Politics and the English Language by George Orwell free essay sample

Work : Essays : Politics and the English Language (May 1945) Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language so the argument runs must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. We will write a custom essay sample on Politics and the English Language by George Orwell or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written. These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen but because they llustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary: I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter i n each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate. Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression ) Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate , or put at a loss for bewilder . Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossia ) On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side ,the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity? Essay on psychology in Politics (New York ) All the best people from the gentlemens clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis. Communist pamphlet If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B. B. C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lions roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as standard English. When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine oclock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-maamish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens! Letter in Tribune Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose construction is habitually dodged: Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically dead (e. g. iron resolution ) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people he trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles heel, swan song, hotbed . Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a rift, for instance? ), and incompatible met aphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase. Operators or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc. etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot e left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth. Pretentious diction. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic colour, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung , are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i. e. , e. g. and etc. , there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous , and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers. The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc. ) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the size formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover ones meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness. Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, The outstanding feature of Mr. Xs work is its living quality, while another writes, The immediately striking thing about Mr. Xs work is its peculiar deadness, the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable. The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality. Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes: I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Here it is in modern English: Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account. This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations race, battle, bread dissolve into the vague phrases success or failure in competitive activities. This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing no one capable of using phrases like objective considerations of contemporary phenomena would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase (time and chance) that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes. As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier even quicker, once you have the habit to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only dont have to hunt about for the words; you also dont have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip alien for akin making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. The will construct your sentences for you even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear. In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a party line. Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speakers spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indi spensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity. In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this: While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement. The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between ones real and ones declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as keeping out of politics. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at ones elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this mornings post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he felt impelled to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: [The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germanys social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe. You see, he feels impelled to write feels, presumably, that he has something new to say and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of ones mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of ones brain. I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably cura ble. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence, to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defence of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply. To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a standard English which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes ones meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a good prose style. On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover ones meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualising you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get ones meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose not simply accept the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions ones words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases: Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never us a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article. I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you dont know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognise that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change ones own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase some jackboot, Achilles heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse into the dustbin, where it belongs.

Advanced Organizer 8 Chapter 8 Essays - Educational Psychology

Advanced Organizer 8 Chapter 8 Essays - Educational Psychology Advanced Organizer 8 - Chapter 8: Learners with Emotional or Behavioral Disorders Directions: As you review this weeks assigned readings, please complete the Advance Organizer to focus on key points. Submit in the Assignment tab in Blackboard. Before I read, here are my thoughts: What do I already know about learners with emotional or behavioral disorders in a few words (you can list terms or share a few experiences youve had)?That there are underlying issues and these can range from minor to extreme cases. What questions do I have?None Rating my knowledge: Please rate your knowledge before you read using this scale: 1.I dont feel like I know anything about this topic. 2.Ive heard some of the terms, but couldnt tell you what they mean 3.I feel fairly comfortable with the key concepts, but want to know more. 4.I know all about this, and could teach this section.3 Summarize your learning about the following terms below how can you support the learning of students with the disabilities discussed in this chapter? Main TopicKey Points Externalizing behavior what is it and give examplesInvolves striking out against others. Aggression, anger, etc. Internalizing behavior define it and give examplesInvolves mental or emotional conflicts. Depression, anxiety, etc. ComorbidityThe co-occurrence of two or more conditions. SchizophreniaA sever thinking disorder. Might believe they are being controlled by outside forces. AggressionViewed as a learned behavior and assume that it is possible to identify the conditions under which it will be learned. Zero toleranceNo tolerance for any act whether accidental or on purpose and no matter if the student is disabled or not, all is punished the same. Manifestation determination (MD)Deciding whether or not a students misbehavior is a manifestation of disability. Positive behavioral intervention plan (BIP)Emphasis on creating proactive and positive interventions and avoiding punishment. Positive behavioral intervention and support (PBIS)It integrates valued outcomes, the science of human behavior, validated procedures, and systems change to enhance quality of life and reduce problem behavior. Interim alternative educational setting (IAES)Setup for schools to use alternatives for students with EBD rather than suspension or expulsion. Treatment matched to problemsMay be assessed in environments in which the student may feel uncomfortable in order to see what causes the problems to begin with. Multicomponent treatmentMay involve more than one assessment tool or a whole team of professionals. After I read, here are my thoughts: After I read this, it reminded me of something I already knew (you can share something you know or relate the topic to some other part of your learning)Nothing Based on your reading in this chapter, what is the best way to support students with emotional or behavioral disorders?Make sure they are assessed properly and in the least restrictive environment as possible and to just listen to them and take them serious. Reflect on what you learned from Figure 8.1 in the book. What questions do I still have?None Rating my knowledge: Please rate your knowledge after you read using this scale: 1.I dont feel like I know anything about this topic. 2.Ive heard some of the terms, but couldnt tell you what they mean 3.I feel fairly comfortable with the key concepts, but want to know more. 4.I know all about this, and could teach this section.4 Other information Id like to include/remember from this chapters readingNone

Problem solving Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 4

Problem solving - Essay Example For instance, the DHS uses these technologies when receiving and issuing incidents reports regarding specific incidents. In addition, the DHS uses communication technologies to coordinate the response efforts. In the modern world, Cybersecurity threats have become a major concern. This is one area that the DHS employs information technologies to deal with cyber criminals. The DHS works with investigators and experts in network security to identify and act upon the activities of cyber criminals. This involves the use of information technologies for gathering and analyzing of related data and information (dhs.gov, 2015). The area of Cybersecurity is one of the most sensitive areas where the DHS employs highly sophisticated information technologies and well trained personnel due to the complex nature of this problem. Finally, the DHS relies on information technologies for various security purposes such as detection, identification and surveillance. There are a number of these technologies that have been employed in order to boost the nation’s security. For example, the department has employed these technologies to enhance screening at all entry points in order to vet those people coming in and out of the country (DHS, 2007). Overall, it evident that the DHS uses information technologies to coordinate its operations, enhance communication within and outside the department and enhance the overall security of the nation. Well trained specialists in matters IT are used to make these operations a success. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (2007). Information Technology: Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources Sector-Specific Plan as input to the National Infrastructure Protection Plan. Information Technology Sector Coordinating Council. Retrieved 8 May 2015, from

IP2 Fortun 55 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

IP2 Fortun 55 - Essay Example The age of technology and innovation has imposed upon the employees and organizations extreme competition and hard work to keep with their sustenance. In such a competitive and rigid environment, it is the utmost responsibility of the organizations to keep their employees motivated and maintained through providing them the basic necessities, comfort and satisfaction on the job. This is done through different wellness programs which many companies introduce in order to keep w well-fed and motivated human resource base. Corporate Wellness Programs The corporate wellness programs, commonly known as workplace wellness programs, are sort of motivational programs which are the blend of various environmental, educational and organizational activities. These activities are normally formulated to assist the behavior and attitude which is favorable and encouraging towards the health of the organization’s employees. They are involved in these programs which comprise of health coaching, f itness programs, health education through holding fairs, medical screenings and the various educational programs which are designed with sophistication in order to bring a change in the behaviors and attitudes of the employees. This change is most likely to contribute towards the achievement of better employee health, and a drastic reduction in the possible risks linked to the health of employees. Thus, the basic goal accomplished through the designing and implementation of the wellness programs is the attainment of better health of the employees. According to a recent study presented by the US Department of Health and Human Services, it was indicated that the workplaces which offer the on-site exercise programs to their employees as a component of their wellness programs, experienced a decline from 75 % to 55% in their healthcare costs and the employees’ short-term leaves were also lowered from 38% to 32% , ultimately leading to a rise in the productivity of an average emplo yee from 50% to 52% (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2000). Thus, such wellness programs contribute big time to the health of the employees as well as the organization. Development of an Effective Wellness Program The wellness programs have become the need of time and the basic necessity which should be provided by the organization to all its employees. Here, the Fortune 55 firm is working with an estimated number of 500 employees, who are all busy working hard in order to steer the organization towards achieving its goals. Though, the old wellness program at the company was effective too, however, with the changing needs of the age and the shifting demands of employees, a newer and more effective wellness program should be developed which is capable of delivering further benefits to the employees. Since, the corporate wellness programs are a blend of the healthcare, medical and educational activities, the new plan of the Fortune 500 will follow a more sophisticated mi xture in the program. The elements of the brand new effective wellness program, to be developed and introduced, will include the following elements: Lifestyle Improvement Stress Management Online health coaching Appraisals and assessments of health associated risks Health content programs Employees’ mental health and well being These were the elements which already existed in the company’

Happiness Research Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Happiness Research - Essay Example Based on the appraisal-based theory of happiness, Myers and Diener maintain that one's personality traits, the characteristics of one's social milieu etc can determine one's happiness. Whereas a person's age, sex, race, and income etc cannot determine factors of happiness, "better clues come from knowing a person's traits, whether the person enjoys a supportive network of close relationships, whether the person's culture offers positive interpretations for most daily events, whether the person is engaged by work and leisure, and whether the person has a faith that entails social support, purpose, and hope." (Myers and Diener, 1995, p 17). In a reflective exploration of the arguments put forward by Myers and Diener, it becomes lucid that family support and family relations are two important factors that contribute to happiness or the subjective well-being of an individual. In their article, Myers and Diener offer crucial premises concerning the happiness or satisfaction with life and they suggest that personality traits, supportive network of close relationships, culture, work and leisure, social support, purpose, and hope etc can determine one's happiness. It is fundamental to investigate the premise by the authors that people who have strong family relations are happy and healthy. ... Thus, in their important study titled "Family Support, Family Income, and Happiness: A 10-Year Perspective", North, Holahan, Moos, and Cronkite examined the role of income and social support in predicting coexisting happiness and change in happiness and the conclusions of their study support the premise of Myers and Diener that people who have strong family relations are happy and healthy. "Income had a small, positive impact on happiness, which diminished as income increased. In contrast, family social support, measured by 3 subscales, Cohesion, Expressiveness, and Conflict, showed a substantial, positive association with concurrent happiness, even after controlling for income." (North, Holahan, Moos, and Cronkite, 2008, p. 475). Therefore, it is essential to realize that family social support has a great influence on the happiness of an individual, as against income, and financial stability. The family support and family relations are among the most fundamental elements determining the well being of an individual and the organization of family life can influence the individual's happiness. Based on literature review on the topic, Myers and Diener maintain that the impoverished social connections in the ever more individualistic modern societies hinder happiness and well being of individuals. "Individualistic societies offer personal control, harmony between the inner and outer person, and opportunity to express one's feelings and talents, though with the risks of a less embedded, more detached self." (Myers and Diener, 1995, pp 14-15). The social support system as well as family support and relations can greatly help one in realizing happiness. The value

Prevalence of Hepatitis B Among Medical Students

Prevalence of Hepatitis B Among Medical Students The prevalence of Hepatitis B among `medical students, Majmaah University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ABSTRACT Background: Medical students in the course of their clinical work are at risk of acquiring hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection or transmitting it to their patients. HBV immunization for medical students in Saudi Arabia is recommended but not strictly enforced. It is important to assess the prevalence of HBV infection in medical students in order to direct interventions and inform policy. The objectives of this study were to determine the prevalence of hepatitis B among the medical students of Majmaah University; secondly to determine the relation of hepatitis B and the social factors; and thirdly to compare the relation of hepatitis B in different collages. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study carried out in 478 students of medical, dentistry and applied medical students in Majmaah University. Total enumeration of all students was done. A structured questionnaire was used to collect demographic data. The selected students underwent a blood test to detect HBsAg. SPSS version 20 was applied for data analysis for (frequency, mean and stan ­dard deviation). Comparisons between groups were made using the Fisher Exact test. P Results: The results showed that out of the 478 students tested, two were positive for HBsAg, giving an overall prevalence rate of 0.41%. The prevalence of hepatitis B among males and females was o.6% and 0.0% respectively. It was shown that one of the positive cases was in the college of Medicine and the other was in the college of Medical laboratories. Conclusion: The prevalence of hepatitis B among medical students of Majmaah University is low. The disease, which was reported among the males only, was found in the colleges of Medicine and Medical Laboratories. INTRODUCTION Approximately 350 million people are infected by Hepatitis B virus (HBV) globally. A large number become positive for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬  Ag) but they remain asymptomatic. They are known as silent carriers of HBV [1, 2] and may act as a source of transmission of hepatitis B. In high and moderate prevalence zones of HBV, like South Asia and the Middle East, many silent carriers are young people [3, 4]. The prevalence of HBV has declined considerably in Saudi Arabia since the introduction of immunization in 1989. According to one study, it fell from 7% in 1989 to 0.3% in 1997 [4]. A study 8 years after the introduction of hepatitis B vaccination reported seroconversion of 77% in children vaccinated at birth and 71% in those vaccinated at school entry [5]. Jaber reported in 2006 [6] that 98% of schoolchildren in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia were covered by HBV vaccination; however 14% of students tested negative for anti-HBs antibodies, suggesting that the efficacy of HBV vaccination is diminishing with increasing age [6]. It has been reported that the prevalence of HBV among blood donors in Saudi Arabia decreased from 2.7% in 1993 to 0.28% in 2003 [5,6,7]. HBV immunization is now part of the national routine immunization program for children in Saudi Arabia. HBV immunization in medical students and health workers in Saudi Arabia is recommended but not strictly enforced. As a result, individuals at high risk like healthcare workers and medical students have low immunization rates. Therefore, HBV remains an occupational risk to which healthcare workers and medical students are exposed while at work [8]. Determining the prevalence of HBV infection in the medical, dentistry and applied medical students is important in planning for any intervention to control this infection among them. Furthermore, the information obtained may be used in a wider sense to create awareness among all categories of healthcare workers about the magnitude of the risk of contracting or transmitting HBV in the workplace. The objectives of this study were to determine the prevalence of hepatitis B among the medical, dentistry and applied medical students of Majmaah University and to compare the prevalence rates of hepatitis B between the students in the different collages and social factors. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study carried out among medical, dentistry and applied medical students in Majmaah University over a period of 16 months (from May 2013 to August 2014). The study population was the students of Majmaah University from collage of Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing and Medical Laboratories. Students from all levels and both sexes were enrolled in this study. Total enumeration of 478 students was done. A structured questionnaire was used to collect demographic data. The selected students underwent a blood test to detect HBsAg. The test was conducted in King Khaled Hospital in Majmaah. The assay used is a one-step enzyme immunoassay based on the principle of the sandwich type using monoclonal antibodies and polyclonal antibodies selected for their ability to bind themselves to the various subtypes of HBs Ag, recognized by the WHO and the most part of variant HBV strains. SPSS version 20 was applied for data analysis for (frequency, mean and stan ­dard deviation). Comparisons between groups were made using the Fisher Exact. P Participation was completely voluntary and students who tested positive for HBsAg were counseled in the counseling center, King Khaled Hospital. Measures to prevent exposure and the need to get vaccinated against Hepatitis B as soon as possible was explained to them. RESULTS: There were 150 females and 328 males, giving a female to male ratio of 1:1.4. Out of the 478 students tested, 2.0 were positive for HBsAg, giving an overall prevalence rate of 0.41% as shown intable (1). Regarding age of the students the range was similar ranging from 18 to 20 years. Table (2) shows the prevalence of hepatitis B among students of different collages. It was shown that the two positive cases were in the college of Medicine and the college of Medical laboratories. Table (1) Relation between hepatitis B and gender Table (2) Hepatitis B among students of different collages Discussion: The prevalence rate of hepatitis B among the students, shown as positive HBsAg was 0.41%. Lule found the HBsAg carrier rate of 18% among medical students in Kenyatta National Hospital[9]. In Nigeria, Olubuyide found the hepatitis B as 39.0% among doctors and dentists compared to the national average of 20.0% [10]. There was no significant difference in the HBsAg carrier rates between pre-clinical and clinical students and yet the latter were more exposed to hepatitis B. Similar findings were observed by Khurana. in Maulana Azad Medical College-New Delhi, India[11]. It is possible that most of the clinical students were healthy and fought off the hepatitis B infection despite being more exposed. It is known that spontaneous recovery after acute infection with HBV occurs in 95–99% of previously healthy adults [12].It is also possible that some students might have got occult HBV infection. This could only be revealed by performing highly sensitive molecular techniques which would show persistence of HBV genomes in HBsAg negative individuals[13]. The magnitude of occult HBV infection was not assessed in the study. This rate was also lower compared with the prevalence of 1% found in less than 20 years old persons after 10 years of introduction of extended program of immunization in Saudi Ara bia [14]. The rate of hepatitis B was also higher than the prevalence among male medical students of 0.17% and higher than the prevalence among the females (0.78%) in the same study which was conducted among students of health colleges in different part of Saudi Arabia[1]. The findings of this study were within the range of prevalence from 0.03% to 0.72% among the general public in different parts of the kingdom [15]. The findings of this study showed that the two positive cases of hepatitis B were males, no positivity among females. In comparing hepatitis B with gender by applying the Fisher Exact test, the relation is not significant (p= 1.00). When seroprevalence rates of hepatitis B was compared between students from different collages in the university by applying the Fisher Exact test, the difference was not statistically significant ( p=0,340). CONCLUSION The prevalence of hepatitis B among medical, dentistry and applied medical students of Majmaah University is low. The prevalence was low among the males and not reported among the females. The disease was observed among the male students of the college of Medicine and the college of Medical Lavatories. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors are very grateful to the Dean of college of Medicine, dean of college of dentistry and the dean of Applied Medical Sciences for permission and support to carry out this study. We would also like to thank the administration of Medical Services of Majmaah University and the administration of King Khalid General Hospital in Majmaah for their support. Our thanks extend to the students who kindly accepted to participate in the study. REFERENCES Al-Ajlan A. Riyadh College of Health Sciences (Men), King saud University EMHJ. 2011; 17(9): 759-762. Tong S et al. Hepatitis B virus antigen variants. International Journal of Medical Sciences. 2005; 2:2–7. Chaudhuri SK. HBsAg positivity rate among voluntary replacement donors in the IRCS blood bank. Indian Journal of Gastroenterology, 1999, 18:S21 [abstract]. FitzSimons D et al. Hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus and other blood-borne infections in healthcare workers: guidelines for prevention and management in industrialized countries. Occupational and Environmental Medicine. 2008; 65:446–451. Al-Faleh FZ. Changing pattern of hepatitis viral infection in Saudi Arabia in the last two decades. Annals of Saudi Medicine. 2003; 23:367–371. Shatoor AS, Zafer MH. Hepatitis B virus markers in male blood donors. Bahrain Medical Bulletin. 2002; 24:1–6. El-Hazmi MM. Prevalence of HBV, HCV, HIV-1, 2 and HTLV-I/II infections among blood donors in a teaching hospital in the Central region of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Medical Journal. 2004; 25:26–33. Prevalence of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection among Makerere University medical students, Afr Health Sci. Jun 2005; 5(2): 93–98. Lule G N, Okoth F, Ogutu E O, Mwai S J. HBV markers (HBsAg, anti-HBc, anti-HBs) among 160 medical students at Kenyatta National Hospital.East Afr Med J.1989; 66(5):315–318.[PubMed] Olubuyide I O, Ola S O, Aliyu B, Dosumu O O, Arotiba J T, Olaleye O A, et al. Prevalence and epidemiological characteristics of hepatitis B and C infections among doctors and dentists in Nigeria.East Afr Med J.1997;74:357–361.[PubMed] Khurana V, Kar P, Mansharamani N, Jain V, Kanodia A. Differences in hepatitis B markers between clinical and pre-clinical healthcare personnel.Trop Gastroenterol.1997;18(2):69–71.[PubMed] Heathcote J, Elawaut A, Fedail S, et al., editors.Management of Acute viral hepatitis:http//www.omge.org.2003. Dec, OMGE Practice guidelines. Raimondo G, Pollicino J, Squadrito G. What is the clinical impact of occult hepatitis B virus infection?Lancet.2005;365:638–639.[PubMed] F. Aba Al-khail. Hepatitis B Al Riyadh newspaper December 2012. 155508 From: www.alriyadh.com/2010/12/09/article583595.html Madani TA. Trend in incidence of hepatitis B virus infection during a decade of universal childhood hepatitis B vaccination in Saudi Arabia.Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg.2007;101:278–83.[PubMed]

Maintaining a Learning Environment

The teacher is a manger. The organization he or she manages is a group of students from diverse backgrounds and with differing skills and abilities. Some are already eager learners, while others have to be awakened to the joys and satisfactions of learning. Still others have special problems that must be dealt with effectively in order for them to learn and in order to maintain an environment conducive to learning for the whole group. It's important, first, to provide students with opportunities to learn about things that interest them and then, to find ways to introduce the learning that peaks the student's interest. If the teacher can find ways to relate the topic to the student's present experience, and provide interactive learning activities that the student can actively participate in, then the student will gain motivation. The physical environment plays a role in learning too. Some students learn better in different lighting (softer or brighter), sitting at a desk or lying on the floor, with music on or in perfect silence, in a warmer or cooler place, etc. The teacher can establish areas in the room that meet these different needs and styles of learning. Students who learn better lying down, for example, could bring mats to school that can be unrolled for study time. A small tent in the corner could provide the dimmer light some students need. A radio or CD player with earphones could be allowed during study time provided it truly helps the student to learn. The importance of reasonable rules that everyone understands can hardly be overestimated. On the first or second day of school the teacher could initiate an interactive discussion with the students about why rules are needed in the classroom. Let students share a few experiences that happened when there were no rules. Then, ask them to come up with no more than five rules for classroom behavior. They could each write down a rule or two they think is important on an index card, and the teacher could then let each person read what he/she wrote down. A list could be generated on the board. Or, they could start by brainstorming a list of every rule they can think of, then evaluate, eliminate, combine (just the word respect, for example, includes many rules), and whittle them down into three to five good rules. A student with good handwriting or an artistic bent could be chosen to make a large poster with the rules, or a bulletin board for classroom display where everybody can see it. Once the students have set their classroom rules, they are invested in them. I have tried this with grades 4-7 students, and it worked very well to establish an orderly learning environment. The students took the rules more seriously because they had had a say in setting them. It teaches democracy, too. If the students do not think of something the teacher considers important, the teacher can add it to their list and explain why. However, this is unlikely. In my experience, the student's rules tend to be very good-actually, the same rules I would have made myself, only they mean more to the students since they have developed them as a group and the rules are in their own words. Lane and Wehby (2005) report that 1% of school age children have been labeled emotionally disturbed and are receiving special education services because of it. They estimate an additional 2% to 16% of U. S. students who demonstrate anti-social behavior patterns such as defiance disorders or conduct disorders. When a student is oppositional or defiant, the teacher must be careful not to respond angrily and get into a confrontation. Teachers should be aware of their own triggers so that they can control their own behavior. This will help them to avoid a confrontation. It is best to remain calm and to diffuse the student's anger before it escalates into a crisis and/or violence. If a student refuses to do a certain task, offering an alternative choice may help, and it would be a good idea for the teacher always to have alternative tasks ready just in case-alternative activities that are still learning activities. A sense of humor may be a teacher's best defense when students are uncooperative. It is better to prevent escalation than to deal with a crisis later. One way to do this is to reinforce good behavior with praise, a smile, gesture, touch, â€Å"or a pleasant comment when they display unprompted, socially appropriate behavior† (Albin, 2003). Don't wait until students are disruptive to pay attention to them! Teachers should make the effort to notice and praise good behavior and reward it. Punishment is a negative way of dealing with problematic behavior. It may provide reinforcement for bad behavior if the reason the student is misbehaving is because he/she wants attention. If a student misbehaves because he doesn't want to do his work, and then gets sent out in the hall or to the office, then he gets what he wanted, and the bad behavior is reinforced. Rewards for positive behavior, such as time to do an activity the students loves, a toy or candy, or one-on-one time with the teacher (just to talk and visit for a few minutes) makes students happy to learn and to be in school. Punishment often produces resentment, and may make the student hate school. A student who hates school is not an eager learner, so punishment can be anti-productive (Peck & Scarpati (2005). Teachers commonly deal with difficult students by restricting them-the more intense the student's needs are, the more restriction–such as placing a child's desk toward the wall (Duhaney, 2003). However, a needs-based approach is more positive and effective and suggests recourse to greater resources. Perhaps the child needs to learn appropriate ways to handle anger and aggression, more problem-solving skills, or receive feedback for appropriate behaviors. If the child has trouble with self-control, instructional strategies could include modeling, role-play, and feedback to help him stay out of fights, solve problems, express anger appropriately, and deal with frustration. Without intervention students with or at risk for behavioral disorders are liable to experience many negative outcomes both in school and outside such as impaired social relationships, academic underachievement, and discipline problems (Lane, Wehby, & Barton-Arwood, 2005). Social skills interventions have been used and evaluated for more than 25 years, but their efficacy continues to be questioned. Researchers suggest that social skills training makes only a modest impact; however, most educators agree that not doing anything is worse. The ability to adapt and modify instruction is crucial to effectively educating these children. Before starting an intervention, it would be wise to gather information about the student, such as why, where and when he uses the particular behavior. Identify what social, affective, cultural, or contextual elements might be at work, and analyze the information. List the specific behaviors and describe where when and with whom the behavior is likely to occur. What consequences are usually administered? Keep anecdotal records so you can look for patterns and what triggers the behavior. Then figure out what strategies might be effective to avoid the behavior; for example, teach self-talk to students who are impulsive and organize the classroom environment to help hyperactive students. Consider making a contract with the student. Develop personal schedules for students who have difficulty making good use of their time. Consider implementing a token economy in which the teacher systematically awards or withdraws tokens or points for appropriate or inappropriate behavior. The student can redeem the tokens for something he wants such as privileges, desired activities, or food. Conflict resolution is a way to help students express their feelings and communicate better with others. We tend to see conflict as negative because of the disruption it causes in the classroom; however, conflict is neither good nor bad but simply a fact of life. According to Vollmer, Drook and Harned (1999) â€Å"Learning through social conflict is important to all human development† (p. 122). As children develop cognitive reasoning skills, they begin to see that others have perspectives, needs, and desires too. Early training with role plays and simulations will help them develop the social skills they need to maintain relationships. Students can be taught a process for resolution of conflict. One way is to use a large visual of a traffic light which shows the steps to conflict resolution and includes the words Cool down and Ground Rules (RED), Tell your side and Listen (YELLOW), and Brainstorm and Ideas (GREEN). A turn arrow at the bottom has the words Choose solution, and do it and Shake hands. Teachers report that students take more responsibility and often initiate conflict-resolution strategies on their own after learning and practicing this system (Vollmer, Drook & Harned, 1999, p. 124). The teacher should provide a quiet place in the room where students can work things out when they have a conflict. Once they have mastered a structured routine for conflict management, it will be unnecessary for the teacher to get involved. Classroom management is a challenge that requires the teacher to put his or her heart into it. An ancient Chinese proverb states that a student only learns from a teacher who loves home. In other words, a child needs to feel accepted and that the teacher cares about him or her. All children have basic needs–physical needs, safety needs, and social needs–that must be met before they can feel free to learn and develop to their true potential. If their needs are met and a positive learning environment is created, they will learn and be eager to participate. Therefore, the teacher's goal should be, not to fill their heads with specific information, but to make learning possible in a calm, structured, safe, and flexible environment and help them gain the skills to go after knowledge. Maintaining a Learning Environment The teacher is a manger. The organization he or she manages is a group of students from diverse backgrounds and with differing skills and abilities. Some are already eager learners, while others have to be awakened to the joys and satisfactions of learning. Still others have special problems that must be dealt with effectively in order for them to learn and in order to maintain an environment conducive to learning for the whole group. It's important, first, to provide students with opportunities to learn about things that interest them and then, to find ways to introduce the learning that peaks the student's interest. If the teacher can find ways to relate the topic to the student's present experience, and provide interactive learning activities that the student can actively participate in, then the student will gain motivation. The physical environment plays a role in learning too. Some students learn better in different lighting (softer or brighter), sitting at a desk or lying on the floor, with music on or in perfect silence, in a warmer or cooler place, etc. The teacher can establish areas in the room that meet these different needs and styles of learning. Students who learn better lying down, for example, could bring mats to school that can be unrolled for study time. A small tent in the corner could provide the dimmer light some students need. A radio or CD player with earphones could be allowed during study time provided it truly helps the student to learn. The importance of reasonable rules that everyone understands can hardly be overestimated. On the first or second day of school the teacher could initiate an interactive discussion with the students about why rules are needed in the classroom. Let students share a few experiences that happened when there were no rules. Then, ask them to come up with no more than five rules for classroom behavior. They could each write down a rule or two they think is important on an index card, and the teacher could then let each person read what he/she wrote down. A list could be generated on the board. Or, they could start by brainstorming a list of every rule they can think of, then evaluate, eliminate, combine (just the word respect, for example, includes many rules), and whittle them down into three to five good rules. A student with good handwriting or an artistic bent could be chosen to make a large poster with the rules, or a bulletin board for classroom display where everybody can see it. Once the students have set their classroom rules, they are invested in them. I have tried this with grades 4-7 students, and it worked very well to establish an orderly learning environment. The students took the rules more seriously because they had had a say in setting them. It teaches democracy, too. If the students do not think of something the teacher considers important, the teacher can add it to their list and explain why. However, this is unlikely. In my experience, the student's rules tend to be very good-actually, the same rules I would have made myself, only they mean more to the students since they have developed them as a group and the rules are in their own words. Lane and Wehby (2005) report that 1% of school age children have been labeled emotionally disturbed and are receiving special education services because of it. They estimate an additional 2% to 16% of U. S. students who demonstrate anti-social behavior patterns such as defiance disorders or conduct disorders. When a student is oppositional or defiant, the teacher must be careful not to respond angrily and get into a confrontation. Teachers should be aware of their own triggers so that they can control their own behavior. This will help them to avoid a confrontation. It is best to remain calm and to diffuse the student's anger before it escalates into a crisis and/or violence. If a student refuses to do a certain task, offering an alternative choice may help, and it would be a good idea for the teacher always to have alternative tasks ready just in case-alternative activities that are still learning activities. A sense of humor may be a teacher's best defense when students are uncooperative. It is better to prevent escalation than to deal with a crisis later. One way to do this is to reinforce good behavior with praise, a smile, gesture, touch, â€Å"or a pleasant comment when they display unprompted, socially appropriate behavior† (Albin, 2003). Don't wait until students are disruptive to pay attention to them! Teachers should make the effort to notice and praise good behavior and reward it. Punishment is a negative way of dealing with problematic behavior. It may provide reinforcement for bad behavior if the reason the student is misbehaving is because he/she wants attention. If a student misbehaves because he doesn't want to do his work, and then gets sent out in the hall or to the office, then he gets what he wanted, and the bad behavior is reinforced. Rewards for positive behavior, such as time to do an activity the students loves, a toy or candy, or one-on-one time with the teacher (just to talk and visit for a few minutes) makes students happy to learn and to be in school. Punishment often produces resentment, and may make the student hate school. A student who hates school is not an eager learner, so punishment can be anti-productive (Peck & Scarpati (2005). Teachers commonly deal with difficult students by restricting them-the more intense the student's needs are, the more restriction–such as placing a child's desk toward the wall (Duhaney, 2003). However, a needs-based approach is more positive and effective and suggests recourse to greater resources. Perhaps the child needs to learn appropriate ways to handle anger and aggression, more problem-solving skills, or receive feedback for appropriate behaviors. If the child has trouble with self-control, instructional strategies could include modeling, role-play, and feedback to help him stay out of fights, solve problems, express anger appropriately, and deal with frustration. Without intervention students with or at risk for behavioral disorders are liable to experience many negative outcomes both in school and outside such as impaired social relationships, academic underachievement, and discipline problems (Lane, Wehby, & Barton-Arwood, 2005). Social skills interventions have been used and evaluated for more than 25 years, but their efficacy continues to be questioned. Researchers suggest that social skills training makes only a modest impact; however, most educators agree that not doing anything is worse. The ability to adapt and modify instruction is crucial to effectively educating these children. Before starting an intervention, it would be wise to gather information about the student, such as why, where and when he uses the particular behavior. Identify what social, affective, cultural, or contextual elements might be at work, and analyze the information. List the specific behaviors and describe where when and with whom the behavior is likely to occur. What consequences are usually administered? Keep anecdotal records so you can look for patterns and what triggers the behavior. Then figure out what strategies might be effective to avoid the behavior; for example, teach self-talk to students who are impulsive and organize the classroom environment to help hyperactive students. Consider making a contract with the student. Develop personal schedules for students who have difficulty making good use of their time. Consider implementing a token economy in which the teacher systematically awards or withdraws tokens or points for appropriate or inappropriate behavior. The student can redeem the tokens for something he wants such as privileges, desired activities, or food. Conflict resolution is a way to help students express their feelings and communicate better with others. We tend to see conflict as negative because of the disruption it causes in the classroom; however, conflict is neither good nor bad but simply a fact of life. According to Vollmer, Drook and Harned (1999) â€Å"Learning through social conflict is important to all human development† (p. 122). As children develop cognitive reasoning skills, they begin to see that others have perspectives, needs, and desires too. Early training with role plays and simulations will help them develop the social skills they need to maintain relationships. Students can be taught a process for resolution of conflict. One way is to use a large visual of a traffic light which shows the steps to conflict resolution and includes the words Cool down and Ground Rules (RED), Tell your side and Listen (YELLOW), and Brainstorm and Ideas (GREEN). A turn arrow at the bottom has the words Choose solution, and do it and Shake hands. Teachers report that students take more responsibility and often initiate conflict-resolution strategies on their own after learning and practicing this system (Vollmer, Drook & Harned, 1999, p. 124). The teacher should provide a quiet place in the room where students can work things out when they have a conflict. Once they have mastered a structured routine for conflict management, it will be unnecessary for the teacher to get involved. Classroom management is a challenge that requires the teacher to put his or her heart into it. An ancient Chinese proverb states that a student only learns from a teacher who loves home. In other words, a child needs to feel accepted and that the teacher cares about him or her. All children have basic needs–physical needs, safety needs, and social needs–that must be met before they can feel free to learn and develop to their true potential. If their needs are met and a positive learning environment is created, they will learn and be eager to participate. Therefore, the teacher's goal should be, not to fill their heads with specific information, but to make learning possible in a calm, structured, safe, and flexible environment and help them gain the skills to go after knowledge.

Claim in relation to at least two ways of knowing

â€Å"We see and understand things not as they are but as we are. † Discuss this claim in relation to at least two ways of knowing. Many things we see and understand can be affected by the society we live in, the beliefs we have, and our perceptions of the world. What I am going to try and do in this essay is discuss whether we see things and understand things not as they are, but as we are. In this essay, I will discuss several external factors which affect people and, therefore, interfere with of way of seeing and understanding. There are several issues to be discussed which can affect the way human beings understand and see hings.There are sociologists, like David †°mile Durkheim, who state that â€Å"society is supreme over the individual†. By saying this he wants to show us the power the society exerts on the individual. This may lead to a change in perception, and the way the individual will see and understand things. There are several ways of knowing, there is a short term P E A R L (Perception, Emotion, Reason, Language). Therefore, the society the individual lives on, the language he speaks, and cultural habits involving religion, will definitely affect the way the individual understand things.We see several issues in this modern world which can prove my statement above. As some of you may know, Israel and Palestine have been in conflict for more than one century now. The individuals living in both societies, even though they are very close to each other (in terms of distance), the way they see and understand things are very different, very far away from each other. A individual raised inside Israel will probably have the same beliefs the others in the society do, and therefore would protect the cause of Israel against Palestine. As David †°mile Durkheim, famous French sociologist says, â€Å"society is supreme over the individual†.This same situation happening with the individual in Israel will also happen, despite diffe rently, with the individual in Palestine. This individual in Palestine will probably believe his god is Allah, and that the Israelis are intruders into their territory. This clearly shows us that due to their difference in cultural backgrounds, and beliefs, creates 2 very distinct ways of seeing and understanding things, which in this case ended up in a conflict which have already resulted in the deaths of over 110 000 people, which is the same umber of people living in Charleston (US).In this situation the distinct way of seeing and understanding things have generated this war, however there are others situation where people try to understand the others way of understanding in harmony. It is also possible to have different ways of seeing and understanding things inside the same country. As we can see, in Brazil there are over 67 tribes, in which they speak their own language, and practice their own rituals. It is certain that the vast majority of these Indians don't share the same beliefs as the people living in he big cities (e. g. Rio de Janeiro).The Brazilian society as a whole accept these ditterences, and there is no contlict in between them, only in some separate cases dealing with territory utility, or other specific reason. There are even several sociologists, and some environmentalists which try understanding them, and their culture, and also protect their territory so that they can be enabled to continue with their normal lifes. However this relationship with the native Braszilian tribes has not always been like this, from 1500 to 1900 it is estipulated that over 200 000 natives ave been killed.In early years there were little access to ways of knowledge, and communication was very difficult. These could be one of the factors determining on this occupation. What I wanted to show by using this Brazilian tribes example, was that the difference in ways of seeing and understanding things don't necessarily cause conflict. The natives share distinct perce ption from the world, they practice an extremely unique method which varies from tribe to tribe, and therefore they would see certain things we see as normal, with other eyes.For example: when there is rain, ome tribes, like the Tupi's, believe it is an offer from god so that they can raise some more crops. Meanwhile and individual from the city would see it as a normal thing, as a natural element from the precipitation cycle. Culture and religion is known for distorting our visual perception. This is, seeing things not as they are, but as we are. They affect directly on the formation of the individuals, and build them up in order to believe in their own way.Plato, a very famous philosopher, student of Socrates which was born in Greece, developed an allegory, known as The Cave. Plato imagined individuals living in an underground cave, with their legs and neck chained so that they could not move. Behind them was a fire, which would reflect them on the opposite wall of the cave. Puppe t players would play with their puppets on front of the fire, so that the shadows created by it were reflected on the wall.The people passing through the cave entrance talking would generate an echo which the individuals living on the cave would believe were coming from the shadows on the wall. Until one day, one prisoner is taken off the cave, and shown the real world, he hen realizes that all the things he believed were actually illusions, and weren't true. When the prisoner who was set free returned to the cave to tell the other about the truth, they didn't believed him, and killed him because they felt offended. Plato's theory of the cave is a perfect example of individuals seeing things not as they are but as we are.It shows the impact of the society, which would blindly believe those shadows were true, and would refuse to open their mind, as if they were formed by it. Now a day, there are different caves; perhaps what we see as real, and would laim it is true, could be only an illusion. Therefore, as a conclusion we can see that by Joining up the three example given, we can say that the individual are extremely affected by the society they live on, the religious beliefs they have, and therefore the individual will not see things as they are but as they are.The formation of the individuals is extremely affected by these exteriors factors which will certainly distort their image of what is real and what isn't. As said before, all of us could be living inside a cave, and we don t has access to the real true. Due to that, the claim â€Å"we see nd understand things not as they are but as we are† could be said to be true even though many would go against it claiming that their beliefs are the right ones, similar situation to the prisoners on the cave.

A Brief History of Seat Belts

A Brief History of Seat Belts The first U.S. patent for automobile seat belts was issued to Edward J. Claghorn of New York, New York on February 10, 1885. Claghorn was granted United States Patent #312,085 for a Safety-Belt for tourists, described in the patent as designed to be applied to the person, and provided with hooks and other attachments for securing the person to a fixed object. Nils Bohlin Modern Seat Belts Swedish inventor, Nils Bohlin invented the three-point seat belt - not the first but the modern seat belt - now a standard safety device in most cars. Nils Bohlins lap-and-shoulder belt was introduced by Volvo in 1959. Seat Belt Terminology 2-Point Seat Belt: A restraint system with two attachment points. A lap belt.3-Point Seat Belt: A seat belt with both a lap and a shoulder portion, having three attachment points (one shoulder, two hips).Lap Belt: A seat belt anchored at two points, for use across the occupants thighs/hips.Lap/Shoulder Belt: A seat belt that is anchored at three points and restrains the occupant at the hips and across the shoulder; also called a combination belt. Car Seats - Child Restraints The first child car seats were invented in 1921, following the introduction of the Henry Fords Model T, however, they were very different from todays car seat. The earliest versions were essentially sacks with a drawstring attached to the back seat. In 1978, Tennessee became the first American State to require child safety seat use.

Art Evaluation Essays

Art Evaluation Essays Art Evaluation Essay Art Evaluation Essay Explore-at the start of this project I looked at the artists Karl Blosfeldt and Peter Randall Page. Karl Blosfeldt was a German photographer who took photographs of natural forms. Peter Randall Page is a British artist who takes natural forms and uses the textures and colours to make interesting sculptures. I think I presented my work which included my botanical drawing of kiwi, my flower observation drawing and other pieces in an eye-catching and interesting way. Create. I experimented with my collages by using low relief and by using materials which have the colours of natural forms like brown tape. With my drawing I used tried to show the texture of the object I was focusing on.The materials I used were brown tape, cardboard (thick and thin) and tissue paper. The techniques I used were slotting, using low and high relief. Evaluate. At the start I think I did not really annotate my work but now i think I have fully annotated my work at have improve the pages at the start of my book. I think I have planned my work well because I put thought into how I am going to organise a page and my ideas. My drawings show that I have reflected the styles of the artists work because I have taken their work at incorporated several ideas into my own work. I have reviewed my work my putting a footnote at the bottom of the page. The footnote includes my opinion of how well I did something or what I liked about something. I presented my work in a way so that the people looking at my work can read my writing but the way it was put on the page is bold and visually good. Understand. I think that my work does show a link to the artists work, like I said before in the evaluate section, I have incorporated their styles and put it into my work. My final piece of work did turn out as expected because it had different shapes to show the textures on a real life form. I am particularly pleased with my leave structure as it was one of three parts which look like a part on a real life form. I like the colours I used for the leave structure and I like how the tissue paper gives more natural texture. The changes I would make on my overall structure would be to have a more brighter area because most of structure it pretty dark, so that is how I would improve it. The best bits of making this structure was the painting because it was quite relaxing and you take your time. The worst bit would have to be putting together the structure in the first place because cutting out shapes from the cardboard was really hard and took ages. Feedback. No, I dont think there was anything in the project that I did not understand. I liked the theme and the project because it involved different techniques like painting, drawing and making collages. If I designed the project the work that I would like to do more botanical drawing because I would like to improve on my shading. I think that the project is good as it already is.

Discussion Board Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 6

Discussion Board - Assignment Example On the other hand, the global money related strategy has nonetheless, launched regulations on genuine cash supply henceforth the standard in exchange relies on upon the true premium rate, ostensible cash supply and value level. There are different approaches cases from the USA, including; The U.s. Economy, 1995–2000, the U.s. Economy, 2007–2008, Effects of the Euro in the Macroeconomic Environment, Euro Macro Environment Effects on Managerial Decisions, Southeast Asia: An Attempt to Maintain Fixed Exchange Rate, and Macro and Managerial Impact of the Chinese Yuan Since 2003. Having took a gander at the outside trade around the globe, I agree that the relationship between a nations fare and import using, may be certain if there is an exchange surplus (fares surpass imports) or negative if there is an exchange shortage (imports surpass sends out). This on the other hand, compels the legislature to execute strict measures the extent that cash trade and its rates is screened to realize consistence in cash dissemination and kill any kind of expansion that stabilizes nations economy in question (Gali, 2008). In the interim, I have experienced different articles with respect to the level of utilization and using of people and understood that the legislature is right and legitimate to present financial strategies which are executed through procurement of arrangements and regulations to supervise utilization rate to both on firms and

Comparison of Aims, Objectives and Purpose of Marks & Spencers And Essay

Comparison of Aims, Objectives and Purpose of Marks & Spencers And Lidl Ltd - Essay Example This paper illustrates that business news and subjects have always formed a considerable hype among people and the race among the business firms are of particular interest to readers. However, this article is not about competition but reflects the internal aspects of business management and compares two top-ranking firms and their business practices. One of the companies is a front line retailer and supermarket chain operating globally, Marks & Spencer’s while the other one is the discount supermarket chain, Lidl. In reference to the selection of the companies, it is important to justify that these companies have been selected in order to understand the differences in their management and operational practices in relation to their particular industry traits. The company started its operations in the year 1940 and expanded their operations in 20 countries in Europe during the period of 1973. The privately held company with headquarter in Germany, over time, evolved as the fifth largest retailer in the globe in terms of sales, as per the statistics of 2011. The sales of the company rose to higher levels with the increase in their service processes and also helped them gain a reputation in the national retail and supermarket industry. The business operation of Lidl highly reflects the mission incorporated by the company. Lidl is well-aware about their existing size and customer base and aims to integrate customers across customers with different values and traditions. Lidl infuses systematic approach to achieving their primary goal i.e. customer satisfaction. The company understands the importance of the value of money for the customers and accordingly formulates the corporate strategies. The excellence of such strategies is reflected from the pricing decision and promotional strategies used by Lidl.