Lens Development Essay

Foer’s article brings out the aspect of a known phenomena to explain the cultural ideologies of the people. He used soccer which is a sport that many people identify with and focusing on the behaviours and emotions associated with it, he tries to unravel globalization. This is a good comparison because sports have got much to do with globalization because it brings people together. He uses his own real experiences to relay the information well.
    

Foer claims that there is great disparity in the American youth who play soccer and  the rest of the world. He further claims that, soccer is played by the working class in most countries (Foer, 14). He further states that in America, it is the middle class and the lower class who plays the game. It is evident that soccer is a threat to America’s culture as there exists a large difference between the parts that engage in the sport and those that haven’t ( Foer 16). The enlightened who have embraced soccer have been a good target of ridicule because they are viewed as having discarded the traditions (16)  He further notes that there is constant abusing and jeering of opponents who sometimes don’t have an idea of the game. Soccer has played a greater role in fostering cultural wars. Foer’s claim  further shows that the population of the Americans who engage in soccer do not support local sports.
    

Foer claims that soccer is a major driver of cultural wars helps in understanding the difficulty in embracing change as established in Jacobs essay. Introduction of a new concept or idea can result in unforeseen consequences that is a threat to traditional heritage and peaceful coexistence of people. Jacob’s article focuses on the obstacles facing the introduction of English in Shanghai. This introduction was in aid of foreigners and tourists. This advent has brought with it incompetence in translations of the words, the most common are the road signs.
      

Jacobs pinpoints a comment by one author who claims that if all the signs were translated, then the chuckles on the street would be eradicated as well as a “window into the Chinese mind” (Jacobs, 10). From Foer’s claims, it is clearly indicated the new invention creates some ridicule, which could sprout into enmity if not looked into. It is also noted that there is cultural wash-down by embracing English,  which with the insight of Foer’s claim result into hostility between those who have embraced it and those who haven’t.
    

Foer’s essay incorporates personal experiences that help explain clearly the concept, which is not the case for Jacob’s article. Jacob illustrates opinions and thoughts of other people and does not relay his personal opinion on the subject. Foer’s is more concerned and sympathetic with the situation because the consequences of soccer fanatics have caused more harm than good for the nation. Jacob’s is a non partisan and illustrates the various reactions and feelings of  Shanghai residents on the introduction of English. Jacob pinpoints that English translations do not portray its intended meaning causing  conflicts in interpretation (Jacob, 1). Foer gives more insight into the matter at hand with examples while Jacob gives people’s expression of the subject.
 

From the two articles, one can ascertain that new ideas and inventions have both negative and positive implications. From Jacob’s article, it is clear that the use of English is more convenient for tourists thus encouraging more of them, who bring in revenue for the country.

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Marriage and Psychological Instability Essay

Disorders occur in virtually all types of people. The trigger of disorder usually becomes something that an individual wants to forget or escape from. “In the Lake of the House” by Tim O'Brien and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins, both characters, even though they belong to different genders and represent different roles within society and marriage, have severe psychological disorders.
 

“In the Lake of the Woods” is a brilliant and provocative meta fictional mystery. The novel starts with the John Wade's retreat with his wife Kathy to the Lake of the Woods in far north Minnesota. The year portrayed is 1986. The novel combines the fictional story of John Wade with material from the factual source and the author's own footnoted comments and his personal opinion. John losses in the Minnesota Senate election because of his mysterious past that he tried to hide and run away from. He is trying hard to hold his marriage and himself together but the problems of his past and what he did trouble him deeply. The structure of the novel is unusual, as in the first chapter the author reveals that Kathy will disappear. Rather than to tell a story of the couple's life, the author explores the hypothesis. When Kathy is not found, Wade joins the search about four weeks later but with the only reason – to disappear himself, therefore making it impossible to solve the mystery of both of their disappearances. (O'Brien )
 

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins is a story where the misunderstanding between a wife and a husband dominates as the red thread in the story. Charlotte Perkins develops the drama out of simple depression that most of women have. However, by having a doctor husband this woman end being locked up in the house, where she is left completely for herself. Moreover, she is being threatened by her husband to be sent to the professional facility where she will get special care. Charlotte Perkins demonstrates how desperate a woman can be when she is completely abandoned. At some point of her life, the yellow wallpaper dominates her imagination.
 

Psychological disorders disrupt people's lives, especially the families of those who suffer from it. Both stories reveal the characters with certain psychological disorders. Two common things that both stories have are the marriage problems and the psychological disorder of one of the characters. Moreover, in “The Lake of the Woods”, the psychological disorder of John is a cause of his dysfunctional marriage, when in “The Yellow Wallpaper” it is vice verse. In Perkins' story, Jennie becomes insane because of her dysfunctional marriage, when her husband John does not get her psychological conditions and does really nothing to help her. (Gilman )
 

John Wade was severely damaged by his past. The first aspect that the author tried to tell about John's psychological disorder roots is his childhood. Tim O’Brien uses a unique structure of his novel, as he discloses the crime at first and only then investigates what might happen to Kathy. O’Brien never mentioned that John is a murder, however, he started giving examples of his insanity, which was very visible for his wife. In addition, the author makes it very clear that Kathy cheated on John, but once again, never tells the reader that John could have killed her because of rage. He posts John as a man who lived in a shadow of his past, trying very hard to hide it and forget it. But his past always echoed on his marriage, which made it very clear when describing his sleepwalking problems. John was lost, as when Kathy found out about Vietnam and his past he replies, “Everything is true. Everything is not true”. Tim O'Brien has always insisted on the spectral quality of the things that happened in Vietnam. His main suggestion was that seeing was never equal to proof, as the eyes can lie by not showing the reality. When he comes to the Lake in the Woods, he is ruined, disturbed and lonely. (O'Brien )
 

Both authors describe how their psychological disorders affect their characters. “In the Lake of the Woods” the author tells about the problem of sleepwalking and disrupted sleeping at night that deeply affects the marriage of the main character. Charlotte Perkins illustrates how bad the character of Jennie gets at the end of the story, when she feels completely alone. She starts having hallucinations and her minds compares herself to the image on the wallpaper that she is trying to protect from anyone else, because she is afraid that she will loose it too, just like she lost society, communication, husband and real life.(Gilman )
 

Traumatic experiences wound marriage. John yearns for unconditional love and acknowledgment. The way O’Brien tells the story is interesting, as even at the end of the book the reader cannot understand if John decided to simply disappear or he acknowledged that he murdered his wife and committed suicide himself. O’Brien uses this story to demonstrate how people get affected by trauma in their lives, as it resembles a house with many rooms. Every trauma can be locked in one of such rooms in order to hide it.  He had mood swings, he could wake up in the middle of the night strangling his wife or even sleep walk. Tim O'Brien never reveal what happened to Kathy, but he says: “There were times when John Wade wanted to open up Kathy's belly and crawl inside and stay there forever”. Kathy became for him that mirror he always imagined in his mind where he could become invisible. He wanted to dissolve in Kathy, love her and live a happy life never reminding himself of his past. Kathy was adulterous and when John's inner personality, the one that tried to hide all sins from his past, could not handle being humiliated, he killed her in the state of sleepwalking. After “waking up” from his traumatic state, he realized of what he did and could not live with it any longer.(O'Brien )
 

Dysfunctional marriage causes psychological disorders. Charlotte Perkins uses symbolism in her story by comparing the picture Jennie sees on the wallpaper to herself. Perkins illustrates abandoned woman completely on herself by giving her everything that is empty. The author is sure that if John, Jennie’s husband would react differently on her conditions, she would be cured.  Jennie thinks“I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus”. By saying that the author expects John to be more supportive and do not simply leave his wife in an empty house, but support her and give her the cure by taking care of her and socializing with her.  In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the dysfunctional not supportive marriage makes Jennie to completely loose her mind. (Gilman )
 

Both John Wade and Jennie have psychological disorders, however, triggered by different circumstances and effecting different spheres of life. Both stories incorporate the idea of dysfunctional. Both stories tell about different madness and different causes that became the triggers of psychological disorders of main characters. However, in one story marriage causes psychological instability and in the other one, it gets affected by the psychological disorder. These stories reveal the unspoken ideas about marriage and the secret's of people's real thoughts. In addition, they might be reflecting on psychological disorders that make people have several personalities because of escaping the reality they live in.

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Māori Education Essay

However, the accuracy of the statistical data presented by Education Review Office is arguable because the commission recognizes the impossibility of the sufficient data collection in relation to the student achievements of Māori. The reason for that is the lack of separation between the records of Māori and non-Māori students. Finally, ERO agrees that there are “not enough schools where Māori student achievement is comparable to that of non-Māori, or where schools can demonstrate that they are making a difference for these students.”
 

Besides, the report of ERO creates confusion by opposing own words: at first, an analysis provides a report with less than average improvements (32 and 45 percent in primary and secondary schools accordingly), and then it is pointed out that only 10 percent of all educational institutions showed no improvement. Out of this difference, there are only 20 percent of all schools that are not able to present any data. I suppose the reason for that is quite obvious: those schools which actively participate in the program would tend to record each achievement while those not much interested in the improvements would not keep track of the changes, at least because these changes could never take place within the school. Therefore, my suggestion is that the data presented by ERO so far are insufficient and yet non-demonstrable.
 

One should also point out that the strategy plan designed by ERO does not have any specific diversification or focus even though it is said to have. For a school, it is still a voluntary decision either to introduce changes in the educational process or not. The schools do not appear to be thoroughly classified, and this can be the case of the strategy fragmentation.
 

Taking into consideration the adjacent processes in the society, it is worth mentioning that from the Māori perspective, not only the system of education can be improved. According to Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal (2009), education is not the only challenge of Māori in New Zealand. Their cultural identity and place in the society are still the debating issues. The Māori leave the country for Australia because of either economic benefits and opportunities or negative experience in New Zealand (“Maori Party”, 2007). With the integration into the modern community, the Māori population continues experiencing difficulties with employment, dwelling, and overall level of life (Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal, 2009). This proves that without the full recognition and integration of the Māori nation, it would be hard to improve a single sphere of social life like education, for instance. Another suggestion here is that the efforts spent on restructuring the education in the country can just be vain – the educated Māori seeing no real perspectives in New Zealand would continue migrating to other countries, so the country would lose talented and skillful population which was brought up in its environment and society. This can lead to the excessive expenditures on education and social programs along with the process of population aging, which becomes a real demographic disaster for many developing countries.
 

A part of the Māori population also faces a language barrier in the school along with the cultural one. Let us now take a look at a similar case and observe what effective local solutions can be applied in achieving strong and purposeful performance.
 

Within the development of Māori modern social life in New Zealand, the efforts in improving the education for this minority group have also followed. For the last decade, beginning with the year 2000, many attempts were taken to ensure the introduction of Te Reo Māori, the language spoken by around 160,000 inhabitants of New Zealand (Statistics New Zealand, 2006), to the educational programs of English-medium schools, Ngā Haeata Mātauranga (2008) informs. According to the given source, the reason for that is to make the education for the native population more affordable. In the Annual Report on Māori Education (2008), one may find a description of action plan designed by Te Kopuru School in Northland. The principal of the school Lee Anderson expressed his vision for the three Māori principles standing for the righteous things (tika), truth (pono), and open loving relationships (aroha). Now the school encourages its students to learn in Te Reo Māori and suggests that “the changes at Te Kopuru School reflect the wants of her community” (Ngā Haeata Mātaurang, 2008).
 

The overall statistics shows that in the region where the school is situated, three fourth of the students (77%) can spell and read the Māori language, two thirds (61%) of them can write, and one fourth of these students possess the necessary or more advanced skills in some language disciplines. This was not possible a decade ago when the new principles were just being introduced.
 

Considering such progress, most of the community groups agree that positive results in integration and education are achieved, no negative impact on the non-Māori society members is detected, and, finally, the teaching practice significantly improved (Ngā Haeata Mātaurang, 2008).
 

In the article by Ngā Haeata Mātaurang (2008), one educational institution, Te Kopuru School, embodies the whole educational community and appears to be a vivid example of how one of the processes of integration for the national minorities is designed in the country. The school’s action plan shapes the optimistic prospect for the development of learning facilities for Māori making them better involved in the social life of the country and emphasizing on recognition of their cultural identity. I suppose that such changes in educational process witness about the community interest in allotting more freedom of choice and democratic consciousness to the Māori. Education has always been a concern for the long run and future perspectives, that’s why the country is about to experience significant social changes within a couple of decades for that the community will already feel the fruits of restructuring.  
 

If to take a quick look in the past, one would notice that the commission responsible for the supervision of education process in the country, Education Review Office, was not able to clearly define the education principles in the 1990s. At that time, they had no evaluations and researches done, no special integration for public schools achieved, and no satisfaction from Māori in terms of education obtained. Here is where all sources refer to the single course of events: the concern of Māori as to the treatment of their language and culture was not much discussed. So far, no special forecasts for the restructuring of private schools within the public education sector were made (Boston, Dalziel, and St John, 1999). Supposedly, this was the primary push towards the introduction of all these changes in the next decade when Te Kopuru School acted as an active supporter of the Māori rights and social freedoms. The new integration model of tutoring was enough progressive in those days but was not precisely evaluated by the government (Boston, Dalziel, and St John, 1999).
 

Therefore, I suggest that Education Review Office could be then just observed as an independent institution that mostly monitored the achievement in the given field but was not very effective in designing the solutions and programs of development, at least back in the 90s. Besides, within the issue of national identity, culture and language of the Māori population, it is not reasonable to refer to the aforementioned institution as to the one responsible for the overall progress in the popularization of Māori way of life and its integration in the regular society of New Zealand. As mentioned at the beginning, the whole social program that incorporates the efforts in making the Māori community sustainable and equal in rights could be a suitable solution.
 

Ministry of Education (2011) identifies the conditions and requirements for the children to be enrolled in the education process and adds that “depending on where you live and your circumstances, your child may attend another type of school such as a state integrated or independent school”. This creates a certain background for the justification of Te Kopuru School’s activities and achievements. The school has diversified its vision of the educational process pursuing the establishment of strong teaching practices and emphasizing on several disciplines for the five-year-old newcomers. According to the words of the school administration (Ngā Haeata Mātaurang, 2008), the system proves its effectiveness by attracting and sustaining both Māori and non- Māori students. As a result, the school gets promoted by the word of mouth established by the parents whose children study at Te Kopuru.
 

Here it is important to mention that the government guarantees funding for the schools based on their needs (Ministry of Education, 2011). There should be an existing reason proving that the projects are worth investing. By saying that “Te Kopuru School reflects [...] the education sector’s growing understanding” (Ngā Haeata Mātaurang, 2008), the author might probably mean that many educational institutions, state and private, got supported by the government in different ways. This surely recognizes that the government acknowledges the development of educational means for all children in the country. As a result, Te Kopuru and many other schools specialized in tutoring in the Māori language appear to be in demand nowadays.       
 

In order to conclude the two research cases, I would identify their relatedness to each other as well as to the realities of modern society in New Zealand. Along with the other references, they make up a clear understanding of the actual social problems and tendencies, which have already been taking place for decades.
 

From the one side, it is somewhat complicated to comment whether the improvement of the educational system is a project for the long run but, taking into consideration the last report of Education Review Office (Education Review Office, 2010), no substantial changes in the maintenance of educational benefits for the Māori community were noticed. Nevertheless, Māori now have more possibilities to socialize but, at the same time, there is an emphasis on their distinction from the other population and the intention to create more specialized schools namely for Māori students. The schools of mixed type are certainly the solution because private and specialized educational establishments are not always affordable to the common population and do not stimulate interaction between people.
 

From the other side, the recent state of education in the country shows the weakness of the government system in managing human and other resources. Being an official language (Statistics New Zealand, 2006), Māori is not so widespread even in schools, which doubts its true status. Therefore, the first thing to be done is to assure the relevance and the necessity of the Māori cultural impact in the system of education and legally introduce the nationwide or region-specific changes on the basis of the social feedback and statistical research.

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