The discussion thus far has been to my satisfaction! Most days everyone seemed to contribute to the discussion, and we've gotten on some pretty hot topics. Some people speak more than others, naturally, but I'd say that's always expected. On a few occasions I noticed that peoples arguments seemed a bit competetive, as if the purpose of discussion is to convert everyone to one's own viewpoint. I think that the purpose of a discussion is to think about all possible sides of something without any ulterior motive (e.g. they shall ALL believe ME! bwa haha!) I find it a bit sad when people see discussions as arguments and competitions and would rather put down other people's thoughts than share their own. I've only noticed this a few times, and none this week.
On Tuesday we spent most of the time talking about the pros and cons of Pandora. We discussed how, to best control the songs played, one should put in an artist rather than a song. Pandora has a tendency to avoid playing the entered songs. We also determined that saying 'I like it!" after hearing a song could be a bad thing, as Pandora will avoid other genres to play more like said song.
We also discussed rotating schedules of summaries of blog posts, summaries of discussions, and presentations coming up in October. The first person to summarize blog posts will be Kat, the first to summarize discussions will be myself, Christina, and the first to present will be Machelle. The schedule will rotate so that everyone has a time to do all three. We talked about the nature of presentations, and Nic McPhee himself gave an astounding harmonica preformance! We all applauded him.
On Thursday we were asked to discuss the book, and Kelsey said how it was sad that the slave owners took away the slave's instruments. We discussed why that would be, whether they thought they would escape using the drums/loud instruments or if they were simply afraid of their culture. Nic asked if there were any other instances in history where a similar thing happened, with people taking away meaningful parts of certain cultures. We mentioned the Native American culture, and among other things how we brought them to boarding schools and made them talk and dress like the western culture. We talked about how big groups are comfortable with "sameness" and feel threatened by people who do not fit our mold. Other examples brought up were dress code issues (long hair, colored hair, piercings, tattoos), attempting to give Iraq a democracy and peer pressure to dress and act like the crowd. The discussion was lively and most people seemed to be in agreeance that trying to change others to feel more comfortable is unnecessary.
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2 comments:
Thanks for getting to this so promptly and doing such a nice job!
I didn't have time to say much when I left my previous comment, but now I do :-).
I liked your comments about the nature and tone of the discussion in the noon section. It has been wonderfully interactive and involved, but sometimes it has been a little chaotic, with lots of people talking on top of each other. I definitely don't want to squelch the enthusiastic discussion, but we do need to ensure that everyone feels like they can be heard.
Thinking about our discussion of people being afraid of difference reminded me of some of the old folks that we'll see in the videos, some of which are pretty wonderfully eccentric. In one of the videos Lomax actually talks about the cultural value of eccentric people. If it's important to have eccentric people, how do we help that happen? Are we brave enough to be eccentric ourselves? Are we brave enough to support people who are (even if we're not)?
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