Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Media Is The Most Prevailing Tool Of Communication Media Essay
Media Is The Most Prevailing Tool Of Communication Media Essay What is media and how does it has turned out to be our biggest friend in the world to change our perception about the very world that we live in? There has been a dramatic change as far as media in concerned in Pakistan. It has evolved during a short span of time.  Media is the most prevailing tool of communication and it would be fair to say that it has influenced lives of millions of people in Pakistan. Media anywhere is considered to be a vital tool now and has been associated with people lives whether through radio, television, newspapers, books or magazines. Whatever medium you choose, one cant simply deny the fact that it has been all around us. It serves the purpose of providing the exposure and awareness to its audience in the right manner and on the right time. You dont need to spend a lot of time if you want to be updated about what is going all around us both nationally and internationally. All it takes now is to sit in your home in front of the television and switch through different channels to see all the updates. So it would be fair to say that we are so hooked on getting information through television that it has finally invaded out homes. Where is has given us an opportunity to be updated with awesome invention, it certainly has invaded our minds and changed the patterns of how we use to think. Media these days is used in shaping and molding public opinions in the way these huge multimillion corporations wants. There are times when our media has denied the very rules and regulations it needed to be governed with. On various occasions it has shown us bodies blown to pieces in suicide attacks, blood, honor killing cases, burned faces and God knows what. But the fact of the matter is who decides what to show? There is no doubt that public has every right to know about things happening all around us but sometimes it shows people a lot more than they needed to hear or listen and thus reflects their own opinion and agenda. Television is the most popular medium of communication in Pakistan today.  There was a time when newspapers were all over the place. They were considered to be the most vital and pro efficient tool of communication with the masses. But Over a short period of time it has left behind other modes of communication like newspaper and radio which once enjoyed the complete attention of its audiences. What turned out to be an experimental transmission, finally gained the attention of the whole country and started to gain attention and importance in spreading awareness among masses. The transmission initially started from Lahore but soon spread its infra-structure all across the country. It was the year 1964 when the era of TV transmission in Pakistan finally began. It was only because of people acceptance of the this new medium of spreading information and awareness, that what started with a black and white transmission ,turned into a full-grown  colored transmission in the year 1976. It was huge break down in the as far as the technology was concerned that took the shape of the media that we see now our television screens. Television is one medium that surely has matured over a large period of time. Back in the 70s there was only channel that the whole country could watch and learn from. It was only Pakistan Television (PTV), a single state owned channel which was most popular back in those day. The whole country use to look upon it for political, social and cultural news. However , it was the era of non-other  than our ex-President of Pakistan General (rtd)  Pervez Musharraf when privately owned channels came into being and completely changed the whole scenario of how television use to operate in our country. Now we have more than 70 privately owned channels, each with their own agenda and purpose. This revolution paved a new era for the technical enhancement in the television industry and gave freedom to press as well as to media which governs according to the rules of PEMRA. Globalization Although, everything that has a beginning has it end but with the increased awareness and demand of the public the revolution of television channels in Pakistan paved a path for globalization. People are exposed to a multi-dimensional medium where news isnt just coming from around them but from all across the globe now.  Masses have collaborated together when it comes to economies; cultures, social and living patterns and most importantly trade. The bond between different countries have resulted in a collaboration of news that flows from one part of the world and reaching at the other corner. Due to globalization now people all over the world are connected and interlinked with each other. For example there are various content and news agencies that provides news ranging from finance, fashion, culture and heritage and many more that binds countries together. Flow of information is quicker and easy to access. Goods being produced in other countries are now easily available in any place of the world. International news as it happens and deeply analyzed information is available 24/7 and there is hardly any chance that news is broke without proper research so nothing gets overlooked. Globalization has made international travelling much more quickly. All you need is a television and remote in your hand and you can virtually see anything that goes around the globe. Countries have collaborated together to bring news to all parts of the world and the best part is, its all just a button away. Therefore business doing internationally is no more a problem. You can trade with international companies and therefore bring in foreign exchange to your country that eventually helps third world countries such as Pakistan. Globalization has posh the scenario of Pakistans TV immensely. Now with the accessibility privately owned channels, people are not just attentive of whats going in there cities but can simply contact information regarding anything they want through different provincial channels as well. Whether it is southern or northern countries everything is just a click away. All the Information is available on our screens. There are a number of channels in different languages like English .Sindhi, Punjabi, Arabic, etc. They are provided by our local cables as more and more spectators are now living abroad and as a result their needs should be accommodated. Globalization has not just given us a tool to stay connected to the world but also to learn and make suitable changes in the thinking and living pattern of the world that we experience all around is. With globalization you can communicate with each other irrespective of the time, area and language. You dont need to wait for countless hours to get yourself updated on any issue or matter that might interest you or holds a great importance in your life. Desperate time demands desperate measures. So as a result everything has been made so much easier. Nothing is impossible now. Audiences can view whatever they want to and give out their opinions and ideas as well. Globalization is playing a great role in creating public opinion as well. The public can now go through all the information, facts and figures available and then reach up to their conclusions. Now their thinking is not just bound to one country. They have the entire world in their hands. The audiences have become wiser now. Thanks to globalization people now know what they want and what is right for them. They are much more aware of their rights now and how they deserve to be treated. Now the number of audiences has increased not just with in the country but all over the world as globalization has allowed our local channels to be run on international TVs.             By watching international media our local public has also learnt a lot from globalization. They are made aware regarding the life style of the people all over the world. To achieve such standards they have to have good education. Thus field of education has been affected in a positive way. More and more people are now made aware of the need of the education and knowledge. This is done by showing them that they can achieve a better life style by getting good education and then later better jobs. Technical changes in Television According to a research done by a master students last year and as a result of the research conducted between students of various universities and colleges , it can be concluded that in the last 5 years TV has gone through a number of changes. Not just technical but cultural as well. With the passage of time now and more developed technology has been introduced to enhance this mode of communication. For instance with the use of internet and satellites the flow of information has been increased and you can get to know what ever is happening around the world with just a click. Cable TV has been the greatest invention in the last past 5 years. Cable TV took over the concept of buying dish antennas and expensive decoders in order to watch international channels which also required huge amount of subscriptions. Due to this development in television every one of us can now watch international channels without paying for any subscriptions it has not just increased the viewership but also we could see a great boost in the accessibility of foreign channels. Now more than 100 channels are available to watch from all over the world. Most of the new private channels are using latest technology in order to stay ahead in the market. Now we are using modernized equipments and more enhanced software which give better presentation of the programs. The change is not only visible in the cameras and microphones and software but their handling as well. Now better way of shooting, capturing and editing have been introduced which make the programs and TV shows much more appealing to the audiences. Pakistans channels are now available in foreign countries as well. This is with the help of the satellite TV. This helps in making Pakistanis living abroad aware about whatever is happening in their country. This way they can also be in contact with their culture and religion of their roots. Another latest innovation is the running of the shows live on the TV. The coverage is done live with the help of the latest technology. For example a very famous morning show runs on ARY Digital and Hum TV every day. Not just that now more and more channels have emerged that started transmitting Chefs making various continental and intercontinental dishes and desserts on TV channels like Zaiqa TV. There the host receives live phone calls from the viewers as well. Live shows are not just run with in the boundary of the country but also from other foreign locations like GEOs morning show. In this show the host comes live from Dubai and deals with the callers from Pakistan. Many soaps and dramas are also shot at locations out of the country. This has been possible only with the help of latest technology. Its not just the locations which have been modernized but the sets, designs and the props of these shows have been transformed as well. Sets are made in such a way that they could be broken down and redesigned in just a few hours to make another set for another show. They are more flexible as well as enhanced. Due to this improved technology in the industry people have been provided with a vast variety of channels and even a larger variety of TV programs. Cable TV plays an immense role in this situation because of its accessibility and availability to the most of the population of the Pakistan as it is also cheaper and everyone can easily afford to get a connection. Cultural changes in Television Where everyone has accepted the new trends and technology in their favorite medium they have also criticized the changes being brought by it in our culture as well as society. Cable TV has faced a lot of criticism as it is considered the most important source of foreign content in TV. The critics say that due to this innovation western culture has taken over our norms and values. Unfortunately with this progress cultural invasion is taking place. Especially in our society, most of the population is uneducated and therefore can be easily influenced. What is shown on our television channels is quite appalling. Indian soaps which portray the Indian culture and customs are run on our TVs day and night. As a result people especially women are taking up their way of living as well as dressing up.             Due to such exposure a society faces setbacks which prove to be detrimental. Other cultures should be shown on the television and should be talked about but in a way that they do not take over our own societys culture. There has to be a line drawn because a society can only progress when its people are aware of their own system and traditions. There is no point in having more information about other cultures than your own culture; which gives you your separate identity in the world.             The western media has also done a similar job in controlling ones society. In fact in the case of Pakistan it has played a colossal role in destroying the countrys image. After the Iraq war their perspectives have changed. They believe that Muslims are terrorists and as Pakistan is a Muslim country, international media has to point its finger there. It has not let go any opportunity to declare Pakistan a terrorist country directly or indirectly. Showing images and running news which have adverse effects on the countrys name has been done millions of times. Due to such reasons Pakistanis not only in the country but all over the world have to face a number of difficulties, which is quite saddening because we are blamed for the wrongdoings of others.             The international media is no doubt quite influential and this is the reason that instead of being biased it should be more neutral and impartial in such situations where there is the name and image of a country is at stake.                         As the popularity of foreign shows is more than our local shows Pakistani producers have also started making shows which are more westernized and contain lesser reflection our culture and society. For instance, Pakistan Sangeet Icon a Pakistani show by Indus TV Network was a ditto copy of American Idol. People aspiring to be a singer were selected from all over the country just like the way its done in American Idol. It did receive a lot of praise but not as much as American or even Indian Idol. It is so because singing is still accepted as a part of our culture by the society as its forbidden in our religion.             Then there are local soaps and dramas which are also influenced by Indian culture. Women are more glamourized and made up and portrayed much more bold and outgoing. This is unacceptable again in our society because women are supposed to be modest and homely and a working woman is still considered inappropriate in our society. Its not just their characters but the way they are dressed up as well. They are wearing saris and jeans and heavy make-up and cosmetics.             Whether the society likes it or not, however, women have loved this new portrayal of women. The way they dress up has changed and so the way they think. They are now working in the same fields as men do. The time of modest and homely women has gone and now they are much more aware of their rights and liberties.             Another very valid point is the exposure given to homosexuality. If we look past the gone five years we can see that talking about such a topic openly on a national TV would have been impossible. But now its been discussed everywhere on every channel. They are not just discussing them but also they are being shown in TV soaps and dramas. Jhanjaal Pura was a drama serial which faced a lot of criticism 10 years back when it was run on PTV. But now thats not the case. A very famous late night show on Aaj TV Begum Nawazish Ali is a great example where the host is a homosexual and he invites celebrities for interviews. Topics like rapes, menstrual cycles, child birth, and infertility are openly discussed on our local channels. This is due to the awareness and exposure created by the international media. Theories: Media and Globalization Modernization theory Modernization theory sums up the transformation of social lives. It looks into the details of the countrys facts and figures and explains that a change can be brought about in a conventional country with the help of a modern country. Most of the emphasis is on the change and the way the change should be brought about. The response to change is also very important in modernization theory. This response could be by adapting new technologies, way of living, trade, etc.             If Pakistan tries to get help from developed countries it can surely prosper. Aid from the US, IMF and World Bank always proves to be helpful in order to develop and reach a level where each and every citizen of the country can live a good standard life. For instance Chinas offer to help in our energy crisis can surely help in the betterment of the country. Pakistan has been facing energy crisis since the past few years but still they did not take Chinas offer and tried to solve the issue themselves. New innovative technology is being introduced in the fields of information. Television for instance is now using satellites to communication with other countries. Internet, fiber optics are also now available which can help in keeping in touch with the developed world. However one should not get so much used to all the aid that they become dependent on the other country. It is important to work with in the country and try to figure out what can we do ourselves in order to achieve higher goals. Cultural Imperialism             Foreign satellite entertainment programs have drastically impacted our media cultural products including different categories of programs such as film, drama, music, fashion and film award shows. Cable TV network in our country is giving undue projection to foreign films based on taboo themes, obscene shorts, erotic and intrigued stories without any reciprocity at parallel level. Similarly Pakistani independent drama channels are presenting Indian drama productions which are undermining our drama industry. Our independent drama channels are not only confined to the display of Indian productions but also imitating and following Indians drama format which is not in harmony with our culture, norms and traditions. Fashion impulses originate from foreign channels and are followed blindly by our fashion industry as the fashion Pakistan fluctuates with Indian western fashions. In the field of music Pakistani channels are copying Indian music shows in which boys and girls sing and dance together. Pakistani media channels also arrange to show the frequently held Indian film festivals shows and present their actors and actresses as icons idols for our media industry. The co-productions have changed the face of today media industry. .Our independent media channels are not confined to the combine productions, they have taken the rights from (PEMRA) Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority to broadcast pure Indian productions from their own channels due to which the Pakistani viewers can hardly judge whether it is Pakistani channel or an Indian channel. Thus our media channels being influenced form foreign Indian channels serve as the trendsetter for our Pakistani viewers and society. When the viewers observe that our media is absorbing the change whether it is in the form of dresses, Jewelry, language or other cultural values such as male actors hugging and handshaking with female actresses then the viewers are easily persuaded to adopt these changes or at least they become mentally liberal which is an initial step towards change. Pakistani viewers whole life style is being eclipsed by foreign media. Cable TV channels have become the source from which the young viewers get the inspiration about new trends, fashion and dresses. In a way our language and literature are being adversely affected by the onslaught of foreign channels. So our youth is overawed with English language. People resort to ostentatious and lavish way of living. They love to dine out at expensive hotels and western food chains along with celebration of unnecessary events and festivals which in turn invokes the class consciousness in the society. Conclusion             There is absolutely no doubt that Pakistan is an underdeveloped country as has yet to see the modern era that the other countries of the world are experiencing. However, through media which is the most powerful weapon when it comes to opinion shaping, should be used for the betterment of the people of Pakistan. Although there has been a lot of money poured in to achieve that status but that is just to increase the quality of transmission. There is no harm to that but the fact of the matter is that we need to educate the viewers and shape their opinions not for the betterment of their own lives but for the betterment of Pakistan as well. We have to see what perception we are giving to the world about a country whose media got freedom few years back. We are still in the making of becoming a responsible media. And if we want to compete with the rest of the world we need to make few choices that might sound and feel a little odd for the cur rent viewers but in the long term, it will help them to be a better and responsible citizen of Pakistan. Pakistani media needs to set priorities and the media controlling authority needs to play and important part in performing the task to make sure that all the privately owned channels controlled by cable operators abide by PEMRA rules. We need to introduce more channels that reflects positive image of Pakistan in front of the world so that more economy and wealth can be obtained through tourism and other prospect fields present in Pakistan. We need to collaborate with other international channels to promote healthy education. Since, it is an era or modernization; we need more channels for education like Virtual University offering online educations. There should be more debate on the TV channels where instead of fashion and cooking, we find ways to minimize the potential risks posing our nation that will have far more devastative effects on our culture, society, religion and Pakistan as whole that includes
Monday, January 20, 2020
The Positive Impact of Legalizing Marijuana Essay -- Drugs Legalize Le
The Positive Impact of Legalizing Marijuana For many years, the United States government has prohibited drugs such as marijuana from sale in the marketplace. Yet, with prohibition, marijuana use has decreased only minimally. Because of prohibition, the media has publicized only the bad aspects of marijuana use. What many people do not realize are the many positive aspects of marijuana legalization, including new medical cures, cleaner and more efficient industry, and reduced marijuana usage. Marijuana, as most people commonly know it, is really a plant called hemp, or 'cannabis sativa'. There are other plants called hemp, but cannabis hemp is the most useful of these plants. 'Hemp' is any durable plant used since prehistory for many purposes. Cannabis is the most durable of the hemp plants, and it produces the toughest cloth, named 'canvass'. The cannabis plant also produces three other very important products that other plants do not (in usable form): seed, pulp, and medicine. To understand why hemp is illegal, it is necessar y that we take a look at the law prohibiting hemp today. The law that prohibits hemp is called the "Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act of 1970". The Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act of 1970 (Public Law 91-513) overhauled the nation's drug regulation apparatus. Title II of the law, known as the Controlled Substances Act, established criteria for determining which drugs should be controlled, mechanisms for reducing the availability of controlled drugs, and a structure of penalties for illegal distribution and possession of controlled drugs. Marijuana, hashish, and THC are listed in Schedule I, the most restrictive classification. We also have to understand the reasons why marijuana, the drug,... ...dystonia can also attest to benefits derived from smoking marijuana. In 1981, it was reported that patients with idiopathic dystonia improved when they smoked marijuana. This is a group of disorders characterized by abnormal movements and postures resulting from prolonged spasms or muscle contractions. Animal studies confirmed that cannabinoids might have antidysotonic properties, and scientists undertook another human experiment in 1986 that showed the same results. There are many uses for marijuana, and many are unexplored. Actually, some are explored in depth because of interest, and others are left behind. There are probably many other uses that have not been found because of the lack of experimentation on the drug as a whole. If the drug is legalized, there will be much more research done on the drug, and hopefully the drug will begin to be approved for use.
Sunday, January 12, 2020
Love in Time of Cholera Essay
Time of CholeraLove, as Mickey and Sylvia, in their 1956 hit single, remind us, love is strange. As we grow older it gets stranger, until at some point mortality has come well within the frame of our attention, and there we are, suddenly caught between terminal dates while still talking a game of eternity. It’s about then that we may begin to regard love songs, romance novels, soap operas and any live teen-age pronouncements at all on the subject of love with an increasingly impatient, not to mention intolerant, ear. At the same time, where would any of us be without all that romantic infrastructure, without, in fact, just that degree of adolescent, premortal hope? Pretty far out on life’s limb, at least. Suppose, then, it were possible, not only to swear love â€Å"forever,†but actually to follow through on it  to live a long, full and authentic life based on such a vow, to put one’s alloted stake of precious time where one’s heart is? This is the extraordinary premise of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s new novel Love in the Time of Cholera, one on which he delivers, and triumphantly. In the postromantic ebb of the 70’s and 80’s, with everybody now so wised up and even growing paranoid about love, once the magical buzzword of a generation, it is a daring step for any writer to decide to work in love’s vernacular, to take it, with all its folly, imprecision and lapses in taste, at all seriously  that is, as well worth those higher forms of play that we value in fiction. For Garcia Marquez the step may also be revolutionary. â€Å"I think that a novel about love is as valid as any other,†he once remarked in a conversation with his friend, the journalist Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza (published as â€Å"El Olor de la Guayaba,†1982). In reality the duty of a writer  the revolutionary duty, if you like  is that of writing well. †And  oh boy  does he write well. He writes with impassioned control, out of a maniacal serenity: the Garcimarquesian voice we have come to recognize from the other fic tion has matured, found and developed new resources, been brought to a level where it can at once be classical and familiar, opalescent and pure, able to praise and curse, laugh and cry, fabulate and ing and when called upon, take off and soar, as in this description of a turn-of-the-century balloon trip: â€Å"From the sky they could see, just as God saw them, the ruins of the very old and heroic city of Cartagena de Indias, the most beautiful in the world, abandoned by its inhabitants because of the sieges of the English and the atrocities of the buccaneers. They saw the walls, still intact, the brambles in the streets, the fortifications devoured by heartsease, the marble palaces and the golden altars and the viceroys rotting with plague inside their armor. They flew over the lake dwellings of the Trojas in Cataca, painted in lunatic colors, with pens holding iguanas raised for food and balsam apples and crepe myrtle hanging in the lacustrian gardens. Excited by everyone’s shouting, hundreds of naked children plunged into the water, jumping out of windows, jumping from the roofs of the houses and from the canoes that they handled with astonishing skill, and diving like shad to recover the bundles of clothing, the bottles of cough syrup, the beneficent food that the beautifu l lady with the feathered hat threw to them from the basket of the balloon. This novel is also revolutionary in daring to suggest that vows of love made under a presumption of immortality  youthful idiocy, to some  may yet be honored, much later in life when we ought to know better, in the face of the undeniable. This is, effectively, to assert the resurrection of the body, today as throughout history an unavoidably revolutionary idea. Through the ever-subversive medium of fiction, Garcia Marquez shows us how it could all plausibly come about, even  wild hope  for somebody out here, outside a book, even as inevitably beaten at, bought and resold as we all must have become if only through years of simple residence in the injuring and corruptive world. Here’s what happens. The story takes place between about 1880 and 1930, in a Caribbean seaport city, unnamed but said to be a composite of Cartagena and Barranquilla  as well, perhaps, as cities of the spirit less officially mapped. Three major characters form a triangle whose hypotenuse is Florentino Ariza, a poet dedicated to love both carnal and transcendent, though his secular fate is with the River Company of the Caribbean and its small fleet of paddle-wheel steamboats. As a young apprentice telegrapher he meets and falls forever in love with Fermina Daza, a â€Å"beautiful adolescent with . . . almondsshaped eyes,†who walks with a â€Å"natural haughtiness . . . her doe’s gait making her seem immune to gravity. Though they exchange hardly a hundred words face to face, they carry on a passionate and secret affair entirely by way of letters and telegrams, even after the girl’s father has sound out and taken her away on an extended â€Å"journey of forgetting. †But when she returns, Fermina rejects the lovesick young man after all, and eventually meets and marries instead Dr. Juvenal Urbino who, like the hero of a I9th-century novel, is well born, a sharp dresser, somewhat stuck on himself but a terrific catch nonetheless. For Florentino, love’s creature, this is an agonizing setback, though nothing fatal. Having sworn to love Fermina Daza forever, he settles in to wait for as long as he has to until she’s free again. This turns out to be 51 years, 9 months and 4 days later, when suddenly, absurdly, on a Pentecost Sunday around 1930, Dr. Juvenal Urbino dies, chasing a parrot upon mango tree. After the funeral, when everyone else has left, Florentino steps forward with his hat over his heart â€Å"Fermina,†he declares, â€Å"I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love. †Shocked and furious, Fermina orders him out of the house. And don’t show your face again for the years of life that are left to you . . . I hope there are very few of them. †The heart’s eternal vow has run up against the world’s finite terms. The confrontation occurs near the end of the first chapter, which recounts Dr. Urbino’s last day on earth and Fermina’s f irst night as a widow. We then flash back 50 years, into the time of cholera. The middle chapters follow the lives of the three characters through the years of the Urbinos’ marriage and Florentino Ariza’s rise at the River Company, as one century ticks over into the next. The last chapter takes up again where the first left off, with Florentine now, in the face of what many men would consider major rejection, resolutely setting about courting Fermina Daza all over again, doing what he must to win her love. In their city, throughout a turbulent half-century, death has proliferated everywhere, both as el colera, the fatal disease that sweeps through in terrible intermittent epidemics, and as la colera, defined as choler or anger, which taken to its extreme becomes warfare. Victims of one, in this book, are more than once mistaken for victims of the other. War, â€Å"always the same war,†is presented here not as the continuation by other means of any politics that can possibly matter, but as a negative force, a plague, whose only meaning is death on a massive scale. Against this dark ground, lives, so precarious, are often more and less conscious projects of resistance, even of sworn opposition, to death. Dr. Urbino, like his father before him, becomes a leader in the battle against the cholera, promoting public health measures obsessively, heroically. Fermina, more conventionally but with as much courage, soldiers on in her chosen role of wife, mother and household manager, maintaining a safe perimeter for her family. Florentino embraces Eros, death’s well-known long-time enemy, setting off on a career of seductions that eventually add up to 622 â€Å"long term liaisons, apart from . . . countless fleeting adventures,†while maintaining, impervious to time, his deeper fidelity, his unquenchable hope for a life with Fermina. At the end he can tell her truthfully  though she doesn’t believe it for a minute  that he has remained a virgin for her. So far as this is Florentino’s story, in a way his Bildungsroman, we find ourselves, as he earns the suspension of our disbelief, cheering him on, wishing for the success of this stubborn warrior against age and death, and in the name of love. But like the best fictional characters, he insists on his autonomy, refusing to be anything less ambiguous than human. We must take him as he is, pursuing his tomcat destiny out among the streets and lovers’ refuges of this city with which he lives on terms of such easy intimacy, carrying with him a potential for disasters from which he remains safe, immunized by a comical but dangerous indifference to consequences that often borders on criminal neglect. The widow Nazaret, one of many widows he is fated to make happy, seduces him during a nightlong bombardment from the cannons of an attacking army outside the city. Ausencia Santander’s exquisitely furnished home is burgled of every movable item while she and Florentino are frolicking in bed. A girl he picks up at Carnival time turns out to be a homicidal machete-wielding escapee from the local asylum. Olimpia Zuleta’s husband murders her when he sees a vulgar endearment Florentino has been thoughtless enough to write on her body in red paint. His lover’s amorality causes not only individual misfortune but ecological destruction as well: as he learns by the end of the book, his River Company’s insatiable appetite for firewood to fuel its steamers has wiped out the great forests that once bordered the Magdalena river system, leaving a wasteland where nothing can ive. â€Å"With his mind clouded by his passion for Fermina Daza he never took the trouble to think about it, and by the time he realized the truth, there was nothing anyone could do except bring in a new river. †In fact, dumb luck has as much to do with getting Florentino through as the intensity or purity of his dream. The author’s great affection for this character does not en tirely overcome a sly concurrent subversion of the ethic of machismo, of which Garcia Marquez is not especially fond, having described it elsewhere simply as usurpation of the rights of others. Indeed, as we’ve come to expect from his fiction, it’s the women in this story who are stronger, more attuned to reality. When Florentino goes crazy with live, developing symptoms like those of cholera, it is his mother Transito Ariza, who pulls him out of it. His innumerable lecheries are rewarded not so much for any traditional masculine selling points as for his obvious and aching need to be loved. Women go for it. â€Å"He is ugly and sad,†Fermina Daza’s cousin Hildebranda tells her, â€Å"but he is all love. †And Garcia Marquez, straight-faced teller of tall tales, is his biographer. At the age of 19, as he has reported, the young writer underwent a literary epiphany on reading the famous opening lines of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which a man wakes to find himself transformed into a giant insect. â€Å"Gosh,†exclaimed Garcia Marquez, using in Spanish a word in English we may not, â€Å"that’s just the way my grandmother used to talk! †And that, he adds is when novels began to interest him. Much of what come [sic] in his work to be called â€Å"magical realism†was, as he tells it, simply the presence of that grandmotherly voice. Nevertheless, in this novel we have come a meaningful distance from Macondo, the magical village in One Hundred Years of Solitude where folks routinely sail through the air and the dead remain in everyday conversation with the living: we have descended, perhaps in some way down the same river, all the way downstream, into war and pestilence and urban confusions to the edge of a Caribbean haunted less by individual dead than by a history which has brought so appallingly many down, without ever having sopoken, or having spoken gone unheard, or having been heard, left unrecorded. As revolutionary as writing well is the duty to redeem these silences, a duty Garcia Marquez has here fulfilled with honor and compassion. It would be presumptuous to speak of moving â€Å"beyond† One Hundred Years of Solitude but clearly Garcia Marquez has moved somewhere else, not least into deeper awareness of the ways in which, as Florentino comes to learn, â€Å"nobody teaches life anything. There are still delightful and stunning moments contrary to fact, still told with the same unblinking humor  presences at the foot of the bed, an anonymously delivered doll with a curse on it, the sinister parrot, almost a minor character, whose pursuit ends with the death of Dr. Juvenal Urbino. But the predominant claim on the author’s attention and energies comes from what is not so contrary to fact, a human consensus about â€Å"reality†in which love and the possibility of love’s extinction are the indispensable driving forces, and varieties of magic have become, if not quite peripheral, then at least more thoughtfully deployed in the service of an expanded vision, matured, darker than before but no less clement. It could be argued that this is the only honest way to write about love, that without the darkness and the finitude there might be romance, erotica, social comedy, soap opera  all genres, by the way, that are well represented in this novel  but not the Big L. What that seems to require, along with a certain vantage point, a certain level of understanding, is an author’s ability to control his own love for his characters, to withhold from the reader the full extent of his caring, in other words not to lapse into drivel. In translating Love in the Time of Cholera, Edith Grossman has been attentive to this element of discipline, among many nuances of the author’s voice to which she is sensitively, imaginatively attuned. My Spanish isn’t perfect, but I can tell that she catches admirably and without apparent labor the swing and translucency of his writing, its slang and its classicism, the lyrical stretches and those end-of-sentence zingers he likes to hit us with. It is a faithful and beautiful piece of work. There comes a moment, early in his career at the River Company of the Caribbean when Florentino Ariza, unable to write even a simple commercial letter without some kind of romantic poetry creeping in, is discussing the problem with his uncle Leo XII, who owns the company. It’s no use, the young man protests  â€Å"Love is the only thing that interests me. †â€Å"The trouble,†his uncle replies,†is that without river navigation, there is no love. For Florentino, this happens to be literally true: the shape of his life is defined by two momentous river voyages, half a century apart. On the first he made his decision to return and live forever in the city of Fermina Daza, to persevere in his love for as long as it might take. On the second, through a desolate landscape, he journeys into love and against time, with Fermina, at last by his side. There is nothing I have read quite like this astonishing final chapter, symphonic, sure in its dynamics and tempo, moving like a riverboat too, its author and pilot, with a lifetime’s experience steering us unerringly among hazards of skepticism and mercy, on this river we all know, without whose navigation there is no love and against whose flow the effort to return is never worth a less honorable name than remembrance  at the very best it results in works that can even return our worn souls to us, among which most certainly belongs Love in the Time of Cholera, this shining and heartbreaking novel.
Friday, January 3, 2020
A Teachers Basic Guide to Making a Referral
A referral is a process or steps a teacher takes to get extra assistance for a student with whom they work directly on a regular basis. In most schools, there are three distinct types of referrals: referrals for disciplinary issues, referrals for special education evaluations, and referrals to receive counseling services. A referral is completed when a teacher believes that a student needs some intervention to help them overcome obstacles that may be preventing them from being successful. All referral situations are dictated by the behavior and/or actions of the student. Teachers need professional development and training to recognize specific signs that would indicate when a student may have an issue that requires a referral. Prevention training is more appropriate for discipline referrals, but recognition training would be beneficial for referrals associated with special education or counseling. Each type of referral has distinct steps that a teacher must follow according to school policy. With the exception of a counseling referral, a teacher must establish that they have attempted to improve the issue before making a referral, and thus they should document any steps they have taken to help a student improve. Documentation helps establish a pattern which ultimately justifies the need for a referral. It may also help those involved with the referral process in designing the right plan to help the student grow. This process can take a lot of time and extra effort on the teachers part. Ultimately, in most cases, the teacher must prove that they have exhausted all of their individual resources before making a referral. Referral for Discipline Purposes A discipline referral is a form a teacher or other school personnel writes up when they want the principal or school disciplinarian to deal with a student issue. A referral typically means that the issue is serious or that the teacher has tried to handle it without any success. Key Questions to Ask Before Making a Disciplinary Referral Is this a serious issue (i.e. fight, drugs, alcohol) or a potential threat to other students that requires immediate attention by an administrator?If this is a minor issue, what steps have I taken to handle the issue myself?Have I contacted the students parents and involved them in this process?Have I documented the steps I have taken in an attempt to correct this issue? Referral for a Special Education Evaluation A special education referral is a request for a student to be evaluated to determine whether the student is eligible to receive special education services. This may include areas such as speech-language services, learning assistance, and occupational therapy. The special education referral is typically written by either the students parent or their teacher. If the teacher is completing the referral, they will also attach evidence and samples of work to show why they believe the student needs to be evaluated. Key Questions to Ask Before Making a Special Education Referral What are the exact issues the student has that lead me to believe special education services are appropriate?What evidence or artifacts can I produce that support my belief?What documented steps of intervention have I taken to try to help the student improve before making a referral?Have I discussed my concerns with the childs parents and gained insight into the childs history? Referral for Counseling Services A counseling referral can be made for a student for any number of legitimate concerns and does not always necessitate the teacher to take intervening steps prior to filling out the referral. Some common reasons for counseling referrals include: A student is going through a traumatic family issue (i.e. divorce, death in the family).A student exhibits signs of depression and/or withdrawal.A students grades suddenly dropped or there is a drastic change in behavior. A student cries often, gets sick daily, or expresses anger/frustration regularly.A student who has difficulty functioning in the classroom (i.e. behavior issues, will not do work, skips school often, extreme aggressiveness).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)