Friends And Strangers - Margaret R. Nydell

 Friends And Strangers - Margaret R. Nydell

This essay studies the intercultural differences is relation with the concept of friends and strangers in American culture and in Arabian culture. In Arabian culture there is gap between friends and strangers. There are certain rights and duties in a friendship a stranger is neither alone for rights nor he is offered any duties. In Arabian culture refusing a friend as taken out breaking the friendship even if the work is impossible to perform, a friend never refuses it directly this response is “I will try my best”. This response from a friend keeps the friendship alive forever

          An Arabian culture personal benefits is taken from the friendship we often here “Do it for my sake” but in American culture no benefit is expected from the friendship even if a persona is helped by the other he is not morally obliged to help him.

          The personal choice is so much valued that even the children aren’t obliged to take care of their parents in American culture, personal details are much more important than a person himself. They readily disclose their social and economic backgrounds. In contrast to Arabian culture, the Americans are unwilling to disclose their personal details and individual is much more important than his background.

          An Arabian culture insulting the friends is frequent without information they used their friends and story there as a long as they please. They do not feel that they are interfering their personal life.  Being alone is taken as either being dissatisfied or being sad but in American culture privacy is highly valued. A person likes to have a moment of privacy so that they could feel oneself with their self. Besides the Americans enjoy being with the friends but they never let them cross the boundary of personal life.

          These are some of the differences between the Arabians and the Americans concept of friendship. The Arabians have distinctly the line between friends and strangers but the Americans have blurred the line.

-         For Arabs a friend is someone whose company one enjoys and whose duty is to give help and do his/her ability whereas for westerners a friend is someone whose company one enjoys but whom one doesn’t except to have the same sense of duty.

-         For Arabs and oral promise has its own value as response whereas for westerners actions are valued more than words.

-         For Arabs loyalty is expected from friends but westerns don’t accept the same sense of loyalty.

-         In the culture of Arabs when introducing oneself it is common to give a lot of information about oneself from a one’s family and one social connection where as in westerns culture less personal information are disclosed.

-         In the culture of Arabs one writes one's friends often and has little concern about privacy where as in western culture one just writes ones friend less after and has a strong sense of privacy.

-         Arab people, except a friend to reciprocate invitation but the western people don’t have as strong of a need for reciprocal invitation.

A Coward - Premchand

 A Coward - Premchand

In the story, a coward, Premchand shows how cultural difference within a conflict creates problem among the people who live in the same society. Basically the Hindu cast system has created problems among the people in case of marriage. Moreover, the gap between a traditional mind and the modern mind devide the people clearly in to opposite pose. Most of the people still stick to their conservative beliefs due to which the gap has always remained unfulfilled. In the story, Keshav a Brahmin boy falls in love with Prema a girl from Banya caste. In the beginning Keshav seems to be very strong because he is ready to undergo any hardships that might come on his way. He convinced Prema to be bold and fight against the conservative mind. Prema, who is loyal to her parents, doesn’t close to against them. However she doesn’t share to live her life without Keshav as Prema goes home. She thinks about Keshav and collects her strength to tell her relationship with Keshav to her parents. In the beginning her parents rejects it strongly but they agreed when she put her life at stake. Prema’s father went to talk with Keshav’s  father, who reacted very rudely to him. However he tolerated being the father of a girl. Then Prema wrote a letter to Keshav informing him that she was ready to undergo to any shorts of difficulties if he was ready to accept her as his life partner. She also wrote that her parents were eager to meet him and he was called for dinner. Prema waits for Keshav impatiently but neither he nor his letter comes only the next morning Prema gets the letter of Keshav in which she finds him unexpectedly coward and disloyal. Her parents ask her about his response but she tells them nothing she hides her pain the whole day and the next morning she commits suicide.

          In this way this story shows the cultural problems of the same society due to the conservative feelings of the people. The lover like Prema and Keshav are very much frequent in our society too and they are killing themselves due to the fear of social parts which are almost impossible for them to cross.

School is bad for children - John Halt

 School is bad for children

                                                                  John Halt

In this essay, the writer seems to be against the idea of formal education about, he is not in favor of abolishing the school education, and however he stands for the reformation of traditional teaching system.

          According to him, schools are killing the curiosity of the students by imposing (forcing) the final truth in their mind. When a child comes at school he comes with a lot of expectation and frantically he returns home with the feeling of pessimism. Besides, the writer argues that the school has changed the students' natural intelligence, curiosity, confidence, resourcefulness independence, patience and energy into past, laziness, dependences, indifference. Actually the child has got immense confidence about his potentiality but the teachers always discourage him. The additional to this child, finds the classroom to be cooled and ugly. There are other children but they are unable to communicate with each other.

          Most of the schools separate the learning from the living. When they create the gap between life and learning the children are confused. The classroom environment is artificial and the teachers act almost like robots.

          Usually the students are taken as a blank sheet of paper and the teachers are free to write on their mind. The teachers never trust the students and they never appreciate their natural knowledge. As a result the children feel that he is not worth of listening to.

          The teachers neglect the needs for the respects of individual difference. Every individual has got different perspective and the teachers always try to establish the final perspective.

          The teachers teach the students that to make a mistake or to be confused is to commit a crime and as a result the students start creating the teacher. The writer claims that the schools are teaching him to be indifferent. The class environment is just opposite to the way how a child lives his life in a natural form. There is no doubt that there are other children in the classroom but all of them are in silence. They all seem as if they have nothing to do with each others. As a result, the child takes his teachers to be inhuman.

-         Reformation

According to the writer, there are fundamental changes necessary for school education. The first and foremost thing is that compulsory attendance should be abolished. He justifies that when something is made compulsory it develops unwillingness from the students. It is self-evident that forceful. Knowledge is useless at the time of crisis. Curiosity is developed not to force but through freedom. Undoubtedly, the critics might counter argue, “If the children did not go to school where would they go?” It does not necessarily mean that if the children are not compelled to go to school, they will come out in the street. When the education system is made free, the children will be more eager to go to school.

          The second reformation that the writer puts forward is that the students or the children should be taught in a natural environment. In other words, the teachers should bring the outer world into the school. For example, the students should learn about the law not from the teacher but from the judging himself.

The children should be allowed to judge their works by themselves. It is better to encourage the student to learn from each other rather than dictating what to the small kids learn more readily from their teacher. They also point out the exams should be at list and the fixed curriculum should also be abolished. His argument is that certain hour's examination cannot judge the ability of the students. Besides the fixed curriculum units, should be given the unlimited potentiality of the students.

          In this way John Halt stand for the reformation of the traditional system of school education. In his opinion most of the schools are running natural knowledge of the students and they are making them passive and dull.

 

 

In the first half in this essay John Halt criticizes formal education and says that schools convert students natural intelligences curiosity, confidence, resourcefulness independence ,patience and energy into passiveness, laziness, dependences, indifferences, boredom and low self-esteem. Halt further says that the schools discourage experimentation, creativity and originality. - They teach students that learning in separated from living and that students can't be trusted to learn and are no good at it. The children from school learn that the learning is a passive process. - School neglect students need and interest and shows no respect from individual differences - They teach students that, “to be wrong uncertain, confused is a crime and as a result students start to dodge, bluff, fake, cheat. - School doesn't teach to interact with other people and to lives and without paying attention to anything going around them. - Schools are almost always ugly, cold (not interested) and inhuman. - They encourage dishonesty, --- and anxiety - They provide, little opportunity for students to learn about the real world.

Halt’s recommendations to enhance real learning and improve school

·       - Abolish or modify compulsory school, attention.

·       - Take students into the community to learn about real world first hand.

·        - Bring more of the real world into schools different professional people to talk that they actually do.

·        - Encourage students to work together and learn from each other.

·       - Encourage students to learn to evaluate their own work and find their mistake and correct them.

·       - Eliminate (avoid) grades, exams and rank.

·       - Abolish the fixed, required curriculum.

How the web destroys the quality of Students Research Paper. - David Rothenberg

 How the web destroys the quality of Students Research Paper.

- David Rothenberg

       In this essay Prof. Rothenberg has a display the harmful effects of the use of external especially for the students. The writer has claimed that plagiarism (copying) has lost the sense of originality. In fact his experience with the last semester students clarify that the students were eager to download the materials without mentioning their sources likewise all the references were taken from the external and the students even didn’t know where they exactly occurred.

                   For the ever growing use of the web, the students themselves aren’t fully responsible because the universities themselves teach the students,” Don’t read, just connect”. Instead of searching the materials in the libraries, it is easy for the students to cut and paste.

                   The university teachers must be friendly with the students and they must encourage the students to read books from the libraries and consult the related journals .When the teachers give pressure to the students they are likely to download the materials form the web that helps them to secure a good grade and avoid the pressure of the teacher.

                   It is also necessary that libraries must be mad up-to-date. It is better to invest on buying book than spending so much money for computer.

 

Text

          According to the writer, he is given hundreds of research papers by the final year's students. He would like to read all of them and evaluate them but he knows that this papers aren’t the original creation of the students for they were down loaded from the web.

          It was obvious that the downloaded materials lost their originality due to which writing of the students lost coherence (unity).

          While looking at the papers the writer noticed that all the works cited from the web and they were written during two months. It clarified that the students were missing the general trend of the past and they also failed to make their papers specific. Neither they were able to take any authentic writers. For their citation nor were they able to give credit to the owner of the material.

          In the research papers the beautiful pictures had been quoted but those pictures were the result of copy ,cut and paste. Besides random quotations were found but the sources weren’t maintain.

          Prof. Rotherberg Denies that he is a Luddite but against the idea of misusing the technology. In other words, he believes that the students' quality should not be damaged by so – called industrialization.

          After finding out the errors with students, the writer talks about the causing factors for their flight. First of all, universities themselves are responsible because they are trying to show themselves modernize and spend a huge amount for the computers. The slogan “don’t read, first connect “encourages the students to download the materials rather than create their own ideas. Similarly the teachers are unable to provide adequate information to the students, the result is downloading the materials. Especially the students of second language download the materials so as to secure a good grade in their exams.

          Therefore the students must be made aware about the harmful effects of downloading the materials and they must be encouraged to use libraries free – entry.

Richard Cummins / An opposing view Richard Cummins

 

An opposing view

                           Richard Cummins

          When the article of Rothenberg was published a lot of responses appeared in the newspaper. Among them Richard Cummins also could not help publishing his ideas. He opposed the idea of Rothenberg and tries to establish the web as an inevitable part of modern students.

          Richard Cummins appreciates the logics given by Rothenberg but he criticizes the narrow concept of Rothenberg. Cummins argues that the available materials should be provided to the students so that they can make their writing and thinking even better. Similarly he rejects the idea of originality and clarifies that there is nothing of modern techniques that enable the students to increase their quality.

          Cummins uses the metaphor of a spider and a fly. It is up to the students whether to become a spider or a fly. In other words good and evil come together. Whether we take the good aspects or the bad ones depend on ourselves. So the web is not responsible for the destruction of students for their plight.

          Therefore the teachers should not advocate for banning (to respect) the modern techniques but they should teach the students how to get benefit out of them –

·        Personal persuasive essay

·        Educational hazards (dangerous situation) of the world wide web (www)

·        Rothenberg’s criticism of students use of www

·        The use of interest is don’t read just connect, surf (search), download, cut and paste.

BA 2nd year TU Compulsory English 202

First Grade – Standing The Hall

 First Grade – Standing The Hall   

                                                      Chenyl Savageale

          This poem depicts a real picture of a classroom in which a poor student is punished by the teacher. By showing ill practice a punishment that poet strongly speaks for the reformative of the education system. In fact punishment has got negative effect on the learners and teaching learning system is incomplete with punishment.

          According to the poem the boy couldn’t read and the teacher threw him out side of the class. He stood there and remembers his grandmother who told him the stories but how she was at hospital. He wondered when she would be back at home. The boy knew that the letters told the stories but unfortunately he could not read them. Besides everyone pointed out him as a stupid and a hopeless and the principal punished him. He always waited for the bell to ring or the teacher calling him back in the class. Despite the punishment he still saw the sign port of hope looking at the spider webbing, its net and the sun making the life possible. He felt a kind of communication with them and felt himself distinct from him teacher.

          The poet may be trying to tell us that punishment never makes a student eager to learn. Besides a student's spill should not be measured in the narrow concept, there are obviously many skills. Through which a child can shape his future. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the child who can't read is really hopeless and stupid even if he is poor in studies he can do the best in other field. Therefore the child must be left to learn in the natural environment and according to his will.

·        This poem foregrounds the discussion about educational issues including literacy, oral versus writing tradition, bilingual education, minority students learning problems and disabilities, students punishment.

·        In this poem it is talked about the need for teacher to consider a student an individual. Different individuals have different interests background, intelligence. Imposition of any learning should be avoided. The students should be reflected in matters of creativity of their language, cultural background.

T