Showing posts with label The West Wing. Show all posts
"Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now." -Commissioner Gordon (The Dark Knight)
Cords that resonate with viewers long
after the credits roll. The Dark Knight is a film that allows people
to escape only to show them a reflection of society, and it is not a
bright reflection at all.
A commenter on a blog said it
eloquently:
drvictordavishj: "The key is the way Gordon draws a contrast between (Harvey) Dent "the hero we need" versus the Dark Knight "the hero we deserve." Nolan is saying that we need a law-abiding idealist, but that we don’t deserve him."
But these are our heroes. These are our
leaders. President Obama, Speaker John Boehner, Rep. Nancy Pelosi,
Sen. Harry Reid. These are the men and women who are supposed to be
our White Knights. Yet, not one is anything more than a sock puppet
for special interest groups, banks and lobbyists.
"Because I'm tired of it. Year, after year, after year, after year, having to choose between the lesser of who cares. Of trying to get myself excited about a candidate who can speak in complete sentences. Of setting the bar so low I can hardly look at it." -Leo McGarry (The West Wing)
We continue to allow our rights to be
taken away. Sometimes piece by piece and sometimes in massive sweeps
disguised as protection against our enemies. The, so-called, Leader
of the Free World signed a bill on December 31st that makes it legal
to hold United States citizens in jail...forever. With no charges or
trial. All anyone has to do is claim they are a terrorist.
We assassinate our own citizens, apply
justice arbitrarily, allow our private lives to be searched without a
warrant, refuse the global community the right to try our leaders for
war crimes and, incredibly, denounce other states for doing the same
exact things.
Maybe America is the world's Dark
Knight. We take on the evils of the world and the only way to do so
is by getting our hands dirty. Just as the Joker brings Batman again
and again to that moral line he does not wish to cross, the
world is doing the same to America. Maybe we don't want to be the way we
are, but what other choice is there?
I turn again to an anonymous commenter:
drvictordavishj: Nolan is ultimately saying that strong societies don't tolerate Dark Knights. If we do, it's only because we lack confidence in the institutions and values that we've inherited. After all, with all his gifts, Bruce Wayne could have easily been Harvey Dent, but because he lacks confidence in legitimate institutions and his moral inheritance, he’s not the philanthropist and healer that his father was. He's the sign of a sick society."
Ask yourself, do you have confidence in
our institutions? Is the government of the people, by the people and for the people?
The sad truth is there are a great many
things wrong with this society. We need no more evidence than the
existence of all the Dark Knights we allow to exist. Whether they be
vigilantes fighting crime in New York City or the very
countries we live in.
These are the heroes we deserve. These are our silent guardians, our watchful protectors. The existence of Dark Knights is a
sign of a sick society. And our society is filled with them.
This is the second post in my Zen and
the Art of Teaching series. Check out the first post here.
I'm going to do two things in this
post. First, I will tell you exactly how I wish I could set up my
classroom and interact with my students. Then I'll tell you why that
is so difficult to achieve.
Currently, our schools work in a
strange way. Kids are supposed to "learn" new material from
a teacher at school. They are then sent home and given homework which
is supposed to reinforce what they learned during the day. This is
100% the opposite of how I think things should work.
Here's what I would do. Instead of
forcing kids to learn new material at school we should send them home
with a podcast or assignment to research a new topic using the
internet. Wikipedia pages should be used often. All new material
should be learned away from school.
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| So you don't get kids looking like this. |
Why? You ask. Two main reasons. First,
this is exactly how the rest of us get information. If you want to
learn something new isn't your first stop Google or Wikipedia? "Oh,
I just heard about an anaconda. I have no idea what an anaconda is."
When was the last time you followed that by saying, "I'll go to
school to figure out what an anaconda is."
Schools aren't needed in that regard
anymore. They are not the source of knowledge. The internet has more
information on it than you could ever learn at school, regardless, of
how long you spent there. The teachers in the world can not give you
1/1000th the information that the internet contains on any given
topic.
So why do we treat young adults
differently? Mainly because that's the way it's always been done.
That was necessary. You did actually need a physical location to go
to where someone could teach you things. But that's not the case
anymore. Today, information exists and is available to our students
at the touch of a button, literally.
What do the kids do at school then?
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| Pictured: The actual button for information. |
Schools become the place where students
reinforce the knowledge. Where they go to trained professionals who
have extensively studied the subject area and know ingenuitive ways
to help students incorporate it into their lives. Students go to
school to make sense of the details, to add that layer of understanding that is necessary for true learning to take place. They go to school to ask questions instead of be told
facts.
That would be the first phase of how I
would teach in a perfect world. Reversing the manner in which we
absorb and retain information. The second phase would involve
interacting with students in every medium possible. I think Twitter
could be one of the greatest tools for connecting individuals. As
students are listening to a podcast or reading pages on Wikipedia
they can @mention or hastag their classmates, teachers, even people
from outside resources like National Geographic or Apple.
All this is possible with today's
technology and yet, I often see a backlash to innovation in the
classroom. Which brings me to...
The Challenges
I work at school that has a no
electronics policy. Not a "no phones in class" or a "no
ipods in the hall" policy. Any personal electronic is banned
from anywhere on school.
Is this policy followed? Nope. It does
not reflect the world we currently live in. It reflects a world some
people are trying to hold on to. A world where students came to
school and had no distractions and were perfect little angels. A
world which never existed.
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| Voldermort held on to that world too. |
Solution
Here's my two cents. It's idealistic
and unrealistic, but I'm young and can still afford to be both.
Besides, it's not like anyone in charge is pushing anything that great.
I want education to be treated like the
military. I want companies to compete for lucrative contracts to
provide the most cutting-edge equipment to our schools. I want the
best of the best to be given to our students not once in awhile, but
every single day. The most highly skilled people working should ALWAYS be the young because they've had years of hands on experience with the latest technology. This would insure that future innovations are continually being sought after by the people who, statistically speaking, will be around the longest.
I realize how silly that may sound to
some. I also know that there are people who read this and
agree. I leave you with a quote from the TV show The West Wing that
more articulately sums up my position:
"Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet." -Sam Seaborn, The West Wing (S1E18)
"Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is." -William James
I will divide these thoughts into three blogs and link each here as they become completed.
Part One: Himself
Part Two: Others
Part Three: Truth
There are six people present.
There is each man as he really is.
There are many directions this post can go. Spiritual is the one that jumps into my mind first. There is either some type of spiritual void before and after we die, or there is not. I don't have any great insights to lend to that conversation and my personal opinions, at least for now, will be kept personal.
I ask that we move beyond the initial spiritual question of defining who we really are. For one who believes, the answer is usually simple; there is our true selves, and God knows whom that is.
I can't speak to what God knows.
What I am interested in is the problem of identifying ourselves.
We are bound by certain sociological factors. Culture, time period, parents, friends. More importantly, language.
You are funny.
Stay with me here because it gets a little crazy. I'm also assuming you've read the other posts.
Who is that sentence referring to? You are funny. Obviously, it is spoken by a second person (in this case me). It is being said to you, but which you? Am I saying that to the person I perceive you are, the person you perceive you are, or the person you really are?
(That was tough, I know. Read it again if you must.)
All these people exist. All these creations are real. Now we are trying to get at truth. Are you truly funny? Or is the man I imagine you are funny? How can we decipher these differences?
More mind boggling...what does the word funny mean? My long-time philosophical question on the subject: Is a joke funny if no one laughs? Is a person funny if no one thinks he is?
I know this is heavily philosophical. I can't deal in reality for this part because I don't have any specific answers. Only more questions.
Language is obviously defined by society. If you need convincing ask the thirteen year old version of myself what the word sick means...the answer is cool. "That's sick man."
Is language truth though? When I say something am I actually speaking about the true object?
If you know another language fluently you've probably come across those specific phrases that have no translation. This boggles my mind. There is no word, maybe no combination of words, in the entire language that can define what another human being is experiencing.
Obviously, their experiences are happening. They are "true". But I can not define them. I can not explain them. I can not know them.
It seems like this happens all the time. Language is one of the first separators from truth, reality, actuality. Of course, it is also necessary.
Try describing yourself in seven words or less. It doesn't need to be complete sentences. I'll give you an example:
Kind. Smart. Funny. Tired. Hungry. Happy. Quiet.
Now try and count the definitions for each of those words. Then count the translations into other languages. Then study and immerse yourself in those languages enough so you know that what your saying is actually defining "kind" and not "generous." Then in each of those languages you are now an expert in, find the root of whatever word you are saying, trace it back as far as you can. As you can see, it's incredibly difficult to say only a few simple words and truly understand the meaning.
Can we ever know our true selves when even the language we use is confining, restricting, and impeding? (See what I did there, I used three words that all mean the same thing. Which is a joke fans of The West Wing will appreciate).
Again, this is not the post for answers. At the very least I hope that you have gained some questions of your own. Maybe questions you've never thought of before. That was my goal tonight.
"It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers." -Patrick Rothfusss
Faced with the unending questions that come with any philosophical inquiry I am left with only this:
We must understand that life is complicated, and complicated further by our own actions.
We must be humble in our dealings with others.
We must understand that there are things that we do not know.
There are six people present.
Who are you, really?