Modernity: has helped the education ?

This essay pretends to analyze modernity through a holistic perspective in order to understand what influences of modernity are presented in Education, but first we have to make a simple question: what is “Modernity?”

Modernity is essentially or exclusively a European phenomenon (Dussel, 1993). Modernity appears as consequence of the Renaissance and also emerges due to the new way to understand the world and how to control it. For that reason modernity is a Historic process which has economical, political, social, artistic and educational repercussions. In other words, it has inevitable corollaries in all the aspects of the western world.

Modernity brought promises, such as infinite progress in science and the rational thinking, democracy, freedom; all those promises reflected the future. In that way, the reason increases its power in the modern world. And the human beings realized that they have the power over the world.

Furthermore, when Europe affirms itself as the center of a world History that it inaugurates; the periphery that surrounds this center is consequently part of it self- definition. (Dussel, 1993).That kind of thought is related with education because when a teacher states that he is the center of knowledge, he is looking his students as the periphery. Definitely this way of teaching is the traditional teacher- centered language classroom where the teacher establishes goals for the learners, initiates, organizes and conducts practice and monitors progress and evaluates achievement (Bassano, 1995 ). Teachers tend to think that they have all the responsibility inside the classroom, from motivate students to decorate the classroom. After all they are trying to manifest their power as center to the periphery.

It is important to mention that Modernity imposed dominant cultures, which are American and European cultures. In some cases we are forced to learn their culture, their language and their traditions. English is more important than our mother tongue, or than Mapuches’ language. We are learning English as the only language that can validate our social condition. And we also are forgetting our culture because society tends to think that American’s culture it is better than ours.

English is a tool which teachers can teach our Latin American culture, and being be more specific, our Chilean culture. For example, if in some books appear American or British traditions, the teacher have to explain those traditions and then they have to ask to their students about their own traditions. Teachers can not ignore the cultural diversity and they have to be aware of the different cultures that their students have.

Sometimes some English teachers do not give the importance to our culture. They tend to think as they are teaching English they have to impose that culture. It is good that teachers teach a foreign culture but they have to take into consideration their student’s culture.

Nowadays school is seen with mercantile purposes. In other words, it is seen as a company. That happens because economical capitalism has been dominating and controlling all the aspect of the Western world.

If we have that kind of conception of school, it is not working well because the main goal of the school is money and it is not education, in that way it is very individualistic, there is not a collaborative work and teachers do not assume their mistakes and the government blames private companies and private companies blame the government for the bad education. In order to change those kinds of thoughts, we have to see the school as community that learns (Prieto, 2001), where teachers do not have all the responsibility in the education, in fact their share their responsibility with the students, they construct their knowledge because they are aware of their learning process and the family supports the students in those process. Society has to be aware that education is not a company where the money moves all the aspects of education

Schools look to their students like money, the more students they have, the more money they will earn. In that way education is always seen as business because our society supports that kind of mercantile education. If you have money to pay to go to a good school you could have a good education. On the other hand, if you do not have enough money. Probably you could have an inefficient education.

In conclusion modernity affects in a negative way education because the modern thought give us the idea of teacher- center class which teachers try to validate their authority in their students, they do not give them the chance to express their ideas, feelings and beliefs. Learners do not have voice inside the classroom and they also are passive students because they do not construct their knowledge because they are not aware of their learning process. Besides, teachers force students to learn foreign cultures, they do not give the importance to their native culture and they do not consider their student’s culture. Capitalism imposed to the society the mercantile education where education is a business that its main goal is money.

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References:

1. Bassano, Sharon y Christion, (1995) Community Spirit, California, USA, Alta Book Publishers.

2. Dussel, Enrique (1993) the Postmodernism debate in Latin America, Boundary 2, Vol.20, No.3, Duke university Press.

3. Prieto, Marcia (2001) Mejorando la calidad de la educación. Ediciones Universitarias de Valparaíso de la Universidad Católica de Valparaíso.

Modern times: the factory of unfulfilled promises

Modern Times is a comedy which illustrates ironically the main aspects of modernity and industrialization.

Charles was a factory worker and he worked in an assembly line when suddenly he became mentally ill because of the hard work and for the long and exhaustive working hours. He produced a tremendous chaos in the factory and for that reason he was sent to the hospital. When he left the hospital, the police confused him and they arrested him for leading a Communist strike. He was sent to jail and there he ate accidentally cocaine. After that he rescued the sheriff and his officials who had been put in jail by a group of rebellious prisoners. His good behavior made think the sheriff and he gave him a recommendation to look for a job outside from the jail he realized that the life the jail was difficult and he wanted to come back to jail.

All at once he stumbled on a woman who was escaping from the police because she had stolen bread, she was very hungry. Both escaped from the police and they began to plan their future together.

In this movie I can see problems like unemployment because the financial crisis in the world, the only way that people had to express their discontent was through strikes and riots. As a result of that situation they were unhappy because modernity did not accomplish its promise, the development of the science and the technology to guarantee the social welfare. And it also shows problems like the automation and mechanization of the human being, the dehumanization of the human life in order to be more productive. Workers did not have time to eat or to go to the toilet; some basic human conditions were ignored to be more effective and efficient in the work.

Another important topic was when Charles was arrested because they thought that he was a communist. In that period of time any kind of thinking against capitalism was suppressed. The main ideal that modernity imposed on society was capitalism

It is a wonderful movie which shows the real problems of modernity, it illustrates what the way of thought was, style and how machines controls the human life but sometimes it is quite cloying because the main character repeats the same stupid behavior many times. Maybe he wanted to represent in a hilarious way how modernity affects the human life. Clearly I will recommend this movie because it demonstrates perfectly Modern Times.

The hurricane Elizabeth

Elizabeth: the golden age took place in England in 1585. Spain was the most powerful country in Europe and it tried to impose the Catholic religion in the rest of the world. But England was against its ideology because Queen Elizabeth was protestant.

The movie begins when Elizabeth’s advisor was showing her some portraits of Princes but she did not want to get married because she did not want to share her power so for that reason she never got married and she was called the “Virgin Queen”. Meanwhile a group of Catholics conspired to assassinate Elizabeth in order to replace her with Mary, who was Queen of Scots. They wanted Mary Stuart as future Queen of England due to she was Catholic, so in that way Spain could have more influences upon England. However, they were uncovering and Mary was sentenced to death for high treason. Elizabeth confronted them and after that the conflict between them ended into a political and religious war.

It is an amazing movie because it shows Queen Elizabeth in all her glory, and how she managed the political and religious conflict with Spain. She was a very strong woman, who was self- confident and she had self- determination. She was one of the most important women in England because she fought against Spain, which was the dominant country, to establish the Protestant Church.

Analyzing psychologically Elizabeth, I believe that she never got married because her father Henry VIII projected a wrong image of marriage because he had many wives and he killed Anne Boleyn, who was Elizabeth’s mother. So I think that she could believe that marriage could be broken easily and it could not be serious. In that sense she could have fear of marriage or she could think that a husband could disturb her life and in her ideals.

The secret behind Stonehenge

This entry is about the new theory for Stonehenge based on the article form boston.com

For many years, scientists have made researches to look for answers and also to understand why all those huge rocks were there and what their function was.

Some scientist found through excavations some bodies that showed some signs of diseases. Therefore, they postulated that Stonehenge was a place where people from different places went there to find a healing for their diseases. And they carried all those rocks in order to protect themselves or they had some healing property.

This theory helps me to understand more about Stonehenge because I thought that aliens had made these structures to communicate with their peers, or to indicate that their spaceship had landed. At least this theory made me reflex about a more realistic hypothesis and it is more credibly that the one I was thinking before.

Vicky's presentation

This entry corresponds to the presentation that Victoria did on culture and civilization class, which was about The Relationship of Language and Culture.

I really like when she explained this picture because she related all the terms that culture involves and for that she used a very clear language, everybody could understand her explanation due to she was precise and concise and she also had an excellent domain on the topic.

It was a very well organized presentation because she began answering the question what do we mean by culture?, then she answered the question what is language? and finally she made a relationship between them.

She gave very good examples like the differences between Mapuches’ culture and Chilean’s culture.

Something that called my attention that she made lots of questions to explain the topic, so I think she reflected about it, she went beyond the text and for that reason she found that the best way to explain it, it was through questions.

It was a very interesting presentation. Good job Vicky!

What is civilization?

According to my point of view civilization is a complex relation between citizens of a determined society which make questions to the past in order to understand the present. It implies the social evolution and for this reason is always changing in terms of art, literature, technology, education, etc.

Also civilization implies culture due to all the human beings belong to a specific society with their own beliefs and characteristics and they have developed economical, social and political structures. Equally important are the laws and the government that facilitate the social order.

Another important point is how civilizations perceive the world. For example the occidental civilizations do not observe in the same the way the world that the oriental cultures.

In conclusion civilization is the way of life of the humans, how they relate with their environment, how they develop strategies to maintain the order and how they discover the world.