Affirmative Action Policies based on Minority Should be Eliminated (ENG 3010)

Affirmative action generally means giving preferential treatment to minorities in admission to universities or employment in government & businesses. The diversity of our current society indicates that the programs have been a success for the past few decades, but now, many think the policies are no longer needed and that they lead to more problems than they solve. Hence they should be removed.Education is one of the most prominent forms of affirmative action. Race, gender, ethnicity, social class and geographical origin are the factors often taken into account for admission into universities. Students are awarded scholarships based on these criteria. By the implementation of the affirmative action programs, universities sometimes accept minority students according to different, lower and less rigid admission requirements. It is absolutely unacceptable.Affirmative action also lowers the standards of accountability needed to push students to perform better. Although some students are self-motivated, most students need an extra push or incentive to do their very best. By setting lower standards for admission the schools reduce the incentives of students to work at their level best, lowering the society’s performance as a whole.All of the above mentioned examples just clarify one thing: Affirmative Action does more harm and benefit to the society and that it should be eradicated as much as it possibly can. It is no longer needed in today’s world.

Most difficult about the paper writing process (ENG 3010)

I hate writing. There are many areas in the writing process that I am bad at, and hence I have always hated it. Given any topic, the first challenge for me is to find: ‘Where to start from’. I get stuck before even getting started! After thinking extensively, when I finally have something to share about, I face difficulty in generating my ideas into written expression. Many times I have some vague idea for a topic but have to drop it just because of my inability to put it into words. I am poor at delivering my thoughts and ideas to the readers in a way that would explain them the logic behind it. I am unable to strongly assert my view points to the readers over an argument.
I lack the skill of organizing ideas in a smooth flow. I fail to make a smooth transition from one subject matter to another. Often times whenever I settle down to write a narrative essay, I am incapable to organize the events in the order that seems rational to the readers. I jump to a different focus without giving a proper justification for the first one but then return to it again. As a result of this, the essay turns out to be quite monotonous and unorganized.
I constantly feel to the need to improve my writing skills. I have already started working towards it. Each day before going to bed, I write a brief summary of how I passed my whole day. I write about people I met and things that happened to me that particular day. Hopefully this works in my favor.

Intelligence and IQ tests! (ENG 3010)

Defining intelligence is highly problematic. Is there an 'intelligence' that equips us to solve all kinds of problems and answer all questions, regardless of their nature? Are there different intelligences that help us deal with particular problems and solutions? This has been a forever debate amongst the scientists who study human brain.Many claim there is not one kind of intelligence, but at least eight different types, including verbal and emotional intelligence. One idea of 'intelligence' is the concept of 'General Intelligence', or 'G' as it is commonly referred to as. ‘G’ is used to measure one’s mental performance over a variety of tests. It was found that the same people who did well in a variety of mental tests tended to use only a part of their brains that is termed as 'g'. These observations made scientists believe that single intelligence enables us to undertake everyday mental tasks. There are a number of different methods which purport to measure intelligence, the most famous of which is perhaps the IQ, or 'Intelligence Quotient' test. Modern day IQ tests measure a variety of different types of ability such as verbal, mathematical, memory and reasoning.Many see IQ tests as an assessment of an individual’s problem solving ability rather than general intelligence. However, they are not even a comprehensive test of someone's problem solving ability. They aren't an accurate test of creativity, practical knowledge, and other skills involved in problem solving. So how can IQ tests be seen as a measure of intelligence? ‘Whether IQ tests actually test general intelligence’? will always remain debatable.

Parents should be strictly spared from the child’s appalling actions (ENG 3010)

There has been a huge increase in the number of juvenile crimes recently. Apart from parents, there are many factors like, school, teachers, friends, television, internet etc. that are responsible for the downfall of children’s behavior.When a child commits a crime and investigation is done, it is very rarely stated by him that he was largely influenced by his parents or his parents were his key motivation behind his odious actions. But it is mostly likely to come out that he was inspired by his friends in school, television shows and movies. Many times, the child quotes activities and things from his teachers and friends in school. The parents have nothing to do with the child’s deeds.Many people might argue that it was the lack of good parenting and proper guidance on behalf of the parents that provoked the child to commit offensive crimes. But one should not forget that it is not solely the parent’s duty to provide him with correct guidance and moral values. The school plays an equally crucial role in a child’s nourishment and ethical teachings. The conduct of children is a result of a combination of parenting, schooling, social environment, and nature. It is true that parents’ role in training the child is substantial, but they did their job of warning and preventing. Then it has to be the child’s obligation to stick to moral values instilled in them by the parents and live peacefully amongst others in the community.

Are We Digital Natives or Digital Immigrants???? (ENG 3010)

Its weeks after the elections and I could not be happier. Not because Barack Obama’s the president but for some other minor reasons. Today in our English class after almost a month and half of talking about politics and media bias, our teacher assigned us something far more different and interesting to read. I read an article today by Marc Prensky titled ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants’. The author makes some good and valid points on the emergence of a new digital media young generation. Today’s younger generation surrounded by new age technology has a whole different style of thinking than the previous generation. He calls the young generation of today as ‘Digital Natives’ since they have been surrounded by technology since the moment they were born. He calls the rest as ‘Digital Immigrants’ since we had to adapt to the use of technology in our daily lives. I think the invention of state-of-the-art video games and the internet is the prime cause of bringing this revolutionary change. These days the video games are made not only keeping the kids in mind but also the youth. The video games have ratings just like for the TV shows and movies. Some of the games have serious adult content in terms of violence and portrayal of sex. The kids of today are really getting tech-savvy. I am only 20 years old and seeing my little cousins (10 and 8 years old) playing video games and surfing on the internet makes me feel really old and someone from the past generation. It makes me a ‘Digital Immigrant’ and them ‘Digital Natives’. I like the way the author came up with these terms so appropriately. I think due the emergence of new age gaming system like X-Box, PS I, II, III and Wii took gaming to a whole different level. The gaming systems can now integrate with the internet and play and compete against other online players sitting virtually at any corner of the world. It’s a nice way to bring the world together…lol. Internet is of course had gotten far better than video games. With the exponential growth of websites on virtually anything and everything, you have everything you need right at your fingertips. Schools and universities have recognized the benefits of the internet and have successfully integrated the use of internet in their curriculum to enhance student learning experience. For almost all the college classes, I have taken so far, all the teachers have posted their class notes and their audio recordings online on blackboard website. This makes it very convenient for the students to have access to the teacher’s information anytime and as many times as they want. But there is also a disadvantage to it. Students don’t feel the need to come to lectures since they can listen to it later. Teachers have come up with daily attendance point system to rectify the problem. At many universities the teachers make the use of ‘clickers’ –which is way to take daily attendance. The teachers ask the students multiple choice questions at the beginning or end of the lecture. The students are required to answer those questions Many times the teachers show animation of important and hard-to-understand concepts via different educational websites with the use of the internet. Thus in my opinion technological advancements has been nothing but a boon to the human race.
But there still exists a flock of teachers who still haven’t welcomed or fully adapted the ‘going digital’ concept thoroughly. For example, for the research paper in ENG 1010 class, we were supposed to cite three sources. But NONE of the resources could be internet-based. She did not want us to find any sources off the internet even though the websites were reliable. Instead she made all of us to go different libraries and search for written documents that support our research topics. It took me two days to find such articles in magazines and newspaper when it could easily be done in less than 2 hours—had she allowed us to use the internet sources. Her argument was that internet makes the job easier and it’s an easy way out. She failed to understand that we can find more and far better materials to support our argument. This is the best example of the teacher being ‘digital immigrant’ and students being ‘digital natives’. Another important point that Prensky makes in his article is common belief of the digital immigrant parents and teachers that students cannot be educated via watching TV or listening to music. This used to be true back in the days when TV and music was meant only for entertainment. But due to immergence of TV channels like, Discovery, National Geographic and History the youth are able to better educate themselves about the environment, wild life and happening of the past in a much better way. The youth of today have increasingly become ‘visual learners’. Thanks to the development of these educational channels.
I agree with pretty much everything that Prensky had to stay in his article except for one thing. I don’t agree with is proposal of turning everything into a game for the kids and young adults since they appear to learn best the ‘digital way’. Prensky argues that since kids learn so much faster with the help of video games, the schools should modify their curriculum in such a way that all the learning can actually happen in a exciting and joyful manner through the use of video games. Such an approach is feasible only upto elementary schools where kids don’t need to stress out with course work as much. But as the kids move on to high school and college, education via games is not at all possible. Think of about it for a second: You cannot turn a kid into a doctor by making him play video games all day long. I think it is a terrible idea to even experiment. It’s sensible to introduce the use of computer software to better explain the concepts and subject matter with the help of 3 dimensional diagrams and animated movies etc. but the suggestion to completely replace the traditional textbooks is ridiculous in my opinion. Kids need to learn to focus and try to find a way on his/her own to make the boring stuff interesting. While learning any new information is always boring and dull in the beginning. Kids have to learn to deal with it. This is a quality every child needs to develop in him to sustain the atrocities that life will throw at him as he grows older. Overall a good read. Stay tuned for more on this next week.

Bias 2--Discussion continued this week as well (ENG 3010)

Hello again,
So on the week of halloween, we contunued our discussion on bias in media. One of the three groups who still had to make thier presentation went ahead and presented their project to the class. They were assgined to search for any sort of bias on the diferent radio channels. NPR was the only radio channel that was found to be really neutral in terms of their plitical views. It makes sense because it is government run and it is not looking for any profit from private companies. Whereas other local and national public radio channels were either shifted slightly to the left or to the right.
The reamining two groups went on wednesday. Their presentation was interesting too. In the end we as a class came to a conclusion that there is defiantely some kind of bias preelant in everything around us. A bias-free society is practically impossible because not everyone will agree with everything that is going on around us at this time.
One specific type of bias which was seen in every form of media was that, all of them were either suporting democrats or republicans. They would only cover news from the presidential candidates of these two parties while in reality there are many more third party candidates runnig for president. As citizens, we never learn or hear anything abot what these candidates have to say. The media does not give them any coverage at all. Hence, this is also one type of bias that eery media is following.
That's all we talked this week. On friday our class got cancelled because the STATE HALL--the builiding where our class meets was closed down by the Wayne State University Police Department. There was supposedly a 'bomb threat' in the building. All classes in the buidling were cancelled for the rest of the day. Thankfully there was no bomb found. I am assuming that someone made a prank call since it was Halloween on friday. That's it for this week. Stay tuned for more on Bias next week.

Class Presentation Week ---ENG 3010

This week in English was very eventful. The class was divided in 6 groups. Each group was assigned a specific type of media. The group’s job was to find any sort of political bias in their respective type of media. My group was initially assigned ‘Magazine’. But we traded that with another group who had ‘Internet’. Quite surprisingly that’s what they wanted! It all worked out perfectly. So with regard to our assignment we decided to look at a variety of political websites and tried to find bias in them. So I looked at a lot of network websites like CNN.com, MSNBC.com, ABC News.com, FOX News.com. In terms of international coverage on US politics, I also looked at TIMES OF INDIA.com and INDIA Today.com. Other members of my group looked at other local news websites and blogs. Wednesday we had no class. So we utilized that time in getting together and organizing our strategy on how to carry out the 10 minute presentation in class for Friday. Even on Friday we got together and rehearsed the final presentation. In class, we drew on the board, a ‘spectrum’ of the websites ranking them for being the ‘most liberal’ to the ‘Neutral’ to ‘most conservative’. Each one of us had a chance to talk and explain why a particular website that they looked at, was inclined more towards the right or left. All together we covered a total of 15-20 websites. Our presentation lasted for 25 minutes. Ours was the longest and much more comprehensive in terms of content than others groups they made their presentation after us. Everyone liked our spectrum. It was really cool.
Two other groups went after us. One group did their presentation on ‘Radio’ and the other on ‘Magazine’. The magazine group made a big poster in which they put various types of magazines in 3 categories: Liberal, Neutral and Conservative. They made good use of visual aid. The radio group’s presentation, in terms of content, was good as well. That’s how the lecture on Friday ended. On the whole, it was one of the most exciting days in class. On Monday, the remaining three groups are supposed to make their presentation. I am eager to see what they come up with.