Bowling Alone, we are becoming selfish.

We read an article written by Robert D. Putnam titled “Bowling Alone: America´s Declining Social Capital.” In his article Pu tnam talked about how the community engagement and the capacity to work together, what he calls Social Capital, was one value that characterized the United States in the past. However, this interaction between people has being declining since the 1960s. He supports his idea by given different statistics of how different kinds of organizations have seen a decline in the number of its members. And he purposes that the reasons of this decline in the Social Capital are possibly related with the movement of women in the labor force, different ethnographic aspect and the role of technology in the American society.

The fact that people is less involved in organization is quite sad, but it is just reflect of how the American society is becoming more selfish every day. Think about how the wealth is distributed in this country, there are small group that have so much money, that they do not know what to do with all that money. While there are people who live poor, dealing with what to eat every day.  
For instance I am now at the Complex Study Lounge. A girl who is sitting next to me made brownies and she is saying to her friend that she does not know what to do with all those brownies. But she did not offer me anything, even I am right next to her. 
One of the main things that Putnam did not mentioned in his article is that this decline in the Social Capital is a result of the big obsession with money.  It made me think about the Social Capital in my home country Costa Rica where, I have observed that in the more poor neighborhoods people interact more with each other, while people who live in the richer neighborhoods live more isolated of the rest of the people.

Also this society is rewarding individual competitively rather than group work. Thus, it is normal that the social cohesion is decreasing. But thats an intersting topic for another blog entry :).

Wartburg College Social Change

In the IS 101 class, we look at different ways that people can contribute to social change.  They gave us a sheet of paper with information where we can see different activities that we can do at Wartburg College in order to contribute to someone’s concept of social change. There are some good suggestions but I hope that the people who received that piece of paper have defined before what is the change that they want, before participating in an activity, just because of doing it. For instance, some people may think that feed starving children is just a short term ineffective solution when the real problem is the bad distribution of resources (I mentioned the waste of food on a past blog entry). Also,   I think that some of the activities suggested in that paper does not contribute to any social change, instead they are just ways to keep the social structure the same. For instance, even though there are people who believe in service as way to improve the world, there are many others who do service as a way to obtain individual benefits.

By looking at the social change wheel, I think that I have done many different types of service through my live, but what I really think has contributed to social change is much less than that. This “Social Change Wheel” gives the feeling to people that just by doing easy things as “follow the student handbook” they are contributing to social change when they are not. Thus people feel happy and comfortable, because they justify their lack of action by believing that they are contributing to social change just by “follow the student handbook”.

With which type of social change I identify myself the most? Since that is a personal preference question I feel free to say that with any of those mentioned in the Wartburg College Social Change wheel. I feel that I still need a lot to do in order to say that I am contributing to social change.

I believe that if we want to see a big change we need big actions and especially big sacrifices in our lives.        

Waste of food

One of the most shocking moments that I experienced since I came to Wartburg College, occurred when I was at my job in the college’s cafeteria and I saw the huge amount of food that was just thrown away. It was not left overs, it was trays full with food that was being thrown away, just because it could not be keep for later. At that moment I felt different sensations. I felt sad to think that nowadays many people in the world would actually eat that food, because they have nothing else to eat. Then I felt disappointed. When I decided to come to Wartburg College, one of the things that made me feel interested about it was the community engagement and service, but all that is contradicted when I saw how that food was thrown away.

I heard that they can just give that food to charity because of the risk of being sued if someone gets sick with food from them. It is all about money.  It makes me sad to think that this is only what I have observed at the cafeteria of one college in the US, I am horrified to think in the amount of food that is being thrown away by all the colleges in the countries. And then it makes me disappointed to think that colleges are supposed to be the places where idealism and different ideas grown, but it seems that many people here is more concerned about their own well.

I hope not to start seeing this waste as normal like many people here does. I know that I am not perfect, but at least I promised myself to eat all what is my plate and I have two years of not eating any kind of meat except for fish.

Really, does that match with the values of the Lutheran or any church? Does that match with the change that we want to see in the world?  

Is that normal?

Two months and my vandalized bike

In only one week, I would have spent two months at Wartburg College. A lot of experiences have happened to me so far, some of them nice but some of them pretty challenging. Living far from home is more difficult that what it though, especially because I have started to feel things that I have never felt before, but the effort is worth considering the good things that I have experienced so many beautiful things.

Since the moment I got inside the plane that was taking me to the US I knew that the only way to make of this a success, would be by keeping a good attitude. So I decided not to let myself think about things like how much I miss home and all that. But now I have understood that I just cannot avoid it, I have to think and talk about these things, because if not, they started to accumulate in my head and suddenly explode. 

I had one specific experience that made me reconsider talking about my feelings, the story of my bike. Once I was walking to Wal-Mart because I decided to buy one specific thing, a bicycle; this idea came to me because at that moment I was feeling that I would like to explore more Waverly by my own. I was at halfway from Wal-Mart when someone in a car sounds the horn. It was Kevin, the president of the international students program here at Wartburg, he offered me to take to Walmart. So when we were on the way to it I told him what I was going to buy. He answered me that he had a used bicycle at a warehouse close to the college, and he offered to borrow it to me. I was very happy, we went to there and he gave me the bicycle. For around twenty days used the bicycle so much. Until one day I woke up and I didn’t found it. Then I looked all around the campus. I found outside the student center, but it was vandalized. For some reason that made me feel so bad, at that moment I just wanted to be in my home, in my country, with my family and friends, I felt so lonely, like if the person who did, (probably someone drunk) wanted to make damage to me. That is the moment when I realized that it was not really what happened with the bike that was making me feel that way.  It took me a couple of days before start feeling better (emotionally), the security people caught the guy who did it, however I don’t know if I am going to get another bike from Kevin, but after that event, I feel that I am more conscious about my feelings here and by expressing them I feel that I can handle them better than just not saying them. I am excited for all what is coming, live and particularly this experience is like a rollercoaster, so I have to enjoy the ride!

Michael Crichton's Speech: information or misinformation

We were watching on the IS101 class a panel where Michael Crichton participated, by the time that he was releasing his book State of Fear. Crichton talked about how the media makes us believe that some events in history were worse or not that worse than they really were. He pointed out the effect that this misinformation may bring negatives effects to society. He referred to the catastrophe of Chernobyl as an example of how different newspapers and studies showed different statistic related to the damages of this accident and he suggested that the magnification of the catastrophe led to  consequences like the decrease in the optimism and self-expectations of the people in Chernobyl. Then he applied that same idea to the environmental field. What would be the effect of not having the accurate information regarding the global warming? Just because scientists support global warming, does that means that is necessarily going to happen? What if yes? What if no?

I think that Dr. Crichton´s speech was a good example of the critical point of view that we all need to have in our lives.  We need to learn to be skeptic when we read the journal front pages or see the CNN or Fox News, knowing that their information may not be real and that they can be a tool that people in power use to manipulate the ideas of the population.

So what can we believe on? I am convinced that when something happen the first information released is the less accurate. A modern example is the tragic event that occurred in Norway some months ago, where the reporter constantly changed the number of victims, at a certain point I remembered when I though the following: “See the power of media, fifty Norwegians died and that was one of the world´s most tragic events, but what about the people who died every die because of terrorism in the middle east, and by terrorism I don’t mean only Osama and their internal conflicts, but the terrorism generated by the US army, where with sources like Wikileaks we can have a small idea that how people is being killed”. We need to know that the information that we receive sometimes is not only intended to inform us, but misinform us, manipulate us.  We need to overcome that State of Fear generated by the media and before feeling terrified (if necessary) by something, be sure that we have looked for many different sources. Unfortunately even we tenf to believe that we in the era of the communication, reliable sources are just a few.

Teaching: power and responsability

Paulo Freire is a recognized Brazilian teacher, who has written many works about the modern educational system. We read a piece of him in the IS 101 class, named “The Banking Concept of Education”. I have to recognize that at the beginning it was a little bit hard for me to understand the language that he uses, but I thing that I comprehend most of his points. Freire argues that in the modern educational system there is a big issue concerning the relation between students and teachers. There is a sense of superiority from the educators, where they perceive  students as empty people who have nothing to contribute and that he or she has nothing to learn form them. This attitude is very prejudicial because it limits greatly the creativity and critical thinking of the students, who at the end interiorize this system becoming more alienated and  reproducing it leading to a hardly breakable cycle.      

I think that teachers are one of the most important pieces of society and this means a huge ethical responsibility. They have a big power of influence over their students and they should be aware of this all the time. As physicians have the responsibility of keeping their selves informed all the time about changes and innovation in the medical field, teacher need to keep an attitude of learning all the time.   The challenge for teachers is to assume this open attitude while keeping enough credibility in their students and this in my opinion only come with years of practice.  That why good teachers are so difficult to find, because sometimes the easiest way to teach is the conventional and practice teaching as any other paid job, but those who get to that equilibrium can feel satisfied of the positive impact that they are letting to the world.

Free to learn

We read a piece written by Barry Schwartz named: The Debasing of Education: Turning Play into Work. I found it really interesting and I definitely agree with many of his arguments; however I feel that many of the points that the author provides area too idealistic and the only way that all that idealism can become reality is by proposing solutions.  He recognizes that we have a big issue with the motivation of students, because the system is made on such a way that extrinsic motivation is fomented rather that the intrinsic motivation. But what is the solution? How can we change? This is the thought part, because without grades and all those elements of the extrinsic motivation how can we guarantee the quality of the learning process and of course the most difficult part is: How can we change such a complex system? Probably the change should start with each one of us. We need to be conscious that we are in a learning process and that if we want to get the most of it, we need to enjoy it. I know that for some people, it sounds ridiculous to pretend, enjoying something that we don’t, but life is full with those kinds of situations, so people who actually have that ability, may have a great advantage. But the most important thing to remember is that having access to a college education, is something that most people in the world do not have, even they would want to, so there are reasons to be happy, enjoy and be grateful with life.

Interesting discussion about Islam after the Persepolis

What images come to your mind whenever you listen to the word Islam?

Today, after watching The Persepolis movie we had an interesting panel with two students, one from Afghanistan and the other from Pakistan. They talked about how Islam is different on each country on the Middle East, and how, the wars are not a result of religion, but political issues. This was very interesting for me, first because I do not know a lot about this religion, that is in fact one of the biggest in the world, and also, because in some way I think that the media created a negative perspective of Islam, always like the conservationist religion, or the people who are always are on war, but as one of the students pointed out that these misconceptions are wrong.

It was sad to hear that is some countries they are not letting Muslim woman to use their veils, what if they just want to use it because, doesn’t matter the reason, I think that everybody should be free to wear whatever they want to.

Religion is a strong part of humans that can be used either to unify or separate people.  

Liberal Arts: the long wait.

I have to recognize that when I made my decision of coming to Wartburg College, I was not a 100% sure of what the Liberal Arts program mean. I knew that with this program, people make a major and also a minor and that they need to take some classes additional to those of their intended carrier. I recognize the importance of the effort made by the college and specially the IS101 class, to make us see more clearly what this means.  Now that I have read a little bit more and that we had our discussions on classes, I have a stronger opinion of the Liberal Arts programs, which, of course may change with the time.

I believe that this program can have an extraordinary effect on students; however, depending on their motivation it can just become a lot of required classes for graduate.

Learning is a process that requires a constant source of motivation, especially because it is a long process, and as any other long process, it can lead to desperation.  Like children, when they are waiting for Santa Claus (in Costa Rica we say that is “El niño Dios”) to bring them presents, learning is a long wait until the results can be seen.

Some people never were taught to wait, they have always got what they wanted in the moment that they wanted, and this is possibly why they perceive a learning process as boring or demotivation, because there is not that constant retribution to their effort.

I think that we need to find that equilibrium between living for today and seeking for long term retributions. So, how can we find that equilibrium on a learning process like the Liberal Arts program? Easy, we need to enjoy it. We need to take out all those fears and laziness and start enjoying every single class and work, just with a change of attitude, and seeing the daily retribution of having an education being concern and responsible, because many people in the world would like to have something like it.