Education Essay Example for Free

Education Essay The most prominent example of a formal setting in the book is school. However, Scout does not learn much from school. This can be examplified by the fact that when Scout is able to read better than the teacher, Miss Caroline Fisher had expected, Miss Caroline Fisher told her to tell her father to stop teaching her how to read. Instead of helping Scout to improve her reading, Mrs Fisher is impeding Scouts learning process. This shows that schools do not cater to children of different abilities and Scouts learning is restricted in school. Hence, school is not the only place where a child learns. Jem and Scout learn moral values from Atticus. This is examplified by the many values Atticus teaches them such as moral courage and to stand up for what one believes is right. Atticus brought his children up to treat the blacks and the whites as equals. When Scout tells Atticus to send Calpurnia away, Atticus told Scout that they could not survive a day without Calpurnia and he told Scout to mind her. Scout learnt that she had to treat Calpurnia (a Negro) like how she would treat a White and to be respectful towards Calpurnia. Jem looks up to Atticus and tries to emulate him. This is because Atticus is a good role model and a good father. Jem learns from Atticus to have the moral courage to fight for what is right. This is evident as Atticus went all out to fight for Tom Robinson as he believed that Tom was innocent. Atticus did this although he knew that he would face severe criticism from the people in Mycomb and that he would put his life and his childrens at risk. From the example he sets, Jem is able to learn to have the moral courage to fight for what is right. Hence, Jem and Scout do learn in informal settings. Jem also learnt to have the courage to do what one decides to do. This is evident from Jems encounter with Mrs. Dubose. Mrs Dubose is a morphine addict and she tried very hard to get rid of her addiction. Mrs. Dubose sets an alarm clock and made Jem read to her as he was angry at what she said and cut off the top of her bushes. When the alarm clock rings, it would mark the end of Jems reading time. During this period of time when Jem is reading, Mrs Dubose will refrain from taking morphine. She used this method to try and get rid of her morphine addiction. To further elaborate, Mrs. Dubose was very courageous to try and get rid of her morphine addiction as it was a very painful process. Mrs. Dubose was almost dying but she wanted to leave the world beholden to nothing so she tried her very best to get rid of her addiction and displayed a strong sense of courage. Jem learnt from Mrs. Dubose that no matter how painful the process is, one should have the courage and determination to accomplish it. Hence, Jem do learn in an informal setting. Jem and Scout also gained knowledge from a new experience that Calpurnia showed them. This is evident as Calpurnia showed them how it was like in a Negro church. By visiting their church, they learnt about the difference in the conditions of the Negroes church and their church. They also learnt more about Tom Robinsons case when Scout asked Calpurnia why the pastor demands a donation from everyone to help Tom Robinsons wife provide for her kids. From these, the children were somewhat more aware of the discrimination happening in Maycomb.

Transhumanist Philosophy Essay -- Future Science Fiction

Imagine that you are able to teleport to the not too distant future. In this world you discover that disease and poverty are no longer causes for human suffering, world hunger has become eliminated from society, and space travel is as easy as snapping your fingers. Cryonics, nanotechnology, cloning, genetic enhancement, artificial intelligence, and brain chips are all common technologies at a doctor’s office. You gasp as a friendly sounding electronic voice cries out, â€Å"Welcome to the future Natural!† You are unsure of whether being called a Natural is an insult or not, so you feign a half-hearted hello at the posthuman in front of you. Getting over the initial shock you ask the posthuman, â€Å"Who are you?† The posthuman gives an electronic sounding chuckle and shakes his head. He replies, â€Å"I am a Posthuman, and you Natural, are in Utopia. Welcome.† Sounds pretty science-fiction based right? Well, to those who follow the Transhumanist philosophy, a â€Å"utopian† world could be a reality. Susan Schneider a philosophy professor at University of Pennsylvania defines Transhumanism as a â€Å"philosophical, cultural, and political movement which holds that the human species is now only in a comparatively early phase and that its very evolution will be altered by developing technologies† (271). In simple terms, transhumanists believe that the human species is in its early phase. Our species is a work in progress and our evolution will be altered by advancing technologies. With these advancements in technology, transhumanists have optimistic plans about the future. Transhumanists hope that as our current technology advances we will soon be able to create superhumans or â€Å"posthumans†. According to the World Tanshumanist Association a... ...d, working definition of what a person is, enhancing will be newest fad. Humankind is on an irreversible evolutionary journey where super-intelligence will be the normal IQ for children, war and death are no longer terms in the english dictionary, and being 1,000 years old is considered young. It is a bright and prosperous future looking through the lens of a transhumanist. One that I cannot wait to see through bionic eyes. Works Cited Brooks, R. A. 2003. Prologue, In: Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us, Vintage. Elliott, C. 2003. Humanity 2.0. The Wilson Quarterly, 27(4): 13(8). Schneider, S. 2008. Future Minds: Transhumanism, Cognitive Enhancement, and the Nature of Persons. Forthcoming in: Penn Bioethics Reader. Accessed online July 20, 2010: http:/repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1037&context=neuroethics pubs

Discourse: Ellen Lupton’s Deconstructivist Theory Essay

Key concepts from Ellen Lupton’s A Post-Mortem on Deconstruction? * Deconstruction is part of a broader field of criticism known as â€Å"post-structuralism,† whose theorist have included Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, among others. Each of these writers has looked at modes of representation – from alphabetic writing to photojournalism – as culturally powerful technologies that transform and construct â€Å"reality†. The phrase â€Å"deconstruction† quickly became a cliche in design journalism, where it usually has described a style featuring fragmented shapes, extreme angles, and aggressively asymmetrical arrangements. This collection of formal devices was easily transferred from architecture to graphic design, where it named existing tendencies and catalyzed new ones. The labels â€Å"deconstructivism,† â€Å"deconstructionism,† and just plain â€Å"decon† have served to blanket the differences between a broad range of design practices and an equally broad range of theoretical ideas. Rather than viewing it as a style, you can view deconstructivism as a process – an act of questioning. In Derrida’s original theory, deconstruction asks a question: how does representation inhabit reality? How does the external appearance of a thing get inside its internal essence? How does the surface get under the skin? For example, the Western tradition has tended to value the internal mind as the sacred source of soul and intellect, while denouncing the body as an earthly, mechanical shell. Countering this view is the understanding that the conditions of bodily experience temper the way we think and act. A parallel question for graphic design is this: how does visual from get inside the â€Å"content† of writing? How has typography refused to be a passive, transparent vessel for written texts, developing as a system with its own structures and devices? * The Western philosophical tradition has denigrated writing as an inferior, dead copy of the living, spoken word, when we speak, we draw on our inner consciousness, but when we write, our words are inert and abstract. The written word loses its connection to our inner selves. Language is set adrift. * It has recently become unfashionable to compare language and design. In the fields of architecture and products, the paradigm of language is losing its luster as a theoretical model – we no longer think of buildings, tea pots, for fax machines as â€Å"communication† cultural messages, in the manner of post-Modern classicism or product semantics. For the design fields, â€Å"deconstruction† has been reduced to the name of a historical period rather than an ongoing way of approaching design. Derrida made a similar point in 1994, saying that deconstruction will never be over, because it describes a way of thinking about language that has always existed. For graphic design, deconstruction isn’t dead, either, because it’s not a style or movement, but a way of asking questions through our work. Critical form-making will always be part of design practice, whatever theoret ical tools one might use to identify it. Apollinaire’s Il Pleut is a perfect example of the juxtaposition of language and design – of typography and content. Like the other structural games calligrammes are often referred to, Il Pleut uses typography as an active picture rather than a passive frame, demonstrating only the beginning of the possibilities available for manipulating type to reflect language. Often graphic design can reveal cultural myths by using familiar symbols and styles in new ways, and Apollinaire does exactly that in this futurist, poetic, and exciting way. Marinetti, another Futurist-classified poet, was a master in deconstruction — letting the words themselves build imagery both literally and figuratively; the letterforms and sentences themselves becoming the building blocks of his compositions. This 1913 work by Marinetti, Words of Liberty, is a perfect example of the theory of metalanguage, proposed by Roland Barthes. In his work, Elements of Semiology, he advanced the concept of the metalanguage — a systematized way of talking about concepts like meaning and grammar beyond the constraints of a traditional (first-order) language; in a metalanguage, symbols replace words and phrases. Insofar as one metalanguage is required for one explanation of first-order language, another may be required, so metalanguages may actually replace first-order languages. Barthes exposes how this structuralist system is regressive; orders of language rely upon a metalanguage by which it is explained, and therefore deconstruction itself is in danger of becoming a metalanguage, thus exposing all languages and discourse to scrutiny. A work of design can be called â€Å"deconstruction† when it exposes and transforms the established rules of writing, interrupting the sacred â€Å"inside† of content with the profane â€Å"outside† of form. Weingart is the perfect example of this, using not only letterforms themselves but also nonobjective elements within his composition to distort the typographic content. Yet, the link between language and typography is so close that typography is, essentially, the frontier between languages and objects; languages and images. Typography turns language into a visible, tangible artifact, and in the process transforms it irrevocably. While researching the link between the â€Å"inside† and â€Å"outside† form of content, George Orwell seemed to hold very similar views in his The Politics of English Language, speaking not of the link between typography and language but instead the written and spoken versions of English itself. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble; and what trouble does this necessarily include? Protecting one’s writing from staleness of imagery, and of course lack of precision. Both are marked by vague writing or perhaps, in some cases, sheer incompetence of modern English prose, as well as the use of dying metaphors. He concludes for us that verbal false limbs and pretentious diction are the downfall for our mangled language, and we, the ambitious struggling writers of the world, can unite against its seemingly inevitable destruction. But let us look closer at Orwell’s reasoning for a moment; that if thought corrupts language than surely language can also corrupt thought. Although written nearly 60 years before our time, he shares this ideal with a modern behemoth of writing – Stephen King. King has already imparted a great secret to us about the nature of writing – that ideas come from nowhere, and that vocabulary is one of the first steps toward a novel which actually functions as it should. One should not begin writing from the abstract, trying to dictate with impressive words or alliterative sentences; one should have an idea in mind and then set about trying to convey that idea to an audience. Vague writing only begets vague understanding, which is not the vehicle in which your novel should be riding. I personally feel that this is a powerful parallel to language and typography — that the designer should have in mind what exactly they are trying to communicate before beginning their design, instead of taking text copy and moving it around, trying to design without a firm message at hand. This eventually will end in a vague, incomprehensible and garbled communication, one which has no place in today’s world; unless of course you happen to be a self-proclaimed Dada-ist.

Training Ground For Murderers Essay - 1749 Words

Training Ground For Murderers Continued U.S. support for the School of the Americas, an institution that has trained dictators and political assassins, is completely unjustifiable. At seven o’ clock in the morning on December 11, 1981 an evil force entered the small El Salvadorian village of El Mezote (School of Assasins). With painted faces and army fatigues, the guerillas carried machine guns and automatic rifles into the peaceful village. As survivor Rufina Amaya recounts, â€Å"At ten o’clock the soldiers began to kill the men who were in the church. First, they machine-gunned them and slit their throats† (â€Å"Country Sheets for Close it Down Fast!† 3). After the men, the women were placed face down in the dusty streets and shot to†¦show more content†¦However, the school has been responsible for training dictators, assassins, and murderers like those at El Mezote. One would assume that the United States would discontinue support for an institution whose existence has escalated violence against civilians in Latin America. Yet, even in light of the massacres and dictators that have been directly linked to the schoolâ₠¬â„¢s operation, nothing has swayed the government in its unyielding support for the school. The United States established the School of the Americas in Panama in 1946, for the purpose training of Latin American military and police forces (â€Å"School of the Americas† 1, â€Å"Schools of the Americas; U.S. Military Training for Latin American Countries† 1). Prior to 1984, the United States had a network of schools in Peru and Panama that trained soldiers under CIA instruction (Buckley 5). Panamanian officials requested the U.S. to move the school out of the country, citing the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty giving Panama territorial control over the land the school occupied. In compliance, the United States withdrew the school’s operations in Panama and permanently moved the school to Fort Benning, Georgia (Buckley 5). Training Latin Americans to protect their nation through strong-arm military tactics places anShow MoreRelatedDexter Morgen- Vigilante Serial Killer Essay899 Words   |  4 Pagescommonly lain against them will be disproved and a new perspective will be given to support them. Dexter is a serial killer in Miami, FL from Dexter, a series on Showtime; however Dexter only kills murderers. Dexter is considered a felon and his actions are a capitol offense. Many would consider that grounds for Dexter to be thrown into jail, or even face death-row. But look at all the murder we allow and encourage today. Our military is trained to kill Americas enemies. While not everyone approvesRead MoreJack the Ripper and H.H. Holmes1279 Words   |  5 Pagesis possible that he had a connection to another well-known murderer, H.H. Holmes, but not just any connection. 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