Hello everybody in C.I. class!
Thanks a lot for a fun and interesting class last week; I enjoyed the topic of Art!
We started off by discussing art in "A/B"! pairs, discussing the following:
* Describe a form of art that you love.
* Describe your last trip to an art museum.
* Describe a piece of art that you love.
* Describe a piece of art that you hate or don't understand.
* What's your opinion of graffiti: is it art or is it vandalism?
(I had more questions for you, but it was time to move on to the presentations!)
Donald presented poetry, writing out a poem by Li Bai and reciting it to us in Taiwanese; Andrea introduced art therapy, and told us about the healing and life-enhancing benefits of art; May, in response to George's presentation last week, shared her feelings about Edvard Munch's painting "the Scream;" and Barrett addressed the deceptively simple question: "What is art?," ending up by advising us to "take it easy and love beautiful things." Thanks to Donald, Andrea, May, and Barrett for your interesting presentations!!
And thanks to everyone in class for your participation and insightful comments and questions!
The theme of our next class, on 6/21, is Ethics. Ethics is defined as "the process of determining right and wrong conduct."
(The above definition is from this page: http://ethicsalarms.com/rule-book/).
When faced with a difficult choice, how do you decide what is the right thing to do?
The site I quoted from above, "Ethics Alarms," has some interesting pages which list some famous peoples' codes of ethics (what they considered to be "right conduct"), including:
Edward Everett's Credo: http://ethicsalarms.com/rule-book/edward-everetts-credo/
Gene Autry's Cowboy Code of Ethics: http://ethicsalarms.com/rule-book/gene-autrys-cowboy-code/
Benjamin Franklin's 2 daily questions and 13 virtues: http://ethicsalarms.com/rule-book/ben-franklins-two-daily-questions-and-13-virtues/
For another definition of "Ethics," please see Dictionary.com at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ethics
In class, we'll introduce a few ethical dilemmas and discuss what we would do in some tricky situations.
For our discussions and debates, I'll choose four different situations for us to discuss both in pairs and small groups, and then as a class. Feel free to choose an article that interests you from the four sets below, in order to learn more about one of these four issues:
1 * An ethical dilemma for hikers: Would you share your water with a stranger?
"A Hiker's Plight: How to Help When Water Runs Low"
2 * The ethics of sports: Is the only ethical rule of sports "win at all costs"?
"Is it Okay to Cheat in Football?" (Here, the word "football" means "soccer!!")
3 * The ethics of journalism: Should journalists get involved?
"Helping One is Better than Helping None"
and below is a related story written by the actual journalist who is the subject of the above article:
"Afghan girl arrives in Canada to attend school"
4 * The ethics of charity: Should you give your money?
the cons: "Arguments against Charity" http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/against_1.shtml
the pros: "Peter Singer: It's our duty to give" http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/duty_1.shtml
We'll spend time in class discussing the above articles (tell us which one you read and whether or not you agreed with what you read!), and we'll also talk about what we would do in these situations; I hope our discussions will lead to some interesting debates.
Besides discussing and debating the above ethical dilemmas, we'll also listen to your presentations about ethics: how do you decide what is the right thing to do, and what do you think of other ethical issues?!
The field of ethics is wide and interesting, so I'm sure everyone who wants to can find something to talk about.
Here are some further ideas for topics for your presentations:
Personal ethics: Tell us a story from your life about a time when you had to make a difficult decision; what did you decide to do, and why did you decide to do it, and what were the consequences of your decision? How do you feel about the decision now: would you do the same thing again? Do you have any regrets?
Business ethics: topics include advertising and marketing, child labor, workers' rights, etc. See http://tutor2u.net/business/strategy/business-ethics-issues.html for more ideas related to the ethics of business.
Bioethics (and Medical ethics): this category includes abortion, animal rights, birth control, cloning, euthanasia, genetic engineering, etc. See http://bioethics.com/ for many links to current stories pertaining to bioethics.
Aesthetics: the ethics of beauty; topics include what is considered "art," and who should be allowed to define or regulate art.
Environmental ethics: examines how humans should behave in relationship to the nonhuman world; topics include clear cutting forests, extinction of species, human overpopulation, etc.
Government and Legal ethics: this category includes the death penalty, gay marriage, China's one child policy, protests and activism, etc.
Here's a blog written by a philosopher and dedicated to "everyday ethics!" http://everyday-ethics.org/ ;
if you scroll down the page and look on the right side, you can find the author's blog posts organized by category, and you can find blog posts related to many more categories of Ethics.
(On the above site, I found this post interesting: "My Cat is Smarter Than Your Baby," under the category "Applied Ethics."
And if you still haven't had your fill of ethics, check out this long list of common "unethical rationalizations and misconceptions,"
on the "Ethics Alarms" site at http://ethicsalarms.com/rule-book/unethical-rationalizations-and-misconceptions/ .
See you on 6/21! I look forward to an interesting discussion of Ethics!
Sincerely, Abbie
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