Sunday, September 27, 2009
Unit 2 Blog 2
The Unit 2 reading had been barely introduced to how the tipping point functions in real-life. But Gladwell’s point is clear, and that point is that a few special people that present information in a memorable way in the right context can change the courses of history. He hopes his readers will “take these ideas and apply them to other puzzling situations and epidemics” (Gladwell 29). The main assumption with this goal is that his work will reach some of those special people who have the ability by his own measure to cause a tipping point. He also assumes that understanding a concept in a book can immediately allow it to be enacted in everyday life. Gladwell’s optimism may spring in part from the well of scientific evidence supporting his argument and the extraordinary real life examples he researched and presents. His proximity to fellow researchers and their work shows that he and those extraordinary few around him can apply these changes. He sees thing from scientist perspective, and in science application is everything. This is science based leading to the conclusion that anybody can apply the “Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, the Power Context” once empowered with information (Gladwell 29). The main implication here being that if every author uses these laws to land on the bestseller list, or if every business uses these laws to a become Fortune 500 company, then no author or business would really have uniquely effective marketing. If everyone is empowered by this information, then no is really empower because the entire playing field has been changed.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Unit 2 Bolg 1
In "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell, the main idea is that "the best way to understand... any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics". The idea is that all those tiny contributing factors will come to together in one moment to tip the scales quickly. Using Gladwell's theory, any strong change can be measured in a similar fashion to epidemics, whether it is high school drop out rates or Hush Puppies coming back in vogue.
Line 1: "Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do."
Impact 1: Here Gladwell provides clear everyday application to his idea. It can be used with businesses or crime deterrent. This sentence hints at the contagion like spread of information and actions.
Line 2: "The second distinguishing characteristic of these two examples is that in both cases little changes had big effects."
Impact 2: Recalls the term "everything counts in large amounts". The changes were small but enough of them together change everything. A new concept it seems.
Line 3: "And what can we do to deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own?"
Impact 3: The exciting idea of being able to start and control positive epidemics has wild business application that could be incredibly useful to real entrepreneurs. It could change the way businesses run advertising campaigns.
Line 1: "Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do."
Impact 1: Here Gladwell provides clear everyday application to his idea. It can be used with businesses or crime deterrent. This sentence hints at the contagion like spread of information and actions.
Line 2: "The second distinguishing characteristic of these two examples is that in both cases little changes had big effects."
Impact 2: Recalls the term "everything counts in large amounts". The changes were small but enough of them together change everything. A new concept it seems.
Line 3: "And what can we do to deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own?"
Impact 3: The exciting idea of being able to start and control positive epidemics has wild business application that could be incredibly useful to real entrepreneurs. It could change the way businesses run advertising campaigns.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Blog 2
Friere and I seem to come from very different places, but I need to address his arguement, so I began with the Strong lines activity.
Line 1: The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world.
Impact 1: Friere seems to believe that telling a student one thing means they cannot learn something contradictory and decide which answer to believe. He feels that if a student happily memorizes their vocabulary words they cannot also go out into the world learn the separate unrelated skill of fishing or picking watermelon.
Line 2: From the outset, his efforts must coincide with those of the students to engage in critical thinking and the quest for mutual humanization.
Impact 2: Any good teacher will try to ensure that the students are on the same page as the teacher. Both educator and student benefit from a mutual understanding and feeling of equality.
Line 3: The more completely the majority adapt to the purposes which the dominant minority prescribe for them (thereby depriving them of the right to their own purposes), the more easily the minority can continue to prescribe.
Impact 3: I have read this line several times but have yet understand Friere full meaning. The minority controls the majority but for what purpose remains unclear. It’s as though the minority have political goals or the power to prescribe simply make the minorities’ lives easier.
Questions: What is the goal of the minority in prescribing to the majority? Is there a solution? If there so, why doesn’t Friere who regards himself as an expert present it? Is finding the solution our task as a critical thinking exercise?
The flaw to Friere's argument lays in the fact that he presents only two ways, the banking system or a democracy styled learning. This is an either-or fallacy; teachers do not simply fall into one of two categories. This idea that all teaching can be boiled down to being oppressing or enlightening is ridiculous. A banking system is not necessarily oppressive and democracy styled learning is not always freeing. The banking system provides structure some students may need or crave; a democratic classroom may move at a slower rate to accommodate more individuals. Schools have a finite amount of time to teach and an almost infinite number of things they are responsible for teaching.
The “Banking Concept” of education in certain places is not only appropriate but necessary. The basics must be taught in order for the student to recall and use them to reason or create comprehensive ideas. Math courses build on each other, so that with out learning geometry a student cannot learn calculus. But that having been said, there comes a point when a student will branch out on their own to discover new principles and push current boundaries. This learning is individual, but it is rooted in all the basic concepts teachers spend hours trying to teach individuals.
Line 1: The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world.
Impact 1: Friere seems to believe that telling a student one thing means they cannot learn something contradictory and decide which answer to believe. He feels that if a student happily memorizes their vocabulary words they cannot also go out into the world learn the separate unrelated skill of fishing or picking watermelon.
Line 2: From the outset, his efforts must coincide with those of the students to engage in critical thinking and the quest for mutual humanization.
Impact 2: Any good teacher will try to ensure that the students are on the same page as the teacher. Both educator and student benefit from a mutual understanding and feeling of equality.
Line 3: The more completely the majority adapt to the purposes which the dominant minority prescribe for them (thereby depriving them of the right to their own purposes), the more easily the minority can continue to prescribe.
Impact 3: I have read this line several times but have yet understand Friere full meaning. The minority controls the majority but for what purpose remains unclear. It’s as though the minority have political goals or the power to prescribe simply make the minorities’ lives easier.
Questions: What is the goal of the minority in prescribing to the majority? Is there a solution? If there so, why doesn’t Friere who regards himself as an expert present it? Is finding the solution our task as a critical thinking exercise?
The flaw to Friere's argument lays in the fact that he presents only two ways, the banking system or a democracy styled learning. This is an either-or fallacy; teachers do not simply fall into one of two categories. This idea that all teaching can be boiled down to being oppressing or enlightening is ridiculous. A banking system is not necessarily oppressive and democracy styled learning is not always freeing. The banking system provides structure some students may need or crave; a democratic classroom may move at a slower rate to accommodate more individuals. Schools have a finite amount of time to teach and an almost infinite number of things they are responsible for teaching.
The “Banking Concept” of education in certain places is not only appropriate but necessary. The basics must be taught in order for the student to recall and use them to reason or create comprehensive ideas. Math courses build on each other, so that with out learning geometry a student cannot learn calculus. But that having been said, there comes a point when a student will branch out on their own to discover new principles and push current boundaries. This learning is individual, but it is rooted in all the basic concepts teachers spend hours trying to teach individuals.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Ashleen Tucker Intro DB
Paulo Friere's "The "Banking" Concept of Education" is pretentious, poorly supported, and generalizes. Friere takes no mind to audience; throwing out scientific and vaguely defined terms in an attempt to avoid the tone of a griping high school student. Terms like "conscientização", "critical faculties" and, "raison d’être" can only be deciphered with rereading. If his audience was a group of college deans perhaps Friere's diction would not be so painful but, his intended audience is students of this "banking education". He considers his audience poorly taught yet, expects them to be enticed in by his obscure vocabulary. Friere also shows a borderline obsession with repetition. The words "meekly", "oppression" and, "narration" pop up continually; by the last "oppressed" the word has lost some of its meaning.
Friere also leaves his essay without answering key questions. Teachers play the role of "oppressor" to justify their existence yet, many other roots for justifying existence are readily available and less demanding. The psychology teacher could chose to open a practice instead of teach but, some chose to teach. Friere believes "the majority adapt to the purposes which the dominant minority prescribe for them", as though somewhere someone is standing behind a curtain plotting nefariously to rule the world. What the minority "prescribe" and how that benefits the minority’s want remains undefined. The only clear gains made by the minority are unspecified amounts and types of control. Whether the gain is political, economic, or social cannot be determined. He fails to provide a concrete example of how teachers benefit from this "banking education".
Finally, the “banking education” ignores that most public education is based on a classical education. The first stage is the “Grammar Stage” where kindergarteners to fourth graders learn facts by rote. Friere’s “Banking Concept” and Aristotle’s “Grammar Stage” are one and the same. However, the second stage lasting from fifth to eighth is called the “Logic Stage” where students learn to question why and to actively seek answers. Here in most fifth grade curriculum comes the break away from straight memorization; the student learns how to find answers. The final stage, “Rhetoric Stage”, applies to ninth to twelfth graders who learn to state their own original conclusions elegantly. The Rhetoric Stage utilizes the logical drawing of conclusions in the “Logic Stage” that are based on the initial learn from the “Grammar Stage”. Thus, “Bank” learning is a necessary base to any education.
Friere presents an overstated idea with foggy vocabulary and no concrete examples.
By the end of this semester I would like to improve my critical thinking (especially under time constraints), write better, and read interesting essays.
Friere also leaves his essay without answering key questions. Teachers play the role of "oppressor" to justify their existence yet, many other roots for justifying existence are readily available and less demanding. The psychology teacher could chose to open a practice instead of teach but, some chose to teach. Friere believes "the majority adapt to the purposes which the dominant minority prescribe for them", as though somewhere someone is standing behind a curtain plotting nefariously to rule the world. What the minority "prescribe" and how that benefits the minority’s want remains undefined. The only clear gains made by the minority are unspecified amounts and types of control. Whether the gain is political, economic, or social cannot be determined. He fails to provide a concrete example of how teachers benefit from this "banking education".
Finally, the “banking education” ignores that most public education is based on a classical education. The first stage is the “Grammar Stage” where kindergarteners to fourth graders learn facts by rote. Friere’s “Banking Concept” and Aristotle’s “Grammar Stage” are one and the same. However, the second stage lasting from fifth to eighth is called the “Logic Stage” where students learn to question why and to actively seek answers. Here in most fifth grade curriculum comes the break away from straight memorization; the student learns how to find answers. The final stage, “Rhetoric Stage”, applies to ninth to twelfth graders who learn to state their own original conclusions elegantly. The Rhetoric Stage utilizes the logical drawing of conclusions in the “Logic Stage” that are based on the initial learn from the “Grammar Stage”. Thus, “Bank” learning is a necessary base to any education.
Friere presents an overstated idea with foggy vocabulary and no concrete examples.
By the end of this semester I would like to improve my critical thinking (especially under time constraints), write better, and read interesting essays.
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