http://michaelparenti.org/ ☮
http://michaelparentiblog.blogspot.com/ ☮
No War But Class War Part one and Part two
Thursday, July 26, 2012
The Generational Karma - 君子恥言義, 而揚利??
http://michaelparenti.org/ ☮
http://michaelparentiblog.blogspot.com/ ☮
No War But Class War Part one and Part two
An Introduction to an Anarcathist's Catideology
Socio-political Felineology #11 July 26, 2012
An Introduction to an Anarcathist's Catideology
His Majesty the Elder- Wow, joined this household when he was a speculative feline supreme being. No one knew where he was from when he was a wanderer on Nebraskan streets as a starving naturalist 18 years ago. He seemed keen to select a pool of caregivers. At least, he also chose a music professor’s family as a back-up caregiver for a period of time, and later he gave up that family.
Wow, is a noble loner believing in an individualistic type of non-violent anarcathist philosophy. He is associated more with the early Taoist philosophers, such as Lao-zi and Zhuang-zi than that of Bakumin or Most’s.
Surely, he seems prefer “negative liberty”, opposing to any house rules and any other feline control over him due to his born-free spirit. Thus, he does not buy in any other feline social wing’s positive liberty - "recognizing equality of entitlement" to achieve his potential. Why does he need to believe in those "artificial equality” notion, if his bio-genetically endowed strong fangs, claws and agile physique make him a fittest survivor in the wilderness? Confusing, isn't it - thinking and behaving like a progressive Libertariancat???
But joining in a human family, he needs different strategies to cope with the stress of how to trade off between his precious feline freedom and the plenty of deliciously secured foodfood. He did make a hard decision, hopefully, not to lose both!
Obviously, you can tell he is skeptical of "Feline folks, unify, you lose nothing relating to your fangs and claws, but the windows and doors"- in the contemporary catpitalistic society.
Having said so, he does believe in Goodwin’s idea. It says that all the feline beings need to be educated with felineology via the Stimer’s personalist catedagogy to enlighten the feline anarcathist. Alas, even our human friends are unable to access the proper amount of education, why his feline folks?
Instead, as Illich mentions that “deschooling” seems more popular in many feline households – they are taught the instant catgratification and feline mass/conspicuous consumption manipulated by the maga-feline-food business-industrial complex.
Wow in quest - "Can you imagine ½ of my feline folks are overweight and obese with all sorts of modern feline diseases plaguing in our feline communities? The myth of us folks having 9 lives has lost 8 in this tightly encapsulated world. Even though I don't believe in the Feline universal health care, I foresee that my other feline members and I in this household can bankrupt my caregivers sooner than later!"
Just for relax - Crystal's Cross-Species Observations#1
Post on Facebook July 26, 2012
When taking a short break from grading, then inspired by an excellent student project, this feline teasing remix appeared :3!
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Socio-political Felineology #10 " A 'Self-Made' Feline Majesty's Cognitive Fascination "
Socio-political Felineology Course ID: 809- meoooow-☮ _(♥)_♥(☼◠‿◠)☮( =';'=)Course ancillary #10
Note - Nothing to do with the "Dark Night Rises"...
" A 'Self-Made' Feline Majesty's Cognitive Fascination "
This is Her Majesty 恰查某 (Spicy Meow or a.k.a. Young-Young to pair with Ying-Ying,-Mummy). See above photo.
Young was adopted from the local Humane Society 10 years ago. According to the available info, she seemed either severely bitten by dogs (under her chin, there was a long and deep scar when adopted), or been abandoned in the wilderness and someone rescued her to the Humane Society.
All I can say is that she is a very adorable, self-reliant, and headstrong "Republicat" - what an oxymoron :3!
She believes that all felines should pull up their paws with their own pawstraps, no matter the straps are available or not. She worships Social Darwinism of survival of the fittest and enjoys monopolizing the catnips, foodfood, treattreats, toytoys, and nice bedbeds...and so on goodie stuff, and then preaches on other feline folks that this is a feline free market world, go ahead!!
Surely, she claims all her hard earned goodies and entitles even more.. These attractive thinking and behaving deeds amaze me constantly. Was she "born" that way, or learned from "me" or someone-someplace else??? :P!
She also convinces herself that she could get out of the humane society was because she worked very very hard by sitting, sleeping, and waiting for her hard "earned" opportunities to happen :P.
Anyway, she does have good values regarding her independence without being helped or using other public resources to be flourishing!
Her motto is " See, I can make everything out of nothing; You can too!" - and encourages other feline folks in the humane society - " Stop whining! Get to 'work'!"
Be honest, I love Republicats more than the Democats or any other Politicats, because their Cute and Catego-centic reasoning is far more fascinating than anything else :P
Young is my favorite feline supreme being, just like my favoritism toward this million-dollar-detrimental-radio-talkshow super big mouth-piece (He was a luckily adopted child into a rich family a while ago :D!)
One more thing, Young watches her diet in an extremely finicky fashion. She only eats super fresh Raw chicken breasts, pork sirloin, fresh fish on weekends, (but no Cohiba Cigars). On weekdays, when her royal/loyal caregivers are busy in bringing in paychecks, she can tolerate fancy feast, i am (hard or soft) with a little bit treats... because, she is very cautious of not being perceived as a "Fat Cat"!
Friday, July 20, 2012
Socio-political Felineology #3 A confession of a free-riding Upward Social Mobility
Post-Modern Socio-political Felineology. Photo taken on July 19, 2012
A confession of a free-riding Upward Social Mobility:
I (Ying-Ying 英媖, a.k.a. Mummy or the Heroine Hero :3!) was adopted without being aware of my hidden pregnancy. If not this given life-chance via a miraculous adoption (like that million-dollar-detrimental-super-radio-talkshow-mouth-piece's) my innocent children and I might have been living in Inferno? (See I lost half of the right side of my ear in the northern frozen tundra, and struggled to survive from starvation before being adopted...)
I have never been an intentional welfare queen, nor want to be one, due to an opportunity being available to me for managing survival :3!
Who says that America is not a land of Feline opportunities; who says that American is not a land of the Feline brave, the Feline tough, and the Feline courageous?
From the C-at to the shining C-at: Long live the brave, Long live the tough, and Long live the courageous!!!! :3!
I am a great American Catizen (...though, un-shamelessly speaking, I don't pay feline-Income Taxes DIRECTLY). I transfers my private cost to the public fiscal domain, including the fresh water, clean air, feline SUV highway systems, feline National park visitation, utility/medication, my children's feline education, and feline homeland security fees...etc.
I am quite sure that now my children are much more ahead than other less luckier or unfortunate feline folks...
One more conspiracy - sometimes, my kids run into troubles (you can tell from the above rambunctiously sculpturing video, as well as the marauding of butterflies and grasshoppers), but don't worry, they always get bail-outs :3!
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Seemingly, it is necessary for socio-economic accumulations via generational efforts to refine cultural constructions, such as Pyramids, the British Museum, the Modern Hanging Garden (e.g., Dubai), the Sistine Chapel... and the most important one - the LHC - shamelessly speaking, not my name initials, but Large Hadron Collider!
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Thursday, July 12, 2012
absolute Amusements corrupt absolutely
Unfortunately, I am an amateur sociological football fan : (! I told my class how much I adored Donald Driver, regarding his social mobility not exactly via his wide receiving, but via beating the odds. And outside of the football field was more dramatic than the inside's- you know more than I do... :P! Yes, dancing… as well :P!
July, 12, 2012 Socially constructed reality - altering the biological facts
Socially Constructed (intriguing) Reality
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Trans-generational upward and downward ideological mobility
 |
| Crystal's Cross-Cultural Perspective #40 - posted on Facebook, July 8th, 2012 |
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Socio-political Felineology #2 Philosopher Catking - Sir GaGa
Philosopher Catking - Sir GaGa in Meditation
His Majesty Sir GaGa counts his own UN-earned privileges during a Meditation
1. I don't earn my handsomeness (can do catwalk effortlessly as well);
2. I don't have to earn my American Catizenship (am not even required to
pass the feline naturalization test, but the "neuter"ization);
3. I don't choose/earn to be a popular Maine Coon
(Born That Way, though, not white);
4. I was an abandoned kitten and adopted into a feline worshiping family
(a big intra-generational upward social mobility);
5. My loyal care givers enrolled me via a Legacy Admissions Policy to the Feline
Ivy Leagues for a Felineology Ph.D. degree program
(without being accused of a "reversed" affirmative action);
6. I use all sort of public facilities without paying taxes (such as visiting the local
Phelan Park via our 0-carbon-footprint feline SUV);
7. In fact, I don't have to do much, just being beautifully handsome and
earn all sorts of admiration as many Polico-Econo-Hollowood celebrities do...
(- Modern Meritocracy);
8. I have never had to worry about when/where/how I get sick/ticks, due to my
health care plan (am probably a top 1 or 2%);
9. As an imaginative feline, though not really a "Fat Cat", if I want, I can
parasitically live off the expected Wall Street Windfall and still being worshiped;
10. Probably, if not by imagination, I might inherit a good fortune in the future to
be ahead of other less lucky feline folks.
and will keep on counting in the coming posts : P!
Who says that I am not a philosopher Catking?? :3!
Thursday, July 5, 2012
June 30, 2012 A Quest to a Civilized Society in the Social Darwinist Jungle
  |
A response to an Animal right advocate who might not be interested in basic human rights Posted on my Facebook. |
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Friday, June 29, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Monday, May 14, 2012
May 14, 2012 An annual 200-Billion-Dollar-Weight-Lost and Medical-Treatment Business Modern 朱門酒肉臭, 路有餓死骨
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Diversity and Learning Technologies
- by Li-chin (Crystal) Huang 042912
William Sloane Coffin, Jr. once said that diversity might be the hardest thing for a society to live with, and perhaps the most dangerous thing for a society to be without. It cannot be more true than in the digital age. From past history up to recent events, such as Slavery, Nazi Holocaust, Rwanda genocide, the Triangle Factory fire, the Arab Spring, Anders Behring Breivik’s mass murdering, up to current campus/cyber bullying tragedies tell us that the narrow and distorted view toward human diversity is against the best interests of humankind.
Naisbitt's MegaTrends (1982) provided a perspective that alludes to such an understanding. He wrote, “Whenever new technology is introduced into society, there must be a counterbalancing human response, that is, high touch, or the technology is rejected”. In short, the more high-tech development, the more high-touch is needed. I would maintain that this high touch has to be reified through healthy human interactions and proper socialization processes via the increasingly sophisticated technological affordance. From there, understanding, tolerance, acceptance, embrace, and then to celebrate the value of uniqueness and differences would be possible. The individual’s needs for survival, love, respect, and self-actualization cannot not be achieved without human beings’ mutual relying on one another to create common good. The following sections are my points of view regarding the importance of enhancing diversity via awareness, understanding, and actions.
First of all, from a broader perspective of diverse technological affordance, the dramatic change of information technology since 1960s with the PLATO system up to today’s Web 3.0/cloud computing capacities, and M-learning, provides myriad teaching and learning possibilities for more diverse facilitators and learners than ever before to access knowledge. With this constant advance in computer and communications technologies, research in educational technologies has undergone a paradigmatic shift toward a new horizon: enhancing the fluid mobility between theories and actions. This new horizon focuses on merging the study of learning in complete, complex, and interactive learning environments with the use of emerging technology to advance the integration of contents, pedagogy, and technology to meet the increasingly diverse students’ needs.
First of all, from a broader perspective of diverse technological affordance, the dramatic change of information technology since 1960s with the PLATO system up to today’s Web 3.0/cloud computing capacities, and M-learning, provides myriad teaching and learning possibilities for more diverse facilitators and learners than ever before to access knowledge. With this constant advance in computer and communications technologies, research in educational technologies has undergone a paradigmatic shift toward a new horizon: enhancing the fluid mobility between theories and actions. This new horizon focuses on merging the study of learning in complete, complex, and interactive learning environments with the use of emerging technology to advance the integration of contents, pedagogy, and technology to meet the increasingly diverse students’ needs.
Secondly, relating to my first point, the demographic trends illustrate that the non-conventional education consumers and “prosumers” (the hybrid of consuming and producing)- be it the digital native or luddite , digital immigrants or aliens, digital savvies or connoisseurs, the different digital generations of learners have been occupying the main educational landscape. Alluding to human diversity, in a differentiated teaching methods seminar, I found an inspirational message - “When we identify a student who doesn’t understand, louder and slower won’t do it. We need to be more creative than ever; when we identify students who already understand, doing it again isn’t acceptable. We need to be more creative than ever”. Students learn in different ways just like educators who facilitate with different teaching styles and pedagogies. In addition to the teaching-learning diversity, other significant social forces and circumstances, such as race, ethnicity, social class, gender, sexual orientation, disability, languages, creeds, as well as the rest of human different conditions, according to the available research, provide evidence of the significant correlation to the teaching effectiveness and learning outcomes. This is what I consider to be the most challenging issue in the digital age- what to understand and how to be part of the solution. The key method is that we need to be more creative than ever to enhance the connectivity and to bridge the differences. I am convinced that innovation and responsibility go hand in hand to usher to this transformative direction. From the local communities to the global markets, in order to successfully adapt to the fast changing societies with various cultures and sub-cultures, it is imperative that people develop an empathic insight and a comprehensive cognitive capacity toward diversity issues.
Then, we heavily rely on those who can, teach – creatively and responsibly to be the catalysts to the systematic and systemic change of human societies. Learning technologies will be the hardest science that requires robust digital engagers to take on studies that are dynamic and contingent. In such a profession, only those stakeholders who tackle the diversity challenge as a way of conscious living to promote human understanding and collaboration will reshape the future. Thus, I envision an omnipresent and mobile environment for all learners to create the -world-is-flat phenomenon. The terms of Blog 2.0, semantic Web 3.0 encapsulate the idea of the proliferation of interconnectivity and interactivity of the e-effects. They open up sky-is-the-limit possibilities to transform learning to defy various digital divides as well as human divides in the domestic and global domains.
“Be the change you want to see”. The optimism and challenge are co-existent in this unprecedented epoch. Learning Technology is a gift as well as a social responsibility to the educators and relevant stakeholders. It is a golden opportunity to reach diverse learners to optimize human capitals and shorten the digital and human gaps. It is time to redirect such powerful capacity of learning technologies into the humanitarian engagement.
Finally, at a personal level, during my past 14 years' teaching, in several semesters, I was the only “minority” in the classroom ( in particular, at 2 universities in the Midwest that I taught), in terms of my race, gender, social class, faith, language, and socio-political understanding. I fully comprehend the urgency to expand the understanding of diversity issues confronting the contemporary society. We identify the resistance of change, but we also see people paving the way for a better society. As mentioned in the letter, I have been passionately educating and promoting race/ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, disability, and other relevant diversity understanding in the local, state and global levels in seminars, conferences and via social media.
It is a goal, an action, a commitment, and most importantly, a responsibility. We make the road of understanding and empathy by walking together!
Friday, January 27, 2012
Revision of A Talk: Empowering Women through Education-3 Women's Stories from Taiwan at the International Panel of AAUW, Rapid City, South Dakota followed by the "被割割" episode
BBC news reported yesterday (Jan. 26, 2012) that a Pakistani woman was brutally cut off her nose and ears by two men due to being late to bring back water from the well site. This unbearable event reminds me of a talk that I gave about nine years ago. I revised a little bit (when I first wrote it, I used the "present tense" relating to my mother, which needs to be changed into a past tense, for my mother passed away in 2005) and re-posted here to share with you.
To save time for the key stories, I would skip my father's, and go into the second one. It is about my mother. Born during Japanese colonization, like most of the poor women, she was encouraged to have as many children as possible. The "reproductive machines” were highly demanded to produce more workers, and soldiers for Japan’s military expansion needs. My mother did have 10 children. According to the comparative advantage, and since some education would damage the womb (Edward Clarke, 1873), my mother, and women of her generations were deprived of the opportunities of education. So, she could not read, nor write. Although she was so-called “illiterate”, she insisted that children should have an education.” “Children should have education” is equivalent to “people need to breathe, to eat, and to drink” in today’s society. So what’s new about it?
Now, again the story needs to be situated in the historical context (for detailed conditions, refer to my thesis: A Multi-Level Analysis of 228 Social Movement (A Massacre) of 1947 in Taiwan, deposited in the General Library of UW-Madison). Among her peers, education to women is like a camel wanting to go through the needle’s eye. Just taking a look at her contemporaries dealing with their daughters, you can imagine how noble an idea my mother had! Among Taiwanese women of her age group, approximately 95% were poor and illiterate. One of the major anxieties of them was not able to pay daughters’ future dowries, thus giving away or exchange daughters for the future-baby brides-in-law (童養媳-who were usually brutally mistreated by the future mothers-in-law) was a popular practice in the low social class. Many young girls were even sold to rich families as child laborers or chateau slaves, and some of them ended up in the highly demanded business - brothels.
My mother loved us, children, very much. Those young girls’ horrifying nightmares had never happened to us female siblings. However, my eldest sister had to sacrifice herself to help out the family. Right after graduating from elementary school, at that young age, she worked at a textile factory as a weaver- a very popular and booming industry at that time during the first wave of globalization marching through Taiwan. As to me, I realized how important money was to my family. I always had a strong desire to please my mom to soothe her constant anxiety of family financial stress. I worked many tiny jobs starting from my elementary school days. Two of them were multinational corporate company’s branches in Taipei. One was the Max Factor Cosmetic Inc., the other one was an International Traveling Bags Manufacturing Company. I remembered I took my younger sister Li-chun working in those difficult working conditions to earn 3-8 cents per hour. No such word -"child laborers” existed at that time, not to mention the Child Labor Laws ever been heard off, because children were assets, not liabilities when time did not favor children's innocence! Kathleen just now mentioned the positive and negative sides of Globalization (not Internationalization), I think my female siblings are good witnesses of those days of sweet bitterness!
Definitely, us female siblings did contribute efforts to the first stage of globalization in Taiwan and were also part of the legend in establishing the famous MIT (Made In Taiwan) kingdom with unimaginable joy (tiny yet significant money) and sacrifice (terrible working conditions). Male siblings even born in a humble background still could get enough attention and protection from my mother and nurturing from sisters. For example, I had to do all the family laundry by hand and cleaned my brothers’ rooms when I was a very little girl. Us sisters took turns to do cooking and cleaning. Recall when I was in high school which was a very competitive one (the Taipei Municipal First Girls’ Senior High School), I anxiously saw most of my classmates staying at cramming schools after class for another 2-3 hours' extra home assignment drills and preparation, so they could do well on next day’s quizzes/exams and kept very competitive in class, while I had to go to families hiring me to tutor their children so I could bring some money home. You can imagine, after family chores, tutoring jobs, school works, there was not so much time for me to prepare myself for the next day’s challenges in school. But fortunately, through those events, I learned to keep the head above the water, and survived well. Who says that “What cannot break you, make you stronger,” indeed!
Now I had better quickly jump to the third woman’s story. I am running out of time. She was a wet nanny. A wet-nanny, mainly, a woman living in poverty, saved her milk to nurture other families’ babies for whose mother could not or did not want to raise them. Thus the nanny was called in to serve and earned the service fees. The third story was also relating to my mother. My biological grandma died right after giving birth to my mom. You know at that time, a woman’s partition was similar to put one of her legs into the casket ( just recall the horrifying and ordeal that Mary Wollstonecraft had been through for such a tragedy!) It was a 50-50 % chance to survive for most of the babies and the mothers. The grandpa had to marry a widow with 4 children of her own. He witnessed the abusive behaviors of the stepmom toward the little baby – my mom, thus he decided to save the baby’s life by sending her to the wet-nanny’s house and paid her some meager fees. In the long run, my mother decided not to go back to the stepmother's and stayed with the nanny's family.
The nanny (we called grandma) had 7 children, three boys, and four girls. Each time she gave birth a baby, if boy, she kept him, if not, she would arrange to sell or give away the female infants (named with gender derogation, such as 罔腰, 招弟, 一招, 再招 - frequently seen at that time. For more details, refer to my thesis: Social Ideology and Gender roles- Contemporary Women's Issues in Taiwan (社會意識型態與性別角色-論臺灣社會變遷中婦女問題 ) deposited in the Grad Library of National Taiwan University). Thus, the milk could be saved to nurture other families’ babies. She only kept one girl for family chores and took care of other family members. Two of her daughters were sold, and one of them almost ended up in a brothel, whom my mother (she became the oldest one in the nanny's family whom the nanny dare not to touch) used all the possible methods to rescue her out of the misery. As to the money the nanny earned, she used to support the whole family. Remember, during the Japanese occupation, Taiwanese men were oppressed in a different fashion!
Now, I hope you won’t be misled by my anecdotal stories about the true face of women in Taiwan during the early 20th century. I wish I would have presented more accurate data about the social condition during those days. But, now, the misery of women has been replaced with a new vitality through a tremendous socio-economic transformation: just comparing my current academic and career conditions to my mother’s.
So, regarding the generation next to mine, are you curious about it?
Yes, let me tell you, each time I go back to Taiwan, I just could not tell whether my nieces are American girls or Japanese young ladies! They enjoyed the tremendous economic affluence in Taiwan. They dyed/highlighted their hair, changed their contact lens by colors, and dressed up like Japanese girls or westerners with all sorts of fancy stuff which make their auntie Crystal look like a modern pumpkin. They just want everything that the modern American and Japanese girls enjoy! They are experiencing the fourth stage of Rostow’s economic development model- the “high consumption era.”
The trajectory of women’s development in many societies has striking similarities reflecting her specific socio-economic conditions and the cultural ideology. That's why it is important for women from different cultures, nations, races, and classes to get together to share our female experiences.
Taiwan presents a wonderful case study for women’s striving for justice among developing countries in the 20th and 21st centuries. The history of the development of women in Taiwan was young but impressive. The female grassroots movements have generated more than 50 NGOs (non-government organizations) to fight for women's rights. Via 30 years’ empowerment of education, women’s movements led by the well educated middle-class women and their relevant associations have accomplished the following major successes legislatively, economically, and politically a decade ago:
1. Taiwan had the first female Vice President in Far Eastern Asia, elected in 2000, and the first female
Presidential candidate running against two males with a narrow margin of loss in January 2012;
2. passed the Equal Rights, Equal Pays Law;
3. amended several family laws to protect single parent and divorced women; and
4. passed the Civil Liberty Union Law that same-sex can legally marry and is protect by the law.
Due to time constraints, the statistical data relating to the changing socio-economic statuses of women in Taiwan will be shown through the slides/PowerPoint presentation! Thanks for all of your attention and patience.
------------------------------------------------------------
The following short article might not directly relate to the above story and was not a new story either. But I would like to put them together as a response to a Mainlander-official who worked in the Taiwanese Foreign Affairs Dept in Canada as a public serviceman, paid by Taiwanese taxpayers. (Note -There are Taiwanese Chinese, Chinese Taiwanese, Taiwanese, and the natives as well as other different ethnic groups in Taiwan). This gentleman derogated Taiwanese people's multiple-century suffering into insignificance that caused a socio-political scandal a couple of years ago.
他的名子叫 被割割 March 2009 Crystal L C Huang
他的名子叫 被割割。這個名子犯不著對 "范蘭欽" 有任何自由聯想或對他有畫蛇添足之 "閒"。(這仁兄宣稱臺灣人是"賤"民. 是可忍孰不不不不不不可忍?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) (This short article was done by the turtle-crawling style in typing each character when the voice to texts software was not available).
被割割很認命與守舊。深信書中自有外交屋，書中自有謙忠恕。中學作文得數獎，大學聯考歷史考了個一百分。算是個左腦 (右腦是在媒國啓蒙的) 有開發的人。被割割一心一意想拼個謙忠恕外交官以報家國養育之恩 (真是顽固迂腐到極點!)。首度赴特考戰戰兢兢, 然而慘遭敗北 - 這科國際公法雖非本行, 也不該考個如此無能的分數。捲土重來信心十足。不料晴天闢靂高分落選。
回想多年前時的被割割並非輸不起那一分，而是被割割 那不識字的母親滿懷疑問 "那ㄝ安內生? 歷哪目賙放ㄎㄨㄟ ㄎㄨㄟ去考，歷史也不會考二十五分!!!" 一輩子沒機會上一天學的老母卻苦苦巴望她十個苦命兒 中能有一兩個有出脫當個 像包清天那 樣 的 ”官”，一如歌仔戲 (忠孝節義封建承控機制) 中那十年寒窗一舉揚眉顯親的莘莘學子鬆口氣 地說， ”此後不再受虐於猛逾虎的苛政”。 然而複查成績的結果是白紙四大黑字- "查無錯誤"。
被割割只好安慰老母: “媽，您的每日清晨夜晚虔誠欽天敬祖，燒好香做好待， 祖宗神明會原諒我的失誤。” 然後被割割嬉皮笑臉地對媽說 “可能是真的， 想當官要燒三代的好香做好事呢! 媽， 一定是前兩代阿公阿祖香沒燒夠!” 私底下，被割割卻無奈地想著那報考的履歷表上, 的確是要你提及祖宗三代。不過不是有關燒好香做好事，而是祖宗們的學經歷背景。被割割的兄妹們倒是黃家頭一代出產的識字人。在台灣，這是一件很值得誇耀的事。
言歸正傳，這 “ 二十五分的歷史教訓 ” 從此深深烙印在這個社會學没讀透的狂狷青年心頭。
話說山不轉路轉、當不了駐外人，被割割 倒也扛轎周旋於幾個小型官場，看了幾齣現形記 (時當解嚴天蠶劇變之際，於國府殿堂)。厚黑與薄白戲碼趁機上演，看得眼花撩亂，做得澎湃洶湧 。 說得遲那時快，一個有份量的獎學金使被割割覺悟一切有為法，如夢幻泡影 - 痛心地空遁到海外, 專心投入百年樹 (媒國)人的工作 (不夠格樹本國人，只好退而求其次)。 所以, 從一個當了七年親愛精誠的丘八官與抬轎人如今成了個 “住” 外的樹人。
如此一來，被割割時而仰天長嘯壯懷激烈一番, 時而自我調侃自我阿Q，自封個背 "彩虹旗" 的人 (有綠， 有藍， 有紅，有黑，更有白)。如果你要為被割割駐個名 (不論是加罪或加封)- 這嗎 騎牆騎得太離譜??
不過看官要是知曉這荒唐辛酸個中味， 說真的，這種旗也真重得難扛。 試想被割割對著大鼻混眼的媒國學生唱著 望你早歸，梅花，雨夜花，易水寒, 與 高山青以解說社會階層和族群理論時，卻無法用那美麗的母語的精神分裂折騰?! 被割 割的自我流放, 值得反省, 值得三思..
-----------------------------------------------------------
Dear Friends of AAUW,
First of all, I would like to thank you for the fantastic job you have done to open my eyes as a brand new member. Then, I want to thank Kathleen who introduced and encouraged me to join this big family, so I have this opportunity to learn from you. Peg picked us from the airport along the way to the conference that made me feel so welcomed. Cheryl and Rusty, thanks for the email connection and the sincere help to make this trip possible. Finally, I want to show my appreciation to your Mayor who sang a wonderful song for us. I won’t forget his wonderful voice. Please promise to say our thanks to him.
I was amazed to know that AAUW was 121 years young. 121 years is equivalent to my grandma, my mother, me, plus my nieces’ generation together. During that century, when AAUW had accomplished so many great jobs to encourage /help girls and women to reach their potential, what did my grandma, and mother do? And what about my generation and nieces’ are doing? So, I decided to tell three women’s stories from Taiwan. Don’t be surprised or disappointed, I will be one of them.
Once upon a time, a little girl was born in Taipei, Taiwan, 19xx. Her name is LC Huang. When she was about 6 or 7 years old, she told her mom that she would like to be an artist, ballerina, poet, and diplomat. This is the first story of the three. So, you can see, most of her interests seemed relating to feminine fields. But think about it, a 7 years old girl was hardly qualified to be enlightened as a young "feminist" during the 1960s in Taiwan. The possibility of being a female computer scientist or engineer was equivalent to the cats in “A Room of One’s Own” wanting to go to heaven.
Since talking about cats, which the bishop commented on in Virginia Woolf’s article, I needed to confess that I had not read it when I was young. If I had known I needed a room of my own with a lot of CASH to be myself, I dared not to tell my mom about my wannabe. Furthermore, if I had learned earlier about John Adams’ famous remarks, I dare not to have made such an “enormous” wish. He once said “ Because of my father’s hard-working, so I can study military and politics, so my sons can learn law and engineering, thus my grandsons can be artists or poets,” something like that…. You see, what an interesting statement that made me think!
First of all, it is all about men- the father, himself, the sons, and the grandsons. Where were the great-grandma, grandma and the mother, the daughters and daughters-in-law, and the “Shakespeare’s sisters”? Secondly, it lets me think how wonderful or how lucky it could be to have a father from Adams’ family!
Finally, darn it, I am not a son, but another Shakespeare’s-sister-could-be!
Since I have mentioned "father", let me just quickly and briefly introduce my father (though we are talking about women, without men, women's stories would have been much more different??). I need to be objective and neutral toward my father who passed away several years ago. My father was born in 1910 during the Japanese occupation. Putting in this way, let us recall a movie, maybe you have seen it- “The Last Emperor.” It was the last Sino-Japanese war of the last dynasty, the Qing was defeated and gave away Taiwan to Japan. From 1985 to 1945, Taiwanese people like orphans suddenly tossed away to a foreign regime that strategically ruled her (both repressive and assuaging tactics) for half of a century. Some relevant information can be find in a grad paper of mine: https://ci8395.blogspot.com/2012/08/pedagogy-of-oppressed-vs-oppressors-and.html After having depicted the historical background, let me go to some details about him. He was forced to have 4 years’ Japanese elementary (to uproot the cultural heritage) education which was all he could attend. Such a "privilege" given to him perhaps, he was born with a desirable gender.
First of all, I would like to thank you for the fantastic job you have done to open my eyes as a brand new member. Then, I want to thank Kathleen who introduced and encouraged me to join this big family, so I have this opportunity to learn from you. Peg picked us from the airport along the way to the conference that made me feel so welcomed. Cheryl and Rusty, thanks for the email connection and the sincere help to make this trip possible. Finally, I want to show my appreciation to your Mayor who sang a wonderful song for us. I won’t forget his wonderful voice. Please promise to say our thanks to him.
I was amazed to know that AAUW was 121 years young. 121 years is equivalent to my grandma, my mother, me, plus my nieces’ generation together. During that century, when AAUW had accomplished so many great jobs to encourage /help girls and women to reach their potential, what did my grandma, and mother do? And what about my generation and nieces’ are doing? So, I decided to tell three women’s stories from Taiwan. Don’t be surprised or disappointed, I will be one of them.
Once upon a time, a little girl was born in Taipei, Taiwan, 19xx. Her name is LC Huang. When she was about 6 or 7 years old, she told her mom that she would like to be an artist, ballerina, poet, and diplomat. This is the first story of the three. So, you can see, most of her interests seemed relating to feminine fields. But think about it, a 7 years old girl was hardly qualified to be enlightened as a young "feminist" during the 1960s in Taiwan. The possibility of being a female computer scientist or engineer was equivalent to the cats in “A Room of One’s Own” wanting to go to heaven.
Since talking about cats, which the bishop commented on in Virginia Woolf’s article, I needed to confess that I had not read it when I was young. If I had known I needed a room of my own with a lot of CASH to be myself, I dared not to tell my mom about my wannabe. Furthermore, if I had learned earlier about John Adams’ famous remarks, I dare not to have made such an “enormous” wish. He once said “ Because of my father’s hard-working, so I can study military and politics, so my sons can learn law and engineering, thus my grandsons can be artists or poets,” something like that…. You see, what an interesting statement that made me think!
First of all, it is all about men- the father, himself, the sons, and the grandsons. Where were the great-grandma, grandma and the mother, the daughters and daughters-in-law, and the “Shakespeare’s sisters”? Secondly, it lets me think how wonderful or how lucky it could be to have a father from Adams’ family!
Finally, darn it, I am not a son, but another Shakespeare’s-sister-could-be!
Since I have mentioned "father", let me just quickly and briefly introduce my father (though we are talking about women, without men, women's stories would have been much more different??). I need to be objective and neutral toward my father who passed away several years ago. My father was born in 1910 during the Japanese occupation. Putting in this way, let us recall a movie, maybe you have seen it- “The Last Emperor.” It was the last Sino-Japanese war of the last dynasty, the Qing was defeated and gave away Taiwan to Japan. From 1985 to 1945, Taiwanese people like orphans suddenly tossed away to a foreign regime that strategically ruled her (both repressive and assuaging tactics) for half of a century. Some relevant information can be find in a grad paper of mine: https://ci8395.blogspot.com/2012/08/pedagogy-of-oppressed-vs-oppressors-and.html After having depicted the historical background, let me go to some details about him. He was forced to have 4 years’ Japanese elementary (to uproot the cultural heritage) education which was all he could attend. Such a "privilege" given to him perhaps, he was born with a desirable gender.
To save time for the key stories, I would skip my father's, and go into the second one. It is about my mother. Born during Japanese colonization, like most of the poor women, she was encouraged to have as many children as possible. The "reproductive machines” were highly demanded to produce more workers, and soldiers for Japan’s military expansion needs. My mother did have 10 children. According to the comparative advantage, and since some education would damage the womb (Edward Clarke, 1873), my mother, and women of her generations were deprived of the opportunities of education. So, she could not read, nor write. Although she was so-called “illiterate”, she insisted that children should have an education.” “Children should have education” is equivalent to “people need to breathe, to eat, and to drink” in today’s society. So what’s new about it?
Now, again the story needs to be situated in the historical context (for detailed conditions, refer to my thesis: A Multi-Level Analysis of 228 Social Movement (A Massacre) of 1947 in Taiwan, deposited in the General Library of UW-Madison). Among her peers, education to women is like a camel wanting to go through the needle’s eye. Just taking a look at her contemporaries dealing with their daughters, you can imagine how noble an idea my mother had! Among Taiwanese women of her age group, approximately 95% were poor and illiterate. One of the major anxieties of them was not able to pay daughters’ future dowries, thus giving away or exchange daughters for the future-baby brides-in-law (童養媳-who were usually brutally mistreated by the future mothers-in-law) was a popular practice in the low social class. Many young girls were even sold to rich families as child laborers or chateau slaves, and some of them ended up in the highly demanded business - brothels.
My mother loved us, children, very much. Those young girls’ horrifying nightmares had never happened to us female siblings. However, my eldest sister had to sacrifice herself to help out the family. Right after graduating from elementary school, at that young age, she worked at a textile factory as a weaver- a very popular and booming industry at that time during the first wave of globalization marching through Taiwan. As to me, I realized how important money was to my family. I always had a strong desire to please my mom to soothe her constant anxiety of family financial stress. I worked many tiny jobs starting from my elementary school days. Two of them were multinational corporate company’s branches in Taipei. One was the Max Factor Cosmetic Inc., the other one was an International Traveling Bags Manufacturing Company. I remembered I took my younger sister Li-chun working in those difficult working conditions to earn 3-8 cents per hour. No such word -"child laborers” existed at that time, not to mention the Child Labor Laws ever been heard off, because children were assets, not liabilities when time did not favor children's innocence! Kathleen just now mentioned the positive and negative sides of Globalization (not Internationalization), I think my female siblings are good witnesses of those days of sweet bitterness!
Definitely, us female siblings did contribute efforts to the first stage of globalization in Taiwan and were also part of the legend in establishing the famous MIT (Made In Taiwan) kingdom with unimaginable joy (tiny yet significant money) and sacrifice (terrible working conditions). Male siblings even born in a humble background still could get enough attention and protection from my mother and nurturing from sisters. For example, I had to do all the family laundry by hand and cleaned my brothers’ rooms when I was a very little girl. Us sisters took turns to do cooking and cleaning. Recall when I was in high school which was a very competitive one (the Taipei Municipal First Girls’ Senior High School), I anxiously saw most of my classmates staying at cramming schools after class for another 2-3 hours' extra home assignment drills and preparation, so they could do well on next day’s quizzes/exams and kept very competitive in class, while I had to go to families hiring me to tutor their children so I could bring some money home. You can imagine, after family chores, tutoring jobs, school works, there was not so much time for me to prepare myself for the next day’s challenges in school. But fortunately, through those events, I learned to keep the head above the water, and survived well. Who says that “What cannot break you, make you stronger,” indeed!
Now I had better quickly jump to the third woman’s story. I am running out of time. She was a wet nanny. A wet-nanny, mainly, a woman living in poverty, saved her milk to nurture other families’ babies for whose mother could not or did not want to raise them. Thus the nanny was called in to serve and earned the service fees. The third story was also relating to my mother. My biological grandma died right after giving birth to my mom. You know at that time, a woman’s partition was similar to put one of her legs into the casket ( just recall the horrifying and ordeal that Mary Wollstonecraft had been through for such a tragedy!) It was a 50-50 % chance to survive for most of the babies and the mothers. The grandpa had to marry a widow with 4 children of her own. He witnessed the abusive behaviors of the stepmom toward the little baby – my mom, thus he decided to save the baby’s life by sending her to the wet-nanny’s house and paid her some meager fees. In the long run, my mother decided not to go back to the stepmother's and stayed with the nanny's family.
The nanny (we called grandma) had 7 children, three boys, and four girls. Each time she gave birth a baby, if boy, she kept him, if not, she would arrange to sell or give away the female infants (named with gender derogation, such as 罔腰, 招弟, 一招, 再招 - frequently seen at that time. For more details, refer to my thesis: Social Ideology and Gender roles- Contemporary Women's Issues in Taiwan (社會意識型態與性別角色-論臺灣社會變遷中婦女問題 ) deposited in the Grad Library of National Taiwan University). Thus, the milk could be saved to nurture other families’ babies. She only kept one girl for family chores and took care of other family members. Two of her daughters were sold, and one of them almost ended up in a brothel, whom my mother (she became the oldest one in the nanny's family whom the nanny dare not to touch) used all the possible methods to rescue her out of the misery. As to the money the nanny earned, she used to support the whole family. Remember, during the Japanese occupation, Taiwanese men were oppressed in a different fashion!
Now, I hope you won’t be misled by my anecdotal stories about the true face of women in Taiwan during the early 20th century. I wish I would have presented more accurate data about the social condition during those days. But, now, the misery of women has been replaced with a new vitality through a tremendous socio-economic transformation: just comparing my current academic and career conditions to my mother’s.
So, regarding the generation next to mine, are you curious about it?
Yes, let me tell you, each time I go back to Taiwan, I just could not tell whether my nieces are American girls or Japanese young ladies! They enjoyed the tremendous economic affluence in Taiwan. They dyed/highlighted their hair, changed their contact lens by colors, and dressed up like Japanese girls or westerners with all sorts of fancy stuff which make their auntie Crystal look like a modern pumpkin. They just want everything that the modern American and Japanese girls enjoy! They are experiencing the fourth stage of Rostow’s economic development model- the “high consumption era.”
The trajectory of women’s development in many societies has striking similarities reflecting her specific socio-economic conditions and the cultural ideology. That's why it is important for women from different cultures, nations, races, and classes to get together to share our female experiences.
Taiwan presents a wonderful case study for women’s striving for justice among developing countries in the 20th and 21st centuries. The history of the development of women in Taiwan was young but impressive. The female grassroots movements have generated more than 50 NGOs (non-government organizations) to fight for women's rights. Via 30 years’ empowerment of education, women’s movements led by the well educated middle-class women and their relevant associations have accomplished the following major successes legislatively, economically, and politically a decade ago:
1. Taiwan had the first female Vice President in Far Eastern Asia, elected in 2000, and the first female
Presidential candidate running against two males with a narrow margin of loss in January 2012;
2. passed the Equal Rights, Equal Pays Law;
3. amended several family laws to protect single parent and divorced women; and
4. passed the Civil Liberty Union Law that same-sex can legally marry and is protect by the law.
Due to time constraints, the statistical data relating to the changing socio-economic statuses of women in Taiwan will be shown through the slides/PowerPoint presentation! Thanks for all of your attention and patience.
------------------------------------------------------------
The following short article might not directly relate to the above story and was not a new story either. But I would like to put them together as a response to a Mainlander-official who worked in the Taiwanese Foreign Affairs Dept in Canada as a public serviceman, paid by Taiwanese taxpayers. (Note -There are Taiwanese Chinese, Chinese Taiwanese, Taiwanese, and the natives as well as other different ethnic groups in Taiwan). This gentleman derogated Taiwanese people's multiple-century suffering into insignificance that caused a socio-political scandal a couple of years ago.
他的名子叫 被割割 March 2009 Crystal L C Huang
他的名子叫 被割割。這個名子犯不著對 "范蘭欽" 有任何自由聯想或對他有畫蛇添足之 "閒"。(這仁兄宣稱臺灣人是"賤"民. 是可忍孰不不不不不不可忍?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) (This short article was done by the turtle-crawling style in typing each character when the voice to texts software was not available).
被割割很認命與守舊。深信書中自有外交屋，書中自有謙忠恕。中學作文得數獎，大學聯考歷史考了個一百分。算是個左腦 (右腦是在媒國啓蒙的) 有開發的人。被割割一心一意想拼個謙忠恕外交官以報家國養育之恩 (真是顽固迂腐到極點!)。首度赴特考戰戰兢兢, 然而慘遭敗北 - 這科國際公法雖非本行, 也不該考個如此無能的分數。捲土重來信心十足。不料晴天闢靂高分落選。
回想多年前時的被割割並非輸不起那一分，而是被割割 那不識字的母親滿懷疑問 "那ㄝ安內生? 歷哪目賙放ㄎㄨㄟ ㄎㄨㄟ去考，歷史也不會考二十五分!!!" 一輩子沒機會上一天學的老母卻苦苦巴望她十個苦命兒 中能有一兩個有出脫當個 像包清天那 樣 的 ”官”，一如歌仔戲 (忠孝節義封建承控機制) 中那十年寒窗一舉揚眉顯親的莘莘學子鬆口氣 地說， ”此後不再受虐於猛逾虎的苛政”。 然而複查成績的結果是白紙四大黑字- "查無錯誤"。
被割割只好安慰老母: “媽，您的每日清晨夜晚虔誠欽天敬祖，燒好香做好待， 祖宗神明會原諒我的失誤。” 然後被割割嬉皮笑臉地對媽說 “可能是真的， 想當官要燒三代的好香做好事呢! 媽， 一定是前兩代阿公阿祖香沒燒夠!” 私底下，被割割卻無奈地想著那報考的履歷表上, 的確是要你提及祖宗三代。不過不是有關燒好香做好事，而是祖宗們的學經歷背景。被割割的兄妹們倒是黃家頭一代出產的識字人。在台灣，這是一件很值得誇耀的事。
言歸正傳，這 “ 二十五分的歷史教訓 ” 從此深深烙印在這個社會學没讀透的狂狷青年心頭。
話說山不轉路轉、當不了駐外人，被割割 倒也扛轎周旋於幾個小型官場，看了幾齣現形記 (時當解嚴天蠶劇變之際，於國府殿堂)。厚黑與薄白戲碼趁機上演，看得眼花撩亂，做得澎湃洶湧 。 說得遲那時快，一個有份量的獎學金使被割割覺悟一切有為法，如夢幻泡影 - 痛心地空遁到海外, 專心投入百年樹 (媒國)人的工作 (不夠格樹本國人，只好退而求其次)。 所以, 從一個當了七年親愛精誠的丘八官與抬轎人如今成了個 “住” 外的樹人。
如此一來，被割割時而仰天長嘯壯懷激烈一番, 時而自我調侃自我阿Q，自封個背 "彩虹旗" 的人 (有綠， 有藍， 有紅，有黑，更有白)。如果你要為被割割駐個名 (不論是加罪或加封)- 這嗎 騎牆騎得太離譜??
不過看官要是知曉這荒唐辛酸個中味， 說真的，這種旗也真重得難扛。 試想被割割對著大鼻混眼的媒國學生唱著 望你早歸，梅花，雨夜花，易水寒, 與 高山青以解說社會階層和族群理論時，卻無法用那美麗的母語的精神分裂折騰?! 被割 割的自我流放, 值得反省, 值得三思..
Sunday, September 25, 2011
The temporary residents on this planet – Life beyond possessions
Weekly laugh-if-off (on my Facebook):
與大學同學紙上談兵,隨興所稚,
我也狗尾續貂做"七言覺句(十)-無聊詩"一首: (The temporary residents on this planet – Life beyond possessions). Share with you-
位高權重人人靚, 遊山玩水日日春;
縱橫綼闔處處行, 金銀財寶月月進;
妻妾成行個個幸, 兒孫子女年年增;
麻將梭哈時時贏, 宅豪戶廣歲歲營;
吃喝嫖賭樣樣精, 無憂無愁常常暝.
與大學同學紙上談兵,隨興所稚,
我也狗尾續貂做"七言覺句(十)-無聊詩"一首: (The temporary residents on this planet – Life beyond possessions). Share with you-
位高權重人人靚, 遊山玩水日日春;
縱橫綼闔處處行, 金銀財寶月月進;
妻妾成行個個幸, 兒孫子女年年增;
麻將梭哈時時贏, 宅豪戶廣歲歲營;
吃喝嫖賭樣樣精, 無憂無愁常常暝.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
August 24 internal sharing
Greetings,
Thanks to colleagues, for the valuable information from the Dr. Jones', in particular, the right hand, left hand analogies.
Others are, "A wind of unearned privilege behind some people's sail gets them further along in their journey"; "Understanding unearned privilege is not about blaming people for the past"; "The culturally-based definition of normal is then extended to everyone and everything"!!
Thank you guys for keeping diversity issues (both teaching and learning) updated and inspiring.
With the dynamic supports from students' unreserved discussions and expressing their genuine feelings in the classroom, my unearned privileges get me sailing further. Perhaps, you have the similar experience as I do.
Have a great semester!
Crystal
Thanks to colleagues, for the valuable information from the Dr. Jones', in particular, the right hand, left hand analogies.
Others are, "A wind of unearned privilege behind some people's sail gets them further along in their journey"; "Understanding unearned privilege is not about blaming people for the past"; "The culturally-based definition of normal is then extended to everyone and everything"!!
Thank you guys for keeping diversity issues (both teaching and learning) updated and inspiring.
With the dynamic supports from students' unreserved discussions and expressing their genuine feelings in the classroom, my unearned privileges get me sailing further. Perhaps, you have the similar experience as I do.
Have a great semester!
Crystal
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
7/11/11 RED class logs and reminder
Ladies and gentlemen,
Today I explained a little bit about the nature of RED curriculum and design required by our State.
Some peers expressed that this course was relevant to personal life, family and future, and some are still searching/questioning deeper issues which might involve with other dimensional understanding and experiences.
Since the RED course is heavily relating to History, Philosophy, and Socio-political science, I wish we had more time to touch on/or review those essential info to enhance our critical thinking and understanding of the complexity in human thinking and behaving.
We finished "Beyond our Differences". Hope you found beneficial info to help your Actions with Plan - understanding the past, not repeating the same problems but becoming a solution - being a change agent from very simple yet significant step for improving ourselves and society.
Thanks for two groups' sharing Essay III - Melissa+ Lynn, Michelle, Ashley+Dean+Matt. I have your peer-review scores.
Reminder:
1. We have 2 guest speakers to come to our class and share their experience with us tomorrow.
Some background info was addressed briefly in the Beyond the Differences film.
2. You will think about some questions relating to Diversity tonight.
They will present info and then a mini-panel/Q and A discussions will be held.
You will turn in a page of in-class writing
at the end of the class.
3. You still can modify or enhance your Essay III and Reading 49 before presentation.
4. I am also organizing an internal panel discussion (from peers who wish to share experiences relating to RED, please email me a brief contents you would like to discuss with our class. This will be held on next Tuesday.)
Email me if you have questions. lhuang@cvtc.edu
Today I explained a little bit about the nature of RED curriculum and design required by our State.
Some peers expressed that this course was relevant to personal life, family and future, and some are still searching/questioning deeper issues which might involve with other dimensional understanding and experiences.
Since the RED course is heavily relating to History, Philosophy, and Socio-political science, I wish we had more time to touch on/or review those essential info to enhance our critical thinking and understanding of the complexity in human thinking and behaving.
We finished "Beyond our Differences". Hope you found beneficial info to help your Actions with Plan - understanding the past, not repeating the same problems but becoming a solution - being a change agent from very simple yet significant step for improving ourselves and society.
Thanks for two groups' sharing Essay III - Melissa+ Lynn, Michelle, Ashley+Dean+Matt. I have your peer-review scores.
Reminder:
1. We have 2 guest speakers to come to our class and share their experience with us tomorrow.
Some background info was addressed briefly in the Beyond the Differences film.
2. You will think about some questions relating to Diversity tonight.
They will present info and then a mini-panel/Q and A discussions will be held.
You will turn in a page of in-class writing
at the end of the class.
3. You still can modify or enhance your Essay III and Reading 49 before presentation.
4. I am also organizing an internal panel discussion (from peers who wish to share experiences relating to RED, please email me a brief contents you would like to discuss with our class. This will be held on next Tuesday.)
Email me if you have questions. lhuang@cvtc.edu
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
A discussion (7/5/11) and feedback 7/6/11
I would like to share some of my observations which you might be familiar with (or interested in) as well.
I do agree that among the 6 +1 major themes in this course (race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, and disability, as well as their intersectionalities), the RACE part is the toughest one to convey and discuss in a predominantly Caucasian student body - not to mention to cover these 7 heavily weighted fields within A semester!
This issue happened before when I taught at a neighboring University. Some students argued that there was no racial issue in Wisconsin, and why they needed to learn those "unnecessary stuff" - Surprising? Not at all! A few days ago, one of the Presidential candidates proclaimed that the hard-working "founding fathers" (such as "John Quincy Adams"...as she harangued) had eliminated racial problems from America !!
I do small surveys every semester to understand the prior knowledge that students have to take RED. (In many colleges, Intro Soc is the prerequisite to take RED. At some universities, RED is a 400 senior level course). Generally speaking about 2/3 of my students have no soc background and expect RED is about learning different "interesting" cultural facts and practices and then surprisingly to know there are some "unhappy" Racial events in the "unknown" history and in current practices that make one feel uneasy.
Even though I usually spend a week on reviewing or providing basic SOC concepts and introducing the rich and complex dimensions of this course at the beginning of the semester, I still expect the phenomena as this specific student expressed to her.
Yes, some reparations are needed. Thank you to bring it up to the WTCS General Education Deans group regarding the potential for revision and updating in the future for this course.
Hope you are enjoying the summer break!
Crystal (070511)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good morning, Thanks for the prompt feedback and comments on RED issues (070611).
Just another small episode happening in my summer class to share with you:
Having been teaching this course for a while, I understand the parameters of presenting and am aware of the boundary of students' "comfort zone" within a proper probing without stinging.
To teach this course, one strategy, as you know well, is to let them bring in learning materials and conduct mini-sharing and teaching within rubrics at the first 5-10 minutes of class.
What has happened in this summer so far is that some students did bring in very "spicy" materials that could be categorized as this specific student said -"demoralizing" and "feeling no good" stuff which are really provocative, yet good for critical thinking.
I truly appreciate and enjoy some students who are willingly (or are able ) to stand outside of their comfortable boxes and contribute to our collective learning.
As to the uncomfortable part of the stories, due to the textbook I use having a special design and purposes, in the 2nd and 3rd part of sections (now we are in) , the feeling of "sitting on fire" would be aroused. And I am glad that some students do feel that way.
The final part - from my previous semesters' experience - they would get the AHA! moments.
Again, thank you to raise the question of rewriting the course competencies at the state level during last semester and C's brought it up to the Deans' group discussion.
Have a nice day.
Crystal (070611)
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
October, 30, 2009 International AECT Convention, Louisville, KY (Oct 27-31) Presenting:
Topic: Learning Information Techologies as Empowering Tools to Narrow the Class and Gender Gap in Rural-Urban Spetrums- A review from Global to U.S. Perspective.
Presenter: Li-chin (Crystal) Huang, 10/30/09, Louisville
Abstract
Information technologies are rapidly reshaping the world, but the digital divide has been a growing concern both in the domestic and international discourse. Generally speaking, the poor and the disadvantaged tend to live in the remotely isolated rural areas. Gender plays a role in this scenario. This paper provides a review of learning technologies as empowering tools for rural low income women from global and domestic perspectives.
Though information technology (IT) is no longer considered a luxury in many affluent societies, the digital divide continues to be a major concern both in domestic and international discourse (NPA Report, 2002; PEW, 2004). Statistics shows a significant gap in access and knowledge of IT among the rural, urban and suburban areas where socio-economic status, gender, and racial background distinguish such disparity (World Bank, 2002). Issues with accessing opportunities and resources relating to IT imply the increasingly marginalization of low-income rural mothers. As Dean (2000) remarks those who with lack of access to information technologies will become the second class citizens of the future.
Rural low-income women are disproportionately burdened with task loads, and have the least social mobility to access resources and services such as health care, child care facilities, social supports, education, and job opportunities. Many government policies, including U.S. Welfare Reform in the 1990s intend to support low income mothers’ independence by providing job and skill training, education opportunities and other relevant self-sufficient strategies. Learning technologies have been deemed as powerful tools to transform many aspects of human lives (Brown, et al, 2009). The following are some practices gleaned from different regions of the world.
At the global level, in its Gender and Development Plan of Action, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations recognized the power of IT in transforming both natural and human capital development. It pointed out that changes could accelerate progress through gender equality. It calls for policymakers, practitioners and communities to give attention to the risks and burden that women bear and suggested that unless women have access and use new technologies, the inequality could be exacerbated (FAO, 2002). We reviewed several countries across different continents regarding their conditions and practices.
With this brief glance of gender and technology in developed, developing and underdeveloped countries, we focuses on the conditions in the U.S and reviews research related to IT use and needs from a project on rural low income mothers. The data of this research were generated from the Rural Families Speak (RFS) - a multistate longitudinal research project focusing on the well-being of rural low-income families in the context of welfare reform. The original project began in 2000 across 17 states, targeting on mothers with at least one child under the age of 12 living at home and with an income at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. Data were collected from 413 families in rural counties (with population centers of less than 20,000).
Questions regarding low income mothers’ job training, educational opportunities and family life revealed serendipitous information relating to computer and the Internet usages. These face to face interview results provided an opportunity for investigation of IT use in the rural low income mothers’ lives. Based on this discovery, we formulated our research question to probe into low income mothers’ relationship with IT - “What are rural low income mothers’ perceptions, experiences, barriers and supports relating to computer and Internet usage?”
We read through original transcripts several times. A search through interview texts for the words ‘computer” and “Internet” via software Maxqda2 revealed 165 cases with segments containing the searched expressions. To examine the salient themes from computer usage and Internet access, we tabulated the collected segments to extract the essences that potentially contribute to a theme. All the proper segments went through thematic reduction process and qualitative analysis techniques (Miles & Huberman,1994; Strauss & Corbin, 2002).
After several readings of the extracted texts of 165 cases, 33 were identified with meaningful segments related to perceptions and experiences with information technologies. Based on the above criteria, the similar statements of participants’ expressions were grouped into categories which were then clustered into sub-codes and codes. Through back and forth inductive, deductive, and abductive reasoning processes, similar segments were clustered into three primary themes: general usage, barriers, and supports.
Results
The primary and sub-codes were organized and explained as follows:
Figure 1: Primary Codes and Sub-codes of Rural Low Income Mothers’ Using IT
(The inter-rating validity was done with Dr. S. Walker, U of M).
General speaking, rural low income mothers revealed the uses of IT, primarily for family and employment purposes, which encountering barriers to access and relaying on family and friends, community and employment resources as supports. Cost was the largest barrier, and most mothers reported not having the Internet in their homes. Based on mothers’ comments, many did not have computers at all due to the cost of purchase or maintenance. Using computers in public places and at work were resources for mothers’ use. Family and friends also were supports, letting mothers use their computers, or giving them old computers. This issue resonated Hargittai’s (2002) the double levels of digital divide: the first level of computer ownership and the second-level of multiple effects on digital divide, which extend to broadband access; machine vintage; connectivity; online skills; autonomy and freedom of access; and computer-use support (Hawkins, Rudy, & Nicolich, 2005). Horrigan (2004) also pointed out that solving the availability problem would get higher IT adoption in rural areas. Broadband technology is the ideal mechanism to narrow the divided gap. Practical uses of technology in diverse learning environments, in particular, the remote rural areas, the distant killers can conquer the distance barriers.
Having access to broadband Internet means that rural low income mothers obtain new kinds of support systems to provide the communication mechanism for their children, schools, teachers and other stakeholders. It opens up new ways of exploring resources and opportunities, which has impact on children’s well being. Such learning environment includes local libraries, community centers, and K-12 schools where all members of the community have access to meaningful programs and providing useful lifelong knowledge and skills.
Domestically, many non-profit organizations,[1] promote a wide range of free broadband for everyone and Internet neutrality issues. They have been organizing grass-root movements to raise the consciousness and to persuade policy makers. For example, Socialfreenet advocates free broadband Internet access to low-income families that are in need of high-speed access to attain financial, educational and employment goals. Other organizations such as Geekcorps, EduVision and Inveneo also help to overcome the digital divide through the use of education systems that draw on IT. The technology they employ often includes low-cost laptops/subnotebooks, handhelds tablet PCs, Mini-ITX PCs and low-cost WiFi-extending technology as cantennas and WokFis. Other well-known projects like One Laptop per Child and 50x15 offer a partial solution to the global digital divide; these projects tend to rely heavily upon open standards and free open source software. The OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world, to provide them with access to knowledge. Programmer and free software advocate Richard Stallman has highlighted the importance of free software among groups concerned with the digital divide such as the World Summit on the Information Society.
As of today, Finland is the first country to announce every Fin citizen to access a 1 megabit-per-second broadband connection in next year, and a 100 megabit-per-second broadband connection at the end of 2015. This move inspires other countries to start perceiving broadband as citizens’ inalienable legal right, akin to part of the First Amendment.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to vote Dec. 18 on whether to auction off the so-called AWS-3 spectrum, an unused chunk of airwaves. The winner would have to agree to use at least 25 percent of the spectrum to build a free, national broadband network which would reach 95 percent of the U.S. population, especially those in rural areas where broadband is less accessible, We suggest that US federal government play a more active role to shorten the digital divide in broadband access. This means investing and renovating IT infrastructures at local public organizations, such as community centers, child care facilities, transportation agencies, job centers, libraries, schools and churches can open up wider opportunities for learning, training, and guidance to low income mothers.
[1] Such as Freepress ( http://freepress.net/media_issues/internet), SaveTheInterent (http://www.savetheinternet.com/), Finding Dulcinea (http://www.findingdulcinea.com/guides/Technology/Internet/Free-Use-Media.pg_05.html,) , and Socialfreenet (http://socalfreenet.org/mission).
This project was completed under the team leader Dr. S. Walker's guidance.
Abstract
Information technologies are rapidly reshaping the world, but the digital divide has been a growing concern both in the domestic and international discourse. Generally speaking, the poor and the disadvantaged tend to live in the remotely isolated rural areas. Gender plays a role in this scenario. This paper provides a review of learning technologies as empowering tools for rural low income women from global and domestic perspectives.
Though information technology (IT) is no longer considered a luxury in many affluent societies, the digital divide continues to be a major concern both in domestic and international discourse (NPA Report, 2002; PEW, 2004). Statistics shows a significant gap in access and knowledge of IT among the rural, urban and suburban areas where socio-economic status, gender, and racial background distinguish such disparity (World Bank, 2002). Issues with accessing opportunities and resources relating to IT imply the increasingly marginalization of low-income rural mothers. As Dean (2000) remarks those who with lack of access to information technologies will become the second class citizens of the future.
Rural low-income women are disproportionately burdened with task loads, and have the least social mobility to access resources and services such as health care, child care facilities, social supports, education, and job opportunities. Many government policies, including U.S. Welfare Reform in the 1990s intend to support low income mothers’ independence by providing job and skill training, education opportunities and other relevant self-sufficient strategies. Learning technologies have been deemed as powerful tools to transform many aspects of human lives (Brown, et al, 2009). The following are some practices gleaned from different regions of the world.
At the global level, in its Gender and Development Plan of Action, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations recognized the power of IT in transforming both natural and human capital development. It pointed out that changes could accelerate progress through gender equality. It calls for policymakers, practitioners and communities to give attention to the risks and burden that women bear and suggested that unless women have access and use new technologies, the inequality could be exacerbated (FAO, 2002). We reviewed several countries across different continents regarding their conditions and practices.
With this brief glance of gender and technology in developed, developing and underdeveloped countries, we focuses on the conditions in the U.S and reviews research related to IT use and needs from a project on rural low income mothers. The data of this research were generated from the Rural Families Speak (RFS) - a multistate longitudinal research project focusing on the well-being of rural low-income families in the context of welfare reform. The original project began in 2000 across 17 states, targeting on mothers with at least one child under the age of 12 living at home and with an income at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. Data were collected from 413 families in rural counties (with population centers of less than 20,000).
Questions regarding low income mothers’ job training, educational opportunities and family life revealed serendipitous information relating to computer and the Internet usages. These face to face interview results provided an opportunity for investigation of IT use in the rural low income mothers’ lives. Based on this discovery, we formulated our research question to probe into low income mothers’ relationship with IT - “What are rural low income mothers’ perceptions, experiences, barriers and supports relating to computer and Internet usage?”
We read through original transcripts several times. A search through interview texts for the words ‘computer” and “Internet” via software Maxqda2 revealed 165 cases with segments containing the searched expressions. To examine the salient themes from computer usage and Internet access, we tabulated the collected segments to extract the essences that potentially contribute to a theme. All the proper segments went through thematic reduction process and qualitative analysis techniques (Miles & Huberman,1994; Strauss & Corbin, 2002).
After several readings of the extracted texts of 165 cases, 33 were identified with meaningful segments related to perceptions and experiences with information technologies. Based on the above criteria, the similar statements of participants’ expressions were grouped into categories which were then clustered into sub-codes and codes. Through back and forth inductive, deductive, and abductive reasoning processes, similar segments were clustered into three primary themes: general usage, barriers, and supports.
Results
The primary and sub-codes were organized and explained as follows:
(The inter-rating validity was done with Dr. S. Walker, U of M).
General speaking, rural low income mothers revealed the uses of IT, primarily for family and employment purposes, which encountering barriers to access and relaying on family and friends, community and employment resources as supports. Cost was the largest barrier, and most mothers reported not having the Internet in their homes. Based on mothers’ comments, many did not have computers at all due to the cost of purchase or maintenance. Using computers in public places and at work were resources for mothers’ use. Family and friends also were supports, letting mothers use their computers, or giving them old computers. This issue resonated Hargittai’s (2002) the double levels of digital divide: the first level of computer ownership and the second-level of multiple effects on digital divide, which extend to broadband access; machine vintage; connectivity; online skills; autonomy and freedom of access; and computer-use support (Hawkins, Rudy, & Nicolich, 2005). Horrigan (2004) also pointed out that solving the availability problem would get higher IT adoption in rural areas. Broadband technology is the ideal mechanism to narrow the divided gap. Practical uses of technology in diverse learning environments, in particular, the remote rural areas, the distant killers can conquer the distance barriers.
Having access to broadband Internet means that rural low income mothers obtain new kinds of support systems to provide the communication mechanism for their children, schools, teachers and other stakeholders. It opens up new ways of exploring resources and opportunities, which has impact on children’s well being. Such learning environment includes local libraries, community centers, and K-12 schools where all members of the community have access to meaningful programs and providing useful lifelong knowledge and skills.
Domestically, many non-profit organizations,[1] promote a wide range of free broadband for everyone and Internet neutrality issues. They have been organizing grass-root movements to raise the consciousness and to persuade policy makers. For example, Socialfreenet advocates free broadband Internet access to low-income families that are in need of high-speed access to attain financial, educational and employment goals. Other organizations such as Geekcorps, EduVision and Inveneo also help to overcome the digital divide through the use of education systems that draw on IT. The technology they employ often includes low-cost laptops/subnotebooks, handhelds tablet PCs, Mini-ITX PCs and low-cost WiFi-extending technology as cantennas and WokFis. Other well-known projects like One Laptop per Child and 50x15 offer a partial solution to the global digital divide; these projects tend to rely heavily upon open standards and free open source software. The OLPC XO-1 is an inexpensive laptop computer intended to be distributed to children in developing countries around the world, to provide them with access to knowledge. Programmer and free software advocate Richard Stallman has highlighted the importance of free software among groups concerned with the digital divide such as the World Summit on the Information Society.
As of today, Finland is the first country to announce every Fin citizen to access a 1 megabit-per-second broadband connection in next year, and a 100 megabit-per-second broadband connection at the end of 2015. This move inspires other countries to start perceiving broadband as citizens’ inalienable legal right, akin to part of the First Amendment.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to vote Dec. 18 on whether to auction off the so-called AWS-3 spectrum, an unused chunk of airwaves. The winner would have to agree to use at least 25 percent of the spectrum to build a free, national broadband network which would reach 95 percent of the U.S. population, especially those in rural areas where broadband is less accessible, We suggest that US federal government play a more active role to shorten the digital divide in broadband access. This means investing and renovating IT infrastructures at local public organizations, such as community centers, child care facilities, transportation agencies, job centers, libraries, schools and churches can open up wider opportunities for learning, training, and guidance to low income mothers.
[1] Such as Freepress ( http://freepress.net/media_issues/internet), SaveTheInterent (http://www.savetheinternet.com/), Finding Dulcinea (http://www.findingdulcinea.com/guides/Technology/Internet/Free-Use-Media.pg_05.html,) , and Socialfreenet (http://socalfreenet.org/mission).
This project was completed under the team leader Dr. S. Walker's guidance.
Monday, November 23, 2009
AECT 2009 Louisville International Convention (Oct 27-31)
Presenter- Topic: What is the Lived Experience of Designing and Teaching Multiple Delivery Methods -Live Meeting, Hybrid, Online, and Face To Face (f2f) within a Semester at a Technical College Setting?
AECT Convention presentation - Situated teaching experience 102909
More PowerPoint presentations from Xena Huang
Friday, August 28, 2009
The 25th Annual Conference of Distance Teaching and Learning Brief Report (Aug. 5-7, 2009 at UW-Madison)
Dr. Moore, Mary, and Crystal --------T. Arina, Crystal, and Dr. Kamau
Aug. 5 (W). I participated in FD-3 whole day Workshop
Topic- Imagination Engine: Visual Concept Design process for Interactive media development
It is about creating instructional materials via software tool in the 2nd life environment.
Summary-Distance education professionals continue to evaluate and discover new ways to combine and apply new information discovery and visual design tools to produce educational content. Following an overview of the steps in the Imagination Engine process and a demonstration of the tools used to develop scenario content. We worked in group to:
1. Develop a digital media design using the Imagination Engine process and the latest software tools
2. Brainstorm, visualize, storyboard, and produce imagery for use in interactive instructional content
3. Review and evaluate group experiences.
Comments- Our school has not officially emphasized 2nd life as a teaching and learning tool.
This area can be developed tailored to 2-year colleges' needs.
Aug 6 (R).
11. Creating online learning communities using Web.2.0 technology
Comments- We have done some part of it at our school. But I listened the whole session patiently.
25. FD Model; Overcoming attitudinal and infrastructure barriers to enfranchise remote faculty
My reflection was how 4-year colleges work hard to provide online courses, but bureaucracy and barriers still exist in their specific environment. The presentation provides a model (similar to ADDIE, intending to recruit more pure online faculty for program instructions).
Comments – I was interested in how they render the “Quality Assurance” issues.
14. Enhancing student persistence online: Retention and reporting a multi-dimensional approach In the second part Mr. Ice provided research data regarding retention which is beneficial.
Aug 7 (F).
43. Studio e: A professional development model for e-learning
Comments- Our school has done the contents of this presentation.
Good to know how other schools tackle problems.
Conclusion:
Generally speaking, I feel that 2-year colleges are still a little bit ahead of general 4-year universities in terms of mobility and adaptation, except some cutting-edge Tech research institutes such as MIT, Nova, and proprietary universities. The Conference has more focuses from general 4-year colleges’ perspectives. The characteristics of student population, faculty, and the edu-ecology between 4-year vs. 2-year are quite different. These can be my personal bias.
Overall, in addition to Michael G. Moore's presentation, two events stood out as my favorites – Teemu Arina’s Keynote and the fascinating E-Poster sessions in the Exhibit Hall.
# For the E-Poster sessions, I would like to share my thoughts:
Ideas- School can purchase wide Plasma (HD Koisk, twice or much larger than the ones we have currently ) screens installed in different campuses for each division, department, or program. Projects from faculty, students or other kind of collaborative works presented in the e-poster format can be instantly shown on the Wide Screen high density of Plasma around all campuses.
Doable conditions- Encourage each department, division, or program to provide teaching&learning relating project plans, work-in-progress, or completed projects on E-Poster with “specific incentives” as rewards.
Match the Green sustainable cores: E- poster saves the project materials (such as paper, tripartites, color, paints and other presenting items…etc.) The whole product-process activity relating to Green Initiatives is pedagogically and economically sustainable (except time spent on projects).
Potential impact- showcase individual and collaborative work via e-poster presentation in an omnipresent fashion to share information and recognize participants’ endeavor and contribution. Promote 2-year college type of scholarship.
Crystal Li-chin Huang Handouts 082709
Topic- Imagination Engine: Visual Concept Design process for Interactive media development
It is about creating instructional materials via software tool in the 2nd life environment.
Summary-Distance education professionals continue to evaluate and discover new ways to combine and apply new information discovery and visual design tools to produce educational content. Following an overview of the steps in the Imagination Engine process and a demonstration of the tools used to develop scenario content. We worked in group to:
1. Develop a digital media design using the Imagination Engine process and the latest software tools
2. Brainstorm, visualize, storyboard, and produce imagery for use in interactive instructional content
3. Review and evaluate group experiences.
Comments- Our school has not officially emphasized 2nd life as a teaching and learning tool.
This area can be developed tailored to 2-year colleges' needs.
Aug 6 (R).
11. Creating online learning communities using Web.2.0 technology
Comments- We have done some part of it at our school. But I listened the whole session patiently.
25. FD Model; Overcoming attitudinal and infrastructure barriers to enfranchise remote faculty
My reflection was how 4-year colleges work hard to provide online courses, but bureaucracy and barriers still exist in their specific environment. The presentation provides a model (similar to ADDIE, intending to recruit more pure online faculty for program instructions).
Comments – I was interested in how they render the “Quality Assurance” issues.
14. Enhancing student persistence online: Retention and reporting a multi-dimensional approach In the second part Mr. Ice provided research data regarding retention which is beneficial.
Aug 7 (F).
43. Studio e: A professional development model for e-learning
Comments- Our school has done the contents of this presentation.
Good to know how other schools tackle problems.
Conclusion:
Generally speaking, I feel that 2-year colleges are still a little bit ahead of general 4-year universities in terms of mobility and adaptation, except some cutting-edge Tech research institutes such as MIT, Nova, and proprietary universities. The Conference has more focuses from general 4-year colleges’ perspectives. The characteristics of student population, faculty, and the edu-ecology between 4-year vs. 2-year are quite different. These can be my personal bias.
Overall, in addition to Michael G. Moore's presentation, two events stood out as my favorites – Teemu Arina’s Keynote and the fascinating E-Poster sessions in the Exhibit Hall.
# For the E-Poster sessions, I would like to share my thoughts:
Ideas- School can purchase wide Plasma (HD Koisk, twice or much larger than the ones we have currently ) screens installed in different campuses for each division, department, or program. Projects from faculty, students or other kind of collaborative works presented in the e-poster format can be instantly shown on the Wide Screen high density of Plasma around all campuses.
Doable conditions- Encourage each department, division, or program to provide teaching&learning relating project plans, work-in-progress, or completed projects on E-Poster with “specific incentives” as rewards.
Match the Green sustainable cores: E- poster saves the project materials (such as paper, tripartites, color, paints and other presenting items…etc.) The whole product-process activity relating to Green Initiatives is pedagogically and economically sustainable (except time spent on projects).
Potential impact- showcase individual and collaborative work via e-poster presentation in an omnipresent fashion to share information and recognize participants’ endeavor and contribution. Promote 2-year college type of scholarship.
Crystal Li-chin Huang Handouts 082709
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Small Minimum Wage, Big Structural Hurdle
Our union (CVTCEA) president Ms. Peck emailed faculty members regarding a blog site for sharing ideas. The latest issue was about "minimum wage". See the following Tech Blog site: http://www.weac.org/multimedia/blogs/wtcs_blog/09-08-07/Minimum_Wage.aspx
I agree with the author's "...But while it is easy to point to education and training as a solution, it’s much more difficult for low-wage workers to attain the skills that will lead them to family supporting employment." But I would also like to go back to President Eisenhower’s 3 old principles on the philosophy of labor as a background understanding.
The first principles – he states, “the ultimate values of mankind are spiritual; these values include liberty, human dignity, opportunity and equal rights and justice.”
The second principle, he speaks of the economic interest of the employer and employee being a mutual prosperity.
It is the last principle that we have seen a great skepticism as well as modification . He stated: “labor relations will be managed best when worked out in honest negotiation between employers and unions, ‘without Government’s unwarranted interference’.” History tells us that improving the lives of workers through education, job training, and consciousness raising can never be enough.
Capitalism has been spearheading with a double-edged-sword wielding its blessings and curses in the U.S. for more than a century, while other countries such as England, France, Germany, Australia , and countries in the Scandinavian regions have historically developed strong Labor Parties , Socialist Parties, and various kind of third parties that played a prominent role in strengthening the unions and general well being of their citizens. Two party system – is not the norm, which may take on unicameral functions.
Though labor union laws vary from country to country, immersing in a broader International framework could provide a mirror to reflect on the accolades and criticisms of unions of what we have practiced - if change is not a phantom or rhetoric!
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Big Carrot, Invisible Stick - Think about the good will - $9 billion grants
Recently Federal Government announced that there would be a $9 billion block grant for improving 2-year colleges. With such an amount of grant, the high expectation is inevitable.
To Achieve the Dream, U.S. House of Representatives laid out a series of benchmarks that colleges and states would have to meet to receive the grants. Though still under the floor action, suggested goals such as program completion, work-force preparation, and job placement and so on are familiar anticipations to the interested parties.
I have an ambivalent perspective toward this grandiose event as an instructor at a two-year Tech college for six years. The aid can be an edu-political good will with turbulence run deep underneath this unique educational system. It can be a high time to diagnose the accumulated problems and controversies with systematic/systemic approach instead of the habitual piece-meal work.
In terms of access vs. success, 2-year colleges are not exactly FOR the under-served, OF the less-prepared, and least BY the under-privileged. As the saying goes, it is much more a unique hybrid entity of socio-politics, industrial-business compound, and rhetoric than that of the concern of what teaching and learning actually happens to improve the “human capital”.
I am still baffled by the long term “sacrosanct”(sacred cow?) state imposed on the 2-year colleges. What I am looking for is a systematic and theoretical based of this multifunctional and controversial system to be tangibly understood by the majority of stakeholders, like that of the K-12, or at least the 15+ systems.
This lost child (13-14) educational setting shall not be an edu-business-political hot potato as it used to be! I am embarking on piecing together for this missing link.
Here is my tiny step- http://cvtcscholarship.wetpaint.com - a developing wikiblog invites your input.
To Achieve the Dream, U.S. House of Representatives laid out a series of benchmarks that colleges and states would have to meet to receive the grants. Though still under the floor action, suggested goals such as program completion, work-force preparation, and job placement and so on are familiar anticipations to the interested parties.
I have an ambivalent perspective toward this grandiose event as an instructor at a two-year Tech college for six years. The aid can be an edu-political good will with turbulence run deep underneath this unique educational system. It can be a high time to diagnose the accumulated problems and controversies with systematic/systemic approach instead of the habitual piece-meal work.
In terms of access vs. success, 2-year colleges are not exactly FOR the under-served, OF the less-prepared, and least BY the under-privileged. As the saying goes, it is much more a unique hybrid entity of socio-politics, industrial-business compound, and rhetoric than that of the concern of what teaching and learning actually happens to improve the “human capital”.
I am still baffled by the long term “sacrosanct”(sacred cow?) state imposed on the 2-year colleges. What I am looking for is a systematic and theoretical based of this multifunctional and controversial system to be tangibly understood by the majority of stakeholders, like that of the K-12, or at least the 15+ systems.
This lost child (13-14) educational setting shall not be an edu-business-political hot potato as it used to be! I am embarking on piecing together for this missing link.
Here is my tiny step- http://cvtcscholarship.wetpaint.com - a developing wikiblog invites your input.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Truly Madly Deeply
I am teaching both face to face and online diversity classes this summer.
Bombarded by the media frenzies about Michael Jackson's death, children, debt, Neverland, properties, will, and legality, critically I found "Ben" is the only song that I 'realize’ touching my soul "truly ‘madly’ and deeply."
Ben told the stories of an inner state that relates to my own conditions sociologically.
The lyrics of Ben subtly and elegantly expresses W.E.B. Du Bois' "double consciousness", C. Cooley's "looking glass self" and Becker's labeling theory and other relating social interaction processes that we have discussed in class recently.
The lyrics of Ben: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSqo17o2a1w - listen to the song)
Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I'll never be alone
And you, my friend, will see
You've got a friend in me (you've got a friend in me)
Ben, you're always running here and there
You feel you're not wanted anywhere
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
There's one thing you should know
You've got a place to go (you've got a place to go)
I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
Ben, most people would turn you away
I don't listen to a word they say
They don't see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben (a friend)
Like Ben (like Ben)
Like Ben
Bombarded by the media frenzies about Michael Jackson's death, children, debt, Neverland, properties, will, and legality, critically I found "Ben" is the only song that I 'realize’ touching my soul "truly ‘madly’ and deeply."
Ben told the stories of an inner state that relates to my own conditions sociologically.
The lyrics of Ben subtly and elegantly expresses W.E.B. Du Bois' "double consciousness", C. Cooley's "looking glass self" and Becker's labeling theory and other relating social interaction processes that we have discussed in class recently.
The lyrics of Ben: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSqo17o2a1w - listen to the song)
Ben, the two of us need look no more
We both found what we were looking for
With a friend to call my own
I'll never be alone
And you, my friend, will see
You've got a friend in me (you've got a friend in me)
Ben, you're always running here and there
You feel you're not wanted anywhere
If you ever look behind
And don't like what you find
There's one thing you should know
You've got a place to go (you've got a place to go)
I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
I used to say "I" and "me"
Now it's "us", now it's "we"
Ben, most people would turn you away
I don't listen to a word they say
They don't see you as I do
I wish they would try to
I'm sure they'd think again
If they had a friend like Ben (a friend)
Like Ben (like Ben)
Like Ben
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)