My reflection on "The Emancipated Spectator"

Jacques Ranciere focuses on how the theatre needs to be reformed.  To do so, he believes that the two types of intelligence in people need to be equalized.  The two types of intelligence come in the forms of a knowledgable master, and an ignorant person.
What the ignorant person has to do is close the gap between what he knows, and what he still doesn't know but can learn by the same process as the master did.  And what the master has to do is close the gap between his ignorance and knowledge.
Emancipation can also be looked at as the idea of dismissing the difference between looking and acting, where the spectator is the looker, and the performer is the actor.  This will create an active spectator, who observes, selects, compares his observations with past observations from another time and place, and then interprets his information.
Even if the superior group and the inferior group were to switch roles, the structure stays the same.  Ranciere talks about a "third term" in the process of intellectual emancipation more towards the end of his article.  This third term is the mediation of books.  It is the something that is between the master and the student.  It appears as the "instance of separation, dispossession, and treachery."  Books create the power to translate in your own way what you are looking at.
To better understand the idea of an emancipated spectator, it is important to acknowledge that every spectator is already an actor in their own story, and every actor is in turn the spectator of the same kind of story.
In all of these performances, Jacques Ranciere says "it should be a matter of linking what one knows with what one does not know."  He also believes that "An emancipated community is in fact a community of storytellers and translators."  This calls for spectators who are active interpreters and know how to frame the story of a new adventure in a new idiom.
In "The Emancipated Spectator", Ranciere also talks about the history of workers and realized that it was not a matter of setting free the distance of ignorance and knowledge, but a matter of time vs. space.  These workers were doomed to do nothing after their day of work but to get to bed early to restore there energy for another hard day of work the next day.  They wanted to blur the opposition of members of a collective body and "individuals".  This created a new type of knowledge predicated on the presupposition of "likeness."  The chronicles of this likeness entails the reframing of the relationship between doing, seeing, and saying.  These workers felt that they didn't have enough leisurely time to stroll and look at random as other individuals did.
The way to fix this was to create a "work of translation, showing how empirical stories and philosophical discourses translate each other."  This is where the third term, books come in.  Ranciere states that knowing that "words are only words" can help us better understand how "words, stories, and performances can help us change something in the world we live in." Just don't forget: first we have to equalize all of these intelligences that he has talked about.

do we need the argument templates?

Personally, I don't think the argument templates are too helpful.  They may help out some people, but for me, I consider the whole argument template process to be common sense.  I think I've already been taught or I am just used to already writing my essays how the templates tell you to.

Assignment #4 final draft

Dale Stephens leads the movement known as the UnCollege movement.  Throughout the article he published on August 17th in The Washington Post, The Case Against College, he describes this movement and why it is extreme that we should be putting it to work even further.  The idea is based on the role that college has on somebody’s overall success.  And due to Stephens, college doesn’t have a role in success, rather it has a role in deteriorating one’s creativity and putting millions of students into thousands of dollars in debt.  According to an article in The New York Times called “The Dwindling Power of a College Degree,” the average debt a student faces following graduation is $25,250.  This is a 5% increase from last year, showing that we need to find a solution, and fast.

To fix these problems, Dale Stephens highly emphasizes an act of “unschooling.”  Rather than going to college, or if you are currently a college student, it would be best to drop out and start educating yourself outside of the classroom with natural life experiences.  Some ways he suggests how to enhance knowledge outside of school include:  finding a mentor, taking classes only when you desire to, starting up a businesses and learning collaboratively.  Although these are good alternatives to prevent debt, I do not believe that you have to be out of school to do so.  If you were brought up believing it is best to go to college, and you want to, then put matters into your own hand.  There are many ways to go to college and not be in such horrid debt afterwards.  It’s called: cheaper colleges, scholarships, and financial aid. 

Another known way of enhancing knowledge outside of the classroom is simply getting a lot of experience.  Bell Hooks is a feminist writer who wrote Essentialism and Experience.  She believes it is best to be taught by somebody with a privileged standpoint.  A person with experience is a person with wisdom in her eyes.  But in order to be taught by somebody with a privileged standpoint, you’d have to be in a classroom in school, therefore, not dropped out.  What contradicts this though, is that the teacher with a privileged standpoint has spent some UnCollege time, but then went to college to be the teacher that they are now.

            Dale Stephens also spoke about college killing creativity.  He says that our education system cultivates a mind-set where students are rewarded for following directions.  Stephens encourages people to follow their passion instead of merely just memorizing facts in a classroom.  But to me, it is not college that kills creativity, it’s the society and environment we are surrounded by and the lower-educational systems we were brought up into before college life that does.  I also think that if a person uses the opportunity of college correctly, they will only become more creative. 

I believe that some courses in schools can enhance a person’s creativity, depending on what that person is interested in.  For example, along with the mandatory classes you have to take to get a degree, you are aloud to take multiple elective classes of your choice.  I would think that because of this attachment of various courses, the creative skills of the students that chose to be in that class would increase intensely.  Electives narrow down the education to people who want to follow the footsteps towards that type of work specifically.  Thus, creating special skills that an employer in that field would be looking for.  So, it is not necessary to drop out of college, you just need to take advantage of what college offers you, which can help advance one’s creativity immensley.  For examples, students who take electives like autoshop and culinary arts will receive useful knowledge that they can use later on in life.  Electives like sculpting, drama, music and art, which are considered a universal language and are usually degraded from regular language classes, allow students to express themselves further than if they weren’t in school.  Resulting in an increase of creativity.

College also creates an opportunity for the use of many extra resources, and they should be taken advantage of if you are paying the money to go.  They have libraries filled with books, and tutors to help if you need it.  Not only this, but colleges have many extra-curricular activities and clubs that students can participate in.  Some include studying abroad, which comes with new life experiences, leading to learning.

Home-schoolers are good examples of the “unschooling” process that Stephen’s has talked about being put to work.  According to The National Home Education Research Institute, home school students perform at the 87^th percentile while formal school students only present at the 50^th percentile.  Although this is a good argument towards the positives of the spread of unschooling practices, Dale Stephens has said himself that there haven’t been any studies conducted about informal learning at the college level yet.  So there still is no evidence that formal schooling has a negative impact on college students.  The solution to home-schoolers doing better could just be because of the extra individual attention that they get from their educator.  But college has the option to get one-on-one help also if needed.

Another approach to take other than dropping out of school due to the abomination of creativity in college is to try and help change the education systems completely.  Michael Glassman, a professor at the Ohio State University believes that education is due for a paradigm shift.  His argument is that currently, there is a neo-liberal, utilitarian approach to education, which tells how “well-off” a person is based on a generalized, universal assessment score.  Glassman believes in the paradigm of the Sen’s Capability Approach (CA).  This approach argues that you can’t merely just base some one’s well-being on a number only.  They want to fight for the development of education policies that are more concerned with the needs and life trajectories of each individual separately, considering everybody is different. Speaking of individuals, it is also seen as unfair if a person get’s a job just because of a degree.  It seems more fair if the people were evaluated and whoever really seemed to best fit the expectations of the job would receive it. 

Stephens says that people pursue scientific knowledge only because it looks good on practical applications and resumes.  He also says that people assume that the subjects of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are the most important of all the other subjects.  In fact, hiring innovations for creative and technical professions are happening because “the product of one’s labor is tangible and easy to evaluate” and it is easy to now demonstrate your knowledge in a digital format.  The hiring of employees seems to make more sense if it was based on one’s creativity rather than on a piece of paper stating one’s degree.  Although this seems like the best idea, it is not how it goes today. 

Going back to the article “The Dwindling Power of a College Degree,” the author states that until the early 1970’s, less that 11% of the adult population graduated from college, and most of them found decent jobs.  Minimum wage then was almost 50% higher than it is now.  This is due to the strong unions they had and the government support trying to make life more equal, more stable, and for some, less rewarding.  But today these unions and the government support isn’t as great, and a Bachelor’s Degree no longer conveys intelligence and capability of a person.  Now to get a job, you have to have a special skill that the employer values.  The only thing employees should watch out for is that there is a good chance in the next few years that your employer will replace you with technology or oversea workers who will work for less pay.  Therefore, if a student decides to undergo the college experience, the goal of the student should be to pursue a career path with stability, and one that will always be in need.

Dale Stephens and his UnCollege movement might work for some, but I do not believe that it is the proper action to take.  I think that it is just as possible to gain extra knowledge and experiences outside of the classroom, while taking courses inside of the classroom as well.  All it takes is taking advantage of the resources you are given.  I also don’t believe that it is college killing people’s creativity, rather it is the society around us, and it should be reformed.  If you use your tools properly, then you will most likely be rewarded with a positive effect.  Choosing certain courses at school can increase a person’s creativity, so it would be wrong to make a generalized statement such that college as a whole kills creativity. 

philosophies of education

I just found this website, and figured i'd post it because we've been learning about other people's theories and writings about education.

http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Education.htm

Argument Template #2o

Essentialism by Bell Hooks
The general argument that Hooks makes in his work is that experience is needed to be well educated.  More specifically, he talks about how a privileged standpoint is a great advantage in education.  This is because not only is the person learning about the situation in books or on the Internet, but they've experienced that situation themselves.  
Oxfords English Dictionary defines essentialism as : Educ. A theory advocating the teaching, on traditional lines and to everyone, of certain ideas and methods supposed to be essential to the prevalent culture 

I agree with Bell Hook's theory of essentialism.  For example, like she says, I would much rather be taught African American history by an African American who's been through it, rather than from just a Caucasian professor who's only learned what he knows by books.

Writing Genre's

Oxford English Dictionary defines the following genres as:
Fable - n, A fictitious narrative or statement; a story not founded on fact.
Parable- n, An allegorical or metaphorical saying or narrative.
Fairytale- n, An unreal or incredible story.
Dialogue- n, A conversation carried on between two or more persons; a colloquy, talk together.

Honestly, I do not think it is going to be easy for me to write a story using one of these genres.  I am more of the type of person who likes to write in a first-person narrative.  If I had to choose, i'd probably write a fairytale or a fable.

One example of a fairytale is the tale of "The Crumbs on the Table" - Grimm's Fairy Tales
You can find the story at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/grimmtmp/

One example of a fable is the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" - Aesop
You can find the story at: http://www.storyarts.org/library/aesops/stories/boy.html

Essentialism and experience

From reading this article, i think essentialism is the essence, identity, subjectivity, and experience of people.
Fuss says people use essentialism to silence others and dominate the institutional setting.
A problem she discusses is the "competition for voice" in the classroom, and how she is wary about discussing personal histories in the classroom because the basis they have might not be correctly theorized.
But this is criticized because bringing personal experience into the classroom can cause more participation from everybody in the room, enhancing learning.

"Many of the limitations she [Fuss}points out could be easily applied to the way experience informs not only what we write about, but how we write about it, the judgements we make."
Fuss also suggests that "the very discursive practices that allow for the assertion of the "authority of experience" have already been determined by politics of race, sex, and class domination.

Gender- Most of what is taught in this article comes from the writings of a black feminist writer.
Black feminist writer's believe that they need to have more more say in the classrooms, and how essentialism takes place in them.

assignment 2 ideas

Emerson- “The American Scholar”

-       “It is the raw material out of which the intellect moulds her splendid products. A strange process too, this, by which experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry leaf is converted into satin.”

Moulds-  slowly puts together

Converted- turned into

Experience- going out and acting on something

Process- action that takes time

I think that the author is trying to highlight the key point to enhance knowledge.  The point that this passage brings out is, people need to go out and experience things on their own, then think about it, and produce useful information from it.  This will help the person gain their own opinion and realize how they want to live their life, rather than just following what you’ve always been brought up to believe in.

Close Readings

The article we read states that "when you close read, you observe facts and details about a text."  I believe that close readings has helped me with my writing, but i think i've always just naturally done this and never really thought so hard about it.  The goal is to aim on one passage at a time of a text and break it down into pieces.  You have to try to find new meanings to the words you think stand out in the passage, and analyze how different the meaning of the sentence then would be if you changed the word.  After this is done, it might help someone understand more on why the author used the word choice that he used.  "close reading requires careful gathering of data (your observations) and careful thinking about what these data add up to." Using close reading techniques can help a reader more understand what the author is talking about.

A day in the life of myself, in 1943

While I was thinking about what my life would be like in 1943, I realized that WWII was happening during this time.  Considering I've never had to live through that, it's hard to tell what an average day would be like.
Being 18 years old in this time is very difficult.  I'm leaving my house today, on my way to work.  I need to help my parents pay for our bills, and for food for our family.  This war is starting to kill us financially.  My father was just drafted into the war a few weeks ago, and i really miss him.  My mom and I work in this filthy factory from sun-up to sun-down.  We don't even make a lot of money, even though I think the work labor we put into this factory is great.  I have to operate a heavy machine, which cut off multiple peoples hands before.  I also work next to a young boy, maybe 6 or 7 years old.  I feel bad because whether the boy is too tired to work, the boss won't let him have a break.  Children means cheap labor.  I can't bare the smell of this place.
The employees here don't get treated as they should.  We work all day long just to be able to pay off for food for maybe 2 days.  And don't think we get to eat a feast, we get to eat a few bites of something plain.  After today's long day of work i get to sleep, only to wake up and go back to the factory again in the morning.

The American Scholar

While reading "The American Scholar" I learned that Ralph Waldo Emerson is an extremely intelligent writer.  Considering my level of reading and writing isn't as great as his, i found his essay to be difficult to understand in some parts.

I think his main goal of this essay is to spread his knowledge on how to become a better student.  He expresses his thoughts on how people should branch out and have their own way of thinking.  People should not just stick to the thoughts and ideas they were brought up to believe in by their parents, but go out and explore and create their own logic themselves.  

Emerson also states that "The theory of books is noble".  He shows that in order to increase a person's reading and writing skills, all they need to do is read a lot of books.  Books that will expand the mind.  

Another thing that Emerson explains is important for man to do is become one with nature.  He says that "The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature."

The  21st century Emerson would agree with all of Emerson's theories.  Still to this day, in order to become a smarter intellectual you have to go out and experience different things and broaden your mind with difficult passages by more intelligent writers.

"Help must come from the bosom alone." is another quote that stands out to me.  To me this means that you cannot rely on the help of others if you're not willing to help yourself.