Wednesday, March 28, 2012

DAYS 34 - 39 Culture Projects in My Absence

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, April 2, 3, 4.  Library Lab.

Introduced last Friday, here's the Subcultures at School Project.   Here's the Marking Sheet for it.

I have left extra copies with Mrs. Boychuk and she has extra copies of the school map too.

Thursday, April 5.  Classroom, 308.  
Use this period to complete your project - most of you will have produced a poster-type board so today's the day to put it all together and wrap up the project.  Please ensure your names are on them  :-)

Tuesday, Wednesday, April 10, 11.  Library Lab.
Introduced Friday, March 30, Food and Culture Day Preparation

This is one of the highlights of the course and a good chance to show off a part of yourself that you don't normally get to show off - you're cultural / ethnic / national background.  Because every one of us has some ancestry from outside of Canada it's important to highlight it for the school.

Here's the handout and marking sheet for it:  Food and Culture Day & Marksheet.

We will hold the event on or around Wednesday, April 25 Monday in period 3 - that's the day we'll set up tables and your boards in the Bearpit and run the event for the period.

DAY 33 Viet Nam, Cultural Change, Sub-Cultures at School.

We continued and finished today with my lecture on How Cultures Change.


Included here is a link to a James Burke, "The Day the Universe Changed" episode wherein a Scottish Witch Trial occurs 300 years ago.  The events in the clip are easy to understand, a suspected witch is tortured, tried and then burned alive at the stake.  What we see is quite barbaric and meaningless because we (tend not to) do not believe in witches or such crude means of holding a trial and certainly we do not think it's right to burn people alive any more.  But what the people involved in this trial saw was something entirely different - a witch who needed to suffer and then be burned alive so that her soul could be saved and then sent heavenward on the smoke of the fire.

This raises the question of how two groups of highly intelligent people, one group from the 16th century and our modern group, could possibly see the event so differently?  The answer, of course, is in our belief systems - if the common belief is that it's a good thing to catch a witch and then torture and burn her to save her soul then people will certainly follow that belief.  If your belief is that witches do not exist and that torturing people is not acceptable behaviour then you will consider such behaviour unacceptable.

This idea of creating a reality (set of truths) based on beliefs, customs, teachings, values, etc. and then living your life accordingly has great implications for all societies.  In fact, that is exactly how societies and cultures operate - whether or not the set of "truths" are correct or not!


We ended up with a fine example of a changing modern technology and how it swung the debate against the US involvement in the Viet Nam war in the early 1970s.  Here's a link to that slideshow.  Viet Nam War Portrayal in the Media.

I will be away for the next six classes (April 2 - 11) so I'll post one blog entry for those days - it will be called DAY 34 - 39.  There are two projects for you to work on in there - Mrs. Boychuck will be with you for those classes, mostly held in the Library Lab, so please work well for her, she's a wonderful teacher and person.

DAY 32 How Cultures Change

Today we looked at some ideas around how cultures and societies change.  It was really a full period clarification of the idea that:

"When ideology (new ideas) and reality (status quo) clash, tension might rise to a crisis point.  When that crisis is resolved it's likely that culture/society has changed."

Here's my presentation - How Cultures Change.

DAY 31 Culture Intro Lecture Presentation

We spent yesterday and today going through my introductory lecture on Anthropology.  Unfortunately this show is too big for Google Docs however it's on the school server under S:resources, Classes, Kovich, Triologies, Anthropology, etc.  If you missed it in class please access it there.

DAY 30 - Culture and Anthropology Intro.

We spent part of the day discussing the meaning of "culture".  I gave you some ideas to ponder including the fact that throughout our history as homo erectus, homo habilis, etc. etc. up to our current form of homo sapiens, we have been a relatively week member of the natural world, meaning that there are many extremely powerful, fast, cunning and otherwise deadly creatures in our environment that could kill us easily.  Also, we have always had to search for food sources and compete with other species.

Our big advantage out there in the dangerous world has been our brain, but our brain does not work in isolation. Collectively, the knowledge and strategies that we have used for countless millennia have, in fact, given us a distinct advantage over all of the other dangers that we have faced.  This collective knowledge and those collective strategies  have enabled us to out compete all other species and to flourish.  This is what we now call "culture". 

In a simple sense culture can be thought of as a mechanism to adapt in order to find food and remain safe in hostile environments.

Of course today when we think of culture we think of the complete set of learned human behaviour patterns which we know are different from place to place and country to country.  This is what our second unit will study, Anthropology - the study of human cultures.


We started my lecture on Culture as well . . . it's posted in tomorrow's blog entry.

Monday, March 26, 2012

DAY 29 Test 1, Psychology

Today's test will take you the entire period to complete properly - come prepared.

DAY 28 Gods Must Be Crazy

We began the day by reviewing our short discussion on Culture from Tuesday.

We watched much more of the film today (we skipped the parts about the revolutionaries on the run as that part of the story, about half the movie, has little to do with culture - there's a tie in at the end enabling the viewers to identify the real masters of the land as the local people and 'Xi, not the so-called "civilized" revolutionaries or the bumbling scientist and the school teacher).


Check out the synopsis and other information about The Gods Must Be Crazy!  or check this one The Gods Must Be Crazy!

We stopped the film several times to discuss the meaning of the film work.

Monday is your first test on our Psych Unit - just a reminder!

DAY 27 Students vs. Police Hockey Game

Because we had only a few class members today we watched more of the film.

DAY 26 Test Review and the Beginning of Culture/Anthropology

 

We did a review of the review sheet for next Monday's test today.  This was a good time to get your thoughts and notes in order - everything on the test is on the review sheet, at least the main concepts are so there will be no surprises at test time.

Then we started to watch The Gods Must Be Crazy to introduce several ideas about culture and the different ways that people do things and see things around them.
One of the best concepts in the opening of the film is the idea that people, when they live close to nature as we have done for the majority of our existence as a species (thousands/millions of years) have slowly developed ways to get food/water from the environment by developing clever ways of dealing with problems.  For example the San ('Xi, the main character in the film is from the San group of people of the Kalahari Desert) know how to collect water overnight or how to obtain it easily from the roots of plants that are not too evident above ground.  Modern, civilized people have actually adapted their environment to suit them.  The San have adapted to suit their environment (for the most part).

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

DAY 25 Optical Illusions and Psych. Test Review

Here's the link to the Optical Illusions presentation that we looked at today - it's a fun way to demonstrate just how adaptable our brains are and just how vulnerable our brains are to over stimulation and/or incomplete or conflicting data through our eyes.

Here's the Psych Unit Review Sheet that I distributed as well - we'll plan the best day for our Psych Test together as a class.

The Psych Unit Test will be next Monday, March 26.  Remember, the best way to study is to review your stuff several times a week - best time to start was in February, but if you haven't done that then start today!

DAY 24 Freudian Slips!

Beginning our look at normal development and socialization from babyhood to adulthood, we looked at Freud and his Theory of  Psycho Sexual Development.

We also had a look through the Freud PowerPoint presentation on the same topic.

Then we had a look at the fun questionnaire, What Gender is Your Brain, which is a quick (albeit completely unscientific yet fun) look at whether your brain is hard-wired more in line with a typically female or male brain in problem-solving thought patterns.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

DAYS 21, 22, 23 Shine and B Mod

These are three days of lab time so that everyone can continue to ask good questions and move through you assignments - lots of work before March Break yes, but then you have a week to recover!

Great questions people are asking, I'm very impressed with the level of thinking going on with both of your Shine and B Mod projects.  Well done everyone!

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

DAY 20 Shine and Erikson

Today is a work period for this project (see yesterday's blog for it).  It's due Friday, please!

DAY 19 End of Shine and First Project

We finished the film today and then as a class we discussed some of the connections from it and Erikson's stages of Psychosocial development.

In each of the first seven stages there is clear evidence of maladaptations in David Helfgott.  Remember that I said that it is impossible to attribute each psychological "flaw" exclusively to his failed relationship with his father, but there is evidence of connections - for example Helfgott was never praised for trying to win piano competitions but was always ridiculed for trying but not winning filling him with shame and doubt and diminishing his autonomy as he grew older.  This finally ended up in David simply leaving his family against his father's wishes, beating and the threat to disown his son (which he did!).

Here's the assignment handout for the Shine Assignment (Erikson).

Monday, March 5, 2012

DAY 18 Shine On

Due to the lack of people in class on Thursday (I was away with the Snowboard team) we continued to watch from yesterday's spot, the film Shine.  We'll complete it on Monday.

Friday, March 2, 2012

DAY 17 Shine

I was away at Ofsaa Snowboarding today and you were to watch the rest of the film.  I'm not too sure how many of you were there or how the film watching went so I'll catch up with you in class about how yesterday's period 5 went and then I'll post today's class.

DAY 16 Erikson and the film, "Shine"

We had a quick look at the rest of Erikson's stages of development today.  See yesterday's blog for the entire explanation - also, here is a link to the note and further explanations.  Erik Erikson's Theory of the Stages of Psychosocial Development.

Then we started to watch, "Shine" - an amazing and award-winning film about Australian pianist, David   Helfgott.  This is based on the actual life experiences of Helfgott and shows all of the stages indicated in Erik Erikson's theory.  The plot is basically this: a child prodigy pianist, the young Helfgott is tightly controlled by his demanding father and learns to play beautifully but is continually pushed in this or that direction by his father - eventually Helfgott wins a scholarship to be trained in the USA under Isaac Stern but his father does not allow him to leave home.  Again, he is offered a scholarship to study in Londaon, England but his father refuses to let him go.  Helfgott leaves anyway and suffers a nervous breakdown after relearning Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto # 3, a piece he learned as a chid to impress his father.  He spends years in mental institutions and undergoes electric shock therapy.  Eventually he meets his future wife and seems to recover to the point where he becomes a touring concert pianist again and he comes to terms with the death of his father.