Modern times?

“Modern times” by Charles Chaplin is one of my favourite films. It shows the biggest economical problem in the US, which, then, affected the whole world. However, you can still laugh of them and ourselves.

“Modern times” makes 1929’s “The great Depression” look amusing, although this period was not. This was also the time when people was really mistreated. Just like “industrial revolution”, the conditions in which the people lived where dreadful, so poor people had to struggle and work really hard day in and day out in order to “survive”.

In “Modern times”, Chaplin plays the role of an enterprise worker. Anyone who sees the film, will notice that he didn’t like his job. I can say, therefore, that this film is the representation of all the people who worked in factories. Also, before this film, I’ve never watched a “black and white” film. I thought that they were antiquated and I didn’t understand them. However, I looked up the word “modern” in the Cambridge dictionary and it is defined as: “designed and made using the most recent ideas and methods”. So, after reading this description, now I understand the reason why Chaplin made these kinds of films.

If we compare that context of Chaplin’s film and this actual context, I think that we are returning to the 1929’s reality. Nowadays banks have broken, prices have highly increased because of Inflation. As people don’t ask for loans in banks (because they are afraid of being unemployed), there’s no “money movement”. As there’s no “money movement”, there are no constructions of new buildings whatsoever, because the people is afraid of investing money in something that, later on, will be “valueless”. Therefore, as there are no constructions, there are more unemployed people.

If we read this, it sounds really sad and discouraging. Are we that bad? Were they, in 1929, that bad as well? There are some investigations that, throughout this era, people killed themselves, because they weren’t brave enough to make every effort to “stay alive”.

To me, the title of the film - “Modern Times”- recalls images of technological devices, which make people’s life and living conditions better. On the contrary, if we take a look at our past, people were underestimated in their jobs and their salary was a clear representation of it.
Although all the sorrow that this time might show, Charles Chaplin’s film gives a splendorous moral out of it: If they didn’t learn from the past, it’s time for us to do so.

To sum up, I will recommend this movie, because it’s a great opportunity to know more about this critical period of all times and also, to make a comparison between their “modern” reality and our “contemporaneous” reality , which is not that different.

Critical Thinking, British culture and EFL

Is it important to teach other cultures, like the British one, to Chilean students? How can we teach it, then? Will it be meaningful for them if they realize that there are other cultures besides theirs? Those are all the questions that come to my mind when thinking in these three issues.

Nowadays, in Chile, students don’t seem to give importance to other cultures. I have experienced that not even our culture is important and I think that this is the Chilean curriculum’s fault. I say this because the curriculum wants the students to learn how to say, for instance, “hello. Where is the bathroom?” and not thinking beyond those superficial topics. In other words, at school they are just worried about teaching grammatical structures. Still, it is not necessary if they are trying to improve Chilean education. The quality of Chilean education is getting worse everyday, because we don’t reflect on certain topics that should be discussed, like cultures. Moreover, children are not able to make their own decisions. Instead, teachers are making the decisions for them, so their metacognitive abilities[1] or strategies are not being worked out well.

Also, Chilean education is getting more and more individualistic, because now everything is focused on results, more than in the process itself, so in the end, the students are not worried whether they learn some subject or not. In its place, they are just focused on their final marks. Also, children are just working on their own result, and the rest is not worth it, unless they help in this final grade. That’s how teacher are creating individualistic students; they don't see what surrounds them. It is true that teachers are asked to grade students, but that should not be their main and only aim.

Would it be better is students were worried about other cultures in order to learn from them? Why don't teachers focus on the process? If so, then everyone will collaborate with their own knowledge.

Now, another question that comes to my mind: How to teach British Culture?It's a difficult task. Isn’t it?

Perhaps the best way to teach is by making all the knowledge meaningful. "Meaningful learning refers to the concept that the learned knowledge (let's say a fact) is fully understood by the individual and that the individual knows how that specific fact relates to other stored facts (stored in your brain that is)." ("Meaningul learning", par 1)

That is to say, we will have to look for strategies in order to make British culture meaningful. For example, we can start from "bottom-up" (there might be something that they do know! They are not a “tabula rasa”). In other words, in order to relate the new knowledge we can start from asking what they know about England whatsoever. Therefore we can relate their knowledge of Chilean culture with the new one. This is what the constructivist theory explains. Jean Piaget and Lev Vigotsky held that “human beings construct their own version of reality, and therefore multiple contrasting ways of knowing and describing are equally legitimate.” (Brown, 2000).

Nonetheless, we have to be aware that this will be taught in English, especially in a country when their mother tongue is not English.

How can we do it, then? I think that the best option is by working with “individual engaged in social practices ,...on a collaborative group or on a global community” (Spivey, 1997). In other words, if we imagine the setting of a Junior High –thinking that the Chilean curriculum states that “el estudiante participa en intercambios orales controlados o espontáneos en la lengua extranjera solicitando o dando información, ejemplificando, enumerando, expresando preferencias, emitiendo opiniones, solicitando ayuda o consejo, y/o interpelando a su interlocutor con propiedad.” (Curriculum para 3ro medio, Ministerio de Educación)-, we can make them work by themselves by being asked to reflect on their own culture, the characteristics they like and don’t like about it and share it, later on, with his/her group. That will be the introduction to the next topic, which will be the presentation part. Then it will be explained how the British culture is, the similarities and differences that both cultures may have, etc.

As a conclusion, we should be willing to reflect not only on cultures, but also in other important topics regarding our world, especially if it is about other and our own culture. In my opinion, my main goal in life is not that I want my students to be bilinguals, but I want them to be good citizens and people, because in a future, they will contribute to this country and this society.

· [1] Metacognitive: these term is used in information processing theory to indicate an “executive” function, strategies that involve planning for learning, thinking about the learning process as it is taking place, monitoring of one’s production or comprehension, and evaluating learning after an activity is completed. (Brown, 2000)

Bibliography

• Meaningful learning, Nov 14th, 2008
  http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~rallrich/learn/mean.html

• Brown, Douglas, Principles of Language learning and teaching. New York, Usa. Pearson Education Company. Fourth edition. 2000.

• Programa de Estudio, Tercer Año Medio, Ministerio de Educación, Chile, 2004. Nov, 15th, 2008 http://www.curriculum-mineduc.cl/docs/fichas/3m11_ingles.pdf

The Victorian age

What does it come immediately to our minds when we listen to the word “revolution”? Is it something good or bad?

“Revolución significa cambios rápidos y profundos. Antes de la Revolución Industrial, por ejemplo, la economía era de tipo familiar y la producción, artesanal; el prestigio social provenía del linaje, es decir, de haber nacido en cuna aristocrática; los artículos de uso diario como el calzado, el vestuario o los muebles los hacía un artesano en su taller”. (Ortega, par 1). In other words, before the revolution era, people didn’t have the opportunity to have more money, so either you were rich or aristocrat or you were poor and had to work harder than the rest in order to succeed. Therefore, the people who didn’t belong to the rich society had to create their own goods and, if they could, they sold them in order to get a bit of money.

The Victorian age, also known as The Industrial revolution was a period in which “fundamental changes occurred in agriculture, textile and metal manufacture, transportation, economic policies and the social structure” (Montagna, par 1)

If we compare a machine and a person, it is clear that a person does not get sick; therefore neither medical licences, remedies nor a nursery is required to get your workers in a good environment. Now, comparing a woman with a machine, a machine doesn’t have babies, so they won’t have any problems when going to work or while they are doing so.

On the other hand, in the fields, now there’s no need to have a person to plough with a wooden tool. Instead, they had machines that could plough and harvest at the same time!

In that moment, when people realized that they were no longer needed, they started to move to industrial towns, where cheap hand labour was needed. In these industries, they tried to hire women and children, because their wages were lower than men’s. They both had to work almost 15 hours a day. “If the conditions in which people lived in these factory towns were considered bad, then the conditions in which they worked can be appropriately characterized as being horrendous. Inside these factories one would find poorly ventilated, noisy, dirty, damp and poorly lighted working areas” (Montagna, par 46)

The consequence of this era was that another social class was being created by the "new citizens", which was called the "ploretarian class". As people wanted to work, they overpoblated big cities, but the only thing that occurred was that people lost their dignity only for a badly-paid job

Bibliography.

Ortega, Rene. "La revolución Industrial", Yahoo Geocites, 23th Sept. 2008. 10th Nov, 2008.

<http://www.geocities.com/profereneortega/REVOLINDUSTRIAL.htm>

Montagna, Joseph. "The Industrial Revolution", Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, 2008. 10th Nov, 2008.

<http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/2/81.02.06.x.html>