WikiTP

2010 Welcome Address

2010-12-31T00:11:00.000+08:00

Welcome to WikiTP.

The WikiTP is a TPJC English Department project aimed at increasing learner's autonomy and to build an online database of information revolving around topics that are relevant in the General Paper. Through this project, we hope to increase students' interest in world affairs and autonomy in learning.

WikiTP started in the year 2006, which proved to be a very exciting yet turbulent year for the world as the ice-caps melted, the nuclear powers tested, and nations warred. Inspired by Discovery Rewind 2006, a special Discovery programme that featured all these events and issues which surfaced in the year 2006, Miss Angela Quek from the English department decided to design a project that linked research, multimedia and ICT.

We hope you will make use of this opportunity to learn as much as you can from your research and from your schoolmate's research.

The various topics covered in this project are grouped by the labels you see on the right.

To find out more about this project, please contact any of the English enrichment sub-committee teachers from Tampines Junior College.

Project Coordinator: Miss Angela Quek
Web(Blog)master: Miss Dawn Ng
Teachers-in-charge: Mrs Karen Neo, Mrs Christine Koh, Mr Poh Chee Chau
This project is a proud joint effort of the staff and student body of Tampines Junior College.

Yours truly,

Dawn Ng
Web(Blog)master

10SO2 elitism Tan Yong Jin, Jess Chen, Jolene Ong, Kwa Shaur En, Cherie Wong

2010-07-27T22:55:00.003+08:00

Elitism/Class Discrimination

People are different, and their differences can be categorized into respective levels and ranks. When such classification occurs, there will be a division amongst the people in terms of status, whereby people with better talents, physical attributes and social background are deemed to be superior. This will then lead to discrimination and prejudice against people belonging to a lower class and rank, leading to elitism.

One example of elitism can be seen in Singapore’s education system. Educational pathways are stratified according to ability and aptitude, and this stratification may be deemed to be highly hierarchical. In the past, Singapore’s primary schools’ students are being sorted into respective class of EM1, EM2 and EM3 according to their results. EM3 students are ‘those who are less able to cope with Languages and Mathematics’ and their syllabus would be that of a lower level set of Foundation English, Foundation Mathematics and Basic Mathematics. In the transition from primary to secondary schooling, the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) at the age of 12 is used to further sort pupils, into the Normal (Technical), Normal (Academic), Express and Special streams, although everyone has the choice to select their desired secondary school to pursue their education, the success of the student choice is also largely dependent on their PSLE scores, where a higher result will give them a higher chance of entering a prestigious school that is of their choice. After secondary school, pupils go on to junior colleges, polytechnics and Institutes of Technical Education, where entry is based on a points system calculated from their results at ‘O’ Level and administered centrally by the ministry of education (MOE). The top and elite junior colleges include Raffles Junior College is fond of comparing itself to the elitist Eton and Harrow public schools of England, while other junior colleges (JC), such as Jurong JC (JJC), are not dissimilar to state 6th-form colleges in the UK. Hence, from these examples, we can see that elitism can also exist in educational system due to the difference in abilities and aptitude of the students.

Besides that, we can also see the existence of class discrimination due to difference in working or family background. People of wealthy status or whose parent has distinguished jobs and a family name of resounding reputation are often treated respectably and looked up upon. For example, the Indian Caste system, people are being treated and ranked according to their occupation. People of the lowest rank are not allowed to interact with people of higher rank, and unable to enjoy the same facilities or treatment as people of higher rank such as not allowed in temple to worship with others, nor retrieve water from the same sources. Thus, we can see that people that are deemed as in a lower class level due to their job or social background are being discriminated against and prevented from enjoying the same rights as other people of higher class level.

Also, due to differences in physical attributes, problem of class discrimination also occurs. One example is in America, where the Blacks are viewed as in a lower class level than the Whites due to their skin color. They feel that the Blacks are of a lower class than them as they viewed the Blacks as dishonest and a disgrace because of their skin color. Hence, the Blacks are denied a better job opportunity, housing conditions and other basic rights, due to the class discrimination they White have against the Blacks.

However, due to globalization and advanced technology, importance of human rights is raised and democracy is implemented. Freedom of speech is encouraged and any unfair treatment towards any respective group of people can be known instantly with the help of advanced technology tools such as the Internet. The implementation of laws that prevent class discrimination and prejudice are also carried out to promote social peace and equality among different people. This can be seen in the Singapore society, where meritocracy is implemented to ensure that equal job and education opportunities and rewards would be allocated on the basis of demonstrated competence as well as hard work and not because of unfair determinants of any other factors such as skin color or social background.

With the help of various policies and adjustment, class discrimination can be reduced and proper rights can be given to everyone. In conclusion, as long as we do not judge each other based on our differences, discrimination of class and ranking can be prevented.

References:
http://thethirdweireading.blogspot.com/2005/09/singapore-educational-elitism.html

Ageism-10s15

2010-07-27T22:31:00.003+08:00

Ageism

What is Ageism?

Ageism is a form of age discrimination. It is the stereotyping of and discrimination against elderly individuals or groups.

Examples of negative ageism include:

- Older people are expected to ‘accept’ the ‘facts of aging’ .
- Older people are constantly ‘protected’ and their thoughts interpreted. They forget someone’s name and are charged with senility and patronized.
- Older people miss a word or fail to hear a sentence and they are charged with ‘getting old’, not with a hearing difficulty.
- Older people are called ‘cranky’ when they are expressing a legitimate distaste (justifiable mild dislike) with life as so many young do.

Constant and common misconception of the old:

Older people, or the elderly, are characterised to be senile, rigid in thought and manner, and old-fashioned in morality and skills.

The Truth:

1. As more people live to an older age, there are more opportunities for us to be aware of the process of ageing. It is commonly understood that a person's physical, psychological, social and spiritual dimensions undergo changes with ageing. Most organ systems in the body show a loss of the component cells as well as a reduction in functional capacity. However changes due to ageing alone usually do not result in any significant disability.

There have been some examples of those who achieved eminence in old age, such as the astronaut John Glenn who orbited the Earth when he was 77, and Thomas Edison who was still patenting inventions at the age of 81.

2. Ageing does result in a lower reserve capacity so that when the organ is subjected to damage by a disease, its ability to perform is significantly diminished. For example, the brain's nerve cells gradually reduce in number with increasing age. However this does not cause older people to suffer from memory loss or personality changes. It has been shown that an older person's ability to learn new things is comparable to that of a younger person. Hence there is no such thing as senile dementia.

3. Besides dementia, there is a long list of problems which older people face as a result of disease and not ageing. These include incontinence, falls, difficulty with walking, joint pains, poor vision and hearing.
Attributing these problems to old age is simply sweeping the problems under the carpet. The suffering still does not go away. The sad thing is that little or nothing is done because the person is "so old already!"

Origins of Ageism

The term ‘ageism’ was coined by the eminent American gerontologist Robert Butler in 1969, while he was chair of the District of Columbia Advisory Committee on Aging and was involved in setting up public housing for older people.

In two articles published, Butler described the irrational hostility displayed by a group of middle-aged, middle-class white citizens against a proposal to build special housing for older, poor, black people.

From this, he concluded the definition of ‘ageism’ to be a form of discrimination just because they are old, like how racism accomplishes this for skin colour.

Reasons:

- Derived partly from ignorance. Stereotyping and myths surrounding old age are explicable ‘by a lack of knowledge and insufficient contact with a wide variety of older people’

- Derived partly from the dread of growing old, death anxiety

- Maintenance of self-esteem. For the younger ones, this stereotyping of the elderly may serve as an ego-protection function. (for example, as older people threaten the young by reminding them of the transience of youth, young people will be motivated in this way to protect themselves.)

- Education levels. Research has shown that people who had lesser education tend to have a more negative attitude towards the old.

- Rationalization. Prejudices against the elders are often rationalized on a basis of stereotypes of elders. For example, forced retirement can be rationalized on the grounds that the older worker is no longer competent, slowing down, old-fashioned, etcetera.

In the Past:

- In US, during the Colonial times, there were only a small number of elderly: about 2% of the population. Yet those few enjoyed advantages because old age was given high respect and status in the major institutions of the society.

After the Revolutionary War, there was increased emphasis on equality, individual achievement, secularism, and the free market, hence, undercutting advantages and the traditional authority of the elderly in the family and community.

Again, after the Civil War, rapid modernization and urbanization continued lowering prestige and status of elders.

Progress:

- At the turn of the century, there was increased competition between the older Native American workers and the younger immigrant workers. Employers interested in maximising profits started replaced the young immigrants with the older natives, intending to reduce labour costs. More and more older workers were fired and once fired; they had a hard time looking for another job because of age discrimination.
Finally, the enactment of the Social Security Act of 1935 helped put a stop to the stereotype that most of the elderly are poor.

- Popular books were published on the ‘beauty’ of aging, emphasising on the positive impacts of aging. Scientists began developing positive view of aging, such as Dr. I.L.Nascher, who stressed the body’s ability to renew itself and maintain good health in the later life.

- The 1978 rectified Age Discrimination in Employment Act prohibited the use of age as a criterion for hiring, firing, discriminatory treatment on the job.

- Medicare and Mediaid provided health insurances for the elderly

- The United States federal government has responded to issues of ageism in governance through several measures in the past. They include the creation of the 1970s-era National Commission on Resources for Youth, which was created in the late 1960s as to promote youth participation throughout communities. Recently the federal government implemented the Tom Osborne Federal Youth Coordination Act, aiming to curb redundancy among federal service providers to youth.
Other countries that have laws addressing ageism include Australia, Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

Presently:

- From John Macnicol’s Age Discrimination: an historical and contemporary analysis, it proves the perniciousness of ageism when a group of researchers disguised as an old person. Results had shown that the disguised researchers encountered hostility, prejudice, contempt and patronising sympathy.

- Even in Singapore, where filial piety is often emphasised, ageism is not just prevalent among older people and their families, but among health professionals too.

The following anecdote illustrates this: A 102-year-old man went to see his doctor for pain in his left knee. His doctor remarked, "What do you expect? You are already 102!"The man replied, "Well, my right knee is 102 years old too, and it doesn't hurt."
In this case, the doctor is rationalizing his neglect for the older patient that their illness is due to old age and will not respond to treatment.

1) Older people should not be denied treatment on the basis of age alone. 2) Their ability to recover from illnesses should not be underestimated.

In addition, studies have found that physicians often do not seem to show any care or concern toward treating the medical problems of older people. Then, when actually interacting with these older patients on the job, the doctors sometimes view them with disgust and describe them in negative ways, such as "depressing" or "crazy."

For screening procedures, elderly people are less likely than younger people to be screened for cancers and, due to the lack of this preventative measure, less likely to be diagnosed at early stages of their conditions. (1)

Though there may be surgeries or operations with high survival rates that might cure their condition, older patients are less likely than younger patients to receive all the necessary treatments. (1) It has been posited that this is because doctors fear their older patients are not physically strong enough to tolerate the curative treatments and are more likely to have complications during surgery that may end in death. (2)

- A recent survey for the University of Kent, England, 29% of respondents stated that they had suffered from age discrimination, mainly ageism. This is a higher proportion than for gender or racial discrimination.

10S15- Shermaine Ee, Choong Yong Jie, Huang Jing Jie, Bevie Wee, Aloysius Wang

10S10, NATO

2010-07-25T15:45:00.003+08:00

NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a military alliance which is formed from the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4th April 1949 in Washington, D.C. It consists of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. The NATO headquarters are located at Brussels, Belgium
NATO has added new members 7 times since first forming in 1949 (with the last 2 in 2009). NATO now comprises of 28 members: Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
NATO uses the concept of collective defense, in which participant states commit support in defense of a member state if it is attacked by another state outside the organization. However, the support need not be military action against aggressors
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established under the North Atlantic Treaty (Apr. 4, 1949) by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United States. Greece and Turkey entered the alliance in 1952, West Germany (now Germany) entered in 1955, and Spain joined in 1982. In 1999 the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined, and Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined five years later, bringing the membership to 26. NATO maintains headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
The treaty, one of the major Western countermeasures against the threat of aggression by the Soviet Union (USSR) during the cold war, was aimed at safeguarding the freedom of the North Atlantic community. Cold war is a term used to describe the shifting struggle for power and prestige between the Western powers and the Communist bloc between 1945 and 1991. Of worldwide proportions, the conflict was tacit in the ideological differences between communism and capitalist democracy.
Considering an armed attack on any member an attack against all, the treaty provided for collective self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. The treaty was also designed to encourage political, economic, and social cooperation. The organization was reorganized and centralized in 1952, and has undergone subsequent reorganizations.

In forming NATO, each member country agreed to treat an attack on any other member as an attack on itself. Militarily, the United States was, and still is, the alliance's most powerful member, in part because of its large supply of nuclear weapons. The NATO countries believed that the Soviet Union would not attack Western Europe if Soviet leaders thought such an attack would trigger war with the United States. NATO's policy is known as deterrence because it is designed to deter (discourage) an attack.

On the 17 March 1948, Treaty of Brussels was signed by Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and France, with United Kingdom playing the role of the precursor of the treaty. The treaty, together with the soviet of Berlin Blockage creates a western European union’s defence organization in September 1948. After which, many talks are held almost immediately, talking about the new military alliance. This then come to a conclusion that the involvement of United States would help to counter the military power of the USSR. On the 4 April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty is signed in Washington. The strength of NATO was strengthen in 18 to 20 december 1962 after the United States and Britain agreed to contribute their strategic nuclear forces to it. But soon, on 10 March 1966, France pulls out it’s forces from NATO integrated military structure. After that, whenever there is a fight between countries, NATO would step in to solve the problems to help keep international peace.
In the 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Treaty Organization, NATO's role in world affairs changed, and U.S. forces in Europe were gradually reduced. NATO has increasingly concentrated on extending security and stability throughout Europe, and on peacekeeping efforts in Europe and elsewhere.

NATO was formed when The North Atlantic Treaty was signed to reaffirm their faith in the aim of the Charter of the United Nations as they desire to live in peace with all people and all governments from the worldwide countries. They have decided to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their people, which is also known as the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They aim to promote stability in North Atlantic area and the well-being of the citizen thus they have concluded that they have to unite their efforts so as to preserve peace and security.

Figure 1:The NATO flag with all the flags of the participating countries.

How Are Decisions Made in NATO?
All NATO decisions are made by the member countries on the basis of consensus. The North Atlantic Council, or NAC, is the main decision-making body in NATO, made up of permanent representatives from each member country which meets regularly in discussion. The NAC also consults with Heads of Government, Foreign Ministers, and Defense Ministers and establishes committees to provide advice on military policy and strategy to NATO's political leaders.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) currently leads the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, aiding the new Afghan government to maintain security in the area. [14] NATO took command of the force in August of 2003 and is ultimately governed by its 28 member states.

The ISAF comprise of 9,700 troops from 37 NATO and non-NATO countries, with western countries like US, Germany, etc providing most of the troops. ISAF’s assists the Afghan government in the establishment of a secure and stable environment. SAF forces conducts security and stability operations throughout the country together with the Afghan National Security Forces and are directly involved in the development of the Afghan National Army through mentoring, training and equipping.
With alliance between countries, ISAF is able to successfully execute the peacekeeping operations. Examples include patrols, building up security of country, aiding reconstruction, operating the airport and participating in the disarmament of former combatants.

NATO Council also helps outline how decisions are to be made within NATO. The senior permanent member of each delegation is known as the Permanent Representative (generally a senior civil servant or an experienced ambassador.)
The Permanent Members forms the North Atlantic Council (NAC). They have effective governance authorities in decision making in NATO. The meeting sometimes involves Foreign ministers, Defence Ministers or Heads of State or Government (HOSG). Decisions regarding NATO’s policies are generally taken during these meetings. With all these foreign ministers helping in the decision making, it allows the decisions to be more beneficial for the country.

In overall, NATO has been keeping a close eye on the policies implemented and constantly improvising them in order to achieve its goal of sustaining peace and security in their targeted zone. Hence, it contributes to the effectiveness of international peacekeeping.

NATO is effective in international peacekeeping from its fruitful efforts in bringing and improving security in different areas. In a certain case, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) under NATO helped to improve security in Gereshk in Central Helmand. Example: the opening up of the main route from Gereshk to Lashkar Gah.
In addition, ISAF Forces managed to push back Taliban in Southern Nad 'Ali. The operation began with a move by the Brigade Reconnaissance Force in Jackal vehicles to pull insurgents away from the intended new patrol base areas. This was followed by a push at dawn by infantry troops to seize the new patrol base locations and establish hasty defensive positions to repel any Taliban attacks until the new compounds had been cleared of possible improvised explosive devices. Based on these examples, it is rather apparent that NATO is successful in international peacekeeping.

10S15 Arun Sridhar, Yanni Chua, Dale Lim, Jerome Tan, Tharshini Lokanathan

2010-07-22T22:37:00.005+08:00

Social hostilities were measured by religion-related terrorism and violence between religious groups. The countries in North and South America reportedly had some of the lowest levels of social restrictions on religion, while The Middle East and North Africa were the regions with the highest. Of the world's 25 most populous countries, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan and India had the most restrictions, while Brazil, Japan, the United States, Italy, France, South Africa and the United Kingdom had some of the lowest levels. While the Middle East, North Africa and the Americas exhibit either extremely high or low levels of government and social restrictions, these two variables do not always move together: Vietnam and China, for instance, had high government restrictions on religion but were in the moderate or low range when it came to social hostilities. Nigeria and Bangladesh follow the opposite pattern: high in social hostilities but moderate in terms of government actions. The study found that government restrictions were relatively low in the U.S., but the levels of religious hostilities were higher than those reported in a number of other large democracies, such as Brazil and Japan. While most countries provided for the protection of religious freedom in their constitutions or laws, only a quarter of those countries were found to fully respect these legal rights in practice. In 75 countries - four in 10 in the world - governments limit the efforts of religious groups to proselytise and in 178 countries - 90 percent - religious groups must register with the government. India and China, also exhibited extreme, but different restrictions on religion. China showed very high levels of government restriction but low to moderate levels of social hostilities, while India showed very high social hostilities but only moderate to high levels of government restrictions. Israel stood out among the nations surveyed with "high scores on the social hostilities index" in comparison with other countries that are more authoritarian or less ordered. At the top of the social hostilities index were Iraq, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Somalia, Israel, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Saudi Arabia.
Examples:
Germany
Past situations of religious discrimination:
Holocaust
The Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany on January 30, 1933, and the persecution and exodus of Germany's 525,000 Jews began almost immediately. Hitler had been open about his hatred of Jews, and made clear his intention to drive them from Germany's society. In the 1930s, the rights of Jews were restricted; the Nazis considered anyone of Jewish descent, even the descendents of converts were still considered Jews. In 1933, a series of laws were passed to exclude Jews from key areas, medicine, agriculture and law. Jewish lawyers were disbarred; some were even dragged out of their offices and courtrooms, and beaten. Jews were excluded from schools and universities and newspaper agencies.

Before the 1933 elections, the Nazis began intensifying acts of violence to destroy the opposition. With the cooperation of local authorities, they set up camps as concentration centres within Germany. These early camps were meant to hold, torture, or kill only political prisoners, such as Communists and Social Democrats. After 1939, the camps increasingly became places where Jews and POWs were killed or forced to live as slave labourers, undernourished and tortured. Other methods involved death by firing squads or living in confined spaces.

Progress:
Under the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany it states
Article 3 [Equality before the law]
(3) No person shall be favoured or disfavoured because of sex, parentage, race, language, homeland and origin, faith, or religious or political opinions. No person shall be disfavoured because of disability.
Article 4 [Freedom of faith, conscience, and creed]
(1) Freedom of faith and of conscience, and freedom to profess a religious or philosophical creed, shall be inviolable.
(2) The undisturbed practice of religion shall be guaranteed.
(3) No person shall be compelled against his conscience to render military service involving the use of arms. Details shall be regulated by a federal law.
In effect, giving guaranteed freedom of religious activities in Germany.
A decision by the German Supreme Court in 1995, decreed that the presence of religious symbols (crucifixes) in public institutions to be illegal, excluding in some Roman Catholic elementary schools. Still, it further states that the symbols must be removed if a parent does not agree with them. In the 1950s, a German Jew complained successfully that his freedom of religion was violated by the obligation to speak in a German courtroom decorated by a cross.
Limitations and reasons:
Church Tax
The tax for recognized religious organisations is collected with the regular state tax. Churches in Germany receive the tax which is collected by the state from all registered members. Those who are not members are not required to pay it. Members of a religious community under public law may formally declare to state authorities that they wish to leave the community. With such declaration, the obligation to pay church taxes ends. The concerned religious organisations usually refuse to administer rites of passage, such as marriages and burials of members left. To rejoin a religious organisation, one would simply get one's declaration of re-entry officially recorded. The church tax is historically rooted in the pre-Christian Germanic custom where the chief of the tribe was directly responsible for the maintenance of priests and religious cults.
Fee for 'leaving the church'
In July 2008, it had to be decided whether a fee for leaving the church was in line with the constitution. The court decided it was an infringement of religious liberty. As the state of affairs in August 2008 noted, declaring that one is no longer a member of a churches costs between 10 and 30 € in most federal states. It is free in Berlin, Brandenburg and other areas, though in some places like Baden-Württemberg, it may cost up to 60 €.
Religious Education
Children who do not want to take the obligatory class in religious education may take an alternative class which is called "ethics", in which various issues of philosophy, society, and morals are discussed.
Social aspect
While church and state in Germany are legally separated, Germany has been under the dominating social and cultural influence of one single church, be it Protestant or Roman Catholic. This influence determined the arts, education, customs, lifestyle, and even architecture. Though in eastern Germany urban areas, this cultural influence of religion has been substantially reduced, it is not so in rural areas.
In 2004, the court denied a Muslim teacher the right to wear a headscarf in class, on the basis that she had to be neutral. In the late 1970s, another teacher, was not allowed wear the distinct clothing of his religion.
Cults, sects, and new religious movements
Since the 1990s, German courts have denied the request of the Jehovah's Witnesses several times to become a corporate body under public law for various reasons, one of them being that the Jehovah's Witnesses would discourage their members from taking part in state elections. In March 2005, Jehovah's Witnesses were granted the status of a body of public law for Berlin, on the grounds that the alleged lack of fidelity towards the state had not been convincingly proven.
German courts have come to different decisions on employees and members of Scientology regarding their religious status. The German government considers Scientology "an organization pursuing commercial interests". Scientology is not classified as a non-profit organization in Germany. Germany has been criticized over its treatment of Scientologists in United States human rights and religious freedom reports. In defense, the Germany has said that the German government believed Scientology's "pseudo-scientific courses can seriously jeopardize individuals' mental and physical health, and that it exploits its members."
There have been cases of groups in Germany which practice Germanic neopaganism facing legal sanctions because of their display of symbols such as runes, which prosecutors have deemed illegal under laws against neo-Nazi propaganda.
USA
Past situations:
1. STONE v. GRAHAM. In 1980, the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law that required the posting of the Ten Commandments in the public schools classrooms. The Court ruled that posting the Ten Commandments was a form of state sponsored religious indoctrination prohibited by the First Amendment. Posting the Decalogue, the Justices worried, might "induce the school children to read. Meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Ten Commandments."
2. Last May, 1986, three Pennsylvania seventh grade students were suspended for passing out a religious newspaper in the hallways of their public school. The paper, Issues and Answers, covers a variety of topics of interests to teenagers -sports figures, sex and dating, social issues, and problems with parents- with a direct Christian content of the newspaper unacceptable, and prohibited its distribution. Believing the order restricted their free speech rights, the students continue to distribute the paper -an action for which they were suspended. The students have sued the school district, and the case is still pending in the courts.
3. Twelve year old Rebecca Higgins was harassed by school authorities in May, 1985, when, after giving a short report on the Bible, she distributed free copies of the New Testament to her classmates. After her report, a math teacher, acting under the school principal, confiscated the New Testaments. At the end of the school day, the New Testaments were returned. But when Rebecca tried to return the New Testaments to her classmates the next morning, she was ordered to the principal's office where she was "interrogated" about her religious beliefs and told that she had broken the law. Rebecca and her parents sued the school district, and the case eventually settled out of court. (1)
4. In 984, Mary May, a teacher's aide at Harper Elementary School District in Evansville, Indiana, filed suit against the school district after she and several co-workers were threatened with dismissal unless they stop holding their weekly early-morning Bible study on school property. Last April, the Seventh U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against May stating, "the school has never been used for meeting unrelated to the business of the school." This, despite of the fact that the school is open for meetings of the PTA, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, a fine arts group, and others. Thus, at least in Induana, teachers are not permitted to pray or study the Bible together on school property.
Progress:
Freedom of religion was first applied as a principle of government in the founding of the colony of Maryland, founded by the Catholic Lord Baltimore, in 1634.
Fifteen years later (1649) the Maryland Toleration Act, drafted by Lord Baltimore, provided: "[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
The Maryland Toleration Act was repealed with the assistance of Protestant assemblymen and a new law barring Catholics from openly practicing their religion was passed. In 1657, the Catholic Lord Baltimore regained control after making a deal with the colony's Protestants, and in 1658 the Act was again passed by the colonial assembly. This time, it would last more than thirty years, until 1692, when after Maryland's Protestant Revolution of 1689, freedom of religion was again rescinded. In addition in 1704, an Act was passed "to prevent the growth of Popery in this Province", preventing Catholics from holding political office. Full religious toleration would not be restored in Maryland until the American Revolution, when Maryland's Charles Carroll of Carrollton signed the American Declaration of Independence.
The United States formally considers religious freedom in its foreign relations. The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 established the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom which investigates the records of over 200 other nations with respect to religious freedom, and makes recommendations to submit nations with egregious records to ongoing scrutiny and possible economic sanctions. Many human rights organizations have urged the United States to be still more vigorous in imposing sanctions on countries that do not permit or tolerate religious freedom.

10S15: Chau Zhing, Lester, Kenny, Justin & Gwendy

2010-07-21T23:06:00.003+08:00

In the past, class discrimination is evident among many countries which are run by monarchies. A monarchy is defined as a form of government in which political power is absolutely or nominally lodged with an individual or individuals. Within most monarchies exist a class system. A class system shows the status of people in their society by the jobs they have. Monarchies that are more famous for class discrimination in the past are India, which has a system known as caste system, and Egypt, which has a social class system.
India’s Caste System

The origins of the caste system in India are shrouded, but it seems to have originated some two thousand years ago. Under this system, which is associated with Hinduism, people were categorized by their occupations. Although originally caste depended upon a person's work, it soon became hereditary. Each person was born into an unalterable social status. The four primary castes are: Brahmin, the priests; Kshatriya, warriors and nobility; Vaisya, farmers, traders and artisans; and Shudra, tenant farmers and servants. Some people were born outside of the caste system. They were called Pariahs, or known as "untouchables."

Their caste system is largely influenced by their beliefs. Reincarnation is one of the basic beliefs in Hinduism; after each life, a soul is reborn into a new material form.
A particular soul's new form depends upon the virtuousness of its previous behaviour. Thus, a truly virtuous person from the Shudra caste could be rewarded with rebirth as a Brahmin in his or her next life.

Souls can move not only among different levels of human society, but also into other animals - hence the vegetarianism of many Hindus.

Within a life cycle, people had little social mobility. They had to strive for virtue during their present lives in order to attain a higher station the next time around.

Egypt’s Social Class System
In Egypt, there were definite social classes which were dictated by an Egyptian's profession, which is shaped like a pyramid.

At the bottom of the classes were slaves and farmers, they represented the greatest percent of the Egyptian population. The workers supported the professionals above them, just as the base of the pyramid supports the rest of the structure.

Above were skilled Craftsmen, then Scribes, Priests, Doctors, engineers, and then High Priests and Nobles, who served as generals and administrators, and formed the government. The Vizier was the Pharaoh's closest advisor. Finally, at the top of the social status pyramid was the Pharaoh. He was not simply a ruler, but was considered a god on earth for the Egyptians.

Current situation
Currently, the World is reducing discrimination on social classes, and equality is being stressed on. An example of efforts to reduce class discrimination would be in Britain. According to the article published on 13th January 2009, the British government is preparing to outlaw social class discrimination so that talents from less privileged backgrounds have a greater chance for employment.

However, there are still countries with quite severe class discrimination going on, but as compared to the past, it is on a much smaller scale. Examples of such countries with such discrimination are India and Peru.

India and Peru
For many centuries, the Hindu and Peruvian civilizations have followed a caste system of social stratification. Today, many belonging to the upper castes or social classes still subjugate Dalits in India and Campesinos (field workers) in Peru . Both Dalits and Campesinos are the lowest social classes in their respective countries, and they are oppressed by a caste system that exerts cruel discrimination and segregates these poor populations. The rich people in Peru (“ricos”) are mestizos with mixed European and indigenous blood. The Campesinos are mostly indigenous Quechuas. Although India and Peru are different culturally and ethnically, unfortunate similarities are manifested in the social conditions of their lowest classes. These impoverished people lack education, suffer political suppression, and have no legal protection.

One significant similarity between Dalits and Campesinos is their lack of education. A few Dalits benefit from government quotas reserved for castes. Because only a small minority of Dalits have benefited from India ’s policy of quotas in education, their priorities are work activities rather than education. Therefore, most Dalits are unskilled workers who are exploited due to their lack of education and low social status. They perform the most menial and unsafe jobs, such as removing human waste and dead animals, or sweeping streets. In the same way Peruvian Campesinos, with no quotas for higher education, are forced to send all the members of their families to work in the fields, including their children, who are often absent from school because of the necessity to work in order to contribute to their families’ incomes. While most Campesinos are engaged in farm labor, others perform manual labor such as trimming trees, sweeping streets, or digging wells under unsafe working conditions.

Another similarity between Dalits and Campesinos is the political suppression of rights. Dalits are used politically by upper caste candidates, but they are forgotten as soon the election is ended, and their rights are not protected. For instance, during an election, Dalits are compelled to vote for certain candidates. Dalit villagers who do not vote as they have been told have been murdered, beaten, and harassed. Also, Dalits who have sought active participation in politics have been battered or assassinated to keep them out of political office. There are laws which protect Dalits from such abuses of the caste system, but these laws remain unimplemented because the upper caste isn’t held accountable, so the laws are not enforced. Campesinos as well are obligated to vote for “ricos” candidates under the menacing threat of being fired from their jobs. Also, Campesinos have laws which protect their right to vote freely, but they are not enforced. For instance, although the law mandates that employers should facilitate voting for their workers, they don’t allow them to go to the elections polls, and when a Campesino presents a complaint about this, the authorities never proceed according to the law.

Finally, the lack of legal protection for Dalits and Campesinos is similar. Dalits are dominated by upper caste organizations. They are discriminated against in all public institutions, which makes it difficult for Dalits to get legal protection. For instance, police often refuse to receive complaints about crimes committed against the members of this lowest caste. Similarly, Campesinos are not protected under the same umbrella of the law. They suffer discrimination and segregation and are often cheated by the rich. For example, when a Campesino’s cow accidentally wanders onto ”ricos” property, they take that animal as part of their property, and because most “ricos” have connections with public authorities or the money to bribe them, it is impossible for the Campesinos to inquire about their rights against any member of the upper classes.

Progress and Limitations
Ever since the past, from caste systems in Ancient India and Egypt to the present class systems in the world now, class discrimination has been reduced significantly, and it is only targeted at a smaller group of people now, which largely aims developing countries. However, it is still existent in the world and would continue to exist in the world, as long as superiority among people which arises from high incomes and posts continue to remain in the mindsets of the people. It is not possible to fully eradicate class discriminations, unless the mindsets of people can be changed, and it would take many years for that to be done.

Bibliography
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_system
2. http://asianhistory.about.com/od/india/p/indiancastesystem.htm
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India#Caste_and_social_status
4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/jan/13/class-discrimination-social-mobility
5. http://www.eslstation.net/Lab_Information/Our_Lives/Viewpoints/Dalits_Campesinos.htm
6. http://www.aldokkan.com/society/social_pyramid.htm

Racism

2010-07-21T23:04:00.001+08:00

Racism
 Racism is defined as the belief that race is the primary determinant of human capacities, a certain race is inherently superior or inferior to others and individuals should be treated differently according to their racial designation

1)Why does racism exist?

• A contributing factor to racism is social and economic status.
• People are often judged by where they live, how much money they make, what type of car they drive and so on.
• According to CNN, in 2004 the percentage of Americans living under the poverty level was 12.5%. In this same year the percentage of African Americans living under the poverty level was 24.4%, almost twice the national level.
• This tends to cause a feeling of superiority amongst some people over the African Americans. This also may cause people to generalize all African Americans as “poor” since the number is so high.

• Not all people who are racist are taught from their parents or an older generation. Sometimes it is the lack of diversity in the area in which one lives. Generally when people are unaccustomed to something they judge it. For example in Wallowa county racism is common due to lack of minorities in the area.

• One of the root causes is ignorance. Also, it is a lack of understanding, and false perceptions about others which amounts to a lack of knowledge, which once again translates back to ignorance.
• None of us see reality in its most perfect and purest form. We interpret what we read, we interpret what we hear, we interpret what we see and we call that reality when actually it could be the furthest thing from the truth.

• Throughout western education we as students are told to be competitive, that to succeed in life we need to be better than the rest, and here rests our problem.
• With competition, comes the mindset that equality is not an option, If we were to eliminate racism, than everyone would be equal, and if everyone is equal than life's competition is brought to an end.
• The teachings of Western society can be seen to echo in the very histories of the world that we rely upon so heavily in modern society.

2)Historical examples of racism(past situations):

a)Racism displayed by Westerners with regards to Black Africans
• During the past 500-1000 years, racism on the part of Western powers towards non-Westerners has had a far more significant impact on history than any other form of racism
• The most notorious example of racism by the West was slavery, particularly the enslavement of Africans in the New World, due to the belief that Black Africans were inferior to white Europeans and their descendants
• The white society considered blacks and other minorities as inferior
• Blacks are often seen more like beasts than men → subhuman
• This led to situations where blacks were relegated to the back of the bus, minorities were regularly excluded from public institutions, and seeing a black on a major league baseball team was a rare occurrence
• A significant example is South Africa under apartheid which was a system of legal racial segregation enforced by the National Party government in South Africa between 1948 and 1994, under which the rights of the majority non-white inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and minority rule by white people was maintained

b) Hitler’s idealogy of the supreme race

• Nazi Racism: For years Adolf Hitler, believed in racial "purity" and in the superiority of the "Germanic race" - what he called an Aryan "master race."
• His definition of an ideal "Aryan" was blond, blue-eyed, and tall.
• This traits had to be present if they wish to dominate the world
• Nazis began this ideology that the human race could be improved by limiting the reproduction of "inferior" races through performing forced sterilizations on ‘inferior race’ , so that they cannot have children
• The Nazi viewed the Jews as a poisonous "race," which "lived off" the other races, instead of a religious race
• They saw the Jews as a threat to them
• For example, Jewish and Romani (Gypsy) students were discriminated to the extent of the existence of ‘the principles of racial science’ which measures skull size, nose length and colour of pupils’ hair and eyes, just to determine the true “Aryan race”

3)Examples of Steps taken to fight racism(progress made):

a) Setting up of World Conference against Racism (WCAR)
• After World War II, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization(UNESCO), organised several World Conference against Racism(WCAR) to combat racist ideologies and behaviours
• The latest conference was the 2009 WCAR held in Geneva, Switzerland
• It evaluated progress towards the goals set by the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, in 2001
• The Review Conference served as a catalyst to fulfilling the promises of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action agreed at the 2001 World Conference through reinvigorated actions, initiatives and practical solutions

b) Repealing of laws in South Africa
• In 1991, South Africa repealed the last of the laws that formed the basis of apartheid. Since then, racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa have been diminishing very slowly.

c) Leaders stepping in to fight racism
• Martin Luther King Jr. and several other civil rights leaders initiated a nonviolent protest campaign to desegregate public facilities in Birmingham, Alabama. City authorities turned fire hoses and police dogs on a large crowd of demonstrators—many of whom were children from local schools—and hundreds of protesters were beaten and arrested.
• President John F. Kennedy appeared on national television to proclaim his support for pending legislation that would forbid racial discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations
• Abandoning the use of race as a signifier of identity would liberate people from the societal stereotypes, divisiveness, and self-fulfilling prophecies attached to race
• Suppression of such information by banning the use of racial categories, argues former Justice Department attorney Alan Jenkins, amounts to censorship: “It bears noting that facts belong to no one group or agenda, to no ideology or political party. . . . Information and the liberty to use it . . . are hallmarks of a free society.”
• Efforts to suppress [racial] information gathering are threats not merely to the political left or right, but to the truth

d) Jew’s response to Nazi oppression

• The Jews fought with the Nazis and tried to protect their families, but a handful of poorly armed Jewish people were nothing to the German war machine. Thus, their efforts went down the drain
• Modern-day societies have drafted and enacted legislation to ensure that people “treat” each other with respect and dignity allowing one another their inalienable right to their pursuit of life and liberty.

4)Existence of racism in today’s world (limitations):
• Despite the various efforts made, racism is still apparent in our world today
• Countries may set laws which segregate people according to their nationality in doing business on their territory. This may be in the form of preventing the foreigners from buying real estate, especially land
• Modern racism domain is much larger than the usual perception of hatred that people feel towards others because of their skin colour
• In developed countries, individual or group hatred is replaced by institutional framework of restrictions and promotions
• To give resources and preferential treatment more to victims of racism than to people who simply suffer cultural and economic deprivations. . . . More and more racism was the lever one pushed to get entitlements and preferences, and cultural deprivation became more important as evidence of racism than as a problem to be overcome in its own right

• You can’t undo the discrimination against some blacks by some whites in the past by requiring new discrimination on behalf of different blacks against different whites. The solution to the discrimination that exists is not more discrimination. It is to enforce the laws we have and to stop discriminating

• Man’s actions can be legislated but their hearts and fears cannot.
• Thus, society continues to suffer from the disease. Forums, coalitions, and initiatives continue to be formed to foster unity, understanding, and tolerance.
• Racial prejudice perverts this uniqueness of the races and takes the view that these differences separate individuals further into groups, with one group being inferior to the other

• Countries/People facing heavy racism problems: Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, American Jews, Italian Americans, Arab Americans, and some other immigrant groups and their descendants

5)Reasons why racism still exists:
• There are no strict international rules on these matters and everything that hasn't been regulated internationally goes automatically to the state sovereignty domain
• We are so used to this subtle form of racism that we usually don't even consider such acts as racist per se believing that the governments better know what is and what isn't appropriate.

• Racism is a discrimination which can build up hatred, causing people to have the possibility of resorting to violence in order for their views to be heard. The violence may result in hostile relationship and tension among people and hence, causing more misunderstandings between them and worsening the problem of racism. Thus, this vicious cycle will be likely to continue.

Conclusion:
• What may seem to be significant "racial" differences to some people - skin color, hair, facial shape - are not of much scientific significance. In fact, genetic differences within a so-called race may be greater than those between races.
• One philosopher writes: "There are few genetic characteristics to be found in the population of England that are not found in similar proportions in Zaire or in China….those differences that most deeply affect us in our dealings with each other are not to any significant degree biologically determined."

Special thanks to:
http://www.adl.org/hate-patrol/racism.asp
http://www.globalissues.org/article/165/racism#TheLureofAdolphHitlerandneo-Nazism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism
http://www.allaboutpopularissues.org/racial-prejudice.htm
http://www.racismnoway.com.au/library/understanding/index-What.html
http://www.socialpolicy.ca/52100/m17/m17-t2.stm
http://www.globalissues.org/article/165/racism
http://www.enotes.com/racism-article
*and other articles which we may have forgotten to include

Done by: (10S15)
Goh Chang Jie
Jasper Ong Qing Xiang
Tan Li Xuan
Welly
Benedict Yeo Lehao

2010-07-21T21:53:00.011+08:00

10S15, Group 4

Done by: Jared Tan, Mark Yeo, Annette Tan, Gerald Gan & Nurul

Topic: Sexism/Sexual Discrimination

Traditional Perceptions of Sexism

Since many centuries ago, the society has gender stereotypes towards the sexes especially with men and women being identified with particular occupations. Women back then were expected to be in charge of the household, mainly taking care of children and doing household chores while the men are usually the sole breadwinner of the family. Women were also not allowed to even work alongside men in the workforce as they were viewed by the society as being ‘not on par’ in terms of status, ability, etc. The main reason is that they are generally viewed by society as the ‘weaker sex’ and sometimes even treated as the property of men. Furthermore, they do not receive education as compared to men and often stay at home with their mothers learning how to manage the household. Besides not having any status in the society, women had no power. They had no control over the decisions made by men who had all of the authority to influence how the society should run. Sexual discrimination towards the females were the norm in societies back then.

However, it was not until during the Industrial Revolution in the 18th to 19th centuries that women played a role in society. The Industrial Revolution which started in Europe is a small step towards women’s position in the society as they were finally able to work in certain industries such as the textile industry, contributing to the countries’ development as workers. However, during the 18th and 19th century, there were still forms of sexual discrimination towards women as many people would prefer them to stay at home and take charge of family matters. Despite being able to work then, women received low wages as compared to men and had no means to support the family alone.

Furthermore, women were not entitled to high positions in the society. While the Industrial Revolution had allowed women to work in the society, in many parts of the world such as Asia and Africa, women were not able to enjoy such rights as the countries there remained largely undeveloped. Women had no say in politics until the 20th century, where women were allowed to vote in the U.S. and U.K. in 1920 and 1918 respectively. It was not until 1875 before women in the U.S. were legally defined as people. Women have been historically excluded from most professions. When women managed to gain entry into a previously male profession, they would probably face many additional obstacles. However, many women have successfully climbed to the top of the social hierarchy, proving to the world that women are just as capable as men.

FACT! Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to receive a Masters Degree and Myra Bradwell was the first female lawyer.

Progress of Sexism from the Past to the Present

Sexism, or gender discrimination, is present everywhere, in every culture, in every country. The terms ‘sexism’ or ‘gender discrimination’ basically means the prejudicial treatment of a group or a person due to their gender or sex. It involves a reinforcement of behaviour and attitude on the basis of traditionally stereotypical roles people have in the society we live in. Gender discrimination can involve a whole gamut of issues, from unequal pay to women being portrayed as sexual objects in the media to wives being beaten up by their spouses. While in theory gender discrimination can affect both men and women, however, it is women who have been at the receiving end through the ages and across cultures, since most cultures in the world are patriarchal, or male dominated.

In the past, most women were considered equal to men. They had power politically, spiritually, medically and generally in everyday life. However, nowadays, women in contemporary societies sit at the bottom of the social hierarchy. They struggle with sexism and racism and are generally not respected even by their own people. Economically they are more disadvantaged than non- First Nations people and First Nations men. In addition, in the western as well as the eastern world, if there is only one chance for education, this chance is surely given to boys in the family. In their youth, girls have to help their mother with housework. After they get married, they must take care of their father and mother. Later, taking care of the children is part of their job.

Due to many regions in the world being male dominated, most gender discriminations have their roots in these religions, with women being relegated to a much lower level than men. She is regarded as unclean when she menstruates, she becomes untouchable after childbirth until she undergoes a ritual cleansing, she is described as a temptress or a whore in the scriptures and she has to cover herself from head to foot in order not to weaken the man’s purity of resolve. From being burnt at the stake accused of being witches to honour killings that still continue in places like India, Pakistan, and other Islamic countries, to undergoing fasts for the well-being of her husband – most if not all religions have always discriminated against women and continue to do so.

Presently, women are sometimes being sexually harassed by male colleagues and get paid less for the same jobs to preferential treatment given by male bosses to more compliant women (whom they don’t consider a threat) to stronger female colleagues being undercut for openly challenging the conventional gender roles they are supposed to conform to, to discussing female colleagues or making jokes about them in a denigrating manner. In this way, gender discrimination exists to some degree in most workplaces.

FACT! According to the United Nations, there is not a single society where women are not discriminated against, or have equal opportunities as men. Even in countries in the West where women’s emancipation has bettered the lives of countless women, they still experience the unfairness of the ‘glass ceiling’, where women just do not get promoted beyond a certain level. According to the Glass Ceiling Commission in the U.S., about 95-97% of the senior managerial posts in country’s largest corporations are held by men.

In conclusion, women all over the world are still regarded as passive or weak or sexual objects. There is still a long way to go to attain gender parity. Women continue to fight for respect, justice, and equality. Gender discrimination has to be resisted wherever it exists. Whereas in the developing world, it can be achieved by widespread education and economic independence, in the developed world, women must continue to break all the “glass ceiling barriers”, to achieve equal parity with men in every field, while continuing to sensitize men about the issues of sexism and gender discrimination.

Limitations of Sexism

The usual view of men's anti-sexism is that it centres around men who find it personally important to challenge the pressure to conform to a 'macho' image plus a handful of politically aware men wanting to assist on what are seen as feminist issues. In fact any man giving it serious thought will come to see domestic violence, rape, care of their children and such-like as being men's issues. However, the average man will not be drawn into men's groups by these issues, and will tend to see men's anti-sexism as a movement without a cause.

At the workplace:

In spite of the massive unemployment, little has changed about men's ideas about work. The classic picture of “a man as an incomplete person” those men’s groups invoke - emotionally retarded, distant from his children, competitive at work and dominant at home - describes a man well moulded to the career world. The stereotypical male values closely match the qualities desirable in competitive work.

Although there are women working successfully in most professions, males continue to dominate. This is due to the strict division between full-time and part-time work. It's in full-time work in the majority of occupations that men and traditional values prevail - women in these jobs work on men's terms. Part-time work on the other hand is clearly the province of women - over 90% of part-timers in Britain are female. In fact, much of the recent increase in women's employment has been in the part-time sector.

Full-time jobs are valued more highly, often paid a 'family wage' and require the specialization of skills and continued commitment that would merit the title 'career'. However, full-time work has changed little to accommodate the increasing number of women in it, who have to accept the limitations imposed by men such as avoiding children or delegating their care to the domestic/part-time sector.

Thus, women who are pregnant need to be free from work from late pregnancy until the baby is weaned at the very least. As men are generally not permitted any reasonable paternity leave, it is necessarily the mother who continues to look after the child at least until school age (unless the parents are willing and financially able to pay someone else to do so). If these considerations did not keep the women out of full-time work in the first place, they are likely to do so for some years at this stage, especially since this whole situation increases the likelihood that the father will be earning more than her at this financially critical time.

As a result, women wanting children will be disadvantaged when it comes to full-time work and many women having children will have to accept the limitations of part-time work. Men, if they are able to get full-time work, will almost always take this in preference to part-time work - and when they become fathers, they are likely to be under financial pressure to keep their full-time job, at the expense of their involvement with their children.

However, if the responsibility for financial support was no longer borne principally by men, it could undermine the damaging tendency for manhood to be measured by economic success - which is often won at the price of being a second rate parent. Besides that, for women, working on these terms would mean not only an increase in real economic power and independence, but with this a greater participation in public and political life. Also, any overall reduction in average hours worked could help to reduce unemployment in the right circumstances.

In conclusion, if men looked objectively at the unnecessary sacrifices they make on the altar of work, anti-sexism would suddenly seem relevant to many more men than the few involved at the present.

Reasons for Gender Inequality

Gender inequalities often stem from social structures that have institutionalized conceptions of gender differences.

Due to cultural stereotypes engrained in both men and women, it is a possible explanation for gender inequality and the resulting gendered wage disparity. Women have traditionally been viewed as being caring and nurturing and are designated to occupations which require such skills. While these skills are culturally valued, they were typically associated with domesticity. As a result, occupations requiring these same skills are not economically valued. Men have traditionally been viewed as the breadwinner or the worker, so jobs held by men have been historically economically valued and occupations predominated by men continue to be economically valued and pay higher wages.

Gender inequality can further be understood through the mechanisms of sexism. Discrimination takes place in this manner as men and women are subject to prejudicial treatment on the basis of gender alone. Sexism occurs when men and women are framed within two dimensions of social cognition.

Benevolent sexism also takes place when women are viewed as possessing low degrees of competency and high degrees of warmth. Although this is the result of a more positive stereotype of women, this still contributes to gender inequality as this stereotype is only applied to women who conform to the caring or nurturing stereotypes, with the remaining women still being discriminated against as they are not viewed in this positive light. Also, this form of sexism has negative effects as well, as these notions of women include the idea that women are weak and in need of the protection of men.

Discrimination also plays out with networking and in preferential treatment within the economic market. Men typically occupy positions of power within the job economy. Due to taste or preference for other men because they share similar characteristics, men in these positions of power are more likely to hire or promote other men, thus discriminating against women. Discrimination against men in the workplace is rarer but does occur, particularly in health care professions.

FACT! Only an estimated 0.4% of midwives in the UK are male.

Another reason which led to gender inequality is the physiological difference between male and female. Such a difference leads to different labour distribution, especially in a primary society where social productivity of labour is at a low level. In modern society, the distribution of power in society is still dominated by men - men earn more money than women, men own more property, men take out many more mortgages than women and men are still seen as physically stronger. Besides that, most companies prefer male staff to female staff. In economic activities such as production, distribution, exchange and consumption of materials information, women have been in a subordinate position. Consequently, the statuses of women have improved, however, at a rather slow rate. That is why sexism has always been a big problem in society.

10S02 KhngYouCheng HowJunXiang YanAikTeck PohZhongWee BehGuangWei Ageism

2010-07-18T17:08:00.011+08:00

Ageism

- Ageism is a form of discrimination that casts judgment on the lifestyles, personalities and abilities of individuals strictly based on accepted stereotypes about their age. It is most often seen against senior citizens, but it can often be seen on the young as well. It is a method of formulating stereotypes of the lives of individual and then using these stereotypes to develop a prejudice. This negatively effects groups like senior citizens by making them feel as if they are seen as nothing but noncontributing members of a community, despite a lifetime of being an asset to society.

Cause

- In many countries, companies more or less openly refuse to hire people above a certain age despite the increasing lifespan and average age of the population. The reasons for this range from vague feelings younger people are more "dynamic" and create a positive image for the company, to more concrete concerns about regulations granting older employees higher salaries or other benefits without these expenses being fully justified by an older employees' greater experience.

More than 50% of companies do not employ anyone aged over 65, a survey from Origen reveals. The independent financial advice firm said the statistic increased to 80% in IT telecoms and media - proved age discrimination legislation had not had an impact on the working practices of many firms.

Effects

- Ageism functions to strip individuals of their rights or worth solely based on their age. This is unfair to senior citizens because it trivializes their wisdom and experience that they have gained over the course of a lifetime. This is also unfair to teenagers and children because it assumes that their opinions and ideas do not hold any value simply because they have not been alive long enough to gain the experiences that would properly educate their beliefs.

Ageism is not just prevalent among older people and their families, but among health professionals too. The following anecdote illustrates this: A 102-year-old man went to see his doctor for pain in his left knee. His doctor remarked, "What do you expect? You are already 102!"The man replied, "Well, my right knee is 102 years old too, and it doesn't hurt."

Why should ageism be avoided?

- Older people should not be denied treatment on the basis of age alone. Their ability to recover from illness should not be underestimated. After all they are survivors. It is indeed remarkable how many physical, emotional and social crises they must have survived to reach their present age. In these more enlightened times; there is no reason why they should not survive their remaining years with less pain and discomfort.

“It has been shown that an older person's ability to learn new things is comparable to that of a younger person. Hence there is no such thing as senile dementia.”

Origen client services director Warren Page said: "Apart from defined contribution pensions and group personal pensions, most other employee benefits will increase in cost if there is an ageing workforce and these costs will be met by the employer.

Solutions and improvements

-Prevention is the best option to battling ageism. Those who are made aware of the dangers of ageist outlooks are less likely to exhibit ageist views that can cause discrimination in the workplace and the rest of society. By encouraging others to practice acceptance and tolerance of other people and cultures, things like discrimination and hate become easier to fight.

- The portrayal of older characters in television commercials has over time become more varied and positive. This study examines how different portrayals of older characters relate to self-stereotyping, a process through which older individuals apply their beliefs about older people in general to themselves and behave accordingly. The study thereby seeks to connect, as few have previously done, cultural studies and critiques of media portrayals with psychological studies of the effects of self-stereotyping.

From October 2006, legislation prohibited age discrimination in employment. Origen found the retail sector was embracing the older workforce, with almost 20% of firms actively recruiting the over 65s.

The Office for National Statistics has indicated there is likely to be an increase of around 33% in the number of over- 65s in the workforce by 2020, which will have consequences for benefit requirements.

Conclusion

-ageism is prevalent among any age group of people as long as there is lack of understanding. Hence like other discrimination of races and religions, as long as there is sufficient communication between different age groups, ageism may be prevented and workforce can be enhance to its maximum capacity, contributing greatly to the economy. However, it all boils down to how each individual think and act as many individuals come together to form family and community, and all of these form the society.

10A01, Ili Kaiyisah Rahan, A Comparative Look at Women in Harry Potter and Twilight.

2010-07-13T23:48:00.003+08:00

Rarely can we come up with female characters that are as memorable or on equal footing such as Superman or Batman. This may be due to the constant presence of female characters possessing stereotypical feminine traits and have been dependent on their male counterparts. One example is the infamous 'damsel in distress' such as Superman's Lois Lane and Spiderman's Mary-Jane, where they constantly need to be rescued by the man. These characters are hardly what you would consider to be 'independent'. However, there is a progression in the female characters who are now presented as strong-minded.

The Harry Potter novels and the Twilight saga feature females as lead characters; Hermione Granger being one of the heroic trio and Bella Swan. Hermione is portrayed as an intelligent, capable young woman who possesses a no-nonsense attitude and excels in areas that are considered 'male' territory. This is in contrast to Bella's character as her obsession over the leading male character, Edward makes her a contradiction to Hermione.

Hermione is one of the best portrayals of a strong female as she possesses the characteristics of strength and intelligence. Although in the very first book, Hermione's personality is that of a stereotypical female, with her studious nature and 'know-it-all' attitude, we see that with age Hermione's personality traits grow and she no longer embodies those undesirable traits. At times, Hermione overshadows the main character, Harry Potter with her cunning ability to recall complex spells and calm nature in the face of danger that has more than once, saved Harry's life. This shows that without Hermione, it would've been impossible for Harry to eliminate Voldemort. Throughout the novel, Rowling teaches valuable lessons in the form of subtle hints about the importance of the equality of men and women in the wizarding world. This suggests that Rowling is trying to communicate the fact that equality for women is something that happens naturally in the realm of her books and should also be applicable in the real world.

On the other hand, Bella is a complete contrast to Hermione. Bella's most profound trait is her lack of self-esteem which is seen through her own dialogue where she describes herself as 'very average' Furthermore, her idolization of Edward is most disturbing as her extreme passion for Edward is shown through her willingness to give up her relationships with her parents and friends in order to stay with Edward. The suggestion that women need to act and look a certain way to attract the attention of males is enforced through Bella's actions in the novels. Her entire personality(or lack thereof) does not exist unless Edward is present, she deliberately chooses to be sad and to suffer in a way which symbolizes the idea that women 'need' men to exist. She even makes herself physically ill and withdraws when Edward leaves her and this creates the underlying acceptance among young female readers that this type of behavior in normal when love is involved. Bella's character contradicts the ideals of a modern young women where they are encouraged to reach for their dreams and fight against male superiority.

In conclusion, the fact that we see more female heroines indicates a vast improvement in the acceptance of women in the realm of men. Characters like Bella exist because she is a comfort to young girls who have been gendered to believe these traditional roles equals to a happy and loving romance. Both Bella and Hermione exist because young female readers are able to find comfort in Bella and at the same time, accepting the progression of feminism with Hermione. Morally, strong characters like Hermione should become the idols to young females and the influence of young adult literature in young women today provides more opportunities in the future for dominant female characters to shape the progression of feminist movements.

10A01, Jee Seng, Visual Art: Importance of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper

2010-07-12T23:19:00.002+08:00

The Last Supper, one of Leonard da Vinci's more famous artworks, is important for various reasons.

First, because the disciples are all displaying very human, identifiable emotions. "The Last Supper" had certainly been painted before. Leonardo's version, though, was the first to depict real people acting like real people.

Secondly, and of major importance - the technical perspective in Last Supper is incredible. You can see that every single element of the painting directs one's attention straight to the midpoint of the composition, Christ's head. It's arguably the greatest example of one point perspective ever created.

The Last Supper is Leonardo's visual interpretation of an event chronicled in all four of the Gospels (books in the Christian New Testament). The evening before Christ was betrayed by one of his disciples, he gathered them together to eat, tell them he knew what was coming and wash their feet (a gesture symbolizing that all were equal under the eyes of the Lord). As they ate and drank together, Christ gave the disciples explicit instructions on how to eat and drink in the future, in remembrance of him. It was the first celebration of the Eucharist, a ritual still performed.

Specifically, Last Supper depicts the next few seconds in this story after Christ dropped the bombshell that one disciple would betray him before sunrise, and all twelve have reacted to the news with different degrees of horror, anger and shock.

His artwork comprises of a mixture of various techniques, which include the innovative techniques that he used in laying on the paint, his detailed knowledge of anatomy, light, botany and geology, his interest in physiognomy and the way in which humans register emotion in expression and gesture, his innovative use of the human form in figurative composition and his use of the subtle gradation of tone.

source: http://arthistory.about.com/cs/leonardo/a/last_supper.htm

10A01, Gillian, Visual Art: Leonardo da Vinci beyond the canvas

2010-07-12T23:18:00.001+08:00

Artists have always found it difficult to make a living off their art. Even a master like Leonardo was forced to sell out in order to support himself, so he adapted his drawing skills to the more lucrative fields of architecture, military engineering, canal building and weapons design. Although a peacenik at heart, Leonardo landed a job working for the Duke of Milan by calling himself a military engineer and outlining some of his sinister ideas for weapons and fortifications. Like many art school types in search of a salary, he only briefly mentioned to the Duke that he could paint as well.

Lucky for Leonardo, he was actually really talented as an engineer. Good illustrators were a dime a dozen in Renaissance Italy, but Leonardo had the brains and the diligence to break new ground, usually leaving his contemporaries in the dust. Like many crackpot geniuses, Leonardo wanted to create "new machines" for a "new world."

Throughout his life he had brilliant and far-out ideas, ranging from the practical to the prophetic. As military engineer and architect to the notorious Cesare Borgia (son of the Pope!), Leonardo proposed creating a dry route across the Gulf of Istanbul, connecting the Golden Horn and the Bosporus with a bridge. Alas, like most great ideas, the bridge plan was squelched by those killjoy engineers, who flipped when they found out how big it was supposed to be. Leonardo watchers got the last laugh, though, because modern engineers have determined that the bridge would have been completely sound. Furthermore, they show its construction would have been entirely feasible, proving yet again that Leonardo was the smartest man ever.

Nearly a century before Galileo, Leonardo butted heads with the challenge of measuring time. For him, the most interesting part was the use of mechanical gears, and he studied them with relish (see "Levers and Gears"). Based on the gear, he came up with loads of different thingamajigs, including the bicycle, a helicopter, an "auto-mobile", and some gruesome weapons of course.

The biggest mechanical bee in his bonnet, however, was water. Recall that nobody had harnessed electricity yet, so water was at that point the ultimate source for power. Leonardo studied all forms of water -- liquid, steam, and ice -- and he had all sorts of swell ideas of what to do with it. He cooked up plans for a device to measure humidity, a steam-powered cannon, many different waterwheels, and oodles of useful industrial machines powered by flowing water. He also devised some highly ambitious plans to revitalize Milan with canals, which he intended to implement with some equally ambitious construction machines. In fact, once he started on the subject of water te couldn't really stop, forever envisioning things like floating snowshoes to walk on water, breathing devices (including a diving hood) and webbed gloves to explore underwater, a life preserver to remain afloat, devices to attack and sink ships from underwater, and an "unsinkable" double-hulled ship and dredges for clearing harbors and channels.

source: http://www.mos.org/leonardo/inventor.html

10A01, Mark, Visual Art: Leonardo da Vinci learning beyond art

2010-07-12T23:15:00.002+08:00

Leonardo the scientist bridged the gap between the shockingly unscientific medieval methods and our own trusty modern approach. His experiments in anatomy and the study of fluids, for example, absolutely blew away the accomplishments of his predecessors. Beginning with his first stay in Milan and accelerating around 1505, Leonardo became more and more wrapped up in his scientific investigations. The sheer range of topics that came under his inquiry is staggering: anatomy, zoology, botany, geology, optics, aerodynamics and hydrodynamics among others.

While greatly influenced by the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans, Leonardo, unlike many of his contemporaries, saw the limitations of seeking the truth solely in those writings or the Bible. Instead, he took the startling approach of actually observing nature and asking deceptively simple scientific questions like, "How do birds fly?" To finish the bill, he then systematically recorded their solutions in his sketches.

Leonardo certainly had an uncanny ability to observe nature and record it. And to this he added a preternatural, even spooky determination. The first biographer of Leonardo da Vinci, Paolo Giovi, wrote in 1520: "in the medical faculty he learned to dissect the cadavers of criminals under inhuman, disgusting conditions...because he wanted [to examine and] to draw the different deflections and reflections of limbs and their dependence upon the nerves and the joints. This is why he paid attention to the forms of even very small organs, capillaries and hidden parts of the skeleton."

In a study of cervical vertebra shown from different perspectives, Leonardo notes: "[Both] former and contemporary authors have produced written reports [about anatomy] in tormentingly long-winded and confused styles. However, through a concise portrayal from different perspectives, things are described definitively; and to avoid that my gift to mankind could be lost [to time], I teach the technique of reproducing things by printing." These remarks heralded the birth of a new method of scientific study: the systematic, descriptive method of the natural sciences, which was the predominant method of scientific study well into the 19th century.

As his curiosity took him in ever wilder directions, Leonardo always used this method of scientific inquiry: close observation, repeated testing of the observation, precise illustration of the subject object or phenomenon with brief explanatory notes. The result was volumes of remarkable notes on an amazing variety of topics, from the nature of the sun, moon and stars to the formation of fossils and, perhaps most notably, the mysteries of flight.

10A01, Karen, Literature (Origin of Fairy tales)

2010-07-12T22:44:00.003+08:00

They have been told as bedtime stories by generations of parents, but fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood may be even older than was previously thought.

A study by anthropologists has explored the origins of folk tales and traced the relationship between varients of the stories recounted by cultures around the world.

The researchers adopted techniques used by biologists to create the taxonomic tree of life, which shows how every species comes from a common ancestor.

Dr Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, studied 35 versions of Little Red Riding Hood from around the world.

Whilst the European version tells the story of a little girl who is tricked by a wolf masquerading as her grandmother, in the Chinese version a tiger replaces the wolf.

In Iran, where it would be considered odd for a young girl to roam alone, the story features a little boy.

Contrary to the view that the tale originated in France shortly before Charles Perrault produced the first written version in the 17th century, Dr Tehrani found that the varients shared a common ancestor dating back more than 2,600 years.

He said: “Over time these folk tales have been subtly changed and have evolved just like an biological organism. Because many of them were not written down until much later, they have been misremembered or reinvented through hundreds of generations.

“By looking at how these folk tales have spread and changed it tells us something about human psychology and what sort of things we find memorable.

“The oldest tale we found was an Aesopic fable that dated from about the sixth century BC, so the last common ancestor of all these tales certainly predated this. We are looking at a very ancient tale that evolved over time.”

Dr Tehrani, who will present his work on Tuesday at the British Science Festival in Guildford, Surrey, identified 70 variables in plot and characters between different versions of Little Red Riding Hood.

He found that the stories could be grouped into distinct families according to how they evolved over time.

The original ancestor is thought to be similar to another tale, The Wolf and the Kids, in which a wolf pretends to be a nanny goat to gain entry to a house full of young goats.

Stories in Africa are closely related to this original tale, whilst stories from Japan, Korea, China and Burma form a sister group. Tales told in Iran and Nigeria were the closest relations of the modern European version.

Perrault’s French version was retold by the Brothers Grimm in the 19th century. Dr Tehrani said: “We don’t know very much about the processes of transmission of these stories from culture to culture, but it is possible that they may being passed along trade routes or with the movement of people.”

Professor Jack Zipes, a retired professor of German at the University of Minnesota who is an expert on fairy tales and their origins, described the work as “exciting”. He believes folk tales may have helped people to pass on tips for survival to new generations.

He said: “Little Red Riding Hood is about violation or rape, and I suspect that humans were just as violent in 600BC as they are today, so they will have exchanged tales about all types of violent acts.

“I have tried to show that tales relevant to our adaptation to the environment and survival are stored in our brains and we consistently use them for all kinds of reference points.”

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6142964/Fairy-tales-have-ancient-origin.html

10A01, Goh Yanyi, Feminism in Literature

2010-07-12T22:31:00.004+08:00

Feminism has gradually become more far-ranging and subtle in its attacks on male-dominated society. Many injustices still need to be corrected, but equally necessary is a more down-to-earth, tolerant and compassionate view of fellow human beings.

Critics, being generally male, had not generally concerned themselves with gender issues. Most of the world's great literature had been written by men. Sappho, Austen, the Brontës and Emily Dickinson apart, it was difficult to think women really had it in them to write at the highest level. Literature was literature, and critics saw no need to distinguish a specifically feminine way of writing or responding to a text.

Virginia Woolf was herself a refutation of that thesis, though her mental breakdown was perhaps brought on by the strain of balancing male self-realization with female abnegation. But in her essay Professions for Women, Woolf complained only that women's social obligations hindered a writing career. Their lives gave them a different perspective, but women were not fundamentally different from men in their psychological needs and outlooks.

The gathering feminist movement very much disagreed, and argued that women's writing expressed a distinctive female consciousness, which was more discursive and conjunctive than its male counterpart. Such consciousness was radically different, and had been adversely treated. Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex documented the ways "Legislators, priests, philosophers, writers and scientists have striven to show that the subordinate position of women is willed in heaven and advantageous on earth." Women had been made to feel that they were inferior by nature and, though men paid lip-service to equality, they would resist its implementation. Some men might be sympathetic to women's issues, but only women themselves knew what they felt and wanted.

Nonetheless, by the early eighties, feminists had advanced to a much more confrontational attack on male hegemony, advocating a complete overthrow of the biased (male) canon of literature. French feminists argued that women should write with a greater consciousness of their bodies, which would create a more honest and appropriate style of openness, fragmentation and non-linearity. Parallel studies in the visual arts stressed a feminine sensibility of soft fluid colours, an emphasis on the personal and decorative, and on forms that evoked the female genitalia.

Five years later the debate had moved on, from exclusively feminine concerns to the wider issues of gender in social and cultural contexts. Patriarchy and capitalism should be examined more closely, perhaps as Althusser had attempted, and sophisticated models built to integrate the larger web of economics, education, division of labour, biological constraints and cultural assumptions.

Literature will often reflect the cultural assumptions and attitudes of its period, and that of course includes attitudes towards women: their status, their roles, their expectations. But a literature doctored of male-orientated views would be failing in its first requirement, to present a realistic or convincing picture of the world. Moralizing, which includes political correctness, has its dangers.

Feminists have argued for positive discrimination as the only way to correct centuries of bias. Nonetheless, the consensus emerging among black Americans is that positive discrimination is counter-productive. Disadvantaged minorities desperately need the odds levelled, but not patronizingly tilted in their favour.

Psychoanalysis has little scientific standing, and Lacanian theory is further disputed within the psychoanalytical community itself. Feminism does itself few favours by relying on these supports.

A more damaging criticism is the concept of the feminine itself. Does it really exist? There are very real differences in the psychological make-up between the sexes, but testing also indicates what anthropologists have long accepted: the expression of those differences is more determined by cultural factors than sexuality per se. Feminists who argue for a more understanding, fluid, and delicate attitude are not so much advocating qualities native to women but for attitudes still repressed by society. That in turn suggests society itself needs exploring rather than sex differences per se, which is indeed a view more recognized in contemporary feminist studies.

A rather fuller article can be found on TextEtc.

10A01, Emily, Visual Arts: Leonardo da Vinci as an artist

2010-07-12T22:26:00.003+08:00

Leonardo da Vinci, a man often described as the archetype of the Renaissance man, was a polymath. Born in 1452, he has accomplished and invented so much that he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics and hydrodynamics. Despite all this, however, he was and is renown primarily as a painter.

Renaissance Italy was centuries away from our culture of photographs and cinema, but Leonardo nevertheless sought a universal language in painting. With perspective and other realistic elements, Leonardo tried to create faithful renditions of life. In a culture previously dominated by highly figurative and downright strange religious paintings, Leonardo's desire to paint things realistically was bold and fresh. This call to objectivity became the standard for painters who followed in the 16th century.

Leonardo went beyond his teaching by making a scientific study of light and shadow in nature. It dawned on him that objects were not comprised of outlines, but were actually three-dimensional bodies defined by light and shadow. Known as chiaroscuro, this technique gave his paintings the soft, lifelike quality that made older paintings look cartoony and flat. He also saw that an object's detail and color changed as it receded in the distance. This technique, called sfumato, was originally developed by Flemish and Venetian painters, but of course Super-Genius Leonardo transformed it into a powerful tool for creating atmosphere and depth.

Ever the perfectionist, Leonardo turned to science in the quest to improve his artwork. His study of nature and anatomy emerged in his stunningly realistic paintings, and his dissections of the human body paved the way for remarkably accurate figures. He was the first artist to study the physical proportions of men, women and children and to use these studies to determine the "ideal" human figure. Unlike many of his contemporaries -- Michelangelo for example -- he didn't get carried away and paint ludicrously muscular bodies, which he referred to as "bags of nuts."

All in all, Leonardo believed that the artist must know not just the rules of perspective, but all the laws of nature. The eye, he believed, was the perfect instrument for learning these laws, and the artist the perfect person to illustrate them.

source: http://www.mos.org/leonardo/artist.html

10A01, Claire, Literature

2010-07-12T22:10:00.003+08:00

Examples of fairy tales

A fairy tale is a type of imaginative writing that carries the reader into an invented world where the laws of nature, as we know them, do not operate. One famous example would be Cinderella.

Cinderella is a classic folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world. The title character is a young woman living in unfortunate circumstances which suddenly change to remarkable fortune. The word "cinderella" has, by analogy, come to mean one whose attributes are unrecognised, or one who unexpectedly achieves recognition or success after a period of obscurity and neglect. The still-popular story of Cinderella continues to influence popular culture internationally, lending plot elements, allusions, and tropes to a wide variety of media.

Another well-known fairytale would be Rapunzel.

Rapunzel is a German fairytale in the collection assembled by the Brothers Grimm, and first published in 1812 as part of Children's and Household Tales. The Grimm Brothers' story is an adaptation of the fairy tale Persinette by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force originally published in 1698. Its plot has been used and parodied in various media and its best known line ("Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair") is an idiom of popular culture.

Both stories contain morals that are meant to educate and instruct the readers on certain matters. For Cinderella, the moral of the story is that beauty is a treasure, but graciousness is priceless. Without it nothing is possible; with it, one can do anything. The Grimms’ version of Rapunzel also presents a strong moral message to young women in order to maintain the patriarchal nature and moral code of 19th century Germany. In Rapunzel, the Grimms took a story that was about rites of passage and, while maintaining that element, added a moral message about the importance of female purity, catering to the ideals of the time in which they lived. In the final version of Rapunzel, the Grimms add a moral message, based primarily on stories taken from the Bible, in order to demonstrate the importance of female purity.

Singapore gays allowed a step forward, but pushed two back

2010-07-12T21:59:00.004+08:00

By Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop

Published: Thursday, August 2, 2007

SINGAPORE — In a city-state that reserves the right to control public expression and private sexual behavior, these have been interesting weeks for the emerging gay rights movement.

Last month, the Singapore Media Development Authority allowed "Happy Ending - Asian Boys Vol. 3," a new play on gay themes by a local playwright, Alfian Sa'at, to be staged uncensored. It was seen by more than 6,000 people in its 23-day run and drew praise from a visiting British film actor and well-known gay rights advocate, Ian McKellen, among others.

But this week, the same authority denied licenses to two art exhibitions that had been planned for the third annual Singapore gay pride festival, IndigNation, which began Wednesday: an exhibition by Alex Au that was to show 80 photos of same-sex couples kissing, and a pencil drawing by Genevieve Chua depicting two nude women in a suggestive sexual position.

In a letter explaining its refusal to license the photo exhibit, the authority said that while homosexual-themed content was permissible in an "appropriate context," it should not be of a "promotional or exploitative nature."

"Hence we have allowed brief same-sex kissing in plays and in R21-rated films. But the proposed exhibition (comprising 80 color photographs), which mainly focuses on homosexual kissing, is deemed to promote a homosexual lifestyle and cannot be allowed," it said.

Although homosexuals in Singapore have become slightly more visible in recent years, few have been willing to take public stances on gay rights. Despite some signs that the government might be rethinking the issue, gay sex remains a criminal act under Section 377A of the Singapore penal code, and many are unsure how far they can push the debate.

In April, Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister of modern Singapore, referred to homosexuality as "genetic" - an announcement some people seized on as an indication that the government might move toward liberalization.

At a public forum last month organized to coincide with the opening performances of "Happy Ending," a lawmaker, Baey Yam Keng of the ruling People's Action Party, argued that if Section 377A was reviewed in Parliament, members should be freed from the obligation to vote strictly along party lines, in order to encourage a "very open debate and open expression of opinion."

At the same forum, the Reverend Yap Kim Hao, a former Methodist bishop, said he thought the law should be repealed. The National Council of Churches of Singapore said that Yap was not speaking on its behalf.

"Happy Endings" is the final play in a trilogy by Sa'at that began in 2000 with "Asian Boys Vol. 1." In the years since that first installment was performed, Singapore has loosened some of its restrictions on sex, both heterosexual and homosexual.

The government now lets gays serve openly in the civil service and allows a small number of gay bars, saunas and other businesses to flourish in certain parts of the city. In 2001, the government gave the green light to the first outdoor party for gays in Singapore. In ensuing years, though, the party got bigger, and in 2005 it was denied a license. Organizers moved it to Bangkok.

Last year, the government announced plans to decriminalize heterosexual oral and anal sex between consenting men and women, but made clear that the ban on homosexual sex would remain intact. However, the Home Affairs Ministry said it would not be "proactive" in enforcing the ban when it came to consensual acts taking place in private.

Sa'at said that with "Happy Ending" he wanted to confront issues that he was "at most alluding to" in the first two plays.

"The first was almost apolitical because it used a lot of camp aesthetic, and there was a lot of hide-and-seek because I wanted to avoid censure and get it staged," he said.

"Happy Endings" is more direct. In part, it is an adaptation of "Peculiar Chris," a gay-themed 1992 novel written by a Singaporean, Johann Lee. The book deals with a gay man's coming of age, his first loves and his eventual decision to leave Singapore, where his sexuality makes him a criminal.

McKellen, who was in "Lord of the Rings" and "X-Men," saw "Happy Endings" in Singapore while on tour with the Royal Shakespeare Company. "It seemed to be talking about a situation I recognized in my own life, even though here it was, set on the other side of the world," McKellen said.

"The play does have a strong point of view, but it doesn't only argue one side of the issue and time and again you're having, as you watch it, to adjust your thoughts and answer the point that is being made," McKellen said. "It doesn't just shoot its opinion at you."

He said seeing the play made him feel that he was witnessing "a really important part of Singapore's social history."

A survey in May by a local newspaper found that 62 percent of "heartlanders" - Singaporeans living in public housing, a majority of the population - thought homosexuality should not be legalized.

But Ivan Heng, the director of "Happy Endings," said the question was badly phrased.

"The question was whether gay sexuality was acceptable and not whether homosexuals should be put in jail," he said. "There is a big difference here. Of course, the majority of the population is conservative and will reply accordingly, but that doesn't mean they want to see gay people in jails."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/02/world/asia/02iht-singapore.1.6955415.html

Sharon

10s13

10A01, Raymond Ler, Literature (Women in Literature)

2010-07-12T21:47:00.004+08:00

In A Literature of Their Own, Elaine Showalter shows how women's literature has evolved, starting from the Victorian period to modern writing. She breaks down the movement into three stages — the Feminine, a period beginning with the use of the male pseudonym in the 1840s until 1880 with George Eliot's death; the Feminist, from 1880 till the winning of the vote in 1920; and the Female, from 1920 till the present-day, including a "new stage of self-awareness about 1960."

When discussing the characteristics of each of these phases, she looks at how other literary subcultures ("such as black, Jewish... or even American") to see how they developed. A female solidarity always seemed to exist as a result of "a shared and increasingly secretive and ritualized physical experience... the entire female sexual life cycle." Female writers always wrote with this commonality and feminine awareness in mind. Therefore, women's writing and women's experiences "implied unities of culture."

Showalter finds in each subculture, and thus in women's literature, first a long period of imitation of the dominant structures of tradition and an "internalization of its standards of art an its views on social roles." This Feminine phase includes women writers such as the Brontës, Elizabeth Gaskell, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Harriet Martineau, George Eliot, Florence Nightingale, and the later generation of Charlotte Yonge, Dinah Mulock Craik, Margaret Oliphant, and Elizabeth Lynn Linton. These women attempted to integrate themselves into a public sphere, a male tradition, and many of them felt a conflict of "obedience and resistance" which appears in many of their novels. Oddly enough, during the Victorian period, women flooded the novel market and comprised a healthy segment of the reading public — still, women writers were left "metaphorically paralyzed." The language with which they could fully express their experience as women and their sufferings as they still identified themselves within the confines of Victorian bourgeois propriety.

In the second stage, the minority — or rather, the subordinate — lashes out against the traditional standards and values, demanding their rights and sovereignty be recognized. In this Feminist phase, women's literature had varying angles of attack. Some women wrote social commentaries, translating their own sufferings to those of the poor, the laboring class, slaves, and prostitutes, thereby venting their sense of injustice in an acceptable manner. They expanded their sphere of influence by making inroads into social work. In a completely different direction, the 1870s sensation novels of Mary Braddon, Rhoda Broughton, and Florence Marryat, "explored genuinely radical female protest against marriage and women's economic oppression, although still in the framework of feminine conventions that demanded the erring heroine's destruction." Their golden-haired doll-like paradigms of womanhood mock contemporary expectations of Angels in the House by turning out to be mad bigamists and would-be murderesses.

Militant suffragists also wrote prolifically during this protest phase of literature. Women such as Sarah Grand, George Egerton, Mona Caird, Elizabeth Robins, and Olive Schreiner made "fiction the vehicle for a dramatization of wronged womanhood... demand[ing] changes in the social and political systems that would grant women male privileges and require chastity and fidelity from men." On the whole, Showalter finds these women's writings not examples of fine literature. Their projects concerned themselves more with a message than the creation of art, though their rejection of male-imposed definitions and self-imposed oppression opened the doors for the exploration of female identity, feminist theory, and the female aesthetic.

The third period, then, is characterized by a self-discovery and some freedom "from some of the dependency of opposition" as a means for self-definition. Some writers end up turning inward during the subsequent search for identity. In the early half of Female phase of writing, it "carried... the double legacy of feminine self-hatred and feminist withdrawal... [turning] more and more toward a separatist literature of inner space." Dorothy Richardson, Katherine Mansfield, and Virginia Woolf worked towards a female aesthetic, elevating sexuality to a world-polarizing determination. Moreover, the female experience and its creative processes held mystic implications — both transcendental and self-destructive vulnerability. These women "applied the cultural analysis of the feminists [before them] to words, sentences, and structures of language in the novel." However, Showalter criticizes their works for their androgynistic natures. For all its concern with sexual connotations and sexuality, the writing avoids actual contact with the body, disengaging from people into "a room of one's own."

This changed when the female novel entered a new stage in the 1960s. With twentieth-century Freudian and Marxist analysis and two centuries of female tradition, writers such as Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, Doris Lessing, Margaret Drabble, A.S. Byatt, and Beryl Bainbridge access women's experiences. Using previously taboo language and situations, "anger and sexuality are accepted... as sources of female creative power." Showalter's analysis shows how the progress of women's writing reached this phase and expresses all the conflicts and struggles still influencing the current of women's literature.

List of women authors:

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Willa Cather

Emily Dickinson

Edna St.Vincent Millay

Karoline von Günderrode

Carson McCullers

Marge Piercy

Sylvia Plath

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Virginia Woolf

(10A01, Poh Jee Seng, Visual Arts)

2010-07-12T21:45:00.004+08:00

The Leuven Town Hall is located in Leuven,Belgium, and is a landmark building building on that city's Grote Markt (Main Market) square, across from the monumental St.Peter's Church. Built in a Brabantine Gothic style between 1448 and 1469, it is famous for its ornate architecture, crafted in lace-like detail. It has three main stories, lined with pointed Gothic windows on the three sides visible from the Markt. Above is a gallery parapet, behind which rises a steep roof studded with four tiers of dormers. At the angles of the roof are octagonal turrets pierced with slits allowing for the passage of light.
Statues in canopied niches are distributed all over the building. The corbels supporting the statues are carved with Bibilical scenes in high relief. While the niches and corbels are original with the building, the 236 statues themselves are relatively recent, dating from after 1850. Those of the first floor represent personages of importance in the local history of the city; those of the second, patron saints and symbolic figures; those of the third, the Counts of Leuven and Dukes of Brabant from various ages.
The main façade has an entrance staircase, and two portals in the center, above which are figures of Saint Peter and Madonna and Child, the former in compliment to the patron of the church opposite.
The interior accommodates an interesting collection of artwork, including sculptures by Constatin and Jef Lambeaux. Inside can also be seen the portraits of the Leuven mayors since 1794.
Construction of the Town hall started in 1439 at the site of an existing Town hall. The first architect was Sulpitius Van Vorst, who died before the project was completed. He got succeeded by Jans Keldermann II, whose death in 1445 ended the first construction campaign. The project was resumed again in 1448 under Matheus de Layens and in 1469, the building was complete.

10A01, Wong Siew Jean, Literature

2010-07-12T20:57:00.006+08:00

Validity of Fairytales in society today.

Fairy tales typically feature folkloric characters as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. Often the story will involve a far-fetched sequence of events.

In less technical contexts, the term is also used to describe something blessed with unusual happiness, as in "fairy tale ending" (a happy ending) or "fairy tale romance" (though not all fairy tales end happily). Colloquially, a "fairy tale" or "fairy story" can also mean any far-fetched story or tall tale.
- From Wikipedia.

Almost every child grows up knowing at least one fairy tale, be it perhaps the happy ending of Cinderella, where the fairy godmother shows up, and helps Cinderella to the ball where she meets her Prince Charming, or the one where Snow White ends up kissed and saved by yet another Prince on a white horse to the rescue. However, how much of these fairytales are actually applicable in society today?

Fairytales are told to little girls, and maybe even little boys, and they grow up thinking all these are true, wishing for their prince charming to one day arrive and sweep them off their feet, carry them off into the sunset and live happily ever after. For a lucky few, this is true. They meet prince charming, who is rich and handsome and they live happily ever after.

In real life though, these cases are few and far between. Life, harsh reality often interferes with these. Couples end up quarreling, stock markets crash, people go bankrupt, affairs and infidelities happen, divorce rates increase rapidly. Happily ever after seems like a far hope to have, impossible.

In the face of all these, can it really be said that fairytales are still valid and relevant to society today? After all, all it gives are false hopes and dreams to little children, before they grow up and become cynical and jaded, after they lose the innocence of childhood.

And yet, some of the lessons and morals taught in fairytales are still applicable. As in Hansel & Gretel, we learn not to talk to or take sweets from strangers. In Snow White, this lesson is also apparent. And in the darker versions of these fairytales, the versions that had not been modified by protective parents for the sensitive ears of their children, even more lessons are apparent, albeit slightly gorier lessons. These stories told to entertain children, to put them to sleep, they all hold a lesson. And more often than not, in these fairytales, good usually triumphs over evil, despite the magical powers evil usually has, Good usually prevails.

So despite everything, and despite the increasingly cynical attitude that adults hold towards fairytales, I still believe that fairy tales are valid in society today, as lessons learnt from them are still valid and true, especially in today's more and more dangerous world. Moreover, in this bleak world, do we all not need a little happiness and hope that these tales can bring us?

Everest, 10A01, Literature (Women in Lit)

2010-07-12T20:45:00.004+08:00

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction has earned her place as one of the most widely read and most beloved writers in English Literature.

From 1811- 1816, she has experimented with various literary forms, and released several novels namely, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion and Sanditon which she died before completing it.

Jane Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the eighteen century and are part of the transition to nineteenth-century realism. Her plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependance of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.

In her lifetime, her works brought little personal fame and only a few positive reviews. However, through the mid nineteenth century her novels were admired by mainly members of the literary elite. Through the publication of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen on 1869 introduced her to a far wider public as an appealing personality and kindled popular interest in her works. Over the recent years, Austen's works has developed a culture among the people and also saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship which explored many aspects of her novels; artistic, ideological and historical.

The USA and Human Rights

2010-07-12T18:48:00.003+08:00

by Anup Shah
This Page Last Updated Wednesday, August 21, 2002

The leaders of the United States of America are proud to present the picture of being the foremost bearers of human rights.
- Yet, they have often been heavily criticized for advancing their own interests and of double standards.
- They often have not ratified various international human rights related treaties (and where it has, there have been many, many reservations).
- US diplomats were influential in drawing up the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, yet the USA has not always put (some of their own) words into action.
Amnesty International has long called for the USA to have a greater respect for human rights.
One of the things that they campaign on constantly is the death penalty and the innocentwho are sometimes killed as a result. In fact, Amnesty International (where the two previous links are from) has been quite vocal about the death penalty frequently:
The USA is engaged in a cruel, brutalizing, unreliable, unnecessary and hugely expensive activity for no measurable gain.
... There is no evidence that the US authorities have prevented a single crime with this policy ... They have diverted countless millions of dollars away from more constructive efforts to fight crime. And the macabre absurdity is that it creates more victims - the family members of the condemned - often in the name of victims' rights.
The death penalty is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it. The sooner US politicians begin to find the political courage to educate public opinion rather than hide behind it, the better.
— USA: Flouting world trends, violating international standards, Amnesty International, March 1, 2001
There have been about half a million murders in the USA since 1977. In the same period, 716 men and women have been executed. This is a punishment, these bare statistics suggest, reserved for the “worst of the worst” of murderers in the USA. But how can that be true if, for example, learning disabled prisoners are among the condemned? ... It is time they [U.S. leaders] took it upon themselves to measure US standards of decency against the aspirations of the international community on the death penalty.
— USA: Time to recognize international “standards of decency”, Amnesty International, 5th June, 2001.
(You can see Amnesty International's USA campaign on-line for additional information.)
Police brutality in the US has been a known problem. (The previous link is from an article about a 450-page report released by Human Rights Watch that accuses local governments and federal officials of failing to address this issue.) Probably the most well known recent case was the 1991 Rodney King incident in Los Angeles that led to riots in that city.
The Republican Convention and Democratic Convention for the 2000 elections had been accompanied by large public protests. However, the mainstream media did not report much on the police brutality involved to silence the dissenters. There were many, many mainstream and alternative sites around the world following the 2000 election race (as it was a global issue -- one Ugandan citizen lamented at how he didn't have a right to vote in the U.S. elections, and yet the U.S. influences his country more than his own government!). However, to look at the issues not covered by the mainstream (and an analysis of the issue that are covered!), you can start at the ZNet Convention Convergencesection.
Health and other social rights were also becoming important issues while the economy was booming in the late 1990s and early 2000s (for some) yet leaving more and more people out. Some 44 million people in the U.S. do not have health insurance, for example. As another example, an Inter Press Service summary of a report titled Economic Apartheid in America points out that “the United States is the only industrialised nation that ‘views health care as a privilege, not a basic human right.’” (Unfortunately the report itself not available on the Internet, but is produced by United for a Fair Economy where you can see many extracts and similar reports.)
In what is the second most hazardous industry to work in, after mining, agriculture is also the most hazardous for children, in the United States. Human Rights Watch reports how the US fails to protect child workers.
In Amnesty International's 2001 report, they pointed out that there were many cases oftorture and ill-treatment in prisons and jails, where “[a]buses included beatings and excessive force; sexual misconduct; the misuse of electro-shock weapons and chemical sprays; and the cruel use of mechanical restraints, including holding prisoners for prolonged periods in four-point restraint as punishment. Many reported abuses took place in isolation units or during forced removal of prisoners from cells (‘cell extractions’).” The USA incidentally also has the world's largest prison population of roughly 2 million people, which accounts for approximately a quarter of the world's prison population.
For 2000, for example, Human Rights Watch also reported that the United States “made little progress in embracing international human rights standards at home.”
http://www.globalissues.org/article/139/the-usa-and-human-rights
JUNE's GROUP

10A01, Lei yu jia Joanna, Literature

2010-07-12T16:32:00.005+08:00

Characterisitic of Fairy Tales

Fairy tales are stories either created or strongly influenced by oral traditions. Their plots feature stark conflicts between good and evil, with magic and luck determining the usually happy endings. While each culture and geographic region of the world has its own body of folk tales and fairy tales that it considers "its own," certain themes and motifs tend to be repeated across many cultures and time periods. Universal human emotions such as love, hate, courage, kindness, and cruelty appear in bold, broad strokes on the canvas of fairy tales.

The following are basic characteristics of fairy tales which have similarities with most cultures:

1. Undefined time and place

"Once upon a time, long ago in a far away place" gives a vague definition of the time and place. We know that it took place no where near us and not in the present, and that eaves the door wide open for anything to happen.

2. No develpment in characters

Cinderella has one good night, but you never find out how it ends, except that they live "Happily ever after." She never does learn to stand up to her evil stepsisters; she simply marries a prince and moves away. So does Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and the chick in the tower with the long hair.

3. Transformation & Magic

Transformation and Magic are commony seen in fairy tales. For examples, Cinderella is transformed into a princess; the frog is transformed into a prince, the beast is transformed into a man. They can be under a spell which was cast by a villain, or brought on by their own selfish behavior (as in Beauty and the Beast, wherein the lord of the house was unkind to an old woman who asked for his help.)
And of course, some kind of magic has to take place. A magic coach, broomstick, a wish made possible by a fairy, the kiss of a handsome prince.

4. Happy Ending

Fairy tales have happy endings where the good is rewarded and the evil is punished. Often, something will also be blessed with unusual happiness.

Role of Family

2010-07-05T22:41:00.000+08:00

HAT YOUR CHILDREN ARE REALLY LEARNING

What are children learning? I can assure you, after administering and evaluating thousands of tests, too little in the way of actual facts, figures and skills -- even after hours of instruction.

What they are learning is often more profound:

GOOD MESSAGE

BAD MESSAGE
"I am smart. My teacher likes me."
"I can read well. I understand."
"I'm a fast learner. I'm smart."
"I'm of great worth."
"I have a good memory."
"I can do it." "I am sexy. I can manipulate with hormones."
"I can't read well. I might as well act the fool."
"I'm a slow learner. I'm stupid."
"I'm worthless."
"I have a learning disorder."
"No, I can't."

What is being taught is not necessarily what is being learned. After 120 hours (the approximate length of a one-year course), MOST students (at all grade levels including post-graduate university) demonstrate only an incremental increase in their knowledge of the subject. And this on tests that are, for the most part, rudimentary.

While all of this school instruction is not without value (it does slowly accumulate and may provide contexts for future learning and skill development) the question must be asked, "What is the role of the parent in optimizing their children's learning?" How much must be done outside the school?

THE 40/90 RULE

Forty percent of the students use 90% of the teacher's time:

* The top 20% seem to succeed no matter what. They get plenty of teacher attention because they are rewarding to work with. They are the ones who raise their hands and tend to dominate discussions. The teacher can count on them.
* Another 20% are off task no matter what. These students get their teacher attention by consistently taking others of task. They are the ones who wait patiently until the teacher's back is turned. These students become known as the class clowns.

Unless your child is a member of this 40%, he or she is not likely to get much personal attention or time throughout the school day.

The additional 60% of the class gets 10% of the teachers time:

* The 60% in the middle are rather quiet and make few demands.

The most important job a parent can undertake is to create a safe environment at home where their children are insured the time to develop the academic self-confidence required to continue their educations. Providing your children with time translates directly to, "I must be important. Mom/Dad is willing to spend time with me."

After being buffeted by the million vagaries that stalk the schoolyard, children need to be able to walk in their front doors without fear of further recrimination, criticism, admonitions for better living, anger, sarcasm or self-righteousness. Children need the security of knowing that at least for one hour a day, their needs are paramount, that they can succeed academically, that they can earn for demonstrating the three primary behaviors of academic achievement: starting on time, staying on task, completing assignments (see "Contracts" that put your child in charge of winning, www.brainsarefun.com).

COMMITMENT

To accomplish this goal parents need to commit themselves:

A) Negotiate sound contracts;
B) Remind the child it's time to begin, "It's almost time. Don't forget to earn your points;"
C) Delay negative responses;
D) Stop threatening with "take-aways;"
E) Record points earned on a daily report card;
F) Catch the child doing something right, reward immediately;
G) Allow plenty of opportunities for self-correction;
H) Control behavior with listening and taking notes;
I) Make sure answers are provided before questions are asked;
J) Ask only winning questions. Stop asking, "Why?"
K) Stop making excuses;
L) Eliminate all competing reward systems;
M) Provide clear instructions;
N) Break down complex instructions into achievable parts;
O) Pay off immediately;
P) And above all: Hugs, Kisses, and plenty of Love.

How can parents demonstrate to their children the value of learning, reading, communication, character?

"Please" and "Thank you" are a good place to start.

"Ask" your children rather than "Tell" your children. Nobody likes to be told what to do.

Offer your children choices, both of which are acceptable, "You can earn your points by starting with your math or your history. Which would you prefer?"

When there is no assigned homework, children may still earn their points by "Copying."

Post Contracts and Daily Report Cards on the refrigerator door.

Take notes during important conversations and keep them in a parent's portfolio.

Attend meetings on time.

Read out-loud to your children, 15 minutes, four or five evenings a week.

Stop asking questions that force the child to guess. Provide answers first.

Stop catching your children failing.

Reward immediately and consistently. The best rewards look like eye contact, thumbs up, a touch on the shoulder, a hug, a smile (don't get rewards confused with candy).

Exhibit self-control by refusing to engage every argument. Turn your back, lower your eyes and ignore hostile eye contact. Walk out of the room. Go to your bedroom and shut the door. Tell the child, "I need a time out."

Delay all responses that aren't positive. All the negatives have been expressed and heard a thousand times. If they worked I'd suggest using them again. The problem is, they rarely work.

PARENTS

During the Homework Hour the role of the parent should be: listener, note-taker, evaluator, tracker of points, planner.

Insure there is always plenty of notebook paper and sharp pencils at hand. Don't allow children to go off task for lack of paper and pencils. You provide the pencil sharpening (take away as many procrastinating excuses as possible).

Can you imagine homework where every child knows exactly, "Here's what I'm going to earn." "Here's the behavior I need to exhibit to earn it." "When I succeed, I am rewarded."

How much would this contribute to productivity and satisfaction?

In education we have largely taken the emphasis off of the behavior we want and tend to emphasize the behavior we don't want.

It is more helpful to the child to say, for instance, "Bill, please shut the door quietly," than to scream, "How many times have I told you not to slam that door?" Yet, as a parent and teacher, I can testify to which approach is more common.

During homework, the emphasis is usually on the content of the assignment, not on the objective behaviors directly related to academic success: beginning on time, staying on task, completing the assignment. These behaviors can be measured and tracked and rewarded. It's very difficult to judge how much history is being learned.

Continually emphasizes the responsibility of the child to make choices, this is not a simple swim or sink approach to the child's success. This is why there are ongoing family meetings and opportunities for contract renegotiation.

Sometimes I am asked what I mean by the phrase "staying on task." I explain without saying a word. I pick up a pen, open a book and start copying. "This is what staying on task looks like." It's the opposite of taking a snack break, going to the bathroom, arguing with a brother or sister, whining and making excuses.

Children very regularly need to be shown what good behavior looks like and how to do their assignments and projects. If they don't know how to bake a cake, they learn by baking a cake with Dad. If they don't know how to hammer a nail they learn by hammering a nail with Mom. If they don't know how to write a book report or use a word processor, Mom and Dad can help. It is not helpful for a parent to believe, "The teacher made the assignment, it's up to the child to do it."

Children are regularly assigned projects and homework at school that have never received any clear instruction. In order for their children to look as though they are succeeding, some parents cross every "t" and dot every "i." Other parents refuse to lift a finger, believing it's the child's project. As with all truths, between these two extremes is wisdom. Wisdom is discovered through ongoing practice and involvement with the child. When in doubt about how much help is appropriate, ask the child.

Projects, special reports and long-term assignments offer a perfect opportunity for negotiating Five-Minute Contracts.

The goal is not to create "bubble" environments in which the student may achieve. The goal is to develop behaviors and skills that allow children to successfully continue their educations. With these skills and behaviors, opportunities expand. Without them, opportunities shrink to virtually zero.

HEROES

A critical role for parents is to publicize heroes. Our lexicon is sadly bereft of heroes. Make up a list. Stick it on the refrigerator door along with your other papers and decorations. Let your child know you have some heroes. Check out some biographies and books on tape about these men and women. Leave them lying around the house. Use your reading out-loud time to read about men and women who achieved.

It's essential for children to know that there are real heroes in the world. Some are very famous people, others are your neighbors.

By filbert Tan 10s16

2010-07-05T20:49:00.000+08:00

Case study: India

a) Changing role of men/women in other areas.

Changing role of men in society:

Past situation:
In India, dharma or the moral order the cosmos influences the roles of men and women. For example, dharma has many meanings. Dharma signifies truth. It has come to be understood as “that which is established, customary, or proper”. In addition, dharma signifies one’s duty, responsibility, or moral responsibility. For example, svadharma is understood as one’s moral obligation given one’s position in India’s social order. Rajadharma is the dharma of kings. Varnadharma is the dharma of one’s caste and stridharma is the dharma of women.

Current situation:
Men are being held under such heightened scrutiny is a sign of changing social rules between men and women as the country modernizes, a process fuelled by its economic boom. While more and more Indian women move into the hi-tech workforce or rise to key government posts in the new India, some analysts say many women appear to be losing the battle to overcome centuries-old cultural attitudes that tend to devalue the role of women and keep them dependent on men.

Changing role of women in society:
The status of women in India has been subject to many great changes over the past few millennia. From equal status with men in ancient times through the low points of the medieval period, to the promotion of equal rights by many reformers, the history of women in India has been eventful.

Original status:
Women’s status in India was low and devalued up till the 20th century. The inhumane caste system in place in India, which is supposedly based on religious faith, brought about masculine domination acts against the religious base of men and women living as equals. As a result, women were viewed as though they were of a lower status than men.

Traditional moral order:
Under stridharma, the dharma of women entails devotion to one’s husband. A woman’s career is her husband. This means a woman’s obligation in life is to serve her husband and provide him with children, especially sons (Heinz 1999: 161). He is essentially her “lord” for the very meaning of the word husband (Pati) means both husband and lord. In addition, she worships him by eating his leftovers. This may also be a sign of respect.

Obedience to and dependence upon men characterizes women’s traditional roles in the family. Patrivrata, or total devotion to the husband, set out by Hindu scriptures is the wifely ideal (Lebra,et al. 1984: 26-27). The ideal wife is one whose sole joy in life is to satisfy her husband. Her only concern is to perform properly any of the services demanded by her husband. Such a woman is attached to her husband even after he has died. In fact, in a conversation between mythological characters Sandili and Sumana, when asked by Sumana how she had attained divinity and was residing in heaven, Sandili replied that it was not through performance of any religious rite or penance but through fidelity and loyalty to her husband that she became a goddess (Mukherjee 1978: 15). Stories like this are not uncommon in Hindu mythology which serves to strengthen the ideals of stridharma. In addition, under Hindu customary law, marriage is seen as a sacrament with stricter obligations for women than men (13-17). For example, neither divorce nor widow remarriage was allowed in the past. Also, whereas widowers could remarry, widows were considered ritually polluting and lead restricted lives.

Present status:
Women in India are beginning to follow the direction that the women of the Western world took more than eighty years ago; demanding treatment as human equals. The main goals in achieving equality are, improvement of health care, education and job opportunities in order to gain equality between men and women in the various settings of public society, the workplace, the school yard and – possibly the most fundamental setting of all – the home.

They are also striving to be independent on the equal level of men. However, these women are faced with tough opposition and restrictions by the caste system, heavy religious customs, older and more traditional roles of the sexes, as well as the even stronger power that men hold in India. The status was at one time accepted, but with the Western women’s revolution and perception, the role is slowly succeeding in its development through both independent groups of women and national and worldwide organizations based on the goal of gaining equality. They have all accomplished much, but have yet to overthrow the male dominated society.

In modern India, women have adorned high offices in India including that of the President, Prime minister, Speaker of the Lok Sabha etc.
Women in India now participate in all activities such as education, politics, media, art and culture, service sectors, science and technology, etc.
The Constitution of India guarantees to all Indian women equality, no discrimination by the State, equality of opportunity, equal pay for equal work. In addition, it allows special provisions to be made by the State in favour of women and children, renounces practices derogatory to the dignity of women, and also allows for provisions to be made by the State for securing just and humane conditions of work and for maternity relief.
The feminist activism in India picked up momentum during later 1970s. One of the first national level issues that brought the women's groups together was the Mathura rape case. The acquittal of policemen accused of raping a young girl Mathura in a police station, led to a wide-scale protests in 1979–1980. The protests were widely covered in the national media, and forced the Government to amend the Evidence Act, the Criminal Procedure Code and the Indian Penal Code and introduce the category of custodial rape. Female activists united over issues such as female infanticide, gender bias, women health, and female literacy.
Since alcoholism is often associated with violence against women in India,many women groups launched anti-liquor campaigns in Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and other states. Many Indian Muslim women have questioned the fundamental leaders' interpretation of women's rights under the Shariat law and have criticized the triple talaq system.
In 1990s, grants from foreign donor agencies enabled the formation of new women-oriented NGOs. Self-help groups and NGOs such as Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) have played a major role in women's rights in India. Many women have emerged as leaders of local movements. For example, Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
The Government of India declared 2001 as the Year of Women's Empowerment (Swashakti). The National Policy For The Empowerment Of Women came was passed in 2001.

Sports and Violence (USA)

2010-06-19T22:29:00.003+08:00

It had been reported by Time magazine that between 43 000 and 67 000 high-school football players suffer concussions each year and that may just be a mere understatement. Sports injuries cases are increasing and becoming more and more significant. The greatly mushrooming number of cases of sports injuries makes us question, is violence in sports inevitable?

Violence is a physical force which can inflict pain or harm when exerted to the involved parties. It seems that this act of aggression is becoming more and more prevalent in sports especially contact sports such as football, hockey and rugby etc. We shall categorise violence into different types: one which happens while the game is going on and the post-game violence.

The violence in the field shows great emphasis on the players’ desire to win or in another case, the playing teams’ way to gain fans. Many a time, the number of fans supporting a certain team is a representation of a team’s recognition and popularity among others. This indirectly means that the more fans the team has, the ‘better’ it is. Countless players tend to stray away from the true values and the meaning of the sport, and violence in this case shows the loss of sportsmanship. For example, when the first UFC began in 1993, it was meant to be a showcase for Brazilian-style jujitsu (a fighting style), but it quickly devolved into a circus. Wild audiences screamed for more violent drama. It seems the sport was more treasured for its dramatic actions instead of the actual sport value and these sportsmen may give the audience what they want to see just for the sake of gaining more fans.

Richard Lustberg, a journalist, teacher and creator of psychologyofsports.com, says post-game violence is an outlet to unleash the rage. An incident during the game which may has displeased either of the parties can catalyze the rage. Violence may be a channel for players to display their resentment to another player of the opponent- intentionally or unintentionally. However, most violence occurred during the game are being fairly dealt with.
For example, in a baseball brawl, St. Louis Cardinal’s slugger, Tino Martinez was hit by a pitch from Arizona pitcher, Miguel Batista. After the play, Batista glared at Martinez as if to say, “I meant to do it.” A play later, as Martinez trotted off the field, he went after Batista and a brief bench-clearing brawl ensued.

At the same time, violence in sports does not just happen in America. Who can forget the infamous rugby match between St’ Andrew’s Secondary School and Anglo Chinese School (Independent), where a fight broke out right after a match? This happened here, in Singapore, or the ‘Zidane Headbutt’ incident during the 2006 World Cup Finals in Berlin. Apart from these two incidents, many other examples exist around the world and throughout history. Sport is something which can be found everywhere, it is like the sky, the land, the seas, and one cannot escape it. Neither can one escape the violence which is related to any sport. Violence in sport is therefore in evitable. It is correlated and can never be separated. To have a sport without violence means to have players who will never feel frustrated in a match, to be able to tolerate any insult and have enough self control to control their emotions. In other words, the player haws to be either a saint or a robot without a heart. Even then, one cannot say with hundred percent certainties that no violence will take place during a match.

Violence in sports is not new to us and is likely to continue on, however, the question is, whether we play sports for enjoyment and leisure; or for the glory of winning, will we do anything to succeed and emerge victorious, including resorting to violence?

Credits: 1.2.3.

By: Pang Yun Jing, Kyla Wong, Isaac Chong, Dorothea Leong and Phyllis Zhuang 10A06

How Religion has contributed to world peace keeping.

2010-06-18T23:53:00.005+08:00

How major religions of the world have contributed to world peace-keeping

The five major religions in the world are namely, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. Religions do play a part in world peace-keeping, as religion is part of almost everyone’s culture. As such, similarities in these religions can assist them to come together and promote world peace.

Christianity has contributed to international peace keeping by its values. Churches regularly provide free counseling, not only to their members, but often to virtually anyone who desires it. Many churches have pastors or staff members who are trained in the art of listening to people, helping them understand their problems and offering advice. Obviously the more people who receive this care, the healthier a community becomes as they can resolve their problems. This will make everyone feel that they are valuable to one another.
Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) offers an organized, non-violent alternative to war and other forms of lethal inter-group conflict. CPT provides organizational support to persons committed to faith-based nonviolent alternatives in situations where lethal conflict is an immediate reality or is supported by public policy. CPT seeks to enlist the response of the whole church in conscientious objection to war, and in the development of nonviolent institutions, skills and training for intervention in conflict situations. As such, world peace can be established.

The organization of International conference is one of the major Islamic organizations in the world which mainly focuses on combating terrorism. The combative measures taken are to ensure effective protection of people working in the field of criminal justice as well as investigators, also ensuring effective protection of information sources and witnesses on terrorist crimes. Extending necessary assistance to victims of terrorism, arresting perpetrators of terrorist's crimes and prosecuting them according to the national law or extraditing them in accordance with the provisions of this Convention or existing Conventions between the requesting and requested States and Establishing effective cooperation between the concerned organs in the contracting States and the citizens for combating terrorism including extending appropriate guarantees and appropriate incentives to encourage informing on terrorist acts and submitting information to help uncover them and cooperating in arresting the perpetrators. Moreover the main preventive measure taken to combat terrorism is developing and strengthening systems relating to detecting transportation, importing, exporting stockpiling, and using of weapons, ammunition and explosives as well as other means of aggression, killing and destruction in addition to strengthening trans-border and custom controls in order to intercept their transfer from one Contracting State to another or to other States unless they are intended for specific legitimate purposes. Thus Islamic organizations are effective in international peacekeeping.

The culture of the Jewish is known as Judaism. It is one of the oldest monotheistic religions and was founded by Moses over 3500 years ago in the Middle East. Judaism also includes Christianity and Islam. Jews believe in one god and they also believe in following the lord’s commandments and laws. The Sabbath (a Jewish holy day) is observed by the Jewish people every week. It is said to be god’s gift for his people to make them feel special. On that day, people do things to keep their minds away from their stressful lives. For example, families gather together in a house in the presence of the lord and perform rituals. By doing so, families have an opportunity spending time together with a common focus. Hence, this helps to build understanding among the Jewish people and therefore creating peace and harmony in the society. Moreover, they have also participated in international peacekeeping by indicating their willingness to participate in the U.S. implementation of the ‘International Rights and Redress Campaign’. Thus they play their part to maintain world peace.

Hinduism, which is one of the oldest religions of the world, has a lot of similarities with the major religions of the world. Although there may be many deities worshipped by Hindus, the Hindu scriptures hold the fact that there is only one formless god, the Brahman. This similar believe itself can promote world peace. There are also various quotes in the Hindu scriptures promoting peace, empathy, compassion and mercy. Also every single living being is acknowledged to be the creation of god. Thus, this can bring about a sense of common identity as humans, where everyone is accepted regardless of their race or religion. These values can also be found in other religions too. Such similarities between religions bring about harmony, thus keeping world peace. Hinduism emphasizes on charity to a large extent. In fact, most Hindu scriptures hold that sins can be rectified if one is charitable and he must donate to the needy without considering caste or creed. Therefore, such qualities can bring about world peace as charity programmes for example, can conducted by various religions together.

Many Buddhist believe that to maintain World Peace, we have to start with establishing peace in our minds first. Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, said that “Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.” It literally means that anger and any other negative states of mind are the cause of wars and conflict and people might even lose wisdom in the process. Therefore, Buddhists believe that only by abandoning our negative emotions such as anger in our minds, we can cultivate positive emotions such as love and compassion. People will then be able to live in peace and harmony. An ideal compassion is a humane response to suffering as long as beings continue to suffer. They emphasized on the training of their minds to face facts, endure suffering and attain a more lasting state of happiness. Be objective and humble; realize that no party is always wrong. There can never be absolute equality but surely there can be a greater degree of equity. For the last 2,500 years, there has never been any serious discord or conflict created by Buddhists that led to war in the name of this religion. This is probably a result of the dynamic character of the concept of tolerance contained in the Buddha's teaching.

All the major religions of the world will be able to contribute to world peace and work together for the benefit of humanity if we put aside subtle metaphysical differences, which are really the internal business of each religion. Thus, world peace-keeping can be maintained if these major religions play their part with their similar values incorporated as one value.

A Project of 10S12

The Role of Parents in Children's Psychological Development

2010-06-18T10:45:00.002+08:00

ABSTRACT

This article reviews the three major ways parents influence children: direct interaction, identification, and transmission of family stories. This essay summarizes some of the relevant empiric data in support of this claim and describes the operation of other mechanisms that also contribute to the child's development.

Key words: parental influence, children.

The profile of cognitive abilities, beliefs, ethical values, coping defenses, and salient emotional moods that characterizes each child at each developmental stage is the result of diverse influences operating in complex ways. Most students of human development agree that the most important determinants of the different profiles include 1) the inherited physiologic patterns that are called temperamental qualities, 2) parental practices and personality, 3) quality of schools attended, 4) relationships with peers, 5) ordinal position in the family, and, finally, 6) the historical era in which late childhood and early adolescence are spent.1 Each of these factors exerts its major influence on only some components of the psychological profile and is usually most effective during particular age periods. For example, the quality of social relations with peers affects primarily the child's beliefs about his/her acceptability to others and has its major effect after school entrance.2 By contrast, parental conversations with the child, and especially naming unfamiliar objects, affect the child's future verbal talents and have maximal effect during the first 6 years of life.3

Current discussions of the consequences of parental practices, whether in the media or in professional journals, favor one of two positions. One awards seminal power to parental factors; the other minimizes the family. The advocates of attachment theory, for example, propose that the relationships established between an infant and its caretakers during the first 2 years of life have a permanent effect on the child's future.4 But Harris's recent book, The Nurture Assumption, makes the opposite claim by arguing that parents have little or no permanent influence on their child's future personality.5 Although the attachment theorists take too strong a position, I side with a majority of developmental scholars who, in disagreement with Harris, believe that parents do affect their child's psychological growth. This article summarizes what most developmental scientists believe to be the major effects of parents on children.

It is important to appreciate, however, that some of these effects are difficult to quantify and, as a result, scholars working in this domain are caught between two opposing imperatives. On the one hand, they recognize that conclusions must be based on empiric evidence; if one does not have valid measurements, one should be cautious. On the other hand, investigators also recognize the error of awarding significance only to statements that rest on objective measurements. Because the current Zeitgeist is more positivistic than it was a half-century earlier, contemporary scientists usually have ignored important causative conditions that are subtle in their expression.

PARENTAL INFLUENCE: DIRECT INTERACTIONS

Parents can affect their children through at least three different mechanisms. The most obvious, and the one easiest both to imagine and to measure, involves the consequences of direct interactions with the child that could be recorded on film. For example, a mother praises a 3-year-old for eating properly, a father threatens the loss of a privilege because a child refuses to go to bed, a parent names an unfamiliar animal in a picture book. These everyday events that involve the rewarding of desirable actions, the punishment of undesired ones, and the transfer of knowledge from parent to child have a cumulative effect. Failure to discipline acts of disobedience and/or aggression is correlated with children's asocial behavior.6 Display of interest in a young child's activities is correlated with greater levels of responsivity in the child.7

However, these first-order effects can have second-order consequences that appear later in life. A 7-year-old with a more extensive vocabulary than her peers, because her parents encouraged language development 5 years earlier, will master the tasks of the elementary grades more easily and, as a result, perceive herself as more competent than her peers. This belief is likely to embolden her to resist domination by others and, perhaps, motivate the initiation of unusually challenging tasks. The 7-year-old who was not chastised for aggressive behavior earlier or who had abusive or overly intrusive parents is likely to be aggressive with peers. As a result, these children provoke peer rejection and eventually come to question their acceptability to others.8-10

EMOTIONAL IDENTIFICATION

An emotional identification with either or both parents represents a second, quite different way in which the family affects children. By age 4 to 5 years, children believe, unconsciously, that some of the attributes of their parents are part of their own repertoire, even although this belief might have no objective basis.11 A girl whose mother is afraid of storms and large animals is tempted to assume that she, too, is afraid of these dangerous events; a girl with a relatively fearless mother will come to the opposite conclusion. In addition, children share vicariously in some of the experiences that occur to the parents with whom they are identified. A boy whose father is popular with friends and relatives, for example, will find it easier to conclude that he, too, has qualities that make him acceptable to others.

The more distinctive the features shared between child and parent, the stronger the identification of the former with the latter. A father who is tall, thin, and has red hair and freckles will, other things equal, engender a stronger identification in a son with these four features than in a son who is short, chubby, brown-haired, and has no freckles.1 That is why many members of minority groups that possess distinctive features have a strong identification; for example, whites in South Africa are more strongly identified with their ethnic group than whites in the United States.

Children also can identify with the class, ethnic, or religious group to which their family belongs and often feel an imperative to honor the identification. To fail to do so is to violate a principle of cognitive consistency between an ethical standard and an action and, as a result, to feel uncertain. Some adolescents for whom the group identification generates anxiety may attempt to minimize bases for the perceived similarity; hence, some Jews change their last name, some Mexicans try to lighten their skin, and some African-Americans straighten their hair.

The importance of identification for personality development means that the parents' personality, talents, and character, as they are perceived by the child, are of significance. When the content of parental rewards and punishments is in accord with the adult's persona as a role model, the content of adult socialization is potentiated. A child praised for her intellectual competence by parents who read books and display a curiosity about the world is more likely to value intellectual pursuits than one whose parents praise academic success but do not display any interest in intellectual competence in their personal lives. Children tend to honor what parents do rather than what they say.

The power of identification can be seen in the robust relation between the educational level of the parents, which is a good index of the social class of the family, and many psychological outcomes, including level of school achievement, frequency of aggressive behavior, and attitude toward authority.12 The psychological differences between young adults born to college graduates, compared with those born to parents who never graduated from high school, cannot be explained completely as a result of direct interactions between parents and children. These psychological products also involve the child's identification with the family's social class. The features that define social class, as distinct from ethnicity, include place of residence, nature of the neighborhood, and material possessions. But because most parents do not remind their children of their social class and signs of family's social class position can be subtle, a child's discovery of the family's class is conceptually more difficult than discovery of his/her gender or ethnicity and usually is not articulated before 7 years of age.

The proportion of economically stressed families in a particular region will affect the strength of a child's identification. An awareness of those who are affluent and those who are not is most distinctive in societies like our own, where there is considerable variation in material wealth. No uniform psychological outcomes flow from absolute poverty, but many predictable outcomes flow from the belief that one's family is either advantaged or disadvantaged relative to others. Because many Americans believe that persistent hard work and intelligence are all that are needed to gain the wealth that has become, in this century, a defining feature of personal worth, class has a greater potential for shame in America than it does in many countries of the world. Ten-year-olds who identify with their relatively poor families are vulnerable to feelings of shame or psychological impotence if they wonder whether their family's status is attributable to the fact that their parents were either lazy or incompetent. The literary critic Frank Kermode, born to poor parents, once admitted to feeling like an outsider, "Looking the part while not being equal to it seems to be something I do rather well."13 Because identification with a poor family can generate anxiety, shame, or anger, it can represent a chronic psychological stress that might contribute to the generally poorer health of the economically disadvantaged.14

It has proven difficult to gather the objective evidence needed to affirm beyond doubt the truth of these statements about identification because of insufficiently sensitive procedures. However, some evidence does support this claim. In one unpublished study from my laboratory, white high school students, all with good grades, who came from either upper-middle or working-class families in the Boston area, came to a laboratory at Harvard University to be interviewed and evaluated for autonomic functioning. The working-class adolescents were more subdued in their interaction with the female examiner. In addition, the working-class youth had greater power in the lower-frequency band of the cardiac spectrum. This second fact implies greater sympathetic tone on the baroreceptor reflex, perhaps attributable to greater apprehension in a context that was symbolic of affluence and privilege.

FAMILY STORIES

A third mechanism of family influence is related to identification, but is more symbolic. Some parents tell their children stories about relatives uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousinswho were, or are, especially accomplished in some domain. Perhaps an uncle made an important discovery, accumulated wealth, performed a courageous act, was a talented athlete or writer, or a respected public official. The child is likely to feel pride on hearing these stories because of the implication that if he or she is biologically related to this important family member, the child, too, must also possess some admirable characteristics. George Homans, an influential Harvard sociologist, noted in a memoir written shortly before his death that he coped with his childhood anxiety over poor school grades and unpopularity with peers by reminding himself that he could trace his pedigree back to John Adams.15 Charles Darwin's description of his father glows with awe for his father's intelligence, sympathy, kindness, and business sense.16 Darwin knew about the inheritance of psychological features through his acquaintance with animal breeders and may have felt that his cognitive talents were inevitable given his family's eminence.

Direct interactions, identification, and knowledge of the accomplishments of family members are three important ways in which families influence children. The first mechanism has its greatest effect on intellectual development and character traits, especially the control of aggression and motivation for achievement. The second and third mechanisms, identification and family myths, have a greater influence on the child's confidence or doubt about his/her talent and, therefore, on the child's expectation of future success or failure.

INDICATORS OF FAMILY RELEVANCE

A persuasive source of support for the significance of family experience is found in follow-up studies of young children who suffered serious privation, usually the result of war, and were later adopted by nurturant families. Many of the orphans produced by World War II and the Korean conflict, who had extremely fragile bonds to any caretaker in their early years, appeared to develop well after adoption by loving foster parents.17,18 More recently, a group of children who had spent the first year in depriving orphanages in Romania were adopted by nurturant British parents. When they arrived in London, they were emaciated and psychologically retarded, as one would expect, given their harsh experience. However, when they were evaluated several years later, after adoption by middle-class parents, a majority, although not all, were similar in their intellectual profile to the average British child (Michael Rutter, personal communication, 1998).

A study of 13 624 families living in 10 different cities provides a particularly persuasive demonstration of the importance of the family. The children, who were observed as infants and again at 3 years of age, had experienced varied forms of early care. Some were in day care centers, some were in family day care, and some were raised only at home. The form of care outside the home had little effect on the prevalence of problems with self-control, compliance, and asocial behavior; variation among the families was a critical determinant of differences in these psychological traits.19

OTHER INFLUENCES ON CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Although empiric data affirm that parental behaviors and personality traits influence the child's talents, motivation, academic performance, and social behavior,20 their influence is part of a larger web of conditions that includes inherited temperamental biases, ordinal position, social class, ethnicity, quality of peer friendships, and the historical era in which adolescence is spent. The importance of temperament is seen in a longitudinal study of a large group of healthy children. Approximately 20% of these healthy infants inherited a temperament that was revealed at 4 months of age in vigorous levels of motor activity and irritability to unfamiliar stimulation.21 Approximately one third of these infants, called high reactive, were shy and fearful to unfamiliar people and settings during the preschool years, and approximately one fourth were likely to develop anxious symptoms when they were 7 years old.22 Although only 20% of the high reactive infants were consistently shy and fearful from 14 months to 8 years of age, it was rare for a high reactive infant to become a consistently bold, extroverted child.

The influence of ordinal position is affirmed by the fact that, controlling for social class, first-born children obtain better grades and are more often high school valedictorians than later born children.23

The influence of historical era is revealed in a study of the cohort of Americans that was between 10 and 20 years of age during the economic Depression in America from 1930 to 1940. A large proportion of these American adolescents, who are now in their 7th decade, saved more money than the generation before or after and conducted their lives with a gnawing concern over financial loss.24

The protest against the Vietnam War at the end of the 1960s also affected large numbers of privileged adolescents who turned against the values of established authority. College students seized administration buildings or shared sexual partners in unheated communal homes. High school youth defiantly left their classrooms to protest the war, and they got away with it. It is heady for a 16-year-old to defy the rules of authority and escape punishment. For many youth, such experiences eroded a tendency to worry about coming to work at 10:00 in the morning instead of 9 and leaving at 4 instead of 5. Many of these middle-class youth thumbed their noses at authority because they happened to be born during a brief period when segments of American society were uncertain as to which actions were legitimate. When history tears a hole in the fabric of consensual assumptions, the mind flies through it into a space free of hoary myth to invent a new conception of self, ethics, and society.

CONCLUSION

The influence of these extrafamilial factors suggests that it is more accurate to state that parental qualities contribute to a child's psychological profile, rather than to conclude that family conditions determine a particular outcome. An infant's secure attachment to a parent does not guarantee a benevolent outcome or protect a child against psychological problems later in life, but the secure attachment probably constrains the likelihood of producing an adult who is homeless. Physicians are familiar with this form of restrained conclusion. Chronic middle ear infection during the first 2 years of life does not always lead to language delay, but it can make a small contribution to that phenomenon.

Eleanor Maccoby, a colleague and a distinguished developmental psychologist, wrote that the contribution of parental practices to children's personality cannot be viewed in isolation. Each parental behavior or parental personality trait is part of a complex system that in some respects is unique to each parent-child relationship.25

This conclusion is not different in substance from most generalizations about complex natural phenomena, including the appearance or extinction of a species or the duration of an infectious epidemic. The proper conceptual posture is restraint on shrill dogma that claims either that the family is without significance or that it represents the only conditions that matter.

Done by: Marcus Chan
10S22

role of parent

2010-06-17T19:37:00.000+08:00

http://ezinearticles.com/?Our-Ever-Changing-Role-As-Parents&id=3541452
lai hoi bing jordan neo
10s16

Role of family

2010-06-15T19:41:00.000+08:00

A recent study in England found that divorce results in a significant economic benefit for men, but penalizes women, reported the Observer newspaper Jan. 25. According to a study carried out by Stephen Jenkins, a director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and chair of the Council of the International Association for Research on Income and Wealth, when a marriage splits up, the father's disposable income increases by around one-third.

By contrast, and regardless of whether or not there are children, the average post-divorce income for women falls by more than a fifth, and is adversely affected for a number of years.

According to the report by the Observer the survey carried out by Jenkins is the first long-term study of income and marriage breakdowns.

Jenkins found that the poverty rate among divorced women is 27%, almost three times higher compared to their former spouses.

Economic penalties are not the only disadvantages associated with divorce. An Australian study published last year found that the emotional and social impact of divorce makes itself felt for decades afterwards, reported the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper July 10.

A research team headed by David de Vaus, of La Trobe University in Melbourne, presented the conclusions of a study at a conference of the Australian Institute of Family Studies. They compared the well-being of about 2,200 Australians aged 55 to 74.

Those divorced not only suffered trauma in the initial years following the end of their marriage, but they were also more likely to feel they lacked someone to confide in, and they were less satisfied with their home and health.

Vital

Benedict XVI recently affirmed the importance of the family for society in his message sent to the participants in the recitation of the rosary during the 6th World Day of Families meeting held in Mexico City.

During his video message on Jan. 17 the Pontiff said the family is a "vital cell of society."

"Because of its essential role in society, the family has a right to have its proper identity recognized that is not to be confused with other forms of coexistence," the Pope explained.

As a result Benedict XVI asked that the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman receive a sufficient level of legal, financial and social support.

The social importance of family life is not just something affirmed by the Church. Jennifer Roback Morse, a former research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and currently a research fellow at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, recently published a second edition of her book "Love and Economics" (Ruth Institute Books).

One of the books sections is entitled, "Why There is No Substitute for the Family." The family is irreplaceable not only in the sense that the two parents of a child play a unique role in its life, but also because the very institution of the family has no effective substitute.

Morse affirmed that the primary role of the family is relational. Clearly, some families carry out this task better than others, but no other institution does this better than the family, she argued.

Not optional

The fact that some families fail should not lead us to the conclusion that the family as an institution is merely optional, according to Morse.

"If we can hold the family together at the individual and personal level, we would have less need for grand schemes to replace the family at a societal level," Morse affirmed.

Morse summarized the findings of a number of studies that document the adverse results of children brought up in single-parent families: poverty; lower educational results; and behavioral problems.

The task of raising children is simply too much for a single parent, said Morse. Moreover, other possible variations, such as cohabitation and stepfathers do not provide the same advantages as a family based on the two biological parents of the children.

The role of a father is more than just economic, Morse continued. His contribution to the moral development of children is something that society is guilty of largely ignoring, she accused.

"The real question is not whether men and women are different but how the difference allows each to contribute something unique to the moral development of children," said Morse.

Commenting on the sweeping changes in moral norms and sexual habits in the last few decades, Morse noted that the changes unleashed in the 60s and 70s promised happiness and fulfillment through unlimited freedom. With the experience of hindsight Morse said that we can now conclude that the ability to sustain commitments is a gift that will bring deeper happiness and satisfaction.

"A great many adults are now ready to relearn whatever they can about lifelong marriage, for their own benefit as well as for the benefit of their children," she concluded.

Freedom has its limits, Morse argued in the concluding chapter of the book. Every generation is not free to redefine the family and its obligations. Some virtues and obligations are indispensable, said Morse.

Foundation

A similar view was expressed by Cardinal Seán Brady, archbishop of Armagh and primate of All Ireland, during his address last year to the Céifin Conference Nov. 4.

The theme of his speech was, "The Family as the Foundation of Society."

The family based on marriage as the foundation of society is a truth revealed by God in the Scriptures, said Cardinal Brady, but it also one of the most precious human values, he added.

The welfare of marriage and the family are of public interest, the cardinal argued, and are fundamental to the common good. They are, therefore, entitled to special consideration and care from the state.

"Other relationships whether they are sexual or not, are the result of private interest," he explained. "They do not have the same fundamental relationship to the good of society and to the bringing up of children as the family based on marriage," Cardinal Brady maintained.

By asking that the family based on marriage is worthy of support from the state the cardinal clarified that the intention is not to penalize those who have chosen different types of relationships.

"It is rather to uphold the principle that the family based on marriage between a man and woman is so intimately connected to the good of society that it is deserving of special care and protection," he said.

Commitment

"The link between a public commitment to life-long marriage, and the stability of the family unit, as well as the distinct role of a mother and father in the generation and education of children, gives marriage a unique and qualitatively different relationship to society than any other form of relationship," Cardinal Brady pointed out.

The family is an indispensable foundation for society, affirmed Benedict XVI in his video message during the Jan. 18 concluding mass of the World Meeting of Families.

"We have received life from others, which is developed and matured with the truths and values that we learn in relation and communion with the rest," he explained.

"It is in the home where one learns to truly live, to value life and health, liberty and peace, justice and truth, work, concord and respect," said the Pope. A truth valid for all cultures and societies.

shawn 10s16

Environmental efforts to protect marine life

2010-06-14T16:17:00.003+08:00

ENVIRONMENTAL EFFORTS TO PROTECT MARINE LIFE FROM THE OIL SPILL IN GULF OF MEXICO

Choice of country: America
Text:http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Eco/bp-oil-spill-national-significance-obama-administration/story?id=10509844 (29 April 2010)
Oil from a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico began to wash ashore along the Gulf Coast this evening after BP asked the U.S. government for help cleaning up the mess and faint fingers of oily sheen could be seen lapping at the Louisiana shoreline.
Environmental impact: As the oil approached the coastline, biologists said it threatened as many as 400 species, including sea turtles and dolphins
Efforts to control the oil spills
• BP asked the U.S. Department of Defense for advanced imaging technology and other equipment to locate oil spill areas so as to contain the spill
• 1,100 people are working on the cleanup effort, which so far has collected 685,000 gallons of oil and water from the polluted Gulf.
• The White House said 174,060 feet of flotation booms had been deployed to corral the floating oil. It said an additional 243,260 feet is available and 265,460 feet has been ordered. 76 tugs, barges and skimmers were on scene to help in containment and cleanup, along with six fixed-wing aircraft, 11 helicopters, 10 remotely operated vehicles, and two mobile offshore drilling units.
• BP is using chemical dispersants to break up the oil -- pumping them all the way down to the leaking wellhead to keep the crude oil from reaching the surface.
• Local fishermen are allowed to assist in the expected cleanup. Prison inmates are trained to help clean up wildlife harmed by oil slicks moving toward shore.

Amos Yap
10s25

the European Union in international peacekeeping

2010-06-14T16:05:00.000+08:00

How effective is the European Union in international peacekeeping?
The European Union (EU) strives to uphold peacekeeping by promoting their democratic values. These values are embedded in their Flag, which consists of a circle of twelve golden (yellow) stars on a blue background. It is the symbol not only of the EU but also of Europe’s unity and identity in a wider sense. The blue represents the west while the circle of twelve gold stars represents unity, solidarity and harmony between the peoples of Europe. Democracy strives to avoid an uneven distribution of power and often goes with the decision of the majority. Since the end of the Cold War, additional non-military elements designed to foster democratic institutions, the rule of law and respect for human rights, a functional police and judiciary and an electoral process that meets accepted international standards had been included in the peacekeeping operations of the European Union. Over the past five years, the European Union has significantly increased its operational contributions to international crisis management while working alongside the United Nations. For example, treaties like the NICE treaty and giving grants to countries help in preparing other countries for crisis management. Thus, the European Union has paved the way to increased peace. Thus, the European Union is successful in peacekeeping due to its democratic values.

The European Union used a content analytical method on the foreign policy declarations on both sides of the Atlantic regarding the peacekeeping missions. After extracting respective patterns in the perspectives of the transatlantic actors regarding peacekeeping, the paper concludes with some recommendations for future transatlantic cooperation in peacekeeping missions. Firstly, the share of the European Union Member States in the total United Nations peacekeeping budget is approximately 40 percent; and, the US currently pays 27 percent of the total UN peacekeeping budget. Secondly, the Cologne European Council meeting in June 1999 has placed the so-called St. Petersburg tasks – humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks and combat-force tasks in crisis management – at the core of the process of strengthening the European Security and Defence Policy. In December 1999, the Helsinki European Council set the Headline Goal: by the year 2003, the Union should be able to deploy within sixty days, and sustain for at least one year, up to 60,000 troops. Accordingly, the first European Security and Defence Policy operation was launched in January 2003, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The European Union also currently runs military operations in Macedonia and Congo. The European Union hence has set aside money to be able to help countries which need money in future due to catastrophes such as Tsunamis. This ensures that no country decides to go against another in the event that the latter does not want to help the former in the condition of need of money. Thus, the European Union is successful in international peacekeeping due to its willingness to share resources with countries that need it.

The European Union has a standardised system of laws, which member countries have to follow and ensures peace as well as harmony among member countries. This system of laws maintains a high level of expectations from each of the member countries in terms of their discipline, economy and quality of governments. Once the rules are broken, the responsible member country may well be excluded from the European Union. The European Union poses many benefits which include economic growth, improved security and help from member countries. These benefits are considered so enticing that member countries could not even afford to think about disrupting the system or being hostile to other countries. Thus, this approach by the European Union is very effective in keeping the world safe, to a large extent.

The European Union specially formed a police peacekeeping force, which makes stability and order certain in Europe and many other countries. The force is intended for international missions covering the whole range of conflict prevention and crisis management operations. The police peacekeeping force looks to provide physical protection for most people all over the world. This is in the sense that bloody clashes and hostile situations are avoided, or, when it happens, are subdued immediately. Capably, this prevention, deterrence and protection method could well avert any potential threat to international peacefulness.

The change of roles of the president of the European Union for every six months could make the organization less efficient in terms of peacekeeping as more time and effort is wasted on appointing the right leaders than on preserving peace among the different nations. The president plays a vital part in the organization as the driving force in the decision making process but this only slows down the rate at which international peacekeeping is being maintained as the peacekeeping decisions of a president varies from nation to nation and this decision making process may last from weeks to even months. This shows how a change of president for every six months could compromise the effectiveness at which peacekeeping is being carried out for example, the passing of presidency from Slovenia (1 January to 30 June 2008) to France (1 July to 31 December 2008) which is vital due to the conflict in middle East between Sudan and Chad resulted in the slow deployment of troops to protect the refugees there. Another problem which could result from this changing of presidency would be that the decision made by the president may not necessarily be in favour with the rest of the European Union Constitutions and could take a long time before the decision is accepted and implemented therefore resulting in time and effort being wasted on deliberating than on peacekeeping. The Union is vulnerable to internal conflicts such as a civil unrest or economic problems among its members such as in Greece, which could hinder its aim in ensuring peace and stability, as the Union has to solve their own conflict first before looking to external ones. A good example would be the Greece’s debt crisis where it now faces a historical proportion of $303 billion foreign debt. Even though France and Germany have agreed to loan Greece to solve this problem, this would surely cause a major setback in the plans of the European Union as less resources are being redirected especially towards the international peacekeeping sector. This debt crisis might also take months to be resolved and this would then affect the amount of time left for the European Union to implement its peacekeeping treaties. Especially with the fact that majority of the European countries that are affiliated with the Union share a common currency which is the Euro including Greece therefore, a major decline in the currency would also affect the other nations on a global scale too. The root of this problem would be the typical old individual responsibility thing whereby each nation only cares for the problems within its own borders and do not take the responsibility to help other neighbouring nations out. Since most of the European nations are part of the European Union, there is this failure to recognize that a single problem could affect the others greatly and this would only result in the European Union facing with more internal conflicts to come hindering its aim in international peacekeeping.

It is an undeniable fact that the European Union plays a vital role in peacekeeping and security in the world. Despite having some flaws, their contributions to the world out-weigh their deficiency. If the Union are able to solve their existing problems, there is nothing that holds the Union back and they are able in carrying out their role as international peacekeeping with full efficiency.

Homosexuality is a form of Human Rights

2010-06-14T01:25:00.005+08:00

California's Proposition 8 (Same-Sex Marriage)

Updated: 11 Jan 2010

Proposition 8 was a 2008 California ballot measure that outlawed same-sex marriage. It continues to be one of the central battlefields in the fight over same-sex marriage in the United States.

On May 15, 2008, the Supreme Court of California voted 4-to-3 that a state law banning same-sex marriage constituted illegal discrimination because domestic partnerships were not a good enough substitute. In its decision, the court wrote that whatever term is used by the state must be granted to all couples who meet its requirements, whatever their gender. The court left open the possibility that another term could denote state-sanctioned unions so long as that term was used across the board.

Opponents quickly organized, and launched the Proposition 8 initiative campaign, asking voters to ban same-sex marriages. After an expensive and hard-fought campaign, the measure passed on Nov. 4, 2008, with 52 percent of the vote. (Florida and Arizona also passed bans at the same time.)

Groups who had fought Proposition 8 immediately filed suit to block it. On May 26, 2009 the state Supreme Court upheld the voter-approved ban but also decided that the estimated 18,000 gay couples who tied the knot before the law took effect will stay wed.

Efforts to overturn Proposition 8 with another ballot measure in California face uncertain prospects, with most major groups having decided to wait until at least 2012 to go back to the voters.

Meanwhile, proponents of same-sex marriage are challenging Proposition 8 in federal court, in a case that is being anxiously watched by gay rights groups and supporters of traditional marriage nationwide. The challenge is being led in court by David Boies and Theodore B. Olson, who represented opposite sides arguing the fate of the 2000 election.

Source: NYTimes

A Basic Civil Right

10 June 2010

After a nearly three-week trial in January, and a lengthy hiatus while lawyers fought over documents, closing arguments are scheduled for Wednesday in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

No one expects the ruling from Judge Vaughn Walker in Federal District Court to be the last word. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, will have its say, and so, eventually, may the Supreme Court.

The testimony made abundantly clear that excluding same-sex couples from marriage exacts a grievous toll on gay people and their families. Domestic partnerships are a woefully inadequate substitute.

On the witness stand, the plaintiffs described the pain and stigma of having their relationships relegated by the state to a lesser category that fails to convey the love and commitment inherent in marriage. “My state is supposed to protect me. It’s not supposed to discriminate against me,” said Paul Katami, one of the plaintiffs.

Defenders of Proposition 8 produced no evidence to back up their claim that marriage between same-sex couples would hurt heterosexual marriage. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” the defense attorney, Charles Cooper, said when asked for an explanation by the judge at a pretrial hearing.

The defense called only two witnesses. The first, Kenneth Miller, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, argued that gay people are a powerful political force, which was meant to support the claim that there is no need for enhanced judicial protection. He ended up admitting that gay men and lesbians suffer discrimination.

The other witness, David Blankenhorn, the president of the Institute for American Values, argued that marriage is being weakened by rising divorce rates and more unmarried people having children, but he could not convincingly explain what the genders of married couples had to do with that.

Upon questioning, he acknowledged that marriage is a “public good” that would benefit same-sex couples and their children, and that to allow same-sex marriage “would be a victory for the worthy ideas of tolerance and inclusion.” The net result was to reinforce the sense that Proposition 8 was driven by animus rather than any evidence of concrete harm to heterosexual marriages or society at large.

It’s not possible to know whether the final ruling in this case will broadly confront the overarching denial of equal protection and due process created by prohibiting one segment of society from entering into marriage. The Supreme Court has, in different cases, called marriage “essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men” and a “basic civil right.”

The result, even if a win for gay couples, could be a limited ruling confined to the situation in California, where the state’s highest court granted the freedom to marry and voters later repealed it following an ugly campaign spearheaded by antigay religious interests.

But there are actions that can be taken now. States like New York should not put off acting on legislation to legalize same-sex marriage. Last week, President Obama extended a modest package of benefits — including day care and relocation allowances — to all partners of federal employees. Congress has a duty to extend to same-sex partners the rest of the benefits that are enjoyed by federal workers whose spouses are of a different sex. It also needs to repeal the 1996 law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Bilingual Education Policy

2010-06-14T00:53:00.002+08:00

“. . .if we were monolingual in our mother tongues, we would not make a living. Becoming monolingual in English would have been a setback. We would have lost our cultural identity, that quiet confidence about ourselves and our place in the world.” (Lee Kuan Yew, 2000).

Singapore’s bilingual education policy was borne out of a pragmatic need to operate in the global economy using the English language while maintaining the Asian languages and values of our respective cultures.

With English as the main language of instruction in all the subjects except the mother tongue, every Singaporean student -- by the time he or she leaves school -- would be able to communicate in at least two languages. They would be competent and confident enough to use Standard English wherever they are in the world without feeling their own cultural values and language crowded out. The aim of the bilingual education policy is to ensure that while Singapore remained viable economically all over the world, Singaporeans need not lose their cultural values or identity.

While the Malay Language is the National Language of Singapore, English has been the main medium of instruction in schools since 1987. Singapore’s education system promotes and stipulates bilingualism as its core policy so that children pick up at least two languages in schools -- English and their mother tongue. English is the language of commerce, technology and administration while Chinese, Malay or Tamil, enables the children from the different main races to keep in touch with their heritage and cultural values.

English would also be the language that would serve as the lingua franca for Singaporeans of different races to bond with one another. Chinese, Malays, Indian and Eurasians can use English as the common vehicle for communication and enter each other’s worlds to understand and appreciate one another.

When Singapore became independent from Britain in 1959, we could have easily gone the way of some former colonies and consigned the language of the former rulers to disuse or mangled it into pidgin. The founding fathers of modern Singapore refused to jettison what would serve us well.

In 1966 when the bilingual education policy was adopted, Singapore’s First Cabinet foresaw that the future of science and technology would be mostly written in English. Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew knew that competency in the English language from a young age was vital: “If a student is unable to understand a language, then he is unable to receive information or knowledge in that language. It is therefore crucial that a breakthrough must be made in the English Language as early in life as possible.” (Lee Kuan Yew, 1982).

That foresight has been paying dividends for Singaporeans. When they go abroad to study in English-speaking countries they have no difficulties following lectures or writing their essays. Singapore’s students also excel in international Maths and Science tests conducted in English, faring comparably with their counterparts from many of the English-speaking countries.

In 1979, Mr. Lee launched the Speak Mandarin Campaign to steer Chinese Singaporeans to using a common Chinese language to interact with one another. This would unite the different Chinese dialect groups instead of keeping them compartmentalised and separate. The other racial communities do not have this problem of a common script sounding unfamiliar due to regional or dialectal differences.

The Government has continued to place the priority on all the races being able to get along with one another and there could be no trade- off on that. In the 1991 opening of the Speak Mandarin Campaign, then Prime Minister Mr.Goh Chok Tong stressed this as the cornerstone for nationhood. He said that while the Chinese community should be “tightly knit”, it must also be “tolerant and appreciative of other communities’ heritage, able to communicate with them in English, and work with them for a common future…”

In the years since the bilingual policy was introduced, generations of Singaporeans have felt confident to engage the world and their fellow Singaporeans of different races using English, while being firmly grounded in their own cultural values through their mother tongues.

References

Singapore Press Holdings. (2000). From Third World To First: The Singapore Story 1965-2000, Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew . Singapore: The Straits Times Press
Call No.: SING 959.57092 LEE

Speak Mandarin. Are you game? (2008). Speak Mandarin Campaign Website. Retrieved July 9, 2008, from
http://www.mandarin.org.sg/site/

Dixon, L.Q. (2005). The bilingual education policy in Singapore: Implications for second language acquisition. ERIC Education Resources Information Center. Retrieved July 9, 2008, from
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/1b/2d/e8.pdf

Daryl Chia, Fung Kiu Yan, Ong Si Yuan, Eugene Chin, Cornelius Wang

10S21

Japan Itokawa asteroid mission set for re-entry

2010-06-13T20:27:00.002+08:00

Japan's Hayabusa probe returns to Earth on Sunday, releasing a capsule into the atmosphere that scientists hope will contain samples from asteroid Itokawa.

If the 40cm-wide conical disc survives the blistering heat of the descent and can deploy a parachute, it should touch down in Australia at about 1400 GMT.

No-one really knows whether Hayabusa succeeded in grabbing samples from Itokawa's surface during a 2005 visit.

Its capture mechanism did not work as designed, analysis has shown.

However, Japanese space agency (Jaxa) officials remain confident.

They believe a lot of dust would have been kicked up when Hayabusa landed on the space rock, and some of this must have found its way inside the probe.

"At the moment of touch-down, Hayabusa collided with the surface and stayed on the surface for 30 minutes, so we believe some material will have found its way into the sample container," senior project team member Professor Hitoshi Kuninaka told BBC News.

If the Hayabusa capsule is confirmed to contain even just dusty fragments from the asteroid, it would represent a scientific first and a remarkable triumph for the Japanese who have had to battle a succession of technical problems.

Hayabusa was launched in 2003 and used ion engines to propel itself out to Itokawa, a 500m-long potato-shaped rock which drifts between the orbit of Earth and beyond Mars.

Not long after the mission started, a solar flare damaged the spacecraft, but it was really at its destination that Hayabusa's woes began to mount.

As well as the capture mechanism malfunction, a mini-probe called Minerva that was to have hopped across the asteroid's surface accidentally drifted off into space.

Even on the journey home, the Hayabusa team had to work around communication drop-outs and propulsion glitches.

But each time an issue came up, the scientists and engineers working on the project managed to find an elegant solution.

Now, after one final course correction during the past week, Hayabusa is bound to hit the Earth's atmosphere above Australia.

Just a few hours before the spacecraft begins this plunge, it will push out the sample capsule in front of it.

The main spacecraft will be destroyed during the descent, but the container is built to survive the 3,000-degree heat of re-entry.

"The capsule will come into the atmosphere with a very high velocity - 12km/s; and so in order to endure such a high heat input, we need a special heat-shield," said Professor Kuninaka. "Its surface is made of carbon phenolic (resin)."

Assuming it makes it through this test of fire, the capsule will deploy a parachute at an altitude of about 10km. This should bring the conical pod to a gentle stop in the Australian Outback's Woomera Prohibited Range.

Radar tracking and a beacon in the container itself should guide scientists to the drop location.

The requirement to avoid all earthly contamination means the capsule will not immediately be moved from its landing site. The sterile protocols the mission team will follow will not permit the capsule's evacuation and transfer to Japan for a few days.

The container will be delivered to Jaxa's Sagamihara curation facility for analysis. It could be some months before scientists are able to say with confidence that Hayabusa did indeed capture fragments of Itokawa.

"You hope for grams of sample but you can make do with much less than that," observed Dr Michael Zolensky who worked on Nasa's Stardust comet sample-return mission.

"On Stardust, the entire sample return was on the order of thousands of nano-grams. That was thousands of grains, each of which weighed about one nano-gram; and one of those grains you could spend a year studying," he told BBC News.

Such grains would provide new insight into the early history of the Solar System and the formation of the planets more than 4.5 billion years ago.

Professor Trevor Ireland, from the Australian National University, who will get to work on the samples, said no rocks on Earth could provide this information because they had been recycled many times.

"If we look at anything on Earth it has been put through the wringer; it's been messed up by plate-tectonic processes and geochemical processes. So if we want to look at what our Earth was made of, we have to leave Earth. That's the importance of Hayabusa and going to Itokawa."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10285973.stm

Bryan Ang, Derek Yam, Gaius Leong, Lai Shi Min, Jerald Wong

10S21

role of family

2010-06-12T23:27:00.005+08:00

Family Roles - Cultures And Role Restriction, Personal Identity And Roles, Role Expectations And Demands

People throughout history depended on families and the kinship system for their survival. This dependence permitted and required that they conform to expected family roles depending on their living circumstances. This gave a family strong control over its members, a circumstance that is changing in the modern world because people no longer always need families for economic survival.

Intentional and unintentional forces worldwide continue to introduce important changes in family roles, in expectation and practice. For example, recent research in a variety of settings reinterprets women's historical roles in Egypt (Watterson 1998), among the Vikings ( Jesch 1996), in medieval Europe (Lewis et al. 1999), and among Native Americans (Klein and Ackerman 1995). Industrialization, urbanization, and the global economy, along with their communication systems, reach into a nation's families, changing where and how men and women live, how often and when they have children, and how they work. World citizenship, global cosmopolitan culture, and international conferences change gender roles. But role change is not unidirectional and may become either narrower or more diverse.

Social roles pivot on assigned and attained places in various social settings, including work, politics, religion, and family activities. Across cultures, gender is an important assigned social location among these (Goody 1996). In the past, sex role was the common designation for activities based on being male or female. Gender role is more frequently used now because it seems less restrictive than sex role. Both terms continue to be used interchangeably.

Social role applies to family in multiple ways, but examining adult roles is complicated by a family's living arrangement. Family roles vary importantly among one-parent, two-parent, and multiple-parent families depending on the combination of persons by gender. Nations variously prescribe what constitutes the family unit through their laws. Preindustrial cultures more commonly prescribed, or permitted, a marital unit with one male and more than one female (polygyny), and less frequently a unit with one female and more than one male (polyandry). The status of a male or female reflected, in part, how many spouses one would have (Cassidy and Lee 1989). Higher status males tended to have more wives. The social context of these different family living arrangements dictates different rights and responsibilities based on gender (Dodoo 1998). Modernizing societies tend toward equalizing gender status and power.

Several terms identify basic social role dimensions, and an extensive body of literature discusses these dimensions (Farmer 1992). One dimension is role location. Common titles identify family role location such as mother, father, daughter, son, uncle, or aunt. These titles identify the general status and gender of the people within the family. Hence, these titles reflect family rights and responsibilities, duties and privileges, power and authority. Gender is important in making social distinctions because families often transmit wealth and property by gender, making a person's sex a factor in determining family status. Role status and the precision of these terms vary widely among the world's cultures. Increased family mobility and modernization blur traditional kinship statuses, particularly in countries based on traditional agricultural economies.

done by:
Pong Sze You
Tanmanjit Singh
Jason Yazuardi
Ason Koh
Benjamin Cao
10S22

Shacking UP and Breaking DOWN

2010-06-12T12:27:00.001+08:00

Common-law marriages are nothing new, they happened even in Jesus' time, as the Bible relates about the women who was married five times, whom Jesus met at Jacob's well and who was then living with a man who wasn't her husband. What is new is the large number of people who live in common-law relationships and that society has resigned itself to accept these relationship. The social stigma appears to have vanished, and even Dr. Laura now calls such relationships simply "shacking up."
The consequences of divorce and separation are a number of social ills that affect mostly our children. Nowhere are these consequence more prevalent than with children from common-law relationships.
StatCan reported the percentages of children 10 years old who saw their parents separate:

Children who lived with two married biological parents 14%
* Children who lived with two parents who got married after cohabitation 26%
* Children who lived with common-law parents 63%

StatCan also noted that the age of children whose parents separate is constantly dropping. 91% of children are born into families with two parents, but fully one fifth of those are living common-law. The number of common-law "marriages" has more than doubled over the past two decades, from 6% in 1981 to 14% in 1995. Not only that, but the rate of increase is accelerating. It has become an escalating cycle: women whose parent's union broke up before they were 15 are 75% more likely to choose living common-law themselves, something that is more typical in Canada than elsewhere. A UN study found the following percentages of women aged 25 to 29 who live common-law:

Canada 40%
Italy 2%
U.K. 10%
Germany 11%
France 14%
Sweden 48%

[No comparable statistics relating to that trend in men of the corresponding age group were offered in the article. --WHS]

The social consequences of "non-traditional marriage" are well documented. Children of those marriages:

* perform relatively poorly in school,
* are more likely to exhibit criminal behaviour,
* have more difficulty in their personal, social, and sexual relationship,
* are twice as likely to drop out of school, and, if they are teen aged girls growing up without a natural father at home,
* are 2.5 times more likely to become pregnant (elsewhere I read that 51% of those pregnancies will result in abortions, but it seems that that statistic relates to the US).

Environmental Effects by USA

2010-06-11T12:52:00.011+08:00

Wetland mitigation

Wetland mitigation is the process in which wetland functions that are previously stopped or slowed are resumed through new or improved wetlands. The primary aim is to resume these wetland functions that may benefit the public, such as preventing floods, maintaining the water quality and quantity, habitats for fauna and floras, and such.

The goals which the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) are hoping to meet are as follows:

Wetland permit applicant may benefit because the permit processing time is shorter and the costs are lower, and there is a higher availability of adequate mitigation sites.

It benefits the state's wetland resources because new mitigation banks are created before foreseen loses, by combining small mitigation projects into a larger one in which it would be easier and more efficient to handle, and by encouraging integration of wetland mitigation projects with watershed based resource planning.

Prairie restoration

Prairie restoration is an environmentally-friendly way of bringing back a portion of the prairie lands that were previously lost to Man’s interest. That includes removing them to build factories, agriculture and business interests. A prairie land is a patch of land in which the predominant vegetations are grasses and shrubs. They are considered to be part of the temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome by ecologists.

The soils of which prairie lands reside on are extremely fertile. This allows farmers to plant crops such as wheat, barley and corn. Many prairie plants can stand extreme periods with lack of water. As a result, they are often used in projects and experiments involving vegetation that do not require watering as often.

The benefits of prairie restoration are significant. A small part that is restored would assist in holding in soil and slowing down or preventing soil erosion. They would also absorb any excessive rainwater into the ground to prevent surface flooding. The flowers are also attractive to insects that promote pollination. Looking on a wider impact, organisms thrive and areas in which organic carbon are stored in the soil are created. This helps to maintain the biodiversity that depends on these prairie lands for survival.

Hazardous wastes management

Hazardous wastes often has the potential to incur illness in people that can have long term effects or death, and they pose a danger to the environment and human race if they are not handled with care and treated carefully. These wastes can be in various states, including gaseous, liquid and solid. Depending on the different states, it is handled differently. They must be specially treated because it cannot be disposed off by conventional methods.

The facilities that process these wastes must obtain a permit from the relevant authorities to do so. The hazardous wastes are broadly sorted into 4 categories. The ignitability of the wastes determines that the wastes is highly combustible, or can start a fire in temperatures less than 60 degree Celsius, examples are oils and used solvents. Corrosive wastes, such as battery acids, have pH values of at most 2, and can corrode the container that are used to contain them. Reactive wastes can result in an explosion or release poisonous particles when exposed to high temperatures. Toxic wastes contain poisonous materials that exceed the allowed level, and can cause harm to people or the environment.

Modern landfills are capable of storing these hazardous wastes in large amounts, whilst at the same time having little impacts on the environment. Alternative methods of handling these hazardous wastes include recycling them into new products, be mixed with cement to produce cements that have different properties such as being stronger. Neutralization is done so that the dangerous materials are removed. They can also be burned in very high temperature to destroy them, or burning them as energy sources to produce electricity. An alternative landfill can be created to separate these hazardous wastes, or may be disposed off in the presence of electricity to keep them stable and not react.

De-icing procedures and salt reduction

Deicing is the process in which frozen materials such as ice, are removed from a surface. In the past, they do harm to the environment because the additives that are mixed with the deicing compounds to improve their performances are toxic. However, in the present times, organic compounds that are sprayed on roads are created that reduces the impacts it has on the environment connected to chemical compounds. Moreover, mixing these deicing chemicals with some other common household items allows the compound to work effectively even at lower temperatures.

In some airports, the planes are deiced on special surfaces, in which the deicing chemicals, along with the melted ice and snow, are channeled from the surface into storage areas, which are later processed and later used again as deicing chemicals. This process produces heat in which are stored and used to heat the airport terminal.

Storm water management

Storm water management is the process in which storm water which remained as surface runoff are treated so that they would not pose a danger to the environment. They do not go into the ground and flow on the surface. As they flow over buildings, pavements and roads, they gather debris, chemicals and other sediments that may be unhealthy to us, and flow with them to water bodies. These could affect the water quality. Moreover, floods can be controlled and aquatic life can be preserved, and the water would remain safe for humans to use. Some of the approaches used include filters and separators. More advanced techniques such as the usage of ultra-violet disinfection units may also be utilized.

In USA, the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) is in-charged of the water bodies in the country. Their goal is to restore all the water bodies in USA to be in “fisable” and “swimmable” conditions. Despite the efforts done by the EPA, a lot of water bodies in USA are still pretty much unsafe.

Noise monitoring and noise walls

Noise can come from a variety of sources and they can upset the balance of our lives, and likewise to any other living things in the vicinity. This is because the stress level increases when one lives in an area which is noisy, and thus they could not relax. This could give rise to anxiety, high blood pressure, heart problems, and even death.

Noise walls, also known as noise barriers, are built along roads to absorb unwanted noise from vehicles on the road. They have been built in USA since the mid-20th century when the amount of vehicles on the road rose sharply. However, some limitations, such as that it would be impracticable in some areas, pose problems for the building and development of noise walls. The final costs of building the structure also determines if it is actually built. The designing of the noise walls takes place inside a computer, using computer simulations. With the introduction of noise walls, people living in residential areas near roadways can enjoy their sleep longer, more able to enjoy the outdoor life better, can communicate better because there is not sound disturbance, and reduced stress level.

The presence of extra soil in the vicinity of the noise barrier allows constructors to use them for berm construction. It would cost less because they can use the soil to construct an earth berm noise barrier than remove them. In fact, the cost may be negligible, save for the fact that moving the earth upwards may not be cheap.

Done by: Francis Cheng, C Vaahsan, Ren Yonglin, Ong Tian Hua (10S20)

2010-06-10T16:47:00.007+08:00

Changing roles of women in the workplace/family in Japan.

The traditional role of women underscores the deeply-rooted nature of inequality in the gender roles and relationships in Japan. However, in today’s Japan, such traditional attitudes are changing, as illustrated by the emergence of a class of young, educated and professional women, who prefer to remain single, in order to preserve their freedom. Traditional gender roles in Japan are characterized by a strong sense of patriarchy in society, which account for the bifurcation of the productive and reproductive spheres, with a distinct separation of gender roles. In the family, this refers to the idea of the man as the primary breadwinner of the family, and the woman as the primary caregiver in the family. Women are also marrying later, with the average age of first marriage at 26.3 years in 1995, compared to 25.4 in 1983.

With the rising problems faced by the Japanese economy, there have been changes in the structured patterns of gender in both the family and the workplace. Economic recessions in the country have forced many women to enter the workforce in order to increase the level of income earned for the family. With an increasing number of women in the workforce, the existing gender ratios have been altered favoring increased gender equality in that women now have a greater say in the family, and also participate more in the workforce.

Gender inequality, however, continues in family life, the workplace, and popular values. The notion expressed in the proverbial phrase "good wife, wise mother," continues to influence beliefs about gender roles. Most women may not be able to realize that ideal, but many believe that it is in their own, their children's, and society's best interests that they stay home to devote themselves to their children, at least while the children were young. Many women find satisfaction in family life and in the accomplishments of their children, gaining a sense of fulfillment from doing good jobs as household managers and mothers. In most households, women are responsible for their family budgets and make independent decisions about the education, careers, and life-styles of their families. Women also take the social blame for problems of family members. Gender roles in the family bear a close relationship to the situation in the workforce, where there is a strong male dominance in the company hierarchy. Resultantly, males possess increased career opportunities, unlike females, who are marginalized in the workforce and are considered to be temporary labour, expected to resign upon marriage or childbirth. As can be seen, there is an intimate family-work relationship in Japanese society and this hinges on the traditional gender roles within society.

Women's educational opportunities have increased in the twentieth century. Among new workers in 1989, 37 % of women had received education beyond upper-secondary school, compared with 43 % of men, but most women had received their postsecondary education in junior colleges and technical schools rather than in universities and graduate schools.

After World War II, the fixed image of the Japanese woman has been that of the office lady, who becomes a housewife after marriage. But a new generation of educated women is emerging, that is seeking a career as a working woman. Japanese women are joining the labour force in unprecedented numbers. In 1987 there were 24.3 million working women (40% of the labor force), and they accounted for 59% of the increase in employment from 1975 to 1987. The participation rate for women in the labour force rose from 45.7% in 1975 to 50.6% in 1991.

In 1990 approximately 50 % of all women over fifteen years of age participated in the paid labor force. At that time, two major changes in the female work force were under way. The first was a move away from household-based employment. Peasant women and those from merchant and artisan families had always worked. With self-employment becoming less common, though, the more usual pattern was separation of home and workplace, creating new problems of child care, care of the elderly, and housekeeping responsibilities. The second major change was the increased participation of married women in the labor force. In the 1950s, most women employees were young and single; 62 % of the female labor force in 1960 had never been married. In 1987 about 66 % of the female labor force was married, and only 23 % was made up women who had never married. Some women continued working after marriage, most often in professional and government jobs, but their numbers were small. Others started their own businesses or took over family businesses. More commonly, women left paid labor after marriage, and then returned after their youngest children were in school. These middle-age recruits generally took low-paying, part-time service or factory jobs. They continued to have nearly total responsibility for home and children and often justified their employment as an extension of their responsibilities for the care of their families. Despite legal support for equality and some improvement in their status, married women understood that their husbands' jobs demanded long hours and extreme commitment. Because women earned an average of only 60 % as much as men, most did not find it advantageous to take full-time, responsible jobs after marriage, if doing so left no one to manage the household and care for children.

Yet women's status in the labor force was changing in the late 1980s, most likely as a result of changes brought about by the aging of the population. Longer life expectancies, smaller families and bunched births, and lowered expectations of being cared for in old age by their children have all led women to participate more fully in the labor force. At the same time, service job opportunities in the postindustrial economy expanded, and there were fewer new male graduates to fill them.

Done by: Ariel, Charissa, Isabel, Hui Si

Class: 10A02

Mind the Gap

2010-06-10T08:50:00.004+08:00

The train slows, a recording voices the familiar “mind the gap” warning, and the doors open. A horde steps mindlessly over the threshold and continues on its way without missing a beat.
If only the generation gap were so easy to cross.
Could it be though? Is it really inevitable that there should be a wide chasm between older generations and younger ones? Is the generation gap simply a function of progress—because older people are not interested in new trends and younger ones are—or has it been actively cultivated by a society that believes age divisions are inevitable, if not preferable? Could developing good relationships between generations actually be easier and more beneficial than we assume?
These are among the questions being asked by sociologists as they study what they call “institutional age segregation,” by which they mean the socially constructed isolation of different groups according to their chronological age. In fact, sociologists have observed that institutions divide the human life timeline roughly into thirds: childhood, or the education phase; midlife, which involves work and family-building activities; and finally, retirement.
Usually, when any of these age groups is engaged in their primary activity its individual members are physically isolated from people of other generations. There is little (if any) interaction across age barriers except at the nuclear family level during relatively brief down times. Even during leisure time, institutions continue to encourage segregation by age. Communities have “senior centers” or “youth centers.” Church activities are also often structured within these narrow generational distinctions. But after all, is there really any harm in this?
According to sociologists Gunhild O. Hagestad and Peter Uhlenberg, there is very good reason to be disturbed by such segregation. In a 2006 exploration of the subject published in the international journal Research on Aging, they write “In our view, it blocks essential opportunities for individuals to meet, interact, and move beyond ‘us versus them’ distinctions. This has several consequences worthy of attention. First, it produces and reproduces ageism. Second, it is a threat to embeddedness, and it increases the risk for isolation in later life. Third, it thwarts socialization for young and old. Fourth, it impedes generativity, especially the creation and maintenance of a generative society.”
Any one of these factors is cause for concern, but two of them in particular carry potentially serious long-term consequences. The first of these involves the concept of embeddedness. When individuals have strong relationship networks within society at large, they are considered to be embedded in the social fabric. They receive adequate social support and can offer support to others. But if networks exist only among age-peers, this support system eventually begins to break down. As people age, those who outlive their close friends are likely to suffer severe isolation as their support system disintegrates. Worse, when these support networks are only connected horizontally, society as a whole is weaker and people of all ages are more likely to feel isolated than if networks extended both horizontally and vertically.
The second factor, generativity, refers to building continuity from one generation to another through activities such as mentoring and teaching to ensure a positive legacy. Generativity happens on an individual level as well as a societal level, of course. Parents hope to pass something of themselves on to their children, but they are also motivated to improve society in general so their children will have a better future. Unfortunately, researchers find that older people without vertical ties to younger generations are less likely to be concerned about contributing positively to society than those who have children or grandchildren.
Whether they have ever been parents or not, elders naturally have a great deal to contribute to the younger generation. But young people also have benefits to bestow on their elders. Their enthusiasm for new experiences and new technologies is contagious, and their youthful outlook can actually be a boon to their elders’ physical health. However, if young and old rarely occupy the same space at the same time, a mutual exchange of benefits is unlikely ever to take place. As Hagestad and Uhlenberg point out, in modern urban society different generations each live in separate islands of activity. “Much of adult life takes place on islands that are unknown to children, and adults are away from their residential islands so much that they are not integrated in the surrounding communities. . . .While children and youth occupy spaces devoted to education, adults are ‘away’ much of the day in work spaces, where there are no children and no old people.”
This state of affairs encourages the formation of diverging age cultures, and according to Hagestad and Uhlenberg, marketing entities are eager to exploit and fortify these differences. As a result, the more each generation is convinced of their differences, the less time they spend together, and the fewer opportunities they have to influence one another.
It’s a cycle that would appear very difficult to break. However, some researchers are working on ways to break it.
One way is through what sociologists call intergenerational interventions, or intergenerational programs. These are essentially organized activities that bring two or more generations together to become better acquainted through helping one another: for instance, older members of the community may enroll in programs to help tutor teens, or read to preschoolers. Some interventions may take the form of multigenerational music groups that may perform in community venues. Still other programs bring the two “bookend” generations together in intergenerational daycare centers. In fact, a 2007 study published in the Journal of Applied Gerontology focused on just such a center located in the northeastern United States.
The center’s objective was to meet the care needs of preschool age children and elders in a single facility while providing a variety of opportunities for the two groups to interact daily. To evaluate the success of such programs, researchers interviewed the elderly participants specifically to find out how they perceived the interaction affected their emotional well-being. They found the elders to be overwhelmingly positive about the interaction they had with the children in the group and most of the respondents, no matter how much or how little they involved themselves with the children, reported a sense of calm and familial connection from the program. Many pointed to the youth and enthusiasm of the children as key elements of the emotional well-being they felt from their involvement. One participant was especially uplifted emotionally by a letter he received from a parent of one of the children he had worked with in the center. The single mother indicated that his positive involvement with her child had inspired her to pursue an education and start a business. The elder was gratified that his involvement had positively affected the lives of two generations at once.
Successful projects like this one raise hopes that society could one day tear down the intergenerational walls that have been erected in recent decades. But other studies hint that efforts will need to be determined and consistent. One 2007 study published in the Journal of Intergenerational Relationships makes this interesting assessment: “While being a role model was embraced by many of the older adults [in the study], a few were unable to see themselves in this position. In our nation’s relatively recent past, our elder population was encouraged by media and other sources to view the retirement years as a time for self-indulgence and total relaxation. With that came the unintended message that elders were an expendable part of a productive society. Now that the population is aging and demographics are changing, the need for older adults in the social fabric of society is crucial. . . .Yet, substituting one message for another is difficult and takes time.”
Undoubtedly it is time worth taking. But substituting one message for another may actually be the easiest hurdle. The more difficult task is likely to be that of substituting one course of action for another. This would seem to require a nearly complete overhaul of the social institutions that encourage us to congregate in peer groups and which perpetuate a generation gap. Unfortunately, such widespread change seems an unlikely scenario. Especially considering that most people in today’s busy world don’t really seem to mind the gap so very much.
GINA STEPP
SELECTED REFERENCES:

1 Elza DeSouza, Intergenerational Interaction Through Reminiscence Processes: A Theoretical Framework to Explain Attitude Changes. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships (2007). 2 Susan K. Fletcher, Intergenerational Dialogue to Reduce Prejudice: A Conceptual Model, Journal of Intergenerational Relationships (2007).

Cheryl Chan
Cheryl Tng
Gan Jia Min
Liew Wuan Yi
Ong Nuan Ting

What had caused the World War II (Why Germany attacked Europe)

2010-06-09T22:06:00.006+08:00

At the Reich Chancellery in November 1937, a very select group - Germany's war and foreign ministers and the three heads of the armed services - listened as Hitler expounded at enormous length his vision on the next five to eight years. But the basic message was straightforward. There was little time to lose, for across the world, he told them, 'the primitive urge to colonization' was visible once more. Economic need was the real driving force. It had recently pushed both Japan and Italy to expand, and Germany needed to follow suit. The Reich with its 'tightly packed racial core" could never be self-sufficient in basic raw materials or foodstuffs, and overcrowding was a real threat to the country's future. Raising its standard of living meant gaining access to other people's resources.

But participating in the world economy would make the country vulnerable to British pressure - neither he nor any of his listeners had forgotten the blockade in the Great War - and so the only safe outlet for Germany lay within Europe: 'If we accept the security of our food situation as the principal point at issue,' he said ,'the space needed to secure it can be sought only in Europe, not - as in the liberal-capitalist view - in the exploitation of colonies. It is not a matter of acquiring population but of gathering space for agricultural use. Moreover, areas producing raw materials can be more usefully sought in Europe, in immediate proximity to the Reich, than overseas.' He had Austria and Czechoslovakia in mind in the first instance, predicting that taking over them would improve the Reich's food supply - especially if, as he anticipated, Germany was able to force three million Czechs to emigrate. If they got the timing right, Britain and France would stand aside, and Germany would then emerge bolstered economically and in a strong position to expand further.

Hitler tended to think about economics in terms of how much coal, iron and steel, edible fats and grain he could extract from a given territory. He saw international economies as a zero-sum game, not one in which the fortunes of all were bound together through mutual interdependence. This was certainly how he viewed eastern Europe in particular. But after the fall of Europe, a much larger prospect suddenly opened up - that of continental hegemony. Economic policy experts, who were acutely aware of the strains upon the Germany economy since the early 1930s, were hugely relieved. 'Today we administer a territory from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, from the Gulf of Finland to the Atlantic,' boasted the German minister of economics shortly after the invasion of USSR. 'Never before in the history of USSR in 1941 - 2 - offered a resource base superior in almost every respect to that available to Stalin: only in oil did the Soviet Union remain ahead.

Yet resources were not the whole story. Europe GDP was collectively larger than that of either the British empire or the USA (even before taking into account the potential contribution of French, Belgian and Dutch colonies) but its wealth was generated not so much through extraction as through the performance of sophisticated open and inter-connected financial markets. The inter war economic crisis had hit trade among countries within the continent and reduced their dealings with the rest of the world. Nevertheless, these networks and trade interactions remain crucial to European prosperity. The real challenge for the Germans, in other words, was less how to extract resources than how to manage them.

Adapted from: Hitler's Empire How the Nazis Ruled Europe by Mark Mazower (Pages 259-260)

Ngoh Zhi Lin 10S21

2010-06-08T21:23:00.003+08:00

United States measure to counter terrorism through the National Counterterrorism Centre (NCTC)

Mission
To combat terrorism at home and abroad by analyzing the threat, sharing information, and integrating all instruments of national power to ensure unity of effort.

Objective
--Create a Culture of Sharing Counterterrorism Knowledge and Expertise
*Discover, capture, share, and effectively exploit knowledge, expertise, and information within NCTC and across the counterterrorism community
*Develop integrated information technology systems that enable collaboration and information sharing within NCTC and across the counterterrorism community
*Establish policies, processes, and programs that encourage and reward collaboration, learning, and sharing.

Measures used

--One of NCTC’s measure used is through the 2010 Counterterrorism Calendar. The calendar has two versions which are the Online Multimedia Version and the Daily Planner Printable Version. The purpose of the NCTC’s Counterterrorism Calendar is to provide information on known terrorist groups, individual terrorists, and technical information on topics such as biological and chemical threats so that the general publis has the knowledge on how to deal with terrorist attack situations.

--Secondly, NCTC also uses The Interagency Threat Assessment and Coordination Group (ITACG) Intelligence Guide for First Responders as a measure to deal with terrorism. It is designed to assist state, local, tribal law enforcement, firefighting, homeland security, and appropriate private sector personnel in accessing and understanding Federal counterterrorism, homeland security, and weapons of mass destruction intelligence reporting. Most of the information contained in the guide was compiled, derived, and adapted from existing Intelligence Community and open source references.

The ITACG consists of state, local, and tribal first responders and federal intelligence analysts from the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) to enhance the sharing of federal counterterrorism, homeland security, and weapons of mass destruction information with state, local, and tribal consumers of intelligence.

Huang Wei Ling, 10S27
Country's measures to combat terrorism

Case of negotiations

2010-06-08T20:25:00.002+08:00

In trying to create win-win negotiation agreements, one of the biggest mistakes made by negotiators is to deal with the issues on an issue by issue basis. This often results in a breakdown in negotiations because invariably, conflicting monetary issues arise that result in a showdown between the two parties. Negotiating on an issue by issue agenda does not present the opportunity to make concessionary trade-offs between the different issues

Management of Bayou Steel enlisted the help of two facilitators from the FMCS (Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services) to guide management through a win-win style negotiation with its workers. The president of Bayou said that the facilitators helped them identify each side’s objectives and concerns, and led him to believe that they had in effect, resolved 90% of the contract issues.

The facilitators set up an issue by issue agenda. They left the economic issues such as incentives, base pay, overtime, and vacation time as the final issues to be discussed. Management believed that they had correctly addressed the employees’ concerns about these pay issues.

However, union members became suspicious about management’s good intentions to take a win-win approach. They began to believe collectively that this negotiation approach by management was a disguised ploy meant to undermine their position, especially on the economic issues.

At first, negotiations went relatively well and as predicted. Yet, as the economic issues were placed on the table for discussion, the situation quickly turned upside down into a hard nosed bargaining negotiation. Management attempted to stay the course with a win-win approach, but this no longer washed with the union. Can you guess what happened? That’s right – union members walked and went out on strike.

By using an agenda to address the format of the contract negotiations, Bayou Steel failed to consider that any single issue could be so divisive. As the economic issues rose to the foreground of the talks, Bayou Steel no longer had leeway in considering trade-offs. They literally painted themselves into a corner because of their structured of agenda items.

We need to be able to compare and contrast all the issues collectively, and by order of relative importance. Package or multiple offers offer a greater latitude in finding creative solutions as it gives us more to work with, as opposed to dealing with issues on a one-on-one basis through a pre-designed agenda. Planning and using a Concession Strategy effectively can give one side a big power advantage over the other. So be careful to plan your agenda wisely.

Addiction and Family Roles

2010-06-08T16:37:00.000+08:00

By ERIKA KRULL, MS, LMHP

When a family isn’t emotional healthy, everyone begins taking on fairly predictable roles. Usually, this kind of family upset is caused by a drug or alcohol addiction. But it can also be caused by any other disruptive thing that seems to overtake the family’s mental wellness. The key thing is that no one wants to face reality and make necessary changes. This could be someone with a mental illness, severe grief, or chronic illness. All roles are meant to distract from the real problem

Since addiction is the most common reason for these roles to appear, I’ll describe them briefly in the context of drug and alcohol addiction.

Addict – This person uses excuses, minimizes the problem, and refuses to change their behavior. They sneak and lie about their drug use and mishandling of their money because of it. They deny that they have a
problem and make it sound or appear that others have the problem. They allow their emotions to dictate their life by trying to cover them instead of being honest about them. They haven’t been approached about drug rehab, or they have refused to go, or they have been before and have relapsed and are in denial.

Enabler – This is usually the spouse or significant other, sometimes a parent or friend if there is no romantic partner. They stand by the addict helping to pick up the pieces, making more excuses, not exposing the problems in a way that can make them stop. They sometimes try to help but in ways that end up allowing the addiction to continue. Or, they are is as much denial as the addict on how bad it is and they block out all the evidence in their mind that this is happening (or was at risk for happening).

Hero – This is typically the oldest child. They distract from the addiction by being the “good face” on the family by being an overachiever and being a rule follower. They are the do-gooder, but often resent this in the end. They do all sorts of extra work but eventually still don’t get the love and connection they desire.

Scapegoat - This is the opposite of the Hero. The family distracts by blaming the scapegoat for anything and everything. This plays on the normal tendancy of first and second borns to develop some distinct differences from each other as they grow and mature. The Scapegoat becomes the black sheep of the family and takes the hit of responsibility that really belongs to the addict.

Mascot – The Mascot is often one of the younger two kids. They distract from the addiction by being goofy and bringing some light into the family. They try to alleviate the pain in the family, but often go overboard. They usually get in trouble for this but the family needs this role to keep from getting too serious.

Lost Child – The Lost child is what the title says – they are lost. They distract by not being a distraction. They just go with the flow, don’t stand out, don’t make any trouble. With the antics and achievement of the other kids, the low-maintenance kid is what the addiction family needs. Unfortunately, the Lost child often stays lost long into adulthood and has a lot of trouble getting direction in their life, interacting socially, or standing up for themselves.

When addiction is addressed and managed, these roles can eventually dissipate. But if a parent gets sober when a child is nearly ready to leave the nest, the positive effect may be limited. A child of this age has spent their formative years in one of these roles and may need plenty of help making their own changes. It’s never too late to get sober, but you need to know that not everything can really be fixed. As time progresses, the overall impact of parental sobriety goes lower.

http://blogs.psychcentral.com/family/2009/09/addiction-and-family-roles/

2010-06-08T16:21:00.002+08:00

Daddy’s Home, and a Bit Lost

By PEG TYRE

SCOTT BERRY has always been a morning person. For years he would wake up at 5 a.m., shower, shave and, tamping down a twinge of regret, plant quiet kisses on his two sleeping children and his wife, before backing his BMW out of the driveway.

As the family breadwinner, he worked long hours at his job as a technology analyst for a boutique investment firm in Manhattan. The demands of his work and the substantial commute from his home in Darien meant he rarely saw Samantha, 8, and Max, 7, before his wife, Tracey, had them in their pajamas and ready for bed.

Then in December 2007, Mr. Berry, 49, lost his job. He immediately looked for a new position but found opportunities puzzlingly elusive. In mid-2008 came the rout on Wall Street. “The good news is, I don’t feel singled out for unemployment,” he said, running his hand through his light-brown hair.

But his plan for his next job — as an analyst in a venture capital firm or as an executive at a start-up — has been deferred. So Scott and Tracey Berry have faced a complex series of choices about work, money and the roles and responsibilities each would assume in the family. Their goals: to keep their domestic economy from mirroring the national one — and to stay married.

As unemployment has hit a 16-year high and Wall Street shakes off tens of thousands of jobs, affluent couples in the New York area find their families suddenly in flux. It’s not only the high-flying income and the attendant abundance that have evaporated. For many couples, it’s also the assumption of what their marriages would look like; the traditional model — executive husband and stay-at-home wife — may be a little dated, or unworkable.

One mother in TriBeCa, who is married, at least for now, to a Wall Street executive, put it rather bluntly: “My job was to run the household and the children’s lives,” she said. “His job is to provide us with a nice lifestyle.” But his bonus has disappeared, and his annual pay has dropped to $150,000 from $800,000 a year. “Let me just say this,” she said, “I’m still doing my job.”

The Berrys’ marriage isn’t as fraught, and they were never the kind of couple who lived bonus to bonus — which may explain why they, unlike most newly unemployed Wall Street families, are willing to open their lives to a reporter. In good times, they saved, set up college funds for their children and paid off their mortgage. Aside from a modest car loan, they don’t carry any debt. Despite their year of little work, their 11-year marriage seems as solid as their spacious five-bedroom Colonial home.

It helps, too, that they are not the only ones making adjustments. They live in an affluent bedroom community of New York, one whose very name has become synonymous with wealth. The median income for Darien, a village of about 20,000 in Fairfield County, is $180,000. The median price for homes sold last year was well into seven figures. But when Scott Berry walks along Darien’s commercial strip on a weekday, he sees many middle-aged men like him: part of the growing corps of the newly unemployed. At his local Y.M.C.A., the out-of-work Masters of the Universe and the professionals who relied on those huge salaries — architects, landscape designers and high-end contractors — can be found pumping iron together at 10 a.m.

“A lot of them have a deer-in-the-headlights kind of look to them,” he said. “If you have a massive mortgage and your wife has been out of the work force for a decade or more, being laid off can seem crushing.”

But, he added, “If you can learn to roll with it a little bit, you’ll be fine — I mean, you know, probably.”

The couple’s first upheaval was Tracey Berry’s short-lived effort to join the opt-out revolution. Two years ago, she left a job in Manhattan negotiating contracts forRalph Lauren to spend time with her aging parents and children. After her husband’s job search stalled, Tracey, 47, found a job at a local reinsurance firm. It doesn’t nearly make up for her husband’s salary, but she is home by 6 o’clock every night.

Scott’s response to her new job was pure relief.

“If she wanted to be home more and we could swing it financially, I was happy for her to be at home,” he said. “Now, things being what they are, I’m happy for her to work again. I always wanted a marriage of equals. And frankly, having a wife who works or can readily join the work force is a good risk-management strategy.”

Tracey was more ambivalent. “I’m pretty vocal in my marriage,” she said. “I said to him, ‘I thought this was my turn to be home with the kids.’ I wanted another summer with them, but what are you going to do? Beat him up for it? I assumed I’d re-enter the work force at some point, and right now, I’m proud to be able to go out there and earn money.”

Shortly after Scott lost his job, the couple replaced their full-time nanny with a more cost-effective au pair and began choosing long-weekend getaways instead of weeklong family vacations. Some expenses, though, haven’t changed: they still shell out for membership at a local country club (“the most modest one in town,” Tracey said); they rented a condo last summer on Block Island; and they continue to pay hundreds a month for soccer, skating, T-ball and karate lessons for the children. They afford these things by dipping into the savings Scott put away during the flush years.

How to spend is a continuing negotiation — one that sometimes devolves into heated discussions, outright arguments and bouts of sulking. Tracey is trying, often unsuccessfully, to spend less on clothing for herself and the children. “Don’t make me look like a jerk,” she told a reporter, “but I cannot bring myself to buy my children’s clothes at Wal-Mart.”

“But do you have to buy them at Ralph Lauren?” Scott shot back.

The Berrys have been at this long enough to make light of the well-worn nature of their disagreement. “It goes like this,” Scott said. “ ‘How can you complain about me not earning an adequate income, when you can’t control your spending?’ ”

On cue, Tracey chimed in. “And I say, ‘How can you complain about my spending when you don’t have an adequate income?’ ”

To try to keep their spending under control, Scott and Tracey collect their receipts each week. Every Sunday, Scott calculates their weekly expenses. Then he compares the balance in their savings account with the rising cost of college tuition. “There was a time when we had saved up enough to send both kids to Harvard,” he said. “Now I tell myself Harvard is not the only school.” Then he calculates how their dwindling savings will affect their annual retirement income.

“Right about then,” Tracey said, “he blows a gasket.”

At times like this, a big house helps. “We go to separate corners,” Scott said. “I have a big glass of wine and watch TV for couple of hours or do a sudoku puzzle to clear my head.”

Alone in another part of the house, Tracey decompresses by phoning girlfriends and makes a mental list of Scott’s virtues. “The danger is that we’ll have saved enough money for our retirement, but I won’t like him enough to want to spend it with him,” she said wryly, her affection for Scott clear.

IN many ways, couples today have better resources to weather the economic storm. This is the best-educated generation of women in history. If their husbands face a prolonged period of unemployment, women are more qualified than their mothers or grandmothers were to re-enter the work force or expand their jobs and make a significant contribution to the family’s bottom line. Gender roles have softened, too.

“In the past, working women were the target of great resentment,” said Stephanie Coontz, a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., who studies marriage. “Husbands felt emasculated when their wives went to work. All that has changed.”

And while gallons of ink have been spilled about men who don’t do enough housework or don’t do it well, men today are more likely to cook, clean, set up a play date, phone the pediatrician and wash a load of laundry than their fathers ever were.

Which is not to say that they are perfect.

Scott does the daddy stuff with enthusiasm. “I love that he’s a great father,” Tracey said. “He takes them on outings. He coaches soccer. He’s signed them up for a Y.M.C.A. program and they all get Indian names — Samantha is Smiling Fox and Max is Flaming Arrow. It’s so adorable.”

But the vacuuming? “When I come home at the end of the day, the house is cluttered,” Tracey said. “There are dishes in the sink and stuff underfoot. I leave the recycle at the top of the stairs. When I get home, the recycle is just where I left it. I don’t want to be critical, but it’s taken some getting used to.”

Amy Reiss, a divorce lawyer in Manhattan, said that she had seen a spate of women seeking to end their marriages after they re-entered the work force or expanded their careers to replace their husbands’ income. The wives don’t resent working, she said. In fact, they’re pleased to contribute.

But “the husbands become what I call ‘clickers,’ ” Ms. Reiss said. “These are unemployed men who sit on the couch all day, holding the remote and watching TV, unable to step up and take over some of the household tasks and chores associated with raising the kids.”

Those women, she said, come to her looking for an exit strategy. The Berrys are not seeking Ms. Reiss’s services. For one, they are better at coping in lean times. Scott hopes he will be making money again soon: he is consulting on a start-up that may receive financing, which would generate a modest but regular paycheck.

He is still a morning person. The first out of bed, he wakes his wife and helps the children get ready for school. Once the school bus pulls away, he heads for his regular workout at the gym. By 11 a.m., he’s showered and dressed in a pressed oxford shirt and sitting at the computer in his home office. He writes a blog(scottjberry.com). He handles phone calls stemming from his consulting work. He knocks off at about 5 for dinner.

“My job right now is looking for a job,” Scott said. “I may not be getting paid, but when I sit down at my computer I’m ready to work — physically, mentally and psychologically.”

Learning to roll with it? He has become something of an expert. “We’re making a lot of changes,” Scott added. “It isn’t always comfortable, but we’re doing it.”

Tracey sounded more tentative. She and Scott sat on either end of the couch during an interview not long ago as she used two hands to tick off the number of marriages that she knows are foundering or ending.

“Economics isn’t the only reason, of course, but it doesn’t help,” she said. She paused for a moment, considering the distance she and Scott have traveled. Then she shifted her seat to move closer to her husband.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/fashion/11berrys.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Environmental NGOs of Norway

2010-06-07T22:25:00.003+08:00

1)Green Warriors of Norway (Norges Miljøvernforbund) is an idealistic environmental organization, founded in May 1993 with its headquarter in Bergen. The Green Warriors (GW) has active members all over Norway, and regional offices in Bergen (west), Tromsø (north) and Oslo (south+east).
In the eventful years from 1993 until today the GW has rapidly grown towards its goal of being a nation-wide environmental organization. GW is working with all kinds of environmental cases both locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.

2) Eco-agents is the environmental organization for children in Norway.
The Eco-agents is a unique combination of children's culture and a profound commitment to the environment. This distinctively Norwegian phenomenon has now existed for 15 years, and a generation of young adults are already carrying a lot of our involvement and insight with them.
Our aim is to stimulate the childrens interest and love for nature, and to make them realise that the way we live our lives have influence on the environment. Eco-agents always focuses on possibilities, and our goal is to make the voices of the children heard.
Advertisement example : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBo9gj6AHl8

Eco-Agents challenges the parliamentary parties to an environmental competition. Most events organised by them were to encourage the young to challenge the politicians and be active in lending a hand to the green movements, for example proposing a ban on vehicles idling for too long and that parking guards be authorised to hand out fines to those who violate that rule.

3)Natur og Ungdom (NU) which translates Nature and Youth, also known in English as Friends of the Earth Youth Norway is a Norwegian youth environment protecting organisation. It is the only environmentalist youth organisation in Norway. 6,100 members in 80 local groups work on environmental issues all throughout the country. Officially NU is the youth branch of the Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature. The organisation is led by Ola Skaalvik Elvevold.
The main issues the organisation works with include petroleum, public transport, energy and nature conservation. In addition to local groups there is a central board with 14 members that works on national issues and an administration, both located in Oslo.
Natur og Ungdom is a member of Friends of the Earth International and an active participant in the A SEED network (Action for Solidarity, Equality, Environment and Development). It published the magazine Putsj.

In 1967 the Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature (NNV) had announced that they wanted a youth organisation, and the two organisations Norsk Feltbiologisk Ungdomsforening (NFU) and Oslo Katedralskoles Naturvernforening decided to merge on November 18, 1967. The organisation had a difficult start with few members and difficult organisation, but in the 1970s NU got better organised with more local groups. Focus in this period was agriculture. But in the 1970s nuclear porwer became a hot issue in Norway and NU gained organisational strength as it opposed the plans, and won a victory when it was decided to not build nuclear power in Norway.
Through the 1970s and 1980s the organisation worked with many issues, including the Alta controversy, and also to prevent environmental contamination, especially from industry. In 1984 members from NU and Greenpeace chained themselves to the factory Titania in Sokndal in a civil disobedience action to prohibit the dumping of 2.2 million tonnes oil and rockdust mixed with chemicals in Dyngadjupet in Jøssingfjord. This was the first civil disobedience. In 1990 Titania was required to deposit the waste on land, like the environmentalists had demanded.
During the end of the 1980s environmentalism grew among the general population, further strengthening the organisation with more members and local groups. In 1991 NU was the prim organisation in the Rotvoll controversy. In the EU referendum in 1994 NU worked actively against EU membership. During the late 1990s the main focus has been on trying to prevent the building of natural gas power plants in Norway and in the 2000s stopping the opening of the Barents Sea for petroleum production.

2010-06-07T19:08:00.002+08:00

Aviation Security
cockpit doors have been hardened; some pilots are armed; the number of air marshals has increased significantly; and screeners are better trained and more sensitized to the critical role they play as the last line of defense before would-be terrorists board airplanes.
Mass Transit Security
The good news is that, in partnership with the relevant state and local officials, DHS did all the right things after those scares. In various cities around the country, especially those in the
Northeast most dependent upon mass transit and most often targeted by terrorists, we saw increased armed police patrols; the use of bomb-sniffing dogs and the deployment of bomb detection technology; the greater use of surveillance cameras; public awareness campaigns; and, in some places, like New York City, random bag searches.
If I were a terrorist, I would simply wait until these measures were relaxed or repealed and strike then. What needs to happen, of course, is for these measures to be institutionalized on an ongoing basis. But this is exceedingly costly, and DHS has been reluctant to subsidize states’ and localities’ recurring security costs.

Melanie Kwok 10S27
Terrorism(What have been done to tackle terrorism in the United States)

The American Society

2010-06-07T18:48:00.004+08:00

GROUP MEMBERS: Melisa Yeo, Joleen Goh, Lee Puay Ling, Nur Amirah
Chosen country: United States Of America

A) CHANGING ROLES OF MEN AND WOMEN IN WORKPLACE/FAMILY

Despite being a democratic society, it is undeniable that there are and always have been very distinct divisions in the roles of men and women in America. These divisions are deep-rooted in economic, social and religious beliefs throughout history. Women have played many roles in societies throughout history. Throughout the centuries, almost every society has developed very distinct ideas of what activities are proper for women. In some societies, there is no greater honor than to be a woman and in turn a mother. Yet, as in some Asian cultures, the lives of women are of such less value than those of men that the practice of female infanticide has become a widely used device for population control. Over time, many reasons have been given for the gender inequality that exists in society. Women are supposed to be weaker, less aggressive and more caring and nurturing than men. However, the most applied barrier of equality, especially in the workplace, has been woman's ability to bear children. Because only women have the ability to bear children, it has often been viewed that it is thus a woman's ultimate obligation to do so. There has been no scientific evidence though that women have what is called maternal instinct, that is, a natural desire to bear and care for children. From the earliest of times, motherhood has helped to divide men and women in terms of career and family role. However, it is certain that the role of women in workplace and family did experience a clear change, especially after the American Revolution. The change in the role of women throughout these years results in the change in the role of men.

The American Revolution had a deep effect on the philosophical underpinnings of American society. One aspect that was drastically changed by the democratic ideals of the Revolution was the roles of women. Women in the era of the Revolution were responsible for managing the domain of the household. Connected to these activities, women worked in the Homespun Movement. Instead of wearing or purchasing clothing made of imported British materials, Patriot women continued a long tradition of weaving, and spun their own cloth to make into clothing for their families. The context of the years preceding the American Revolution charged this action politically. Just as the spinning and weaving of American cloth became a mechanism of resistance, so did many acts of consumption. Non-importation and non-consumption became major weapons in the arsenal of the American resistance movement against British taxation without representation. Women played a major role in this method of defiance by denouncing silks, satins, and other luxuries in favor of homespun clothing generally made in spinning and quilting bees, sending a strong message of unity against supposed British oppression. As a result of non-importation, many rural communities who were previously unincorporated in the political movements of the day were brought "into the growing community of resistance" because of the appeal "to the traditional values" of rural life. While male suppliers of such services were exempted from military service in exchange for their goods, there was no such recompense for women who did the same thing. Spinning, weaving, and sewing were seen as part of the female province; as patriots they utilized their skills to assist the revolutionary cause. Hence, the idea of republican motherhood was born in this period. The mainstream political philosophy of the day assumed that a republic rested upon the virtue of its citizens. Thus, women had the essential role of instilling their children with values conducive to a healthy republic. During this period, the wife's relationship with her husband also became more liberal, as love and affection instead of obedience and subservience began to characterize the ideal marital relationship. In addition, many women contributed to the war effort through fundraising and running family businesses in the absence of husbands.Whatever gains they had made, women still found themselves subordinated, legally and socially, to their husbands, disenfranchised and with only the role of mother open to them. However, The Declaration of Independence still remained indifferent, stating, "all men are created equal". Nevertheless there was little interest in suffrage, for the most common call for 'women’s rights' involved claims of women’s intellectual equality with men and their right to an adequate education.

After the revolution, women's employment status was not guaranteed, and much of the industrial economy rushed to rehire men. However, in many white collar sectors, such as banking and clerical work, the glass ceiling was moved significantly upward. Both during and after the war, women rarely earned as much in the occupations that became female-dominated (such as cashiers, tellers, and low-level loan officers) as their male colleagues had before. Government investments, such as the GI Bill, fueled suburbanization, and the reuniting of separated spouses fostered the baby boom. With radical political activity suppressed by McCarthyism, consumerism being fostered by the retooling of wartime factories for domestic use, and the nuclear family at one of its historic peaks, women were home bound, as wives and mothers. Eventually a major backlash and reconsideration of women's roles occurred, in Betty Friedan's 1963 exposé The Feminine Mystique, which critiqued contemporary educated American women's socialization and restrictions and judged them to be intolerable. In addition, the Great Depression occurred and highlighted the change in the role of men and women in workplace and family. In 1934, the American Woman’s Association declared that working women were “the employment casualties of the Depression.” Many working women had come from a generation of women that “stressed and exulted in the importance of jobs for women.” They had aspired to better jobs for better wages. The Association reported that “during the Depression years they have had to meet doubt and distrust and fear, loss of morale and disturbance of established ways of living.” As employment opportunities dwindled, everyone seemed to agree that men should hold the few remaining jobs. Men gladly stepped into occupations that women had increasingly held—as social workers, teachers, bookkeepers, and insurance agents. The Economy Act, passed by Congress in 1932, prohibited more than one family member from working for the government. This caused many women to lose their office positions. Most school districts refused to hire married women and fired those who got married. Unemployed men, however, shunned the more menial jobs that were considered “women’s work” and showed little interest in becoming laundresses, domestics, telephone operators, store clerks, typists, or secretaries. As one commentator put it, “Approximately 3,100,000 women are employed as domestics. Which men want to take their places?” Men’s disinterest in the lowest rungs of female employment allowed at least some women to retain their jobs. It was no longer popular for a woman to aspire to independence and a career. Striving for a career was condemned as an antisocial act that deprived another family of income. In 1936, 82 percent of those polled opposed women working. Working women became easy targets for public disdain. Public officials referred to married working women as “undeserving parasites.” One man wrote to his congressman, “Woman’s true place is her home . . . and I do not believe we are again going to have normal and prosperous times until women do return to their homes.” This hostility put women into a double bind, because their labors were often necessary for their family’s survival.

Today, however, Americans have made great strides in accepting and adjusting to new definitions of gender roles. Part of the cause is the increased number of women in the workplace. With the increased presence of women in the workplace, old attitudes and behaviors have had to change. Men and women are more aware of sexual harassment than previously; whereas 20 years ago a woman who refused to have an affair with her boss may have had to quit, she now has other options. Companies are now experimenting with policies that are family-friendly, such as flex time, job sharing, and on-site child care-policies that benefit both men and women. In the egalitarian workplace, some men are concerned about being accused of sexual harassment, and they feel they must be extremely cautious in their everyday dealings with the women they work with; this caution may stifle creativity, some experts say. In addition, women still earn far less money than men do for the same work, even though their salaries are vital to maintaining their families' economic health. Just as women's gender roles have changed, men's gender roles have changed in the last few years. The old model of the "macho man" is less acceptable in today's world than it was even three decades ago, and men are struggling to reinvent themselves. Some men are so dependent on the old roles for their identity that they find themselves at a loss when confronted with new expectations. For example, some men cannot adjust when they discover that their wives or girlfriends earn more money than they do, and end the relationship. It may seem silly but for such men the new options they have regarding gender roles are limited and limiting. Despite great changes in the workplace, life at home is still much the same as it was in past generations. Women do most of the work. Men earn most of the money. And this is not sitting well with women: researchers report that 38 percent have a problem with how much their husbands do. It's a dilemma for women to feel they have the right to choose their own career paths, an opportunity few of their mothers and grandmothers had, and then realize that they are still ruled by many of the same old gender role expectations.

The shifting of gender roles in the past 30 years has been huge. It has happened so quickly that men and women are still trying to sort out what the new roles and rules mean to them. Although women are no longer expected to be the keepers of the house, in reality, they are in most families. Although men are generally open to the successes enjoyed by the women they share their lives with, some still find it hard to celebrate a woman's triumphs because they feel it diminishes their own. However, rather than blaming each other for the situation, men and women are increasingly willing to work together to learn about their new roles. Successful marriage partners learn to negotiate and share tasks. Managers take employees aside and tell them when comments are inappropriate. It will take time to sort out all the implications of the changing gender roles of Americans, but new expectations should result in better workplaces, better relationships,better schools, and better lives.

B) CHANGING ROLES OF MEN AND WOMEN IN OTHER AREAS

In early America, all of a woman’s work comes under the general heading of housewife and it varied from region to region. Despite variations, the activities were much the same throughout the different regions. First came supervision of the house. Women swept, scrubbed, polished, made their own brooms, soap and polish. They carried water, made starch, ironed, carried firewood, built fires, and made candles. They sewed and made everything and they were usually in charge of the family bookkeeping. Politics were out of women's reach and voting rights were also not granted to women.

However in 1756, Lydia Taftwas was the first woman legally allowed to vote in colonial America. She was granted this right by the town meeting of Uxbridge, Massachusetts because of the death of her wealthy husband and eldest son left the family without an adult heir.
Following the American Revolution, women were allowed to vote in New Jersey, but no other state, from 1790 until 1807, provided they met property requirements then in place. In 1807, women were again forbidden from voting in the state.

In June 1848, Gerrit Smith was nominated as the Liberty Party's presidential candidate. At the National Liberty Convention held during June, Smith gave a major address, including in his speech a demand for "universal suffrage in its broadest sense, females as well as males being entitled to vote." The delegates approved a passage in their party platform addressing votes for women: "Neither here, nor in any other part of th world, is the right of suffrage allowed to extend beyond one of the sexes. This universal exclusion of woman... argues, conclusively, that, not as yet, is there one nation so far emerged from barbarism, and so far practically Christian, as to permit woman to rise up to the one level of the human family." At this convention, five votes were placed calling for Lucretia Mott, an activist, to be Smith's vice-president. For the first time in the United States, a woman was nominated for federal executive office. In July, at the Seneca Falls Convention in Upstate New York, activists including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott began a seventy-year struggle by women to secure the right to vote. In 1850, Lucy Stone organized a larger assembly with a wider focus, the National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts. Susan B. Anthony, a native of Rochester, New York, joined the cause in 1852 after reading Stone's 1850 speech. Women's suffrage activists pointed out that blacks had been granted the franchise and had not been included in the language of the United States Constitution's Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments (which gave people equal protection under the law and the right to vote regardless of their race, respectively). This, they contended, had been unjust. Early victories were won in the territories of Wyoming (1869) and Utah (1870), although Utah women were disenfranchised by provisions of the federal Edmunds–Tucker Act enacted by the U.S. Congress in 1887. The push to grant Utah women's suffrage was at least partially fueled by the belief that, given the right to vote, Utah women would dispose of polygamy. It was only after Utah women exercised their suffrage rights in favor of polygamy that the U.S. Congress disenfranchised Utah women. By the end of the nineteenth century, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming had enfranchised women after effort by the suffrage associations at the state level. During the beginning of the twentieth century, as women's suffrage gained in popularity, suffragists were subject to arrests and many were jailed. Finally, President Woodrow Wilson urged Congress to pass what became, when it was ratified in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment which prohibited state and federal agencies from gender-based restrictions on voting. But by the end of the first decade after suffrage,the anticipated “women’s vote” had not appeared, nor had a transformation in women’s political roles emerged. By 1930, only 13 women had gained seats in Congress, seven of them filling mid-term vacancies. In the state legislatures, the showing waslittle better: In 1925, women won almost 150 seats out of approximately 7,500. Democratic national committee woman, Emily Newell Blair, observed, “I know of no politician who is afraid of the woman vote on any question under the sun.” The women’s reform community in the 1920s had not united around a common agenda after suffrage. Post-war conservatism and a split over the question of whether women most needed legal equality or legal protection thwarted unified action. During the 1930s, the economic emergency worked against a renewed interest in women’s rights — unemployment and poverty took precedence over any other problem.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a new wave of feminism arrived. With ties to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the new women's movement took on a wider agenda than the women's suffrage movement had focused on. All these have led to increasing concern over the voting rights of women. Thus over the years, women whose life tended to center around farm and family changed to center around politics.

C) Treatment of the Aged and Disabled

Treatment of the Aged:

Reinforced by the image that is being portrayed by the mass media, present-day Americans hold little respect for the old people. Movies and television have greatly influenced the teenagers and from 1950 onwards, a great culture of youth, influenced by teen heroes like James Dean, emerged and strengthened. This left the old people out of the entire picture and they are no longer seen as a productive member of the family but rather as a burden that drain on the family’s resources. This is evident in the break-up of large extended families after the World War Two period.

This move of breaking up the family into smaller units has led to the shrinking of families and this has affected the older people as they lose their support. Previously, the older people in the family depended on the younger working ones to support them after their retirement or during their “declining years”. However, now that the family has shrunk, they are not enough people to work and support these elderly. Although the government have been coming up with programs to provide the older people with more incentives but it is never enough. For instance, the U.S government spends an average of US$100 a day on an elderly and this sum up 10 percent of the country’s annual budget. Even so, providing elderly healthcare is insufficient to replace for a caring, loving family. Hence, living pass seventy has become a rather bleak prospect, a time of loneliness, poverty and illness to many of the Americans nowadays.

The old people are the U.S are also stereotype as chronically ill, unable to work and provide for themselves, behind the times, slow-thinking and useless financial burdens on the society, by the younger Americans. The idea that old people are engaging in sexual activities or even fall in love are being seen as embarrassing and inappropriate.

However, the above stereotypes are not true and certainly not the poverty notion. Americans over 50 own 75 percent of all American assets and spend half the money. Out of these, a full 70 percent of them actually own their own homes and they are also given the rights to vote and are active in the community to a greater extent than young people.

To assist the ageing population, there are several organization which aims to provide the elderly with a better environment to live in, help them maintain their independence and also to maintain their social status. A good example of such organization is the Administration of Aging (AoA). AoA has been providing for older people through the funding by the Older Americans Act. They provides home and community long-term care, protection of the elder rights and also the health and wellness of the elderly.

Treatment of the Disabled:

Discrimination in employment

In the US, there is a Rehabilitation Act which was established in 1973 that requires every single organizations that receive government’s funding to provide the disabled with accessibility programs and services. In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) have been established but it only came into effect in 1992. This law prohibits private employers, state and local governments, employment agencies and labor unions from discriminating against employees with disabilities in job application procedures, hiring, firing, advancement, compensation, job training, or in the terms, conditions and privileges of employment. This is also applicable to organizations like retail businesses, movie theatres and restaurants. These organizations are to make “reasonable accommodation” to individuals with different needs. This policy is used to protect anyone with either a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits him/her to one or more of the major life activites, a record of such an impairment or those regarded having such an impairment.

African Americans and disability

As reflected by the 2000 U.S. Census, African Americans have the highest rate of disability of 20.8 percent and that is slightly higher than the overall disability rate of 19.4 percent. Despite the fact that people have come to understand and accept different types of disability, there still remains a mark attached to the disabled community. For instance, disabled African American women have to face “triple jeopardy” syndrome, a term used by Doctor Eddie Glenn of Howard University to describe the situation. They have to face tremendous discrimination due to their disability, their race and their gender.

Social administration

The US Social Security Administration defines disability in terms of inability to perform substantial gainful activity (SGA), by which it means “work paying minimum wage or better”. The agency pairs SGA with a "listing" of medical conditions that qualify individuals for benefits.The Social Security Administration provides monthly incentives to the disabled and retired, their spouse and children, and also to the survivors of insured workers. In the year 2004, more than 47 million Americans have received approximately US$492 billion in Social Security benefit. These programs are being financed by mandatory contributions paid by the employers, employees and self-insured individuals. These revenues are placed into a trust fund which is also known as the Retirement, Survivors, Disability Insurance (RSDI). Another program, the Social Security Income (SSI) helps to meet the needs of the elderly, blind and disabled americans. Recipients of this program are being paid out of the general revenue of the U.S and an estimated figure of 7 million people benefit from this program.

Education

The American government has come up with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which aims to address the educational needs of the children who have disabilities in learning from birth to age 21. However, not all children with disabilities are qualified to benefit under this program. Only children with mental retardation, hearing impairments, speech or language impairments, visual impairments, serious emotional disturbance, orthopedic impairments, autism, traumatic brain injury or other specific learning disabilities are entitled to benefit. Under this act, public schools are to provide disabled children with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) they meets the needs of the child. It specifies the services to be provided and how often, describes the student's present levels of performance in school and how the student's disabilities affect his or her academic progression, and specifies accommodations and modifications to be provided for the student. However, if the parents are not satisfied with the IEP provided by the school, they have all rights to come up with their own IEP, should it be unfair to the child.

Insurance

To ensure that there is no discrimination against disabled drivers, there is a law in California which states that it is illegal for insurers to refuse an individual of a car insurance if he or she is a properly licensed driver. It is also illegal to refuse insuring a car driver even if he is blind. However, the insurance company is allowed to exclude coverages for injuries or damages which are incurred while a blind driver is operating behind the wheels of the vehicle. This law is actually set up to allow blind people to buy and insure a car which allows their family members, caretakers or friends to drive them around and not to allow them to drive the car.

D) ROLE OF FAMILY AND PARENTS

In the year 2006, it is said that 12.9 million families in the U.S were headed by a single parents, 80% of which were headed by a female. Since 1994, single parenthood in US REMAIND AT 9% ALTHOUGH IT NEARLY DOUBLED IN 1970.

Single parent families are said to have a higher risk of facing poverty than coupled families, and on average single mothers have poorer health than couple mothers. The main provlem that single mothers and their children in the US today face is Poverty and female-geaded single parent families comprise comprise 50% of families living in poverty in US. Statistics show in the U.S. Census Bureau that children raised by both parents grow up with more financial and educational advantages.

There are usually both parents and two children in a typical British family. In most British families both parents work. Very young children go to nursery schools or stay at home with a childminder. Old people usually live in their own homes or a nursing home if they cannot look after themselves. British parents try to spend their free time with their children going to the cinema, museums or parks. During the week they usually have dinner together

For most Americans, family means the infrastructure shaping their life’s journey in one way or another from the cradle to the
grave. Whatever form it takes, family provides the earliest experiences of nurturing, security, and socialization. It provides a
platform, a foundation for entry into the broader community and a roadmap for navigating the vast network of interpersonal and institutional relations comprising society. If a trend is observed in families, it will most likely surface at some other level of the social order.

How parenting skills will have an effect on their children

Parents who communicated and were involved with their children at ages 10 and 11 would set clear expectations for their children’s behavior, practiced good supervision towards them, consistent discipline, and minimized conflict in the family. Their children were more likely to see alcohol use as harmful and less likely to initiate alcohol use early. They were also less likely to misuse alcohol at ages 17 to 18. The lack of parental support, monitoring, and communication and lack of feeling close to their parents have been significantly related to frequency of drinking, heavy drinking, and drunkenness among adolescents. The harshness or any hostility or recjection the parents have towards children have also been found to significantly predict adolescent drinking and alcohol-related problems. Research have been made and it showed that poor parenting practices are associated with early childhood deficits in social skills and self-regulation, particularly with regard to aggressive behavior, which result in early minor delinquency and rejection from mainstream peer groups. Children who feel rejected then affiliate with deviant peers; in turn, participation in deviant peer networks increases the risk for drinking and other forms of substance use.

The Social Influences families have towards teens

Family and peers can influence drinking behavior of teens actively by explicitly discouraging alcohol use or by providing models of drinking behavior. A Columbia University study reports that adolescents whose fathers have more than two drinks a day have a 71 percent greater risk of substance abuse. As adolescents develop, drinking behavior becomes less influenced by parents and more influenced by peers hence parents should play a guiding role to prevent them from taking the wrong path. Perceptions of how much peers drink may exert a stronger influence on an individual’s drinking behavior than the actual level of peer drinking. Parents can exert a moderating influence on the drinking behavior of their adolescent children by actively monitoring their alcohol use. They can be a role model and kick of the drinking habit if they have one.

Importance of families

Dr. Vern Bengtson, professor of gerontology and sociology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles once said that "Families through time have changed, but they have not declined in importance to Americans. Multi-generational bonds represent a valuable resource for families in the 21st century and are becoming more important than nuclear family ties for well-being and support over the course of our lives."

Modern Woodmen of America, a fraternal life insurance organization dedicated to helping people achieve quality family life, sponsored a survey based on 1,001 random telephone interviews and poll results indicated that most Americans aged 25 to 65 believe it is good for children to know their relatives and family history. Americans connect with their families through a variety of gathering activities, such as holiday meals, weddings, birthday parties, reunions, family vacations and less formal get-togethers. The reasons are simple on which why do Americans see the importance of their family is that Americans cite everything from the noble desire to provide their children with the opportunity to know their relatives and to learn about their family heritage to participating just because family events are fun. Historically, family relationships have played the most basic role of all -- ensuring survival. Today, most people rely on family interactions to provide an affirming, positive experience. They provide a sense of support and an identity of who we are and what's unique about us."

"Intergenerational and extended family relationships not only create a sense of identity but, even today, are a valuable resource for exchanging information, services and goods," says Dr. Bengtson. Close extended family relationships can have educational, economic and professional implications. People with extended family contacts tend to be more literate and reach out to get more education and better jobs. People who cultivate extended family relationships are at an advantage emotionally and are often more successful in their personal lives. Both children and adults benefit from these relationships during times of great stress, such as tragedy, death or divorce. They also reap the rewards when joyous events enter their lives, whether it is a new job, a new child or a milestone birthday. It is even suspected that interaction with extended family can have a positive effect on your lifespan and physical health. Even though technology allows families to keep in touch and share personal milestones more easily, nothing replaces the experience of actually gathering in the same room with family.

Povery in South America

2010-06-07T14:52:00.001+08:00

Group members: Lau Yu Fan, Perry Tan, Joshua tan, Chiam Dao Wen, Edwin Chua
Issue: Poverty in South America

Guidelines:
1. Case Study
2. Causes of poverty
3. Solutions of poverty
4. Evaluation of solutions

Written Sources:
· POVERTY
Publisher: Opposing Viewpoints Series
Series Editor: David L. Bender & Bruno Leone
Published:
· The Growth Illusion
Author: Richard Douthwaite
Published: 1993

Case Study:

There are approximately 534 million people living in the Latin American/Caribbean area. Of these, 132 million live on less than $2 a day, and 57 million live on less than $1 a day.
About 70-75 percent of South America is suffering from poverty. However, this poverty is caused mainly by its economic growth.

Causes of poverty:

New technologies cause poverty
It has been widely assumed that an obvious factor in the socio-economic growth of nations is the steady introduction of new technologies into the workplace is.
However, British economist and journalist Richard Douthwaite rejects this proposition. He contends that in the majority of cases new technologies have profoundly weakened the economic well-being of a society. Douthwaite stresses that technological advances in industry contribute to joblessness and ultimately promote poverty.

Douthwaite's book The Growth Illusion depicts the interrelationship of technology and social changes in the modern world.
New technologies almost always destroy more jobs than they create. It has taken 180 years for the evidence that this is so to become apparent because, until very recently, the jobs which were lost in the Third World, where growing poverty and underemployment were blamed on the laziness and stupidity of the natives.
Globalization
Globalization has increased the standard of living in more developed countries, and as a result, the markets of these countries demand a higher standard of good. However, Less well-developed countries are unable to cope with the increased standards and therefore are stuck producing ‘inferior’ goods. Inferior goods do not bring about enough revenue to produce better goods and the lack of revenue for Research and Development means that factories continue producing the inferior goods. And the vicious cycle repeats itself.

Solutions for poverty:
One main contender for the cure of poverty is Communism. This is based on the idea that communism seeks to create a society free from all distinctions like class with the means of production being commonly owned by the people. As a result, money earned is shared evenly among everyone. This rids the poverty issue as it means that there is neither rich nor poor.

Evaluation of solution:
Although the idea behind communism is perfect, we are, in fact, dealing with imperfect subjects. Communism does not take into account the basic greed of humans. There is no point in working if one gets the same pay as others, therefore, the individual will depend on others to provide for him.
However, multiply that by a whole nation and all the flaws in the system show up. People start to become lazy, hoping that the next guy would pick up what one left off and society starts to crumble.
10S19

human efforts on saving the marine life

2010-06-07T00:35:00.003+08:00

humans have taken lots of effort into saving the marine life, especially nowadays where the weather conditions are so terrible and so many pollutions from the human race.

In America, the Cigarette Butt Advisory Group (CBAG) has banned the act of smoking at beaches as it it really, really bad for the environment. The chemicals from just one filtered cigarette butt are strong enough to kill half the fish living in a one liter container of water, according to research conducted by Richard Grasberg, a San Diego State University public health researcher and member of CBAG. Marine animals will also have difficulty eating and digesting food once they have ingested particles from cigarettes. Since cigarette butts are the most frequently collected pieces of trash at beach cleanups — 340,221 were picked up in a single day in 2009 — they represent a major threat to marine life. In addition, cigarette filters are made of cellulose-acetate, which is non-biodegradable. They are considered as toxic wastes.
Not only will this law reduce the number of smokers due to the decreasing number of legal places to smoke, but it will also improve the condition of the environment at the beaches, and also save the marine life.

Not only in the area of land pollution, but pollution in the sea itself is a great problem.
Oil from a massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico began to wash ashore along the Gulf Coast this evening after BP asked the U.S. government for help cleaning up the mess and faint fingers of oily sheen could be seen lapping at the Louisiana shoreline.
Environmental impact: As the oil approached the coastline, biologists said it threatened as many as 400 species, including sea turtles and dolphins
Efforts to control the oil spills:
• BP asked the U.S. Department of Defense for advanced imaging technology and other equipment to locate oil spill areas so as to contain the spill
• 1,100 people are working on the cleanup effort, which so far has collected 685,000 gallons of oil and water from the polluted Gulf.
• The White House said 174,060 feet of flotation booms had been deployed to corral the floating oil. It said an additional 243,260 feet is available and 265,460 feet has been ordered. 76 tugs, barges and skimmers were on scene to help in containment and cleanup, along with six fixed-wing aircraft, 11 helicopters, 10 remotely operated vehicles, and two mobile offshore drilling units.
• BP is using chemical dispersants to break up the oil -- pumping them all the way down to the leaking wellhead to keep the crude oil from reaching the surface.
• Local fishermen are allowed to assist in the expected cleanup. Prison inmates are trained to help clean up wildlife harmed by oil slicks moving toward shore.

Australia has some of the world’s most intact marine areas. Its tropical waters include the Great Barrier Reef, one of the world’s iconic marine systems. In addition, its southern temperate waters are highly biodiverse, with many species restricted to those seas. Australian marine areas include productive and diverse areas in both tropical and temperate seas that remain relatively undisturbed.

The Pew Charitable Trusts’ marine work is aimed at preserving the biological integrity of marine ecosystems and primarily focuses on efforts to curb overfishing, reduce bycatch and prevent the destruction of marine habitat in Australia.
Pew’s advocacy efforts, conducted through marine conservation campaigns, seek to protect the nation’s fisheries and ocean wildlife, including marine mammals, both in the Australia and around the world.

Established in 1977, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) is an international non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization in Australia. Their mission is to end the destruction of habitat and slaughter of wildlife in the Australia oceans in order to conserve and protect ecosystems and species.

Sea Shepherd uses innovative direct-action tactics to investigate, document, and take action when necessary to expose and confront illegal activities on the high seas. By safeguarding the biodiversity of their delicately-balanced ocean ecosystems, Sea Shepherd works to ensure their survival for future generations.

It is seen that Australia has a lot of efforts done in order to conserve marine life, not only in Australia, but also around the world. Efforts are mostly based on campaigns done by non-profit societies so as to educate the people there. There are many organizations available to address the marine debris problem, and cooperation is being sought from industries, fishers, non-governmental organizations, and Economy representatives. In fact, much is done to minimize the problem: outreach and education – not only by disseminating information, but seeking ways to regularize the exchange of scientific research and data, monitoring/data collection and research, engaging stakeholders – establishing net collection points, establishing gear repair, re-use and recycling centres among others, business and industry involvement – insurance companies, manufacturers, innovation and incentives for proper disposal, economic impacts, regulation, compliance, institution and infrastructure.

Parents As Role Models

2010-06-06T23:33:00.001+08:00

While television and other media have made it a practice to anoint well-known celebrities as positive role models for kids, the great majority of people still believe that parents should be the foremost role models of their children. The following is a compilation of various ways that can help parents become better role models for their kids.

In terms of nurturing children, the most common comment is to show your love and concern. Tell them you love them every day and show affection daily through hugs, kisses and touches. In spite of busy schedules, make time for special family fun activities. Also make the effort to meet your child's friends to build stronger rapport with them and to gauge the influence they exert on your kids.

Understanding is another key in becoming an effective role model for your child.

As the saying goes, "Understand - don't take a stand." Communication is vital and should always be a two-way street. Listen to your kids and find out what's going on in their lives and if anything is bothering them. Let them know that they can talk to you about anything under the sun. It is important to remember that children who have good communication with their parents are more likely to ask for their advice than turn to their peers.

Parents constantly demand respect from their children, but remember that is it is not something that can be taken for granted. Like most things of real value, respect has to be earned. And oftentimes, the best way to earn respect is to give respect. This also means that you have to learn to empathize, to put yourself in your kid's shoes and understand what it means to be him. And always try to avoid putting your children in situations where they feel disregarded, disrespected, humiliated or embarrassed. Such situations can sometimes leave deep emotional scars.

Remember that you have to teach your children to respect themselves as well. Teach them to stand up for themselves without putting their safety at risk. Discuss ways to solve problems without fighting. Make them aware that fighting never solves a problem. Most importantly, advise them that physical force or intimidation does not win respect, rather, it is the quality of one's character that wins respect.

Keith Shepherdson 10S16

Source:http://lifestyle.ezineseeker.com/parents-as-role-models-267f5e32dd.html

2010-06-06T23:02:00.002+08:00

The Changing Place of Women in Traditional Religion

July 17th, 2009 ·

by: welmer

As women are becoming increasingly dominant in academia and the philosophically oriented professions, more and more are beginning to take on authority in matters of spirituality. It is not only in the more liberal Protestant churches and Jewish temples in America that we see this, but in the Catholic Church as well. There are even hints that women are beginning to step up and preach Islam. It appears that only Orthodox Judaism has held a very strict gender line; although I cannot say for sure that this is the case, it certainly seems to have maintained tradition to a greater extent than most other religions. As far as Hinduism and Buddhism are concerned, they are fairly inconsequential in America — at least for now.

Having been raised Catholic during a time of great change in the Church – the 1970s-80s – I never quite understood how consequential the changes the Church had gone through following the Vatican II Council were until I was an adult and read the history. I studied Latin in school, but heard precious little in church, and the role of the priest did not seem significantly different from the women who read from the lectern during most services. I later learned that my particular church had become a haven for lesbians, and was forced to curtail its activities following then Cardinal Ratzinger’s evaluation of the Seattle Archdiocese, which was sparked by some strange politics and practices in the early 1980s, including political support for Communist insurgencies in Latin America, gay activism and the widely ignored – and widespread – indulgence in pederasty.

These practices have changed, and the Church has taken on a more traditional demeanor, but the damage has already been done, and it seems that more and more men are fleeing religion, viewing it as an apparently hostile and inscrutable institution (this has some parallels with the male flight from higher education). So what we are seeing today is women defining Christianity from every part of the spectrum. We have women like Katherine Jefferts-Schori heading up the Episcopalian Church in the US and taking it down the path of outright, flaming heresy, and then we have a number of more conservative Christian women writing their own opinions about their particular church, coming close to preaching in their own right. Many conservative Christians celebrate the appearance of conservative female Christian writers, but they seem to forget that this upsets the entire notion of Christianity, which is that the Church shall be led, first and foremost, by men. There is really no argument about this in scripture.

What this says to me is that the decline of Christianity is by no means over. In fact, I would argue that even conservative women, if they take on authority in their particular religion, will only hasten the process. The truth is that it is demoralizing for men to have to listen to a female know-it-all preach to them about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and most young men will in all likelihood reject religion entirely, as they see it as offering no escape from the submissive role they must assume in all relationships with women in the secular world. Who could imagine that a shrill priestess could compel young men to get married, when they have been chafing under female authority from the time they first learned to walk on their own two feet?

The emergence in the mainstream of American women assuming authority in matters of religion is a clear indication of the impending collapse of the social norms that have sustained our society for centuries. It’s anyone’s guess what will replace them, but a growing number of people are suggesting Islam will ultimately prevail over a weakened, spiritually emasculated West, just as Christianity vanquished the tired paganism of the Roman Empire.

source: http://www.welmer.org/2009/07/17/the-changing-place-of-women-in-traditional-religion/

Nurulhuda Suhaila, Nurul Raqiah, Lee Xin Hui (10A07)

Bringing Up Kids The Right Way

2010-06-06T22:31:00.002+08:00

Mothers face an uphill task bringing up their kids in today’s materialistic world. They face a greater responsibility and challenge today than ever before,in bringing up the kids as responsible and worthy citizens of the world.

Children are the future of the world and it is of utmost importance that they be taught the right values and correct thinking. Given the present scenario, where our world has shrunk and boundaries have been erased by advancing information technology, tolerance levels have hit an all time low the world over. It is high time we gear up to impart training for our kids which focuses mainly on positive emotions, all encompassing views, with the sole aim of creating responsible world citizens.

The family as a close knit unit is the right place for the child to start learning these important lessons of life. The mother being the key figure in the child’s life during the formative years plays the most important role in molding the thought processes and emotions of the little one. A calm and composed mother makes her child feel secure and sends out the message to the little one that she is in charge and that there is nothing to fear. As the child grows, confidence in the abilities of the mother increases and the child will form easy relationships with the dad and other siblings and anyone who the mother interacts with. There is an important point that moms have to bear in mind; that she should in no way exhibit any negative emotions or feelings in the presence of her child, at least till the child is about 6-7 years of age. Raising children with good values and moral behavior should be the all important duty of parents. By the time the child is about 6-7 years of age, the child should be able to respect adults, what belongs to others, should exhibit good behavior outside their homes and interact amicably and cheerfully with their peers.

Children are given to irrational behavior at times and mothers should relate to them at their level to bring them around to her point of view, at the same time make allowances once in a while. The ability of a child to understand and grasp good moral behavior would be different during the various developmental stages and as they journey through life as toddlers, adolescents and young adults. Each stage requires a different mode of handling and the extent to which allowances can be made in their favor. As teenagers, the children should be given more freedom to do the things they would like to do, but they should be taught to do so responsibly and also learn to accept the consequences of their actions and set it right if the need arises. This would teach them to shoulder responsibility and recognize right from wrong and by the time they are young adults, they would have enough experiences and would be ready to start their life on their own.

Mothers are intuitive to the emotions, feelings and actions of their kids because they are closely involved in bringing them up and she is the best person to inculcate and instill in them good habits, moral behavior and values. An intelligent mother would teach by example, communicates with her kids at all times, keep track of the kind of friends they interact with, especially when the kids reach their teens. Mothers with teenagers know only too well how tough parenting at that stage is and would do well to invite their friends over once in way and mingle with them. It would make the children proud to have a mom who cares for the friends as well, because children in their teens tend to attach a great deal of importance to their friendships. This is also an excellent way to keep track of your teenager’s lifestyle.

Parenting is a tough commitment, a long arduous journey; but when you look at the fine young adults you have reared, you know you have done your duty well and have made a great contribution towards a better world.

Call for junk food ads ban to tackle soaring child diabetes in UK

2010-06-06T22:16:00.004+08:00

A GROUP of more than 100 diabetes experts has called for laws banning all forms of advertising of "unhealthy foods" that targets children.

The specialists, brought to together by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, looked at all the evidence available on how best to tackle rising rates of Type 2 diabetes, which they said was a major health threat.

They concluded that one measure would be to ban advertising directed at children for unhealthy products – such as fast food, crisps, chocolate and sugary drinks – to combat the obesity which increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes.

The group said current restrictions on television advertising during children's programmes should extend to all ads, including those in newspapers, magazines and on billboards, to stop an increase in the number of obese youngsters.

In January 2008, a total ban on adverts for unhealthy food and drink products around TV programmes for under-16s came into force.

The experts said preventing an increase in the number of youngsters who are obese would cut the risk of more people developing Type 2 diabetes.

The group also called for tighter regulations of the food, drink and catering industry following their meeting last week.

Dr Scott Ramsay, lead organiser of the event, said: "Rates of obesity and diabetes are increasing at alarming rates and pose one of the most serious health challenges of this time.

"In response to this, diabetes experts from across the UK have come together to call on the Scottish and UK governments to demonstrate greater leadership in tackling this crisis.

"In particular we believe that the lessons from effective legislation on smoking should be used to promote healthier diets, increased physical activity and to inform transport and planning policy.

"This should involve tighter regulation of the food and drink industry and the extension of restrictions on 'less healthy' food and drink advertising in children's television programmes to all forms of advertising aimed at children."

The recommendations will be sent to the Scottish Government and the Department of Health at Westminster.

Bridget Turner, head of policy at charity Diabetes UK, said: "As a result of increasing obesity levels among young people in the UK, we are now seeing cases of Type 2 diabetes – historically a condition to affect the over-40s – in children as young as seven.

"This situation was almost unheard of just 20 years ago and should act as the wake-up call for the new coalition government to urgently push through legislation to ban all junk food advertising aimed at children."

However, Ian Barber of the Advertising Association said there was little evidence that advertising was a main driving factor behind obesity. "Advertising might influence which brand you choose, but there is very little evidence that it drives consumption," he said.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said: "Television advertising is reserved to Westminster, but the Scottish Government has introduced a range of measures to improve children's diets and encourage them to be more active."

http://news.scotsman.com/health/Call-for-junk-food-ads.6298171.jp

Lee Tuck Chong (10S25)