Sunday, November 25, 2012

Teaching Virtue


Can virtue be taught?  When I look up the word virtue, this is one of the definitions that come up from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue


Virtue (Latin: virtus, Ancient Greek: ρετή "arete") is moral excellence. A virtue is a positive trait or quality deemed to be morally good and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being. Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting collective and individual greatness.


The definition “moral excellence” baffles me.  What is “moral excellence”?  How can we measure what is moral?  Morality is different for everyone at least that is how the Sophists believe.  I believe this too; so how can we judge what is excellent morally and what is not? 

As I am nearing the end of my History of Rhetoric class, this question of whether virtue can be taught comes up regularly in the readings.  Isocrates believes that virtue couldn’t be taught, but teachers could help students to get close to being virtuous.  Is this true?  I believe that teachers can lay down the fundamentals of virtue, but it’s up to the students to decide to be virtuous or not.

This idea of teaching virtue as a focus during the ancient Greek era is so relevant today.  Many students are being subjected to so many tests that there is little room left for analytical, critical thought.  I believe that if we can come close to teaching virtue or how to be virtuous, it is through critical thought: giving students the skills to think for themselves, therefore gaining the confidence to make good, rational decision on their own.  But with all these tests and teachers focusing their time primarily on testing, are our students getting further away from learning the fundamentals of how to be virtuous?  Is education pulling away from helping our students gain moral and ethical skills through critical thought?  Just some questions I have been pondering over this past quarter…

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Go MOOC Yourself



New York Times has deemed 2012, “The year of the MOOC.”  So what exactly is a MOOC?  The acronym stands for Massive Open Online Courses, and many universities and schools have become very interested in it.  They are online courses for students to take to continue their education.  So what is the difference between the MOOC and other online courses?  MOOC is free, but credit-less classes and apparently it is huge and continues to grow in the academic world.  Students can take courses that are designed like actual courses in a school, but they do not have to pay.  However, if they want the credit for the course they take, they then must pay for it.  The work is also shared amongst the students/participants and the facilitator and everyone can keep the work in the end.  MOOC refers to the course as “participatory,” this sense of engagement with everyone else in the course.  There aren’t any assignments; the courses are more focused on engaging with one another and building up network connections. 
The courses are distributed, meaning that videos, social networks, blogs, etc. are all connected and work together to create this shared network of ideas.

Though MOOCs is becoming more and more popularized within the academic spectrum, the controversy questioning the validity of internet classroom connection compared to face-to-face lectures continues to ensue.  Can online courses be just as effective as face-to-face lectures?  It’s difficult to say considering that I have never taken an online class.  However, I have known people to take online courses and they felt that from them, they learned a great deal.  There is a discipline needed to be maintained in a classroom, however, taking an online course requires a particular different kind of discipline.  Students must keep up with their course, and not succumb to procrastination and laziness.  It is a tough discipline, one that requires a great want and desire to learn and be a part of an online, academic group. 

So, I wonder, is MOOC the next step in education?  Is this the future of education?  So many people do not have the time, money, or drive to attend school, yet they have the thirst for knowledge and to be a part of a larger community in which they can share that knowledge.  MOOC offers that experience and allows for people to be a part of a growing network of shared information. 

As a professional student who is only used to face-to-face interaction and the occasional blogging for specific classes, I find this source of education fascinating and will most likely investigate it more, watching as it continues to flourish.

I am interested to know how you all feel about this growing phenomenon.  Is it a valid source in the educational field?  Will this replace other online courses?  Will it offer the same challenges that regular school courses offer?

Though face-to-face interactive classrooms will continue to be an integral part of our education, MOOC seems to offer an alternative for the accessibility of taking courses online.  It will be interesting to watch as this continues to progress…

Faithfully,

Cristina

Sunday, November 11, 2012

The creative process


Blogging seems to be my only outlet for any sort of creative writing lately.  Since I have been spending the majority of my time studying for my upcoming finals and working on two research papers, I have absolutely no time for anything else. 
Although, I cannot spend time writing creatively, I have been writing a lot due to all my schoolwork and have found that the creative process I used has transferred from fictional writing to discovering a solid thesis for my rhetoric paper.  It is difficult when given a research paper to write, having to come up with a thesis that you find interesting enough to spend the great amount of time researching.  I always thought that when it came to writing a research paper, there was very little room for creative energy.  However, there is a certain creativity that does result from finding a thesis and being able to argue it well. 
The Rhetoric class that I am currently taking has shown me that creativity lies heavily in arguing, whether through orality or literacy.  Even though fictional writing, poetry, etc. requires an artistic approach to the discourse, writing a thesis has its moments of creativity.  My research paper will focus on the rhetorical analysis of war speeches and their effects on the audience.  I came up with this thesis because I have always found an interest in war speeches and how they are used to rouse the audience to either persuade the troops or the citizens. 
The process of creativity for writing my paper relies on the fact that I can argue for the validity of these speeches and their ability to succeed in gaining the support of the audience.  Of course, I would prefer to spend my time writing short stories or poetry, but I surprisingly am excited to begin my paper, to attempt to persuade my audience with the importance of war speeches. 
Creativity in writing is needed for research papers; without it, you are left with a dry, poorly argued paper.  Trying to be creative while writing my paper is not easy; I find that I want to focus more on the flow and pattern of my words rather than the actual argument itself.  But as I continue to research for my paper and discover new facets of rhetoric through war speeches, I realize that creativity is present in my argument.
Creativity does exist outside the fictional world of writing.  Since school has left me without any time to write stories or poems, I am taking advantage of my creative energy in researching and writing my paper…and of course, these blogs.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

One Scribble at a Time


It seems like all I'm talking about these days is schoolwork. It makes sense. It’s consuming my life and will continue to be my main focus until December 5th. Yes, I have the date memorized. I've already started planning what I’m going to do once I’m set free. These daydreams are dangerous, but sometimes I need them to get me through the most taxing assignments.

 Regretfully, I haven’t been doing any creative writing. In place of actual poems I have scraps of paper with strange scribbles and random rushed thoughts. As I was cleaning, I found all sorts of note cards,  old receipts, and paper bag remnants with single words or phrases scrawled in barely legible pencil (it’s my preferred writing implement). I've now relegated my scraps to a bucket. But I’m awfully concerned that when I try to go through the bucket and draw some inspiration from my disjointed thoughts I will have completely lost access to that fleeting spark. Another thing I've started doing is writing passing thoughts on the notepad on my Iphone. I know…pretty gross.

I've always favored the organic process of writing by hand, but out of convenience, or survival, I'm resorting to technology. It’s creating a self-conflicting disgust. On the one hand I don’t want to stop writing completely. On the other hand I feel silly. I feel like my words mean less.There is just something about looking at your words on a miniature glowing screen with a yellow notepad background that is absurd.

What I want to know is what method do you use for writing? Do you notice a difference in the quality of your work when you switch from typing to handwriting? It will be interesting once the quarter is over to return to my scrap bucket and see if those ideas have been incubating in the recesses of my mind, or if they were merely superficial flights of fancy. I'll be sure to fill you in and continue cataloging my strange move to the fast-paced world of technology.  Or I may drop out of college, retreat to a cave, and start chiseling all of my poetry.  

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Hyggelig

Remember those several years of a foreign language you took in high school?

Of course you do. You remember how difficult it was to learn an entirely new way of perceiving, naming, and structuring thought that was entirely distinct from and seemingly illogical compared to your mother tongue.

For those of us with a native English tongue, it often seemed nonsensical and a little bit sexist that some objects and ideas had a male gender and other a female or even neutral gender. When we, as English speakers, look at chairs, trees, or historical movements and talk about them, we don't change our articles and our word endings to reflect any kind of innate gender. Not only is the language itself foreign to us, the very central concepts of the language are foreign and, in the opinions of far too many who attempt to learn French, Spanish, German, Chinese, or others, unnecessary and arbitrary.

Many of us who speak English fluently see little point in learning a foreign language because many of us pass through life only needing this universal language, and many of us also rest upon the arrogant opinion that others around the world should learn English because almost every corner of the world is familiar with and employs English over its own native language as the lingua franca (or should we say lingua angla?) of business, economics, art, literature, communication, science, etc.

For those who transitioned into English from one of these or the thousands of other languages that populate the entire world, some declaring two or more languages as a standard language for the media, publication, and interpersonal relationships, this opinion is shallow and limiting. Yes, it is very realistic and possible for someone living, for example, in a Southern California suburb to only speak English to his or her friends, family, coworkers, and colleagues and never utter a word of another language his or her entire life.

But if you think English is enough, listen to the people around you.

In Southern California, in the United States, and around the world, you will rarely hear your own language exclusively. In fact, the Anglophone world, including the United States, Canada, England, and others where English is the dominant tongue, is unique in its lack of diversity in its citizens' knowledge of languages other than English.

If you think English is enough, then you are cheating yourself of truly understanding one of the most beautiful aspects of humanity: our countless ways of expressing ourselves. You are cheating yourself of understanding writers, poets, scientists, and culture makers in their own untainted method of conveying their perceptions, knowledge, and wisdom.

As an illustration, imagine Shakespeare, the English language's literary cornerstone. Though he is taught almost ad nauseum in average middle school and high school curriculum, many students dread tackling plays like Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet because they find much of it incomprehensible to their own form of English and often ignore the text itself, seeking Spark Notes' emotionally-gutted commentary or, perhaps worse, using a side-by-side "translation" better suited to their understanding as students removed from Shakespeare's "English" by over 400 years. What's more frightening is that most of the Shakespeare editions we use in school that we find difficult to understand are themselves "translations," wiped clean of Elizabethan colloquialisms and archaic spellings that would make even the most fluent English reader woozy.

Shakespeare himself even reinterpreted these plays from authors of other tongues, liberally borrowing from Scandinavian, German, Italian, and Latin texts, and even though he may have read many of these in English translation, hundreds of multilingual scholars were arguably responsible for the success of the English language's greatest figure.

But what made him truly great in the English tongue was his depth, his insight, his wisdom, and his unmatched characterization of human beings at their most noble, their most evil, their most obedient, their most rebellious.

Now, imagine how much of our own culture and idiom we are depriving ourselves of when we refuse to read forms of English that do not line up with our contemporary expression. If we treat our own language this way, imagine the multitudes of languages and words we ignore simply because we see it as "not useful."

Furthermore, some of the most significant movements in the history and literature of English were inspired by poets, writers, and philosophers of other cultures.

The Enlightenment, out of which emerged a new respect and priority for the ideas of science and inquiry, was brought into Anglo-American culture through a multilingual interaction with the French, the Germans, and the academic use of Latin, which was inspired centuries before by the Italian Renaissance and the Catholic Church.

Without a familiarity with other languages, our English-speaking forefathers and mothers may never have brought democracy and a thirst for learning from the European melting pot to the new worlds through figures such as David Hume, John Locke, and the founders of the United States themselves.

Before I start sounding like a textbook, what I'm getting at is that we, as Americans, as Anglophones, as citizens of a global society, as readers, as writers, as poets, as lovers, as friends, are limiting our potential to understand the world in its most profound element.

Language existed for thousands, perhaps millions, of years before an inventive homo sapien thought to record his or her inexpressible musings on the wall of a cave, and to extend ourselves into the realms of other linguistic cultures and perspectives is to come closer to understanding the origin of this artistic urge to speak, to name, to declare, to encourage, to write, and to articulate unspeakable emotions to which one's mother tongue simply cannot do justice.

The title of this entry illustrates the expressiveness of other languages to emotions for which we have no expression. "Hyggelig" is a Danish word that implies coziness, openness, community, and a welcoming atmosphere. The entire Danish culture perceives itself using the nuances of this term...and some people have written thousands of words about it.

http://www.hackwriters.com/Denmark.htm

And here's a collection of some more expression-bending words and phrases:

http://betterthanenglish.com/

Danke, Merci, Farvel!

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Schoolwork...for pleasure


I have been reading many of the blogs on here and some of them discuss taking time out to read for pleasure.  After I read these blogs, I feel motivated to read for pleasure; I get up from my desk and scan my collection of novels, but then that little voice in my head reminds me of reading that must be done for school.  I retreat back to my schoolwork and let the novels on my bookshelf collect dust once again.

I try to make time to read for pleasure, but then I look at my calendar and realize that the quarter is flying by and I have 2 research papers to work on.  As a graduate student, it is so difficult to find the time to read for fun, to have a social life or to even focus on certain favorite TV shows.  Either I am taking the program too seriously by putting in more studying than I need or this is just something I need to suck up until June (when I am officially done with the program!). 

As a solution, I have decided to look at my readings for school as reading for fun.   Not to say that reading for school isn’t fun and I have to force myself to enjoy them, I am just choosing to look at the readings as more than just a necessity in order to do well in class.  Since I am mastering in Rhetoric and Composition (completed my Lit emphasis last year), I have taken quite an interest in the ancient Greeks.  Though the writing at some points is difficult to get through, the ideas that were presented during that time is so relevant today.  I have found that I do thoroughly enjoy reading the ancients and consider it pleasurable reading. 

During school, I may not be able to choose what I want to read, but I have enjoyed the readings I have done thus far.  Schoolwork can be enjoyable and can be considered reading for pleasure.  The novels on my bookshelves will continue to collect dust, but for the time being, I will continue to view reading the ancient Greeks as a pleasurable read.

My novels will have to wait to be read…until winter break, of course! 

Faithfully,

Cristina

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Figure out what you need



In this week’s blog I mostly want to take a minute to mirror a sentiment Alli expressed a couple of weeks of ago: we must make time for reading.  This sentiment was made real and relevant to me last night when I decided to carve three hours out of my schedule to spend the evening re-reading Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree.  The last time I sat down and read a book straight through was earlier this year with The Great Gatsby (and it helps when it’s roughly your 500th reading of a novel) one hung-over Sunday morning.  But before that I have no idea how long it has been since I’ve had the opportunity to do such a thing.

And the effects of last night’s journey into the great beyond of Ray Bradbury’s imagination? Similar to those of a drug, like eating chocolate after abstaining for too long- you find it difficult to stop yourself.  All day, while teaching early this morning, and while trapped inside a tutoring center for 8 hours after that, in the back of my mind has been one thought: I can’t wait to read again. 

It’s exhilarating to be excited to do something that you’ve been doing for most of your life and that has been a significant part of your life, but there is a disappointing side to this story, a side to which I’m sure many of you can relate.  It doesn’t matter how excited I am to really start reading again, and it doesn’t matter that I’ve spent all day at work anticipating starting Tender is the Night again; at the end of the day, I’m often just too tired to do it.  Hell, I can barely write this blog, let alone indulge in an enjoyable reading experience. 

So many nights I find myself sitting on the couch or in my bed (come to think of it, maybe location is my problem) after a long long day, with book in hand, and what feels like two seconds later, I’m out.  I didn’t let this problem bother me too much until now- until I’ve now rediscovered the joys of making time for reading, I’m suddenly saddened that it can’t happen more.

But it is also a matter of choice. Every Sunday night, Jack and I watch at least two hours of television together. Not bad compared to the average American, right? Plus, it’s HBO, so it’s only making us smarter. But it’s two hours nonetheless, and those are two hours, if last night is any indication, that could make a significant dent in a novel. 

Now, to be honest, I’m not saying I’m going to give up the Sunday night ritual of Boardwalk Empire to silently read a book next to Jack- I don’t want to do that. I’m not willing to. But that is precisely the point: 
I’m not willing to. I like the things I’ve chosen to spend time doing.  And when I realize I want to do more of something else, it’s a question of learning to balance and to eliminate some of the things you don’t care as much about. It’s very rarely the case that we truly don’t have the time.

So, as I confessed, I don’t choose to take time out of my HBO schedule, but I would be happy to take some time from Facebook Time and deposited it into the Reading Time account. And I would be happy to take some Downton Abbey on Netflix time (yeah, the obsession with that show was brief), and I would be more than happy to take the break time that I spend idly staring at my cell phone. And the time that I would normally spend surfing the internet when I finish this blog. All of that can willingly go into the Reading Time bank. Why not?

We all think we don’t have enough time, and to some extent, we’re all right because we don’t spend much time trying to figure out how to better incorporate the things that matter. Yes, we all need downtime where were just not doing anything, and don’t let anybody tell you that you should listen to audiobooks as you drive if you feel that you truly get something out of the downtime of listening to music instead.  But that’s the thing- take a minute and figure out what is actually adding to your life and what, in the end, is just a time suck. I trust you to know the difference.