We enjoyed a feast of narratives in this class -- many thanks to the authors. We heard about deciding to live in residence and learning to juggle school, work and daily living chores; the heartbreak of false friendship and being grateful for true friends; the shock of a good high school student receiving poor grades in university and deciding to meet the challenge; a summer trip to Quebec and the benefits of travel for young people; developing a fear of public speaking from experiences in a hostile classroom and the contrast of learning how to be more confident in a nurturing classroom; work experiences in a friend's business and a man's unique way of teaching through salty stories; the impact on children in a family breakdown and learning why forgiveness is important; and, lastly, through early marriage and more worldly experiences, being able to stand up for yourself and finding the courage to change your life.
Our story this week, "Man and Wife" by Katie Chase, created a lot of good discussion. Thanks for all the good comments on the blog as well.
Please note: the blogs/reading logs are due next Wed., March 18. You can e-mail them in one document or bring a paper copy to class. After the introduction, there should be nine entries in total. Your response to this class, Mar. 10, will be the final entry. I will continue to post information on the blog and you are welcome to post your ideas, but it is optional from now on.
Just a heads up: in less than two weeks (Mar. 25) the three narratives for the Portfolio will be due. Please bring one narrative to class next week on which you have not yet received feedback and we will give each other peer comments. See you then.
13 comments:
This week’s narratives brought to light an ugly side of education: competition. One of the narratives read described how the severity of the competition in some faculties have even gone as far as to induce fear of speaking in class, be it required by the syllabus, or otherwise. Appropriately timed, it seems, as I experienced the losing side of competition just a short while after. In one of my classes there are two mid terms. I did well on the first mid term, seemingly by the grace of god, and not so well on the other mid term. Now, I’ve never been one to compare grades, or use language like “I beat you” when it comes to comparing grades. Sure I’ve used a competitive edge to drive myself to be better, but never to gloat or to make myself feel better about my worth in a class. However, in this class I have two friends, who are markedly better students than I am, and they are very competitive people. After the first mid term they were quite upset that I had “beaten” them. They used this to drive themselves to be better on the second mid term, and to their credit, they were very well prepared for the second mid term, much better than I was. I, on the other hand, rested on the laurels of my first mid term mark, and consequently paid the price. Feeling a little down about my grade, I did not wish to talk much about it. However, upon arriving in to the next class, I was immediately bombarded by questions about how I did. To which I responded that I did not do very well (but I attached no number value to the grade). In stead of feeling a quiet satisfaction for their own success, my friends greeted my answer with a “Ha!”
This all is in a class that is not curved. So my success, or lack there of, holds no barring on how my friends do in the class. It makes me wonder, that even in a class with no built in competitive edge that comes with the faculty, why there is a competition? I suspect that it is just human nature to try and jostle and jockey for position and rank as a sort of self validation. Which in turn makes me wonder if competition is engrained in education as a whole? At first estimate it would seem like we would be well served to do away with competition all together, but in that case, what would become of students who wish to enter the competitive professions, would we be doing them a disservice by ill-preparing them for these faculties and professions as a whole? Where is the happy medium? It seems like there is a fine line which needs to be navigated when dealing with competition in education, but just where does this line lay?
In the business faculty there is a unique discrepancy that goes on. On one hand, the faculty tries to encourage teamwork by making almost every course have a group project while on the other hand, the classes are curved creating a very competitive and individualistic mentality. I disagree with curving courses because it creates competition amongst students and also your grade is dependent on others and not just yourself. Although I admit that the curve has saved me in the past I believe that students should get the mark they deserve through a grading scheme and not have it based on how the people sitting around you did. The competition that curving creates also brings out the dark side of many people. I have seen friends not willing to help each other because they want to get a better grade than them and if their friend does badly, that's even better since it lowers the average. Such actions disgust me and this mentality carries over into the real world. This competition makes people trample over one another to come out on top and is a cancer to society. There is such a thing as healthy competition but I think that we have passed that limit and are back to a world where it's survival of the fittest.
Like Mike said, I think it has become human nature to come out on top. The experience that he talked about where his friends were comparing each other's grades and gloating I have done and also seen in elementary school. Even when there is no curve, and grades hardly have any significance, the kids still compare each other’s grades and go "Ha! I beat you." With some cultures which implement ranking systems in elementary school, how are we supposed to come out of our competitive nature when we are made to compete against one another from childhood?
Being a university level athlete, it is hard not to have a competitive side. As Mike and Juliano said before, I think that humans are born with a competitive nature and this is what drives us to be successful in everything we do. However, in an educational setting, I think that competition among your peers or classmates is not necessary to get ahead in life. This is especially true in the younger grades. There is no need to have competitions in elementary classrooms and I feel this is detrimental to the development of young students. I remember my grade 3 class had a reading chart to keep track of the amount of pages we read each week. We all had a little car and moved it across a map of Canada, getting 1 KM for each page we read. At the time I thought it was great and power read every book I could find. My competitive nature was strong even at that age and I wanted to be ahead of everyone. But listening to some of the stories about competition in school and reflecting back on this activity from grade 3, it occurred to me that while I loved this race across Canada, what about the kids who had a harder time reading? I remember there are lots of kids that were still developing their reading skills and barely made it through BC. They must have felt so down on themselves, having the majority of the class so much further ahead must have made them wonder what they were doing wrong and why they couldn’t read like the rest of the class. The point I am trying to make is that competition in an elementary classroom hurts student’s confidence and might even hinder their development as a student. I think that competition is great, but the best way to compete is against your own personal best. The best way to improve skills in any aspect of life is to learn from mistakes and do better the next time, and this is what we should be trying to instil in young students. Compete against yourself. Don’t worry if you only got 8 out of 10 on a spelling test when your friend beside you got 10. Just study harder for the next one and get better than 8. While I thrive off competition and always seem to do better when the stakes are high, I think that in an academic environment, the only person you should be competing against is yourself.
The questions about marriage certainly sparked a conversation in class as well as with my boyfriend later that night. Although we had discussed a few of them before I thought it would be interesting to get his perspective on some of them as well. If we were to get married I think the biggest stress in our relationship would be financial. He certainly loves to spend money (in the last year he has bought an RV, truck, ATV and a boat) and his credit line is rather large now. I personally like to save money. I only work 10 hours a week, with full time school, so the money I have I need to save. It may just because he is a young 24 year old now that he is spending all his money, or maybe it’s something more than that. I think as our relationship progresses this is something we will have to think seriously about. Coming from divorced parents I have really felt financial strain and seen the evils money can provoke in people.
On the other hand, our views on money could balance each other out. As long as we have respect for each other and our decision making then maybe him being frivolous and me being frugal will help him settle down and me live life a little more. I don’t want to save tons of money and not enjoy life, neither do I want to be thousands of dollars in debt. There must be a balance. These questions certainly have given us a lot to reflect on. Our values are the same, we want a family and a few children and I hope money doesn’t become too much of an obstacle.
This class was very interesting for me. The marriage question forms that we were to fill out and then discuss was eye opening. When the question about "would you go to pre-marriage counselling?" came up I immediately thought "NO!" and that was silly. After talking and discussing, it came about that it was a great idea because the divorce rate is so high today. By going and getting pre-counselling for marriage it opens up conversation topics that perhaps you and your parenter hadn't thought of or were avoiding. Good idea. The other questions on the form were questions that my boyfriend and I have discussed every once and a while because we've been together for almost 4 years. Over those 4 years I have learned that being selfish gets you no where and that comprimise is the biggest aspect to getting a relationship to work. Besides love and humour of course! I did take those questions home last week and asked my boyfriend to read through them adn see what he thoguht and he thougt they were valuable questions to think about and discuss if we wanted our relationship to last. Both of our family's have been very fortunate to have not experienced divorce so our mind sets about being married once are on the same page. Balance, comprimise and love are key components to a relationship and are are valuable to me.
I have to agree with Jen and Kerri’s posts about how our class discussion on marriage leaked into relationships at home. My boyfriend and I have been dating for almost 5 and a half years and are seriously considering marriage in the near future; so obviously the first thing I did when I got home was to show him the list of questions we worked through in class. My boyfriend and I are polar opposites; I am very talkative and expressive while he is reversed and has trouble communicating emotions. So while we have talked about these things in the past, sometimes I feel like I do most of the talking.
I know that communication is extremely important in marriage so to me, while the answers my boyfriend gave to our class questionnaire were important, they were not as important to me as to how he was answering them. Was my boyfriend being open and honest in his answers or was he only nodding along and agreeing with what I was saying? To ensure that my boyfriend was getting as much out of the questions as I was, I made sure to ask him more specific than broad questions so that he could truly give a reflective rather than typical answer. I absolutely do not question my boyfriend’s honesty and do not accuse him of telling me what I want to hear. I am merely trying to express that he is one of those people who responds with “good” when asked “how was your day ?”. Depth is not his specialty. I really did appreciate going over the class marriage questionnaire with my boyfriend because it gave us another important opportunity for both of us to dialogue and to be aware of how we were both contributing to the conversation and expressing our feelings.
The narratives from last class really got me thinking – especially the last two that were read aloud. Having been raised by my mom as a single parent, those feelings of anger, betrayal, and the wanting to forgive, are all too familiar. My dad left when I was 2 but it wasn’t until I was 10 or 11 years old that I fully realized what had happened, or what could have been if he had not left. I remember laying awake at night and continuously going over the question of “What if..” – What if they had stayed together and found a way to make things work? Would they be happy today? What kind of family would we have become? Would he have been a good father? Although he made an effort to see me when I was younger, it wasn’t the fatherly effort that I always saw from my friend’s dads. I don’t remember him being there teaching me to ride my first bicycle, or reading me bedtime stories at night. Instead, he took me out for lunch and to a movie every Saturday. Even that stopped after a while. However, he has made an increased effort in the past few years although that will never make up for the fact that he was never really there for me as a father figure.
Therefore, having recently become engaged myself, I am determined to make my marriage work and give my children what I did not have. I fully believe that I have found my soul mate in life and over the past year, I have fallen completely in love with him. While going through and answering the list of questions from last week’s class I was only more reassured of this. As a few other people have mentioned, I also brought the list home for my fiancé to read over. It was kind of funny though, the first thing he said to me was how we had already discussed each of the questions on our own previous to last class. It was true too, they were all familiar territory.. in a good way . Now if only this next year would fly by!! (getting married next June :P).
When discussing the marriage questions last week a recurring thought and trend became again apparent, that is that divorce is often seen as failure. That a common perception is that couples and families of divorce are exempt from having any ‘good’ knowledge or worthwhile opinions about marriage. It isn’t any one persons fault but is a general trend in society. I come from a family history where divorce is unheard of. A huge family that boasted strong minded women, equally strong men and treasured children. The examples of marriage that I had were of the best, the kind that got asked “what was the secret?” and yet there I was faced with the heartbreaking experience of divorce. I would like to suggest that it would be wise to remember that most of the couples that entered into marriage in the first place sounded and thought just like engaged couples now, perhaps even like you. Life has a way of sometimes slapping you in the face and not every situation or marriage survives or should. You could be someone who takes marriage and all that it stands for seriously and works diligently at it but for one reason or another, your partner chooses something else or just doesn’t pull their share in making the marriage work. There are hundreds of reasons. Even the couples that have the most secure relationships are going to face uncertainties of life and can find themselves in a situation they never imagined. The most a couple can do is to make sure that they have given themselves the best chance possible and this is why pre marriage courses and counselling is important. I think that it should be mandatory to seek out divorced and married people to hear their stories and ideas about marriage. Engaged couples should ask themselves what they would do if faced with some of these tough scenarios. Divorced people have a wealth of knowledge that is valuable and people would be wise to access this knowledge instead of trying to disassociate and separate the issue from themselves. Knowledge is power and to gather as much as possible, the good and the bad (and the ugly), is the best chance for a marriage.
The story this week made me mindful and reflective about life in a broad sense. How we are all connected. I know how much it is a cliché but it is true. Our actions, choices and lives will inevitably have some effect on all we come in contact with. No matter whether you think that no one will notice if you are alive or dead, whether you make good choices or bad choices it will effect someone somewhere. No matter which way you look at it ‘No man is an Island’. Even by deciding to have no contact with anyone your absence would have a surprising ripple effect. The reason it is important to be aware of our connectedness is that with that knowledge, we would understand that even the tiniest action or words will effect an unknown amount of people. I think with the understanding of that kind of power comes the understanding of the inherent responsibility of that knowledge. Perhaps if there is more of an understanding of this, then people would realize and maybe change or modify what they do, say and think. It is hard to grasp the idea that maybe the clothes you wear today, the water you used for your shower or the very fact that you breathe will affect some stranger on the other side of the earth or maybe some future person that hasn’t yet been created. Your life matters no matter how seemingly insignificant a person can feel. As a teacher this is extremely important. As a teacher I have to understand that I am making an impact even if I never see it, on students now and adults of the future, their families, the society they will be apart of etc. I also want to make my students aware of the power they have, that what they do and who they are matters.
I really enjoyed listening to all of the narratives this week as I felt like I can relate too many of them. The one in particular that stood out to me was the idea “developing a fear of public speaking” I remember how shy and scared I used to be to simply put up my hand and participate in the classroom discussions. I did have reasons of why I was scared since during a class presentation in high school, I fainted in front of everyone and since then I used to be absolutely mortified of ever doing class presentations or participating in any sort of class discussion at all.
Prior to coming to SFU, this fear was always with me and it literally scarred me for the rest of my high school years and my first year in post-secondary. As I took my first Education class last semester, I felt like this was an opportunity for me where I could finally get over this fear because it was such an inviting environment. Over the years, I remember I would never talk or ask a teacher a question because I had developed such a strong fear of speaking out. I later learned that the only way you can really get over a fear is simply facing that fear. So as difficult as it was, I slowly started off by participating in small class discussions and making my way up to participating in front of the class. When I see that, in many other faculties such as political science, students actually criticize one another so negatively, it makes me think of what it probably does to one’s confidence level. I personally cannot even imagine what it would do to my confidence as a student. I mean I still do get nervous and still am shy, but because of the fact that education classes are so inviting and taught on how to build upon one another’s ideas, it actually builds one’s confidence in a student rather than destroy it. I feel like that is what learning is actually all about: reflecting and building upon one another’s ideas is how many of us learn and see different topics from different angles or views. But to actually bash on each other’s and tell someone how “stupid” their idea is, I find it almost hard to believe that is actually acceptable and I cannot even see how anyone can really learn anything from that.
Although I am starting to overcome this fear of public speaking as this is a big step for, I have to say that I really admire people such as teachers and Politicians as well as students who have this talent of speaking out their opinion and letting their voice be heard.
“Old boys, old girls”, was a story I found to be a hard and somewhat interesting read. I did not understand if there was a moral set in the story or not because I could not relate to what message the author was trying to send to the readers. There were many unsolved mysteries such as why Caesar left his dad and why Yvonne did not come home one night and why he murdered 2 men. What I thought was interesting was how Caesar changes perspective to his brother and sister’s family after interacting with Yvonne. It took a lot of courage from Caesar to talk to someone again who was family and had social status that is totally different from him. Did Caesar still cared for Yvonne? Why did Caesar clean up for Yvonne after she had died from drinking too much alcohol? What I found interesting was the mindsets of Cathedral on his perspective on why god is so stupid. His logics made sense, but it’s just a way of life and that’s how things go. Yvonne was the other person that had a interesting mindset who wished everyone expresses their true feelings to everyone else without any sugar coating. I think that what these two characters lacked was the sight to forgive or understand others but this could also be because no one forgave them or understand them in the past so that is why they act what they act now.
*I hope this made sense because the story was a bit confusing.
From last week’s class, what I found interesting was the marriage questionnaire that was handed out at the end of class. They were basic questions but each of them had deep discussion potentials. One of the questions that I found hard to answer was 8C, it asks if putting bread on the table was more important than raising a child in a daycare or vice versa. Both of these elements are important and I think that putting food on the table is more important because nothing is more valuable than having a good health. I’m sure there are other ways around to raise a child other than in a daycare. I believe this is so because I wasn’t brought up in a daycare and I think everything has worked out pretty well so far not causing any troubles or have any mentality problems. Another question that was more focused on marriage that I found interesting was 8B. I would only agree to it if it were the best and only decision to make for both of us. If there were other opportunity that does not require the separation of the two, then I would ask my other half to reconsider taking those options instead.
After class ten – march 11
The marriage questionnaire was a very interesting exercise. Filling it out, I found that pretty well every question had come up with the girl I’ve been seeing for the last four years. The one about one partner not being able to have kids was a hypothetical we’d actually thought about just 1 week prior. Talking to my group, it seemed that most of us had a similar experience, and we agreed after talking that the questionnaire is chalk full of the sorts of things a couple should talk about before taking the hurdle.
The fact that my girlfriend and I (longest relationship I’ve been in) have been over most of this hints at what I think is probably the most important thing in a relationship; communication. My other relationships have all ended basically the same way; bogged down in irrelevant bickering, arguments which are never actually about what you are arguing over. Talking about life, the future, compatibility and so on have created a sort of open atmosphere that make bickering and hormone/hunger/irritation/sleepy-ness fueled arguments look as silly and immature as they no doubt are. Class convinced me that questions of this sort are things every couple should engage in on some level as things progress. Not only does it become apparent whether or not you are really compatible in the long term, but it opens the door for a lot of other meaningful conversation that might have been side-tracked tangential bullshit that’s never really about anything.
Hope this makes sense, I think things might have gotten a little rambly at the end there…
I also found the discussion on marriage an interesting one. I want to go over the paper with him and see what he says. Talk about what we may not agree and find an understanding. There is always a fear that there will be something that we do not agree on but the best way to deal with that is to face it. It is important that we discusses the future to have a good long lasting relationship. This the reason why my uncle had to get divorced. My aunt and him were dating for a long time but did not really look into the future. Well one day they decided that they been going out to long and decided to get married and bought a house. A year into the marriage she decided that she does not ever want children and my uncle would like to have children on day. There was a major conflict of interest so the separated. It would have been avoided if they discussed question like these or went to marriage counselling.
I found the story “Old Boys, Old Girls” to be very well written. Though the author did jump from present to past a lot it was still very easy to read. I really liked it that Caeser family wanted to keep in contacted with him and did not care about any of his past. They just wanted to be with him. I think that the main idea of this story is poverty life and what can come from it.
I found the marriage questionnaire quite thought provoking. It really seems that marriage should be thought and discussed long before the proposal and even longer before the wedding day. A full commitment by both partners and open communication is essential to any relationship through marriage or otherwise. It is definitely easier to be in love when the entire world looks wonderful with rose coloured glasses on but when reality steps in and bites you in the butt that can be truly painful.
A friend of mine is getting married in July and her fiancé and her are going through premarital counselling right now. She said that it has changed their relationship dramatically. They have not had nearly as many fights and the lines of communication are opened to discussion rather than arguments. They seem to be building a strong foundation for their marriage.
It is easy to say I wish I had when looking back on past experiences. I certainly do in regards to my “common law” marriage that ended over 6 years ago. I wish we had gotten married and been fully committed to each other. I wish that he hadn’t cheated and thought only of his own needs. I wish our communication was more advanced and that we had tried harder to work things out. But as Sarah mentioned in her blog if one partner is not fully committed and a participating member of the relationship then the relationship has no base to stand on.
I may say I shoulda, woulda, coulda but these experiences have made me who I am today. A stronger, smarter, highly motivated person who has two kids who admire her perseverance to stay in school to make a better life for them. It is not always easy but they keep me going and motivated!
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