Link to What's New This Week What America Should Be Like

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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: February 8, 2003
Latest Update: February 8, 2003
E-Mail Icon jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Site Teaching Modules What America Should Be Like

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, February 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

On Saturday, February 8, Timothy McCaskill (CSUDH) wrote:
This is Timothy McCaskill. In response to the astronauts we lost, that was a tremendous disaster, and I feel for their family and friends. Although we are all friends in one way or another that picture displayed what America should be and I believe is close to being: all cultures working together to be one. I could go on and on about that picture and how they represent the coming of [age of] America, but I'm going to cut it short. You have a nice weekend Jeanne.
On Saturday, February 8, jeanne responded:
Good submission, Tim. Just a few pointers. You have clued me in that you are reading the site, and that you are thinking about it. That's good. B for that for this transaction. You begin to move into touching on our class themes when you speak directly of the picture, and of how that picture represents for you what America really is and should be. But these are vague sketches in passing.

I see two courses to editing this to an A transaction here. Either think about it for a while and recognize that if this is to be more than a "just checking in" transaction, and you would like it to count for one of your three main submissions, you'll need to go a little deepter into a sociological analysis of what your trying to exress. Maybe it doesn't occur to you immediately how to do that.

So Option 1, say that. "I feel like it relates, but I think I need some help here." Here are some of the kinds of help I can offer:

  • For an A on this transaction I'd like you to actually acknowledge that you have now begun to use the theory we've learned in application to the reality of everyday lived experiences. How? Well, you focus on the power of the picture to deliver a message.

  • The message is these people were all heroes and successes, and they were of all colors and origins. The picture says all that.

  • You talk about how we should be: our American values. And that is a topic of major importance just now.

  • You talk of community, how even though we didn't all know the astronauts, we knew of them and considered them part of our context, our friends, our family, our community.

  • All of these represent observations of illocutionary discourse taking place amongst us, the ordinary folks in America, and that is the beginning of understanding the Other.

  • But then, let's move back from the utopian view of ourselves, and acknowledge that crucial to this integrity of a whole community is that these people were high status, learned, respected. And then we might consider how the picture might change if those underlying assumptions were not met.

I don't expect you to follow all these leads. We're not working on a term paper, remember. But my suggestions might give you an idea on how to do the conceptual linking that measures your learned skill to move from sociology to explanations of lived reality.

  • Or Option 2, you might have some ideas of how this links comceptually, but are a little intimidated by committing your self to writing academic discourse, then just begin to express the relationships you see between what you have focused on in the issue and the theory and concepts we study. You don't have to worry aobut the name of the theory; you don't have to sort through the theories correctly. You're bound to make some mistakes at this stage of your learning. But if you'll put your ideas in your own words, then I can help you edit them for accuracy and completeness.

    In that process, as we put our dialoge on the site, other students can gain courage from your efforts.

    I'd say that you ought to be able to manage in a couple of paragraphs to do all that. Remember, you've already done a lot. And you're not going to try to follow every suggestion I make. You're going to choose the one that seems to express what you wanted to say.