Slashdot Mirror
Teaching Fahrenheit 451 and Censorship w/ a Tech Twist?
scrimmer asks: "
I'm a second year high school English teacher--heaven forbid I misspell something in this post! I'll be teaching Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 for the first time this semester, and I was hoping Slashdotters could help me out a bit. I want to make the novel as relevant as possible to my students, but I would also like to work DMCA-related stuff, free speech-on-the-Internet stuff, and other issues--as seen on Slashdot--into the unit to give it a fresh spin, in addition to the traditional censorship issues normally taught alongside this novel. I've been chasing web links for weeks, but I'm afraid I might miss some salient issues. If you were a student in my class for a few weeks, what kind of angle would you most like to investigate while studying this novel?"
~~~
in the spanish version of the book there is a short story name "And the stone shout", about a cuople of americans in mexico, after a atomic war. the people of the mexican town kill the couple, with anger. T think Its a interesting history in this war times.
I'm from Argentina: Tango, Asado, Mate, Gaucho, Maradona, YPF
Good luck
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
... if Michael hadn't killed censorware.org - as it stands censorware.net is a good resource for the info you want to teach.
And yes, I'm talking about the Slashdot editor ("User" if you will) who's username is michael.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Also point out the television content! Game shows and game shows and game shows...
P.S.: don't forget to completely ignore the hideous movie Truffaut made! It ignores several key points and simplifies the plot to a disgusting level.
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
Make your students do a project tying the novel into something happening now. They'll likely come up with something you haven't though of, and it would be more instructive than just shoving a message down their throats.
Try the Socratic method -- lead them to the ideas you want them to discover by asking questions, not by preaching at them.
Just a thought...
Hmmmm, I would love to see a unit on 1984 and how digital media/archives make rewritting history easier then ever.
As for 451? I guess my take on it was more of a "if the Nazi's had won book" (I mean that was why everyone drove Volkswagon Beetles right, you know the "peoples car"), So explaining how propoganda, media bias and such play roles in society today. Maybe compare the US media's depiction of events to say the BBC or some other countries media (heck doing that on my own is fun, just watch IGN or the BBC and see what they say, it is almost always slightly differnt).
One story springs to mind, but I can't remember if it was on Slashdot or not. If you type a document using MS Office 97 containing words such as cretin (S.P.) or buffoon then spell check it the words exist. If you carry out the same exercise using MS Office 2000 they are now missing. All the words that could be used for personal insult are now gone from the on-line dictionary.
Given that the folks at Redmond are now controlling the English language I'd say that that's censorship.
PMG
In view of the number of people I hear advocating the sacrifice of civil liberties in the name of "homeland security" I think this is one of the most relevant issues raised by the book.
There once was a time when Americans were a courageous people who resisted any attempt to force-fit them into a mold. Now, I fear the bulk of "We, the people" have become sheep ready to be led to slaughter by the first figurative goat to come along. I don't know how to reverse the trend, but America must return to the way of thinking that lead the founders to believe that:
if this noble experiement in participatory government is to survive.
Best of luck with your class. Although some of the images the book raises are somewhat dated, I personally believe Fahrenheit 451 is one of the most important books in American political literature.
utter rubbish
I'm a second year high school English teacher--heaven forbid I misspell something in this post!
Compound adjectives should be hyphenated. That should read "second-year".
bp
Ok, regarding your question, may I suggest that you have the students do a little leg-work themselves? I don't know what country you're in, but here in the USA, dissident thought (something other than, "My country right or wrong"), doesn't really start until late high school, and develops into full blossom in college. So this is the right time, because your students are probably starting to question The System, if they haven't already. So have them research censorship in these modern times. Heck, if you're in the US of A, there's plenty within the last six months. Have them research charges of censorship, then make a case: was it censorship? Was it right? (This is an excellent time to introduce the limits of free speech, ie, "Don't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater.")
Bradbury has an appendix in some later versions of the book, where he details how F451 has itself been censored. (Mostly for language, although there have been some cases where it was to "condense" the story.) Get the students thinking about what it means to "edit" a story. How does this effect the author's intent? What about just replacing swear words with milder equivalents?
High school students are at that very precarious stage where they are beginning to form their own ideas about politics and the nature of government. Use it! I'm one of those who believes that a little distrust of the government at all times is a healthy thing. Teach the book in such a way to create thoughtful, questioning citizens who aren't going to take what they hear from the talking heads on TV as gospel truth. Instill in them a desire to learn more about what's going on beneath the surface.
I know you will mention the relevance of the title (451 degrees F) but you could note that Data (tapes, floppies, HDs, optical) fails and therefore can be destroyed at a much lower temperature; digital makes obliteration easier.
A second though is the role of firemen pre/post 11SE. The depiction and public perception of the job has changed. They have moved from "save a child/keep my insurance cheap/friendly alternative to scary policeman/drain on my taxes" to what amounts to trench soldiers in the battle against "evildoers".
You could ask if they think the events depicted in the book would be easier, about the same, or harder to implement with this new public perception of the fireman, the now-widespread belief that there are enemies amongst us, etc.
Firemen themselves have always been dedicated, hard-working, and commit to a very dangerous job for the public good. But has our perception of them changed, and if so, how?
This story shows the reaction of our government to limit information potentially damaging to the United States. In this case, librarians are being asked to become "Firemen" and destroy information in their care. Many people who are tasked to protect their data (backups, archives, etc.) , would be outraged if they were then asked to destroy it before scheduled, that is, unless they work for Enron. How would your students react to being asked to destroy books from their library, or music CDs?
One quote from the LA Times article sums up the motivation behind these acts that your students will be forced to challenge on their own when they graduate:
I'm not sure if sheep can recognize their own sheepness, but have your students try to identify such traits in the characters of the book as well as the main character's transition. It is safe to think freely, but eventually you are forced to act on those beliefs. Have your students discuss amongst themselves what concrete beliefs they are willing to stand up for.
Why does the govenment feel the need, or even the Right to get involved in such things?
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
You'll find that few of your students will identify with the particular viewpoints expressed by the "Slashdot community"
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Indymedia is independent, but they certainly have a liberal slant. The elite already have their own news media; it's natural that a populist media source with wide access would attract liberals, as they make up a) most of the population and b) the least enfranchised by the current media. You can submit your conservative articles, and they'll appear on the website. Don't expect an editor to put it on the front page, though.
Ceci n'est pas un post
give them a copy of j.s. mills' on liberty and have them read that as well and draw parallels to mills' concepts of liberty and how free thinking individuals are prone to the liberty of thought and the way the society in Fahrenheit 451 eschew those values.
Look, if you or your school have issues with using SF or other lowbrow genres in class, that's fine. But you can't have it both ways. Nobody over the age of 12 considers Bradbury "real" SF. Pretending otherwise is a threat to your credibility.
If you want to teach a novel about censorship, you really need to use something besides SF. (No titles come to mind, but I don't have degree in English.) There's damn little real SF on the subject, because SF is mainly about technology, and the main role of technology in censorship is to make it more and more difficult. That's also the main relevence (and absurdity!) of the DMCA.
Now if you want to cover the social attitudes at the root of censorship, you're in luck -- provided you're willing to discard any prejudices as to what is "real" literature. The following titles come to mind: Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky; Asimov's Caves of Steel. I'm sure Slashdotters will jump in with additional titles.
If you're going to pick that kind of nit, I have to jump in with a Writing Clearly issue. "Second-year" is ambgious -- I went to a 3-year high school, but a lot of high schools are 4-year. "Tenth-grade" ("Eleventh-grade"?) is clearer. Not "sophomore" or "junior" -- pseudo-Latin and unnecessary jargon are also enemies of clarity.
What concerns me most is self censorship. There are a lot of stories that are n
ot reported in the main stream media because of fear of lawsuits, editorial pres
sure from owners or advertisers, or the government.
see project censored for recent examples.
~
I fell your pain (from the perspective of a high school senior.)
I do find this question interesting (though I would like to know if you intended on asking the adults who frequent or the l33t kids who do) because it raises the issue of the master-disciple relationship and the Socratic method (which has been mentioned.)
As Xunzi said, "Though the blue dye comes from the indigo plant, it is bluer than indigo." (referring to the dye as the student and the plant as the teacher with the student being bluer because of ages of re-dying from the plant -- hence being taught) Just as was the case with Plato and Socrates (and Aristotle and Plato, and Xunzi and Confucius) the master did (if they were good masters) hope for the student to be able to bring some wisdom back to the teacher after they have presented what they are capable of presenting.
So, as the Socratic method states, come in with some (well thought out) ideas (I liked the one about giving up civil liberties and such) and then play the role of Socrates (who, at least in the Republic, would insist that he was wrong and ask to be "corrected") and watch them ponder examples that one who isn't a high school student (any longer) couldn't fathom.
I started a Philosopher's Club here (at my high school) based entirely on the apparent willingness of all great (teachers and) philosopher's to facilitate discussion and then to sit back and ask (instead of preach) about their ideas.
I can (warning: slightly off topic) sympathize with the difficulty in what I have proposed. It isn't so easy to get people interested in the depth of meaning in a book (or any other work.) I see it everyday. We live (at least at my high school) a life where the trouble associated with (with respect to the ease of switching on digital cable and choosing from our 700 channels) thinking makes it unpopular. This can also be a theme in your unit, however, since the parallel with the people in the book just watching their movie-walls and "taking life as it is handed to them" is easily drawn (though not easily accepted by people who it applies to.)
So I wish you the best of luck and I beg you allow me to give you this honor: teaching is the most important occupation (second only to parenting -- which, by my observation, is failing and depending on teaching more and more) and I would say you are of a beautifully courageous type to pursue such a respectable profession.
Much luck, and thank you for listening to my humble opinion.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
I just thought...
:))
have something for them to read to further their ideas (if they become interested in the book.)
some good ol' Locke (Essay on Human Understanding) or More's Utopia, or even go back to (a favorite) Plato and do the Republic. Maybe there are better examples (hey! I'm a high school student who spends 25 hours a week doing extra curricular activities.. i can only have so much time to read philosophy.. and these books aren't thin) but I just think it would be smart to be prepared for "that kid" who really gets into this and asks you for something else to consume... And maybe if you get this one kid to care about the love of wisdom/knowledge (the definition of philosophy) we will have the next Sartre, Camus, Descartes, or Paine. (at least that is my hope
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
"We have to get away from the ethos that knowledge is good, knowledge should be publicly available, that information will liberate us," said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan. "Information will kill us in the techno-terrorist age, and I think it's nuts to put that stuff on Web sites." (emphasis added)
I am appalled, troubled and deeply dismayed that a person who would utter such a remark would be referred to as a "bioethicist". Simply put, these are the words of a Luddite spreading anti-scientific FUD.
One does not control the effects of scientific progress by hiding them from public view, but rather by examining them, discussing them and understanding them in the full light of day.
utter rubbish
That is, ask the students: What would it be like to be Montag? How's it feel to have The Hound (take it as a symbol for the legal system) nipping at your heels, or seeing it devour others? To have your employer give you an "out" for your activities, and would you take it? What if someone could advance their career by doing ill to fellow booklovers?
Now, honestly, Jon Johansen and DeCSS is actually a better individual example. It's not inconceivable that one of the students could find themselves in a similar situation (below is one of my favorate quotes, where Jon is responding to reporter Declan McCullagh, given Declan was arrogantly giving Jon a hard time for not immediate returning Declan's request for comment):
That is, Fahrenheit 451 takes place in metaphor. But there's real battles going on right now, right this minute, and there's real-life opportunities to be Montag. But beware The Hound.
All these reminds me of a comment made by a well known Ballet creator that said that culture is not something to put in an untouchable degree. But the envision (sorry for my english) that the whole comunity elaborates of their every day living.
I think that it would be helpful to appreciate the perspective that one could have of a problem when one is a constant reader compared with people that are used to get diggested information of things.
Rwe obliged 2 save our future by choosing:O3 hole-greenhouse effect instead of accepting everydays gossip-nonsense chat?
Oh, and before you call someone a Luddite, you might want to take 10 seconds and check the quote out for yourself. It always amazes me how often freedom of information advocates fail to use the information that they've fought so hard for.
Be cruel. Tell them to select a passage - any passage - that they will protect from the firemen. It just has to be at least 2000 words, and they have to memorize it and recite it during class.
(Obviously there would be some restrictions on content - nothing indecent, and possibly no scripture.)
There's actually a connection to your question here. Technology has allowed us to avoid developing our own memories, yet the same technology is now making it easy to rewrite history in a way that's nearly indetectable. Changing microfilm copies of a newspaper in a dozen libraries is hard, changing a database entry feeding a newspaper web site is trivial.
We need to develop our memory, and a 2000 word passage is long enough to be a real challenge to your students. Yet it's nothing compared to a novel, and maybe a third to half of a 30-minute sitcom.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
okay, it doesnt look like anybody has discussed what i have been thinking recently, so i will say it:
censorship has changed drastically in the last twenty years. sure, the government still trys to keep some things secret, and fundamentalists still try and keep people from "dangerous" material, but overall, this kind of information control just isnt possible anymore. if the us government tries to stop NBC and ABC and CBS from reporting a story, then some cable news network will pick it up. and if the cable networks are censored, then a foreign station will cover it, and americans will get it through the magic of cable. and nowdays, some semi-respectable internet news sites, like drudge report or something, will cover it too. or in the fundamentalist case - if you want to look at pornography, or worship the devil, you can do so, or find people and places with which to do so, very easily on the internet. the bottom line is that there is just no longer any way for top down control of information.
however, does this mean that there is no censorship? personally, i think no. people are censored everyday. bill mahr says something that may upset people, and so he is taken off the air for a while. and honestly, how can you blame ABC for doing that? their whole existance is tied to making money by having viewers watch their station. if bill mahr is alleinating viewers, it is ABC's economic interests to censor him. what is the effect of this though? dissenting opinions get squashed. what can be done? i am not really sure. you can argue that the diversication of information solves this problem too, since bill mahr will get picked up by a different station if he gets fired from his first, and there will always be internet sites which arent profit driven. overall though, the mass media is driven by profits, and therefore will tend to provide a "non-offensive" middle of the road point of view.
overall, i think that the real problem is that in america (i apologize if you are writing from somewhere else, but i tend to think in american terms), economic success is the ultimate good. i will spare you the rant, but i personally think it is the root of alot of problems. it essentially causes economic censorship.
to provide one more example, where i live, a rich man wants to build a 250ft cross on his private property near a highway. it will probably be rejected because it is ugly, but what if it was rejected because it was a religious symbol? is this censoring his religious views? does he have the right to "impose" his religious views on everyone who drives on the freeway? do rich people have more right to express their religious views then poor people?
anyways, the point is that while fareingheit 451 is a wonderful book, the way it presents censorship is very cut and dry. and nowdays, we have essentially moved past that simple issue to a much more complex and nuanced one. so by all means, cover the basics, but try and cover some of the "iffy" areas too, since these are the most interesting ones.
In the two weeks I was waiting for this question to be accepted, I put together for my students a small, research-oriented group project. I've asked them to scour the library and web in search of, among other issues, real-life incidents of "book burning" and censorship (in books, film, and music). I've pointed a few students to Neil Postman's work as well.
Unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure of reading this book until recently. It has fast become one of my favorites, and I really hope I can share my enthusiasm for reading this novel with my students.
Oh, and I put a li'l bit of Socrates in all of my lessons, not just this one.
Thanks again for the ideas
Out of curiosity, how would you describe the Slashdot demographic?
... What every you do, do NOT show the movie they made out of the book. I had to sit through that in grade 11. It is one of the worst book movies I've ever seen.
Also see you can get a later addition of the book where Ray Bradbury writes on the censorship of his book. This is a great addition to the read.
--
Then Indymedia is not independent, and they are just as bad the the "mainstream media" they claim to be an alternative too.
If the liberals and radicals held themselves to the same standards they hold the rest of society, there would be a quota of non-leftwing articles appearing on the front page.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Please do read some Plato in detail before you post about the Socratic method again! Try Plato's Gorgias and Apology of Sokrates (Apologia means "defense" in Greek), as well as Xenophon's version of the same Apology of Sokrates (neither Plato's nor Xenophon's version is strictly an accurate representation of Sokrates' defense speech (in his trial for "corrupting the youth of Athens" and "denying the existence of the gods"), but both, along with Gorgias, the best of Plato's shorter works, give a good flavor of the Socratic method.
Am I the only one who don't think the theme of F451 was about censorship? I've read it several times and I think it is more a work on sociological decay than censorship. The concept of censorship manifested through the burning of books is not really a central theme. It is merely a derivitive of the enforcement of the society's weird form of socialism. The secondary and tertiary events in the book have more to do with the central theme rather than the primary actions of the primary characters. Clarisse being killed by a wreckless driver and Millie not concerning herself enough to tell Montag for over a week conveys an idea of humanism being supplanted in their society by secular socialistic consumerism. The little things like the lack of porches on houses, 200' billboards because cars go over a hundred miles an hour, televisions that take up four walls of your house, ect.. Those are the thematic elements of the book in my opinion. F451's society is a not so far out extension of American society in the 1950's. The act of censorship was just another tool used to pacify the human spirit in their society. If you wanted to use a real censorship piece 1984 would be a much better candidate. Censorship in that society was an end rather than just a means to an end.
I think if you want to add a tech twist to studying F451 have students examine things from the novel (like houses built without porches) and have them find them in real life. When I first read it forever ago I'd never seen a house with a porch except on TV when they showed some old house in some old part of the country. Then my friend rented a house with a porch on the front in a pretty old part of town. We spent a lot of time out there and met several of her naighbors just by being outside. Every time I went to her house I was reminded of the book. It isn't every day a book makes such a big impression on me that I think about it for years after reading it. Activities like that might make for a pretty cool way to study the book. Consorship issues in the tech sector might apply if you were reading The Wealth of Nations but I don't think intellectual property fits in well with F451. I'm envious of your position right now, I'd love to be able to teach that book to kids.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Proof positive that libs are as much hypocrites as they claim conservatives are (if not more so.)
At the time I read the book, I thought Bradbury was alluding to soap operas with the Family room of wall-sized interactive televisions. Now I think that active webcams, chat rooms, Instant Messaging, and e-mail are more like what he had in mind. They all involve a bunch of unrelated, unacquainted people talking, chatting, and interacting. They form artificial bonds to these people, because when away from the PC, they're out of mind.
There is also an addiction factor to these casual acquaintances that mimics Mrs. Montag's addiction. Real people have broken up over Internet acquaintances, similar to the way Montag goes for an affair.
Another parallel that may work is with online games like Everquest. The addicted have a more fulfilling fantasy life than a real one--all achieved through sight, sound, and communications.
...Network Associates' attempt to use their EULA fine print to pre-censor independent reviews of their products.
...Microsoft's similar action with the FrontPage 2K license.
...China's "national proxy server," and private web use / e-mail monitoring.
...AOL's mega-anal chat room monitors.
...The ongoing efforts to force libraries to use site blockers on their net PCs.
..."Voluntary" ratings on movies/TV/games.
(Coming Soon: equally "voluntary" web page ratings!)
...Australia's increasingly Draconian net censorship laws.
...France's attempt to force a U.S. company (Yahoo) to deNazify its online content.
...Marketers' rights to advertise their products vs. consumers' rights not to pay to download two dozen "Make $5000/month while enlarging your penis!" ads every day.
(This isn't really a censorship issue, but that's the way the spam wraiths cast it.)
DDB (...{chime}...make that two dozen + three...)
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
Stir up a bit of unrest and tension *within* the class to give them a touch of reality.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I'm still not sure how this is hypocritical. If most people are liberals, they operate the site by a mix of consensus and majority opinion, then of course it will be dominated by liberal points of view. The classic rule of freedom of the press: he who has a press, has the freedom. They aren't demanding that regular media print things from their point of view, they're printing the point of view of the majority. In this case, the majority owns the press rather than vested interests. As those vested interests have their own press, they don't bother to submit articles to Indymedia.
They aren't claiming to be neutral! Maybe that's your issue. They claim to represent the interests of most people, which is quite different. We can't be neutral when it comes to matters of life and death. The hypocrisy comes when a news source like Fox News claims to be independent or neutral in reporting the news, when in fact they are choosing the side of moneyed interests.
PS: it's "to" not "too." Anti-intellectual right-wingers make me mad :)
Ceci n'est pas un post
It's been my experience, as a scientist at an unnamed institution, that "ethicists" are generally talentless hacks who couldn't be on the forfront of human progress if they tried, so they soothe their egos by finger-wagging at those of use who are.
Ah, but "Nth-grade" is also not universal, becuase some other English-speaking countries number their grade levels in a different fashion, e.g. Canada. ("Must wait two minutes between replies." Jesus, do the slashdot coders think we all read at 30wpm?)
No, "hacker conventions" apply only to technical discussions (where the punctuation-inside-quotes rule could have unfortunate consequences if taken literally), a set of topics that does not include the applied pedagogy of English instruction. RTFEssay!
"Linux," however, is not. Hmmm...
Are you trying to be ironic by listing restrictions? If the student decides that preseving scripture or something indecent is important to them then why shouldn't they preserve it. At the end of the book, what is the work that was memorized?
Lasers Controlled Games!
From what I know of other English-speaking countries, they don't even use the terms "high school" or "grades", so an assumption of American (and maybe Canadian, a country whose existence may be a myth) conventions makes sense.
Depends. Are you a carbon-based life form, or a bot?In my experience, people who make a living doing security are at the moment having a field-day. This was true before 911, too.
The reason is the profound ignorance about what crackers can do, the many scary stories, the small-minded mentality of Americans in general. Did you know that America has more people in prisons and jails than China, which has maybe 4 times the population? Americans are hyper-paranoid about crime. Crimes of almost all types have been decreasing in the past ten years, but many cities have doubled their police forces recently.
In California, many public libraries now have private security guards roaming about. It's simply not necessary. But it's trendy to be paranoid.
How does this tie in with F-451? I think perhaps the novel and movie didn't cover the behind the scenes reality of the security aparatus enough. But the movie at least did depict the mindless fears of the public.
Anyway, the book is more appropriate now than ever.
If a person told me I had to fear the unknown, then told me I had to hire him to protect myself, I would call him a crook: I'd say he's with the mafia.
Today, we call these people "security".
Obviously the whole dumbing down of the society angle. Compare the family the people watch on the "wall" versus what is called "reality TV shows" in todays world (in America). How did Ray Brabury know? Just a massive flood of this image that people need to be a certain way or that most people are a certain way and give a false sense of inferiority to any not conforming to these ideals.
Those reality TV shows are basically nothing like anyones reality that I know. As a comedian has said, "Reality TV would be acurate if all they showed were fat, lazy, americans sitting on their asses watching TV." So if we can get a lot of Americans to watch these fake shows, we can show them all these rugged SUV commercials and make them think they need a tough $30,000 vehicle and that they need this and that and have to keep up with the Jones'. Beer, Abercrombie & Fitch, Ford, Pepsi, Britney Spears, etc etc. In Fahrenheit 451 they convince you books are bad for society and thus you should fear them. If you do not, you are basically a felon and shunned by the entire society, only a few secret admirers exist.
Brainwashed, dumbed down and no sense of individuality except in the form of status based on how much you own is what the society in F451 is with a rather tragic ending, losing most everthing tangible you ever knew. In real life, are we really much better? We have big bombs with half of our citizens not voting. Decisions made by less and less people, less diversity means less resistance to anything new.
I do not have a graceful ending to this comment/rant so it ends... now
ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
I'm not a right-winger nor anti-intellectual. I simply made a typo. Grammer fascists on sites like Slashdot make me mad. :D
The problem that I have with Indymedia is that while they present themselves as journalists, in reality the "coverage" it offers is Kuro5hin-style editorial content.
When I read the New York Times or Washington Post, the editorial opinion is generally found in the Op-ED section of the paper or can be derived by the selection of stories that go to print.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
No, "hacker conventions" apply only to technical discussions
This supports his point: slashdot is an acceptable forum for "hacker conventions". <-- note
Mod me as flamebait, but please do not preach to these kids. That's their parent's job, not yours. Yours is to provide them with the skills and tools necessary for them to learn and think on their own. They need to learn reading comrehension , not why the DMCA is the most evil thing on the planet.
I may agree with your values on the DMCA, but I don't agree that its your job to preach to the children. Kids get more screwed up ideals from their teachers these days than from anywhere else, even TV. We don't need yet another teacher doing that to our youth.
The irony is astonishing.
Walter M. Miller, Jr.: A Canticle for Leibowitz.
It has a lot of other issues involving religion, but much of the story is set in a post-apocalyptic world where knowledge and wisdom have been spurned, and man has engaged in a dark age of deliberate ignorance. In it, there are a few learned men, who like during the medieval Dark Age, escape persecution by becoming monks. These men hide and memorize the few remaining books, at great danger to their own lives, in the hopes that the descendants of the ignorant masses who loathe and fear knowledge may use that knowledge to make the world a better place. They bear a strong resemblance to Mr. Granger and the "hobos" at the end of Fahrenheit 451. Specifically Mr. Granger's quote: "There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man."
However, I'm not sure whether it will be truly appropriate for a high school class - besides the religious motifs, there is a lot of Latin and quite complex adult concepts, as well as the extremely pessimistic viewpoint it takes on mankind. The two books (Fahrenheit 451 and A Canticle for Leibowitz), by the end of each, both paint the same terribly sad and depressing view of mankind's nature, but there's a spark of hope - just a spark - left at the end. I heartily recommend it, and I hope your students get something out of both books.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
No, it doesn't. A technical discussion would be a discussion of technical matters, such as the latest linux kernel patch or handy vim tricks. As the person you replied to said, the discussion of teaching methods is not technical. Slashdot may be a _technical forum_ but not all topics discussed _are_ technical.
I only caught part of the episode myself. If you can, I suggest seeing it and possibly getting permission to show it to your students. The nature of the story makes it 451 in a nutshell, and might draw students into the actual book.
--The basis of all love is respect
But it doesn't change the fact that the original opinion expressed was that in this forum, hacker conventions should be expected.
Perhaps you think that hacker conventions should only be followed by hackers in technical discussions. You are entitled to that opinion.
Another story today already made me think of Fahrenheit 451. Once they know which books we are reading, they know where to start burning...
Although government intrusion into both our privacy has been kept at bay, corporations seem to have taken over as the Big Brother who is watching us. Also, the brainwashing and re-writing history that is done in the book is earily similar to how companies try to brainwash us and change our views of reality in their marketing.
-Jim
Farenheit 451 is a bit silly in some respects, although the world of 451 is quite different from 1984. Bradbury is railing against "brute strength and bloody ignorance", but Orwell goes after the purpose of governments in the first place. Anyway, they're different books, and both are required reading as far as I'm concerned.
I agree.
." looks lame. "sales.html " (no period) looks worse, especially when you have a second sentence after: "Please visit our page at sales.html We list our best stuff there."
It's like the @#($* periods at the end of URL's.
Quote sample:
Joe asked, "Why should we go to the store?" Jim replied, "To get some Jolt Cola, of course."
vs.
After you see the login prompt, type the username "joe" followed by the password "brown".
What I referred to as the url problem is this:
Please visit our sales page at http://www.ourdomain.com/sales.html.
If you put the period as above, then some times you'll accidentally grab it especially when you're right clicking on it in certain terminal programs which auto-scrape the url and stuff it into a web browser.
So what do you do? "sales.html
(Of course I've mis-spelled half of this post in the process... Where is the @#)$* spellcheck button?...)
Personally, I find it annoying to have the period semantically misplaced regardless of the discussion topic.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
In fairness, I used to hear this kind of thing
done on King's late night talk-radio show, i.e.
before he moved onto TV...
As a coincidence, Radio National's Media Watch
(or similar) program happened to mention that
Aussie talk-show hosts respond differently to
callers who -agree- with their point of view,
talking over, insulting &/or cutting-off those
who happen to -disagree-
sometimes at length
There oughta be a law...
Sorry to break it to you, kid, but these are issues too important to be neutral about. And if you think that the mainstream press only prints opinions on the opinion page, you are mistaken. Ever been in the news? I have, frequently, and it is disenchanting to see how blatant misrepresentation of your statements can be, when it fits the editor's direction for a story.
Finally, to say that only opinion pieces are posted on Indymedia is false. You must not read it frequently. There are some editorial type pieces that are clearly marked, and there are reports of events along with analysis. Instead of the usual corporate focus, they have a people focus. That's it. It's still the facts. Which facts you report is critical.
Ceci n'est pas un post
A long, incisive, and--in its own way--funny essay by sci-fi author Neal Stephenson. Nominally about the OS wars, it has an interesting analysis of the way our culture has traded in text (books) for media (videos, movies, TV, music, theme parks, etc). It is a different take on many of the issues raised by Fahrenheit 451.
You can get a taste of it from this cookie file.
+1 Funny.
I hate to think of the comments you'll get from some. Nice one tho'.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
But given a `literal' interpretation of the change you suggest (`That should be "second-year."' and not `That should be "second-year".') would leave our original sentence to be `I'm a second-year. high school teacher ...', which has an extraneous period!
:-)
K.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
In the bookless future made possible by the Electrics device we worship the prospect of limited accessibilities to ancient logged thought process would be a daunting conflict. Terrorism against mind and spirit always has at its heart Phobos and Deimos and the savage reptile mind of our primitive species. To control,restrict, subgigate and destroy. The Book ,the Idea, and the shared wisdom form and enable our future.
BlueHorror