Happy (late) Purim! For those of you who don't know what Purim is, I shall explain. Purim is a Jewish holiday which falls on the 14th day of Adar (on the Jewish calendar, which is lunar), and falls on the 24th of February this year. Purim revolves around the story of the Book of Esther, or the Megillah. People dress up in costumes and eat hamantaschen (triangle shaped cookies with fruit filling) and give each other baskets of treats called mishloach manot.
Here's the story of Purim:
Once, there was a king called Achashverosh who was rather fond of excess. One day, King Achashverosh held a seven day feast for the princes of the 127 provinces of his kingdom. On the seventh day, the king was pretty drunk and was showing off, so he called for his wife, Queen Vashti to be brought before him in her royal crown (the rabbis take this to mean in only her royal crown) to show off her beauty. The Queen refused to come, so, upon the advice of his royal advisers, the king banished her.
Then the king decided that he needed a new queen. He ordered that all the young women of his kingdom be presented before him so that the could choose a new queen (basically an old fashioned beauty pageant). One of these women was Esther, the niece of Mordechai. Esther was Jewish, as was Mordechai. The king took a liking to Esther and decided to make her he new queen. Before Esther married the king, Mordechai told Esther no to reveal that she was Jewish.
At this point, there's a whole side story in which Mordechai discovers an assassination plot against the king and reports it, saving the kings life, but that's not really important to the story.
Anyway. The king had an evil adviser named Haman (everyone boos whenever Haman's name is mentioned during the telling of the story). Haman was the most powerful of the king's advisers and everyone bowed down to him when he walked by. Everyone that is, except Mordechai. Mordechai said that he couldn't bow down to Haman because he was Jewish, and Jews could only bow down to their god.
Haman decided that this was absolutely unacceptable, and that as payback, he would have all the Jews killed. He talked to the king, got his permission to write a proclamation about it, and cast lots ("purim" in Hebrew) to pick the day of the executions.
Mordechai, understandably upset by this proclamation, sent a letter to Esther telling her that she had to save her people. Esther wasn't big on the idea because it involved her going to talk to the king without being summoned (a crime punishable by death). But in the end, she went. She invited the king and Haman to a feast. At the feast, she revealed to the king that she was Jewish and that Haman was going to have her people killed. The king was appalled, sentenced Haman to death, replaced him with Mordechai, and issued a new proclamation allowing the Jews to fight back against the people trying to kill them.
And they all lived happily ever after. The end.
Now then, the thing that bothers me about this story is King Achashverosh. When young children, or really any children, are taught about Purim, he is referred to as "the silly king" or "the foolish king". The thing is, if you take a look at what King Achashverosh actually does in the story, there's nothing silly or foolish about him at all.
Lets start at the beginning. The king sends for the queen to show her off (because he's showing off his other property) and he orders her to come, according to the rabbis, in only her crown. Hm. Nice guy. I understand that customs were different at that point of time, but no matter how you look at it, it's rather demeaning to be ordered to present yourself in a room full of drunk men wearing nothing at all.
And then, when she refuses to come, he decides to find a new queen because the queen must be obedient. Through this decision, he ruins Vashti's life. At that time, women were not considered to have any worth without their husbands (I'm not saying that this was a good thing, but that's how it was), so Vashti was left disgraced, with no way to provide for her self, and no hopes of finding a new husband.
I also find it interesting that no blame at all is put on Achashverosh for the decree to kill all of the Jews. Sure it was Haman's idea, but it's not like Achashverosh didn't know about it or was tricked into it. The text makes it clear that they had a nice discussion and Achashverosh agreed that it was a fine idea for all the Jews to be killed. He just left it up to Haman to iron out the details. Funny how this is always glossed over in the retelling of the story.
So yeah, King Achashverosh wasn't a particularly silly or foolish. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing and he made some terrible decisions. I also find the language choice somewhat worrisome. When I learned about what King Achashverosh actually did, I learned about in the context of, "this is not an okay way to treat women, King Achashverosh did the wrong thing". The issue is, a lot of Jewish kids wouldn't learn about it that way. I worry that kids will learn what King Achashverosh did and associate that with the fact that he was silly or foolish. The connection would then be that his actions were just silly, nothing to worry about. In my opinion, that's not an okay connection to make.
On that note, I'll leave you with a song by the Maccabeats about Purim. Enjoy!
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Monday, February 25, 2013
Monday, February 18, 2013
Look Before You Leap
A couple of weeks ago, I came across a post online which informed me that people were trying to get a law passed in Georgia which would allow gay students to be expelled from public schools. I was rather surprised by the post because a) I'm generally pretty up to date on this type of thing and I hadn't heard about it at all and b) there's been enough negative publicity about Tennessee's "don't say gay" bill that I would have assumed that this would have been added onto that.
Anyway, the post, which had gotten tons of notes of support and reblogs, linked to a petition, so I went there to see if there was any more information. The petition still didn't have a particularly coherent explanation. It made said that over 100 schools in Georgia don't allow gay students and that these schools were receiving public funding. The petition, if anything, confused me more, as it sound as though different Georgia schools had different policies with regards to whether gay students would be expelled. At the bottom of the petition, there was a link to a New York Times article, so I clicked that in hopes that the article would explain what in the world was going on.
What I learned in reading the article was that the schools involved in this are private schools. And that changes everything. Basically, what's happening is that in Georgia, state money is being used for scholarships to private schools, some of which don't allow gay students. And see, that's a completely different story. Georgia public schools banning gay students and Georgia giving money to private schools some of which ban gay student are two very different things.
Now I'm not saying that I agree with these schools' policies at all. Personally, I think that the policies are awful. But that's part of private school, they get to make their own rules about this type of thing. And if they're a religious school who wants to make rules about gay students attending their school, that's their prerogative. Whether the government is allowed to fund scholarships to these schools is a question of constitutionality and separation of church and state stuff, and honestly, I don't know if it's allowed or not.
My main point is, please look before you leap into something on the internet. The fact that the post stating that Georgia public schools planned to ban gay students was reblogged over 40,000 times is concerning. It's awesome that that many people were up in arms about the idea, but the amount of ignorance that people displayed there, supporting something without even knowing what they were really supporting is not a good thing at all.
It also showed a basic lack of logic and understanding of politics. If you think about it, the whole thing really wouldn't make sense because, first of all, where would a gay student go if they got expelled? Wouldn't they have to go to school in a different state? And second of all, the sodomy laws in Georgia were struck down by courts, so why would a state a state in which its not illegal to be gay now allow their students to be gay?
On top of that, the fact that the poorly articulated petition got over 50,000 signatures is concerning. If you were to read the petition, you would think that the petition was being sent to the head of the Department of Education (who isn't the appropriate person to send it to at all, by the way), when in fact, upon closer examination, it is being sent to the Georgia State Schools Superintendent (who is a more appropriate person to send it to). Basically, this petition was super vague and misleading and still managed to get 50,000 signatures.
This ties into something much bigger. With the increased ability to organize and spread awareness through the internet, comes the increased possibility that your true message will get mixed up with misinformation or lost completely along the way. Now that people can show their support with just a click of their mouse, they don't even bother to understand what they're supporting. People need to be careful to make sure that they know what it is that they're supporting instead of blindly supporting a cause which may or may not really exist. With increased access come an increased responsibility to check things out before we jump onto the bandwagon.
Anyway, the post, which had gotten tons of notes of support and reblogs, linked to a petition, so I went there to see if there was any more information. The petition still didn't have a particularly coherent explanation. It made said that over 100 schools in Georgia don't allow gay students and that these schools were receiving public funding. The petition, if anything, confused me more, as it sound as though different Georgia schools had different policies with regards to whether gay students would be expelled. At the bottom of the petition, there was a link to a New York Times article, so I clicked that in hopes that the article would explain what in the world was going on.
What I learned in reading the article was that the schools involved in this are private schools. And that changes everything. Basically, what's happening is that in Georgia, state money is being used for scholarships to private schools, some of which don't allow gay students. And see, that's a completely different story. Georgia public schools banning gay students and Georgia giving money to private schools some of which ban gay student are two very different things.
Now I'm not saying that I agree with these schools' policies at all. Personally, I think that the policies are awful. But that's part of private school, they get to make their own rules about this type of thing. And if they're a religious school who wants to make rules about gay students attending their school, that's their prerogative. Whether the government is allowed to fund scholarships to these schools is a question of constitutionality and separation of church and state stuff, and honestly, I don't know if it's allowed or not.
My main point is, please look before you leap into something on the internet. The fact that the post stating that Georgia public schools planned to ban gay students was reblogged over 40,000 times is concerning. It's awesome that that many people were up in arms about the idea, but the amount of ignorance that people displayed there, supporting something without even knowing what they were really supporting is not a good thing at all.
It also showed a basic lack of logic and understanding of politics. If you think about it, the whole thing really wouldn't make sense because, first of all, where would a gay student go if they got expelled? Wouldn't they have to go to school in a different state? And second of all, the sodomy laws in Georgia were struck down by courts, so why would a state a state in which its not illegal to be gay now allow their students to be gay?
On top of that, the fact that the poorly articulated petition got over 50,000 signatures is concerning. If you were to read the petition, you would think that the petition was being sent to the head of the Department of Education (who isn't the appropriate person to send it to at all, by the way), when in fact, upon closer examination, it is being sent to the Georgia State Schools Superintendent (who is a more appropriate person to send it to). Basically, this petition was super vague and misleading and still managed to get 50,000 signatures.
This ties into something much bigger. With the increased ability to organize and spread awareness through the internet, comes the increased possibility that your true message will get mixed up with misinformation or lost completely along the way. Now that people can show their support with just a click of their mouse, they don't even bother to understand what they're supporting. People need to be careful to make sure that they know what it is that they're supporting instead of blindly supporting a cause which may or may not really exist. With increased access come an increased responsibility to check things out before we jump onto the bandwagon.
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Why Group Work Doesn't Always Work
Right now, I'm really fed up with group work. We do a lot of group work in CAP; it's part of the program. I suppose that the reason that we do so much group work is that CAP is a communications based program and it's important to learn to work with others. The thing is, group work doesn't often work out all that well.
First of all, often times, teachers will tell students that they are allowed to form their own groups, but that they should work with people who they don't usually work with or someone who is interested in doing a similar idea, as opposed to their friends. Anyone who has ever been a student can tell you that that doesn't actually happen. As soon as a teacher says that students are allowed to pick their own groups, students start looking around, making eye contact with their friends, with that subtle head cock and nod that means, "lets work together". The second part of the teacher's statement either completely goes unheard, or is met with an eye roll and then ignored. Teachers notice patterns of student behavior in their classrooms, so I'd be surprised if they didn't notice this; however, this never seems to change.
Fine. I'm not saying that I want teachers to assign groups for every project. But I don't understand the point of making the statement if both teachers and students know that it isn't actually going to effect the makeup of the groups. I'm also not saying that I don't like working with my friends. I enjoy it as much as anyone else. But if the whole point of group work is to learn to work with diverse and different groups of people, it doesn't really make sense to always work with the same group when given the opportunity. Also, if this is the goal of the teachers, it doesn't make sense that they allow this dynamic to exist unaddresed.
Another big issue that I have with group work is the distribution of work within the group, which is very rarely equal. Often, one member of the group will wind up doing most or all of the work on a group project. I think that most of us have probably been in both the position of the person doing all of the work and the person doing very little work at one point or another. Being in the position of the former is extremely frustrating. The whole point of a group project is that the teacher is asking students to do something that is not meant to be done alone, either because it's too big to do alone or because students are meant to learn something from each other. Teachers base the amount of time given to do a project on the assumption that the work load will be shared between students.When one student has to do all of the work, the project loses a lot of it's meaning. In addition, the project becomes an unfair burden on that student's time. For example, in a group of three, the student who does most of the work often winds up spending three times the amount of time expected of one student because they have to carry the burden of their peers work as well.
I'm also not saying that this always happens. Sometimes groups are very well balanced. From what I've observed, on of the reasons that friends consistently work together is that work gets distributed more fairly among friends, or if one person winds up with all the work, it is more because they are willing to do it and less because no one else is.
In CAP, we all have a lot of work right now. The work load is pretty overwhelming as it is. So when you have to do not only the work assigned to you, but also the work of others in a group, it's just ridiculous. I think that ultimately, we all benefit when everyone does their fair share.