Uprising in Egypt

(via The Daily Dish)

What protests look like:

See also:

  • Summary of the last two days’ protests.
  • The United States’ support for Egypt.
  • What happens when you’re arrested by the state security service. (warning: contains one quote with vulgar language)

UPDATE: We just watched the video over lunch, and it actually resulted in a very good discussion. Our morning novel discussions have been useful here, in helping us see the multiple perspectives of the actors in the street protests: the protesters and the police. After all, the police have families too.

I gave a little spiel at the beginning, to set the stage and to point out the potentially historical nature of these protests. Democracy spreading through the middle east has huge implications for a country fighting two wars in the region; not to mention the blowback from these conflicts.

The truth of the anger of the protesters in the video seemed to resonate, making poignant what could have appeared farcical. The music and the Kennedy quote also helped my students identify with these events in such a far off place.

We also touched on the role of the U.S. in supporting the Mubarak government, and the potential of the uprising to lead to an anti-US, muslim fundamentalist government (via the Muslim Brotherhood). We still need to talk about what the US should and can do to support democracy in this situation, which is so full of conflicting imperatives.

Extending Thinking with Calvin and Hobbes

My students have been asking to write “book” reports on movies or Dr. Seuss picture books instead of novels. I am not theoretically opposed. Our theme this cycle is literary essays, with a focus on extending our thinking about issues, which can be done to any type of media: books, movies, music or even art for example. A great example is of what can be done is Richard Beck’s series of essays on the theology of Calvin and Hobbes.

… given the fact that the two lead characters are named after John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes, Calvin and Hobbes presents a dim view of human nature. … a running theme in Calvin and Hobbes is why virtue is so hard and vice so fun.
–Beck (2008) in The Theology of Calvin and Hobbes, Part 1: Human Nature Chapter 1: “Virtue needs some cheaper thrills”.

Although he’s an experimental psychologist at Abilene Christian University, Beck’s essays are fairly easy to read, and are great in how they analyze the subject work, in this case the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, while drawing comparisons to other theological texts, from the original Hobbes’ Leviathan to recent analyses by authors like Alan Jacobs.

I think, as a condition for using an alternative to the novel, I’ll require students to read one of Beck’s essays. In fact, maybe I’ll have the entire class read the first one, “Virtue needs some cheaper thrills”, as an example of a literary essay.

The Chrysalids, Godwined

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.
— Mike Godwin, 1989.

Our daily discussions of The Chrysalids have gone on long enough that Hitler came up. I can’t remember the details, but somehow, it occurred to one of my students that, since we don’t know exactly when the story is set, and given the outstanding question, “Did they ever find Hitler’s body?” what if Hitler turned up in the book.

Sigh.

Quite coincidentally, I ran into this article today, about Hitler’s last bodyguard. Apparently, he’s getting too old to answer all his fan mail. Tennessee gets a mention.

Sigh.

On a final note, the above quote about Godwin’s Law is a nice one to use in a cycle where we’re talking about probability.

Cheers.

Tunisian revolution

NPR had a great article today summarizing what’s been going on in Tunisia.

I played the article this morning. We had a little discussion about the conflicting groups in Tunisia and the possible causes of the revolution. It would be nice to be able to follow the emergence of a democracy in real-time.

Protests in Tunis. (Image by Habib M’henni, via Wikipedia).

U.S. Immigration Data

Raymond Cohn has a great table of immigration data on the Economic History Association website.

This data ties very nicely into the work we’re doing on graphing. The Excel file with the post 1820 data, and another with pre-1790 data, make it easier to work with (note the pre-1970 data comes from the Wikipedia page on the history of immigration; it was the easiest source to find a table of data).

Since each small group of students is responsible for a different wave of immigration, the groups will create bar graphs showing the countries of origin for each wave. They should look like these:

U.S. Immigration from 1820 to 1831. Data from Cohn (2010).

and,

U.S. Immigration from 1900 to 1914. Data from Cohn (2010).

Plotting the time series as a line graph would be another great way to slice the data:

Comparison of U.S. Immigration Rates from Great Britain and Central Europe. Data from Cohn (2010).

Note that the data in the table is as a percentage of total immigration, so the numbers do not compare directly from one time period to the next; however, the proportions still work to show the same patterns.