Reflection Week 4/7

     I found myself very interested in some of the points made in the videos we watched this week in class. It really made me think about the way our world is, if it needs to change, and if it does, how it will happen. The videos demonstrated a desperate need for social change in our world, I just can't imagine how it will come about. In Jeremy Rifkin's lecture he says, "To empathise is to civilise; to civilise is to empathise... So when a child learns that life is vulnerable and fragile, and every moment is precious, and that they have their own unique history it allows a child then to experience another's plight in the same way - that that other person or other being, it could be another creature, has a one and only life, it's tough to be alive, and the odds are not always good. So if you think about the times that we've empathised with each other our fellow creatures it's always because we felt their struggle, we had the depth and empathy and the celebration of live. And we show solidarity with our compassion." (Rifkin, The Empathic Civilisation) I found this point very interesting. I find my mind wandering thinking about how different our world would be if we kept the same empathy standards as we grew up. I feel that our society does have empathy. Most people do care about others and feel bad if they are struggling. The issue is, no one does anything about it. Then this point was made in the other lecture we watched done by Roman Krznaric. "...instead of the age of introspection we need to shift to the age of outrospection. And by outrospection I mean the idea of discovering who you are and what to do with your life by stepping outside yourself, discovering the lives of other people, other civilisations. And the ultimate art form for the age of outrospection is empathy;..." (Krznaric, The Power of Outrospection) He adds on to Rifkin by defining what is necessary to get to that place. He says that we need to experience other people's poverty, devastation, and horrifying lives in order to truly be empathetic. Ultimately he says that we can help people in need but we cannot truly understand until we walk a mile in their shoes. For example, someone can send money from the comfort of their own home everyday to children in poverty in Africa but they won't ever see the whole picture. The only way for them to develop true empathy is to travel to Africa and see for themselves what the living conditions actually are and feel how the kids actually feel. There was another interesting point in another one of the videos that was also about empathy but took a very different approach. The lecture was by Slavoj Zizek. "But the remedies do not cure the disease they merely prolong it; indeed the remedies are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive. Or in the case of a very advanced school by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution it is an aggravation of the difficulty." (Zizek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce) I am still a little bit lost on the main points of Zizek's lecture but from what I understand I believe he thinks our empathy needs to go deeper. The ways in which we empathize, or in other words, help the less fortunate are pathetic. He is saying that we really aren't helping them at all. In reality we are hurting them more and we don't even recognize that. He is saying we need real, concrete solutions to all the serious problems in our world. 

 
     Something else I found fascinating was Sir Ken Robinson's perspective on public education. I had never really thought about how constricting school actually and how worthless it is when kids are invested as little as they are. "We still educate children by batches; we put them through the system by age group - why do we do that? Why is there this assumption that the most important thing kids have in common is how old they are. It's like the most important thing about them is their date of manufacture. Well I know kids who are much better than other kids at the same age in different disciplines, or at different times of the day, or better in smaller groups than in large groups, or sometimes they want to be on their own. If you're interested in the model of learning you don't start from this production line mentality." (Robinson, Changing Paradigms) I completely agree with him, now that I recognize this issue. I think this is something I have actually believed for awhile without really noticing. In most of my classes I feel zoned out and uninterested because of either the information being taught or the way it is being taught. Time in a public school is wasted when the students aren't invested. Teachers can take phones away but that does not stop distraction. Students can come to class everyday but that doesn't mean they're present. It is so true that our society puts every student in a box and that is crazy because we don't all learn the same way. We all learn very differently, in fact. I wonder if schools were taught in a different way would the same students excel? This lecture made me realize that we really only follow one way of learning. It really sparked a desire in me to bring change to our public education system.