Achebe talks about a time when maybe our ancestors didn’t have language… I couldn’t imagine living in such a time, not having language,how do you communicate, I’m sure so many mis-understandings happened because of the lack of language. 

Language is very important, for nations to understand one another there must be communication and in order for there to be communication there must be language.

Though an animal does not have the same language as we do, I do believe they use some form of it to communicate with one another, they use different sounds that sound like howls or barks to us but it’s their language, it’s their way of communicating with one another, just like birds chirping etc… language is universal and it truly is what makes our world go round.

Though language comes in different forms it is still the main way to communicate and it is important to be able to communicate and language makes this possible.  Wars have been avoided as well as fought because of language.  When children learn to speak and communicate their needs with their parents or care takers it makes it so much easier to care for them or tend to those needs, so too is the way our world works and functions, without communication that language makes possible, nations, people etc… would not be able to understand each other, language brings unity as well.

My example of parallel elements or writings is not only my blog! because I repeated myself quite a few times, and parallel structures do repeat themselves but also in the writing of Mencius on page 17 in where the following is repetitious making it an ex sample of parallel writing:

Water indeed will flow indifferently to the east or west, but will it flow indifferently up or down? the tendency of ma’s nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downwards. There ar none but have this tendency to good, just as all water flows down wards.  This is my example of a parrallel.

There is the Honorable Cause and the Astonishing Cause which address those who respectively agree or disagree with the position taken by the speech.  The low cause addresses those who do not feel that a topic is important and the doubtful cause addresses those who partially agree and partially disagree with the speaker, and the obscure cause addresses those who do not fully understand the issues involved. 

According to Cicero each type requieres a different approach to the persuasion process. But what of a full audience in which you do not know what kind of people you are speaking to? then what? what kind of speech will you give then?

So many questions! the answer is simple, according to  Quintilian, the best speech is the one that is given by the heart, a true virtuous speech by a honest person goes a long way.  Rather than trying to figure out who you are talking to in your audience, if you speak from the heart you have a chance to touch all who are listening rather than if you fake it or are trying to speak falsely just to please.

Cicero says that it is important that the speaker knows well the subject he is talking about before going into a speech, but Quintilian reminds us that if you speak truthfully from the heart you will always know what you are talking about because you are speaking what you know to be true.  If you attempt a lie in a speech it will be noticed and you will loose your audience.

The conclusion of both opinions of these writers is that a good speech is one spoken with truth and knowledge of what you are talking about.

You learn something everyday, even if you do not notice it but you do, when you were a child you imprinted and learned everything from your care taker, usually mother or father etc..

I believe that the kind of knowledge I have gotten from education is a better understanding of my world today, armed with the knowledge of history, culture and ancestry I better understand my world today, why things are as they are, why people are as they are etc.. knowledge is power and I crave learning something new everyday.

I also believe that knowledge leads us to a better tomorrow, if we didn’t hold the knowledge of our past, our history, as a nation we wouldn’t be able to learn from our mistakes and make a better today.

John Henry talks about liberal knowledge, useful knowledge etc.. I believe knowledge is knowledge! if applied for leisure or to teach or skill or work or hobby knowing is power, its what gets us our jobs, our positions in society in social groups etc.. what you know is who you are and that is the truth, at least that is how society measures us.

John Henry evaluated all kinds of different knowledge but at the end of the analysis if you ask me, information, any kind that you know how to apply is useful and valuable be it what it may.  Like I said, knowledge is power no matter what kind.

This is what traditionally is taught to us as a society, that we as students need to be taught by the teacher in the classroom because that teacher a lone knows everything you must learn right?  wrong, I believe Paulo Freire made a good point in his reading when he says that both student and teacher can learn from each other rather than the learning and the teaching be one sided only.

The teacher might have most of the knowledge for the subject being taught but two heads think better than one and 42 students heads verses one teachers head …..yeah! you do the math, of course students opinions and thoughts should be heard in the classrooms, and of course students also have some contribution to the learning of both themselves and yes the teacher can learn from them as well…..the teacher can teach and be taught…..yes this can be……..

Because not one person knows everyone thing! students all have lived and have had different life experiences that can and should be applied to their studies ……knowledge you don’t get from books, or something you have to memorize, no life skills knowledge, application knowledge, meaning knowledge not just read about, but knowledge you acquired through experience of it.

Having the student and the teacher discuss and learn from one another is an awesome concept, one that I truly believe is workable and something that can be beneficial given the right circumstances, but it is also one that society is not ready for.  Society doesn’t really like change and the old fashioned way of having a teacher lead and teach the class while the students sit and obey and listen and supposedly learn ……that is the way it has always been done, that is the way it will stay; unless there is someone as Paulo Freire, who is in power and thinks the same way as Freire does, unless that is the case. there will be no change!

Education has always been viewed as teacher teaching the student ……standard form for standard living! but the problem is ……we are not all standard! we do not all fit molds etc…. everyone is unique and therefore there should be options on education that best that would suit each student according to how they best learn….which ever way it may be.

That would be a good way of learning and a good way to have education triumph.

I’ll leave it at that because it’s late, my husband three kids and I just got back from Disneyland where I celebrated my 35th Birth Day!  yes today is or was my Birthday! any way, I hope I made some sense on what I wrote, I’m just pretty tired at the moment and encase I didn’t I wanted y’all to know why.

In the movie, you can see how the people rebel against authority and want to do their own thing, how a society without order is not only disorganized but unlivable!  how a human being can loose it if not following a life with order.  In the movie you see the grim reality of how life would be like if you knew there was an end to our civilization as we know it.  Hsun Tzu and Hobbes touch on the way human beings by nature will always want to go against authority so there must be a consequence like laws and punishment….. here in the movie you saw the disorder life would be without the disciplines we as a society are so used to living with.  We know that if we speed we can get stopped and get a ticket, which signifies paying a lot of money, we know that if we steal or kill it is jail time, so man usually will obey the laws in order to avoid punishment.

In the movie though, you see no consequences for killing or stealing so you saw the disorder this caused, we as humans like Hsun Tzu mentioned need to be taught to follow authority and  to obey and only this way can we have a life with order.

As for freedom vs. culture, as Ruth Benedict’s readings read, that although culture plays a big part on our decision making; it doesn’t have to, we as individuals can break apart from culture beliefs and make up our own minds in what we truly want and believe individually.  In the movie you saw people from different cultures and beliefs inner-mixing and some groups or cultures weren’t suppose to mix with others, but because of Individual minds they did as they thought right and not as their group or cultural group thought they should do, and because of this,there was able to be a somewhat happy ending, the girl and baby survive and you assume humanity will have hope to continue.

The answer is no! he would have been just another slave, who lived, worked and died a slave………through education he not only got freedom but he became somebody, somebody who not only lived to his fullest but left a legacy as well.

Education is not only vital but it is what makes and forms our lives, determines what quality of life we can live and what material possessions we can have.  Education determines the kind of job you can have and therefore determines what kind of car you can drive, the house you can live in etc………

Education has always determined your quality of life……it does for us now in days as it did for Frederick Douglas in his day, if it weren’t for education Frederick Douglas would have continued to be a slave and would have died one, but because of education his way of life changed for the better.

He shows us the importance of education and what it can do for anyone who takes advantage of it……he struggled to get his but at the end it was so worth it.  We live in a country where education is for the taking…….and yet so many of our children do not even graduate from high school, I can’t help but wonder, what would Frederick Douglass say to all those students that take education for granted? I’m sure he would think them foolish and ungrateful. 

In life there are many doors of opportunity, but like many doors, they need a key to open them, the keys to open those doors of opportunity is education, only through education can you get your keys to open those doors, for education is the key to a great future and better quality of life;  Frederick Douglass is a testimony to that.

I believe we are naturally inclined to imprint and learn not only from those who raise us but also from our daily life experiences, with or without a textbook we learn to live and be, feelings are not taught by a text book; neither are personalities, these are learned behaviors through life experiences that continue to form us on a daily basis.

Rousseau’s view on education are right on, many things not one particular thing can work to form a good education, the views he has on men, nature and things is so true… You can not learn and have a good education without all three factors.

We gain knowledge by our experiences, by our surroundings but also by text so by having all three we educate ourselves in a well rounded way.

This is why a standardize teaching method and classroom does not work, everyone learns in different ways and different paces, the classrooms in today cater only to the standard learner the standard student what of the Albert Einstein learner, the different learner the learner that learns by all three factors and not just one? that kind of learner usually gets left behind in the classrooms of today; this is why it is important to continue to look at our past philosophers like Rousseau and evaluate what is good and bad of our education today. 

Question things as they did becuase without questions we will never have answers.

Children have the freedom to Rom, to dream to be just because they can; but once you enter into adulthood those freedoms are no longer acceptable.  There are certain behaviors expected from adults that when you were a child you were free from.

Simone also touches on the subject that women give up their freedom to men, in many cultures and societies this is true, women bow down to man becuase they are taught to do so.  They give up their beliefs or wants to please man because they are taught that this is the right thing to do…in many cultures and many generations women were considered lower than the male adult role.

Simone also touches on the subject of religion, that many of us give up our freedoms to it, we follow the rules and legalism of religion and give up our freedoms to it.  It’s funny that we live in a country where we pride ourselves in being the land of the free and yet all the subject that Simone’s reading touches exists in this land of the free.  There are many children who are in situations where they are in such bad situations that they are not free, women who are abused and captive in abusive marriages, they are not free, people who get involved in religious cults they are not free and this happens in everyday life in America land of the free, what is freedom? Simone says that to be true to yourself you can be free but it is rare that as humans we seldom are, we first are true to everyone else but ourselves and until we start to be true to oneself do we really reach our true freedom.

Both authors seem to believe that man’s nature is what forms our society today, because Hobbes writes that if it weren’t for government and society rules then we would have a world without order.  A world full of disorder.  Benedict touches on the subject that man is formed by his or her culture…..

I believe both Hobbes and Benedict make good points, it is in man’s nature to need rules and discipline to keep him in order and culture does play a big role in that; but no matter who you are and what up -bringing you have had, at the end of  the day you and you alone decide your behavior and your behavior decides your life.

Every step we take and every decision we make dictates the life we will have and live, both Hobbes and Benedict touch on subjects that man kind has always explored and have always questioned, but at the end of all analysis it all comes down to individual mind set which we all have no matter what culture you are and no matter what government rules; at the end of it all, the individual is the one who decides what path he or she will take.

Their theories’ and philosophy’s were all based on trying to find the stability their world around them needed.

The way they write makes you believe that the question in their mind was, why is this war happening? Is it becuase man is so evil, how do we control this? They wanted answers but before they can have them they had to start with the questions, and the questions were and the controversy between Mencius and KaoTzu was, is man naturally evil?  Or is it a learned behavior and how do we control it? Can it be controlled? so that maybe then we can have a good government, a good order, a good life…

Mencius believed love and respect came naturally in human beings; where as KaoTzu believed that human nature was not naturally good or evil it could go both ways depending on the influence.

This different way of thought sets out both men into a war of theories in which I believe they both make good arguments toward their ideas.

I believe man has the capacity of both good and evil, I do believe man is initially good, but given the right circumstance can also be capable of evil.

A human being that has been good all his life, and has meant well to others always, that same man who all know as a “good man” someone you never thought capable of doing wrong or harm; if put into a situation that angers him to his core is capable of even killing. We have seen that repeatedly in the news, where someone has committed something horrible and no one thought him or her possible of doing that.

This is where I believe KaoTzu’s theory can be applied.