Blog #13: Things Fall Apart

Due: Tuesday, November 3 at the end of class. 

Things Fall Apart is about a culture on the verge of dramatic change. We see how the prospect of change affects individuals within that culture.

Efulefu level (D): 250 words and a quote from the novel
Unoka level: (C/B) 350 words and two quotes from the novel
Okonkwo (B+/A-) level: 450 words and two quotes from the novel
Chukwu level: (A/A+) 750 words and at least two quotes from the novel as well as quotes and references from other works.

A Culture On the Verge of Change

• What forces are at play?
• What connections can you make to things happening now?
• What role do tradition, ritual, and ceremony play in maintaining a culture and what role do they play during a time of change?
• What effect does status play in cultural change?
• How does push and pull influence people.

Progress

• In what ways does the idea of progress shape the novel?
• How does the idea of a single story play into the idea of progress?

Tradition

• How does tradition perpetuate and thrive from one generation to the next?

If none of these questions work, here are some questions I stole from a great school and teacher in Pleasanton, California. If you are the teacher who wrote these questions, you are getting the titles of our village. May Chukwu bless your people and your traditions - in both your motherland and fatherland. I tried to find you to ask permission and thank you, but I couldn't.

1.   How does the father-son relationship throughout three generations shape the     personalities of Okonkwo, and Nwoye? Comment on their characteristics and the role their father plays in making them who they are.

3. "The story of Okonkwo is in a way the story of our culture; he pays a price because he places too much emphasis on strength and manliness." Discuss this quote as it applies to both the novel and our own modern American culture.

4. One of the themes of Achebe's novel is the striving after titles, trophies, and status in general. Write an essay commenting on the presence and importance of status symbols in Okonkwo's world and today's world. Explain their appeal and the ways in which searching for status symbols is a negative force in life.  

5. Discuss the ways in which the District Commissioner symbolizes intolerance and disrespect for cultures he considers inferior.

6. Okonkwo suffers because he does not understand himself.  Do his experiences help lead him to self-awareness or not, and why?

7. "[Okonkwo's] whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness."  Explain how fear, in an ironic way, is the catalyst for destruction and failure in the novel?

8. Comment on how Achebe, through this novel, counters the Imperialist stereotypes on Africa as an uncivilized continent.  What aspects of Ibo culture contradict this commonly held stereotype?  Perhaps use the District Commissioner’s comments to help convey the imperialist view.

Blog #12: Hamlet

Due Date: Saturday, September 26 and the end of the day.
Minimum Word Count: 450
Minimum Quotations and Specific Text References: 3
Please come up with a better title than "Hamlet" and start with a strong thesis or claim.

Your task:

You've been working on this blog post for the past week. It's based on the essential question that fate selected for you. If you need a reminder about your question or a copy of the outline sheet that you got in class, click here.

Throughout the process of reading, discussing, and writing about the play, you followed and took notes on your essential question. Now, this is your opportunity to present your reflections, discoveries, and conclusions in the form of a blog post, complete with textual citations and quotations (required) and multimedia (when appropriate).

You must incorporate at least two relevant quotes from the play, as well as paraphrased instances from Hamlet or other texts that relate to your thinking (between 4-8) that support your answer. You might also consider using minor supporting information from other sources (allusions to historical figures, celebrities, the Bible, or other stories/films). If you allude to anything other than the play itself, be sure it is cited correctly to credit is given to the original authors.

Here's how you cite examples and lines from the play:

25. Verse play or poem For verse plays, give act, scene, and line numbers that can be located in any edition of the work. Use arabic numerals and separate the numbers with periods.

In Shakespeare’s King Lear, Gloucester, blinded for suspected treason, learns a profound lesson from his tragic experience: “A man may see how this world goes / with no eyes” (4.6.148-49).

Blog #11: What is justice?

Due Date: Sunday, September 13
Minimum Word Count: At least 350
At least 1 quote or reference to Plato's The Republic
At least 1 quote, reference, or link to a modern example of justice or injustice

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The first week of class has focused on two main questions:

Why bother being good?
What is Justice?

These questions have sparked a lot of thought, discussion, and debate. Most of all, they've called into question some of the essential questions about what it means to be a part of a culture or civilization.

For your first blog, take time to come to some conclusions for yourself on the issues of goodness and justice. Here are some possible questions to get your started, but you are always more than welcome to come up with a question or questions on your own.

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What is justice?

Is justice, as it is currently practiced, just the advantage of the stronger? How do you know?

Why do you think our discussion on the importance of doing good turned into a discussion on the benefits of being bad?

How is the ideal of justice different from how you have experienced justice?

How do children learn about justice, and what does that say about us?

Look at the current events surrounding Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, or Trayvon Martin and discuss how you see justice or injustice playing into these situations.

Why bother defending justice?

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Our questions from class:

• Link to Day 2

Blog #24: Where do we go from here?

Over the past 23 blog posts, you have been responding to questions I've asked or issues we've discussed as a class. You've synthesized ideas from dozens of people, analyzed works spanning over 3000 years, tackled some of the most difficult and enduring questions facing philosophers, and made connections with both depth and breadth.

For your final blog, I will ask you the question I started with as I started preparing to teach this class: Where do we go from here?

This is your chance to write in your own way about the entirety of your experience with me. You get to make some final connections and summarize the point of your own growth and development as a reader, writer, thinker, teacher, and learner. Consider the major themes of the class as well as your thinking on what we've done that continues to resonate with you.

I am not putting a word limit on this blog and I'm not going to specify what you link to here. Please, if you can, consider the entirety of the experience, as well as the works we've read recently that talk about freedoms, laws, morals, ethics, hope, and despair. Take a look over the other posts you've done and see how your thinking and writing developed over the course of your Quest English experience.

I'm very much looking forward to reading what you come up with. This could be my last chance to read your writing for a while. This experience has changed me for the better in so many ways. I'm looking forward to seeing what you have to say.

Blog #23: Lord of the Flies

Minimum Words: 400
Minimum Text References and Citations: 3 (Including works outside of The Lord of the Flies)
Due Date: Tuesday, December 22 at midnight. Actually, it can be done any time before the end of break.
Note: You are very welcome to include references to other works, including books, stories, videos, music, and other things.

Helpful links: Sample Reader's Notebook from CIS Literature* | Critical Lens notecards | Reader's Notebook Instructions | Spark Notes

This notebook entry is supposed to be 100% dictated by your own analysis and relationship to the text. If you can, try to do this without looking at the suggested questions below. However, for those of you who need a little push to begin this voyage, please feel free to consider the following questions or statements: 

• Try to apply a critical lens to your reading, the characters, or the context of the novel.

• Who is the protagonist in the novel? Who is the antagonist? How does the opposition of these two characters help develop the drama and the unfolding of the tale?

• What connections can you make with law, morals, and ethics? Consider the readings we did in class.

• Do you agree or disagree with what Golding seems to be teaching through this novel?

• What does it mean to be good? What makes a person good? How are these traits or qualities reflected in the characters in Lord of the Flies?

• How does fear or savagery or the unknown control the boys? How do characters leverage these feelings or concepts to control others?

• What connections can you make to Plato's Republic and the idea of justice or the creation of a perfectly just society? How does The Lord of the Flies contrast or compare with the ideas at play in The Republic?

Suggested topics from Spark Notes:
* The sample reader's notebook above is done by a senior in high school with a lot of experience writing these notebooks. It is also over 600 words longer than the entry you are expected to create. No pressure.

1. Of all the characters, it is Piggy who most often has useful ideas and sees the correct way for the boys to organize themselves. Yet the other boys rarely listen to him and frequently abuse him. Why do you think this is the case? In what ways does Golding use Piggy to advance the novel’s themes?

2. What, if anything, might the dead parachutist symbolize? Does he symbolize something other than what the beast and the Lord of the Flies symbolize?

3. The sow’s head and the conch shell each wield a certain kind of power over the boys. In what ways do these objects’ powers differ? In what way is Lord of the Fliesa novel about power? About the power of symbols? About the power of a person to use symbols to control a group?

4. What role do the littluns play in the novel? In one respect, they serve as gauges of the older boys’ moral positions, for we see whether an older boy is kind or cruel based on how he treats the littluns. But are the littluns important in and of themselves? What might they represent?

You can also use the prompts from the previous blog post to help in your analysis.

Please cite page numbers and specific passages from the novel to support your inferences and conclusions. We will be using these questions and your conclusions, questions, and insights to spark classroom discussion on Wednesday.

Example citation:

Scout says that "Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it" (Lee 4). She seems to be trying to emphasize not just the age of the town, but also the slowness of the town, the values of the people, and the way that summer heat made everything drag on.

or

This isn’t the first time we see one of the Price women choosing materialism over God, despite Nathan’s harsh beatings and warnings. On page 363, Rachel reaches for her mirror instead of for her Bible, explaining “[ . . . ] it didn’t seem worth saving at that moment, so help me God. It had to be my mirror.” Whether this shows rebellion or just the simplistic mindset of a 15-year-old teenage girl, I’m not sure. Perhaps she was, in her own, small way, rebelling from Nathan. But maybe she just wanted to make sure that no matter where she went in Africa, she would always know the state of her appearance. That seems pretty likely.

Blog #22: Hope and Fear

Due: Saturday, December 13
Minimum Words: 400
Textual References and Links: Four
Remember to quote and cite the works you are using correctly.

It seems we're always living on a continuum of hope and fear. They are two emotions that are powerfully motivating and almost ever-present in our lives.  In class, we discussed how closely related the two emotions can be. Some of you went so far as to say that the two concepts are the same thing. Of course, I disagree.

Huge topics call for a lot of latitude in responses. So, I've provided several possible questions with an important disclaimer near the end. Synthesizing sources is essential.

• How do hope and fear shape and change people? How does the roles of hope and fear change throughout a person's life?
• What is the relationship between hope and fear? How does this play itself out in some of the works we have read and how could this relate to real life?
• We've talked extensively about all of the advantages fear has with motivating people. What benefits could their be from leading with hope? What advantages should there be with leading through fear? How does this show itself in some of the literature we've examined in class?
• Hugh Howey wanted us to explore Plato's Allegory of the Cave and the 24-hour news cycle and what it does with our optimism and pessimism. Can you fully explore these ideas in the context of Wool and/or the other works we've read in class.

@cleanapple Sure. Tell them about Plato's Cave. And then ask what 24-hour news does to our perception of the world, our optimism/pessimism.
— Hugh Howey (@hughhowey) November 18, 2013

• What role does hope and fear play in education in general or your education specifically? What themes from some of the works we have read fit well with your educational experience?
• We started to explore the idea of pride and ego as they relate to fear. We also looked at the popularity of superheros during times of fear and hopelessness. What connections can you make with these concepts and the discussions in class as they relate to the literature we've studied as a whole?
• Under what circumstances is hope more powerful than fear? How can fear be healthy? How does this show itself in life and what connections can be made with the work we have studied in class?
• MAUS explores the idea of survivor's guilt as it relates to hope, fear, and ego. It also brings up the fear that defined lives in the concentration camps. What conclusions can you make based on this work as they relate to other things we've looked at. If you need help citing a graphic novel, check out this resource.

If you haven't figured this out by now, it is essential that you provide evidence from the texts we've studied in class to support or illustrate your claims. Beyond that, you can create any question for yourself to pursue that allows you to synthesize multiple sources in your writing.

Works for your consideration:

• Wool by Hugh Howey
• The Lady or the Tiger by Frank Stockton
• Hiroshima by John Hersey
• Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
• The Republic by Plato
• MAUS II by Art Spiegelman
• "All The Kings Horses" by Vonnegut
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• The blogs and opinions of Seth Godin
• The Hunger Games, specifically Catching Fire by Suzane Collins

Here is some help with how to format citations like a pro.

Don't forget to provide links within your text to your outside sources and credit all opinions that are not yours.

Blog #21: The Republic

Due: Tuesday at the end of the day.

Minimum words: 350

Minimum links: 0

When I originally selected Plato's Republic for this class, I knew it would be challenging - both in the way it is written and the concepts that it contains. I wanted a piece of literature that would stretch us and make us work. However, I also wanted this work to be worthwhile - to lead us to some deep discussions and conversations about the nature or morals and justice. 

In this blog post, please reflect on your thinking about The Republic and the concepts that you found most important or interesting. Please go beyond whether or not you "liked" the book.

Here are some concepts and potential questions for you to consider if you need some help getting started:

• What is the true nature of Justice?
• The Forms.
• The Allegory of the Cave
• The Tripartite Soul
• The value of a Philosopher king
• The role of luxury in a just society
• Democracy, Timocracy, and Oligarchy 
• Wisdom, Honor, and Appetite 
• Censorship and "The Noble Lie"
• Creators, Makers, and Imitators
• Restorative Justice versus Punitive Justice
• The Tyrannical Man

What value is there in studying this work from 2300 years ago in a modern context?

Why is "goodness" so hard to understand or describe?

How have the philosophies in this book influenced things, beliefs, or systems you encounter in your life?

Can you connect the ideas presented in this book with current situations?

Why is justice so important to us but so difficult to describe or obtain?

Why must Socrates describe a just city in order to shed light on a just person or the concept of justice in general?

What quotations or concepts stick out to you when you look at key quotations from The Republic?