My toughts on "Ill health begins in the mind" and "Real learning does not happen in the classroom"

On this week's Debates class, we investigated the topic "Ill health begins in the mind" to discuss in class.

This statement has always seemed to me as a truth because I have read and heard many times that being in a certain mood (for instance, sadness or rage) can generate different changes in your body (such as an increase or decrease in your cardiac rhythm, a change in your body temperature, etc.). 

During this debate, my opinion regarding this affirmation has stayed the same, if not reinforced, due to the remarkable arguments my peers presented to defend the statement, which nurtured my knowledge about the topic.  

We also discussed the statement "real learning does not happen in the classroom", which, in my opinion, is complete nonsense. What does "real learning" mean?. In my view, this type of statements that somehow try to say that schools/teachers are useless seem utterly ridiculous to me because most of them do not take into account the willingness of the student to learn and that, in my opinion, is the main factor which determines how much a person can learn.

Debate class

Mainly, we dealt with two topics yesterday: “Ill health begins in the mind “and “Real language does not occur in a classroom”, with which I’m in agreement. Regarding the first statement, our mind and our body are interconnected, in fact the brain is part of our organism, and so, taking this into account, I dare say that our mental state has an impact on our body. In other words, our emotions affect us physically. For instance, when we feel worried, stressed, anxious, afraid or guilty, those emotions weaken our immune system, which can trigger a number of sicknesses, such as colds, digestive disturbances, chronic aches, high blood pressure or heart attacks. In regard to the second affirmation, from my point of view, it is not that we do not learn in a classroom, we do so, but we are taught about subjects we are uninterested in which if we do not want to devote ourselves to a job which it’s necessary to know about one of them, then it will be useless for us to study about the history of Egypt for example. Moreover, if those subjects are indifferent to us, we will study for an exam and probably we will forget about what it was about in one month.  Though, out of school we do learn, throughout the experience of life, how to live in society, the values or how to react to different situation because there does not exist a book about any of those topics that school will send us to read and beacuse is something that is not learnt by reading but through actions and mistakes. 

The last statement we talked about said that women should be treated in a certain way. I totally disagree with it because, as many of my peers said, we all must be treated equally. 

Wendesday 17 debate

Throughout the whole debate I agreed with both of the statements that were presented: "Homework should be banned" and "Poverty is a state of mind". I personally find the second statement to be more interesting and more wide to discuss. Even though we did not came up with a conclussion for the first statement I really enjoyed doing research for it and mentioning my reasons for why homework should be banned. I completely agree with one thing one of my classmates mentionated which was "Homework should be reduced but not banned", although it was not the statement provided in class I found it really interesting to discuss.

Dead Poet´s Society follow up

The Dead Poets Society, the Next Day...
Write what happens in the sequel to the movie. What does the
future hold for Mr. Keating and the boys?
Dead Poets Society - Supplement to Movie. Use your imagination, kids, make hypothesis as to the future of these people based on whatever you saw in the movie...

Dead Poets Society

Taking into account that Dead Poets Society was created on 1989 and set on 1959, we can interpret that the setting was chosen on purpose, it made it even more old-fashioned, highlighting the fact that boarding schools where common, and the fact that the academy was located at the countryside of the city gave the movie another great touch. All together made the landscapes look beautiful and well placed, and scenes much more real. If it would have taken place today, on a big urban city, it would be completely different, boarding schools are almost gone, at least in Argentina, there are not many schools located on the countryside. The movie would lose it’s sense without the  tidy uniforms,  and the structured and old ways of teaching. Besides that, I would love to share my opinion on a particular “theme”, I want to highlight that as Mr. Keating’s way of learning was the same as “now”. Once his students find his old yearbook, he claimed he was not proud of the student he was, he did all the conservatism values the institute had. To change that, he would teach literature differently, in his own fashion, without any school influence, he did what he wanted to.

About the characters, protagonists? The whole class where! (of course Mr Nolan was too). If I have to categorize them by relevance or participation, Neil, Mr Keating would be the so called main characters. Neil, Todd, Knox, Charlie, Meeks, Cameron, where the paramount group of the movie and the class itself. Mr Keating, the state-of-the-art teacher. I dare to say, if I had to realate grown-ups personal goals and teenagers or students goals, I would say that every adult in the story wants those goals reflected on their sons or students. For instance, Mr. Perry wanted his son to do whatever he wanted him to do, study this, do that, stick to the society customs, acting was insane, any disrespect or answering to him would take him to military school. Furthermore, the Academy and mostly the headmaster; Mr. Nolan, wanted everyone to be disciplined and follow the school rools.  As I mentioned before, Mr. KEating wanted his students to get out of their comfortable-zone, think out of the box, dare to do whatever they ever dreamt about, to question the  input of the society on their lives, to live their own life, seize the day! (Carpe Diem). About this “seize the day” “topic”, I came to the conclusion after watching the film, that Mr. Keating tryes to take the students out of the institute tradition, create their own lives and teach them in a way they feel different, they feel more freedom.  They are all forced to stand up when the teacher enters the classroom, talk super formally, get spanked if they made a “mistake” or “reveal”, all this non-sense kind of actions implied by the school teachers and the students’ predecessors. I think throughout the movie, the students increase their “willingness” to break free and they finally do it when all of them stand on their desk, showing rebellion against Mr Nolan and the school and showing support to Mr Keating. Students begin to behave differently once they see how things go with Mr Keating, he teaches in a new way, he makes them go out to scream and let everything out, rip the pages that he thought were useless, jump from their benches to see everything from a different perspective, and he introduced  the Dead Poets Society to them. About the influence of the families on their kids, I consider wrong the way Neil’s and Todd’s parents raise them, forcing them to study what they couldn’t in the past, trying to forge the kid they weren’t able to be. Todd specifically, was given a desk set as a present every single year, as his parents wanted him to be a lawyer, with the influence of Mr Keating and the help of Neil, he get rid of it, he throws it from the rooftop, showing and claiming he was not going to stand that any more. In the case of Neil, it was much harder than throwing something, his father was really strict and wouldn’t stand neil answering or claiming he thought otherwise. Neil was threatened when he told his father he wanted to start acting , his father almost immediately related this to Mr Keating way of teaching. The threat was to take Neil to a military school if he did not follow his father's commands. Other thought I had… What if Neil did not commit suicide, what if he killed his father instead, that would be awesome and so much different. He could have hidden the body and continued with his acting career and his awesome classes with Mr Keating. Other option would be if Neil instead of killing himself, he stole money from his parents, pay the school, or apply for a scholarship and maintain the DPS and deny its existence.  If Mr. Keating had never come to Neil’s life, he would have certainly not commited suicide, he wouldn’t have dared to answer his father that many times, and keep pushing him to let him become a proffessional actor.

I believe, as the word says, a snowy setting with “cold” snow and skyes, makes the scene or movie much more; sad or depressing, in the end for example it makes a great help to show the sadness Neil’s peers carry after his death. Personally I would not like  the movie as much if it have had taken place on sunny California, you would not be as immersed in the movie that way.

I could not upload this sooner because I wasnt able to finish until the weekend because every website said “server down please try again later” so the movie could not be displayed

Hello mates, and Dean, I want to share my opinion about the exercises done and the topics discussed with you. 
To begin with, I was pleased with the result of the last activitie we have been doing for the last weeks, in which we had to discuss personal topics with each other, each one of us had to give a rough and ready argument about certain topic. In the positive aspect, it helped us improve our "improvisation skills" (it helped us think faster). About the negative things, it's difficult to think about many "counter"-answers, in such short period of time.

About the topic discussed today; Everyody should be vegetarians, I was completely against this statement because, no matter what they said about proteins and vitamins being part of vegetables (and fruits) the iron you can find in lentil, IS in the same amount you can find in meat, BUT it is not the same kind. It was said by a nutricionist on the radio. Besides that, we are homosapiens, and this "type" of human being is omnivorous, we would we change that? Furthermore, vegetarians don't eat meat because they want to decrease the amount of animals killed and the pain they suffer, but they eat chicken eggs, cows milk and other stuff that still come from animals. How do you know cows or chicken don't suffer when farmers take their eggs from them or milk them everyday. That is kind of hypocrite.

"All people should become vegetarians"

According to today's class, I think it was an interesting topic, and what I found great about it was that I discovered that many classmates thought different than I do. It suprised me a lot and I learned many things from the information that some of them prepared for the class. Although I still think in the same way it was good to see what my friends thought about it.



All the people should become vegetarians.

In my most sincere opinion, other than a good ingest of nutrients, and the good care of the animals, two topics which already have solutions, people should see the big picture, and take into account the consequenses of both massive meat consumption and vegetables´s. The contamination the production of certain products used in the handling of both the meat and vegetables cause could and should be stopped. Other than thinking about a cow´s feelings (which I consider silly), the world should do its best to keep our beloved planet Earth in the best possible conditions. The reason why I disagreed with the statement, is because of the word "all" in it. Maybe some people should (or must) become vegetarians due to health (or other) issues, but certainly not all.
Tobías M.

all people shold be vegetarian

Today we discussed the statement “all people should be vegetarian” I strongly disagree with this since meat has a lot of nutrients that although they could be replaced with other vegetables it will never be the same. Eating meat and killing animals to survive is in the human nature and you can probe this by our teeth, they are sharp enough to cut meat and if we were not supposed to consume it we would have square and non-sharp teeth. Some people are concerned because of the suffering of animals before death, if that is the reason why they stopped eating meat they could consume kosher products that is a Jew method of killing the animal reducing its suffering

    All in all everyone is free to choose weather to eat meat or not although I thinks it is better to do so.

"All people should become vegetarians"

I was unfortunately absent to today´s class, however I have some oppinions I would like to share about this topic. Firstly, being vegearian isn´t just a simple decision about saving animals lives, it is a decision about your life and your health. By becoming a vegetarian, you are denying to your body vital nutrients that are essential for our physical development. Even though many vegetarian consume pills in order to replace this missing vitamins, it´s not the same taking pill than eating a piece of meet. On the other hand, the survival of our specie has always involved killing species that are less developed than us. If we think about it, this behavour is comppleteely unfair, but things have worked like this for the past million years and it is almost imposible to change a whole society´s mentality just beacuse a reduced group of people consider it ridiculous to kill an innocent animmal in order to survive.

My views on "all people should become vegetarians"- Santiago Ortega

Today, may 10, we discussed in class the statement “All people should become vegetarians”. During this debate, many interesting ideas were examined, such as the pain that the living beings we eat suffer or the reasons why do people become vegetarians, among others.

My view about this topic has slightly changed during this utterly fascinating argument, mainly because I would not hesitate to eat what I had in front of me when meat was served, even though I still strongly believe that vegetarianism is not the best diet for humans, it certainly has its benefits (for example, less fat consumption) and one can choose what they want to eat as long as it does not harm them, in other words, the same way some people become vegetarians because they disliked the taste of meat, people have the ability to eat animal-based products as much as they want to.

As a side note, we were asked to "draw a conclusion" and, for a comedic relief, I did this:

Given the condition that the video does not work, try this link

Debates class

In today's class, we discuss the statement "All people should become vegetarians". I found today's class quite interesting, since most of us could nurture from the research we had all made.Furthermore, I was able to be acquainted of my classmate's viewpoint. I also  realized that what for some may not be ethical for others may be accepted as correct or moral.

DEAD POETS SOCIETY

Hello everybody. Here we are with yet another chance to speak our minds through this wonderful blog that we are putting up together. On this ocassion, you will be searching your soul and picking your brains to come up with answers for the questionnaire I have placed on your platform. You need to cover as many of these questions as possible in the form of a paragraph, carefully crafted to meet my demands. Scrupulous attention to the last three and in particular to the bold part of the first in that lot. Enjoy the rest of the movie by yourselves at home before coming with your contributions. Regards.