A Message of Awareness :: Essays Papers

A Message of Awareness James Joyce’s book Dubliners, is composed of several intriguing short stories. Joyce’s main emphasis is to send a â€Å"wake up call† to the people of Dublin about the appalling conditions of Ireland. In a letter to his publisher Joyce tells him that he â€Å"seriously [believes] that [the publisher] will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass† (qtd. in Beja 33). Joyce proves his assertion through his use of characters and situations in the short stories â€Å"The Boarding House,† â€Å"A Little Cloud,† and â€Å"The Dead.† In addition, autonomy and responsibility play a major role of how the characters act and react to certain situations that connect to the hard times of Ireland. In Dubliners, characters often face situations that are portrayed as â€Å"light and dark.† In â€Å"The Boarding House,† Mrs. Mooney’s actions and interactions are primarily portrayed as being manipulative. She is a â€Å"dark† person and Joyce uses examples to support this. Joyce describes Mrs. Mooney as a person that is stern and is â€Å"all business.† Mrs. Mooney’s characteristics imply that she is someone to fear. In addition, Mrs. Mooney’s boarding house is run with much order. Joyce states that Mrs. Mooney â€Å"governed her house cunningly and firmly, knew when to give credit, when to be stern and when to let things pass,† which a viewer can acknowledge that Mrs. Mooney is a â€Å"dark† and fierce women when it comes down to taking actions on others (56). Furthermore, Mrs. Mooney has such a stern and superior control over the tenants that Joyce states that the â€Å"young men spoke of her as The madam,† which means a lady of respect (57). They know that Mrs. Mooney is one lady to be feared. In â€Å"The Boarding House,† Mr. Doran’s actions with Polly caused him to be fearful of Mrs. Mooney. Joyce explains how Mr. Doran’s feelings about receiving consequences from Mrs. Mooney are â€Å"dark.† Joyce exaggerates the depth of Mr. Doran’s nervousness towards receiving his sanctions were so fierce that â€Å"he felt his heart leap [†¦] in his throat† (61). Mr. Doran’s actions are so fearful that he acts as if he is being tried for murder. Mr. Doran’s fears of the consequences are so â€Å"dark† that He longed to ascend through the roof [of the Boarding House] and fly away to another country where he would never hear again of his trouble.

Brazilian Racial Politics Essay

The reading provided, extracted from Orpheus and Power by Michael George Hanchard, critiques the Race vs. Class Paradigm that is widespread in the Brazilian society. By weaving together some works of the more renowned analysts and sociologists of the topic, he highlights two main things: firstly, the salient points of their claims and secondly, the faults in their arguments. By comparing and contrasting two schools of thought on the issue, Class-based and Structuralist, he points out certain weaknesses and the glaring irreconcilability of such thought when applied to the trends in Brazilian economic society. The subject of Race and Class and their contributions into creating a society wherein oppression has been structured into policy has fueled many debates, much of them still ongoing. While there has not been any theoretical consensus reached, a characteristic that is always attendant in the field of academia, there is however, a fortunate by-product in that it has broadened the body of current knowledge to embrace other topics into the discussion such as modes of production and social inequality. It is also interesting to note that the post-World War II era, as represented by the works of Oliver Cox and Stanley Greenberg, show the minimum agreement between scholars that race, at the very least, plays cuts an integral figure in structuring the oppressive social inequality. This makes for a broader, richer and more interesting scholarly debate. Hanchard begins the comparison with a discussion on Economic Determinism and the study of the Negro population in Brazilian society through the written work of one Florestan Fernandes, Democracia Racial. Fernandes describes the relationship between the â€Å"White elites† and the â€Å"Negroes† in Brazilian society as a situation where the former â€Å"limit themselves to treating the Negro with tolerance, maintaining the old ceremonial politeness in inter-racial relationships and excluding from this tolerance any true egalitarian feeling or content. † (Hanchard 32) By articulating the â€Å"hegemonic position† of the White population over the Black one, he more than hinted at the absence of racial democracy in Brazilian society. Fernandes’ analyzed the racial interaction of the society a pivotal time in economic Brazilian history. The importance of his written work may largely be attributed the perfect timing of it. His deconstructions and analysis of Brazilian society then, through interviews and the gathering of empirical data, did much to further the study of Brazilian racial relations. Moreover, his role and significant importance to the field is further underscored by the fact that he was the first to analyze the linkage between race and class in the context of Brazilian socio-economic development. He claimed that the Brazilian Blacks were â€Å"exploited both during and after slavery by uncaring whites†. However, in a turn-about, he concludes that the Afro-Brazilian is â€Å"dysfunctional, suffering from anomie, hopelessness and immorality† and lacked a sense of discipline and responsibility that made them pale in comparison to Italian immigrants for competition in the labour markets. Hanchard, however, took issue with this particular conclusion and rebutted by emphasing the failure of Fernandes’ missed or misappreciated the important fact that the intervention of big landowners and government officials played a crucial role in creating a marketplace that preferred Southern European immigrants. In essence, Fernandes’ approach fails is that his discussion of the Negro social movement was confined to issues of racial inequality where race itself was autonomous and not an economic variable nor indicator. George Reid Andrews, by using an approach offered by Greenberg, refutes Fernandes’ claims and forwards his own. Andrews’ approach fares better than the previously discussed one of Fernandes’ to the extent that he explored the â€Å"collusion between the state government and landowners to foster economic development† by subsidizing European immigration creating a rocky playing field where the Blacks were the destined losers. He then claims that although slavery played the role of a detrimental catalyst in Brazilian socio-economic development, it is but one of many factors to the displacement of Afro-Brazilian workers. He considered state intervention more critical in that policy itself structured the economic oppression by the doling out of development funds in a very preferential treatment to European immigrant workers. Thus, he introduced a very important aspect into the debates; that of the material dimension of race and how it structures state policies. At this junction, the theoretical wars began to include a different perspective: Structuralist. As the third generation of race relations, this school of thought rebuts and debunks the racial democracy myth proposed by their predecessors. Carlos Hasenblag and Nelson Do Valle Silva are two of the most prominent figures in this approach that does not treat race and class as being on opposing ends of the same spectrum but rather they situated racial inequality at the very heart of socio-economic relations and the development and trends of the labour market. Harchand, however, critically points out that although there was a discussion of racial inequality, there was virtually no explanation offered how such inequality id politically constructed or even contested. â€Å"Despite the conceptual differences between the Reductionists and Structuralists, the tendencies seemed to concur about one crucial dimension of Brazilian race relations; a dimension that seemed to distinguish Afro-Brazilians from their US counterparts: a lack of collective awareness of themselves as a subordinated racial group. † (Hanchard 41) By analyzing the theories at hand, one thing is clear: the need for a better-tailored conceptual framework to be used as a guide for racially equal policy making. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 1. In an effort to stop the mentality of finger-pointing to the dominant white, what has the different Afro-Brazilian social movements done, or at least attempted to bring about, in order to correct the racial inequality with regard to economic policy and labour markets? 2. What are some concrete state policies, like the Black Economic Empowerment Movement of South Africa, that can correct this historical injustice?

Creating Learning Centers to Support Skills

Learning Centers can be an important and fun part of your instructional environment and can supplement and support the regular curriculum. They create opportunities for collaborative learning as well as differentiation of instruction. A learning center is usually a place in the classroom designed for different tasks that students can complete in small groups or alone. When there are space constraints, you can use a display as a learning center with activities that children can take back to their desks. Organization and Administration Many primary classrooms have center time, when children move to a specific part of the classroom. There they can either choose which activity to pursue or rotate through all the centers. In intermediate or middle school classrooms, learning centers can follow completion of assigned work. Students can fill in checklists or pass books to show they have completed a required number of activities. Or, students can be rewarded for completed activities with a classroom reinforcement plan or token economy. In any case, be sure to have a record keeping system that is simple enough for the children can keep themselves. You can then monitor their progress with a minimum of attention--reinforcing their sense of responsibility. You might have monthly charts, where a monitor stamps completed activities for each learning center. You could cycle through monitors each week or have monitors for each specific center who stamps students passports. A natural consequence for children who abuse center time would be to require them to do alternate drill activities, like worksheets. Learning centers can support skills in the curriculum--especially math--and can broaden students understanding, or provide practice in reading, math or combinations of those things. Activities found in learning centers could include paper and pencil puzzles, art projects connected to a social studies or science theme, self correcting activities or puzzles, write on and erasable laminated board activities, games and even computer activities. Literacy Centers Reading and Writing Activities: There are lots of activities that will support instruction in literacy. Here are a few: Laminate a short story into a folder, and give prompts for students to respond.Laminate articles about popular television or music personalities, and have students answer Who, What, Where, When, How and Why questions.Make puzzles where students match initial letters and word family endings: example: t, s, m, g with the ending old. Math Activities: Puzzles matching problems and their answers.Color by number puzzles using math facts to come up with the numbers.Board games where students answer math facts on the spaces they hit.Measuring activities with scales, sand and different size measures such as cup, teaspoon, etc.Geometry activities where students make pictures with geometric shapes. Social Studies Activities: Combine literacy and social studies activities: Write and illustrate newspaper articles about: the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the discovery of America by Columbus, the election of Barack Obama.Matching card games: match pictures to names of historical figures, shapes of states to the names of states, capitals of states to the names of states.Board games based on historical eras, such as the civil war. You land on Battle of Gettysburg. If youre a Yankee, you go forward 3 steps. If youre a Rebel, you go back 3 steps. Science Activities: Centers based on the current content, say magnets or space.Place the planets correctly on a velcroed map.Demonstrations from the class that they can do in the center.