in Matt’s 5th period class. After two quarters of class, the student/athlete in question is failing Matt’s class as the basketball season begins. With progress reports on the horizon, Matt knows that a failing grade would leave the student ineligible to compete. The student, his parents, and at least one administrator have made it clear that they expect him to pass. In one particularly tense phone exchange, the student’s father implied that he would have Matt fired if his son was ineligible because of his class. With two weeks until progress reports, suggest a course of action that Matt can take to ensure that he is fulfilling his role as a mentor and educator. I absolutely love Simon's The Great Gatsby project, and I plan to incorporate it into my lesson plans when I am teaching. That said, teachers face angry responses from parents all the time. In this case, as is often the case, the parent's anger appears to be based on a misunderstanding of what Simon is doing with the class. First, Simon needs to contact the principal, explain tell him or her about the parent's message, and make sure the principal is fully aware of Simon's project on Facebook. After that, Simon needs to talk to the parent to explain the project and to clear up the misunderstanding, while at the same time preserving the parent's dignity and not allowing the parent to look foolish for his anger. Depending on how the message was received, Simon might choose to call the parent or to suggest a face-to-face meeting to discuss the parent's concerns and to explain the project. To prove the instructional value of the assignment and to justify his use of technology, Simon can do several things. First, he can show how the project is in alignment with the district and state standards. Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab, and Walton (2012) write: "Policies that align to a set of goals or strategic plans are those that sharpen the focus of a district and make it easier for all involved to get on board" (p. 130). Similarly, Simon can show that his project aligns with standards, which should help the angry parent get on board with the project. Another way Simon could justify the Facebook assignment would be to give the class a written assessment of the course material that was addressed using the Facebook project and then use the scores to show that the students have successfully learned the material. Simon should also take the parent on a virtual tour of the class's Facebook pages and posts, if possible, to demonstrate the level of engagement and critical thought exhibited by the students. Before beginning the Facebook project for The Great Gatsby, Simon should have sent a note to parents, explaining what the project entailed and how it would be done. This is how my sons' school handles projects. The teachers send out emails to the parents that explain exactly what the students will be doing, how they will be doing it, and what they are expected to get out of the project. In case parents don't have access to email, a paper copy is also sent home with the students. In many cases, the parents are required to sign a slip and send it back to school to confirm that they have received the information. Then, updates on projects are included in the weekly team updates that are sent to all parents by email. If Simon had notified his students' parents about the project, he could have avoided misunderstandings, confusion, and anger. If a particular parent had a really strong reason for objecting to the project, that parent's child could have been given traditional reading and writing assignments. I have seen students in our schools recused from certain projects on philosophical grounds, and I have even recused my own sons from certain projects a few times; alternative assignments have always been provided to accommodate these situations. Undergraduate Series 587 Matt is facing pressure to engage in social promotion. As a teacher who has encountered similar pressures, I feel strongly about this scenario. With two weeks until progress reports, Matt needs to work quickly to help his student/athlete catch up with the rest of the class. Matt needs to make it clear to the student, the parents, and the administration that social promotion is unacceptable. In order to help the student, he needs to work out a schedule of tutoring with the student. This might mean the student has to miss practice sessions with the team in order to get the work done. Matt should talk to the student's coach and impress upon the coach that the student will be unable to participate in sports with a failing grade. Matt can enlist the coach to help encourage the student to do the work that is needed to bring up his grades as well as he can. Matt should encourage the coach to excused missed practice sessions "for the good of the team," which is a concept most coaches will understand. If the student has missing assignments, Matt can work out a schedule for the student to get those assignments in while making sure the student understands that he will have to accept reduced credit due to tardiness, but that reduced credit is always better than a zero. Matt should be respectful when speaking with the threatening parent, but he should be clear and firm in regard to academic integrity and not yielding to pressure to engage in social promotion. The parent's threat is designed to intimidate; in reality, it is unlikely that the parent could get Matt fired for adhering to the school's grading policies. Matt should certainly contact the school district's legal office to discuss the parent's threat. He should also contact the principal or, if the principal is the administrator who is pressuring Matt to pass the student, he should contact the district superintendent. He should also report the pressure from an administrator to the appropriate authority in the district. Matt should interact with the student in such a way as to convey to the student that he should expect as much help as he needs, but that he should not expect special treatment based on his or his father's athletic achievements. The student should be required to meet all of the same standards as the other students in regard to attendance, punctuality, participation, and completion of assignments. It must be made clear to the student that he cannot play basketball if he fails a class, and that it is up to him to earn passing grades that will not be given to him unearned. This is a difficult situation because Matt is being threatened and he may find himself temporarily unpopular if he holds his ground, but academic integrity must be maintained for the sake of all of the students who do not have famous parents or athletic prowess to recuse them from doing the work needed to pass their classes. The student will learn a very valuable life lesson if Matt holds him to the rules and academic standards of the school, and the school will survive having the student miss a basketball game if he doesn't do the work and bring up his grades. References Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Critical Reflection April 24, 2013 The interdisciplinary capstone course has been interesting. It has challenged me to think deeply about the challenges that face teachers and that I may expect to face in my future career as a teacher. The most engaging assignments of the course have been the scenarios that I have related from my own teaching experiences. Each of these assignments has had personal significance for me, since each assignment drew directly from my own memories, and my 588 A Journey Through My College Papers personal investment in the assignments has engaged me to examine the events more deeply than I had done previously. I never felt a moment during this class when I was more distant than t any other time. I have been impressed with the supportive interaction of the students, and I have felt like part of the group, insofar as it is possible to be part of a group in a five week, online class. The only assignment that has caused me any real confusion is the final paper, which I have yet to compose. I understand the parameters of the assignment, but I feel some confusion about how to go about writing it. The capstone essay is a different format than I have encountered before, as it has a prescribed number of paragraphs and a prescribed content for each paragraph. This is a challenge, however, not a problem, and I will find a solution. I did encounter some confusion in regard to APA formatting and parenthetical citations on specific papers. These were very specific situations, and I was able to approach my professor with a degree of professionalism to sort out the confusion. It is good to be able to articulate a concern and to be able to resolve the concern without undue emotionalism, and I hope to carry that habit with me as I continue into my teaching career. I will certainly remember the way in which my concerns were addressed, and I will seek to emulate my professor when similar misunderstandings arise with my own students. Along with the resolutions of misunderstandings that I have already described, I will most remember the many discussions about the uniqueness of each student, and the need to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of each student. In the midst of this course, I had occasion to spend a full day at a local elementary school for a school festival. I was a member of a group of presenters on the culture of Revolutionary War-era America, and we had three make-andtake stations in our classroom. I was in charge of talking about colonial education, and I was to have each student make a horn book out of construction paper. This involved each student printing the alphabet. Two third-grade students were unable to recite or print the alphabet, so I gave each of them a sheet with the alphabet printed on it; they were each able to copy the printed sheet. As I worked through the day, and especially with these two students, I kept thinking about this course and what we have learned about special needs students, differentiation, and engagement. I will carry those ideas with me to use in future classrooms. I am generally satisfied with my work in this course. I have endeavored, as always, to be thorough in responding to discussion prompts, and I have been pleased by the opportunities for critical thought. Based on the entries in the grade book, I have excelled in most of my assignments; I could have been more careful with my word choices in my first written assignment for the course. I have enjoyed my interactions with my professor and with my classmates on the discussion board, and I have appreciated reading their different views of the situations we have discussed. I look forward to applying my learning from this course to my real life work as a teacher in a classroom. Week Five Capstone Essay April 29, 2013 In studying to become a teacher, I have learned many lessons about learners, about education, about teaching, and about myself. There are many kinds of learners, each of whom brings a unique combination of intelligences, learning styles, interests, and backgrounds into the classroom. There are also many types of education, including behaviorist models, cognitive models, and constructionist models. Teaching may be approached with the student in mind, with the final or benchmark assessment in mind, or with federal, state, and district standards in mind; the best teaching takes all of these factors into account. Learning about me and about my role as a teacher has been challenging. It has brought with it a deeper understanding of my motivations for Undergraduate Series 589 teaching and of my personal beliefs in regard to teaching. Through discussions of my past experiences with issues that teachers face on a day-to-day basis in classrooms from preschool through post-graduate programs, and through analyses of a variety of case studies involving elementary and secondary school issues, I have gained a deeper understanding of and appreciation for the challenges and the rewards of teaching. Each student is unique, each classroom is unique, and each teacher is unique. I am no exception to this rule, but this class has helped me to draw in the experience of other teachers so that my unique approach to teaching will also include proven techniques and will integrate the methods of past teachers in a way that will best serve the interests of my students, of my community, and of me. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss what we know about learning, what we know about learners, what we know about teaching, what we know about assessment, and what we know about schooling, and I will connect these areas of knowledge to my own learning and to my career goals. It is through a clear understanding of what is known about learning, learners, teaching, assessment, and schooling that I gain the knowledge necessary to be an effective teacher in twenty-first century America. No two students learn in precisely the same way. Many factors contribute to the individual uniqueness of a student, including the student’s home environment and culture, past experiences, sense of personal identity, and the physical development of the student’s brain. A student’s culture includes not only racial or ethnic considerations, but also the student’s socioeconomic status, emotional baggage created by experiences in the student’s life, and even the generation in which he or she grew up. By developing relationships with students and by effectively communicating with students and maintaining consistency in the classroom, teachers are able to help students overcome the challenges to learning that they bring into the classroom and help engage them in learning by tapping into their prior knowledge to help them build new knowledge. As a future college teacher, I can expect to have students from different generations in my classes, and understanding the differences among baby boomers, generation Xs, millennials, and net generation students will be essential to effective teaching and classroom management. Each of these groups will have different ways of thinking and of dealing with authority, work ethic, scholarship, and personal responsibility and entitlement. I will need to find creative ways to use information technologies to facilitate the learning of my students. Along with differences among generations and differences in cultures and in personal experiences among students, teachers need to be aware that students can be sorted into three learning groups: visual learners, auditory learners, and kinesthetic learners. Effective teachers create a print-rich classroom environment and use color-coding, illustrations, charts, and diagrams to support visual learners. They read aloud, include music in lessons, and provide opportunities for student discussions to support auditory learners. They provide opportunities for students to move around the classroom and provide hands-on projects and activities to support kinesthetic learners. As a teacher, it will be important for me to be aware of these learning styles, and to watch for cues from my students to help me give them to support they need to facilitate their learning. In addition to supporting students’ varied learning styles, effective teachers tap into students’ prior knowledge and their interests to find ways to relate to students in order to engage them and help them learn. Teachers need to help students apply their personal beliefs, experiences, and cultures to their learning, and to bridge gaps between that prior knowledge and the lessons in the classroom. In order to help students set and reach realistic goals, teachers can use targeted feedback, practice, and applied learning, and they can use timelines and milestones to keep students on track. Additional differences in learning are found in special needs students who may have individual education plans (IEPs), gifted and talented education students (GATE), and English language learners (ELLs) for whom English is not their original or primary language. Each of these groups faces additional challenges in the inclusive classroom, and teachers need to make accommodations for students in these groups to learn. Understanding the various ways in 590 A Journey Through My College Papers which students learn, and learning to recognize and accommodate special needs students, GATE students, and ELL students will make me a stronger, more effective teacher. This learning will help me plan my teaching to provide learning opportunities for visual learners, auditory learners, and kinesthetic learners, as well as learners from special groups, so no student is left behind the rest of the class. In addition to being aware of the different learning styles of students, teachers need to be aware of the three learning theories that can be applied in the classroom: behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. Behaviorism deals with observable changes in students’ behavior as reflections of learning. Cognitivism deals with how students think and with meaningful effects and transfer effects in learning, taking into account the prior learning that students bring to the classroom. Constructivism deals with how students learn, placing the process of learning above what it actually learned. As a teacher, I will keep each of these theories in mind and apply each of them to my teaching as seems appropriate to achieve effective teaching. With all of these learning styles and learning theories, a teacher must also be aware of varied student ability levels in the classroom. Differentiated instruction takes into account students’ different abilities and individualizes instruction and assessment to ensure that each student’s individual educational needs are met. In differentiated instruction, the teacher ensures that the students understand the relevance of the subjects being studied, which helps them engage with the learning and learn more effectively. Teachers use formative assessments in differentiated classrooms, as well as allowing students to creatively demonstrate learning, in order to evaluate learning. To teach effectively and to ensure that all necessary material is covered in a required time frame, teachers need to develop and use lesson plans. Teachers can use pre-made lesson plans if necessary, but effective teachers create their own lesson plans that are suited to the teacher’s teaching style, to the students, and to the lessons to be taught. Teachers can collaborate with other teachers to create high quality lesson plans. In order for students to be engaged with a lesson, they need to know why that lesson is taught, and the relevance of the material should be included in the lesson plan. Lesson plans should make the students active participants in their learning, not just passive receptors of teaching, and should equip students to apply their learning after the lesson. I am already collecting a file of ideas that I can include in my own lesson plans in the future, drawing from the experiences of other teachers to help me begin creating lesson plans. Teachers engage in curriculum mapping with other teachers to ensure that questions are addressed, that lesson content is appropriate, that lessons are in alignment with required standards, and that a suitable timetable for assessment is maintained. In planning lessons and assessments, teachers need to keep in mind that student engagement with learning requires both internal and external motivations. A teacher should try to learn her students’ motivations in order to help them find ways to engage with their learning. Mutual respect and an honest exchange of ideas between the teacher and the students help to establish good relations in the classroom and foster learning. Students at all levels of schooling need to know what they expect to learn and why they are learning it, how they will learn the lessons, and when and how their learning will be assessed. Teachers need to apply all of these things to their teaching, and must also practice good classroom management to help students stay on track to maximize learning. Teachers must not only teach students, they also need to assess students’ learning through a combination of formative and summative assessments to determine what has been learned and how teaching should be adjusted to help the students learn. Assessments of various kinds provide information to teachers, administrators, parents, and students. Keys to effective assessment are balance, purpose, and neutrality. Balance involves using a variety of kinds of assessments to evaluate learning, purpose defines how and why an assessment is used, and neutrality protects students from bias on the part of the teacher or the administration so that intentional or inadvertent discrimination is avoided. Assessment is feedback that may be intended to inform the student, the Undergraduate Series 591 teacher, the district, the parents, or higher levels of government about students’ learning. Feedback to students must be constructive, not destructive, and it needs to support effective communication between the student and the teacher to support continued learning. Assessment plans begin at the district level and continue down to the classroom level. Assessment not only informs teachers of how well students have learned, it also helps teachers formulate learning goals for students. In preparation for assessment, teachers need to give students clear examples of what they are expected to produce for assessment. Learning goals are used as a framework for creating meaningful assessments that support ongoing learning, and the results of assessments must be clearly communicated to the audience for which the assessment was designed. Allowing students to contribute to the creation of learning assessments empowers students. I had personal experience of this in my ninth grade earth science class when my teacher announced that the student with the highest grade at or above 100% would be exempt from the final exam and the next highest scoring student would design and write the exam. I was tied with another student for second place, and he and I worked together to create the exam for our classmates. I feel that I learned more from creating the exam than I had learned from the lessons themselves, and there was a sense of accomplishment and personal success associated with creating the exam. It is not always appropriate to design the curriculum first and then design the assessment; designing the assessment first and then building the curriculum to support the assessment is called backward design. Backward design ensures that all of the teaching supports the assessment of the learning. Effective instruction requires that students understand what is to be learned, then that students learn the required skills for the lesson, and finally that students apply the learning after the lesson. One common method of assessment is standardized testing, which helps teachers and administrators make decisions to improve students’ learning. Benchmark testing is a type of standardized testing that helps students track their students’ performance in comparison to grade level expectations at specific times during each school year so that teachers can adjust their teaching to bring students up to expected levels. Standardized testing is very expensive and requires a great deal of security while transporting, storing, administering, and scoring the tests. It covers only a small, quantifiable portion of student learning, and there are many types of learning that cannot be assessed with standardized testing. Everything that has been discussed thus far concerns students and teachers in the classroom, but the concerns of education extend beyond the classroom to the realm of educational policy. Educational policy exists in one form or another at the federal, state, district, and local levels, and my also include a county level of policy. There are two classes of political policy: reactive policy and proactive policy. Reactive policy is created to address problems that exist; proactive policy is created to avoid future problems. A well-known example of educational policy at the federal level is the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which is a policy that deals with accountability in the schools. The most politically motivated educational policies are found at the state level, and school boards are elected to create local, individualized educational policies to serve individual schools or groups of schools. The school board in my local community, for example, sets policy for a high school, a junior high, two middle schools, and several elementary schools. Like students, individual schools have unique personalities, which are referred to as school cultures. Each school’s culture represents what the school stands for. A strong school culture contributes to building a successful school. In addition to traditional schools, there are increasingly other public school models that are designed to serve the learning needs of a diverse student population. Some public school models include charter schools, differentiated instruction schools, bilingual immersion schools, and school conglomerates. Some schools have open classrooms, have several grades grouped together, or are even ungraded, with students grouped according to interests and ability levels. A school option that is becoming popular as society moves into the future is the entrepreneurial school model, which uses real-world activities to help 592 A Journey Through My College Papers students learn. Since many traditional manufacturing careers are now being replaced by careers in the global economy, more students than ever before are being prepared for college. In order to successful produce a high percentage of college-ready students, schools are embracing innovation and the importance of incorporating information technologies in the classroom and they are recognizing the individually unique potentials of their students. Collaboration among educational professionals, alignment of teaching to state and local standards, creating a school culture of universal achievement, and promoting student-centered assessment will help schools achieve their goals into the future. Through a clear understanding of what is known about learning, learners, teaching, assessment, and schooling, I have gained the knowledge necessary to be an effective teacher in twenty-first century America. I have learned that each student is unique and that each has a personal learning style, various personal intelligences, and a unique personal culture that encompasses his or her beliefs, language, racial/ethnic background, socio-economic background, and other individual factors. As a teacher, I will be alert for the clues that will help me most effectively teach each student and engage each student in learning. I have learned that a classroom must be designed to engage visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners, and to accommodate the special learning needs of special needs students, GATE students, and ELL students. My education has made me aware of these diverse learning needs and has enabled me to apply differentiated instruction in my classroom to meet the needs of my students. I have learned about behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism, and I plan to use an eclectic mix of all three theories so that I can most effectively teach a diverse student group. I do tend to favor cognitivism, out of the three theories, because I am fascinated by how thinking happens, and I expect that my teaching will lean more toward cognitive theory when I have that option. I have learned about the importance of using a balanced mix of formative and summative assessments, and a variety of methods of assessment, to gain the clearest picture of my students’ learning, and to help them continue to learn. I have a personal dislike for high stakes standardized testing, but I understand the importance of such testing in accountability and in the creation of educational policy. As a college teacher, I will not have to teach to the test to the same degree as do elementary and secondary school teachers, which will allow me to concentrate on giving my students the best teaching of which I am capable. Through my study of The final step: A capstone in education in the capstone course of my undergraduate studies, I have learned about collaboration, about aligning teaching to standards, about a school culture of universal achievement, and about the value of studentcentered assessments, and I look forward to applying the learning that I have gained to my own, future teaching career (Kajitani, Lehew, Lopez, Wahab, & Walton, 2012). References Kajitani, A., Lehew, E., Lopez, D., Wahab, N., & Walton, N. (2012). The final step: A capstone in education. A. Shean (Ed.). 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Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/203268083 626 A Journey Through My College Papers Index 1 15th Century, 273, 277 17th Century, 267, 534 18th Century, 459 19th Century, 33, 38, 74, 76, 149, 150, 172, 238, 242, 243, 244, 252, 253, 267, 268, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 403, 413, 414, 426, 427, 428, 438, 440, 445, 446, 447, 448, 449, 458, 463, 489, 490, 494, 498, 501, 505, 597, 614, 622 2 2001 A Space Odyssey, 103, 105, 106 20th Century, 40, 76, 174, 238, 243, 244, 252, 253, 284, 316, 320, 321, 326, 329, 332, 487, 534, 574 21st Century, 31, 77, 156, 161, 192, 243, 252, 254, 256, 257, 273, 274, 287, 316, 320, 329, 414, 534, 536, 538, 576, 590, 593, 605, 620 2nd Liberty Loan, 241 4 4th Liberty Loan, 241 A A Blessing, 175, 626 A Critical Period for Language Acquisition, 359 A Divine and Supernatural Light, 274 A Doll House, 14, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 490, 491, 494, 498, 501 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 533 A Narrow Fellow in the Grass, 430 A Personal Philosophy of Education, 554 A Rose for Emily, 24, 25, 434, 452 A Slender Fellow In the Grass, 433 A Vision, 328 A Week, 276 A&P, 166, 167 AAC&U, 192 Abbott, Philip, 276 ABC, 444 Abednego, 262 Abel, 21, 305, 308 Ability Grouping, 54, 470 Ability Groups, 486, 579 Ability Tracks, 482 Abortion, 31 Absenteeism, 231, 232 Abu Ghraib, 188, 189 Academic Ability, 470, 553 Academic Acceleration, 470 Academic English, 232, 234, 236, 571 Academic Integrity, 577, 588 Academic Progress, 232, 234, 520, 549 Academic Writing, 412, 569 Academy of Waterford, 551, 552, 594 Accommodations, 201, 235, 245, 472, 536, 570, 590 Achieved Status, 119, 128 Acid Rain, 185 ACLU, 103, 108, 598 Across Five Aprils, 220 ACT, 552 Action Reading, 15, 506, 508, 509, 510, 511, 512, 513, 514, 515, 516, 517, 518, 519, 520, 521, 522, 525, 526, 527, 603 Action Reading Program, 512, 513, 517, 519, 521, 522, 525, 526 Acts of War, 90, 353 Ad Hominem Attacks, 345 AD&D, 413 ADA, 93 Adams, John, 83, 84, 600 Adamy, Janet, 125 Addiction, 250, 285 Addressing Stereotypes, 111 Adequate Yearly Progress, 59 Undergraduate Series 627 ADHD, 14, 206, 207, 222, 343, 346, 471, 472, 510, 511, 515, 519, 521, 522, 523, 525, 602 Adjective, 295, 303, 356, 417 Adlestrop, 317 Adolescence, 27, 64, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 209, 212, 469, 484, 527, 617 Adoption, 51, 54, 74, 80, 131, 132, 335, 336, 339, 341, 342, 344, 547 Adult Development, 63, 65, 479 Adult Development and Life Assessment, 63 Adult Illiteracy, 506 Adult Learners, 63, 194, 233, 506, 577 Adult Literacy, 506 Adulteress, 288 Adultery, 36, 287 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 413 Advantages of Brain-Based Learning Environments, 9, 224 Aerobic Exercise, 216, 217 Aesop, 258, 375, 450, 451, 594 Aesthetic, 97, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 488, 489, 490, 492, 531, 544, 553 Aesthetics, 367, 372, 385, 502, 545 Affecting Presidential Power, 83 Affirmative Action, 256 Afghan, 350, 352, 354, 370, 620 Afghanistan, 179, 188, 349, 350, 352, 370 AFL-CIO, 108 Africa, 33, 38, 41, 42, 147, 156, 160, 187, 192, 220, 267, 316, 317, 348, 361, 362, 363, 364, 366, 594 African Americans in Post-Civil War America, 252 Africana Studies, 363 African-American, 49, 113, 128, 253, 273, 535, 581 African-American Female Intelligence Society of Boston, 273 Ageism, 63 Aghstawenserenthah, 261 AI, 103, 104, 105, 106 AIDS, 199, 323, 324, 606 Air Travel Database, 102 Aisha, Bibi, 349, 350, 351, 352 628 A Journey Through My College Papers Akikuyu, 36 Al Qaeda, 256 Alabama, 238, 278, 282, 286, 618 Aladdin, 324 Alaska, 44, 243, 362 Algeria, 182 Alien, 105 Alien Act, 83 Aliens, 105 Aligning a Personal Philosophy of Education with Curriculum, 543 All About Me Unit, 544, 545, 546 All in the Family, 249, 250, 251, 594 Allegorical, 456 Allegory, 294, 313, 440, 441, 442, 443, 446, 450, 609 Allington, Richard, 507 Alliteration, 174, 286, 499 Alphabet, 70, 226, 236, 358, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 444, 510, 512, 517, 523, 589, 594, 603, 623 Alphabetical Order, 444 al-Qaeda, 180 Altering Power Relationships, 50 Alternate Grouping Strategies, 233, 236 Alveolars, 358 Alzheimer’s Disease, 332 American Civil Liberties Union, 108 American Colonists, 94 American Episcopal Church, 529 American Experience, 279, 281 American Gay Rights Movement, 129, 130, 594 American Gothic, 445, 446 American History Since 1865, 237 American Imperialism, 9, 242, 243, 244 American Leaders, 73 American Literature, 10, 260, 277, 281, 428, 434, 439, 441, 442, 446, 450, 608, 621, 625 American Literature After 1865, 277 American Literature to 1865, 260 American Northeast, 260 American Poetry, 271 American Psychiatric Association, 123 American Revolution, 305 American Samoa, 243 American Slave Narratives, 237 American South, 252, 368, 380, 388, 403 American Students Are Crippled By Cultural Diversity Education, 349 American West, 252, 257, 426, 599 Americans with Disabilities Act, 93 Amherst Academy, 425 Amherst, Massachusetts, 425 Amman, 155, 156 Amnesty International, 122, 123, 179, 595 Amos ‘n’ Andy, 254 Amplify, 547 Amtrak, 104 An Address Delivered Before the Afric-American Female Intelligence Society of Boston, 271 An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, 143 An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, 277 Analysis, 66, 87, 107, 333, 416, 417, 424, 425, 428, 429, 434, 436, 445, 467, 470, 492, 500, 507, 512, 529, 603 Analysis of Here at “The New Yorker”, 416 Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper, 438 Analyzing, 53, 436, 477, 500, 559 Analyzing a Literary Work in Relation to Sociopolitical Contexts and Movements, 383 Analyzing Poetic Structure, 400 Analyzing The Yellow Wallpaper, 446 Anapestic, 457 Anaphora, 499 Anarchy, 135, 176, 177, 256, 553 Anderson, Jill, 509 Anderson, Kirk, 550 Anderson, Stephen L., 349 Andhra Pradesh University, 154 Anger, 144, 175, 220, 235, 246, 254, 261, 262, 308, 321, 350, 398, 408, 423, 480, 497, 504, 587 Anglo-American, 281, 568 Anglo-Boer War, 159 Anglo-Saxon, 147, 158, 242, 293, 294 Anglo-Saxon Period, 487 Animal Communication, 354 Animal Communication versus Human Speech, 354 Animal Rights, 140 Anna Martin, 578 Annotated Bibliography, 491, 492 Antarctica, 542 Anterior Cerebellum, 484 Anthropologists, 361 Anti-depressants, 207 Anti-Federalist Papers, 84 Antifeminism, 299 Antifeminist, 297 Anti-Imperialist League, 243, 244, 606 Anti-piracy Legislation, 348 Antiques Road Show, 341 Anyolo, Prisca, 42 APA, 3, 66, 440, 589 APC, 334, 338 Apostle Paul, 35 Arab League, 179 Aragon, 158 Archaeologists, 223, 363 Archetype, 211 Aristocracy, 97, 158, 159, 161, 239, 262 Aristotle, 138 Aristotle’s Lyceum, 555 Arithmetic, 72, 73, 530, 531, 549 Armed Intervention, 181, 182 Armored Personnel Carrier, 334, 338 Army, 90, 103, 165, 240, 241, 242, 252, 333, 337 Arnold, Sue Beth, 520 Arsenic, 25, 452, 453 Article Review, 208 Articles of Confederation, 84, 86, 87, 94, 187, 595, 603 Articulate Speech, 366 Artificial Intelligence, 103, 105, 106, 107, 607 Artistic Expression, 370, 372, 373, 376, 377, 378, 440 Artistic Expression and Culture, 369 Artistic Representations of the Effects of Intersecting Cultures, 391 Aryan Nation, 53 Aryans, 154 Undergraduate Series 629 As I Walked Out One Evening, 321 Ascribed Status, 119, 128 Ashanti, 36 Ashford Guide for Academic and Career Success, 66 Ashford Institutional Outcomes, 68 Ashford Library, 442 Ashford Online Library, 332 Ashford University, 3, 68, 82, 119, 522 Asia, 38, 44, 48, 75, 127, 147, 150, 154, 192, 348, 361, 362, 603, 615 Asian Subcontinent, 147 Asperger's Syndrome, 206, 222, 343, 346 Assembly Line, 244, 245, 596 Assimilation, 129, 186, 469 Assonance, 499 Astronomy, 531, 549 AT&T, 239 Atlantic Monthly, 75 Attendance, 72, 99, 110, 194, 299, 551, 562, 588 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, 206, 471, 472 Atwood, Margaret, 259, 452 At-Work Privacy, 108, 109, 595 Aubade, 323 Auden, W. H., 321 Audience Awareness, 377 Audience Reception and the Influences of History and Culture, 377 Auditory Learners, 570, 590, 591 Auld, Thomas, 269 Aunt Sue's Stories, 282 Aunts, 336, 339, 341, 342 Australia, 192, 348 Autism, 71 Autobiography, 264, 269, 281 Automobile, 244, 245, 603 Automobile and America, 244 Autonomy, 176, 186, 187, 210, 495, 503, 559, 584, 609 Avalon High, 314, 315, 605 Avarice, 350 Axis Powers, 146 Ayatollah Khomeini, 382 630 A Journey Through My College Papers AYP, 59, 551 B Baby Boomer, 562 Baby Boomers, 562, 590 BAC, 107 Backward Design, 581, 592 Bahasa, 234, 235 Bak, John S., 440, 446 Baker Island, 243 Baltimore, 268, 269 Bambara, Toni Cade, 166, 174 Bandura, Albert, 66, 201, 202, 598, 599 Bankruptcy, 167 Banneker, Benjamin, 262, 263 Baraban, Elena V., 459 Baragaonli, 39 Baraka, Amiri, 256 Barn Burning, 283 Barnabee, Jyl, 513 Barreda, Tony, 130 Barrios, 156 Barron, Homer, 25, 452, 453 Bartleby, the Scrivener, 268 Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills, 570, 571 Batman, 256 Beamer, Charlotte C., 534 Beauty, 162, 301 Because I could not stop for Death, 168, 169, 456 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 553 Behavior, 21, 22, 25, 34, 38, 43, 46, 55, 64, 66, 69, 103, 105, 115, 117, 122, 123, 124, 131, 151, 168, 190, 195, 196, 197, 201, 202, 206, 207, 209, 211, 212, 232, 280, 297, 298, 302, 313, 316, 317, 321, 322, 343, 344, 346, 347, 350, 351, 352, 367, 396, 432, 436, 449, 466, 469, 473, 480, 493, 494, 495, 501, 502, 528, 534, 538, 539, 564, 571, 572, 573, 576, 577, 578, 591, 617 Behavioral Learning Theory, 232, 233 Behaviorism, 530, 539, 554, 571, 576, 591, 593 Behaviorist Models, 589 Belfast, 556 Belgium, 243 Bellissimo, D., 336, 339, 342 Benchmark Assessment, 579, 580, 589 Benefits of the Articles of Confederation, 86 Bengali, 454 Bengalis, 454 Benitez v. KFC Natl. Mgt. Co, 108 Bennington College, 23, 378, 473 Bentham, Jeremy, 143 Beowulf, 10, 292, 293, 294, 295, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 365, 596, 606, 607, 611, 622 Beowulf: Reading for Theme, 292 Berg, Kris, 216 Berkeley, William, 72 Berlin Wall, 100 Beryl Bell, 426 Betrayal, 289 Bevere, Allan, 91 Bianca, 234 Bible, 10, 21, 35, 44, 47, 48, 69, 81, 143, 188, 266, 271, 299, 313, 314, 316, 319, 326, 375, 401, 432, 608, 610, 618 BICS, 570, 571 Bierce, Ambrose, 277, 278 Big Business, 130, 238, 239, 240, 598 Bigamy, 33, 34 Bigotry, 290 Bilabials, 358 Bilingual, 231, 232, 236, 359, 372, 568, 592 Bill of Attainder, 245 Bill of Rights, 34, 84, 85, 98, 101, 245 Biographical Criticism, 424 Biracial, 403 Birmingham Grid for Learning, 543 Bisexuals, 429 Bishop, Elizabeth, 455 Black Hawk, 266, 267, 273 Black Jackets, 323 Blackburn, F.A., 306 Blacks, 74, 128, 153, 237, 238, 252, 257, 258, 600, 618 Blacksburg, Virginia, 534 Blade Runner, 105 Blaine, James G., 243 Blake, William, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 318, 319, 321, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330, 422, 423, 424, 604, 613, 625 Blended Families, 132, 133 Blessed Sacrament and Cardinal Spellman High School, 95 Blood Alcohol Content, 107 Blood Descent, 336, 339, 341 Blood Line, 336, 339, 341, 342 Blue-collar Workers, 246 Bodily kinesthetic, 471 Bodin, Jean, 176 Body Language, 467 Boland, Eavan, 324 Bombings, 22 Bonander, Ross, 458 Bonobos, 354 Boroditsky, Lera, 372 Boston, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 65, 108, 166, 167, 189, 212, 232, 233, 234, 237, 238, 239, 240, 242, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 251, 257, 264, 333, 335, 337, 340, 341, 342, 345, 348, 349, 355, 357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 362, 364, 366, 393, 394, 397, 401, 404, 414, 416, 417, 419, 420, 421, 424, 425, 428, 429, 434, 533, 549, 559, 581, 595, 597, 601, 603, 604, 610, 611, 612, 616, 620, 623 Boston Marathon, 579 Boudi, 454 Boulger, James D., 313, 326 Bountiful, 38 Bourke vs. Nissan Motor Corp, 108 Bowker, Norman, 443 Boy Scouts, 241 Boy Scouts of America, 119 Boyd, Juliet, 217 Boyle, Robert, 69 Bradford, Andrew, 264 Bradley, Marion Zimmer, 413 Brady, Kathryn, 344, 347 Brahmin, 154 Brain, 40, 103, 104, 106, 107, 142, 197, 198, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 221, 223, 224, Undergraduate Series 631 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 355, 360, 363, 484, 527, 528, 553, 562, 590, 594, 597, 600, 610, 611, 613, 617, 618, 619, 621, 625 Brain Cancer, 40 Brain Damage, 142, 197 Brain Dominance, 213 Brain-based Compatible Classrooms, 229 Brain-based Learning, 216, 217, 218, 221, 228, 229, 230, 231, 610, 611, 619, 621 Brain-based Learning Strategies Benefit Students, 216 Brain-based Planning, 230 Brainstorming, 470 Brazil, 43, 509 Brazinski v. Amoco Petroleum Additives Co., 108 Breast Cancer, 250 Breast-feeding, 157, 198 Breathalyzer Monitor, 107 Brecht, Bertolt, 247 Brennan, Heidi, 142 Bride Price, 37, 40 Britain, 147, 155, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 263, 294, 612, 625 British Aristocracy, 158, 159 British Class System, 158, 159, 160, 161 British Columbia, 33, 38 British Empire, 147, 161, 305, 324, 604 British Imperialism, 158, 160, 161 British Literature I, 292 British Literature II, 310 British Monarchy, 83 Britons, 7, 147, 158, 159, 160, 161 Brooklyn, Illinois, 253 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 254 Brown v. Board of Education, 80, 81, 255, 597 Brown versus the Board of Education, 80 Brown, Jessica, 142 Brown, Linda, 80 Brown, Oliver, 80 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 314, 318, 321, 325, 327 Browning, Robert, 454 Bryan, Samuel, 84 Bryan, William Jennings, 81 632 A Journey Through My College Papers Buddha, 367, 369 Buddhism, 548 Buffalo, New York, 253, 257, 599 BUG Tickets, 566 Bullying, 202, 578, 584, 585, 586 Burke, Edmund, 304, 305 Burlington Free Press, 19, 332 Burnett, Frances Hodgson, 391 Burnstein, Dan, 458, 461 Bush, George H. W., 129 Bush, George H.W., 96 Bush, George W., 188 C C rations, 443 C-3PO, 360 Cadence, 173, 286 Caesuras, 457 CAI, 71 Cain, 21, 305, 307, 308, 309 Calcutta, 454 California, 44, 60, 75, 213, 214, 215, 216, 218, 219, 221, 223, 224, 229, 231, 256, 373, 374, 485, 531, 570, 574, 575, 576, 584, 609 California Proposition 209, 256 Calvin, John, 299 Cambridge Public School Department, 217 Cambridge, MA, 217 Camelot, 314, 327 Cameron, Dave, 158 Camp Harmony, 245 Campion, Thomas, 301 Canada, 33, 38, 123, 362 Canadian Lawyer, 38 Cancer, 250 Cannibalism, 136, 304 Canon, 488, 489, 490 Capitalism, 152, 155, 242 CAPPS, 102, 103, 598, 622 CAPPS II, 102, 103 Cardinal Virtues, 135, 350, 352, 353, 619 Career Day, 572 Care-givers, 200, 370 Caribbean, 147, 160 Carnegie, Andrew, 243 Carnivals, 368 Carnivore Program, 108 Carolingian Minuscule Letter, 365 Carpenter, Rollo, 106 Carson-Newman College, 417 Carter, Heather, 219 Carter, James, 248 Carver, Raymond, 162, 163 Case Study Scenarios, 586 Case Study: Assessment, 539 Case Study: Evolution of Theories of Learning, 538 Caste System, 153, 154 Castigation, 474 Castration, 416 CAT, 188 Cataclysm, 291 Catacombs, 459, 461 Categorization, 203, 204, 209 Catharsis, 285, 395, 405 Cathedral, 162, 163 Catholic, 69, 113, 116, 146, 172, 241, 278, 299, 303, 321, 322, 323, 350, 529 Catholic Church, 69, 321, 322, 323, 529 Catholics, 146, 156, 287 Cattell, Raymond, 471 Cause and Effect, 202, 203, 204 Cautionary Tale, 438, 449 Cave Art, 362 Cave Drawings, 362 Cave Painting, 21 Cayuga, 261 CBS, 480 Cecil, Hugh, 158 Celebrating Ecstatic Life, 425 Celibacy, 171, 172 Cell Phones, 106, 124, 552, 554, 583, 586 Celts, 147, 159 Center for Democracy and Technology, 110 Central America, 180, 187, 192, 243 Ceremonies, 317, 367 Certain Iroquois Tree Myths and Symbols, 274 Chakraborty, Basanti, 222 Challenger, 100 Chapman, Robert L., 307 Chapter Four Case Study Scenarios, 581 Chapter Four Synthesis, 580 Chapter One Synthesis, 562 Chapter Three Case Study Scenarios, 573 Chapter Three Synthesis, 576 Chapter Two Case Study Scenarios, 566 Chapter Two Synthesis, 570 Charges Dropped Against Teacher Accused of Forcing Student to Eat From Garbage, 52 Charter School, 119, 144, 551, 552 Charter Schools, 550, 552, 555, 592 Chastity, 350, 376 Chat Rooms, 365 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 10, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 365, 616 Chaucer: Reading for Imagery, 295 Chaucer: Reading for Lexicon, 296 Checks and Balances, 87, 90, 91, 92 Chennai, 154 Chevrolet, 367 Chicago, 21, 22, 92, 239, 244, 246, 514, 601, 605 Child Abuse, 36 Child and Adolescent Development, 194 Child Development, 195, 197, 208, 209, 212, 468, 479, 602, 626 Child Molestation, 123 Child Song, 403 Childhood, 19, 28, 64, 66, 112, 130, 137, 146, 166, 182, 193, 199, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 264, 283, 290, 314, 319, 324, 328, 358, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 377, 380, 381, 388, 389, 392, 413, 426, 427, 456, 466, 468, 469, 479, 490, 519, 526, 529, 530, 596 Children, 20, 21, 22, 23, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 59, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 95, 99, 100, 101, 111, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 123, 124, 125, 129, 132, 133, 141, 142, 143, 144, 146, 157, 165, 166, 167, 168, 170, 174, 176, 177, 185, 188, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, Undergraduate Series 633 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 217, 219, 220, 221, 222, 227, 234, 238, 239, 240, 241, 244, 246, 256, 259, 262, 265, 274, 279, 280, 282, 284, 286, 287, 288, 291, 303, 304, 308, 310, 312, 314, 315, 319, 321, 322, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 333, 335, 336, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 346, 347, 349, 352, 355, 356, 359, 361, 363, 368, 369, 370, 371, 373, 379, 380, 387, 388, 390, 394, 395, 396, 402, 404, 405, 406, 411, 413, 422, 423, 433, 445, 446, 447, 452, 455, 464, 466, 467, 468, 469, 478, 479, 482, 484, 485, 487, 490, 493, 494, 495, 496, 497, 501, 503, 504, 506, 509, 511, 512, 514, 516, 517, 523, 524, 527, 530, 531, 534, 535, 537, 538, 539, 541, 542, 545, 546, 548, 550, 551, 552, 554, 555, 556, 568, 582, 604, 610, 612, 617, 619 Chile, 126 Chimpanzees, 354 China, 125, 126, 127, 152, 153, 180, 185, 186, 243, 246, 344, 347, 348, 390, 392, 425, 596, 602, 603 China Chic: East Meets West, 391 Chinese, 119, 125, 126, 151, 152, 153, 226, 287, 288, 363, 368, 372, 373, 378, 379, 380, 381, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 493, 519, 526, 620, 626 Chinese New Year, 226 Chinese-American, 287, 379, 380, 387, 388, 493 Chisholm v. Georgia, 88, 89, 90 Chisholm, Alexander, 88 Chopin, Kate, 489, 490 Chosen, 403 Chrismonopoly, 43 Christian, 10, 31, 32, 34, 35, 38, 43, 47, 53, 54, 69, 78, 79, 115, 146, 155, 156, 160, 230, 242, 267, 285, 293, 294, 295, 306, 307, 309, 311, 313, 315, 318, 319, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 352, 371, 427, 538, 549, 596, 602, 607, 620, 622 Christian Content in Beowulf, 293 Christian Democracy, 53, 54 Christian Science Monitor, 78, 79, 607 634 A Journey Through My College Papers Christianity, 34, 47, 54, 159, 242, 293, 294, 306, 541, 548, 602 Christians, 35, 53, 146, 274, 286, 306 Christmas, 180, 250, 464, 465, 495, 498, 502, 505 Christmas Tree, 465 Church Going, 323 Church of England, 304 Church of Satan, 285 CIA, 102 Cicadas, 19, 20 Cinco de Mayo, 226 Circadian Rhythm, 229 City Temple, 323 Civil Air Patrol, 333, 337 Civil Disobedience, 270 Civil Liberties, 246, 254, 255, 616 Civil Rights, 85, 93, 153, 154, 246, 247, 254, 255, 280 Civil Rights Act, 93, 94 Civil Unions, 44, 129 Civil War, 21, 153, 181, 220, 221, 238, 239, 252, 273, 426, 427 Clark, William, 84 Clarke, Arthur C., 103, 106 Clarkston, Michigan, 2, 3 Classical Argument, 499 Classical Conditioning, 473 Classical Music, 225, 553 Classism, 425 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 243 Clearances, 324 Clergy, 69, 108, 117, 270, 422 Cleveland Street Scandal, 429 Cleverbot, 106, 107, 619 Clifton, Lucille, 418 Climax, 259, 278, 385, 451 Clinical Depression, 66 Clinton, Iowa, 3 Clinton, William J., 96 Coarticulation, 360 Co-curricular, 550 Cog, 106 Cognitive Development, 194, 195, 199, 203, 209, 211, 212, 484 Cognitive Learning Theory, 232 Cognitive Models, 589 Cognitive Perspective, 194, 209, 211, 212 Cognitive-stage Theory, 209, 211 Cognitivism, 554, 555, 576, 591, 593 Cognitivism/Constructivism, 530 Cohabitation, 33, 115 Co-husbands, 39 Coillege-University-Directory.com, 81 Colden, Cadwallader, 274 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 311, 312, 313 Collaboration, 593 College Cost Reduction and Access Act, 55, 56 College Placement Tests, 519, 525 College Republicans, 256 Collins, Joan, 226 Colombian Drug Cartels, 180 Colonel Sartoris, 24 Colonial Education, 71 Combination Sounds, 512, 514, 524 Comenius, John, 534, 536, 537 Comma, 218 Commentary in Fiction, 267 Commission for Student Success, 57, 58 Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, 181 Commodore Perry, 149, 152, 621 Common Sense, 352, 441, 449 Common Vernacular, 256, 356 Communism, 146, 152, 153, 161, 247, 596, 621 Communist Party, 247 Communists, 247 Community, 25, 37, 38, 49, 50, 51, 72, 74, 76, 96, 118, 119, 124, 129, 140, 143, 166, 167, 168, 182, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 235, 236, 257, 266, 287, 294, 300, 307, 308, 322, 323, 336, 339, 341, 344, 347, 367, 368, 369, 373, 528, 529, 531, 542, 545, 548, 552, 566,鴤567, 569, 575, 577, 584, 585, 586, 590, 592, 609 Community College, 542 Como, Perry, 254 Comparing Satrapi and Nafisi, 384 Composition 1, 17 Composition and Analysis, 24 Composition Books, 17, 330 Comprehension, 237, 360, 475, 508, 513, 516, 517, 518, 519, 521, 522, 525, 526, 539, 578, 613, 625 Computer Assisted Instruction, 71 Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, 102 Computer Literacy, 102 Computers, 12, 107, 325, 360, 606 Computers That Talk and Listen, 360 Concrete Operational Stage, 204, 209 Concrete Operations, 203, 205, 210, 469, 484, 486 Concubinage, 38, 40, 47, 600 Concubine, 35, 36, 46 Concupiscence, 350 Confederal Government, 94 Confederate, 95, 220, 623 Confederate Government, 94 Confession of Faith, 300 Conflict Between Reason and Feelings, 134 Conflict Theory, 120, 131, 132 Congregationalist, 279, 529 Connecticut, 44 Connie, 26, 29 Conrad, Joseph, 316 Conscience, 116, 118, 599, 622 Conservation, 204, 209, 468, 469 Considering Gender in A Doll House, 490 Consociation, 186 Consonantal Alphabet, 363, 366 Constantinople, 367 Constitutional Convention, 95 Constructionism, 554 Constructionist Models, 589 Constructivism, 554, 576, 591, 593 Content Knowledge, 78, 532 Context Support Method, 509 Contextual Meaning, 357 Continued Education, 383 Continuous Student Assessment, 520 Convention against Torture, 188 Undergraduate Series 635 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 188 Conversational English, 234, 571 Conversations in Poems, 11, 311 Convocation, 384, 385 Cooperative Learning, 236 Copernicus, Nicolaus, 69, 553 COPS, 235, 236 Cordero, Esperanza, 378 Core Commitments Initiative, 192 Core Curriculum, 547 Cornell University, 37 Corneto, 364 Corporal Punishment, 480 Corporal Punishment Debate, 480 Corporal Punishment in Schools, 480 Corporations and Big Business, 238 Corpus Callosum, 355 Correspondence, 262 Council Fire of the Confederacy of the Five Nations, 274 Council of Chief State School Officers, 76 Council of the Mohawk, 261 Couplets, 282, 365 Courage, 294, 350, 368, 434, 457, 494, 501 Cousins, 25, 41, 43, 44, 336, 339, 341 Covetousness, 350 Cowardice, 308, 350 Co-wives, 31, 32, 38, 39, 42, 43 Crain, John, 264 Crane, Stephen, 162, 163 Creating Art, 162 Creative Expression, 376, 393, 583 Creative Writing, 100, 392, 393, 394, 397, 401, 404, 412, 413, 414, 416, 533, 623 Creativity, 24, 121, 212, 213, 354, 356, 362, 428, 470, 482, 486, 493, 495, 502, 528, 534, 553, 573, 582, 583 Crisis of Faith, 529 Criteria for Armed Intervention, 8, 181 Critical Analysis, 207, 500, 529, 559, 612 Critical Analysis of Gilman’s Gothic Allegory, 440 Critical Period, 359 636 A Journey Through My College Papers Critical Reflection, 588 Critical Theory, 415, 416, 417, 419, 420, 421, 424, 425, 428, 429, 434, 445, 612 Critical Thinking, 77, 113, 349, 351, 352, 353, 475, 481, 527, 529, 535, 538, 539, 547, 554, 559, 560, 601 Crosby, Bing, 254 Cross-Cultural Perspectives, 145 Cruelty, 135, 140, 270, 281, 353, 403 Crusades, 315 Crystallized Abilities, 471, 472, 483 Cuba, 182, 243, 246 Cueing, 576 Cullen, Countee, 282 Cultural and Linguistic Differences, 236 Cultural Context, 204, 356, 371, 378 Cultural Differences, 192, 235, 350, 351, 353, 471, 541, 556 Cultural Relativism, 136, 351, 352, 353, 601 Cultural Revolution, 254 Cultural Studies, 415, 528 Culture, 12, 32, 38, 42, 44, 48, 69, 78, 122, 125, 126, 128, 131, 136, 141, 143, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 167, 195, 201, 203, 234, 244, 253, 254, 257, 274, 275, 281, 287, 288, 294, 295, 296, 324, 329, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 356, 360, 361, 365, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375, 376, 377, 378, 380, 381, 383, 385, 386, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 425, 439, 440, 441, 446, 447, 450, 454, 469, 480, 487, 489, 490, 533, 542, 549, 556, 562, 568, 575, 581, 582, 583, 589, 590, 592, 593, 601, 605, 610, 615, 616, 619 Cuneiform, 363, 365, 366 Cunningham, James, 507 Cunningham, Patricia, 507 Curfews, 245 Curriculum, 23, 49, 51, 70, 75, 78, 216, 217, 218, 229, 230, 231, 359, 478, 481, 515, 531, 534, 535, 542, 546, 547, 548, 549, 550, 551, 552, 557, 562, 563, 574, 575, 576, 581, 585, 591, 592, 601, 615 Curriculum Change, 546 Cursive, 511, 515, 524 Czech Republic, 536 Czechoslovakia, 246 D Dactyls, 457 Dakota, 281 Dame Schools, 72 Dangling Modifier, 416 Dark Knight, 256 DARPA, 103 Darwin, Charles, 315, 316 Darwinism, 242 Data, 360 Daughter-wife, 42 Davenport, Michael, 216 Davidson Institute for Talent Development, 482 daVinci, Leonardo, 69 De Grâve, 461 de Keijzer, Arne, 458 Dead Languages, 361 Deaf, 295, 359 Death, 7, 13, 24, 25, 26, 35, 36, 42, 122, 123, 124, 140, 143, 162, 168, 174, 197, 198, 208, 241, 249, 251, 259, 267, 270, 271, 272, 276, 283, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 310, 312, 314, 315, 318, 319, 321, 323, 324, 326, 327, 328, 329, 371, 392, 393, 403, 408, 409, 412, 418, 423, 425, 426, 427, 443, 444, 445, 452, 454, 455, 456, 458, 460, 461, 462, 489, 496, 497, 504, 595, 596, 597 Death Penalty, 122, 123 Debs, Eugene V., 239 Deception, 463, 465, 466, 495, 497, 502, 504 Declaration of Independence, 83, 92, 270, 365, 601 Declarative, 457, 474 Declaratory Act of Parliament, 263 Decodable Texts, 509 Decoding Skill, 512 Decoding Skill Teaching Methods, 512 Deconstructing The New Yorker Cartoon, 420 Deconstruction, 421, 492 Deconstructive Analysis, 416 Deconstructive Criticism, 415 Deductive Reasoning, 204, 209 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, 103 Defense of Marriage Act, 115, 117, 118 Defining Education Ideology, 53 Defining Family, 336, 339, 341 Defra, 190 Degree of Multilateralism, 181 Dehennakrineh, 261 Dekanawidah, 260, 274 Delledonne v. Dugrenier, 108 Deloney, Pat, 79 Democracy, 54, 75, 130, 146, 148, 149, 152, 153, 156, 242, 243, 256, 286, 546, 557 Democratic, 7, 148, 240, 246 Democratic Deficit, 148, 149 Democratic Ideals, 556 Denham, Thomas, 264 Dennett, Daniel, 106 Denouement, 259, 260, 385, 451, 452 Dentals, 358 Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 190 Depression, 168, 201, 223, 248, 371, 426, 438, 449, 575 Descartes, René, 69 Description, 26, 37, 64, 66, 162, 163, 168, 169, 172, 173, 174, 262, 264, 276, 296, 297, 300, 311, 314, 317, 394, 403, 419, 422, 427, 438, 445, 453, 455, 462, 463, 486, 489, 507, 529, 530, 534, 556, 561, 569 Desire, 289 Destruction, 26, 170, 288, 289, 290, 291, 294, 299, 304, 328, 329, 448, 461 Detroit, 180, 216, 244, 368, 528 Detroit Public School, 550 Developmental Crisis, 469 Developmental Disabilities, 130, 363 Developmental Theories, 209 Devil Dog Recruiting Station, 241 Devil's Advocate, 185 Dewey, John, 76 Undergraduate Series 637 Deyoenhegwenh, 261 Diacritic Marks, 365, 366 Diacritics, 365 Diagnosis and Assessment Principles, 520 Diagnostic Assessment, 539, 540 Dial F for Frankenstein, 106 Dialect, 174, 358, 372, 380, 386, 388 Dialects, 173, 352, 360, 372, 380, 386, 388, 413, 499 Dialogue, 106, 174, 179, 384, 413, 414, 428, 452, 453, 535 Dichotomy, 165, 288, 289, 290, 325, 329, 441 Dickenson, Matt, 79 Dickinson, Emily, 162, 163, 165, 168, 169, 174, 175, 176, 271, 272, 425, 426, 427, 428, 430, 431, 432, 433, 434, 440, 456, 602, 605, 614, 625 Diction, 174, 302, 333, 413, 416, 430, 499 Dictionary, 47, 48, 49, 73, 90, 106, 263, 297, 354, 358, 366, 424, 445, 456, 463, 513, 595, 599, 600, 601, 602, 603, 607, 608, 612, 613, 614, 616, 617, 618, 620, 621, 624, 626 Differenced Learning, 548 Differentiated Classrooms, 576, 591 Differentiated Instruction, 231, 576, 591, 602 Differentiated Learning, 576 Differentiation, 78, 202, 549, 574, 589, 598 Digging, 324 Digital Communications, 61, 365 Digital Divide, 178 Dimeter, 400 Direct Blood Line, 335, 336, 339, 341 Direct Instruction, 474, 478, 512, 554, 560, 561, 574 Direct Teaching, 549 Disabilities, 54, 59, 130, 256, 471, 472, 481, 483, 485, 520, 548, 549, 553 Disappearing Languages, 360 Discrimination, 53, 80, 81, 93, 94, 153, 154, 160, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 279, 280, 498, 505, 580, 591 Distinguishing Between Historical and Biographical Theories, 424 District of Columbia, 44, 74, 129 638 A Journey Through My College Papers Diverse, 30, 43, 51, 72, 78, 83, 156, 168, 183, 186, 232, 233, 234, 236, 237, 336, 339, 342, 350, 351, 353, 358, 475, 500, 542, 548, 556, 557, 570, 592, 593, 603 Diversity, 32, 49, 68, 69, 236, 237, 350, 351, 352, 353, 542, 545, 547, 548, 549, 550, 551, 556, 595, 609 Divorce, 33, 40, 66, 90, 100, 117, 129, 143, 288, 382, 395, 405, 466, 473 Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, 321 Doctors Without Borders, 179 Doctrine of Predestination, 299 Dogtooth Violet, 427 Doing More with Google, 442 Domestic Abuse, 394, 395, 396, 404, 405 Domestic Violence, 42, 343, 346, 352, 353, 394, 395, 404, 535, 537 Dominican Republic, 373 Dongria Kondh, 40, 610 Dopamine, 215, 217 Dora the Explorer, 226, 373, 390, 568 Dorman, Angela, 512 Dorsey Brothers, 254 Doty, Mark, 169 Douglass, Frederick, 10, 268, 269, 270, 271, 273 Douglass/Autobiography, 268 Down by the Salley Gardens, 321 DPS, 550 Dr. Scholl's, 443 Dr. Seuss, 555, 559, 608 Draft, 20, 50, 68, 76, 83, 134, 246, 332, 412, 498, 569, 605, 624 Dragon, 367, 430, 432, 433, 434 Dragons, 368, 369, 430, 432, 433, 434, 621 Dream Deferred, 170, 171, 608 Dreyer, Gunter, 363 Drive-in Restaurant, 27, 28 Drive-Through Tips for China, 125 Drug Therapy, 206, 207, 602 Drug Trafficking, 180 Drug Use, 101, 249, 285 Dubai, 119, 192, 547 Dublin, 322 Duffy, Ann, 509 Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 400 Duncan, Arne, 75 Dunn Nutrition Center, 199 Durham, Cheri, 509 Durham, Tempe Herndon, 237, 238, 609 Dynex, 390 E Early 17th Century Elegy, Epigraph , and Friendship, 302 Early Child Care, 196 Early Modern Period, 487 Earth, 189, 219 Earth's Answer, 310 East Richland Elementary School, 194, 521 Ebonics, 380, 388 Ebro Valley, 29 EBSCOhost, 439, 440, 441, 442, 445, 446, 450, 492, 595, 602, 605, 608, 609, 621, 622 Eclectic, 233, 367, 368, 369, 480, 487, 530, 550, 554, 555, 556, 558, 593 Ecological Sustainability, 189, 190, 191, 193 Economic Equality, 54, 253 Economic growth, 53 Economic Reform, 153 Economic Stability, 32, 36, 39, 40, 42 Edmonton Journal, 512 Edmunds Act, 33, 34 Education of the Handicapped and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Acts, 93 Education Policy Networks, 58 Education Policy Planning and Research Community, 58 Education Rights Center, 481 Education Topics in the Courts, 80 Educational Attainment, 541 Educational Freedom, 54 Educational Philosophies Self-Assessment, 530, 534, 554 Educational Philosophy, 530, 535, 536, 554 Educational Policy, 592, 593 Educational Psychology, 467, 469, 471, 479, 486 Educational Researcher, 98, 102, 539, 617, 624 Edwards, Jonathan, 261, 268, 274, 275 Effective Teachers, 468, 532 Ego, 65, 78, 428, 432, 435, 436, 437, 497, 505 Egypt, 182, 362 Egyptian, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366 Egyptians, 363, 364, 366 Einstein, Albert, 553 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 255 ELA, 508 Elections of 1912, 239 Electoral, 239, 240 Electra Complex, 430, 431, 432, 433, 434, 445, 599 Electronic Monitoring, 107, 108, 109 Electronic Surveillance, 107, 108, 109 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, 302 Elementary School, 54, 62, 64, 72, 78, 110, 119, 215, 231, 343, 346, 356, 474, 516, 530, 538, 542, 568, 573, 574, 581, 589 Elements of Curriculum Content and Delivery, 549 Elements of Drama: Characterization, 463 Elements of Drama: Imagery, Symbolism, and Allusion, 464 Elements of Drama: Plot and Character, 465 Elements of Poetry – Part One, 454 Elements of Poetry – Part Two, 456 Eleventh Amendment, 89, 90, 93 Eliot, T. S., 321 Elitist, 146, 374 Elizabethan Lyric, 302 Elk’s Club, 25 ELL, 232, 233, 234, 235, 237, 536, 537, 564, 568, 570, 571, 579, 590, 593 Eller, Jeannie, 506, 507, 508, 509, 510, 511, 512, 513, 514, 515, 516, 517, 518, 519, 520, 521, 522, 523, 524, 525, 526, 527, 603 Ellicott, Andrew, 263 Email, 100, 124, 177, 178, 357, 554, 587 Emancipation, 252, 254, 255, 257 Emasculated, 416 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 271, 275, 276, 277, 615, 621 Undergraduate Series 639 Emoticons, 365, 366 Emotional Baggage, 443, 562, 590 Emotional Blackmail, 345 Emotions, 100, 105, 134, 135, 140, 160, 166, 173, 213, 220, 221, 223, 224, 225, 230, 265, 278, 285, 289, 300, 321, 329, 363, 384, 393, 412, 415, 473, 488, 489, 490, 496, 497, 504, 573, 624 Endless Change Rule, 65, 66 Engagement, 190, 196, 212, 565, 587, 589, 591 Engineering Research Facility, 108 England, 72, 147, 172, 192, 199, 255, 264, 293, 295, 299, 303, 304, 305, 310, 316, 319, 320, 321, 324, 325, 327, 328, 370, 414, 422, 423, 459 English, 3, 9, 11, 14, 18, 23, 24, 54, 59, 73, 89, 147, 155, 169, 216, 217, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 239, 255, 259, 293, 295, 296, 297, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 309, 311, 312, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 320, 321, 323, 324, 325, 326, 328, 329, 331, 352, 354, 357, 358, 361, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369, 372, 373, 374, 375, 378, 379, 380, 381, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 413, 425, 427, 431, 434, 445, 451, 470, 473, 474, 488, 489, 490, 491, 492, 493, 494, 500, 501, 506, 507, 509, 513, 515, 516, 517, 519, 520, 522, 525, 526, 530, 533, 534, 536, 545, 546, 547, 551, 554, 556, 558, 560, 563, 564, 566, 567, 568, 569, 570, 571, 574, 575, 586, 590, 598, 603, 604, 606, 613, 615, 616, 624, 625, 626 English as a Second Language, 54 English Capstone, 487 English Channel, 147 English Language Arts, 508, 528 English Language Learners, 234, 536, 570 English Poetry from Around the World, 323 Enjambment, 457 E-notes, 439 Enthymeme, 499 Environment, 34, 49, 71, 102, 124, 130, 151, 174, 183, 185, 189, 190, 192, 195, 196, 209, 211, 212, 213, 214, 217, 218, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 276, 348, 350, 352, 353, 359, 383, 413, 640 A Journey Through My College Papers 468, 478, 480, 520, 541, 542, 560, 561, 562, 565, 568, 570, 575, 576, 578, 590, 624 Environmental Behaviours Unit, 190 Envy, 308, 350 Epichoric Alphabets, 364 Epitaph, 302 EPPRC, 58 Equality, 53, 54, 138, 624 Equality in Education, 51, 54 Equiano, Olaudah, 305 ERF, 108 Erickson, Amy, 509 Erikson, Erik, 65, 66, 209, 210, 211, 212, 469 Eron , Leonard D., 21 Escaping the Famine, 402 Escaping the Famine – Revised, 411 Escapism, 446 Eskimo, 43 Eskimos, 36, 37 ESL, 54, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 379, 380, 387, 388, 520, 526, 607 Esperanza, 373, 374, 375, 378, 379, 380, 381, 386, 387, 388, 389 Essay, 17, 18, 276, 278, 279, 330, 331, 373, 384, 385, 393, 394, 416, 438, 480, 539, 540, 558, 567, 569, 589 Essential Qualities, 340 Essentialism, 530, 554 Ethical Reform, 136 Ethics, 44, 82, 114, 134, 135, 136, 139, 140, 141, 145, 352, 493, 624 Ethiopia, 547 Ethnic Groups, 128, 129, 360, 367, 425, 542 Ethnicity, 128, 159, 195, 368, 369, 374, 378, 386, 549 Etienne, Frank, 108 Etruscan, 364, 365, 366, 615 Etruscan/Greco Alphabet, 365 Etruscans, 364, 366 EU, 148, 149, 179, 614 Euphemisms, 281, 361, 459 Euphony, 499 Eurasian Continent, 362 Europarliament, 148, 149 Europe, 30, 36, 40, 69, 75, 103, 120, 121, 147, 149, 154, 155, 180, 192, 220, 241, 242, 348, 361, 362, 364, 366, 425, 622 European Union, 148, 179 Evaluating a School’s Behavior Rule, 346 Evaluation, 340 Evans, Arthur J., 363 Everyday Use, 170, 171, 624 Everyone Wins, 78, 351 Eviction, 99, 280 Examining a Racial Policy, 49 Examining Gender in A Doll House, 494, 501 Exceptional Learners, 471 Exceptionalities, 471, 479, 481, 521, 558 Exceptionality, 471 Executive Council of Georgia, 88 Executive Order 9066, 245 Exercise, 5, 34, 43, 63, 69, 85, 89, 134, 142, 144, 215, 216, 217, 218, 228, 235, 442, 447, 519, 525, 539, 565, 597, 618, 619 Existential Education Theory, 527 Existentialist Theory of Education, 545 Expected Net Effect on the Human Condition, 181 Experience with Library Resources, 435 Experiential Learning, 194 Explaining Concepts, 335 Explicit Rules, 344, 347 Exploring the Ashford University Library Databases, 439 Extended Families, 39, 143 Extinct, 361 Extracurricular, 528 Extra-curricular, 550 Extramarital Affairs, 37, 42 Extra-marital Sex, 251 F F.A.O. Schwartz, 165, 167 Fables, 258, 300, 450 Facebook, 119, 178, 189, 551, 552, 586, 587 Face-to-face Communication, 357 Facial Expressions, 473 Facing the Future of Education, 550 Factories, 105, 239 Factory Workers, 239, 531 Fair Employment Practices Commission, 254 Fair, Brad, 108 Fairclough, Gordon, 125 Fairy Tale, 327, 369, 391, 435 Fallis, Richard, 328 Family, 4, 19, 22, 24, 28, 29, 30, 32, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 49, 53, 64, 66, 67, 68, 95, 96, 100, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120, 121, 129, 131, 132, 133, 137, 141, 142, 144, 145, 146, 159, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 170, 171, 190, 191, 193, 195, 197, 201, 204, 206, 208, 215, 220, 234, 235, 238, 239, 245, 248, 249, 251, 264, 279, 280, 284, 287, 288, 289, 305, 311, 312, 322, 332, 335, 336, 337, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 349, 350, 351, 352, 357, 361, 367, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 373, 374, 375, 379, 382, 387, 390, 391, 394, 396, 397, 405, 418, 419, 422, 423, 424, 425, 426, 427, 447, 453, 454, 455, 459, 460, 464, 466, 490, 493, 496, 497, 498, 503, 504, 505, 539, 551, 552, 566, 568, 594, 595, 596, 603, 604, 617, 626 Family and Work Changes, 66 Family of Origin, 336, 339, 342 Family Tree, 220 Famine, 367, 368, 395, 406 Fanning, Emma, 183 Fantasy, 18, 22, 100, 142, 202, 203, 331, 368, 396, 413, 441 Far East, 125, 160, 192, 384 Farquhar, Robert, 88 Father, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, 35, 38, 40, 42, 45, 46, 67, 95, 116, 119, 131, 144, 167, 169, 174, 175, 205, 206, 256, 258, 264, 267, 279, 283, 285, 289, 291, 311, 328, 332, 335, 343, 345, 346, 370, 374, 392, 396, 403, 416, 418, 419, 430, 431, 432, 437, 450,鴤454, 464, 465, 489, 493, 496, 497, 504, 505, 587, 588 Fatherhood, 129 Faulkner, William, 24, 25, 26, 452, 453 FBI, 108, 180 Undergraduate Series 641 Federal Farmer, 84, 85, 86, 612 Federal Funding, 217, 550 Federal Impact Aid Program, 75 Federalist Papers, 84 Federation, 186 Feedback, 332, 380, 388, 414, 498, 516, 579, 580, 581, 582, 583, 591, 615 Fellow Craft, 460 Felony, 33 Female Husband, 41 Feminine Ethic, 142, 144 Feminism, 295, 320, 382, 383, 487, 622 Feminist, 112, 120, 297, 298, 299, 320, 415, 429, 438, 441, 442, 445, 446, 448, 449, 490, 498, 505, 618 Feminist Criticism, 415 Feminist Manifesto and Woolf, 320 Feminist Theory, 429 FEPC, 254 Festivals, 368, 542 Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, 195 Feudal, 120, 150, 153, 158, 161, 303 Feudalism, 239 Fiction, 44, 103, 105, 106, 162, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 175, 259, 260, 262, 265, 292, 316, 376, 412, 413, 435, 451, 452, 453, 454, 456, 457, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 489, 490, 491, 493, 498, 500, 505, 595, 600, 602, 608, 610, 617, 619, 620, 624, 625, 626 Fidelity, 210, 293, 295 Fifth Avenue, 165, 166, 167 Fight or Flight, 223 Final Paper Progress, 498 Finch, Anne, 302 Finding Stories and Poems – Mining for Ideas by Reading Literature, 413 Fingerprint Scanners, 108 Fingerprints, 108, 110, 111 Finland, 557, 559, 606 Fire and Ice, 288, 290, 291 First Amendment, 44, 98, 99, 100, 101, 247, 549, 612 First Death in Nova Scotia, 455 Five Nations, 260, 261, 274 642 A Journey Through My College Papers Flagg, James, 241 Flanagan vs. Epson America, Inc, 108 Flanagan, Caitlin, 132 Flash Cards, 511, 522, 523 Flashback, 278 Florida, 75, 84, 108 Fluency, 194, 232, 234, 235, 359, 373, 378, 379, 380, 381, 386, 388, 389, 507, 508, 517, 518, 522, 526, 570, 571 Fluid Abilities, 471, 472 Flynn, James R., 483 Folk Music, 254 Folklore, 294 Fond Memory, 324 Food Administration, 241 Foorman, Barbara, 512 Foot Binding, 391, 392 Foot, Philippa, 138 Football, 293, 566, 567 Forbes, 380, 388 Forces in Education, 69 Ford Motor Company, 244 Ford, Gerald, 245 Ford, Henry, 244 Forgiving My Father, 418 Formal Norms, 124 Formative Assessments, 576, 591, 593 Fortitude, 350 Forton, Mary, 344, 347 Fossil Fuels, 183 Fosterage, 335, 336, 339, 341, 342, 344 Foundation for Critical Thinking, 559 Four Blocks Literacy Model, 507 Fourth of July, 270, 271 Fowler, Geoffrey A., 125 Fractions, 221, 566, 567 France, 83, 123, 155, 243, 246, 459, 461 Franklin, 264 Franklin, Benjamin, 10, 83, 264, 265, 268, 269, 619 Fraternal Affection, 336, 339, 340, 341, 342 Fraternities, 337, 340, 342, 458 Fraternity, 53 Fraud, 105, 110, 180, 464 Free and Accepted Masons, 337, 340, 342 Free and Accepted Order of Freemasons, 323 Free Market Economy, 153 Freedom, 5, 30, 44, 54, 55, 74, 81, 85, 87, 92, 98, 99, 101, 108, 155, 237, 238, 244, 245, 252, 253, 254, 255, 257, 267, 270, 271, 273, 281, 286, 287, 304, 305, 315, 371, 372, 376, 377, 378, 385, 406, 426, 448, 463, 489, 490, 533, 536, 551, 552, 555, 583, 603, 609, 612 Freedom and Equality, 54 Freedom Network, 108 Freemasonry, 458, 460, 462, 463, 612 Freemasons, 322, 323, 458, 459, 460, 461, 462, 463, 597, 608 French, 83, 199, 361, 364, 365, 366, 369, 425, 566 French and Indian War, 369 French Revolution, 83 Freud, Sigmund, 65, 207, 416, 428, 430, 431, 433, 436, 437 Fricatives, 358 Friday Evening, 19 Fried Chicken, 19, 20, 355 Friend, Arnold, 26, 28, 29 Friendship, 205, 206, 208, 303, 312 Frodo Baggins, 292 Frontal Lobe, 40, 213 Frontline, 188, 189, 610 Frost, Robert, 168, 176, 288, 290, 291, 292, 603 Full Immersion, 237 Functionalist Theory, 120, 131 FUNdamentals, 506, 507, 508, 511, 512, 522, 523 Fundamentals of Brain-based Learning, 212 Future Teachers Club, 194 G Gagné, Robert, 70, 71 Gagnon, Paul, 75 Gainurrini, Gian Francesco, 364 Galileo, 69 Gallun v. Soccer U.S.A, Inc., 108 Gardner, Howard, 142, 144, 145, 471, 472, 473, 483, 484, 558, 599, 604 Gardner, Ralph, 141 Garrison, William Lloyd, 267 Gastroesophogeal Reflux Disease, 199 GATE, 570, 579, 585, 590, 593 Gates and Broad Foundation, 74 Gautier, Amina, 256 Gay Rights, 129, 573 GED, 194, 219, 552 Geisel, Theodor Seuss, 555 Gemeinshaft, 119, 120 Gender, 41, 55, 94, 100, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 129, 135, 201, 202, 205, 206, 214, 215, 229, 256, 287, 352, 360, 376, 377, 391, 429, 441, 468, 469, 488, 490, 491, 493, 494, 495, 497, 498, 501, 502, 504, 505, 506, 545, 552, 572, 573, 578, 598, 604, 618, 622 Gender Based Theories and Stereotypes, 429 Gender Inequality, 120 Gender Information, 201 Gender Schema, 201, 202 Gender Theory, 429 General Educational Development, 552 General Motors, 104 Generation X, 562, 590 Generativity-versus-Stagnation, 66 Genie, 359 Genocide Convention, 181 Genre, 278, 384, 412, 413 Geometry, 73, 528, 531, 549, 574, 575 Georgia, 88, 89, 90, 93, 94, 167, 599, 612, 623 GERD, 199 German, 148, 241, 245, 259, 361, 363, 368, 369, 451 Germanic Languages, 361 Germany, 126, 147, 148, 152, 155, 192, 241, 243 GFA, 186 Ghost Marriage, 32, 41 Gifted and Talented, 78, 79, 471, 472, 478, 479, 481, 482, 483, 484, 485, 486, 520, 553, 625 Giftedness, 471, 483, 484, 486, 487, 612 Giles, Rebecca, 222 Gill, Brendan, 416 Gillespie, Dizzy, 254 Undergraduate Series 643 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 13, 393, 394, 438, 439, 440, 441, 442, 443, 445, 446, 447, 448, 449, 450, 595, 599, 602, 605, 609, 621 Gilman's gothic allegory: Rage and redemption in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, 440 Gilmore, Jim, 188 Gilyak, 43 Global Citizenship, 192, 193, 595 Global Civil Society, 183 Global Economy, 551, 593 Global Marketplace, 127, 150 Global Networks, 368, 369 Global Perspective, 193, 599 Global Positioning System, 107 Global Society, 192, 350, 351, 352, 353 Global Socioeconomic Perspectives, 176 Global Terrorism, 180 Global Warming, 185, 186, 191, 602 Globalization, 8, 155, 177, 178, 179, 184, 191, 390, 391, 547, 598 Glottals, 358 Glottis, 358 Gluttony, 350 GNP, 8, 184 God, 34, 35, 45, 46, 47, 67, 69, 91, 116, 117, 163, 164, 261, 262, 268, 269, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 287, 293, 294, 296, 298, 299, 300, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 318, 319, 323, 326, 327, 402, 403, 411, 412, 421, 529, 602 Golden Retrievals, 169 Goldensohn, Barry, 444 Good Friday Agreement, 186 Good versus Evil, 293 Goodman v Georgia et. al., 94 Goodman, Benny, 254 Goodman, Tony, 93 Google, 13, 80, 192, 435, 439, 442, 492 Google Earth, 80, 192 Google Scholar, 442 Gorbachev Government, 152 Gospels, 286 Gothic, 13, 440, 441, 442, 443, 446, 450, 461, 609 644 A Journey Through My College Papers Gottesman, Andrew, 513 Goudge, Elizabeth, 435 Gough, Chris, 136 Gould, Jon B., 98 Governor Winthrop, 266 GPS, 107 Grammar, 72, 73, 174, 325, 333, 354, 359, 379, 387, 499, 528, 531, 539, 541, 549, 554, 556, 558, 567, 569, 577 Grammar-check, 325 Grandchildren, 113, 332, 336, 337, 339, 340, 341, 342 Grandfather, 170, 267, 432 Grandparents, 118, 146, 204, 336, 339, 341, 342, 353, 493 Grant Park, 247 Graphic Novel, 376, 384, 385 Graves, Robert, 318 Gray, Thomas, 302 Great Britain, 90, 94, 123, 147, 190, 243 Great Depression, 258, 576, 618 Great Peace, 260, 274 Great Spirit, 263, 274 Great White Roots, 274 Great-grandchildren, 113 Greece, 364, 366, 375, 530, 531, 555, 613 Greed, 97, 317, 324, 328, 350 Greek, 44, 71, 73, 180, 325, 327, 328, 329, 364, 365, 366, 373, 375, 379, 386, 455, 530, 553, 594, 606 Greek, Cecil E., 180 Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 185 Grendel, 10, 292, 293, 294, 305, 306, 307, 308, 309, 598, 610 Gridlock, 90, 91, 596, 601, 615 Grierson, Emily, 24, 25, 26, 452 Grimke, Angelina Weld, 282 Groff, Patrick, 513 Grooming, 369, 370 Gross Domestic Product, 184 Gross Motor Activity, 215, 217 Gross National Product, 184 Group Marriage, 32, 43, 44 Growth Plateau, 52 Guam, 243 Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, 188, 189 Guardians, 73, 179, 202, 336, 339, 342 Guests of the Nation, 259, 451 Guisepi, Robert, 69 Gulf Cooperation Council, 179 Gulf War, 179 Gunn, Thom, 323, 324, 606 Gutenberg, Johannes, 69 Guthrie, Woody, 166, 254 H Hades, 313, 326 HAL, 103, 105, 106, 360 HAL 9000, 103, 105, 106 Hale, Edward Everett, 427 Half and Half, 287 Hamilton, Marie Padgett, 308 Hamilton, William, 269 Hamlet, 428 Handwriting, 510, 511, 515, 521, 522, 523, 524, 526, 539 Happy Endings, 259, 452 Haptic Activity, 227 Harper, Douglas, 427 Hartz, Glenn, 78 Harvard College, 72 Harvard University, 482 Harvard University School of Law, 481 Haskell, John F., 520 Hate, 9, 289 Haughton, Ethel S., 535 Hawaii, 43, 44, 226, 243 Hawkmistress, 413 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 267, 268 Hay, John, 243 Hayabusa, 150, 151, 609 Headless Horseman, 266 Heaney, Seamus, 324 Hearing, 17, 19, 214, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 361, 599 Heart of Darkness, 316 Heathorn, Stephen, 158 Heaven, 163, 164, 261, 274, 299, 300, 301, 302, 307, 308, 309, 312, 313, 319, 403, 412, 430, 432 Heaven-Hell, 454 Hebrew, 361, 373, 375, 379, 386 Heineman, Dave, 74 Heinlein, Robert A., 435 Hell, 300, 301, 307, 308 HELP, 55 Helterman, Jeffrey, 306 Hemingway, Ernest, 29, 30, 31 Hemispherectomy, 355 Henry David Thoreau, the State of Nature, and the Redemption of Liberalism, 276 Here at "The New Yorker", 13, 416, 417 Heredity, 195, 211 Heresy, 262 Heritage, 170, 223, 245, 282, 352, 367, 368, 370, 371, 373, 374, 375, 377, 378, 379, 381, 386, 387, 389, 493 Hero, 293, 294, 305, 397, 416, 417 Heroine, 24, 281, 313, 314, 327, 446 Heroism, 353 Hertberg-Davis, Holly, 78 Heterosexual, 47, 115, 116, 117, 118, 429, 607 Hieroglyphic Writing, 363, 366 Hieroglyphics, 362, 363, 365, 366 Hieroglyphs, 362, 364 High School, 17, 21, 24, 49, 62, 69, 71, 74, 99, 100, 124, 125, 222, 330, 359, 371, 392, 414, 468, 470, 473, 508, 516, 518, 521, 525, 527, 530, 533, 552, 557, 558, 566, 567, 568, 584, 587 High Stakes Testing, 593 Hijab, 155, 156, 383 Hill, Frances M., 556 Hills Like White Elephants, 29 Hindu, 156 Hindus, 146 Hippie, 378 Hirschberg, Stuart, 336 Hirschberg, Terry, 336, 339, 341 Hispanic, 59, 226, 235, 373, 468, 542, 566, 567, 568 Undergraduate Series 645 Historical Criticism, 415, 424 Historical Foundations of Education in America, 534 Historical Perspectives, 176 Historical Reenactment, 533 History of American Education, 69 History of Education, 69 HIV, 199 Hobbes and Locke, 91 Hobbes, Thomas, 91, 93, 176, 616 Hobson, J.A., 159 Hochman, Barbara, 441, 446 Hodapp, Christopher L., 461 Hodges, Elaine, 442 Holistic Learning, 537 Holland, John, 64 Holland's Hypothesis on Personalities, 64 Hollywood Ten, 247, 248, 602 Hollywood/Fiction - Hollywood Blacklists, 247 Holmes, Joseph, 237, 238, 618 Holy Bible, 34, 35, 44, 47, 187, 188, 608 Holy Orders, 298 Holy Spirit, 275, 328 Holy Thursday, 310, 312, 314, 319, 326 Home Cultures, 469, 542 Home Schooling, 548, 550, 551, 552 Homeless, 187, 189, 280, 535 Homelessness, 121, 536, 537 Homer, 328, 375, 553 Homework, 82, 538, 539, 542, 563, 571, 575 Hominid, 363 Homo erectus, 363, 366, 612 Homo habilis, 363 Homo neanderthalensis, 363, 366, 612 Homophonetic, 360 Homosexual, 44, 47, 115, 116, 117, 118, 251, 356, 429, 608 Homosexual Marriage, 44, 115, 116, 117, 118 Homosexuality, 116, 249, 251, 356 Homosexuals, 116, 117, 118, 287, 429 Honeybees, 354 Hong Kong, 125, 156, 348 Honor, 45, 261, 264, 273, 292, 293, 294, 302, 303, 315, 323, 368, 464, 498, 505 646 A Journey Through My College Papers Horn Book, 589 Horn, John, 471 Hostages, 248 House of Representatives, 60, 97, 261, 623 Household Responsibility System, 153 Houston, Stephen D., 362 Howard, John, 142 Howland Islands, 243 HUAC, 247, 248, 614 Huawei, 390 Hubris, 268 HUD, 165, 188 Hudson, Frederic, 66 Huesmann , L. Rowell, 21 Hughes, Fountain, 237, 238, 615 Hughes, Langston, 8, 47, 170, 171, 237, 282, 288, 290, 291, 292, 457, 608, 620 Human Civilization, 363 Human Condition, 22, 283, 289, 412, 415, 437 Human Expression, 363 Human Rights, 7, 8, 55, 85, 116, 127, 128, 181, 182, 183, 184, 187, 188, 189, 304, 305, 350, 351, 353, 382, 467, 595, 615, 621 Human Society, 121, 275, 277, 294, 306, 308, 359, 396, 415 Human Speech, 173, 354, 358, 360 Humanism, 69, 530, 534, 535, 536, 554 Humanistic Philosophy of Education, 534 Humanitarian Need, 181 Humanitarian Relief, 179, 181, 240, 242 Hume, David, 135 Humphrey, Leonard, 426 Hunt, Irene, 220 Hunter-gatherers, 363 Hursthouse, Rosalind, 138 Husband, 25, 30, 31, 32, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 47, 67, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 131, 132, 142, 171, 223, 249, 258, 267, 279, 280, 281, 284, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 314, 319, 322, 335, 343, 367, 382, 394, 395, 396, 404, 405, 406, 440, 441, 442, 445,鴤446, 447, 448, 449, 451, 463, 464, 465, 489, 490, 493, 494, 496, 497, 501, 503, 504, 505, 547, 574 Hutchins, Robert A., 533 Hutchinson, Anne, 266, 267 Hybrid, 95, 150 Hyde, 315, 316 Hypocrisy, 45, 49, 270, 271, 623 I I can Read with my Eyes Shut, 555 I have a dream, 286, 287, 610 I wandered lonely as a cloud, 455 I, Too, 457 I’m Just a Bill, 61 Iambic, 282, 400, 457 Iambic Pentameter, 282 Ibsen, Henrik, 14, 463, 464, 466, 467, 490, 491, 494, 495, 496, 497, 498, 501, 502, 503, 504, 505, 506, 608, 609, 618, 625 Id, 23, 65, 84, 90, 111, 123, 145, 182, 222, 228, 229, 244, 344, 347, 428, 430, 432, 435, 436, 437, 463, 482, 487, 595, 598, 599, 606, 608, 611, 612, 616, 619, 621, 622, 624 IDEA, 77, 93 IDEAL Problem Solving, 475 Ideas, 43, 54, 63, 74, 76, 85, 99, 138, 150, 160, 171, 186, 194, 202, 203, 206, 209, 226, 262, 275, 278, 282, 310, 311, 328, 329, 345, 352, 354, 356, 362, 363, 366, 374, 376, 378, 380, 383, 385, 387, 388, 391, 392, 412, 414, 417, 421, 428, 436, 437, 444, 449, 457, 465, 466, 469, 470, 475, 492, 493, 500, 529, 531, 533, 534, 535, 537, 541, 544, 546, 547, 554, 555, 557, 559, 561, 577, 584, 585, 589, 591, 597, 608 Identifying Shapes, 23 Identity, 27, 66, 102, 103, 110, 147, 155, 160, 161, 162, 177, 179, 180, 183, 184, 186, 187, 190, 193, 202, 204, 210, 274, 275, 315, 320, 322, 323, 336, 339, 342, 361, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372, 374, 375, 378, 379, 380, 381, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 401, 425, 427, 432, 437, 446, 458, 459, 469, 497, 505, 545, 562, 590, 604 Identity Within and Without, 378, 385 Identity-versus-Role Confusion, 66 Ideographs, 363 Idiomatic, 360 IEP, 470, 564, 570, 579, 590 Igbo, 36, 39, 41, 42, 48, 616 Ignition Interlock, 107 Ignorance, 36, 129, 236, 350 Iklaina, 364 Illegitimate Children, 39 Illinois, 3, 22, 108, 110, 217, 257, 521, 598 Illinois Eastern Community Colleges, 3 Imagery, 163, 169, 172, 173, 174, 175, 272, 273, 274, 282, 300, 310, 312, 314, 319, 321, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 332, 379, 381, 384, 385, 387, 389, 400, 416, 417, 441, 445, 446, 449, 455, 458, 459, 460, 461, 462, 489 Imagery in Literature, 172 Images of Brotherhood and Death, 458 Immigrants, 129, 130, 147, 160, 239, 253, 367, 368, 378, 386, 493 Immigration, 53, 129, 130, 537 Immigration and Naturalization, 93 Impact of Sociological Theories on the Institution of Family, 131 Impact of the Internet, 81 Imperative, 142, 242, 367, 457 Implementation Barriers to NCLB, 59 Impotent, 416 Impromptu to Lady Winchilsea, 302 In Another Country, 283 In the Classroom, 220 Incas, 362 Incest, 116, 118 Inclusionary Classrooms, 78 Incubus, 306, 308 Independence Hall, 84 Independent Readers, 517 India, 33, 40, 49, 125, 153, 154, 157, 160, 185, 186, 344, 347, 371, 390, 601, 602 India and China, 185 Indian Subcontinent, 154 Indiana, 234, 235, 280 Indiana University, 483 Indians, 37, 153, 154, 157, 160, 175, 266, 281, 390, 454, 600, 618 Undergraduate Series 647 Indifferent Universe, 288 Individualism, 53, 351 Individualized Education Plan, 470 Indoctrination, 139, 281, 548 Indo-European, 361, 362, 594 Indo-Europeans, 154 Indonesia, 155, 234, 235 Inductive and Deductive Reasoning, 204 Inductive Reasoning, 204, 209 Industrial Age, 284, 427 Industrial Espionage, 109 Industrial Revolution, 487 Industrialization, 150, 327, 328, 329 Industry versus Inferiority, 469 Inequality of the Sexes, 249 Infant and Toddler Nutrition, 198 Infant Mortality, 197, 198, 208 Infantilism, 446, 447 Infantilization, 445 Inferior-Parietal Lobule, 215 Inflation, 248, 249 Informal Assessment, 540 Informal Logic, 111 Informal Norms, 124 Information Processing, 8, 202, 530, 547, 554, 555 Inheritance, 32, 37, 39, 41, 42, 115, 336, 339, 341 Inheritance Rights, 32 Inherited Wife, 41, 42 Injustice, 177, 270, 271, 280, 281, 349, 350 In-laws, 32, 118, 251, 313, 327, 336, 339, 341, 342, 345, 394, 404 Innocence/Experience, 310 Insanity, 250, 394, 438 Institutional Outcomes, 68 Instructional Techniques, 513 Insult, 458, 459, 462 INTASC, 468 Integrity, 51, 111, 114, 210, 546, 577, 588 Intellectual Exceptionality, 14, 470 Intelligence, 6, 14, 97, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 110, 122, 188, 200, 253, 271, 273, 379, 380, 388, 470, 471, 472, 473, 479, 481, 482, 483, 648 A Journey Through My College Papers 484, 485, 486, 487, 543, 544, 595, 599, 605, 612, 616, 621, 624 Intelligence Tests and Student Placement, 481 Intelligences, Correlations, and A.D.H.D., 471 Intensive and Systematic Phonics Instruction, 512 Intent in Moral Acts, 139 Interactionist Theory, 131, 133 Interconnected Policy Agendas, 58 Interdentals, 358 Interdisciplinary Capstone, 559 Interdisciplinary Capstone Course, 588 Intermediate Composition, 330 Internal Revenue Service, 243, 244, 608 International Law, 180, 181, 183 International Monetary Fund, 150, 183 International Money Economy, 391 International Organizations, 179 International Peace, 181 International Phonetic Alphabet, 11, 357, 358 International Relations, 176 International Voices, 367 Internet, 6, 80, 82, 106, 107, 119, 177, 178, 180, 183, 190, 192, 219, 220, 244, 348, 365, 366, 435, 484, 492, 508, 541, 542, 547, 552, 553, 569, 582, 606, 609, 619 Interpersonal, 119, 133, 289, 372, 391, 471, 544 Interpersonal Violence, 21 Intimacy-versus-Isolation, 66 Intrapersonal, 471, 543, 544 Intrinsic and Embedded Phonics, 512 Introduction, 312 Introduction to Literary Analysis, 415 Introduction to Literature, 162 Introduction to Policy & Education, 49 Introduction to Serving English Language Learners, 231 Introduction to Sociology, 119 Introductory Linguistics, 354 Introspective Memoir, 385 Inuits, 362 Inverted Spelling, 513 Ionesco, Eugene, 415 IPA, 358 IPL, 215 IQ, 199, 470, 472, 481, 482, 484, 485, 486, 487, 600, 621 IQ Test Labs, 470 Iran, 9, 157, 248, 376, 377, 382, 383, 384, 385, 612 Iran Hostage Crisis, 248 Iranian Women's Movement, 382, 383, 384, 385, 604 Iraq, 123, 179, 188 Iredell, James, 88 Ireland, 259, 303, 323, 451 IRIS Center, 236, 237, 609 Irish, 14, 128, 259, 325, 328, 329, 367, 368, 390, 395, 406, 451, 493 Irish Immigrants, 128, 367, 368 Irony, 318, 453, 466, 489 Iroquois, 10, 260, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 617 Irregular Speech, 360 Irvine, California, 390 Irving, Washington, 265, 268 Islam, 154, 155, 157, 541, 548, 611, 616 Islamic, 126, 154, 155, 157, 255, 350, 352, 382, 383, 385, 549, 596, 622 Islamic Commission, 376 Islamic Extremists, 255 Islamic Laws, 126 Israel, 36, 46, 127, 375 Issei, 245 Issues Surrounding Curriculum Development, 548 Italy, 69, 155, 176, 246, 364, 366, 390, 459, 461 Ithaca, New York, 37 J Jackson, Liz, 555 Jacobs, Harriet A., 272 Jacobs, Kimberly, 551, 552 Jacoby, Arthur, 535 James Madison Elementary, 234, 235, 620 James, William, 243 January Federal Register, 102 Japan, 103, 123, 125, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 180, 185, 243, 390, 598, 608, 609, 623 Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, 150 Japanese, 7, 119, 128, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 245, 246, 355, 368, 369, 372, 390, 425, 538, 539, 614, 616, 621, 623 Japanese Spirit, Western Things, 149 Japanese-Americans, 128, 425 Jargon, 356 Jarvis Island, 243 JAXA, 150 Jay, John, 88 Jazz, 253, 282, 283 Jefferson, Thomas, 73, 74, 83, 84, 91, 92, 262, 263, 530, 621, 622 Jekyll, 315, 316 Jen, Gish, 493 Jensen, Eric, 221, 223, 230 Jesus Christ, 35, 267, 294, 299, 300, 310, 312, 313, 318, 326 Jewish, 250, 529 Jews, 21, 36, 146, 287 Jig, 29 Jihadis, 147 Jim Crow, 253, 255, 257, 287, 609 Johnson Island, 243 Johnson, Andrew, 238 Johnson, Greg, 440, 442, 447 Johnson, James Weldon, 282 Johnson, Marietta, 76, 77 Johnson, Samuel, 305, 429 Joker, 256 Jones, Jefferey M., 512 Jordan, 155 Jordan, Travis, 237 Joseph Hanson, 584 Journal of Law and Education, 101, 102, 613 Journal of the Masonic Society, 461 Journey by Inner Light, 370 Joy, Katlyn, 517 Joyce, James, 321 JSTOR, 435, 442, 492 Judaism, 146, 541, 548 Judeo-Christian, 36, 325, 328, 329 Undergraduate Series 649 Judiciary Act, 88 Jung, Carl, 428, 430, 433 Jupiter, 219 Jurisprudence, 270 Just Cause, 181, 318 Just Desserts, 136 Justice, 83, 96, 123, 130, 131, 135, 137, 159, 166, 177, 192, 283, 307, 350, 487, 555, 617 Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 95 Juvenile Offenders, 123 K K12, 552 Kafka, Franz, 167, 176 Kafta, 368, 369 Kaggirs, 36 Kaingang, 43 Kansas, 108, 290, 292, 620 Kant, Immanuel, 135, 555 Karma, 154 Katz, David, 191 Kauppi, Mark V., 181, 184 Kaur, Meeta, 368, 369, 370 Keats, John, 312, 313, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 597 Kelly, Melissa, 75 Kennedy, Robert, 246 Kentucky Fried Chicken, 125 Kenya, 192 Kenyan, 256 Kepler, Johannes, 69 Key Elements of Assessment, 580 Key Learning, 208 Keypad-menu Call Centers, 104 Keys to Effective Assessment, 591 KFC, 108, 125, 151 Kidwell, Barbara, 520 Kiessling, Nicolas K., 306 Kill the rat!, 240 Kindergarten, 23, 52, 69, 74, 192, 209, 222, 343, 346, 359, 434, 467, 508, 509, 516, 530, 537, 549, 551, 566, 567, 568, 582 650 A Journey Through My College Papers Kinesthetic, 215, 225, 227, 229, 230, 470, 477, 564, 570, 574, 575, 579, 590, 591, 593, 611 Kinesthetic Learners, 570 King David, 35 King Solomon, 35 King William IV, 158 King, Martin Luther, 246, 255, 285 King, Rodney, 256 Kingman Reef, 243 Kingston, Maxine Hong, 287, 288 Kinship, 119, 151, 157, 263, 454, 600 KKK, 250, 254 Klein, Melanie, 428 Knights of Columbus, 241 Kodachrome, 443 Kohlberg’s Scale, 142 Kohn, Alfie, 548 Kool-Aid, 443 Korea, 151 Korean, 250, 251 Kosher, 127 Kosova, 186 Kosovo, 186, 187, 608 Kreis, Steven, 69 Ku Klux Klan, 53, 254, 279, 290 Kuuk, 372 Kuwait, 126, 179 K-W-L Chart, 570 Kyoto Protocol, 183 L L1, 359 L2, 359 La Choy, 368, 390 Labiodentals, 358 Laboratory, 535 Laborers, 25, 99, 239, 375, 378, 379, 386, 387, 422, 423, 425, 487 Ladakhis, 391 Lamb of God, 310, 312 Lancelot, 314, 327 Land's End, 104 Lango, 39 Langston Hughes and Alice Walker, 170 Language, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 50, 51, 54, 82, 101, 106, 117, 121, 122, 124, 145, 161, 169, 190, 197, 213, 214, 215, 222, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 246, 266, 269, 271, 285, 311, 314, 318, 320, 325, 330, 332, 348, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 362,鴤363, 364, 365, 366, 372, 373, 374, 375, 378, 379, 380, 381, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 413, 416, 417, 429, 462, 467, 469, 475, 483, 484, 487, 494, 499, 501, 507, 508, 509, 510, 513, 517, 518, 519, 520, 522, 526, 528, 531, 538, 539, 545, 546, 549, 551, 554, 566, 567, 568, 571, 572, 580, 590, 593, 596, 597, 603, 604, 609, 611, 612, 614, 615, 622, 623, 625 Language Acquisition, 359 Language and Literary Studies, 499 Language and Personal Identity, 374 Language and Rhetoric, 285 Language Experience Approach, 509 Language, Perception, and Artistic Creation, 372 Lanham Act, 75 Larkin, Philip, 323 Larry P. v. Riles, 485 Last Resort, 181 Lateralization, 355 Latin, 71, 72, 73, 156, 308, 361, 365, 366 Latin America, 156 Latina, 373 Laurel, Deborah, 227 Lawful Authority, 181 Lawrence v. Texas, 34 Learning & the Brain, 212 Learning Differences, 519, 520, 526, 536, 553, 560, 561, 562 Learning Disability, 234 Learning Disorders, 472, 556 Learning Environments, 213, 218, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 549 Learning Impaired, 23 Learning Point Associates, 517, 518, 611 Learning Stages, 70 Learning Styles, 478, 479, 481, 554, 556, 557, 558, 561, 564, 575, 589, 590, 591 Learning Styles Inventory Assessment, 478 Learning Support, 577 LeFloch, Kerstin Carlson, 59 Left Motor Cortex, 484 LeGuin, Ursula K., 395, 396 Length, 357 Lenkeit, Roberta, 32 Leo’s Coney Island, 340 Lesbian, 41, 116, 129, 249 Lesson Plan, 229, 544, 545, 546, 591, 612 Lesson Plans, 544, 575, 576, 579, 587, 591 Lestrygonians, 321 Lethe, 313, 326, 327 Letters, 262 Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican, 84, 86, 612 Levirate Monogamy, 32 Lewis v. Dayton Hudson Corp, 108 Lewis, Beth, 531 Lewis, Meriwether, 84 Lexical Meaning, 357 Lexicon, 366 Lexus DVD Navigation System, 104 Liberal Arts, 378, 530, 549 Liberia, 42 Liberti v. Walt Disney World Co, 108 Liberty, 53, 73, 85, 92, 103, 128, 240, 243, 245, 270, 273, 304, 305, 315, 598 Liberty Bell, 240 Liberty Bonds, 240 Libin, Nancy, 110 Lieutenant Commander Data, 105 Life Chances, 121 Life Maps, 68 Limited English Proficiency, 59 Lincoln , Abraham, 17, 153, 331 Lincoln, Abraham, 257, 273 Lineage, 336, 339, 341 Linear B, 364 Linguistic, 196, 233, 236, 237, 355, 372, 375, 378, 379, 380, 386, 388, 389, 470, 471, 472, 499, 508, 543, 544, 609 Linguistic System, 355 Linguistics, 500 Undergraduate Series 651 Linguists, 361 Lions Club, 337, 340, 342 Lips, 162, 173, 272, 286, 301, 302, 358, 401, 402, 410, 411, 456 Listening Software, 360 Literacy, 73, 253, 506, 507, 508, 509, 511, 518, 522, 523, 533, 544, 546, 603, 611, 614, 618, 622 Literacy in Learning Exchange, 508, 509, 603 Literacy Standards, 508 Literacy Statistics, 506 Literary Analysis of “Who’s Irish”, 493 Literary Analyst, 415 Literary Canon, 488, 489, 490, 529 Literary Critic, 436, 437, 445 Literary Criticism, 434, 438, 492, 611, 624 Literary Experiences, 434 Literary Period, 487, 488 Literary Periods, 487 Literary Research, 434, 492 Literary Terms, 453 Literary Theory, 415 Literature, 35, 69, 72, 122, 163, 172, 173, 174, 175, 216, 233, 261, 262, 263, 265, 266, 267, 268, 270, 271, 272, 273, 274, 275, 277, 278, 279, 282, 283, 284, 285, 287, 288, 292, 293, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 309, 311, 312, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 320, 321, 323, 324, 325, 326, 329, 376, 377, 378, 382, 383, 384, 392, 412, 415, 416, 417, 419, 420, 421, 424, 425, 428, 429, 432, 434, 435, 436, 437, 445, 449, 453, 477, 488, 489, 490, 491, 492, 494, 498, 499, 500, 501, 505, 516, 528, 533, 534, 535, 542, 547, 548, 551, 556, 557, 559, 569, 594, 598, 606, 612, 613, 615, 618 Literature and Life, 163 Literature in Community, 166 Literature in the Postmodern Era, 285 Little Rock, Arkansas, 255 Little Women, 434 Liturgical Language, 361 Livengood, Jennifer, 144 Locke, John, 91, 92, 93, 546, 616 652 A Journey Through My College Papers Logic, 113, 114, 213, 349, 470, 487, 496, 497, 503, 504, 505, 529, 543, 549, 559 Logical-mathematical, 471, 472 Lolita, 376, 377, 378, 382, 383, 384, 385, 615 LoMonte, Frank D., 98 London, 119, 160, 319, 421, 422, 423, 429 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 271, 272 Long-term Memory, 477 Look and Say, 509 Lord of the Rings, 292, 293 Los Angeles, 187, 256, 512, 623 Loss of Innocence, 310, 311, 318, 319, 325 Louisiana Purchase, 84 Love, 10, 301, 302, 344, 347, 403, 412, 563, 619 Low Income, 36, 54, 55, 59, 165, 196, 197, 482, 485 Lower Class, 111, 120, 121, 146, 159, 230, 296, 328, 373, 378, 379, 380, 381, 386, 387, 388, 389, 422, 499 Lower East Side, 535 Loy, Mina, 320 Luke-Killam, Anya, 363 Lust, 311, 319, 328, 350 Luther, Martin, 36, 287, 610 Lynn, Steven, 417 M M I M U L U K A V I I E S I, 364 M&Ms, 511, 523 M*A*S*H, 249, 250, 251, 611, 613 Machiavelli, Niccoló, 176 Machine Age, 254 MacLaine, Shirley, 380, 388 Maclean's, 78, 79, 614 Madison, James, 262 Madness, 393, 394, 414, 438, 439, 441, 445, 448, 449, 458, 500 Madrid, 31 Magic, 50, 327 Magical Thinking, 203 Magnet Schools, 555 Mahan, Alfred Thayer, 242 Maine, 44, 75, 108 Mainstreamed, 231, 232 Maintaining Peace, 186 Major Trends, Issues and Prospects, 156 Majuscules, 364, 365 Makeup, 28, 97, 367 Malays, 155 Malthus, Thomas, 189 Manhattan, 96, 130, 614 Manifest Destiny, 242, 244, 426, 427 Manipulatives, 221, 222, 225, 227, 228, 575, 582 Manson, Marilyn, 21, 23, 612 Manual on Michigan Marriages, 118 Manufacturing, 105, 150, 238, 239, 244, 378, 386, 593 Mao Tse-tung, 153 Mardi Gras, 278 Margaret Beeks Elementary School, 534, 535 Marines, 241 Marital Infidelity, 353 Marriage, 25, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 129, 131, 132, 163, 171, 249, 284, 288, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 303, 335, 336, 339, 341, 344, 350, 352, 382, 413, 422, 464, 465, 466, 467, 495, 496, 497, 502, 503, 504, 505, 573, 596, 604, 616, 618, 620, 622, 624 Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 319 Mars, 219 Martial Law, 253 Marvel, Laura, 328 Marx, Karl, 425 Marxism versus Postcolonial Theory, 425 Marxist Criticism, 425 Marxist Theory, 425 Maryland, 75 Masonic, 458, 459, 460, 461, 462 Masquerade, 459, 460 Mass Media, 58, 253 Massachusetts, 44, 72, 167, 425, 426, 427, 428, 613, 625 Massachusetts Bay Colony, 71 Math for Elementary Majors, 23 Math Goodies, 582, 583, 613 Matrilineal, 40, 48, 613 Maypole in Vermont, 12, 397 Maypole in Vermont – Revised, 406 McAdoo, William Gibbs, 241 McArabia, 126, 127, 594, 602 McCarthy, Mary, 101 McDermott, Nancy, 142 McDole, J., 137 McDonald’s, 125, 126, 127, 151, 594, 602 McDonald's Goes East, 125 McKay, Claude, 282, 323 McLaks, 126 McLean, Pam, 66 McPitzutz, 127 McVeigh, Timothy, 53 MEAP, 481 Measured IQ, 471 Media Pirates, 348 Media Violence, 21, 22 Media-induced Isolation, 542 Medicaid, 93 Medieval, 69, 119, 120, 121, 279, 294, 297, 298, 299, 308, 309, 367, 368, 369, 425, 555, 607, 619 Medieval Reenactment, 119 Medieval Tradition, 69 Mediocrity, 416, 585 Mediterranean, 36, 119, 300, 364 Melancholia, 438 Melton, Gina, 552 Memory, 18, 20, 63, 73, 162, 170, 174, 201, 213, 214, 217, 219, 221, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 234, 236, 264, 276, 283, 286, 290, 315, 331, 332, 333, 372, 473, 477, 513, 517, 528, 530, 538, 540, 553, 558, 597, 623, 624 Memory Strategies, 218 Mendleson, Rachel, 78 Menopause, 249 Mental Retardation, 197 Mental Trauma, 251 Mentors, 426, 427, 431, 470, 584 Mercury, 219 Meriam, Junius, 76 Undergraduate Series 653 Merriam-Webster, 47, 48, 49, 90, 103, 106, 263, 297, 357, 358, 366, 595, 600, 601, 602, 603, 607, 608, 613, 614, 616, 617, 618, 620, 621 Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online, 103 Meshach, 262 Mesopotamia, 362 Meta, Ilir, 186 Metaphor, 167, 260, 261, 265, 274, 276, 400, 401, 456, 487 Meter, 286, 444, 457 Method Time Management Time Study Engineer, 23 Metrical Structure, 357 Metro Detroit, 121, 208, 367, 551 Metro Parent, 208, 614 Mexican, 119, 368, 369, 373, 374, 375, 378, 379, 381, 386, 387, 389 Mexico, 155, 156, 236, 374, 390, 570 Michael Alvarez, 570 Michelangelo, 553 Michigan, 5, 60, 61, 107, 108, 109, 118, 206, 215, 220, 300, 343, 346, 481, 552, 603, 612, 621 Michigan Educational Assessment Program, 481 Michigan English Language Arts Framework Project, 512 Michigan Legislative Process, 60 Michigan State University, 215 Microsoft Office Word, 499 Middle Ages, 38, 69, 150, 158, 293, 297 Middle Class, 120, 121, 129, 146, 152, 158, 296, 368, 446, 449, 499 Middle Colonies, 72 Middle Earth, 292 Middle East, 38, 92, 125, 155, 187, 220, 390, 547, 596 Middle Eastern, 159, 178, 287, 300, 368, 369, 377 Middle English, 305, 365 Middle English Period, 487 Middle School, 62, 356, 359, 480, 516, 522, 535, 542, 562, 566, 582 Middle Way, 152 Midway Islands, 243 Midwest, 146 654 A Journey Through My College Papers Migrations, 368, 369 Milestone, 369, 568 Military Force, 182, 183, 244 Military Service, 41, 252, 371 Milk Kinship, 157 Millennial, 562 Millennials, 590 Milton, John, 300, 301 Mimic, 354, 446, 551 Mini-lesson: "I before E", 235 Minorities, 160, 246, 249, 254, 256, 485 Minuscules, 364, 365 Miscarriage, 249 Missionaries, 266, 391 Mississippi, 75, 253 Mississippi River, 84 MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, 106 Mixed-gender, 376 MLA, 3, 66 Mnemonic Device, 219 Modeling, 202, 217, 344, 347, 480, 576 Modern American Fiction, 284 Modern American Writers, 283 Modern Humans, 361, 363 Modernism, 155, 281, 487, 596 Modernist American Literature by Women, 281 Modernity, 150, 487 Modernization, 149, 150, 151, 154, 155, 157, 596, 611, 614 Mohammed, 36 Mohawk, 261 Moiseeff, Dolly, 208 Moise-Titus , Jessica, 21 Monarchy, 147, 158, 304 Monogamy, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 42, 43, 44, 45, 48, 467, 614 Monster, 292, 293, 294, 305, 306, 308, 309, 396, 397, 449, 499 Montessori Method, 71 Montessori Schools, 71 Montessori, Maria, 71 Moore, Marianne, 430, 433, 434, 613 Moral Conduct, 376 Moral Consensus, 139 Moral Law, 116 Moral Reasoning, 114 Moral Relativism, 351, 352, 353 Moral Truth, 182 Morality, 73, 135, 137, 298, 299, 351, 352, 353, 487 Morelock, M.J., 79 Mormon, 33, 38 Morphemes, 354, 356 Morphology, 11, 354, 355, 356, 361, 507 Morphology and Creativity, 355 Morrill Act, 33 Mother, 19, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 40, 41, 43, 45, 66, 67, 95, 99, 116, 118, 119, 137, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 157, 170, 171, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 208, 219, 226, 251, 256, 278, 279, 280, 288, 313, 324, 327, 332, 335, 344, 345, 346, 347, 352, 362, 366, 370, 371, 372, 374, 380, 381, 388, 389, 390, 392, 393, 394, 395, 396, 403, 404, 405, 406, 416, 418, 419, 426, 430, 431, 432, 433, 437, 440, 453, 454, 463, 466, 468, 469, 470, 478, 486, 490, 493, 495, 496, 502, 503, 617 Mother Tongue, 373, 378, 381, 386, 390, 622 Motherhood, 142, 145, 433, 613 Motivation, 77, 99, 470, 473, 478, 482, 531, 534, 536, 557, 572 Motivation to Learn, 529 Mount Anthony Union High School, 17, 330 Mr. Rodriguez, 560 Ms. Valdera, 562 MTMTSE, 23 Multiculturalism, 351, 352, 353, 599, 608 Multilingual, 359, 372, 551 Multiple Intelligences, 471, 473, 483, 484, 486, 558, 561, 579, 599 Multiracial Society, 238 Murder, 21, 25, 26, 42, 123, 254, 281, 287, 308, 329, 414, 453, 458, 462, 500, 596 Murders, 21, 22, 305 Murray, Aífe, 425 Museum of Fine Arts, 364 Music, 19, 72, 100, 213, 215, 216, 219, 223, 225, 226, 228, 230, 254, 282, 348, 374, 376, 397, 398, 400, 407, 408, 410, 472, 508, 527, 528, 531, 542, 549, 550, 554, 555, 557, 565, 568, 570, 583, 590 Musical, 219, 254, 282, 286, 358, 471, 500, 543 Muslim, 7, 147, 154, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160, 230, 371, 611, 618 Muslim Modernization, 154 Muslims, 146, 147, 156, 160, 287 My Fair Lady, 358 My Lai, 443 My Last Duchess, 454 My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun, 173, 175, 456, 620 My Name, 373, 374, 375, 378, 381, 386, 389, 599 My Papa's Waltz, 169, 174, 175, 619 My Reading Experience, 176 Myanmar, 182 Mycenaean, 364 Mynahs, 354 Myth, 313, 327, 329, 396, 434, 455, 613 Mythology, 35, 214, 300, 307, 312, 313, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 597 MyTouch, 390 N NAACP, 80, 253, 255 NAAL, 506 NAEP, 506, 507, 615 Nafisi, Azar, 12, 376, 377, 378, 382, 383, 384, 385, 615 Namibia, 37, 42 Nandi, 41 Naparsteck, Martin, 443 Naperville Central High School, 216 Naperville, IL, 216 Napoleon Dynamite, 416 Narayan, Jayaprakash, 111 Narcissus, 455 Narrative, 24, 162, 163, 238, 239, 240, 242, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 251, 257, 264, 266, 269, 278, 287, 333, 384, 461, 583, 601 Narrative Writing, 277 NASA, 103, 150 Undergraduate Series 655 Nation’s Report Card, 75 National Academic Standards, 74 National Assessment for Adult Literacy, 506 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 506 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 80, 253 National Association of Colored Women, 253 National Catholic War Council, 241 National Center for Literacy Education, 508 National Council of Teachers of English, 520 National Education Association, 51 National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 196, 507 National Institutes of Health, 512, 515, 516, 615 National Interest, 181, 182 National Negro Business League, 253 National Standards in Education, 74 Native American, 33, 44, 273 Native Americans, 128, 255, 281, 362 Native Speakers, 359, 361, 374 NATO, 179 Natural Selection, 36, 37 Naturalistic, 470, 471, 543, 544 Nature Imagery, 318 Nature in Early American Literature, 273 Nature of Man, 315, 316 Navy, 85, 240, 241, 242, 243 Nayar, 40, 41, 48, 615 NCLB, 5, 59, 70, 75, 76, 216, 217, 218, 522, 548, 592, 608, 622, 623 NCLE, 508 NDEA, 79 NEA, 51, 52, 615 Near East, 240, 242, 361 Nebraska, 74, 573, 574 Negative Reinforcement, 473, 474 Neglect, 26, 73, 175, 188, 201 Negro, 24, 25, 253, 255, 257, 287, 290, 292, 452, 606, 620 Nelson, Marilyn, 403 Neo-Classical Period, 487 Nepal, 33, 39 Nephews, 336, 339, 341, 342 656 A Journey Through My College Papers Neptune, 219 Net Generation, 562, 590 Netherlands, 155 Neur, 41 Neurasthenia, 393 New Age, 225 New Criticism, 13, 415, 416, 417 New Criticism and Unification, 416 New England, 72, 74, 128, 146, 222, 369, 377, 434, 514, 522, 597, 605, 618, 626 New Guineans, 36 New Hampshire, 19, 44 New Jersey, 44, 240 New Mexico, 44 New Politics Liberalism, 53, 54, 55, 56 New York, 44, 48, 75, 84, 86, 87, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 107, 115, 121, 122, 123, 124, 127, 128, 131, 133, 134, 136, 145, 147, 148, 149, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 161, 165, 166, 171, 174, 175, 187, 195, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 209, 212, 253, 259, 260, 263, 265, 266, 293, 295, 296, 297, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 309, 311, 312, 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 320, 321, 323, 324, 325, 329, 363, 374, 375, 381, 389, 414, 463, 482, 487, 490, 491, 493, 498, 505, 535, 552, 586, 596, 597, 599, 600, 602, 604, 606, 608, 610, 611, 612, 613, 614, 616, 617, 619, 624, 626 New York City, 165, 166, 414 New York State Board of Regents, 552 New York Times, 482 New Zealand, 192 Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, 98 Newton, Benjamin Franklin, 426, 427 Newton, Isaac, 69, 334, 338 Niagara Movement, 253 NICHD, 196, 197, 507 Nicoll, W. Robertson, 275 Nieces, 336, 339, 341, 342 Nigeria, 36, 39, 41, 42, 48, 155, 156, 279, 616 Nigerian-American, 390 Nightmare, 281, 316, 317, 499 NIH, 516 Nile Delta, 363 Nisei, 245 Nitre, 461, 462 Nixon, Richard, 247 No Child Left Behind, 70, 75, 216, 217, 548, 592 No Name Woman, 287 Nobel Prize, 150 Nongraded Schools, 77 Norman Conquest, 487 Normative Maturation Events, 196 North Atlantic, 179, 395, 406 North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 179 North Bennington Graded School, 23 North Carolina, 77, 220, 238, 280, 311, 368, 373, 609 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 548 North Korea, 151 Northern Ireland, 186, 187, 625 Northern Mariana Islands, 243 Norway, 127 Norwood, Hermond, 237 Notebook Paper, 19 Noun, 303, 354, 355, 356, 361, 417 Nowak, Manfred, 188 Nuclear Family, 40, 131, 367 Nudity, 249, 250, 319 Numbers and Mathematics, 204 Nunez, Narina, 112 Nurturing, 200, 336, 339, 341, 477, 533 Nutrition, 198, 199, 200, 201, 600 Nwunye Nhachi, 41, 42 Nwunye Nkuchi, 41, 42 Nyinba, 39 O O to Be a Dragon, 430, 433 O’Brien, Keith, 558 O’Rourke, Meghan, 142 O’Sullivan, John L., 426 Oakland County Community Corrections Division, 107 Oakland County, Michigan, 107 Oates, Carol, 26 Obama, Barack, 96, 128, 129, 219, 252, 256, 257, 258, 285, 286, 287, 605, 620 Oberembt, Kenneth J., 298 Obesity, 26, 193, 198, 199, 596 O'Brien, Tim, 443, 444, 615 Oceania, 362 O'Connor, Frank, 259, 451 Ode on Melancholy, 313, 326 Ode to a Nightingale, 313, 326 Ode, Robert, 248, 249, 313, 616 Ode: Intimations of Immortality, 312 OECD, 179 Oedipus Complex, 416, 428, 430, 431, 433, 436, 437 Of Mice and Men, 574, 575 Office of Naval Research, 103 Offspring, 21, 36, 37, 116 Ogburn, William F., 131 Oghrenghrehgowah, 261 O'Hare, Bill, 129 Ohio General Assembly, 57 Ohio School Board Association, 57 Oil City, Arkansas, 535 Okalongo, 37 Old England, 323 Old English Period, 487 Old Testament, 35, 313, 319, 327 Olmec, 362 Olney Central College, 3, 219, 467 Olney, Illinois, 3 Omnibus Diplomatic Security and Anti-Terrorism Act, 180 On Marriage Forms, 31 On the Border, 119 One Million Signatures Campaign, 383 One Ring, 292 Oneida, 261 Online Etymology Dictionary, 427, 428, 429, 434, 607 Online Piracy, 348 Onondaga, 260, 261 ONR, 103 OnStar, 104 Undergraduate Series 657 OPEC, 248 Open and Candid Discussion, 383 Open Classrooms, 77 Operant Conditioning, 63, 473, 539, 554 Oppression, 53, 161, 252, 256, 267, 291, 350, 353, 375, 376, 377, 382, 385, 425, 426, 432, 448, 457, 605 Oppressions, 266 Oral Argument, 344 Order of Masons, 460 Order of the Eastern Star, 119, 337, 340, 342 Oregon, 44, 75 Oregon State University, 554 Organic Education, 76 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 179 Oriental Tradition, 324 Original Sin, 262 Ostrich Eggs, 363 Osuji, Ozodi, 91 Ottoman Empire, 425 Our School’s Behavior Code, 343 Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, 276 Ovambadja, 37, 38, 42, 47, 595 Overpopulation, 249 Owen, Wilfred, 318 P Pacific, 44, 84, 151, 235, 243, 245 Pacific Ocean, 84 Pacific Rim, 151 Pagan, 306, 529, 541 Paine, Thomas, 263 Palatals, 358 Palate, 357, 358 Palmyra Atoll, 243 PAN, 462, 463, 621 Panama, 243 Panama Canal, 243 Papuans, 37 Parables, 258, 450 Parables, Fables, and Tales, 258, 450 Paradise Lost, 10, 300, 301 658 A Journey Through My College Papers Paradise Lost: Reading for Character and Imagery, 300 Parenting Styles, 200, 201 Parents, 23, 28, 35, 36, 40, 43, 45, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 61, 62, 64, 66, 72, 73, 75, 77, 82, 95, 100, 114, 116, 118, 122, 129, 131, 132, 142, 143, 144, 145, 165, 166, 167, 168, 177, 185, 195, 196, 197, 200, 201, 202, 205, 206, 208, 210, 211, 232, 234,鴤235, 236, 246, 279, 283, 284, 288, 303, 323, 335, 336, 337, 339, 340, 341, 342, 345, 346, 347, 353, 359, 370, 374, 375, 378, 386, 393, 394, 404, 407, 437, 449, 453, 454, 467, 468, 469, 470, 475, 480, 482, 483, 484, 485, 486, 490, 493, 527, 534, 542, 548, 550, 551, 552, 555, 563, 564, 566, 568, 569, 570, 571, 572, 578, 580, 581, 584, 586, 587, 588, 591, 592, 595, 596, 602, 617, 622, 626 Parks, Rosa, 93, 255 Parliament, 148, 149 Parrots, 354 Partition, 186, 187, 245, 608 Partnership for a Drug-free America, 527, 528, 617 Paternity, 41 Patriarchal Society, 320, 440, 445, 446, 447, 449, 494, 495, 501, 502 Patrilineal, 41, 48, 617 Patriotism, 50, 73, 349 Pavlov, Ivan, 66 Payne, Kelly, 467 Paz, Octavio, 168 PBS, 341, 359, 620 PCI, 184 PE, 216, 217 Pearl Harbor, 243 Pearson Education, 70, 71, 72, 74, 76, 77, 79, 232, 233, 234, 237, 261, 262, 263, 265, 266, 267, 268, 270, 271, 272, 273, 277, 278, 279, 282, 283, 284, 285, 287, 288, 292, 337, 340, 342, 368, 369, 370, 372, 377, 383, 385, 391, 392, 416, 417, 419, 420, 421, 424, 425, 428, 429, 434, 513, 514, 598, 603, 607, 612, 613, 618 Pedagogical Knowledge, 532 Pedagogy, 532, 556 Peer Review, 413, 414, 583 Peer Review and Revision Process, 414 Pell Grant, 56 Pen Pals, 541 Pennsylvania, 72, 86, 265, 597, 619 Pennsylvania Dept. of Corrections v Yeskey, 93 Pennsylvania State House, 84 Pentagon, 256 People v. McNair, 108, 109, 617 Per Capita Income, 184 Perennialism, 530, 554 Performance Pay versus Tenure, 531 Performance-based Assessments, 480 Performance-based Pay, 531 Performance-based Teacher Pay, 531 Perfume Bottle, 364 Peripherals, 221, 225, 228, 230 Persian, 376, 377, 382, 605 Personal Identity, 378 Personal Philosophy of Education, 531, 554, 558 Personal Reflection on Global Culture, 390 Personality, 27, 64, 65, 195, 206, 210, 211, 300, 322, 379, 383, 387, 403, 436, 494, 497, 501, 504 Personality Types, 64 Personalized Learning Experience, 561 Peru, 362 Pesticide Action Network, 462 Pesticide Database, 462 Petroglyphs, 362, 363, 364, 366 Petronius, 258, 451 Pew Research Center, 141, 142 Phallic, 416, 430, 431, 433 Philadelphia, 264, 582, 583 Philippine Islands, 243 Philippine War, 243 Philippines, 243 Philosophy of Education, 15, 527, 534 Philosophy of Human Conduct, 134 Phoenician, 362, 363, 364, 366, 603 Phoenicians, 363, 366 Phoenix, 574, 575, 576 Phonemes, 515, 516, 517, 546 Phonemic, 507, 508, 515, 516, 517, 518, 522, 523, 526 Phonemic Awareness, 508, 510, 515, 517 Phonetics and the International Phonetic Alphabet, 358 Phonics, 14, 15, 506, 507, 508, 509, 510, 511, 512, 513, 514, 515, 516, 517, 518, 520, 522, 523, 526, 527, 546, 603, 609, 615, 623, 625 Phonics Based Reading & Decoding, 506 Phonics Instruction, 508, 509, 513 Phonics-based Education, 507 Phonographs, 506 Physical Education, 215, 216, 217, 218, 228, 528, 564, 596 Physical Movement and the Brain, 215 Physiological Effects on Learning, 214 Piaget, Jean, 70, 71, 194, 195, 203, 204, 205, 209, 210, 211, 212, 469, 484 Pictorial Writing, 362 Picturing the First Writing, 362 Pierce, Michelle, 521 Piercing, 301, 367 Pinsky, Robert, 444, 445, 605 PISA, 558 Pita Way, 119 Pitch, 357 Plagiarism, 82 Plasticity, 355 Plath, Sylvia, 285 Plato’s Academy, 555 Play Therapy, 206, 207 Plot, 13, 259, 293, 385, 396, 412, 413, 451, 452, 458, 466, 623 Pluralism, 129 Pluto, 219 Podolski , Cheryl-Lynn, 21 Poe, Edgar Allen, 169, 173, 174, 175, 176, 265, 266, 271, 413, 414, 438, 458, 459, 460, 461, 462, 463, 499, 500, 596, 598, 607, 617, 620 Poems and Feelings, 168 Poetry, 162, 163, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 175, 259, 260, 265, 271, 272, 275, 277, 285, 289, 290, 292, 302, 311, 312, 318, 319, Undergraduate Series 659 320, 321, 323, 324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 332, 357, 365, 383, 412, 413, 425, 427, 430, 432, 433, 434, 438, 445, 451, 452,鴤453, 454, 456, 457, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 490, 491, 493, 498, 500, 505, 595, 600, 602, 603, 605, 608, 610, 614, 617, 619, 620, 621, 624, 625, 626 Poetry Analysis "ABC", 444 Poetry of the Great War, 317 Point of View, 96, 136, 288, 345, 417, 452, 453, 487 Pojman, Louis, 137 Poland, 390 Policy Evaluation, 62 Polish, 368, 369 Political Conservativism, 146 Political Criticism, 415 Political Diversity in the Developing World, 155 Political Freedoms, 153 Political Scientists, 145 Political Unrest, 156 Pollution, 185, 191 Polyamory, 34, 48, 116, 617 Polyandry, 37, 39, 40, 43, 48, 617 Polygamy, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48, 116, 118, 467, 598, 602, 618 Polygyny, 32, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 47, 48, 604, 616, 618 Pomerantz, Francesca, 521 Pope, Alexander, 302 Popular Media, 529 Pornography, 180 Porter, Deborah, 344, 347 Portfolio, 483, 485, 486, 567, 568 Portfolios, 482, 486, 520, 568, 580 Portugal, 155 Portuguese, 509 Position Papers, 348, 349 Positive Feedback, 230, 467, 533 Positive Reinforcement, 473 Posner and Singer, 140 Posner, Richard, 140 Posse Comitatus, 53 Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, 206 660 A Journey Through My College Papers Postcolonial Criticism, 415, 425 Postcolonial Studies, 425 Post-feminist Theory, 429 Postmodern Society, 119, 120 Postmodernism, 487, 488, 492, 594 Poststructuralism, 492 Poverty, 24, 39, 59, 121, 167, 174, 184, 239, 241, 254, 290, 314, 319, 320, 321, 327, 329, 368, 403, 419, 423, 487, 541, 555 Power, 38, 50, 51, 53, 63, 74, 83, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 98, 104, 106, 112, 120, 122, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 147, 150, 156, 158, 159, 170, 176, 177, 182, 186, 193, 239, 240, 243, 244, 255, 260, 262, 273, 274, 281, 289, 292, 293, 295, 296, 297, 299, 300,鴤304, 305, 307, 308, 314, 317, 320, 324, 345, 375, 382, 393, 394, 395, 403, 404, 405, 406, 416, 423, 425, 430, 431, 432, 433, 440, 457, 459, 487, 488, 490, 492, 497, 504, 546, 557, 561, 585, 586, 598 Practicum, 565 Practicum Experience, 521, 522, 526, 527 Pragmatic, 356, 357, 360, 527, 551 Pragmatist Theory of Education, 545 Preamble to the Constitution, 232 Pre-assessment, 582 Preferred Learning Style, 478 Pregnancy, 100, 195, 197, 198, 208, 249 Prelutsky, Jack, 169 Premarital Sex, 249 Prensky, Marc, 80 Preoperational Stage, 209 Preschool, 23, 192, 196, 222, 226, 230, 359, 469, 473, 515, 525, 530 President of the United States, 83, 87, 91, 100, 247, 256 Preterm Delivery, 197 Prevention Research Center, 191 Pride, 17, 18, 159, 166, 220, 223, 239, 300, 302, 311, 319, 330, 331, 350, 374, 395 Primary Cortex, 217 Princeton University, 95 Principle of Charity, 134 Principles for Reading Success, 517 Prine, Ila B., 237 Printing Press, 69, 70, 611 Prior Knowledge, 567, 570, 575, 576, 590 Prius, 150, 152, 623 Private Schools, 548, 550 Proactive Policy, 592 Process, 324 Procreation, 116, 117, 433 Profanity, 249 Professionalism, 589 Programme for International Student Assessment, 558 Progressive, 6, 48, 76, 77, 193, 240, 595, 615 Progressive Education, 76, 77 Progressive Education Association, 77 Progressive Philosophy of Education, 534, 535, 536 Progressivism, 146, 240, 530, 535, 536, 554, 555 Project Follow Through Study, 507 Pronunciation, 413, 522 Proprioceptive Sense, 224 ProQuest, 79, 101, 102, 106, 107, 113, 118, 119, 123, 124, 127, 133, 134, 152, 161, 177, 184, 186, 187, 189, 193, 200, 202, 207, 216, 218, 223, 228, 229, 244, 257, 258, 337, 340, 342, 354, 366, 383, 434, 435, 437, 438, 482, 484, 487, 492, 594, 595, 596, 597, 598, 599, 600, 601, 602, 603, 604, 605, 606, 607, 608, 609, 610, 611, 612, 613, 614, 615, 616, 617, 618, 619, 620, 621, 622, 623, 624, 625, 626 Prosody, 357, 358, 618 Prostitutes, 120, 252, 423, 429 Prostitution, 120, 136, 137, 187, 319, 424, 594, 619 Protestant, 69, 146, 242, 299 Protestant Reformation, 69 Protestants, 69, 116, 146, 287 Proto-humans, 363 Proto-Indo-European, 12, 361, 362 Protolanguages, 361 Proverbs of Hell, 319 Prudence, 177, 350 Psalms, 286 Psychoanalytic Criticism, 435, 438, 614 Psychoanalytic Theory, 436, 437 Psychoanalytical Analysis, 445 Psychoanalytical Theory, 436 Psychoanalytical Theory in Literary Criticism, 436 Psycholinguists, 360 Psychological Analysis, 416, 428 Psychological Criticism, 415, 435 Psychological Development, 480 Psychological Theory, 428, 445 Psychology For Teaching, 478 Psychometric Intelligence, 471 Psychopath, 123 Psychosocial Development, 195, 196, 202, 205, 209, 210, 211, 212 Psychosocial Stages, 65, 210, 469 Psychotherapy, 206, 207, 438, 595, 600, 607, 611 PTA, 586 PTO, 586 PTSD, 206 Puberty, 40, 359 Public Good, 177, 185 Public Identity, 378 Public Interest, 118, 620 Public Libraries, 553 Public School, 23, 31, 72, 78, 80, 99, 530, 548, 550, 551, 570, 592 Public Schools, 23, 51, 53, 69, 71, 72, 73, 78, 80, 81, 93, 98, 101, 350, 351, 352, 353, 480, 530, 548, 549, 550, 551, 608 Public Sensitivity, 383 Puerto Rican, 96, 373, 379, 387 Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, 96 Puerto Rico, 243 Punaluan Marriage, 43 Punctuation, 97, 163, 320, 365, 414, 415, 457, 499, 517, 558, 577 Punishment, 64, 99, 101, 122, 137, 138, 144, 189, 262, 267, 270, 349, 376, 457, 474, 480, 538, 539, 571, 596, 600, 613 Punishments, 63, 64, 138, 464, 480, 571 Purdy, Laura, 133 Puritan, 72, 261, 262, 275, 277, 368, 425, 597 Puritan Church, 72 Undergraduate Series 661 Puritans, 71, 261, 262 Pygmalion, 358 Q Qing Dynasty, 391 Quaker, 72, 281 Quantico, Virginia, 108 Quarrels of the Britons, 147 Quarter Pounders, 125, 126, 127, 603 Queen Elizabeth II, 158 Queer Theory, 429 Question, 288, 290 Quiet Revolution, 153 Qur'an, 157 R Race to the Top, 548 Racial Bias, 481, 485 Racial Equality, 246, 254, 487 Racial Integration, 81, 119, 255, 535, 536, 537 Racial Minorities, 54, 130, 541 Racial Tensions, 272 Racism, 140, 158, 159, 160, 161, 249, 250, 252, 256, 257, 280, 290, 605 Railroads, 238, 239, 317, 378, 386 RALI, 63 Rape, 27, 28, 42, 249, 282, 403 Raphael, 553 RCIA, 529 Reaction to Writing a Paper, 66 Reactive Policy, 592 Reader-Response and Rhetorical Tradition, 417 Reader-response Criticism, 176, 415, 417 Reading, 549 Reading and Critiquing Creative Writing, 393 Reading and Writing Instruction, 507 Reading Drama and Plays, 171 Reading for Global Significance, 304 Reading Instruction Theory, 14, 509 Reading Lolita in Tehran, 376, 377, 378, 382, 383, 384, 385, 615 Reading Poems, 169 Reagan, Ronald, 245, 248 662 A Journey Through My College Papers Realism, 176, 177, 251, 281, 315, 443, 599 Realists, 139, 176 Rebellion, 122, 244, 370, 371, 372, 427, 440, 441, 449, 464, 465 Rebellion and Personal Identity, 370 Reciprocal Instruction, 479 Reciprocal Teaching, 474 Recitation Drills, 510, 523 Reconstructing Proto-Indo-European, 361 Reconstruction, 93, 237, 238, 252, 254, 290, 291, 427 Reconstruction Civil Rights Acts, 93 Red Cross, 179, 241 Red Herrings, 345 Red Jacket, 263, 266, 267, 271 Redemption, 277, 283, 309, 440, 441, 442, 443, 446, 450, 467, 594, 609 Redneck, 380, 388 Reflecting on the Course, 500 Reflecting on your Reading, 166 Reflection on Artistic Expression in Your Everyday Life, 367 Reflection on Artistic Expression in Your Everyday Life: Food, 368 Reflection on Creative Writing, 412 Reflections on Teaching Action Reading, 522 Refrains, 400 Regional Pronunciations, 519, 526 Reincarnation, 154 Reinforcement and Conditioning, 473 Reinforcements, 63, 64, 473 Relevance, 220, 221, 230, 344, 492, 540, 575, 576, 577, 591 Religion and Myth in English Poetry, 325 Religion and Myth in Romantic Poetry, 312 Religious Conservatism, 53, 54 Religious Right, 249 Religious Studies, 548 Renaissance, 69, 301 Renaissance Love Poetry: Reading for Lyricism, 301 Renaissance Period, 487 Repression, 153, 279, 281, 431, 437, 440, 441, 446, 447, 449, 477, 490 Republican, 239 Research and Response, 443 Research on an Aesthetic Movement, 382 Response to the RALI exercise, 63 Responsibility to a Broader Humanity, 189 Rest Cure, 438, 445, 446, 447, 449 Retina Scans, 110 Retinal Scanners, 108 Revenge, 248, 281, 458, 462 Revision, 12, 412, 415, 598 Revolution, 7, 88, 122, 156, 229, 266, 487, 613 Revolutionary War, 74, 89, 589, 597 Reward, 124, 137, 230, 474, 479, 480, 511, 523, 538, 539, 571 Reynolds v. United States, 33 Rhetoric, 10, 37, 113, 117, 139, 261, 417, 500, 510, 528, 531, 549, 556, 602, 625 Rhetorical Analysis, 270 Rhode Island, 44 Rhythm, 264, 276, 282, 286, 397, 407, 408, 457 Rhythmic Quality, 357 Right Amount of Welfare, 147 Right Intention, 181 Right-Wing Extremism, 53 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 169 Riots, 22 Rip Van Winkle, 265, 266, 268 Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, 529 Rite of Passage, 323 Rituals, 367 Road Rage, 22 Roadrunner, 22 Robinson, Stan, 247 Roethke, Theodore, 174 Roman, 44, 69, 73, 116, 146, 172, 313, 325, 326, 329, 365, 425, 529, 553 Roman Empire, 69, 425 Roman School System, 69 Romance Languages, 361 Romans, 147, 159, 365 Romantic Love, 284, 318, 319 Romantic Period, 318, 321, 325, 487 Romantics, 11, 314 Romantics into Victorians, 314 Rondeau, 400 Roosevelt, Theodore, 240, 243 Root Cellar, 175, 619 Roskin, Michael G., 158, 161 Rossman, David, 520 Rotary Club, 337, 340, 342 Rote Learning, 547 Rote Memorization, 509, 521, 538 RTTP, 548 Rubric, 569, 582, 583 Ruling Class, 158, 239, 304, 423 Rural Communities, 541 Rushdie, Salman, 324 Russia, 152, 180, 182, 243, 425 S Sa, Zitkala, 281 Sacrifice, 29, 33, 292, 294, 304, 313, 315, 327, 410, 416, 423 Sadness and Happiness, 444 Saint Francis of Assisi, 367, 369 Sakhalin, 43 Saltpeter, 461, 462 Salvation, 262, 292, 294, 299, 300, 312, 313, 315, 318, 326 Salvation Army, 241 Same-sex Couples, 44, 129, 132, 337, 340, 342 Same-sex Marriage, 38, 44, 129 Sammut, Jeremy, 142 San Francisco, 154, 323, 324, 600, 606 San Francisco Chronicle, 324 Sanchez, Sonia, 457 Sandy Hook Elementary, 579 Sanity, 141, 393, 438, 448 Sashimi, 368, 369 Sassoon, Siegfried, 318 SAT, 552 Satan, 27, 294, 300, 301, 308, 430 Satanism, 50, 51 Satire, 297, 298, 303 Satire in “The Wife of Bath”, 297 Satrapi, Marjane, 12, 376, 377, 384, 385 Saturn, 219 Undergraduate Series 663 Saudi Arabia, 123, 126, 157, 614 Savage, Skye, 551 Savings Certificates, 240 Scaffold, 542, 572, 574 Scaffolding, 210, 231, 233, 527, 574, 580 Scalia, Antonin, 93 Scandinavia, 152 Scenario, 572 Scenario and Strategies, 577 Schaefer, Richard T., 122, 129 Schaeffer, Jonathan, 104 Scheduled Castes, 154 Scholarly Sources, 435 School Board, 50, 51, 52, 101, 584, 585 School Choice, 51, 54, 550, 551 School House Rock, 226 School of Organic Education, 77 School Voucher, 52 Schoolhouse Rock, 61 Schöpp-Schilling, Beate, 442 Schurz, Carl, 243 Schwab, J. J., 532 Schwimmer, Brian, 39 Scientific Method, 69 Scopes Monkey Trial, 80, 81 Scopes, John, 81, 612 Scot, 390 Scott, Walter, 279 Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song, 282 SCRAM, 107 Scripture, 35, 286 Sea of Japan, 251 Sea World, 232 Seattle, WA, 217 Second Inaugural Address, 273 Second Treatise of Civil Government, 91 Secrets of the Lost Symbol, 458 Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitoring, 107 Sedition Act, 83 SEDL, 79 Segregation, 80, 81, 157, 160, 246, 253, 255, 376 Selective Serotonin-reuptake Inhibitors, 207 Self-awareness, 106, 437, 544 664 A Journey Through My College Papers Self-discovery, 371, 479 Self-image, 196, 205, 206, 351, 433 Self-reliance, 546 Semantic, 356, 360, 477 Semantic and Pragmatic Meanings in a Cultural Context, 356 Semitic, 364 Senate, 6, 60, 85, 86, 87, 96, 97, 246, 261, 616, 623 Senate and House Sites, 96 Seneca, 261, 263 Seneca Falls, New York, 267 Senior Citizens, 111, 112, 113 Sensitivity Training, 237 Sensorimotor Stage, 209 Sensory Contributions to Learning, 221 Sentence Structure, 354 Separatism, 70 Serbia, 242 Serfs, 158 Seriation and Transitive Inference, 203, 204 Sermon, 261, 262, 263, 266, 267, 268, 286, 620 Serpents, 430, 433 SES, 379, 387, 485, 541, 542 Sesame Street, 226 Seven Deadly Sins, 350, 353, 619 Seward, William Henry, 243 Sexton, Anne, 285, 457 Sexual Assault, 250 Sexual Deviance, 353 Sexual Harassment, 577, 578 Sexual Virtue, 320 Shadrach, 262 Shah, 182, 248, 370, 382, 385, 620 Shah, Saira, 370 Shakespeare, William, 173, 175, 176, 282, 301, 320, 365, 455, 456, 553, 620 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day, 455 Shalwar Kameez, 454 Shang, 363 Shaping, 576 Shared Values, 165 Sharenhowaneh, 261 Sharing and Writing Events from Our Lives, 392 Shawarma, 368, 369 She walks in beauty, 169 Sheik Abdul-Mohsen al-Obeikan, 157 Shell, Susan, 116, 118 Sheltered, 394 Sheltered – Revised, 404 Sheltered Instruction, 231, 232, 237, 572 Sheraton Hotel, 108 Sherpa, 39 Short Stories, 452 Short-term Memory, 477 Shoskoharowaneh, 261 Shrinking Middle Class, 120 Shumaker, Conrad, 439, 441 Siberia, 362 Sibling Rivalry, 208 Siblings, 42, 44, 116, 118, 132, 157, 185, 205, 208, 234, 311, 312, 335, 336, 339, 341, 342, 345, 370, 419, 563, 564, 570, 572, 575 Sicilian Mafia, 180 Sidney, Philip, 301 SIDS, 197, 198 Sign Language, 359 Signified, 419 Signifier, 419, 423 Sikh, 369, 370, 371 Simile, 175, 455, 456 Simon Lee, 311 Sinatra, Frank, 254 Singapore, 156 Singer, Peter, 140 Single-parent Families, 129, 337, 340, 342 Sinners, 261 Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, 261 Sister Languages, 361 Sit-Coms, 249 Skinner, B. F., 63 Skinner, B.F., 63, 66, 539 Skinner's Operant Conditioning, 63 Skynet, 106 Slang, 352, 356, 429 Slave, 128, 238, 253, 255, 256, 257, 258, 263, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 295, 297, 305, 404, 431, 450, 530 Slavery, 136, 153, 159, 220, 237, 238, 250, 252, 255, 256, 257, 267, 270, 271, 273, 304, 305, 310, 426, 427, 431 Slaves, 220, 221, 237, 238, 252, 257, 268, 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 279, 290, 304, 305, 315, 316, 426, 431 Sloth, 350 Slums, 165, 166, 167, 174 Smart Cards, 110, 111 Smart Computing, 108 Smart Phones, 106 Smartboard, 564, 565 Smith v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc, 108 Smyth vs. Pillsbury Co, 108 Snakes, 430 Social Activity, 232, 538, 544, 545 Social Class, 145, 146, 295, 296, 379, 387 Social Cleavage, 145, 146 Social Cleavages, 145 Social Commentary, 268, 281, 298 Social Democracy, 55, 56 Social Discrimination, 42 Social Elitism, 146 Social Injustice, 132, 166, 271, 318, 319 Social Interactions, 128 Social Issues, 100, 249, 250, 279, 489 Social Learning Activities, 535 Social Learning Theory, 201, 202, 599 Social Media, 541, 542, 544, 552, 554, 569 Social Movements, 129 Social Networking Sites, 100, 348, 365, 547 Social Networks, 189 Social Norms, 124 Social Order, 294, 298, 367 Social Paradigm, 343, 346 Social Pressure, 371, 545 Social Promotion, 588 Social Roles, 119 Social Security, 93, 253 Social Security Act, 93 Social Settings, 119 Social Stability, 131 Social Status, 38, 39, 131, 143, 298, 304, 367, 374, 386, 387, 391, 459, 460, 490 Undergraduate Series 665 Social Stratification, 121 Social Structure, 119, 160, 336, 337, 339, 340, 341, 342, 440 Social Welfare Programs, 92, 303 Social/Emotional Development and Learning, 79 Socialism, 146, 152 Socialist, 239 Socialization, 131, 307, 551 Sociocultural Context, 485 Sociocultural Theory, 209, 211 Socio-economic Backgrounds, 343, 346, 581 Socio-economic Groups, 59, 284, 360 Socioeconomic Status, 133, 379, 387, 485, 541 Sociolinguistic, 378, 386 Sociological Perspective, 120 Sociopath, 123 Socratic Method, 530, 531, 535, 550 Software Designers, 360 Solar Power, 185 Solidarity National Office, 129 Something Is Wrong In London, 421 Song of Myself, 272, 276 Songs of Experience, 310, 311, 319 Songs of Innocence, 310, 311, 312, 319, 326 Sonnet, 282, 403, 455, 456 Sonnet -- to Science, 265 Sonnet 103, 302 Sonnet 16, 301 Sonnet 52, 301 Sonnet 64, 301 Sonnets from the Portuguese, 314, 319 SOPA, 348, 625 Sororate Monogamy, 32 Sororities, 337, 340, 342 Sotomayor, Juan, 95 Sotomayor, Sonia, 95, 96, 610, 612, 621 South America, 192, 348 South Bend, Indiana, 234, 235 South Carolina, 88, 165 South Korea, 156 South Pacific, 75, 227 Southwest Vermont Supervisory Union, 49 Sovereignty, 181, 182, 624 Soviet Union, 146, 180 666 A Journey Through My College Papers Spain, 29, 31, 155, 243, 283 Spanish, 21, 30, 236, 237, 361, 365, 366, 372, 373, 374, 375, 379, 380, 381, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 425, 551, 568, 570, 571 Spanish Inquisition, 21 Spanish-American War, 243 Sparknotes, 439 Spatial, 214, 222, 227, 471, 543, 544 Spatial Intelligence, 222, 227, 543, 544 Spatial Thinking, 203, 204 ' 'Speaking of Courage, 443 S Special Needs, 59, 70, 222, 479, 577, 584, 585, 589 Special Report: Japanese spirit, western things – 150 years after Commodore Perry, 149 Spectre and Emanation, 328 Speculation, 529 Speech, 263 Speech Against the Foundation of a Mission Among the Senecas, 271 Speech Codes, 98, 99, 100, 101, 605 Speech Codes in Education, 98 Speech Impediments, 360 Speech of James Wilson, 84, 86, 626 Speech-recognition Software, 360 Speech-recognition Systems, 104 Spell-check, 325 Spelling, 236, 269, 333, 357, 364, 365, 414, 415, 477, 499, 512, 513, 514, 516, 517, 526, 538, 539, 549, 554, 558, 567, 569, 577, 605, 606, 626 Spenser, Edmund, 301 Spies, 247 Split Brain, 355 Spousal Abuse, 36 Spouses, 32, 33, 36, 40, 41, 44, 115, 117, 118, 133, 234, 293, 336, 339, 341 Squire, Larry, 223 St John's University, 363 St. Jean, Shawn, 448 St. Paul's Cathedral, 323 Stakeholders, 57, 58, 62, 586 Stallones, Jared, 531, 545 Standard English, 378, 379, 380, 381, 386, 387, 388, 389 Standardized Testing, 481, 593 Standardized Tests, 217, 218, 481, 518, 520, 521, 525, 531, 539, 540, 558, 580 Stanford University, 372 Stanley Tools, 23 Stanzas, 165, 166, 302, 324, 400, 455 Star Trek The Next Generation, 105 Star Trek: TNG, 360 Star Wars, 360 Starfall, 516, 601 Starsky and Hutch, 22 State Boards of Education, 57 Statue of Liberty, 240 Stay-at-home Mothers, 141, 142, 143, 144 Stay-at-Home Mothers Deserve Respect, 141 Steele, Valerie, 391 Steinhardt, Barry, 102 Step-children, 335, 336, 339, 341 Step-father, 344, 345, 346 Step-mother, 40, 264, 335 Step-parents, 336, 345 Stereotypes, 49, 111, 112, 113, 373, 374, 375, 378, 379, 381, 385, 388, 389, 429, 468, 469, 494, 497, 498, 501, 505 Sternberg, Robert, 471 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 315, 316 Stevick, Robert D., 306 Stewart, Maria, 266, 267, 271 Stigma, 37, 78, 142, 373, 375, 378, 379, 380, 381, 386, 387, 388, 389, 394, 405, 506 Still Life, 323 Stimulants, 207 Stimuli, 63, 211, 213, 217, 224, 354, 355, 473, 539 Stimulus, 473, 539 Stone Age, 363 Stone, Sandy, 222 Stop Online Piracy Act, 348 Stop the Bullies, 57 Stops, 358 Story of the Bad Little Boy, 277 Storytelling, 219, 264, 370, 568 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 272, 273 Stranger In a Strange Land, 435 Strawberry Alley, 264 Strength, 20, 50, 69, 122, 125, 186, 218, 260, 273, 274, 282, 292, 294, 312, 316, 368, 374, 380, 389, 395, 397, 398, 400, 406, 407, 410, 413, 457, 459, 491, 494, 495, 496, 497, 498, 501, 502, 503, 504, 505, 538, 545, 619 Stress, 357 Stress Markers, 357 Structuralist Criticism, 415 Structuralist Theory, 419 Structure, 451 Student Achievement, 52, 486, 541, 580 Student Cognition, 562 Student Demonstration, 153 Student Enrichment, 470 Studies in Literary Genres, 9, 13, 258, 450 Studies in Short Fiction, 440, 441, 442, 443, 446, 450, 609 Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, 196 Subcommittee on Aviation, 102, 103, 622 Subjective Well-being, 184 Substitution Codes, 514, 524 Subtext, 256, 458 Subtexts, 421 Suburb, 368, 391 Suburban Communities, 541 Suburbs, 244 Successful Intelligence, 471 Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, 197, 208 Suess, Barbara A., 440, 448 Suffrage, 74, 426 Suicide, 66, 250, 272, 287, 392, 393, 443, 444, 447, 448 Sullivan, Harry Stack, 428 Sumerian, 363, 366 Sumerians, 363, 366 Undergraduate Series 667 Summarizing, 474, 475, 477, 491 Summative Assessments, 580, 591, 593 Summative Evaluation, 62 Summer Elementary School, 80 Summer of Hate, 246 Summer School, 562, 563, 564 Sumptuary Laws, 296 Suntech, 185 Super Bowl, 293 Superego, 65, 428, 436, 437 Supreme Court, 33, 34, 74, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 96, 98, 255, 610 Supreme Court Docket, 93 Survival of the Fittest, 212 Susan Wolf, 140 Sushi Maki, 368, 369 Suskind, Dorothy, 521 Sutton, Kyanna, 141 Suzion Energy, 185 SWB, 184 Swift, Jonathan, 10, 303, 304 Swift’s A Modest Proposal, 303 Syllabic Writing, 363 Syllables, 286, 302, 357, 366, 400, 515, 525 Syllogism, 499 Symbol, 453 Symbolic Serpents, 430 Symbolic Thinking, 222 Syntax, 354, 361, 373, 430, 457, 499, 500, 512 Synthesis, 209, 210, 211, 212, 333, 529 Systemic, 515, 516 Systemic Explicit Phonics Instruction, 516 Systemic Phonics Curriculum, 515 T Tablets, 363, 364, 536, 547, 552, 554, 583 Taboo, 32, 361, 376 Taft, William Howard, 239 Taiwan, 348, 390 Taking a Position Online, 348 Tales, 258, 294, 396, 451, 487 Taliban, 349 Talking in Bed, 323 668 A Journey Through My College Papers Tan, Amy, 287, 288, 372, 373, 374, 378, 379, 380, 381, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 622 Tännsjö, Torbjörn, 352 Taoism, 139 Targeted Feedback, 569, 570, 590 Task Force on Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts, 96 Tattoo, 113, 367 Tattoos, 112, 113, 323 Taxidermist, 414 Taylor, Chad, 194 TEACH Grants, 56 Teachers.Net, 544 Teaching, 23, 50, 52, 69, 71, 78, 82, 98, 150, 194, 204, 205, 218, 219, 221, 223, 224, 225, 230, 232, 233, 234, 237, 267, 343, 350, 351, 352, 353, 355, 358, 371, 383, 427, 468, 469, 470, 471, 473, 474, 475, 477, 478, 479, 480, 481, 483, 487, 488, 506, 507, 508, 509, 510, 511, 512, 513, 514, 516, 519, 520, 521, 522, 523, 524, 525, 526, 529, 530, 531, 532, 533, 534, 537, 538, 540, 541, 542, 546, 547, 548, 549, 552, 554, 555, 556, 557, 558, 559, 560, 561, 562, 565, 566, 567, 568, 569, 573, 574, 575, 576, 578, 579, 580, 581, 587, 588, 589, 590, 591, 592, 593, 598, 601, 603, 611, 615, 624, 625 Teaching Challenges, 565 Teaching Strategies, 233 Teaching Treasures Publications, 509 Teachnology, 51, 52, 622 Team Teaching, 77 Technology, 6, 8, 80, 82, 103, 107, 109, 177, 178, 179, 553, 598, 607, 621, 622 Technology and Globalization, 177 Technology and Liberty Program, 103 Technology in the Classroom, 80 Teenagers Versus Adults, 18, 331 Teeth, 357, 358 Tehran, 376, 377, 384, 385 Tekarihoken, 261 Telecommunications, 178, 180 Telephone Call, 357 Temperance, 350 Temple, 370, 371 Tempo, 213, 259, 451, 452, 466 Tennessee, 80, 81 Tennessee Supreme Court, 81 Tennessee versus John Scopes, 80 Tennyson, Alfred, 314, 318, 319, 325, 327, 328, 329 Tenth Amendment, 74 Terminator Salvation, 106 Terracotta, 367 Testing, 57, 201, 216, 225, 234, 237, 470, 472, 479, 480, 481, 482, 483, 484, 485, 486, 487, 540, 548, 553, 557, 558, 579, 580, 581, 592, 593, 605, 612, 621 Tet Offensive, 246 Tetrameter, 400, 457 Texas, 75, 172, 373, 374 Tex-Mex, 368, 369 Text Messages, 100, 189, 190, 569, 586 Textbooks, 50, 73, 76, 478, 500, 529, 552, 578 Text-to-speech, 360 Thai, 119, 368, 369 Thailand, 390 Than Khe, 443 Thanksgiving, 227, 454, 581, 582 The Address and Reasons of Dissent of the Minority of the Convention of Pennsylvania to their Constituents, 84 The American, 29 The American Constitution, 83 The Animal Cell, 219 The Answer, 302 The Ant and the Grasshopper, 258, 450 The Arsenal at Springfield, 272 The Autobiography, 264 The Bible: Reading for Context, 299 the Birmingham Grid for Learning - Multiple Intelligences (Secondary) Assessment, 543 The Black Cat, 499 The Black Finger, 282 The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, 162, 163, 172, 175, 600 The British Disease, 158 The Cadet Picture of My Father, 169 The Canon Wars, 488 The Cask of Amontillado, 458, 459, 461, 462, 463, 596, 614 The Cell Song, 219 The Cherry Trees, 317 The Child‘s Sonnet – Revised, 411 The Chimney Sweeper, 310 The Chrysanthemums, 284 The College Cost Reduction and Access Act, 55 The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 8, 188, 189 The Convocation, 376 The Cry of the Children, 314, 319, 327 The Descent of Man, 315 The Devil, 29 The Endless Change Rule, 65 The Essay, 278 The Evil of Grendel, 305 The Faculty Debate, 527 The final step: A capstone in education, 593 The Fish, 169 The Functions of Schools, 528 The Futurist, 99, 102, 107, 606, 623 The Garden of Love, 310 The Gifted Child Quarterly, 78, 79, 607 The Great Binding Law, 260, 261, 274, 276 The Great Gatsby, 586, 587 The Harlem Renaissance 1900 – 1940, 282 The Immigrant Experience, 287 The Impact of Educational Philosophies and Theories, 544 The Importance of Being Earnest, 171, 172, 625 The Importance of Fantasy, 18, 331 The Jewish Cemetery at Newport, 272 The Kind Aspect of Leopold Bloom, 321 The Lady of Shalott, 314, 327 The Lamb, 310, 312, 318, 326 The Lateralization of Language in the Brain, 355 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, 265 The Lesson, 165, 174 The Life Maps, 67 The Little Black Boy, 310, 312 The Little White Horse, 435 Undergraduate Series 669 The Lotos-Eaters, 319, 328, 329 The Making of the Canon, 489 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 311 The Meanings of Words, 373 The Metamorphosis, 167, 168, 173, 174, 175, 176, 610 The Missing, 323 The NEA Opposes School Vouchers, 51 The Negro Speaks of Rivers, 282 The North American Review, 275, 276, 277, 615, 625 The Odyssey, 328, 329 The Origin of Species, 315 The Past’s Presence Today: Historical Representations in Art and Literature, 376 The Plant Cell, 219 The Prodigal Son, 258, 450 The Prosodic Qualities of Language, 357 The Queen's University, 556 The Raven, 169, 173, 174, 175, 617 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 311, 313 The Road Not Taken, 168 The Rocking Horse Winner, 453 The Role of Emotion in Learning, 223 The Rose of the World, 328 The School Days of an Indian Girl, 281 The Short Story, 259, 451 The Singularity, 106 The Six Million Dollar Man, 22 The Sixteen-inch Waist, 391 The Social and Cultural Contexts of Education, 541 The Sorrow of Love, 329 The Stolen Child, 328 The Story of an Hour, 489, 490 The Story of Prince Fairyfoot, 391 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 315, 316 The Street, 168, 169 The Tell-tale Heart, 265 The Tell-Tale Heart, 413 The Terminator, 105 The Things They Carried, 443, 444, 567, 568, 569 The Tragic Emily Grierson, 24 670 A Journey Through My College Papers The Value of Critical Theory in Literary Analysis, 445 The Weekly Standard, 116, 118, 620 The Widow of Ephesus, 258, 451 The Wife of Bath's Prologue, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299 The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale, 295, 297, 298, 299 The Wife's Story, 395, 396 The Wolf and the Mastiff, 258, 450 The Wrong Race, 279 The Yellow Wallpaper, 13, 393, 438, 439, 440, 441, 442, 443, 445, 446, 448, 449, 450, 595, 602, 605, 608, 611, 620, 622 Theft, 102, 109, 353 Theme, 162, 170, 271, 272, 273, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 289, 292, 295, 296, 301, 302, 310, 312, 313, 315, 320, 401, 414, 417, 440, 441, 446, 447, 449, 461, 462, 467, 490, 493 Theme for English B, 169 Themes in Romantic and Victorian Poetry, 318 Theology, 72, 322, 529 TheOnion.com, 348 Theoretical Frameworks, 61 Theoretical Perspectives: Cognitive, 194 Theories, 232 Therapist, 206, 207, 343, 346, 347 There is a garden in her face, 301 They, 318 Thinking About Plots, Tension, and Conclusions, 395 Thinking Critically, 113 Thinking Critically about Drama: the Contemporary Significance of Ibsen, 466 Third World, 184, 187 This Be The Verse, 323 This Land is Your Land, 166 Thomas, Dylan, 321 Thomas, Edward, 317 Thompkins, Richard, 79 Thompson v. Johnson County Community College, 108 Thoreau, Henry David, 270, 275, 276, 277, 594 Thousand and One Nights, 324 Three Poems by Debbie, 12, 401 Through the Dark Sod, 425, 426, 427 Tiananmen Square, 153 Tibet, 33 Tiddlywinks, 514, 524 Timeline, 24, 290, 483, 488, 568, 569, 582, 583, 594 Tipping the Tank, 333, 337 Title 1, 77 To Helen, 265 To Kill a Mockingbird, 567, 569 To Test or Not to Test?, 480 Tokyo Sushi, 119 Tolkien, J.R.R., 292 Tombstones, 272 Tommy, 401 Tommy – Revised, 410 Tom-Tom, 105 Tonal Languages, 357 Tone, 278 Tongue, 19, 20, 352, 357, 358 Topeka, Kansas, 80 Torture, 168, 188, 189, 316, 600, 610, 615 Tourgée, Albion W., 279 Towhomitmayconcern, 457 Toxic Wastes, 130 Toyota Motor, 150 Tradition, 321 Tradition and the Individual Talent, 321 Traditions, 129, 148, 151, 158, 178, 254, 288, 324, 350, 363, 370, 423, 493, 530, 548, 551, 556, 568 Tragedy, 24, 25, 26, 258, 289, 451, 466 Train from Barcelona, 30 Transduction, 203 Transitory Students, 536 Transnational Crime, 180 Transportation Security Administration, 102 Transsexuality, 249 Transsexuals, 429 Treason, 123 Treaty of Paris, 243 Tree of the Great Long Leaves, 260 Tree of the Great Peace, 260, 274 Triads, 180 Trifles, 281, 284 Trochee, 457 TSA, 102 Tsunami, 234 Tuchscherer, Konrad, 363 Tucker, Patrick, 99 Turing, Alan, 106 Turley, Jonathan, 44 Tutors, 426, 427, 431, 470 Twain, Mark, 277, 278, 279 Twitter, 178 Two-for-one Sounds, 514, 516, 524 Typographical Errors, 360, 415, 482 Tyranny, 90, 95, 270, 350, 376 U U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Georgia, 88 U.S. Congress, 57 U.S. Constitution, 47, 74, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91, 93, 94, 98, 101, 239, 548, 609, 623 U.S. Court of Appeals, 96 U.S. Department of Education, 59, 60, 78, 623, 624 U.S. House of Representatives, 96, 97, 611, 623 U.S. Senate, 55, 56, 96, 97, 600, 601, 623 U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, 55 U.S. Virgin Islands, 243 UAE, 126, 192 UBM, 130 UC Berkeley, 288 UFC, 535 UFC Mini-School, 535 Uganda, 39 Ulysses, 321, 463, 608 UN, 179, 181, 182, 183, 188, 189, 615, 623 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, 183 UN Security Council, 181 UN World Summit, 181 Uncles, 336, 339, 341, 342 Underground, 160 Undergraduate Series 671 Underhill Firing Range, 333, 337 Understanding Dialogue and Character, 403 Unemployment, 121, 133, 148, 150, 152, 178 Unguent Vase, 364 Uninflected Speech, 357 Union, 17, 88, 89, 220, 252, 273 Union Hotel, 266 Unitary Government, 94, 95 Unitary, Federal, or Confederal, 94 United Arab Emirates, 126, 547 United Kingdom, 147, 160, 556 United Nations, 179, 182, 183, 351 United Nations Charter, 181 United States, 22, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 44, 49, 51, 57, 58, 61, 70, 74, 75, 76, 77, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 97, 101, 115, 117, 118, 122, 123, 126, 128, 130, 146, 147, 148, 151, 152, 153, 155, 180, 181, 182, 183, 186, 187, 188, 192, 198, 216, 219, 222, 231, 238, 239, 242, 243, 244, 248, 250, 256, 261, 267, 273, 277, 315, 337, 340, 342, 369, 373, 374, 375, 378, 380, 381, 382, 386, 387, 388, 390, 426, 427, 428, 443, 461, 508, 509, 531, 535, 546, 549, 556, 557, 558, 568, 570, 602, 603, 605, 614, 623, 625, 626 United States Constitution, 84, 86, 546, 549 United States v Georgia, 93, 94 Universal Human Rights, 187 Universal Public Education, 70 Universe, 140, 190, 288, 289, 290, 291, 316, 398, 408 University of Alberta, 104 University of Michigan, 21 University of Utah, 154 University of Vermont, 17, 18, 330, 331 Unschooling, 551 Unwed Mothers, 39, 303 Updike, John, 166 Upper Class, 49, 56, 97, 111, 145, 146, 230, 296, 304, 311, 379, 387, 470 Upper East Side, 414 Upward Bound, 56 Uranus, 219 Urban Communities, 541 672 A Journey Through My College Papers Urban Family Center, 535 Urban Sprawl, 244 Urbanization, 178 Urban-rural, 146 USA Today, 44, 49, 200, 616, 623 Utecht, Jeff, 80 Uvulars, 358 V Vacek, Edward, 117 Vallentyne, Peter, 137 Varsity, 566 Vatican, 116, 117, 118, 622 Veil of Ignorance, 135 Velars, 358 Velum, 358 Venn Diagram, 537 Venus, 219 Verb, 303, 355, 356 Verbal Speech, 364, 365 Verbal Vocabularies, 365 Verbs, 221, 354, 372, 500 Vermont, 17, 18, 23, 40, 44, 49, 129, 165, 279, 331, 333, 337, 367, 368, 530, 581 Vermont Honors Competition for Excellence in Writing, 17, 330 Vermont National Guard, 334, 337 Versification, 282, 357 Vertical Integration, 238 Vestibular Sense, 224 Vice, 138, 350, 353, 354, 493, 613, 624 Victimless Crime, 34 Victor, 359 Victorian Age, 487 Victorian Period, 326, 327, 434, 489, 490 Victorian Science, 315 Victorian Society, 489, 490, 494, 495, 496, 501, 502, 503, 504 Victorians, 11, 314 Victory Bonds, 240 Victory Boys, 241 Victory Gardens, 241 Video Games, 21, 469, 554 Vietnam, 246, 250, 443, 444, 566, 569 Vietnam War, 443 Vinge, Vernor, 106 Violence, 5, 21, 22, 23, 37, 42, 43, 98, 99, 121, 122, 129, 153, 160, 167, 173, 177, 186, 246, 247, 249, 250, 253, 255, 256, 279, 280, 281, 283, 288, 308, 309, 344, 347, 350, 352, 353, 404, 462, 480, 536, 578, 599 Viotti, Paul R., 181, 184 Virgil, 553 Virgin Mary, 313 Virginia, 31, 72, 75, 220, 238, 270, 304, 311, 528, 615 Virtual Classroom, 75 Virtue, 36, 114, 138, 210, 301, 302, 303, 307, 309, 350, 353, 354, 472, 613, 624 Virtue Ethics, 114 Virtuous Behavior, 138 Vision, 52, 63, 74, 214, 222, 227, 253, 260, 274, 313, 326, 327, 329, 337, 373, 452, 453, 586, 615 Visiting Husband, 40, 41 Visual Learners, 564, 570, 579, 580, 590, 591 Vocabulary, 77, 232, 235, 237, 325, 354, 483, 499, 508, 513, 514, 517, 518, 522, 526, 574, 576, 578, 598, 626 Vocal Cords, 358 Vocal Inflections, 473 Vocal Speech, 357 Vocal Tract, 357, 358 Vocational, 77, 470, 528, 530, 549, 555, 557 Voke, Heather, 557 Voting Rights Act, 93, 94 Vowel Sounds, 364, 366, 515, 525 Vowels, 357, 364, 513, 515, 518, 519, 524, 525 Vygotsky, Lev, 194, 195, 209, 210, 211, 212 W Waddy, Reginald, 302 Wake Island, 243 Walden, 275 Wales, 119 Walker, Alice, 8, 170 Walker, Morton, 225 Wall Street Journal, 125, 127, 603 Wall Street Week, 380, 388 Waller, Bruce N., 134 Walling, Robin, 219 Wal-Mart, 108, 126 War on Terror, 92, 188 Warburton, Nigel, 134 Wards, 313, 326, 336, 339, 342, 440, 446 Warner, Nicholas O., 312, 326 Warnick, Bryan R., 98 Warren, Christina, 348 Warwick, Ian, 79 Washington, 44 Washington, Booker T., 253 Washington, George, 83, 84, 219, 266, 608 Watch & Learn: Text Comprehension, 474 We Are Seven, 311, 312 We Wear the Mask, 400 Weaver, Constance, 512 Weber, Max, 122 Webster, Noah, 73, 74, 621 Week 1 Journal, 467 Week 2 Assignment, 510 Week 4 Journal, 479 Week Five Capstone Essay, 589 Week Four Assignment, 518 Week Three Assignment, 514 Welfare, 40, 54, 86, 92, 99, 130, 142, 147, 148, 150, 182, 191, 240, 257, 268, 303, 493, 595 Welfarism, 152 Wellhousen, Karyn, 222 Wells Fargo, 104 Werewolf, 395, 396 West Semitic Syllabary, 364 West, Cornel, 255 Western Colonialism, 155 Western Culture, 30, 125, 126, 127, 148, 150, 390, 391 Western Imperialism, 392 Western Union, 239 Westernized, 150, 151, 382 WETA Public Television, 474, 475, 625 What to the Slave is the Fourth of July, 270, 271 Undergraduate Series 673 Wheeler, L. Kip, 417 Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?, 26 Where Do You Stand?, 530 Whicher, George F., 426 White Elephants, 29 White House, 83, 91, 96, 128, 610 White Houses, 282 White Man’s Burden, 243, 244 White Supremacists, 254, 281 Whiteman, Paul, 254 Whites, 128, 237, 238, 239 Whitla, William, 489 Whitman, Walt, 271, 272, 275, 276, 277, 621, 625 Whole-language Education, 507 Who's Irish, 493 Why Do We Teach?, 553 Why I Wish to Become a Teacher, 533 Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, 438 Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper', 393 Why SOPA and PIPA Won’t Stop Real Piracy, 348 WIC, 187 Wiccan, 548, 549 Widow, 35, 42, 45, 258, 267, 279, 451, 489, 490, 495, 496, 502, 504 Wife of the Village, 41, 42 Wife-swapping, 43 Wiggles, 226 Wikipedia, 439 Wilde, Oscar, 171, 176 Wilhoit, Gene, 75 Willcox, Louise Collier, 276 William the Conqueror, 158 Williamson, Gerry, 427 Wilson, Chris, 37 Wilson, James, 84 Wilson, Sandip, 513 Wilson, Woodrow, 240 Wind Power, 185 Windell, James, 208 Winter Dreams, 284 Wisdom, 31, 35, 210, 310, 311, 315, 319, 350, 432, 434, 459, 559, 608 674 A Journey Through My College Papers Witchcraft, 50 With Six Months to Live, 67 Wolf, Susan, 140, 602 Wolfgang, Charles H., 222 Womankind Worldwide, 350 Womanly Virtues, 142 Woman-to-woman Marriage, 41, 42 Women's Rights, 36, 382, 466, 467 Wood, Chip, 344, 347 Woolf, Virginia, 320 Worcester, Massachusetts, 427 Word Wall, 221 WordPad, 332 Wordsworth, William, 311, 312, 313, 455 Work Ethic, 493, 546, 557, 562, 573, 590 Working Class, 97, 111, 145, 146, 159, 160, 239, 268, 422, 425 World Bank, 183 World Trade Center, 100, 256 World Trade Organization, 179, 183 World War I, 9, 240, 242, 253, 329 World War I Propaganda, 240 World War II, 9, 128, 243, 245, 246, 247, 254, 258, 425, 616, 626 World Wide Web, 544 Wright, James, 175 Writing, 362 Writing a Final Paper, 332 Writing an Annotated Bibliography, 491 Writing Competition, 17, 330 Wroth, Mary, 302 WTO, 179, 183 WWII-Related Events, 245 X Xiamen Overseas Chinese Electronics Company, 390 Y Yakuza, 180 Yale Law School, 95 Yale University, 191 Yeats, William Butler, 321, 325, 328, 329, 330, 603, 613 Yellow Trout Lily, 427 Yeltsin Government, 152 Yemen, 36 Yet Do I Marvel, 282 YMCA, 217 You Tube, 226 Young Goodman Brown, 267 YouTube, 474 Yukagirians, 362 Z Zamora, Dulce, 144 Zeitlin, Marilyn, 247 Zone of Proximal Development, 194, 210, 211, 212, 229, 233 ZPD, 194, 210 Zulu, 41 Undergraduate Series 675