The Culture of Narcissism

By: Julie

Editor's Note: This post was uploaded on behalf of the author.

I remember a time when it used to be cool to be crazy. The protagonists in movies were portrayed as psychopaths that no one understood but were really in the right of it by the end of the movie. There was even that song 'Unwell' that was super popular around the time. The crazies who saw the world differently were glorified.

I suppose thinking back on all this came from my research homework. I'm supposed to be researching swing dancing and culture, but this book is heavily into culture. It went on to talk about 'the culture of narcissism', something that I'd never heard about till today. My first thought was that it was too cracked up to be true. The theory--not explicitly explained in the book, so I might just not have enough information--was summarized as infants not being able to differentiate between their fantasies and the real world. Because of this, the infantile mind becomes frustrated. The culture today does not offer 'transitional objects or spaces' to displace the infantile mind from his fantasies. Thus, he grows up to become a frustrated, neurotic adult that can't relate to other people and prefers his own individual fantasies, such as video games or TV, to interaction with others.

The whole 'infant fantasy' thing made me rather skeptic of the theory, but it was that last part that really got me. A professor of mine said something very similar in observation when he was on the train, "Young people just don't know how to talk to each other these days." At first I wanted to laugh and retort, "Of course we do," but then I thought about it. What he described was he had sat on a train next to a young girl and was making pleasant conversation, now it wasn't even like the guy is creepy in the slightest, so the girl doesn't even have the excuse of being freaked out. But when he spoke to her, she was baffled and wouldn't say more than a word or two in response to a question of "how are you?" The couple that was sitting across from him was equally as bad. They were definitely together but had no interaction. The girl had her earphones in and the guy was blocking his face like he was trying to sleep when it was obvious he wasn't.

And it's been true every time I've stepped onto a train or public place as well. People are so absorbed in looking busy with their own activities that they appear unapproachable. No one wants to talk to someone with their earphones in, but in they go, killing any chance of striking up a conversation. And then there are those who pretend to sleep to avoid having to talk to people or appear un-busy. Sleeping shows that yes, you most certainly are busy--so very busy that you didn't get enough sleep at home and need to fall asleep right there on the train. I used to be guilty of the latter.

I know this isn't the whole world. I know that people genuinely find enjoyment in their music, books, and are so tired that they need to catch up on sleep. I like all of those things as well. I just think it's sad that so many opportunities for conversation are wasted. People complain that there's nothing to do on the trains, but there's a wealth of entertainment sitting right next to them. If one would just open their mouth and talk to the person right there, they'd be entertained for their entire ride. I can't tell you how many fascinating things I've heard from random people on trains or passing on the street.

I also think it's funny how people act like they don't want to talk when they really do. I don't get it. What's the use in denying something you want that isn't wrong?

Maybe this is the so called 'culture of narcissism.' I don't know. ...And how in the world this all relates back to swing dancing, I've got no clue. Hopefully this book will reveal it in later chapters.

The Master Teacher

By: Sara

A couple years ago, a professor told me the most profound insight into teaching which changed the way I looked at the profession. She said that teaching is like an apprenticeship, you begin under the guidance of what should ideally be a master teacher and most importantly of all everyone begins as a novice. Those last words were words which have kept me, as a student teacher on the verge of becoming a fully qualified teacher, sane.

There is no doubt that teaching is one of the most demanding professions around. If you were to put it into terms of a business, a teacher plays multiple roles as manager with day-to-day classroom management, the administration in dealing with paperwork for grading and tracking student performance, public relations with students' parents, and human resources in teaching students. It is my own opinion that no amount of schooling can possibly prepare one for the roles a single teacher needs to fill in the classroom. The master teacher is one who has found a balance between all these roles to the point where he or she no longer needs to consciously think about it as a novice would. Instead, everything is second-nature: the curriculum is known by heart and can be flexible under any circumstance, assessment can be achieved almost at a glance, and management fails to fluster the master teacher. And I'm sure students are keenly aware as to which of their teachers were master teachers, which were still progressing, and worse, which had stagnated toward that level of mastery in teaching.

I had built up in my mind that I had to leave college at that master level; however, my professor helped me to realize that this was an unrealistic expectation to have which only brought about stress. Teaching is a profession built upon experience, and there is a sharp learning curve to it. Sure, some will reach that mastery level faster than others but everyone must go through the novice stage. Teachers are constantly learning something new to their profession, be it a new form of management or a new method of teaching. I guess what this all means in the end, is that for a novice, while it is good to set high expectations, there is a difference between high and unrealistic. Embrace failure since it will happen and learn from it. Then cherish the success and learn from those as well.

Unbiased Research

By: Christopher

The problem with science is everyone is biased when conducting experiments. This is not some ground breaking point I'm making in this post - everyone knows this fact. If you're studying breast cancer, you have an idea of how breast cancer works before you even run your experiment. Then, regardless of what results you obtain, you always view them in the light of your initial bias. Or even worse, you set up your experiment with your result already in mind, and do not allow for other possibilities. The degree to which this affects science varies depending on the scientist, but it is always present. In fact there are very few experiments that are truly unbiased.

If you want to study breast cancer, you use cells from breast cancer patients for your experiments. The way science works is you use "Cell Lines," which are just cells that you can grow in the lab. So let's say if you want to study breast cancer, you use a cell line called "MDA-MB-435." That's just some annoying letters that let you and everyone else know that you are studying breast cancer.

I came across a paper last semester which uncovered decades of truly unbiased research (accidentally). The thrust of the paper was saying that MDA-MB-435 cells, which everyone believed to be breast cancer cells, were not actually breast cancer cells. Since 1982, people have been reporting findings on breast cancer that are completely false because they were using these cells.

Even though the main point of this paper was to discredit all the breast cancer research that had been done using MDA-MB-435 cells, the authors made another interesting point: MDA-MB-435 cells are actually skin cancer cells. This means that all the research done with these cells on breast cancer can now be viewed in the light of skin cancer.

What I find most interesting is now we have a vast encyclopedia of skin cancer research that is as unbiased as you can get. The researchers in no way were intending to study skin cancer when they published their results. Admittedly, the researchers still had a biased (thinking they were working with breast cancer), but a falsely based bias is almost as good as no bias. Since their experiments were not set up in the context of understanding skin cancer they did not have any preconceived notion of how skin cancer works when they planned their protocols. We can now re-examine their data and apply it to skin cancer. There will still be a bias in the interpretation of data, but the data collection is completely untainted.

If you read science papers, scientists are always trying to justify why their experiments are unbiased. Maybe the only way to do unbiased research is on accident.

Learning from one another and early human groups.

By: Brittany

Preface: The first part of this post I am going to discuss is based on an objective viewpoint.

I read an article today in the New York Times that discussed a new anthropological opinion on how humans split from chimpanzees about 5 million years ago. The new discovery is based on a group of hunter-gatherers that would have been more willing to learn from one another through cooperation and social learning. The new discovery, being that most hunter-gatherer peoples are not “highly-related,” implies that cooperative behavior “was the turning point that shaped human evolution.” The article goes on to discuss other reasons that men and women living in hunter-gatherer societies have followed a similar pattern as their chimp counterparts, such as females leaving tribes once they hit puberty to avoid incest. But what interests me are the social patterns that anthropologists have recently discovered and how they apply to us today, to us who are not living in traditional hunter-gatherer societies.

Those who lived within small networks of hunter-gatherer societies and neglected to contribute to the greater social network stinted their knowledge of new information and skills. So how important then is it today that we surround ourselves with a broad social network of people? I would argue that it is very important. And if our network of people is so small that it actually prevents us from gaining knowledge and information, it would be wise to open up through social venues. (Although today we have the Internet, the media, and a plethora of other modes to gain information.) It is assumed, in all of this, that we would like to expand our minds with differing, contrasting perspectives on issues and ideas.

I recently stumbled upon (literally) a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt that said, “Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.” If we are taking full advantage of education, technology and daily close proximity to other thinkers, it is assumed we will want to discuss, argue and listen. It’s part of our humanity.

And one more while we're at it: Mark Twain points out in The Innocents Abroad or, The New Pilgrims' Progress, "Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

Source: New York Times

Extrinsic Rewards in the Classroom

By: Sara

I am currently placed in a 5th grade classroom which has been lamented by teachers as the worst in terms of behavior. Over the course of the school year, the three 5th grade teachers at the school have implemented a number of management strategies. As a student teacher, I was immediately struck by the fact that there are six management systems in place which are regularly enforced. Four use forms of positive reinforcement, one uses negative reinforcement, while the other is a form of punishment. In this brief post, I will describe the management strategies which use reinforcements and their effects in the classroom.

These reinforcement systems are as follows: Party points, Pioneer points, Caught in the Act, and 5-minute recess tickets. Party points are basically for all classes, homeroom, reading, and math. Students are awarded points (around 4) for good behavior and once they reach 50 points, they can have a party which is an hour of using personal electronics (iPods, game consoles, movies from home) and eating. Pioneer points and Caught in the Act are essentially the same idea as party points with students placing tickets that are given for good behavior in a jar to be randomly drawn at the end of the week with rewards ranging from a homework pass to ten minutes of free time. The problem with these intrinsic rewards is that students can easily choose not to perform the wanted behavior without any repercussions on their part. However, perhaps I have put this issue of extrinsic reward into the narrow context of my placement.

Research conflicts on whether or not extrinsic motivators are detrimental to a student's overall performance. One thing slightly more certain than this is that the extrinsic does not mean a transition into the intrinsic. The students in my class have had these rewards in place since the beginning of the school year and today, if praise is given for their good behavior, the question "Do we get party points?" soon follows. Teachers can create these elaborate systems, but they should do so with the end in mind: What happens when the system is gone? What happens when these students are placed under another teacher? Do we want these children to leave our classroom begging for rewards by enacting behaviors which are expected of them or do we want them to take up this responsibility as their own regardless of the outcome?