What does silence mean?
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The other day in my English class we were discussing the freedom of speech topic and the conversation drifted towards an oppressive regime and the needs of the people they oversee. A paraphrased excerpt of the conversation went as follows…
I think we are being given too much information. The way our government works is to mediate that information en masse to relieve our need to deal with it all.
Another person spoke up…
Well its also important to realize that while we are able to function this way, it doesn’t appear that [the middle easterners] are. Their government stepped in to quell the fighting and as such without it they will likely return to it.
I was amused and frightened by this interjection. One person thinks it is big brothers role to be our father figure and shield us from things that may or may not overwhelm us, and the other took things to a different level by implying that the middle east cannot function without one extreme or the other. It was equally frightening when I heard the response – silence.
I found the silence had found a perch in my own stomach, twisting and contorting it into shapes it had never been in. The uncomfortable silence was quite difficult to accept. Is this silence present because we agree with this man’s opinion or are we just so used to not having an opinion that we do not care? Does the fact that I did not speak up even though I knew I had much to say mean I was compounding the issue? So many questions are engraved into my mind and I have really lost myself in thought over it. Surely, the Middle East is capable of being self sufficient and self-policing. How sad it must be for the Middle East to be an assumed terrorist arena where nothing exists outside of the horrors of war.
Posted on April 14th, 2008 by Bob in Global Crises
Student Instruction & Great Instructors
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...When it comes to learning, I think that the best way to get things into any person’s brain is to have them teach it. I have been following this philosophy for about 6 years now and have not had it fail me once. People, without fail, are forced to examine underlying areas of topics that would go without notice if they were to be simply handed the knowledge and forced to move on, as with most assembly line teaching.
As a student teacher it should be a high priority to not only understand it, but to be able to explain it clearly to a group of people that may or may not understand it already. Its important to have a mix of both because correcting teachers is something that you will need to become accustomed to. I prefer to be involved in teachers lesson plans and the way they teach tends to rub off on me. I have worked along side quite a few instructors as I have been learning and it has caused me to question many things I see in other instructors. Having the experience of standing up in front of 30 some odd people, of varied intellects and wills, is difficult, but it is a necessity for our culture to be able to teach masses of people to learn a lot of information in a short period of time. Slowly but surely algebra is being taught to lower grades and more important higher level classes are becoming available. We all have to work together to really be able to wrap our minds around our chosen professions, whatever they may be.
Posted on March 11th, 2008 by Bob in Inspiration