Tuesday, 19 November 2013
Obstacles
An obstacle I have come across in my life is learning two languages at once. I was learning to read and write English at the same time as French, in a French school. I'd often switch spelling on words is they sounded the same in both languages, and I spelt everything phonetically. A great help for this was getting a laptop and frequently using word and spell check on a daily basis. But before that, I had to learn words by heart, and still made a load of spelling mistakes, that - at the moment, I find completely ridiculous. I have also simultaneously learned American and British spelling for words, and depending on my mood, or the influence of those around me, or simply not being able to tell which is Canadian, American or British spelling. Then, I often end up with essays containing a wide variety of spelling, and I can't tell what I've done wrong.
Monday, 11 November 2013
Milgram's Social Experiment
Yale University Psychologist Stanley Milgram began conducting an experiment shortly after the trials of Nazis following world war two. His aim was to test the lengths people went to under another's authority. He had an enforcer, speaking over a speakerphone, a teacher, who was a volunteer, and a learner, who was a hired actor. The teacher would be given a list of words to teach to the learner, a person who was acting the entire time in a different room, of which they were unaware of. For every wrong answer, the teacher would give the learner a shock, progressing up the voltage scale after each wrong answer. On occasion, the actor would plead with the teacher, and tell them of heart conditions, but a surprisingly high number of test subjects went to a fatal voltage, and a surprisingly low number of teachers outright refused to continue, even after being prompted. The enforcers did not say that the teachers couldn't leave the room to check on the learner, and teachers asked for permission to do so, without getting an answer.
The experiment correlates strongly with the Book of Negroes, because we come across several examples of Negroes and Africans who comply with a higher authority, for just a little bit of money, or comfort, and so on. Chekura is an example of an African working for the slave traders to herd slaves to the coast of Africa. Mamed is also an example of a Negro working for a white slave trader, for the promise of books, a bigger hut, and the lack of manual labor.
The experiment correlates strongly with the Book of Negroes, because we come across several examples of Negroes and Africans who comply with a higher authority, for just a little bit of money, or comfort, and so on. Chekura is an example of an African working for the slave traders to herd slaves to the coast of Africa. Mamed is also an example of a Negro working for a white slave trader, for the promise of books, a bigger hut, and the lack of manual labor.
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