The Concept Of Identity Politics

The Concept Of Identity Politics Identity is about belonging, about what you have in common with some people and what differentiates you from others. At its most basic it gives you a sense of personal location, the stable core to your individuality. But it is also about your social relationships, your complex involvement with others, and in the modern world these have become ever more complex and confusing. Each of us live with a variety of potentially contradictory identities, which battle within us for allegiance: as men or women, black or white, straight or gay, able-bodied or disabled, British or European The list is potentially infinite, and so therefore are our possible belongings. Which of them we focus on, bring to the fore, identify with, depends on a host of factors. At the centre, however, are the values we share or wish to share with others. Identity politics was initially defined by and for the new social movements that came to public consciousness from the late 1960s: the black movement, feminism, lesbian and gay liberation and so on. The question of integrating these creative but diffuse and potentially divisive forces into the political mainstream has been part of the agony of the Left during the last decade. Issues of identity are now, however, at the centre of modern politics. When Mrs Thatcher utters anathemas against Brussels and all its works, or interfers in the details of the history curriculum, she is engaged in an exercise in delineating a cultural and political identity, in this case of Britishness, which she wants us to share. When President Gorbachev discourses on our common European home he is striving to re-form our perception of the Soviet identity, and to re-fashion our idea of Europe. When the Bradford mullahs organize simultaneously affirming and fashioning an identity as Muslims, but also as a bla ck British community entitled to the protection of the blasphemy laws like Anglicans and Catholics and evangelicals. When we mourn with students in Beijing, or express solidarity with black South Africans, or run (or sing, or joke) for the world, we are striving to realise our identities as members of the global village, as citizens of the world. Identities are not neutral. Behind the quest for identity are different, and often conflicting values. By saying who we are, we are also striving to express what we are, what we believe and what we desire. The problem is that these beliefs, needs and desires are often patently in conflict, not only between different communities but within individuals themselves. All this makes debates over values particularly fraught and delicate: they are not simply speculations about the world and our place in it; they touch on fundamental, and deeply felt, issues about who we are and what we want to be and become. They also pose major political questions: how to achieve a reconciliation between our collective needs as human beings and our specific needs as individuals and members of diverse communities, how to balance the universal and the particular. These are not new questions, but they are likely, nevertheless, to loom ever-larger as we engage with the certainty of uncertainty that characterise s new times. The Return of Values This is the background to a new concern with values in mainstream politics. Most notoriously, Mrs Thatcher has invoked Victorian values and has pronounced about everything from soccer hooliganism, to religion, to litter. Even the Labour Party, in an uncharacteristic burst of philosophising, has produced a statement on Democratic Socialist Aims and Values. And these are but the tips of an iceberg. Such flurries have not been entirely absent in the past from British political and cultural history. But on the whole, from the Second World War until recently, the political class eschewed too searching a discussion of values, preferring, in Harold Macmillans world-weary remark, to leave that to the bishops. During the years of the social-democratic consensus, welfarism, with its commitment to altruism and caring, provided a framework for social policy, but offered little guidance on the purposes of the good society. Similarly, in the sphere of private life, the most coherent framework of moral regulation, that enshrined in the permissive reforms in the 1960s of the laws relating to homosexuality, abortion, censorship etc, is based on a deliberate suspension of any querying of what is right or wrong. It relies instead on subtle distinctions between what the law may accept for public behaviour in upholding public decency, and what can be tolerated in private when the curtains are closed. Most of us are probably quietly grateful for such small mercies. As the postwar consensus has crumbled, however, the search for more or less coherent value-systems has become rather more fevered. On a personal level some people have moved promiscuously through drugs and alternative lifestyles to health fads and religion; a number seek to be born again. Perhaps most of us just share a vague feeling that things are not quite right. On the level of politics, various fundamentalisms, on Left and Right, have burst fort h, each articulating their own truth, whether it be about the perils of pornography, the wrongs done to animals, the rights and wrongs of this or that religion, or the marvels of the market economy.   There is a new climate where values matter, and politicians, willy-nilly, are being drawn into the debate. Speaking of values, as the philosopher Paul Feyerabend has said, is a roundabout way of describing the kind of life one wants to lead or thinks one wants to lead. 1 Mrs Thatcher has been clearer about the sort of life she wants us to lead than any other recent political leader. She does not trust her bishops, so the values of the corner-shop and the cautious housewife have expanded inexorably into the culture of enterprise and the spiritual significance of capitalism. From her paean to Victorian values in the run-up to the 1983 General Election to her address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in May 1988, Mrs Thatchers moral outlook has had, in Jonathan Rabans phrase, a peculiar integrity. 2 Questions of value have traditionally been more central to socialist debates than to conservatism but during the 1970s and early 1980s the nervous collapse of the Left allowed little room for such niceties. Recently, there have been welcome signs of a revival of concern with basic values. The Labour Partys 1988 statement, Democratic Socialist Aims and Values, intended to frame the partys policy review, may have been too bland for many peoples taste (The true purpose of democratic socialism is the creation of a genuinely free society) but it was the first time since 1917 that the Party had attempted to define its purposes, and in a recognizable philosophical tradition (essentially the rights based liberalism of the American philosopher, John Rawls). At the same time the Party seems to be attempting to resurrect the half-buried collectivist traditions of the British population. The lyrical Kinnock election broadcast in 1987 subliminally told us of the importance of rootedness and be longing as the basis for political advance. The Labour Partys poster campaign early in 1989 The Labour Party. Our party similarly articulated a sense of shared values, of communal spirit, lying latent in the collective unconscious. In part, of course, these Labour Party innovations illustrate the wizardry of ad-agency skills, but it is not too fanciful to see them as a reflection of broader tendencies towards reasserting universal humanistic values, which transcend conventional political divisions. In their different ways, President Gorbachev and green politics have made an impact because of their expression of a human solidarity underlying the divisions of the world. Gorbachevs address to the United Nations in 1988 turned on a call to respect universal human values, and looked forward to an ending of the arbitrary divisions between peoples. Green philosophy calls on the same sense of our common destiny and interdependence, as human beings and as fellow inhabitants of spaceship ea rth, and in doing so claims to displace traditional divisions between Left and Right. It is impossible to underestimate the power of these various (and perhaps sometimes contradictory) appeals to human solidarity after a decade dominated by an ethic of human selfishness. We are reminded that what we have in common as human beings is more important than what divides us as individuals or members of other collectivities. Difference Nevertheless there are difficulties for the Left in an all-embracing humanism. As a philosophical position it may be a good starting point, but it does not readily tell us how to deal with difference. As President Gorbachev could bitterly affirm, it is difference economic, national, linguistic, ethnic, religious and the conflicting identities and demands that diversity gives rise to, that poses a major threat to perestroika, and to human solidarity. If ever-growing social complexity, cultural diversity and a proliferation of identities are indeed a mark of the postmodern world, then all the appeals to our common interest as humans will be as naught unless we can at the same time learn to live with difference. This should be the crux of modern debates over values. In confronting the challenge of social and moral diversity, the responses of Left and Right are significantly different. The Right has a coherent, if in the long run untenable, view of the moral economy. At its most extrem e, expressed in Mrs Thatchers dictum that there is no such thing as society, only individuals and their families, difference becomes merely a matter of individual quirks or pathologies. Social goods are products of individual wills or desires, mediated by family responsibilities. In the economic sphere, this leads to a privileging of individual choice, the essence as Mrs Thatcher put it during the 1987 election campaign of morality. Rut moral choice, in turn, particularly with regard to issues such as sexuality, is limited by the commitment to a traditional concept of domestic obligation, in and through the family. The Left, on the other hand, is heir to a strong sense of collective identities, of powerful inherited solidarities derived from class and work communities, and of different social constituencies, however inadequately in the past it has been able to deal with them. Multi-culturalism, as it was articulated from the 1960s in the legislation on racial equality, embodied a notion of different communities evolving gradually into a harmonious society where difference was both acknowledged and irrelevant. In rather less hopeful times, the commitment to the co-existence of different value-systems is implied in the statement on Democratic Socialist Aims and Values: Socialists rejoice in human diversity. But the Left has been less confident and sure-footed when faced by the reality of difference. When the Livingstone-led Greater London Council attempted to let a hundred flowers bloom at County Hall in pursuit of a new majority of minorities, the response of the Labour Party establishment varied from the sceptical to the horrified. Nor should we be entirely surprised at that: despite its political daring, and commendable commitment to those hitherto excluded from the political mainstream, it was difficult to detect behind the GLC policy anything more coherent than the belief that grass-roots activity and difference in itself were prime goods. Empowerment, yes; but whom should the Left empower? The Salman Rushdie crisis has dramatised the absence of any clear-cut philosophy on the Left. The Rushdie affair is important for socialists not simply because it concerns the fate of an individual (and an individual of the Left at that) but because it underscores in the most painful way the dil emmas of diversity. At its simplest we have an apparent conflict of absolutes: the right of an author to freedom of speech, to challenge whomsoever he wishes in a democratic society, set against the claims of a distinctive moral community not to have its fundamental religious beliefs attacked and undermined. Rut of course the real divisions are more complex and profound. The Left has not on the whole been willing to endorse an absolute right of free speech. On the contrary it has supported campaigns against racist and sexist literature, whilst a strong minority has supported the banning of pornography.   On the other side, the Muslim communities at the centre of the crisis are themselves not monolithic, bisected as they inevitably are by antagonisms of class and gender, and by political conflicts. At the same time the issues raised do not exist only in a meta-realm of principle: they work their way through the murky world of politics, in this case the complexities of international politics as well as the ward by ward, constituency by constituency problems of Labour politicians. Nevertheless, there is a central question at the heart of the Rushdie affair, and it concerns the possibilities and limits of pluralism in a complex society. Lets take as an example the question of religious education in schools: the government by insisting under the 1988 Education Reform Act that there should be a daily act of Christian worship in maintained schools is in effect asserting the centrality of the Christian tradition to, in Mrs Thatchers words, our national heritage For centuries it has been our very life-blood. People with other faiths and cultures are always, of course, welcome in our land, but their beliefs can only, by implication, ever hope to have a secondary position in relation to ours. Labour, however, accepts a less monolithic view of our religious past and present. As a result it seems prepared to support the principle of state-funding of separate fundamentalist Muslim schools. There is a certain multi-cultural rationale in this: if Anglican, Jewish and Roman Catholic schools are supported by the state, there seems no logic in not supporting the schools of other faiths as well. But schools transmit cultural values, some of which in the case of fundamentalists run counter to oft-declared values of the Left. In this case, the schools will be based on a principle of sex-segregation which elsewhere Labour opposes. As a letter to the Guardian from Southall Black Sisters put it, the Labour Party is prepared to abandon the principle of equality where black women are concerned. Instead, they deliver us into the hands of male, conservative and religious forces within our communities, who deny us our right to live as we please.5 This underlines the danger of seeing communi ties as unified wholes, rather than as the locus of debate and divisions. Not surprisingly, the multi-culturalist values of the Labour Party seem as likely to cause confusion, conflict and distrust as the explicitly mono-culturalist views of the Right. It is ironically appropriate that these dilemmas should have been brought to the surface by the publication of, and reaction to, Rushdies The Satanic Verses. Not only was the book written by an immigrant and about immigrants, but the book itself, as Malise Ruthven argued on its publication, is about changing identities, about the transformations of identities that affect migrants who leave the familiar reference points of their homeland and find themselves in a place where the rules are different, and all the markers have been changed. This is not simply the experience of the migrant: the sense of dislocation and disorientation, of the rules of the game subtly changing, of the co-existence within us of conflicting needs, desires and i dentities, is becoming a major cultural experience for us all. Choice The basic issue can be stated quite simply: by what criteria can we choose between the conflicting claims of different loyalties? To ask the question immediately underlines the poverty of our thinking about this. Can the rights of a group obliterate the rights of an individual? Should the morality of one sector of the population be allowed to limit the freedom of other citizens. To what extent should one particular definition of the good and the just prevail over others? These are ancient questions, but the alarming fact is that the Left lacks a common language for addressing them, let alone resolving them. There have been two characteristic approaches on the Left in confronting these dilemmas. Firstly, there is the discourse of rights, probably still the most potent mobilising force in the worlds of politics and morality. In the United States the protection of individual rights is enshrined in the constitution, and the claim to group rights has become the basis of many of the transf orming currents of recent American politics, from the civil rights and black power movements to the womens movement and lesbian and gay liberation. Elsewhere in the West, a rights-based politics is similarly enshrined in written constitutions, bills of rights, constitutional courts, and so on. In Britain, the tradition is enfeebled. Individual rights, though much bandied around in the political rough and tumble, are not entrenched in a constitutional settlement, and the concept of group rights barely exists. Rights are, however, clearly back on the agenda of the Left: the response to the launch of Charter 88, with its appeal for a new constitutional settlement, with government subordinate to the law and basic rights guaranteed, suggests there is a strongly felt need for a codification and protection of fundamental rights. Unfortunately, the claim to right, however well established at a constitutional level, does not help when rights are seen to be in conflict. To take the issue of a bortion (yet again the focus of moral debate in America and Britain), here the conflict is between two violently conflicting claims to right: the rights of the unborn child against the rights of a woman to control her own body. In these stark terms the conflict is unresolvable, because two value-systems tug in quite different directions. The problem is that rights do not spring fully armed from nature. They cannot find a justification simply because they are claimed. Rights are products of human association, social organisation, traditions of struggle, and historical definitions of needs and obligations: whatever their claims to universality, they are limited by the philosophical system to which they belong, and the social and political context in which they are asserted. This is not to deny the importance of rights-based arguments. But if we are to take rights seriously we must begin to articulate the sort of rights and the type of political culture we want. This is the starting point for the second major approach to the dilemma of choice, the politics of emancipation. In his essay On the Jewish Question in the 1840s Marx counterposed to the morality of Rights a morality of emancipation, and even more powerfully than the claim to rights this has proved a potent mobilising force.8 It offers a vision of a totally free society, where everyones potentiality is fully realised, and a powerful analysis of the constraints on the realisation of human emancipation. At its heart is a denial that want, division, selfishness and conflict are essential parts of human nature. True human nature, it claims, can flourish in a truly emancipated society. Most of us who are socialist must have been inspired by this vision. As a politics of liberation it shaped the rhetoric of the social movements that emerged in the 1960s. It is still latent in the hungerfor utopia and for the transcendence of difference that shades our politics. The difficulty is that the p ractice has rarely kept up with the vision, particularly in the history of Marxism. The Marxist tradition has been reluctant to define the nature of the emancipated society, and has been noticeably blind to questions of nationalism, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. Nor do the experiences of the soi disant socialist countries offer much confidence in the attainability of emancipation in the terms offered by the tradition so far. We must not confuse a noble goal with the sordid practices of particular regimes, but we need to ponder whether the very project of human emancipation as conventionally set forth is not itself the fundamental problem. The glorious goal has all too often justified dubious means, whilst the absence of any detailed exposition of the meaning of emancipation has left us floundering when faced by the reality of conflicting claims to right and justice.

American Education

American Education is provided mainly by the government, with control and funding coming from three levels: federal, state, and local. At the primary and secondary school levels, curricula, funding, teaching, and other policies are set through locally elected school boards with jurisdiction over school districts. School districts can be (but are not always) coextensive with counties or municipalities. Educational standards and standardized testing decisions are usually made by the states through acts of the state legislature and governor, and decisions of the state departments of education.Education of the learning disabled, blind, deaf, and emotionally disturbed is structured to adhere as closely as possible to the same experience received by normal students. Blind and deaf students usually have separate classes in which they spend most of their day, but may sit in on normal classes with guides or interpreters. The learning disabled often attend for the same amount of time as other students; however, they also usually spend most of their day in separate classrooms, commonly known as special education or special ed; here they often receive extra instruction or perform easier work.The goal of these programs, however, is to try and bring everyone up to the same standard and provide equal opportunity to those students who are challenged. Some students are identified early on as having dyslexia or being significantly slower learners than other students. The federal government supports the standards developed in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004. The law mandates that schools must accommodate students with disabilities as defined by the act, and specifies methods for funding the sometimes large costs of providing them with the necessary facilities.Larger districts are often able to provide more adequate and quality care for those with special needs. It was noted that the country has a low literacy rate as compared with other develop ed countries, with a reading literacy rate at 86-98% of the population over age 15, while ranking below average in science and mathematics understanding. The poor performance has pushed public and private efforts such as the No Child Left Behind Act.In addition, the ratio of college-educated adults entering the workforce to general population (33%) is slightly below the mean of other developed countries (35%) and rate of participation of the labor force in continuing education is high. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, all American states must test students in public schools statewide to ensure that they are achieving the desired level of minimum education, such as on the Regents Examinations in New York or the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA); students being educated at home or in private schools are not included.The Act also requires that students and schools show â€Å"adequate yearly progress. † This means they must show some improvement each year. Althou gh these tests may have revealed the results of student learning, they may have little value to help strengthen the students' academic weakness. For example, in most states, the results of the testing would not be known until six months later. At that time, the students have been promoted to the next grade or entering a new school.The students are not given a chance to review the questions and their own answers but their percentile of the test results as compare to their own peers. There are several undesirable phenomena seen in the administration of the testing. In Illinois, for example, the state government delegates the printing and distribution of the test questions and booklets to private companies . There are questions about the security of the tests through this management.In 2006, some school districts did not receive the test questions until after other school districts had finished the tests weeks later. During high school, students, usually in their junior (That is, third ) year (11th grade), may take one or more standardized tests depending on their postsecondary education preferences and their local graduation requirements. In theory, these tests evaluate the overall level of knowledge and learning aptitude of the students. The SAT and ACT are the most common standardized tests that students take when applying to college.A student may take the SAT, ACT, or both depending upon the college the student plans to apply to for admission. Most competitive schools also require two or three SAT Subject Tests, (formerly known as SAT IIs), which are shorter exams that focus strictly on a particular subject matter. However, all these tests serve little to no purpose for students who do not move on to postsecondary education, so they can usually be skipped without affecting one's ability to graduateHowever, many conservatives believe that American public education is in poor shape today because of cultural and social trends, most beginning in the 1960s, which d estroyed classroom discipline, the moral basis for education, and a national consensus on what students should learn. There is some truth in this proposition, but ultimately it fails to explain why American students do not possess the communication and computational skills they need today to succeed in college or in the working world. By any standard, California students are observed to be not performing up to their full abilities.While some within the public school system claim that poor performance is due to inadequate government spending on education, more in-depth research demonstrates that such is not the case. The Pacific Research Institute’s California Index of Leading Education Indicators compiles data on the performance of students in California’s public education system. The findings in the Index reveal that poor student performance is the result not of too few taxpayer dollars, but of poor policy decisions by government education officials.Reform blockers of the American political system advantages those who prefer the status quo, which is why so little has changed in American education Twenty years ago â€Å"A Nation at Risk† set off alarms about the quality of America's schools, and ever since our country has been caught up in a frenzy of education reform. But the frenzy hasn't produced much, After untold billions of dollars and lofty reform packages too numerous to list, very little has been accomplished. Why such disappointing results?Many factors are no doubt responsible, but much of the answer rests with the politics of education. The problem is that, with rare exceptions, reforms that make it through the political process tend to be those that are acceptable to establish. Terry M. Moe , Mar 22, 2003 Further more he stated that â€Å"the teachers unions have more influence over the public schools than any other group in American society. They influence schools from the bottom up, through collective bargaining activities t hat shape virtually every aspect of school organization.And they influence schools from the top down, through political activities that shape government policy. They are the 800-pound gorillas of public education. Yet the American public is largely unaware of how influential they are–and how much they impede efforts to improve public schools. The problem is not that the unions are somehow bad or ill-intentioned. They aren't. The problem is that when they simply do what all organizations do–pursue their own interests–they are inevitably led to do things that are not in the best interests of children.To appreciate why this is so, consider the parallel to business firms. No one claims that these organizations are in business to promote the public interest. They are in business to make money, and this is the fundamental interest that drives their behavior†. Terry M. Moe | Jan 22, 2005. The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 13 On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) math test (last administered in 1996), 54 percent of California fourth graders scored below a basic ability level.The average test score of those taking the fourth-grade math surpassed only the average scores of students in Louisiana and Mississippi. While the 1994 NAEP reading test, the average test score of California fourth graders ranked at the very bottom of all states, tied for last with Louisiana. Not only did 59 percent of all California fourth graders score â€Å"below basic,† an even more appalling 71 percent of African American fourth graders and 81 percent of Hispanic fourth graders scored below basic.Interesting performance indicator is the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores of public versus private high school students. From 1987 to 1995, the average verbal score of public high school SAT takers in California dropped from 421 to 412 (with a low of 408) in 1994, while public school SAT math scores stayed constant at 485. Over that same time p eriod, however, the average verbal score of parochial high school SAT takers increased from 432 to 442, while parochial school math scores increased from 464 to 484.Similarly, both the average verbal and math scores of independent private school SAT takers increased during that period. (See Figure 1. ) The public and private school systems seem to be headed in opposite directions, which is why school vouchers are becoming a more attractive option. The rhetoric of school reform often ignores the crucial role of individual decisions (by students, by parents, by business owners, by educators) in determining educational outcomes. You can lead a horse to water, the old adage goes, but you can't make him drink.It's a folksy way of imparting an important individualist truth. Providing students opportunities at school does not guarantee success if students watch television rather than do their homework – and parents let them. By assuming that any set of reform ideas can magically cre ate a well-educated citizenry, we oversell the role of policy-making. Education requires initiative, a trait notoriously difficult to create or impose. American business leaders began to see a decentralized, â€Å"patchwork† education system as a liability in international competition. U. S.manufacturers, especially, saw the rise of Germany as a significant economic threat and sought to imitate that country's new system of state-run trade schools. In 1905, the National Association of Manufacturers editorialized that â€Å"the nation that wins success in competition with other nations must train its youths in the arts of production and distribution. † German education, it concluded, was â€Å"at once the admiration and fear of all countries. † American business, together with the growing labor movement, pressed Congress to dramatically expand federal spending on education, especially for vocational instruction.Also, business and education leaders began to apply n ew principles of industrial organization to education, such as top-down organization and a â€Å"factory-floor† model in which administrators, teachers, and students all had a place in producing a standardized â€Å"final product. † These leaders created professional bureaucracies to devise and implement policy. Perhaps the most important boosters of America's new public education system were what we might today call â€Å"cultural conservatives. † The turn of the century, after all, was a time of tremendous immigration.As more and more immigrants arrived in America, bringing with them a plethora of languages, cultural traditions, and religious beliefs, American political leaders foresaw the potential dangers of Balkanization. The public education system, once designed primarily to impart skills and knowledge, took on a far more political and social role. It was to provide a common culture and a means of inculcating new Americans with democratic values. Public s chools, in other words, were to be a high-pressure â€Å"melting pot† to help America avoid the dismal fate of other multi-national polities.American political leaders were all too familiar with the Balkan Wars of the early 1900s, and were intent on avoiding a similar fate. Educators today lack the tools for dealing with unruly children thanks to two supreme court decisions of the late 1960's and 1970's. The bureaucratic lament that curriculums need to be revised, salaries should be raised, money should be poured into the system, teachers are not qualified, teachers salaries should be tied to students' performances, are not the reasons for students not learning. Rather it is a lack of discipline in the classroom.One decision declared that schools do not have ‘absolute authority' over their students and the other that a school had violated students' ‘free speech' by suspending them for not adhering to the school's dress code. To compound the situation students have learned quickly that if a school official does something they do not like they can sue or just threaten to sue with sometimes very telling results. More importantly, the ever-present threat of lawsuits transforms a teacher from an active, authority figure into a fearful, hapless, down-trodden passive public servant.Discipline is key to learning and acquiring skills to be prepared for the rigorous task of facing the world. It certainly was in place and largely effective before the tumultuous '60's came along and â€Å"discipline† became sinister in connotation. Today classroom disruption is no longer of the mundane sort – feet on the desk, loud talking, noise-making and fighting. Schools are now dealing with sex offenders, pistol packing students, cursing, students and/or parents fighting with teachers and litigation, all of which undermine the teaching profession.When discipline goes out of the window, the pillars of civility get pushed aside. The universal moral valu es of self-control, self- respect, and respect for others and for property cease to exist. The door is flung wide open for all types of self-serving stress. Counselors, psychologists, psychoanalysts, television commentators, lawyers and many charlatans too, first on the scene of every school tragedy, screaming the blindingly obvious, blaming one parent, two parents, dysfunctional and functional, poor and not so poor families for the troubles of society's young, and creating more chaos than calm in the lives of the young.The Solution There was a time when schools were counted always for stability, discipline, knowledge, caring and shaping the minds of young people. In addition, schools forged cohesive societies with very clear-shared values that conferred a sense of worth on all. That sense of worth could be revisited by a restoration of discipline; by teachers and parents working together, to make educating children their number one priority in life; by a system that instills charac ter and spirituality and equips each student with cultural skills.The quest for social improvement and for making societies better rests with the future generation and if students are to have a sense of social responsibility and desire to live up to social obligations, then they must be armed with a real education premised on discipline. The alternative is not to be savoured. References Judy Gelbrich, OSU . 1999 – School of Education. Section II – American Education Part 1. Colonial America Patricia Caton (562) Technical Contact: [email  protected] edu 951- 4807 Peter Sacks, Standardized Minds: The High Price of America's Testing Culture

Descriptive Essy

Descriptive Essay Draft Throughout our lives we meet many people. We impact others by our own actions every day. Sometimes we impact them without even realizing it. And people will impact our lives and our hearts forever. You may Just have a simple conversation with a stranger on a bus, and before you know it, both individuals have a changed perspective on something. Or perhaps youVe known the person your whole life and they have impacted you Just as much or even more. These influential people come into and fall out of our lives so fast, it's often hard to keep track.But it's always good o remember your past, remember who you have met, remember who you know, and remember who is continuing to impact your life even today. These people are the ones that matter. They are who have helped make you who you are now. My dear friend Alex is someone who will always impact my life in so many ways. I have only officially known him for about 3 and half months. We met June 16th of this past summer. We were both working as camp counselors at a summer camp in Harrisonburg, Virginia. There was something about him that drew me in from the start.But for some reason, I was afraid, I thought he wouldn't be the kind of person I ould normally become friends with, so I did not talk to him very much that first week of staff training. Something about him intimidated me, and I could never quite put my finger on it. We finally had our first conversation while sitting by a pool. The day was very hot, but after a quick dunk in the water, the air temperature became cool and pleasant. He came over and asked if he could sit down next to me. I was very intimidated by him and I was never sure why, but of course I couldn't say no!So he sat down and we began talking about small things, until the conversation eventually turned to his tattoos and the meanings behind them. From that day on, we only continued to grow closer and closer. Alex is a very driven individual. He knows himself and he is very c omfortable in his own skin. When a decision comes up in his life that he must make, he always makes the smart choice and always makes the right choice, because he makes it with his heart. He has so many dreams and wishes and continuously strives for more.He always asks questions. And always wonders why or why not? He is an inspiring being, filled with positivity and love for life. He spreads his Joy with his most glorious smile and infectious laugh. And he is the perfect role model who keeps a cool head in any ituation and his responses are filled with high intellect. All of his passions show through every day of his life. He is fully himself at all times. And he has been that way his whole life. Alex is constantly true to himself. And that is something I truly look up to.I aspire to be more like him because of all the qualities he holds, but that by far, being himself at all times, is something I admire the most. It is surprising to think I nave only known him tor a snort while. Bu t even at this early stage of our friendship, he knows me so well. If I am upset from any situation, he can hit the nail on the head every time. He can guess what I'm feeling, tell me why I feel that way, and he can give advice like no one's business. In my life I have always had many passions myself. I have many beliefs and opinions on things too.But I have generally been overshadowed by some of my very outspoken friends while growing up, and also overshadowed by my two older brothers. I was taught to know it was okay to have an opinion even if it is different from others. But I was also taught that if you can't form your opinion into concise words, you will not be able to contribute to the conversation, and therefore your opinion really has no value. It sounds twisted, but that was Just what I knew. I know differently now, but I have never been challenged as much than when I am with Alex.He pushes me to do my best always. He pushes me to make decisions faster and with more strengt h and heart. He pushes me to dream bigger and reach for more. And most importantly, he pushes me to have an opinion on things. He reminds me that it is always valuable, even if it takes a little while to form the words to express it properly. Alex has made me feel comfortable talking about anything. He has made me feel like it is okay to be myself and let people know about it. He challenges me to be a better person every day.And he inspires me with his thirst for the all this world has to offer. He has made a huge impact on my life and on my heart. He is someone that I want to fill my life with. Even with the short time of knowing each other, he has found ways to reach and understand me like no one else has. He has taught me to grow, and to never stop growing. I know he is capable of so many great things. And I cannot wait for the day when his dreams match up with his countless talents and he shares even more of himself with even more hearts in the world.

The Way of the Shepherd - 687 Words

Lloyd G. Hernandez MA 302 The Way of the Shepherd Two thumbs up for this wonderfully written book. This is a guide not just for wannabe managers but for everyone: down from students to ordinary people. This is I think could be a guide for a better way to live and interact with people around us. I really had a very good time reading the book and will be reading this one over and over again. The book is very easy to understand. The summary of the book will lead to the 7 Principles of the Way of the Shepherd: 1. Know the Condition of Your Flock - In here the book suggested that to be an effective leader/manager, it is elementary to know the condition of your people and the status of their work. You get to know†¦show more content†¦A leader should treat equal importance to all employees of whatever position they handle and is ready to remove someone who might cause disaster to the group. A good leader is someone who is visible to their people most of the times and is regularly rotating their people for them to be able to mentally enhanced their capabilities 5. The Staff of Direction - The 5th principle teaches us that to become a good leader/manager, directing people with persuasion rather than coercion is very essential. A good leader gives freedom to their men but always instill in their minds the boundaries and limits to where there freedom is only up to. A good leader gets in the way when their people gets in trouble and reminds them that failure isn’t fatal after all. 6. The Rod of Correction - The 6th principle teaches us that to be a good leader/manager it should always be in a leader’s mind and heart to Protect, Correct and inspect their men. A good leader fights for their men against attacks from other men but corrects them privately if they found it that it was their men’s fault. An efficient leader also sees to it that he knows the progress of their men and how they are doing in their works. 7. The Heart of the Shepherd - The last principle could probably be the very important. The author suggested that great leadership is a lifestyle, not a technique. Great leadership always involves the heart of theShow MoreRelatedComparison Of The Passionate Shepherd To His Love992 Words   |  4 Pagespoems, â€Å"The passionate Shepherd to His love† and â€Å"The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd† the viewpoints are very different. The Shepherd is madly in love with the Nymph and compares her to nature. The Nymphs feelings towards the Shepherds view is the opposite. She does not love the Shepherd back in the way he wants her to, and she does not like to compare him to nature. The Shepherd is hoping to return with the Nymph to an Edenic life of free love. Nymphs grow old and Shepherds grow cold. The viewpointsRead More The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and The Nymph’s Reply to the852 Words   |  4 PagesThe Passionate Shepherd to His Love and The Nym ph’s Reply to the Shepherd: A comparison ‘The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’ was written by Christopher Marlowe. The poem describes a shepherd’s plea to someone he loves urging them to live with him. Marlowe uses imagery to describe the scenery around the shepherd and his love. The shepherd tries to convince her how happy they will be, surrounded by â€Å"mountain yields† and â€Å"groves† in stanza one. Marlowe does not only use imagery in hisRead MoreCompare and Contrast Essay604 Words   |  3 Pagesoccur between the poem, â€Å"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love† and â€Å"The Nymph to the Shepherd.† These differences are mostly with themes, imagery, and diction. â€Å"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love† was written by Christopher Marlowe and it was the first written of the two poems. â€Å"The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd† was written in response to that poem, but it was written by Sir Walter Raleigh. The themes to these two poems vary greatly. â€Å"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love† carries the theme that loveRead MoreThe Ever Growing Limb874 Words   |  4 PagesEver Growing Limb Once upon a time there lived an unhappy shepherd who lived on Canal Rd right under the bridge that was always chilly. He had no shoes, only socks. However, the unhappy shepherd a major problem with his big toe. It never seemed to stop growing. His motherless mother who lived in a rich neighborhood put him out at the age of 65. She told him that it was about that time he move out and start a life of his own. Shepherd the poor child, just could not imagine himself living anywhereRead MoreProtecting Animals with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society 865 Words   |  4 PagesSea Shepherd Conservation Society The Sea Shepherds are group of volunteers who try to protect the sea animals, and capture criminals who kill the animals without permits. Their website has many purposes, one dedicate to collect donations from the reader. Furthermore, they want to protect the ocean wildlife. The website audience includes people who want to protect the ocean, and they want to save the sea animals which will likely be extinct. They offer the audience a chance to donate, volunteerRead MoreOdysseus, An Egotistical Cretin1112 Words   |  5 Pages Odysseus tells Athena, whom he believes is a shepherd, a false account, of how he came to Ithaca, primarily since he needs to keep his identity a secret, familiarize himself with the situation on Ithaca and formulate a plan to execute the suitors. He perceives that he has arrived in a mist-shrouded and unknown land. And thus secondarily, he needs to present a feasible reason for being alone and stranded with copious amounts of treasure for safety reasons as well as to allay suspicion in relationRead More The British Renaissance Produced Many Types of Literature Essay979 Words   |  4 PagesChristopher Marlowes quot;The Passionate Shepherd to His Lovequot; portrays one of the typical love poems that can be seen from the Renaissance. A man is in search of the love of another girl, or woman. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a poem in response to this passage of Marlowes entitled quot;The Nymphs Reply to the Shepherd.quot; Although the name of the girl is not stated anywhere in the former poem, Raleigh decided to use a wood nymph as his subject. The Shepherd seems to be a meaningful man. His pleadRead MoreThe Alchemist Book Review984 Words   |  4 PagesAlchemist† written by Paulo Coelho revolves around dreams, symbols, and adventure. It tells of a young shepherd named Santiago who travels around Andalusia and once dreams of a treasure hidden in the pyramids of Egypt. It is a book full of wisdom and life lessons used to achieved one’s dreams and fulfill self-happiness. The story opens in the mythical region of Andalusia in Spain. The shepherd travels along this place to feed his sheep and to sell wool to merchants. There he finds peace in the familiarityRead MoreEveryman and the Second Shepherds Play Essay1258 Words   |  6 PagesEveryman and The Second Shepherds Play Everyman and The Second Shepherds Play remind the audience that good deeds are necessary for redemption, however, they reinforce the idea that we must shun material concerns to be redeemed. Both plays seek to reinforce these aspects of redemption to insure that all may be redeemed. The world is imperfect, and the only way we can make ourselves perfect and worthy of redemption is by not worrying about our material well being and performing good deedsRead MoreComparing and Contrasting The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and The Nymphs Reply: Love is Eternal and Humble, Not Temporary and Materialistic1121 Words   |  5 PagesPassionate Shepherd to His Love† and â€Å"The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd† are perfect examples of different views of love. These poems have similar structures, but the two speakers have different points of view about love and reality. To begin with, The Passionate Shepherd to His Love is a pastoral poem written by Christopher Marlowe in the late sixteenth century. Pastoral is a term that comes from the Latin word for shepherd: pastor. The pastoral poem is one that deals with shepherds and rustic