Thin Lines between Histories Essay Example for Free

Thin Lines between Histories Essay The connection—history and culture between Africans and Americans can be traced way back in ancient history (Duignan and Lewis xiii). No event linked these two groups—Africans and Americansand Australian natives or the Aboriginal people until the European expansion beginning in the 15th century. In a history review â€Å"Aboriginal Australians,† Nicolas Peterson states that, changes in native-Australian-living began in 17th century. Apparently, customary relationship between Africans and Americans and later the Afro-American, was established in the same event—European occupation. The article â€Å"Aboriginal Australians† reviewed by Nicolas Peterson, claims that, the Aborigines or Aboriginal people were the indigenous occupants of Australia. For at least 50,000 years they have lived and have inhabited every region of Australia. Following their accustomed practice, this tribe lived as hunters and gatherers in the vast lands of Australia. The word Aboriginal is a collective term for indigenous tribes of various cultures. Researches claim that, Aboriginal people also inhabited North America, particularly in Canada which was recognized as parcel of Indians, Metis and Inuit with unique traditional practices, and spiritual beliefs. Native Americans, also known as American Indians, Indians, and native peoples were indigenous peoplefirst people. of North America, as the writing entitled â€Å"American Indians† suggests. They had lived throughout the continent for thousands of years before the European exploration. They built houses and excelled in utilizing the resources around them. On the other hand, African Americans, the Afro-Americans or the American Blacks or Black Americans, whose ancestors are from the West Africa, were considered as a racial group in the United States. Though, they also claimed the European, Native American and Asian ancestry (Duignan and Lewis 6). The two thin lines connecting these tribes lie in the episode of history in the 15th and 17th century. First, the occupation of the Europeans in Australia, Africa and America marked the beginning of the histories of the said three continents; second, while the expedition of the Europeans transcended, Aboriginal history and that of Native and Afro-American history were meeting in the same grounds—declining population and diminishing culture and tradition. In the 15th century, European settlers and explorers began to arrive in the Americas, bringing with them a mass number of Africans, beginning in 1619 from the West Africa, as slaves in farms and European industries, based on â€Å"American Indians†. European wars—natives fighting for their lands and diseases depreciated Native American population. Native Americans learned to work with Europeans by abandoning some of their traditions and adopting new technologies. Duignan and Lewis agree that, slave trade became America’s first link to Africa. Slavery existed in large scale—as the demand for slaves increases, the number of Africans in America also increases intensely and so the Afro-American population. African Americans provided most of the labor for the Europeans. Most of the Africans—who became slaveswere employed to subsistence farming and raising livestock. Their natural abilities both in industries and agricultural fields gave them an advantage as laborers of Americas (6). In 1788, as Nicolas Peterson argues in â€Å"Aboriginal Australians,† the invaders of the West began colonizing Australia. The 17th century marked the devastating period of history in the Aboriginal way of life. The new settlers immediately interrupted the life of the Aboriginal natives, taking over their rich fisheries, sources of water and farm land. Similarly, a number of Aboriginal people died from the outbreak of European diseases and from the struggle to win the control of their lands. Europeans changed the way of life as well as the history of the Aboriginal people and of the Native American to worst. These tribes have lived in their lands long before the colonization happened—the Europeans took it away. They never came in contact with epidemics—the Europeans introduced and brought diseases to their lands. They had the same old tradition and spiritual beliefs—the Europeans attempted to export theirs to them. These changes caused the largest decline in population recorded in history and also a large impact on the history and culture of the natives of America and Australia. And even so with the Africans whose population grew more in the Americas. Europeans conquered countries trying to expand their political power and land ownership. As they did this, their cultures were also expanding and taking over the rich and endemic culture of the Aboriginal people, Native Americans and Afro-Americans. The Native Americans and the Afro-Americans affected the existence of each tribe. The first had its own rich tradition before the Africans were introduced by the Europeans, which it shared to the Negros. The African, likewise, had unique technologies and ways of living, which it allowed to make known to the natives of America. Duignan and Lewis emphasized the dependence of Americans upon the African labor and population (16). The Aboriginal people, nonetheless, were enjoying their fruitful culture long before the colonizers came. And the same lines fall here, both the Aboriginal history and the Native and Afro-American history were marked by the overpowering Europeans. That these Westerners went down to meet the Africans, sent them to America, went east and conquered Australia. But the line does not end there. The lessened population of the continents and tribes they overpowered due to same reasons—land loss and diseasesand the weakened culture during the European occupation, changed the whole course of the parallel histories of the Aboriginal people and Native and Afro-American populations.

GMA and Another EDSA threat :: essays research papers

I’m not a supporter of GMA (and I will never be), but I do not agree that she should step down from her post. GMA resigning would mean that the no-brainer Noli de Castro will be the 15th President of the pitiful Philippine Republic – and that’s the last thing I would dream of. But if the Filipinos would prefer to add another episode to the never-ending EDSA Revolution series, then Mrs. Susan Roces-Poe would take over her post. What’s wrong with Noli and Susan? Noli de Castro is a well-known Lopez crony, and if he will become a president our Meralco bills will be as high as the Lotto Jackpot prize. And besides, he doesn’t have any leadership qualities nor the mind to rule a country. He being a vice-president and senator is even unacceptable. And Mrs. Poe is just the same. Let’s face it: a president should be someone with at least a college degree. Mere sales clerks are required to have such educational attainment, why not require it to the highest post on the land? The problem in this country is the fact that the electorate can easily be charmed with a ridiculous circus performance during the campaign period. Charisma will never fill our empty stomachs. So if GMA stepping down would result to Kabayan or Inday being our next president, then I think it would be a bit better to stay with GMA – unless Ping Lacson is one of the options. It’s like choosing the lesser between two (or three?) evils as they say. Yet, Mrs. Arroyo should still be responsible for the alleged cheating she did last 2004 Elections. Sorry would never do it this time (maybe because we are not as holy as God?) because anyone who committed crimes did not get away with what they did just because they apologized. I don’t know if she will ever turn into a

Language & Gender Essay

Language and gender in the classroom Many of the issues reviewed in this chapter have far-reaching implications in classrooms. Classrooms and schools are among society’s primary socializing institutions. In them, children come to understand their social identity relative to each other and relative to the institution. Although schools are certainly not responsible for teaching students their gender-differentiated social roles, they often reinforce the subordinate role of girls and women through curricular choices and classroom organizations that exclude, denigrate, and/or stereotype them. However, as discussed earlier in this chapter, recent theoretical insights suggest that identity is not fixed, that language use is not static, and that it is possible to negotiate social identities through alternative language use. It follows, then, that schools are sites in which inequities (based on gender, race, ethnicity, language background, age, sexuality, etc. can be challenged and potentially transformed by selecting materials that represent identity groups more equally, by reorganizing classroom interaction so that all students have the opportunity to talk and demonstrate achievement, and by encouraging students to critically analyze the ways they use language in their everyday lives. Based on a review of 2 decades of research on gender and classroom interaction, Clarricoates concludes that interaction between teachers and students and among students themselves is â€Å"suffused with gender† (1983, p. 6; cited by Swann, 1993). Studies reviewed by Swann (1993) describ e a range of ways in which gender differentiation is maintained in mainstream English-speaking classrooms, including the following: †¢ ‘ While there are quiet pupils of both sexes, the more outspoken pupils tend to be boys. †¢ Boys also tend to ‘stand out’ more than girls. Michelle Stanworth (1983) notes that in her study teachers initially found some girls ‘hard to place’. Boys also referred to a ‘faceless’ bunch of girls. Boys tend to be generally more assertive than girls. For instance, a US study of whole-class talk (Sadker and Sadker, 1985) found boys were eight times more likely than girls to call out. †¢ Girls and boys tend to sit separately; in group work, pupils usually elect to work in single-sex rather than mixed-sex groups. †¢ When they have the choice, girls and boys often discuss or write about gender-typed topics. †¢ Boys are often openly disparaging towards girls. †¢ In practical subjects, such as science, boys hog the resources. In practical subjects, girls ‘fetch and carry’ for boys, doing much of the cleaning up, and collec ting books and so on. †¢ Boys occupy, and are allowed to occupy, more space, both in class and outside—for example, in play areas. †¢ Teachers often make distinctions between girls and boys – for disciplinary or administrative reasons or to motivate pupils to do things. †¢ Teachers give more attention to boys than to girls. †¢ Topics and materials for discussion are often chosen to maintain boys’ interests. Teachers tend not to perceive disparities between the numbers of contributions from girls and boys. Sadker and Sadker (1985) showed US teachers a video of classroom talk in which boys made three times as many contributions as girls — but teachers believed the girls had talked more. †¢ Teachers accept certain behaviour (such as calling out) from boys but not from girls. †¢ Female teachers may themselves be subject to harrassment from male pupils. †¢ ‘Disaffected’ girls tend to opt out quietly at the back of the class, whereas disaffected boys make trouble. (Swann, 1993, pp. 1-52) A 10-year research project by Sadker and Sadker (1993; including participant observation, audio and video recordings, interviews with students and teachers, and large-scale surveys) in elementary, junior high, and high school, and in university classes in the United States, and the review of research on language and gender in the classroom by Sommers and Lawrence (1992), both support these general findings. It is interesting to note the parallel between research on girls and boys in schools on the one hand, and on minority and majority students in schools on the other. Just as boys and men (generally with no attention to factors like race and ethnicity) seem to be advantaged at the expense of girls and women in mainstream schools in Britain, Australia, and the United States, white middle-class standard English speakers (generally with no attention to gender) seem to be advantaged at the expense of nonwhite middle-class standard English speakers (see Nieto, 1992, for further discussion). However, as Swann (1993) points out, these findings need to be interpreted with some caution. The differences between sexes are always average ones, and boys and girls behave differently in different contexts. In other words, these are tendencies, not absolutes, that have been documented in mainstream English-speaking classes. It should be emphasized that there is considerable variation that can be exploited by teachers in their own classes. As discussed earlier, for the variation in how girls and boys use language to be understood, research needs to begin not with boys and girls as fixed categories that behave or are treated the same in all contexts, but with a particular community of practice, in this case a class or a school. The analysis, then, needs to focus on the activity and on how boys’ and girls’ rights and obligations are constructed within that activity within that community of practice. Once the class and the activities to be analyzed have been identified, the teacher or researcher can begin by asking how girls and boys, women and men, are represented, for example, in the texts selected for use in the class as well as in the work that the students produce. Researchers have found that women, like other minority groups, tend to be excluded, marginalized, or stereotyped within the mainstream curriculum content (see Nieto, 1992; Sadker ;amp; Sadker, 1993; Swann, 1993, for further discussion). Although we are not aware of any studies that have documented short-term and longer-term effects of mainstream curriculum content versus curriculum content that is gender balanced, Swann summarizes the concerns of teachers and researchers about gender imbalances in the curriculum as follows: Teachers and researchers have been concerned about imbalances in children’s reading materials because of their potential immediate and local effects: they may affect the way pupils respond to a particular book and the subject with which it is associated; they may also affect the pupils’ performance on assessment tasks. There is further concern that, in the longer term, such imbalances may help to reinforce gender differences and inequalities: they may influence children’s perceptions of what are appropriate attributes, activities, occupations, and so forth for males and females. Introducing alternative images may redress the balance, and also have a disruptive effect, causing pupils to question accepted views of girls and boys and women and men. (p. 113) Swann (pp. 190-197) provides a variety of checklists that teachers and researchers can use to investigate how girls and boys, women and men, are represented and evaluated in the texts they choose and the activities they organize within their classrooms. When teachers find that their curricular choices are not balanced with respect to gender, for example, that the science text includes few contributions by women, that the literature anthology includes stories primarily by white males about white males, or that the women included in the texts are portrayed only in traditional roles, they can adopt texts that offer images of women and men in less traditional roles. If the goal is to encourage students to question traditional notions, simply providing alternative images in the curriculum content may not be sufficient. Teachers may want to encourage students to talk about traditional and alternative images, perhaps by critically reading and responding to sexist materials, by emphasizing choice in women’s and men’s roles, and by challenging representations of women and men (and other groups) in the students’ own work. We will return to these points later in this chapter. As has been discussed throughout this chapter, it is not only what is talked about, in this case through the curriculum content, that helps shape gender roles; equally or more important is an understanding of how girls and boys, women and men, position themselves and each other through their interactions. With respect to the organization of classroom interaction, research suggests that participation frameworks, or groupings of students and teachers for classroom activities (e. . , as individuals, in pairs, in small groups, or as a teacher-fronted classes), can strongly influence the students’ opportunities to talk and demonstrate achievement (see Erickson, this volume; Saville-Troike, this volume). For example, mainstream U. S. classrooms are generally characterized by the transmission model of teaching and learning (Cummins, 1989) and the initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) participation structure (Holmes, 1978). In these teacher-centered classes, the teacher talks for most of the time as he or she transmits the curriculum content to the student population in a relatively competitive atmosphere, and initiates the students5 participation. The students are encouraged to bid for the opportunity to respond to what Cazden (1988) describes as the â€Å"known-answer55 question, and the teacher then evaluates the students’ responses as right or wrong. It is in this traditional competitive classroom that boys seem to be advantaged (Sadker ;amp;c Sadker, 1993; Tannen, 1992). However, just as women participated more in more collaboratively organized meetings than in traditional hierarchically organized meetings (see earlier discussions of Edelsky, 1981; Goodwin, 1990), some research suggests that girls, as well as students from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds, participate more in cooperative learning organizations than in traditional teacher-centered classes (Kramarae ;amp; Treichler, 1990; Tannen, 1992; see also Kessler, 1990, for a general review of benefits of cooperative learning). However, the picture is much more complicated; simply organizing students into smaller groups is not the answer. In fact, some research suggests that mixed-sex groupings can reproduce boys’ dominant role and girls’ supportive role. For example, in a study by Sommers and Lawrence (1992) of mixed-sex peer response groups of college students in writing classes, it was found that males took far more turns than females, produced greater quantities of talk, at times appropriated females’ ideas as their own, and tended to interrupt and/or silence their female counterparts. Females tended to wait, listen, acknowledge, and confirm other students’ contributions. When Sommers and Lawrence compared male and female participation in the peer response groups with their participation in the teacher-fronted participation framework, they found that boys and girls tended to participate more or less equally in the teacher-fronted organization because the teachers could exert more control over how the participation opportunities were distributed. It is important to mention that the teachers in these teacher-fronted classes were Lawrence and Sommers themselves, and that they were aware of and concerned about equal participation opportunities for males and females in their classes. In a study by Rennie and Parker (1987, cited by Swann, 1993) of primary school students in science classes in Australia, it was also found that boys tended to talk more in mixed-sex groupings, and girls tended to watch and listen. However, in single-sex groups, and in classes in which the teachers had participated in a â€Å"gender awareness† course, girls tended to participate more actively. Both these examples suggest that when teachers are aware of gender-differentiated language use, they can change the dynamics in their classes so that girls and women are not subordinated, at least in the short run. Swann (1993) provides some useful suggestions for teachers and researchers who are interested in systematically observing and analyzing the dynamics within their own classes to understand how girls and boys are positioned relative to each other (Chap. 8), as well as suggestions for changing discriminatory practices (Chap. 9). The research discussed thus far has been concerned with genderdifferentiated language use in mainstream, white, standard Englishspeaking contexts in the United States, Britain, and Australia. Even in these relatively homogeneous contexts, it is evident that factors other than gender (e. g. participation framework and activity type) may affect the way people behave. Although there has been relatively little detailed research to date on the ways in which boys and girls from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds interact in the classroom, an area of particular concern to ESL and bilingual teachers, it is likely that factors such as culture, race, ethnic ity, and socioeconomic status interact with gender to shape students’ participation opportunities. For example, Swann (1993) discusses a series of analyses of gender and ethnic imbalances in classroom discussions in four nursery and primary schools in Ealing, England. Swann points out that in the original analysis, Claire and Redpath (1989) found that boys averaged three times as many turns as girls, and that some boys were more talkative than others; this finding is consistent with much of the research on girls’ and boys’ participation in classes. Their follow-up analysis of the same data, however, suggests an interaction between gender and ethnic group. They found that the boys who dominated the discussion group were white and black Afro-Caribbean; the Asian boys participated much less frequently. White and black Afro-Caribbean girls participated about equally; Asian girls participated the least of any group. They speculate that the topics of discussion and teachers’ attitudes and behaviors in the lesson might contribute to these classroom dynamics (see Swann, 1993, p. 65, for further discussion). Consistent with Claire and Redpath’s first analysis, research by Sadker and Sadker (1993) found no systematic differences between black and white students, students from different age groups, or students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Atlantic History Concept And Contours - 854 Words

The study of the Atlantic as an interwoven community is a relatively new theory. Historians are beginning to see Atlantic History as â€Å"a sudden and harsh encounter between two old worlds that transformed both and integrated them into a single New World† , and not just separate entities with detached pasts. Atlantic History: Concept and Contours by Bernard Bailyn lays the framework for what Atlantic History is and how it should be studied. Bailyn states that the reasoning behind writing the book is that previous historians focus too much on the imperial history of the Atlantic world, when in fact the colonized areas had just as much of an effect on European powers as Europe had on their colonies. In this concise two part book, Bailyn’s main argument is that the concept of Atlantic History was inevitable because it is impossible to look at any major event of this time period without seeing its effects ripple throughout the entire Atlantic world. The first part of the book, The Idea of Atlantic History, focuses on the historiography of Atlantic History. Bailyn determines that the emergence of the field came from twentieth century struggles, especially the World Wars and the beginnings of the Cold War. Historians and journalists wanted a way of bringing the â€Å"Atlantic Community† together in opposition to communism. Organizations, like NATO, began to support emerging journals that consolidated all of the important events taking place in the Americas, Europe, and West Africa. InShow MoreRelatedA Voyage Long and Strange Apush Book Report755 Words   |  4 Pagesencyclopedia of social, political, cultural, and economic history Government Documents: The Mayflower Compact, The Charter of Massachusetts Bay, and the letters from Christopher Columbus to the Queen. Newspaper Articles: The Juan Pardo Expeditions, The Southeastern Indians, and Atlantic History: Concept and Contours. 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