- A primer on the United Nations and Model UN (MUN)
- How to MUN
Monday, January 11, 2016
Model UN
Here are a few useful links on Model UN:
Friday, April 10, 2015
VAIS Technology Conference: April 11, 2015
Context Matters
Using Google Drive and the Web to Contextualize Historical Events
- Email Michael Loret de Mola
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The British Museum
The Museum of London
The Louvre
Musei Capitolini
Canterbury Roman Museum
9/11 Museum
9/11 Memorial
Canadian Museum of History
The National Gallery of Art
The National Law Enforcement Museum
http://www.nleomf.org/
http://www.nleomf.org/
Monday, August 25, 2014
American Culture and Indefinite Perfectiblity
Today, my second period class correctly stated that Americans value material prosperity and acquisition. I kept asking why, why, why? Though we came up with a few answers, I couldn't help but consider the words of Alexis de Tocqueville. Dearest students, what do you think about Tocqueville's words? Do you think the Frenchy was on to something?
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville From the Henry Reeve Translation, revised and corrected, 1839 Alexis de Tocqueville was born July 29, 1805 (d. 1859), in Verneuil, and studied law in Paris. With the French publicist Gustave Auguste de Beaumont de la Bonninière, he went abroad in 1831 to study the penal system in the U.S. After returning to France in 1832, Tocqueville wrote his most famous work, Democracy in America One of the earliest and most profound studies of American life, it concerns the legislative and administrative systems in the U.S. and the influence of social and political institutions on the habits and manners of the people. Tocqueville maintains in this work that the full development of democracy occurred in the U.S. because conditions there best permitted the diffusion of European social ideas.
Chapter VIII HOW EQUALITY SUGGESTS TO THE AMERICANS THE IDEA OF THE INDEFINITE PERFECTABILITY OF MAN
When the citizens of a community are classed according to rank, profession, or birth and when all men are forced to follow the career which chance has opened before them, everyone thinks that the utmost limits of human power are to be discerned in proximity to himself, and no one seeks any longer to resist the inevitable law of his destiny. Not, indeed, that an aristocratic people absolutely deny man's faculty of self-improvement, but they do not hold it to be indefinite; they can conceive amelioration, but not change: they imagine that the future condition of society may be better, but not essentially different; and, while they admit that humanity has made progress and may still have some to make, they assign to it beforehand certain impassable limits… In proportion as castes disappear and the classes of society draw together, as manners, customs, and laws vary, because of the tumultuous intercourse of men, as new facts arise, as new truths are brought to light, as ancient opinions are dissipated and others take their place, the image of an ideal but always [elusive] perfection presents itself to the human mind. Continual changes are then every instant occurring under the observation of every man; the position of some is rendered worse, and he learns but too well that no people and no individual, however enlightened they may be, can lay claim to infallibility; the condition of others is improved, whence he infers that man is endowed with an indefinite faculty for improvement….Thus, forever seeking, forever falling to rise again, often disappointed, but not discouraged, he tends unceasingly towards that unmeasured greatness so indistinctly visible at the end of the long track which humanity has yet to tread. It can hardly be believed how many facts naturally flow from the philosophical theory of the indefinite perfectibility of man or how strong an influence it exercises even on those who, living entirely for the purposes of action and not of thought, seem to conform their actions to it without knowing anything about it. I accost an American sailor and inquire why the ships of his country are built so as to last for only a short time, he answers without hesitation that the art of navigation is every day making such rapid progress that the finest vessel would become almost useless if it lasted beyond a few years. In these words, which fell accidentally, and on a particular subject, from an uninstructed man, I recognize the general and systematic idea upon which a great people direct all their concerns. Aristocratic nations are naturally too liable to narrow the scope of human perfectibility; democratic nations, to expand it beyond reason.
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville From the Henry Reeve Translation, revised and corrected, 1839 Alexis de Tocqueville was born July 29, 1805 (d. 1859), in Verneuil, and studied law in Paris. With the French publicist Gustave Auguste de Beaumont de la Bonninière, he went abroad in 1831 to study the penal system in the U.S. After returning to France in 1832, Tocqueville wrote his most famous work, Democracy in America One of the earliest and most profound studies of American life, it concerns the legislative and administrative systems in the U.S. and the influence of social and political institutions on the habits and manners of the people. Tocqueville maintains in this work that the full development of democracy occurred in the U.S. because conditions there best permitted the diffusion of European social ideas.
Chapter VIII HOW EQUALITY SUGGESTS TO THE AMERICANS THE IDEA OF THE INDEFINITE PERFECTABILITY OF MAN
When the citizens of a community are classed according to rank, profession, or birth and when all men are forced to follow the career which chance has opened before them, everyone thinks that the utmost limits of human power are to be discerned in proximity to himself, and no one seeks any longer to resist the inevitable law of his destiny. Not, indeed, that an aristocratic people absolutely deny man's faculty of self-improvement, but they do not hold it to be indefinite; they can conceive amelioration, but not change: they imagine that the future condition of society may be better, but not essentially different; and, while they admit that humanity has made progress and may still have some to make, they assign to it beforehand certain impassable limits… In proportion as castes disappear and the classes of society draw together, as manners, customs, and laws vary, because of the tumultuous intercourse of men, as new facts arise, as new truths are brought to light, as ancient opinions are dissipated and others take their place, the image of an ideal but always [elusive] perfection presents itself to the human mind. Continual changes are then every instant occurring under the observation of every man; the position of some is rendered worse, and he learns but too well that no people and no individual, however enlightened they may be, can lay claim to infallibility; the condition of others is improved, whence he infers that man is endowed with an indefinite faculty for improvement….Thus, forever seeking, forever falling to rise again, often disappointed, but not discouraged, he tends unceasingly towards that unmeasured greatness so indistinctly visible at the end of the long track which humanity has yet to tread. It can hardly be believed how many facts naturally flow from the philosophical theory of the indefinite perfectibility of man or how strong an influence it exercises even on those who, living entirely for the purposes of action and not of thought, seem to conform their actions to it without knowing anything about it. I accost an American sailor and inquire why the ships of his country are built so as to last for only a short time, he answers without hesitation that the art of navigation is every day making such rapid progress that the finest vessel would become almost useless if it lasted beyond a few years. In these words, which fell accidentally, and on a particular subject, from an uninstructed man, I recognize the general and systematic idea upon which a great people direct all their concerns. Aristocratic nations are naturally too liable to narrow the scope of human perfectibility; democratic nations, to expand it beyond reason.
Got Culture?
Today my 2nd period talked a little bit about the utility of studying culture in a history class and they also shared about the "culture" they took pictures of. It was a spirited discussion.
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Introductions
This is the website we will use to supplement the TFS portal. Look above for assignment tabs.
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