ishin's blog

I can't stop thinking about the idea of building residential housing and neighborhoods around a prison.  How anyone thought that was a good idea, or why the government even allowed such a thing.  The answer the tour guide gave was helpful and terse: it's cheaper. But I guess I'm wrestling with the implications of a walled community to be so close to "the outside".  I'm left with questions like "what was it like to live so close to such a space" and "how did it mentally affect them on a daily basis?"  When I pose these questions, I'm thinking about both sides.  After all, it was probably psychologically frustrating to be so close to the "outside" and be able to hear life go on and remain so sequestered.  

I've always thought a lot about "what gets left at the door" when entering (or leaving) a classroom that fosters growth, enrichment, education.  To frame question in a different way, a way that reveals how I believe this topic is pertinent to our class theme, I’ve thought a lot about what topics and at what times we should remain silent in the classroom.  This post is to express my thoughts on this in relation to our experience together this past week.

As I think we all know, a type of objectivity, lack of emotion and personal investment, and reason is valued in the classroom.  The reasons are easy to point out: doing so allows us to remain concentrated on the subject matter at hand.  What’s more, this allows the classroom a freedom to discuss and debate without the worry that sentimental opinions and feelings will hinder the intellectual pursuit.  Phrases and thoughts like “Leave your baggage at the door, otherwise, you won’t contribute to the classroom appropriately” or  “Don’t speak about how you’re sad or about your personal life, that has nothing to do with our readings”, to the  “Well, shit, now I definitely can’t say anything; I’m just going to hurt your feelings” all hopefully elucidate what I mean.  Academia believes that emotions and our personal self get in the way of intellectual pursuit.

I'm having a hard time telling you why I chose to use this as my avatar.  It wasn't a verbalized choice, but more an impulsive one.  The kind of choice you make that feels good for good reasons and doesn't come back to bite you in the butt.  This image may have to do with what I imagine silence to look like (see web event 1), but I do think that it also has to do with a certain amount of peaked interest one gets from the anonymity of the person in the cap.  It definitely reveals my aesthetic choices and what I find attractive.  I also just think it's a good picture.

Like most forms of self-expression, this avatar is one that I hope people to draw they're own conclusions from.  One through which people can better understand me and as the semester goes on, perhaps get a better sense of why I made this choice.  I hope to do the same as well.

If someone really wants me to explain myself in class, I'll try.

I've been thinking a lot about our last class--how we tried to grapple with educational policy, realizing how difficult it is, and how frustrating it can be.  We all seem to be emotionally invested into the cause.  As students at a liberal arts college, we undoubtedly value education and what it can provide.

What I want to respond to now is the last comments made before we moved on to the next class.  It expressed the frustration of "not having enough time" to execute all the goals we set out for ourselves when trying to be good teachers and educational policy makes.  I make mention of this point because I think "the time crunch" that all educators feel is one of underlying problems, and one that we all had a hard time trying to grapple with as well.  

Perhaps then, the problem isn't necessarily that we don't "have or possess" enough time to get everything we want done in the day, but that we think that must accomplish everything by a certain date, or else we're doomed to failure.  A kid who does not pass meet the requirements of a third grader by the end of his school year must repeat the year all over again.  If the teacher does not prepare her students by this date, then they will fail the state exam.  In other words, maybe we're a little too concerned about the deadline than the inquiry of the kids themselves.

Reading the Kim and Markus article is a lot for me to process.  It affirms and gives insight into a lot of frustrations and opinions I have about myself.  Perhaps the best way to go about this is to speak in small anecdotes and details about myself:

-I often don't think in words.  More in images, colors, movements, movie scenes.  I often have a hard time writing papers because it involves putting words to thoughts.  The writing process is typically a page or less a day.

-I would never deny my Socratic education.  I speak in class.  A lot.  Sometimes, it's because I don't know how to translate thought to words.

-I really dislike how often I use the noun "I".  I worry about being selfishly individualistic.  Growing up, my father and mother would make soft remarks about how I shouldn't try to stand out so much.  "It's better to be just as high as the other trees in the forest." It took me the past couple of years to really understand why this concerned them so much.

-The main purpose I have in class dialogues is to try and get a sense of what everyone is trying to say and articulate it in a way that everyone can gain from it.

-Can't listen to conversations or music for the life of me when I'm trying to write or read.

Gross makes an observation in the introduction of Colored Amazons that's stuck with me as I read about these cases and their history.  "For most [of these women], their criminal records serve as the only documentation of their lives." (pg.4-5)  It strikes me in a way that I cannot shake.  We, after all, live in a time where we are constantly anxious of the legacy we may leave--may it be by the "greatness" or change we want to bestow on the world, or even by becoming paranoid over the paper-trail we leave on the internet.  In other words, we understand that we have a history and constantly think about it.

These women, however, would have almost never existed.  They were given no birth certificates, no social security code, no formal identification of any kind was given to them when they were first born to let us know that they were born and continued to lead lives.  Instead, we were close to not acknowledging their presence on this earth and to being blind at their imprint on the world.

After reading Elizabeth Ellsworth's introduction, I got stuck on how much the word and concept of movement seems to be a recurring theme in the readings we've been doing.  

To bring up the comparison between Smith and Ellsworth, Smith's Fires in the Mirror argues that identities and people have the propensity and should be encouraged to move.  Doing so can give people the change to make tensions productive by allowing the opposing sides to experience the other in some form and to, perhaps, "[build] bridges between places." (xxxix).  What's more, Ellsworth, borrowing terms commonly used within film studies, often speaks of how 'fixed' the education system is in one particular way of understanding learning.  Instead, she tries to "...make possible and thinkable questions that I believe can set into motion ways of thinking and teaching that have otherwise become rigis, solidified, stuck, and sloganized.  What both then advocate for is to understand individuals as dynamic, not static beings, and if this is the case, we must engage them in a way that complies and takes advantage of this facet of human beings, and by extension, we must choose to view them in a variety of lenses and modes of address.  

This American Life: Act V

To give a little background, This American Life is a PRI radio show where each episode is dedicated to a theme that reflects, well, American life.  The link above leads you to an episode called Act V and is without doubt one of my favorites.  Succinctly put, it follows a group of men in prison who are putting on the fifth act of Hamlet.  Hope you enjoy.

When looking at Jomaira’s images, I was actually a little startled.  Not because their image reflects a dimension of silence I seldom imagine, but because several years ago, I would have likely put up a very similar image of silence.  What startled me was that I didn’t realize how my first-gut connotations of silence have shifted in recent years.  Before, my initial thoughts and feelings of silence would have been ones that were associated with oppression, the inability to speak, absence, dark—concepts that I think are evoked when looking at their images.  But recently, I often associate silence with more positive notions and less tension.  Just as one example of how and why, I think of silence and light together and chose my photo accordingly.  We often forget how remarkably silent light is given what it does.  Light, unassuming and silent, has capabilities that range from giving us the capacity of sight, the dichotomy of day and night, and also life itself.

The image is my bedroom.  I chose this photo because it's intuitively devoid of sound because it's devoid of people.  Even to me, someone who talks in there incessantly, knows that the sound of the upstair's cat's footsteps are thumpering from the ceiling, and just knows this space intimately.  It's always interesting how we tend to associate sounds with people--especially in more man-made constructions and constructs.

In regards to yesterday's conversation, I find more solace and comfort in silence.  This picture of my bedroom makes me wish I was home and alone.