"Beauty is truth, truth beauty--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
-William Butler Yeats
The connection between education, philosophy, and politics has been a much-investigated and very controversial topic throughout the years. In Global Ethics we have read several texts pertaining to the idea of education and its effects on democracy, specifically, how shaping education will in turn shape a society. Nowadays, people often view educational goals in two parts; on one hand we have the epistemological aspects of the term, and on the other there are the social responsibilities that need to be taught. The idea that civic responsibilities need to be taught in school has, in recent years especially, emerged as a very troubling topic. When one intertwines education with politics, complications are sure to follow...
In the Kahne - Westheimer article, we are presented with a framework for raising socially responsible citizens within a democratic framework. Citizens are grouped into three categories: personally responsible, participatory, and justice-oriented citizens. I do not agree with this trichotomy. A citizen can be part of one of these groups, or part of two of them, or three, or none. I also think that there is a plethora of problems associated with the joining of politics and education. We now look back at the educational systems of Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia with a combination of horror and disgust. It is obvious that we are right and they were wrong is it not? That is what we have been conditioned to believe, that democracy is in fact the best (or, the least bad) form of government. I think that there is an alternative to teaching people to fulfill a political obligation to serve the community, and that is teaching them to uphold an ethical responsibility to the tribe. I say tribe because I want to bring the discussion back to a more primal period, when flashy terms like "community" (and the various connotations associated) did not really exist.
I mentioned in the introduction that many people view education in two categories. On one hand we have the process of rote memorization, remembering facts and statistics, and on the other we have the more important process of teaching civic responsibility. I do not think that this duality exists. I think that the epistemological and ethical goals of education are harmoniously intertwined. "Truth is Beauty, Beauty is Truth". Teaching students facts has been misrepresented by new-age educators in my opinion. It isn't about facts, it is about Truth. Students must be taught about the Truth, their origins, the past, the present, the future. When interpreting the Truth, Beauty is apparent. There is a keen sense of awe that we all experience when we gaze into the depths of space through the Hubble Telescope, that sense is beauty. When we teach people about the Truth of society, the philosophical ideas connected with community, mutual necessity, altruism, they will see beauty in that and feel an obligation to help others. You do not teach people to serve others. You inform people, and leave them to decide. The real goal of education, in my view, is to teach the Truth, and the students will find Beauty. This is true freedom, teachers have a right to inform their pupils, it is the sacred duty of an educator, and the student should retain the right to choose what to do after this.
Sunday 22 February 2009
Sunday 15 February 2009
Response to Friedman's Article
I thought that this was a very well written and interesting article. It helped to illuminate the various perspectives people have regarding the issue of global warming. One phrase stood out to me though, it was the passage when Friedman said he noticed satellite dishes on the U.S. Embassy, and solar panels on the Chinese one.
"The U.S. Embassy’s roof is loaded with antennae and listening gear. The Chinese Embassy’s roof is loaded with ... new Chinese-made solar hot-water heaters."
I thought this was a stunning contrast. We often treat China as a gargantuan waste-and-pollution-producing machine, yet here we see that the residents of the U.S. Embassy seem to be far more concerned with security than sustainability. In stark contrast, the Chinese are more focused on sustainability and alternative forms of energy. One could of course argue that China is trying to attract businesses, and looking as if they are "green" is a means of attracting investors, but the end result is undeniable. Friedman's observation filled me with hope, for if a massive country like China is beginning to change, and if others follow suit, then there might be hope for us yet.
"The U.S. Embassy’s roof is loaded with antennae and listening gear. The Chinese Embassy’s roof is loaded with ... new Chinese-made solar hot-water heaters."
I thought this was a stunning contrast. We often treat China as a gargantuan waste-and-pollution-producing machine, yet here we see that the residents of the U.S. Embassy seem to be far more concerned with security than sustainability. In stark contrast, the Chinese are more focused on sustainability and alternative forms of energy. One could of course argue that China is trying to attract businesses, and looking as if they are "green" is a means of attracting investors, but the end result is undeniable. Friedman's observation filled me with hope, for if a massive country like China is beginning to change, and if others follow suit, then there might be hope for us yet.
Wednesday 11 February 2009
Social Experiment with Gender
Today was the cross-dress day for spirit week at my school. As one of the few boys who opted to dress as I normally do and not cross dress, I was able to gain an outsider's perspective when the class took a trip across the road to 7-11. The experiment was to observe the reactions to crossing the cultural boundaries of gender. I anticipated that in Taiwan, where there is less of a cultural binary in terms of gender issues, the popular reaction would be laughter. I was right. People treated the class as more of a joke than any serious offense or assault on cultural standards. I think that crossing cultural boundaries for gender can be healthy if one feels an honest urge to do so. People should not try to make themselves into something they are not, and this goes both ways. You shouldn't cross dress if you don't want to, but if you feel an earnest desire to do so, you can perhaps begin to transgress into the realm of cultural taboos. Males are less accepted when they cross dress, that is clear. I submit that it is harder for males to cross dress because we are in constant competition with each other to find females, and we know it. More to come...
Sunday 8 February 2009
Ideas for Innovation
This article "Rebuilding the Stock of Social Capital", though written nearly a decade ago, contains some very valid points which must be considered with the utmost seriousness. In the brief, but informative article, misters Sander and Putnam set about to identify the main cause of the problem of declining community spirit and contribution, and their main solution is to alter the schooling system. They write about nine ideas for innovation, changes made in the educational system which, if put into effect, they argue will have a positive impact on society as a whole.
The first idea is to encourage parents to become more active in the education of their children. This is a tremendously important point, because parents, as the main financiers of education, have a great deal of say in how their children's educations are conducted. The only issue with this is that parental involvement can be encouraged, but not created. It is very difficult to spur interest in a community where parents traditionally do not feel an urge to be active in their children's learning.
The second idea is to make schools smaller. This has its merits, but I feel that it also has disadvantages. Coming from a small school, I can confidently say that it often frustrates me. In small schools, students often suffer because of the lack of facilities and social diversity. Students do not have the choice to properly pick which social circles they want to be involved in (because there are so few). As a result of this, I feel that many students in small schools turn out very similar to each other in terms of personal identity, because a lack of social diversity does not give rise to an abundance of diverse and interesting people. One of the better aspects of smaller schools is the idea that there is more concentrated interaction between teachers and students. This is the most important point in support of smaller schools. When teachers interact with students on the individual level, they can often create interest where there hadn't been any before.
The third idea is to "use community service to foster civic engagement". This is a valid point, but I think it is secondary to the more urgent task of teaching about civic engagement. The essential goal of a school (in terms of civics) should be to make students aware of certain issues, to create the desire to help others, and then to provide an outlet through community service.
The fourth idea to incorporate civics into education, as I mentioned above, is one of the most important points on the list. Schools should aim to produce people who want to do community service, not people who have simply done community service. I feel that the college application process has been enormously detrimental to the idea of doing community service, because it has turned it into a requirement, not something that a student genuinely likes to do. Through incorporating civics into education, hopefully students will begin to want to devote their time to community service purely for the sake of helping others, rather than helping their college applications.
The fifth idea regarding funding is a nice, but tricky one. It is easy to say that schools should encourage and fund extra curricular activities, but the simple truth is that schools often lack the finances to do so. I think that there should be some degree of engagement from the school when it comes to a student's extra curricular activities, but it should not be expected.
The sixth idea of modeling a high school on a community is a bit vague. I think it is important that students learn essential life skills and social values in school, but these can be taught without modeling a school on a community. I think that bringing in the idea of "community" is to unnecessarily turn the situation into something it is not. We are simply talking about the passing on of age-old social values, which can be done in education without bringing "community" into the equation.
The seventh idea that schools need to create opportunities for meaningful contribution is very important. The faculty of a school should be willing to listen to the concerns of the student body and also be willing to pay heed to said concerns. Students should have the opportunity to actually take part in the creation of school policies, because this creates a sense of involvement in the students and will probably raise interest in community service.
The eighth idea of establishing mentor programs is in my opinion the worst on the list. You cannot establish a "mentor program". You cannot pair a student with an adult and tell the student that the adult is their mentor, that just isn't how mentoring works. Instead schools should focus on fostering close relationships between students and teachers, and hope that students will find mentors or similar figures in the teacher body. This is a much more realistic and helpful solution.
The final idea of asking students for solution is important as well. As I mentioned above; when you create opportunities for students to actually take part in solution-finding processes at school, they begin to feel more involved and will probably be more willing to participate in such activities outside of school.
The first idea is to encourage parents to become more active in the education of their children. This is a tremendously important point, because parents, as the main financiers of education, have a great deal of say in how their children's educations are conducted. The only issue with this is that parental involvement can be encouraged, but not created. It is very difficult to spur interest in a community where parents traditionally do not feel an urge to be active in their children's learning.
The second idea is to make schools smaller. This has its merits, but I feel that it also has disadvantages. Coming from a small school, I can confidently say that it often frustrates me. In small schools, students often suffer because of the lack of facilities and social diversity. Students do not have the choice to properly pick which social circles they want to be involved in (because there are so few). As a result of this, I feel that many students in small schools turn out very similar to each other in terms of personal identity, because a lack of social diversity does not give rise to an abundance of diverse and interesting people. One of the better aspects of smaller schools is the idea that there is more concentrated interaction between teachers and students. This is the most important point in support of smaller schools. When teachers interact with students on the individual level, they can often create interest where there hadn't been any before.
The third idea is to "use community service to foster civic engagement". This is a valid point, but I think it is secondary to the more urgent task of teaching about civic engagement. The essential goal of a school (in terms of civics) should be to make students aware of certain issues, to create the desire to help others, and then to provide an outlet through community service.
The fourth idea to incorporate civics into education, as I mentioned above, is one of the most important points on the list. Schools should aim to produce people who want to do community service, not people who have simply done community service. I feel that the college application process has been enormously detrimental to the idea of doing community service, because it has turned it into a requirement, not something that a student genuinely likes to do. Through incorporating civics into education, hopefully students will begin to want to devote their time to community service purely for the sake of helping others, rather than helping their college applications.
The fifth idea regarding funding is a nice, but tricky one. It is easy to say that schools should encourage and fund extra curricular activities, but the simple truth is that schools often lack the finances to do so. I think that there should be some degree of engagement from the school when it comes to a student's extra curricular activities, but it should not be expected.
The sixth idea of modeling a high school on a community is a bit vague. I think it is important that students learn essential life skills and social values in school, but these can be taught without modeling a school on a community. I think that bringing in the idea of "community" is to unnecessarily turn the situation into something it is not. We are simply talking about the passing on of age-old social values, which can be done in education without bringing "community" into the equation.
The seventh idea that schools need to create opportunities for meaningful contribution is very important. The faculty of a school should be willing to listen to the concerns of the student body and also be willing to pay heed to said concerns. Students should have the opportunity to actually take part in the creation of school policies, because this creates a sense of involvement in the students and will probably raise interest in community service.
The eighth idea of establishing mentor programs is in my opinion the worst on the list. You cannot establish a "mentor program". You cannot pair a student with an adult and tell the student that the adult is their mentor, that just isn't how mentoring works. Instead schools should focus on fostering close relationships between students and teachers, and hope that students will find mentors or similar figures in the teacher body. This is a much more realistic and helpful solution.
The final idea of asking students for solution is important as well. As I mentioned above; when you create opportunities for students to actually take part in solution-finding processes at school, they begin to feel more involved and will probably be more willing to participate in such activities outside of school.
Thursday 4 December 2008
The End of Suburbia in Taiwan and the U.S.
Suburbia was the term given to a large amount of land in the U.S. which was outside of the cities. The original vision of suburbia was something akin to a mansion in the countryside; reality could not be more different. Suburbia has proven itself to be a real threat to sustainability. The houses in suburbia do not even partially resemble the romantic picture painted for people, and the geography of suburbia does not help much for sustainability. The central problem is that suburbia is too far away from most work places, and it costs a tremendous amount in fuel to travel from work to home. The regular commuting from house to work also creates pollution. Such a large number of people live in suburbia that the problem is compounded manifold. Those are the central issues with Suburbia in the U.S.
In Taiwan, I do not feel we face the problem of the sustainability for suburbia. Taiwan is simply too small for us to designate a massive portion of land to countryside homes. We do face a similar issue in that people in Taiwan are used to the idea of traveling miles and miles for work, then returning. I know there are even people that travel from city to city in order to go to school in the mornings. Taiwan faces the same problem with pollution. Nobody is exempt from the pollution issue, in Taiwan, the problem takes the form of scooters. So many people drive scooters in Taiwan that it is creating a serious environmental problem. Scooters make it easier to travel short distances, so people take scooters instead of walking. Scooters also carry a maximum of up to 2 adults (safely) so carpooling is not an option with scooters. Taiwan faces the same problems as the U.S., just not in the form of Suburbia.
In Taiwan, I do not feel we face the problem of the sustainability for suburbia. Taiwan is simply too small for us to designate a massive portion of land to countryside homes. We do face a similar issue in that people in Taiwan are used to the idea of traveling miles and miles for work, then returning. I know there are even people that travel from city to city in order to go to school in the mornings. Taiwan faces the same problem with pollution. Nobody is exempt from the pollution issue, in Taiwan, the problem takes the form of scooters. So many people drive scooters in Taiwan that it is creating a serious environmental problem. Scooters make it easier to travel short distances, so people take scooters instead of walking. Scooters also carry a maximum of up to 2 adults (safely) so carpooling is not an option with scooters. Taiwan faces the same problems as the U.S., just not in the form of Suburbia.
Monday 1 December 2008
Organic Farming and Enron
Organic farming has been widely accepted as being more healthy and ecologically friendly than its non-organic counterpart. This attitude has spawned a new type of competition amongst organic farmers: the race to be the most organic. The organic movement began in the sixties as a type of counter-culture movement which aimed to allow people to get back to their natural roots (no pun intended). It has since then been transformed into a business in which people desperately try to outsell each other in the organic market economy. This is ironic because the idealistic organic movement of the sixties has now morphed into something resembling industrial farming much more than organic farming. One may point to Enron and argue for a similar case. Enron began (presumably) with rather innocent motives, but eventually became corrupt due to the need to stay in the financial competition. Everything does change into the way the world is, at least in the economic sector.
The process of organic farming has also come a long way from its original state. Instead of the original idea of farming as naturally as possible, organic farmers now try to control nature as much as possible in their farming. Everything seems to be controlled to yield the most gain out of the farming process. Enron was a similar case; the people at Enron felt as if they had to maintain control over everything, and even spoke about trading weather. Nowadays, the term organic has been reduced to a word that means almost nothing, it is just another way to sell a product.
The process of organic farming has also come a long way from its original state. Instead of the original idea of farming as naturally as possible, organic farmers now try to control nature as much as possible in their farming. Everything seems to be controlled to yield the most gain out of the farming process. Enron was a similar case; the people at Enron felt as if they had to maintain control over everything, and even spoke about trading weather. Nowadays, the term organic has been reduced to a word that means almost nothing, it is just another way to sell a product.
Monday 24 November 2008
Crime and Punishment and Enron
The collapse of Enron was perhaps the most spectacular financial scandal in the last century. Enron was – on the surface – one of the most stable and powerful businesses in the market, but they used a marketing system known as Mark to Market, this allowed them to manipulate their projected gains in money and essentially allowed them to make up their profits and gains. I could spend a very long time detailing all of Enron's crimes, but it is far more succinct to say that Enron was a company heralded by many as the most innovative company in the world, but it simply got too greedy. One instance of the CEOs of Enron got too greedy was that they had preposterous ideas such as trading bandwidth and even weather. How on earth one can think that there would be a market in trading weather is far beyond me, it is also indicative of an excess of hubris, an excess shared by nearly all the CEOs of Enron, Jeff Skilling in particular.
Jeff Skilling was thought to be one of the most creative and intelligent businessmen in the world. I find it hard to disagree with that statement; Skilling certainly was intelligent, as well as creative. Skilling's fatal flaw was that he had certain insecurities (at one point in the film, they mentioned that he was a perfect example of a nerd who had transformed himself into something new, and was determined to make a difference), and that in order to compensate for said insecurities, he puffed up his ego to the point where there was practically nothing left but ego. It is always disappointing to see somebody with so much natural talent go to waste, as is the case with Jeff Skilling. He is currently serving time (24 years) in a federal prison in Minnesota.
I feel that the main way that Enron connects to Global Ethics is that in most of the other documentaries we've watched, humans have been exploiting the planet, and indirectly harming other humans, but in Enron, humans were clearly exploiting other humans the same way so many other companies exploit nature. The point is that corporations are designed to value profits more than anything else, whatever the cost. Other businesses do it daily and nightly, they are draining the planet of it's resources and beauty in order to make a buck. Enron simply brings this point home by illustrating to us that it can effect us directly as well.
Jeff Skilling was thought to be one of the most creative and intelligent businessmen in the world. I find it hard to disagree with that statement; Skilling certainly was intelligent, as well as creative. Skilling's fatal flaw was that he had certain insecurities (at one point in the film, they mentioned that he was a perfect example of a nerd who had transformed himself into something new, and was determined to make a difference), and that in order to compensate for said insecurities, he puffed up his ego to the point where there was practically nothing left but ego. It is always disappointing to see somebody with so much natural talent go to waste, as is the case with Jeff Skilling. He is currently serving time (24 years) in a federal prison in Minnesota.
I feel that the main way that Enron connects to Global Ethics is that in most of the other documentaries we've watched, humans have been exploiting the planet, and indirectly harming other humans, but in Enron, humans were clearly exploiting other humans the same way so many other companies exploit nature. The point is that corporations are designed to value profits more than anything else, whatever the cost. Other businesses do it daily and nightly, they are draining the planet of it's resources and beauty in order to make a buck. Enron simply brings this point home by illustrating to us that it can effect us directly as well.
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