Quote of the Day: Age appears to be best in some things

Age appears to be best in some things. Old wood best to burn. Old books best to read. Old rice best to eat and old friends best to keep.

Gender Socialization

This is the script from my presentation regarding Gender socialization.

After listening to Sieng Hor’s explaination regarding how your occupation and workplace can shape your attitude and behaviour, let’s move on to another interesting yet controversial topic: Socialization into gender. Before I go any deeper, I’d like to pose some key questions regarding this topic. “Are female born to be emotional?” For exp: whenever they watch a sad love story and the main actor or actress die, more often than not they will end up crying.
To clear your doubt, we will elaborate in the following slides.

First of all, let’s define this key term: Gender role. T asks “Can you anything strange about this picture?” The picture is strange because in general people expect boys to play with cars or gun, girls to play with dolls. 

As we have learned earlier from the previous presentation, who we are and how we behave and what we think is a final product of a process called Socialization. At the same time, through socialization we also learn our gender role, in other words what is appropriate and not appropriate for our gender. We are not born to know about our gender role (boy should do this, girl should do that, boy shouldn’t do this, girl shouldn’t do that), it is the society that tells us so.

 Let’s analyze on how family shape who we are. You see, it is very difficult for a child to grow into an adult without facing any gender stereotyping.  At a very young age, we were taught what is masculine (which is a male quality), feminine (female quality). Boys are told they should not cry, weak and afraid of anything, but they should be strong and dominant. On the other hand, girls are told to be gentle.

 Our parents choose the color of our clothes according to our gender, pink or red to girl, blue to boy. Our parents also buy different kinds of toy for us to play. They would buy gun or car for boys, and barbie doll for girls. They also expect different behaviour from the two kids. Parents also choose different kinds of activity. They would encourage their daughter to do some housework and encourage their son to play sport. Moreover, boys are allowed to go far away from home and late at night, whereas girls should stay at home.

Psychologists Susan Goldberg and Michael Lewis conduct an observation on a mother with her 6-month-old infants.

Teacher is god!!

I believe students are not lazy to study. I have to defend myself first before I elaborate on my opinion. I do not deny that all students are hardworking and there is no such thing as lazy student, but in most cases students' laziness is because of other causes. In my cases, I will pick up one root: teachers' out-dated teaching methodology used by teachers that bored the students, that demotivate students, that do not engage students to participate, that turn students completely off.

I have come to experience many different teachers. Students can easily identify whether or not teacher is enjoy his/her teaching. As a result, students can easily get affected by this things. Do not think that students are stupid. When teachers look like he is enjoying with his teaching, students obviously can feel that energy which can boost their activeness. How can students feel energetic when their teachers are very lazy to teach. I can bring proof for my stance. I will raise 2 teachers teaching the same class and make comparison. The first teacher comes to class late every session. He brings no extra handout to deliver to the class. He teaches for 1 hour and leaves the class early. When looking at how students behave in the class, they talk to each other, paying no attention. The second teacher is a complete opposite of the first teacher. He comes to class on time with handout. He uses the problem-posing model before he starts his lecture to arouse students. When looking at the students, they are paying close attention to lecture; they try to contribute ideas and answer to teachers' question. Why??? Is the answer not obvious?

Problem-posing model is the best approach to stimulate students. It is very effective when it comes to pose curiosity into student to do more research on a particular topic, to do more reading as well as to pay more attention to the lesson. Let's have an analogy. You need to turn someone on before you can do it. Explaining to students is the same. Warm up is the key to engage students to your lesson.

All thing considered, teachers play a huge role in students' learning.

Marriage or Divorce

Married or not… you should read this.

Marriage.

“When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I’ve got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes.

Suddenly I didn’t know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce. I raised the topic calmly. She didn’t seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, why?

I avoided her question. This made her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, you are not a man! That night, we didn’t talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; she had lost my heart to Jane. I didn’t love her anymore. I just pitied her!

With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she could own our house, our car, and 30% stake of my company. She glanced at it and then tore it into pieces. The woman who had spent ten years of her life with me had become a stranger. I felt sorry for her wasted time, resources and energy but I could not take back what I had said for I loved Jane so dearly. Finally she cried loudly in front of me, which was what I had expected to see. To me her cry was actually a kind of release. The idea of divorce which had obsessed me for several weeks seemed to be firmer and clearer now.

The next day, I came back home very late and found her writing something at the table. I didn’t have supper but went straight to sleep and fell asleep very fast because I was tired after an eventful day with Jane. When I woke up, she was still there at the table writing. I just did not care so I turned over and was asleep again.

In the morning she presented her divorce conditions: she didn’t want anything from me, but needed a month’s notice before the divorce. She requested that in that one month we both struggle to live as normal a life as possible. Her reasons were simple: our son had his exams in a month’s time and she didn’t want to disrupt him with our broken marriage.

This was agreeable to me. But she had something more, she asked me to recall how I had carried her into out bridal room on our wedding day. She requested that every day for the month’s duration I carry her out of our bedroom to the front door ever morning. I thought she was going crazy. Just to make our last days together bearable I accepted her odd request.

I told Jane about my wife’s divorce conditions. . She laughed loudly and thought it was absurd. No matter what tricks she applies, she has to face the divorce, she said scornfully.

My wife and I hadn’t had any body contact since my divorce intention was explicitly expressed. So when I carried her out on the first day, we both appeared clumsy. Our son clapped behind us, daddy is holding mommy in his arms. His words brought me a sense of pain. From the bedroom to the sitting room, then to the door, I walked over ten meters with her in my arms. She closed her eyes and said softly; don’t tell our son about the divorce. I nodded, feeling somewhat upset. I put her down outside the door. She went to wait for the bus to work. I drove alone to the office.

On the second day, both of us acted much more easily. She leaned on my chest. I could smell the fragrance of her blouse. I realized that I hadn’t looked at this woman carefully for a long time. I realized she was not young any more. There were fine wrinkles on her face, her hair was graying! Our marriage had taken its toll on her. For a minute I wondered what I had done to her.

On the fourth day, when I lifted her up, I felt a sense of intimacy returning. This was the woman who had given ten years of her life to me. On the fifth and sixth day, I realized that our sense of intimacy was growing again. I didn’t tell Jane about this. It became easier to carry her as the month slipped by. Perhaps the everyday workout made me stronger.

She was choosing what to wear one morning. She tried on quite a few dresses but could not find a suitable one. Then she sighed, all my dresses have grown bigger. I suddenly realized that she had grown so thin, that was the reason why I could carry her more easily.

Suddenly it hit me… she had buried so much pain and bitterness in her heart. Subconsciously I reached out and touched her head.

Our son came in at the moment and said, Dad, it’s time to carry mom out. To him, seeing his father carrying his mother out had become an essential part of his life. My wife gestured to our son to come closer and hugged him tightly. I turned my face away because I was afraid I might change my mind at this last minute. I then held her in my arms, walking from the bedroom, through the sitting room, to the hallway. Her hand surrounded my neck softly and naturally. I held her body tightly; it was just like our wedding day.

But her much lighter weight made me sad. On the last day, when I held her in my arms I could hardly move a step. Our son had gone to school. I held her tightly and said, I hadn’t noticed that our life lacked intimacy. I drove to office…. jumped out of the car swiftly without locking the door. I was afraid any delay would make me change my mind…I walked upstairs. Jane opened the door and I said to her, Sorry, Jane, I do not want the divorce anymore.

She looked at me, astonished, and then touched my forehead. Do you have a fever? She said. I moved her hand off my head. Sorry, Jane, I said, I won’t divorce. My marriage life was boring probably because she and I didn’t value the details of our lives, not because we didn’t love each other anymore. Now I realize that since I carried her into my home on our wedding day I am supposed to hold her until death do us apart. Jane seemed to suddenly wake up. She gave me a loud slap and then slammed the door and burst into tears. I walked downstairs and drove away. At the floral shop on the way, I ordered a bouquet of flowers for my wife. The salesgirl asked me what to write on the card. I smiled and wrote, I’ll carry you out every morning until death do us apart.

That evening I arrived home, flowers in my hands, a smile on my face, I run up stairs, only to find my wife in the bed - dead. My wife had been fighting CANCER for months and I was so busy with Jane to even notice. She knew that she would die soon and she wanted to save me from the whatever negative reaction from our son, in case we push through with the divorce.— At least, in the eyes of our son—- I’m a loving husband….

The small details of your lives are what really matter in a relationship. It is not the mansion, the car, property, the money in the bank. These create an environment conducive for happiness but cannot give happiness in themselves.

So find time to be your spouse’s friend and do those little things for each other that build intimacy. Do have a real happy marriage!

If you don’t share this, nothing will happen to you.

If you do, you just might save a marriage. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”

I saw this on the internet.. I thought I would share this on tumblr to my followers and randoms.

(Source: Nathanpersuasion)

What makes a good teacher?

“My teacher is very good at teaching”. This is the kind of words which most teachers love to hear from their students. The question is what makes a good teacher? The question seems to be very simple, but sometimes a simple question is quite hard to answer. To become an effective teachers require several essential qualities. Being knowledgeable is one quality, but knowledge alone simply is not good enough to be qualified as a good teacher. There are 3 qualities which a good teacher needs to have.

First of all, a good teacher needs to pay close attention to his student’s learning. By doing so, a teacher can clearly identify his students’ needs and modify his teaching style accordingly, as there is no tailor-made teaching style that suit all classes. Moreover, a teacher will put more effort into his teaching by explaining lessons clearly because the teacher cares about his students’ understanding.

Secondly, according to James (2008), a top teacher should “promote the active engagement of the learners”. Traditionally, a teacher’s role in a classroom is to teach and student’s role is to listen and acquire the knowledge. The teacher treats students as a blank bank account in which he will just keep depositing knowledge. This model is what Paulo Freire called “banking model”. However, this model is outdated, because a teacher should get his students involve in his teaching by asking questions and contributing ideas in the class. If students are not involved in their learning, lessons from their perspective will become boring and they will not learn. Therefore, it is teacher’s duty to engage students to participate in the classroom to produce fruitful results and understanding.

Finally, a teacher should not only be just a teacher but also an entertainer in the classroom. Being entertainer means that a teacher should make his lesson interesting in order to attract student’s attention. A student learns best when he is interested in a lesson which means he will put more effort into listening to your explanation and additionally do more research about that particular topic. One way to be entertaining is to bring his sense of humour to the class and make student enjoy his lesson as much as possible. However, a good teacher must balance between entertaining and teacher or the class may become anarchy.

To sum up, 3 qualities needed to become a good teacher are: focusing on student’s learning, engaging students into learning and being an entertainer in the classroom. However, these qualities are just some of other several qualities. Being teacher is deemed to be a fine profession and to live up to a good-teacher standard is such a very difficult task to accomplish. It is therefore teacher’s duty to find possible ways to upgrade himself to be a fine teacher.

An eye for an eye?

Just to keep my blog up-to-date, I will just publish my journal article that I wrote for my school assignment. Here it goes:

An old saying “an eye for an eye” means a person who injures another person has to compensate for what they had done. This saying is also applied to the law of some countries which practise capital punishment which is an act of executing a person by legal process, because he/she commits certain type of crime. Capital punishment is really controversial, which has sparked debates on whether death penalty should be practiced or not. We strongly support the practice of capital punishment based on the following concrete reasons.

Firstly, the core idea of death penalty is that certain atrocious crimes deserve nothing but death. Crimes such as kidnap, terrorism, crime against humanity, and massacre are absolutely inhumane, which criminals do not have any sympathy toward others and their family’s excruciating suffering. These criminals are considered nothing but animals, because they have already lost their conscience. Therefore, death penalty is a “just retribution” for the criminals to pay back the price equal to the atrocity they had caused. Furthermore, only sending these criminal to death means that justice has been served to the victims and their family.

Though it seems cruel, capital punishment is an effective deterrence against other future criminals. One proverb states that a person would never cry upon seeing the tomb. Since fear of dying is a nature of human being, a person will feel uncomfortable to commit a crime. Before deciding to murder someone, a murderer would imagine the possible result happening to him/her afterward. Additionally, a person always bears in his/her mind that if he/she killed someone, someday he/she would be executed to death as a consequence. A study conducted by Professor Steven K. Layson of University of North Caronlina showed that one execution could effectively deter 18 murderers. Thus, capital punishment can obviously help reduce the number of serious crimes.

            Last but not least, the cost of keeping the criminals serving life sentence imprisonment is such as waste of taxpayers’ money. The limited resource, instead of spending on these inhumane criminals, should be diverted to more important sectors such public health, education, infrastructure to build the welfare of one country, which results in the development and economic growth, whereas feeding those brutal prisoners would not provide any benefits by no means.  

Taking everything into account, though deemed as cruel act, capital punishment, if legalized, would do more good than harm. All those thugs and vicious criminals deserve such punishment; it will not only serve justice to those innocent victims but also as a warning to others that “crime does not pay”. Also, the government could cut the expense for those outlaws during their imprisonment and spend on other important public sectors. In essence, the passing of this law will not only the decrease the crime rate but also insure the sense of security among people in the country.

The Winner is the King

There are many political heroes in the world today, because they have attain valuable achievement for their own country, namely Ho Chi Minh (Vietam), Mao Tse Dong (China), Samdech Hun Sen (Cambodia), Franklin Roosevelt (U.S.A) and the list goes on. However, I have some questions that remain unsolved about some heroes if there was some slight change in history.

What if Pol Pot remained in power until today and achieved his Great Leap Forward policy and consolidate Kampuchea Krom and Cambodia, would he be called a hero for Cambodia today, although his regime left more than 2 millions Cambodian dead? Would he be charged of Crime against Humanity and War Crime?

Would Mao Tse Dong still be considered a hero for China if after his death Taiwan invaded Mainland China and successfully overthrew the Communist government? Let’s not forget that Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution is responsible for the lives of more than 40 million innocent Chinese?

What if Adolf Hilter won the World War II and conquered the world, would people call him a criminal and sent him to the court? Would he be called an ultimate hero of the world?

“The winner is the king, whereas the loser is the criminal.” This sentence is nothing but the true when it comes to politics. As you can see, there are many political prisoners nowadays and they are not called “HEROES”, because they are losers. Losers have to bow down to the winner. However, heroes today may not permanently be the heroes in the future.