Takikawa

Takikawa city has an aging population and very few
opportunities for young people.  As a result, the town's economy is
fragile.  When I first came to Takikawa I was surprised to see so
many closed shops. It was depressing at first but then I learnt many
talented people are interested in rejuvenating the local area.  But fragile doesn't mean dead. I think the way forward is as follows. Takikawa needs a center to promote
entrepreneurs.  This should include educational support, crowd
funding, and local government administration.  On the other hand,
people say that it is best to attract  large companies should open
here and provide young people with jobs.  Japanese people, they say,
are only interested in working for established companies.  I believe
however that if Takikawa is going to survive,  it needs to encourage
and support small startups.

Gender studies

Gender studies

Reading 1:  Rwanda - world’s first women-led country

Rwanda will soon become the first country in the world where female politicians outnumber male politicians. The small central African country has made huge progress since its tragic genocide in the 1990s. It can now proudly call itself a beacon of sexual equality. The ruling party coalition won 78% of seats in the election. Women took at least 44 out of a total of the 80 seats. Women may still win another three undecided seats. The head of the country’s election commission stated: “It's clear women representatives will be more than 50 per cent." Since the genocide, the government has encouraged women into politics. Many in Rwanda say the election results show that people are fed up with male-dominated politics. They say women will bring freshness and change to the nation.  
 

Women’s groups were quick to praise the government of President Paul Kagame for promoting such a strong gender equality programme. A female voter told the BBC’s Focus on Africa show that the new political landscape would help strengthen her country. She explained: "Men, especially in our culture, used to think that women are there to be in the house, cook food, look after the children... but the real problems of a family are known by a woman and when they do it, they help a country to get much better." A local newspaper editor told the Voice of America website of his new pride in his country: “We have really been the first…where the women have broken the glass ceiling…now it's like we are enlightened. We are no longer in this backward sort of thinking,” he said.

 Questions

http://iteslj.org/questions/gender.html

  

Gender studies

Reading 2 - Habermas and communicative equality

Think about this -  How does the balance of power in a relationship affect the meaning of the words spoken?

 When people are unequal in power, the stronger dominate the weak. In other words, power distorts communication. According to the philosopher Habermas,  equality in communication is a basic right.  But is it achievable? The linguist Tannon says: If you care what someone thinks, this limits your freedom.  Do you understand this?  If society cares more about the rights of men, doesn’t this intimidate women?

Look at the following explanation for girl’s schools. All-girl schools have been gaining popularity in recent years because of the belief that girls learn better when they aren’t competing with or intimidated by boys, who statistically get more attention in the classroom. Do you think single-sex schools are a good idea?

For Habermas, language is at the core of all social relationships because it is through language that we communicate. The role of language in our lives, for Habermas, is central to the development of our moral sense and has emancipatory potential.  Emancipation means to be set free from social or political restrictions.  What restrictions are we talking about? Well, one example of a restriction is gender inequality in society.  This inequality is a social fact that is a dominant ideology in Japan.  Ideologies determine social practices and when we look at social practices, we find women do not enjoy the same status as men. This communicative inequality (for women) makes it difficult for women to interact with men on an equal basis.  For men, it makes it difficult to communicate without self-interest. 

Communication demands of us, if it is to succeed, a certain tolerance toward difference. Inequality however entails intolerance.

Interview – You are a student doing research on gender equality

1.    Do you think some people have been hired just because of gender?

2.     Do you think that there are fewer opportunities at school or in the workplace because of gender?

3.    Are there times when it’s clearly an advantage to be a man or woman? Give examples.

4.    Do you remember situations when gender was an issue?

5.     Were you ever discouraged from doing something because of your gender?

6.    What would you say are the most common gender stereotypes?

Reading 3 - The Rights of Mothers and Fathers

Three years ago, Gina entered Harvard University in Boston, with a full scholarship. She planned to graduate from Harvard, go to law school, and become a lawyer Unfortunately, in her second year she had to return to her hometown in California when she found out she had gotten pregnant during the previous summer. The father of her baby is her ex-boyfriend, Tommy, who lives in California.

Now her baby is ten months old, and Gina wants to return with her baby to Harvard to continue her studies. But Tommy, the father, doesn't want Gina to take the baby. He says the baby should stay with him in California because he could take care of the baby better than Gina could. Tommy has a job as a waiter and makes about $800 month. He says his parents (the baby's grandparents) could take care of the baby while he's working. At the same time, he says Gina would be too busy with her studies at Harvard to be a good mother. Because she has no relatives in Boston, the baby would have to spend a lot of time in daycare while Gina is in classes or studying.

Gina disagrees with Tommy. She says that, as the baby's mother, she could take better care of the baby than anyone else and that a baby needs its mother. She is confident that she could study and take care of the baby. Also, she says that the baby will have a better future if Gina can graduate from a famous university like Harvard and become a lawyer.

Questions

Why does the father think the baby should stay with him?

Why does the mother think the baby should stay with her?

rubbish dump

The rubbish dump

1.     Who cleans up after us?

2.     Have you ever had a picnic or BBQ and not cleaned up?

3.     Why are sanitation workers often stigmatized?

Cities produce trash.  You produce trash. Rich cities produce enormous amounts of trash.  Some cities recycle.  Mumbai, in India is a city that recycles everything.  Of course they produce trash but surprisingly, very little. But even poor cities produce some trash.  Most things that were created by human beings end up on a rubbish dump.  People who work in the rubbish industry experience stigma.  The dumps are usually on the edge of the city.  Working with trash is a dangerous job. The garbage itself is full of hazards but in today’s story, we see the garbage through the minds of two remarkable characters.

B. After reading: a recurring song in the story is:

The white man is wise

He made the aeroplane

It’s nothing else

But determination   

Key words or background to song:  industrial revolution, colonialization, developed world, educated person, poverty, social Darwinism

C. Connect to the Internet – Bob Marley lyrics for War, verse one.  Write below:

Until the philosophy…

D.  Homework – A.  Watch the TED Talk about the other rubbish dump, our ocean.  Google; Charles Moore:  Seas of plastic, or,

<https://www.ted.com/talks/capt_charles_moore_on_the_seas_of_plastic/transcript?language=en>

B.  Also, Video about rubbish dump workers.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-KJ0C8ZyZI

next week:  Test on the rubbish dump videos

Delay gratification

The remarkable power of delaying gratification

Everyone, please think of your biggest personal goal. 　Imagine
deciding right now that you're going to do it. People will
congratulate you.  They will think you are great. It will feel good.

Well, bad news: you should have kept your mouth shut, because that
good feeling now will make you less likely to do it. Researchers have
found that telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen.
Any time you have a goal, there are some steps that need to be done,
some work that needs to be done in order to achieve it. If you tell
someone, the mind is kind of tricked into feeling that it's already
done. And then because you've felt that satisfaction, you're less
motivated to do the actual hard work necessary.

Researchers tested 163 individuals.  Half of the group were made to
keep their goals a secret, and the other half were told to talk about
their goals.  Then everyone set to work on achieving their goals. The
researchers discovered that the group who had talked about their plans
did not work as hard on achieving their goals.  The group who kept
their goals a secret on the other hand all worked much harder on their
plans.

So if this is true, what can we do? Well, you could not talk about
your goal. You can delay the gratification that the social
acknowledgment brings. But if you do need to talk about something, you
can talk about  it in a way that gives you no satisfaction, such as,
"I really want to run this marathon, so I need to train five times a
week and kick my ass if I don't, okay?"

*Delay gratification means to wait for the pleasure rather than
enjoying the immediate reward


Questions
1.  According to the article, does telling someone your dream make you
feel good?
2. According to the article, why should we keep our mouths shut?
3.  When researchers studied the two  groups, which group worked best
on achieving their goals?
4.  According to the article, is asking for support and telling
someone your goal the same thing?  Explain.

B.   GIVE A TALK - use the following plan to retell the article.
1. most people have goals, many people talk about them. It feels good when others congratulate us
2. Research shows motivation fails after telling someone
3. Researchers tested two groups.
4. There is a difference between asking for support and telling someone your dream


C.  Task - Tell about a time you told someone about a dream and then it
didn't come true.  Reflect on this experience.  Was it because you
lost motivation?  Then, tell about a time you kept your dream a secret
and it came true.

Based on Ted talk on same topic
--
Tim Blankley

men and women

Is gender equality a myth?

Part A - historical differences

For thousands of years, everyone treated men and women as different.  Traditionally, the social roles people played depended on what gender you were.  People believed in the different abilities men and women had.

But this view of gender differences was challenged in the 1960s.  Women wanted equality. As a result, men began to lose their social and economic domination over women.  Educational policies were rewritten to remove gender bias.  In the Israeli kibbutz, the traditional roles of “male” and “female” ceased to exist.  This provided a model for other countries to follow. Never again would a woman simply fall into a role assigned to her by society.

But recent scientific studies have challenged us again. While many of us have been taught about gender equality these past 40 years, the facts are very different.  Not just different in a physical way, but worlds apart in life priorities, ways of communication, and sexual needs. According to researchers, the idea of equality from the 1960s was “a biological and scientific lie.”

Questions

1.     In what ways were men and women treated differently in the past?

2.     What happened in the 1960s?

3.   What has recent scientific research challenged?

Part B – Brain differences

Men’s and women’s brain work differently.  Men’s brains are more specialized and compartmentalized, with their spatial and language skills located in specific centers.  Women’s brain functions, on the other hand, are generally more diffused, meaning that these skills mentioned above are controlled by centers in both the left and right hemispheres.  

The male brain is dedicated to organizing and categorizing. They are single-minded.  Women, on the other hand, have greater overall awareness of a situation and are much more successful at picking up small facial cues that men don’t see. As a result, women tend to be better judges of character, and may account for “women‘s intuition.” Women also have more effective peripheral vision and generally better senses all round.

Men’s brains have an action orientation. For instance most men prefer playing a sport, or doing a hobby than spending time chatting. They are disturbed when women cry, and wonder why it happens so often. Researchers Moir and Jessel explain: “Women... see, hear, and feel more, and what they see, hear and feel means more to them. Women cry more often than men because they have more to cry about—they are receiving more emotional input, reacting more strongly to it, and expressing it with greater force.” When a man cries, on the other hand, there must be something seriously wrong.

Questions

1.     Are men’s or women’s brain more specialized?  What does it mean to be more specialized?

2.    Who is better at reading facial cues, men or women?

3.    Why do women cry more than men?  What does it mean when a man cries?

chicken out

Tell me about a time you chickened out of something.

OK, I'm gonna ask you a few questions...

1.  Where were you?
2.  Who were you with?
3.  What did you want?
4.  What were you doing at the time?
5. What happened?
6.  What was your plan?  or What had been your plan?
7.  What went wrong?  I mean, why did you lose your nerve?
8.  How did you feel about it later?

gossip

Gossiping

Gossiping - student A


This article is about gossiping. Do you understand what "gossip" means? In conversations, when people sometimes talk about other people's private lives, it is called gossiping. We often imagine older women telling gossip to each other; in other words, the tell personal information about other people.

Gossiping - student B


Researchers analyzed girls and boys between the ages of 9 and 12 in order to learn if they gossip and what they gossip about. By the way, children between 9 and 12 are called 'pre-teens.' The researchers found that pre-teens spend 50% of the conversation time gossiping.

Gossiping - student C



Girls often talk about boys that they were in love with. They also talked about boys other girls loved. Boys, other the other hand, rarely talked about girls that they loved. But they did talk about girls in general.

Gossiping - part D


There was some interesting information about pre-teens. Pairs of boys who were good friends gossiped less than boys who were not close friends. In other words, boys used gossip to become friends with someone new. Girls, on the other hand, used gossip mostly with their friends. Girls spent much more time gossiping with close friends than with girls who were just acquaintances.

Gossiping


a) Do people in your country gossip?


b) When you were a pre-teen, did you talk about boys or girls you loved?


c) In general, when you were in junior high and high school, what types of things did you talk about?


d) When you were a pre-teen, did you have a few close friends or many friends who were not so close?


e) Nowadays, what kinds of things do you talk about with your friends?