Passionate Love

Passionate Love

So I found this article that defines what is passionate love and why does it need to exist in a relationship. What I found interesting about it is that it defines what is passionate love. What are the characteristics that define passion and how can they be defined. It reminded me of the time in class when we defined people's reaction to our breaking of social norms. It's a cognitive study. But what I found most interesting about the article is that "Hatfield’s and Sternberg’s models, pure passion hardly exists in the real world outside of romantic poetry, songs, and literature." But from what we studied passion must exist in a stable relationship, but if it only exists in fairy tales how are we ever to find love? I strongly believe that fairy tales and love stories are the reason why people, especially girls have a skewed view of what love is but I find that when people get that fairy tale relationship it's not what they thought or want. I mean seriously do you really want a guy that is your prince charming, completely perfect in every way or someone who makes mistakes, who is human? So I guess what I'm getting out is doesn't true passion exist in real life but it goes beyond the external behavior? 

Leave Me Alone- I'm Lonely

I stumbled upon this article while looking up types of relationships and the name of the article instantly intrigued me. Leave Me Alone- I'm Lonely is an article which analyzes how and why people distance themselves from others. In the cases presented, the parents distance themselves from their children but at the same time demand an impossible amount of attention. One second the parent will clamor for attention from their loved ones and then the next second they will push them away. The article contributed this type of behavior to wanting to be loved or cared for, but then refusing any loving or caring in fear of involving others in one's problems. Regardless, this constant back and forth action proves to be extremely taxing and frustrating for the child, and leaves the parent with a sense of empowerment and control. Clearly the parents in this article are dealing with extreme internal struggles and it's a shame that the child is roped into them, as well.

UK schools are considered “most socially segregated”

I thought it would be interesting to look into the other part of the world, instead of just here in the U.S. As it turns out, UK schools are considered “most socially segregated” according to the writer of this article. He states that children who are poor and disadvantaged are put with those in the same situation/status. It is however based on how much education their parents’ received that puts them in these groups. Of course the UK is working on fixing this and creating equal status for all students trying to get a higher education like going to a University. It’s interesting to see that these kids are being put into groups, and being separated, and it’s not even their choice or doing.

The Article

Harvard Racism test

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.html

Here's an interesting test, to she how racist all of us are or might be , even though we don't know it yet.
I really like the fact that this test conducts it survey in a covert way, that engages you in a some what subconscious  level which by default cannot be filtered by your apprehended ethicist.
However, if so the issue seems quite alarming. Why are we discriminative against others, or people from different races.
What do you guys think ?

Teaching for Change

As I have found in many of the studies linked to intergroup contact theory in children, the classroom has proved to be a major hub for experiment and effect to take place. In terms of forming biases, classroom environments can have a major impact on the positive or negative relationships between ingroups and outgroups. Often times when I encounter or witness blatant discrimination and stereotyping, I tend to step off my high horse and reassure myself that the reason that a bigot lives by stereotype is likely because of a lack of proper education and instruction. Ultimately, I say that the fault is in upbringing and the school systems. Teaching for Change is a non-profit organization that takes this exact source for discrimination and aims to reduce prejudice by implementing social justice in the classroom. On their website, they quote Beyond Heroes and Holidays: "We believe that multicultural education should help students, parents, teachers, and administrators understand and relate to the histories, cultures and languages of people different from themselves." Through donation and fundraising, Teaching for Change is able to offer workshops and courses in teaching, projects with parents, and produce publications like Beyond Heroes and Holidays. Teaching for Change has faced many successes, including awards from the D.C. Humanities Council and the National Association for Multicultural Education.

YWCA

YWCA is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice, freedom and dignity for all. The YWCA works with women to empower them while creating an environment in which prejudice can be fought. This organization also works to combat racism. They work with women of all ages. The YWCA is also the founder of the Race Against Racism, which is a 5K race which promotes antiracism. This organization employes both women and men but their programs are meant for women, as a way to empower them. The programs are mostly meant for women but understand that men are a vital part in eliminating prejudice and racism, therefore promote interaction between the two. 

Kumon Learning

Kumon is a program that brings together students of different ages in a learning-assistance organization. Older students - typically in high school - serve as teachers and provide help to younger children with their homework and assignments, in an effort not only to further the development of the younger child, but to expose students of different age groups to each other. This is meant to reduce prejudices - or fears - that these students might normally have in interracting with each other on a more casual basis, such that a younger child might more willingly go up to an older one to ask for help, or even just to simply play.
I had a number of friends back in high school who were part of this program, and nearly every account I got from them was a positive one. Stories about how they were meeting great kids who really wanted to learn, or about how proud they felt once they'd helped these children through a difficult problem, were inspiring, and made the program, from what it sounded like to me, very worthwhile. A couple of them even told me about how they would get calls from individual students off-hours asking for help, which is something that I as a child, who had never participated in a program like this one, would never have done.