The Reluctant Fundamentalist notes

Why is the interaction with the hostile driver in Manila significant? This interaction is significant because it is the first time that Changez sees himself as the rich, stuck-up, corporate American working man rather than a Pakistani in another country. It is due to the look of disgust he sees in the eyes of the driver that he realizes who he has become. He even tells people, upon being asked where he is from, that he is from New York, despite being from Pakistan originally. The feeling he has, however, when telling people he is from America is shame. This is an indication of his self-loathing that he feels because he is an American now.What is the conflict Changez feels?The conflict Changez feels is the need to succeed and join America’s elite, however he feels that by doing this he will lose his cultural roots, for example his respect for elders. He also does not want to be part of a society like that of America’s elite because they are not really looked up to in oth er areas, they are more looked upon with anger, like the driver in Manila. He feels out of place and yet very much at home with the firm he works for, for example in Manila he feels that he should join the Filipinos on their way home because he is not an American, however his winning smile and his obvious drive and commitment to his work take him in the direction of success.Third world sensibility: shared experience between Changez and the driver, USA to Filipino. They share a third world background however Changez is in a limo while the other man is not privileged or wealthy like Changez is. Changez is protected by his American co-workers and is considered to be part of that society even if he doesn’t feel that way all the time.Play acting: he is an outsider, a third world man but he takes on the identity of someone that is not him, that is someone of riches and opportunity. However, in the airport he is detained and questioned, suggesting that he isn’t American he is Pakistani in a costume.Implication of â€Å"foreign† said to Jim: he is not part of the society, he is not one of those people filled with opportunity.

Knowledge For Social Work Essay

Social work education in Britain has undergone repeated and fundamental restructuring in the past decade. In the early 1990s the professional qualification, the Certificate in Qualifying Social Work (CQSW), was replaced by the Diploma in Social Work (DipSW), a shift which required significant curriculum changes. Now social work education is undergoing another major change, with the DipSW being replaced by an undergraduate degree. However, despite changes to practice and academic training requirements, there are some constants, some requirements which do not alter. One of these is the demand for social work students to demonstrate that they can ‘apply theory to practice’ as part of qualifying requirements. This requirement, presented casually alongside a long list of further requirements, characteristically fails to grasp that understanding the relationship between theory and practice has long been a source of debate within social science. In many respects, the recent debate in Britain (see Trevillion, 2000) continues, and draws upon, consistent themes in social theory over the relative merits or otherwise of positivist paradigms, with their underlying assumptions of a social world that can be revealed through the application of correct techniques. The early debates in social theory were structured by a widespread belief in the power of scientific and secular-philosophical knowledge to provide for the direction and improvement of natural and social life. The ‘age of reason’ provided a context of optimism in the possibilities for a collective life informed by justice and representing the march of progress. Though the optimism generally attributed to the Enlightenment was tempered by ambivalence on the part of some theorists, or rejected by others, the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were dominated by philosophical and theoretical interventions which, in general, supposed that knowledge could provide a foundation for political and social progress. This supposition could only be held by assuming that the world could be conceived of as an object, containing an underlying unity, progressing in a logical way, and peopled by subjects whose access to rational thought would liberate them collectively from the superstitions of pre-modern life. The underlying mechanisms of historical progress, the necessary regularities in social life, were held to be available to discovery by the sciences and philosophies, so that such knowledge attained a key role in the achievement of social progress (Penna, et al, 1999). Although the ‘age of reason’ was also characterized by profound ambivalence concerning the possibilities for rational progress, the social sciences displayed a deep belief in the possibilities of knowledge to understand the social world and therefore guide the development of rationally organized structures, institutions and interventions. Thus the objective of knowledge-generation has been the establishment of a foundational knowledge, derived from the exclusive truth-producing capacity of science, that can inform social action. Foundational principles have been based upon two important assumptions: that theory involved a distinction between mind and world, between the subject and object of knowledge, and that language functioned as a neutral medium for the mind to mirror or represent the world (Seidman 1994: 3). This historical intellectual legacy, together with a need for professional status dependent on a proper ‘knowledge-base’, drives demands that professional practice demonstrate the application of theory to practice. I want to suggest here that this demand betrays a lack of understanding of what theory is and what it can do and, at best, leaves students confused, whilst at worst it leads to cruel or ineffective practices in agencies. Here I outline the historical context that has led to a particular understanding of theory as a guide to action, point to some perils of its application in practice, and suggest a different method of dealing with theory on social work degree schemes. What is Theory? What we call ‘theory’ can be understood as a form of social action that gives direction and meaning to what we do. To be human is to search for meaning, and all of us hold theories about how and why particular things happen or do not happen. Some of these theories are little more than vague hypotheses about what will happen if we act in a certain way in a certain situation and what we might expect from others. But many of the theories we hold are more complex and express our understandings of, for example, how organizations work, of how people become offenders, or why the distribution of resources is as it is. In this sense theories are generalizations about what exists in the world and how the components of that world fit together into patterns. In this sense also theories are ‘abstractions’ in as much as they generalize across actual situations our expectations and suppositions about the reasons why certain patterns exist (O’Brien and Penna, 1998). In the same way that we use theory in our everyday lives, we also draw upon various theories as part of the ways we act in the world, so understandings of the ‘social’ dimension of social work are also built upon different theoretical foundations. As O’Brien and Penna (1998) point out, theories about the validity of data and research procedures, theories about what motivates individual behaviour, theories about what will happen if we intervene in particular situations in x way rather than y way, become embedded in social, economic and criminal justice policies developed, implemented and managed by different social groups. Theories about the proper relationship between the individual and the state, men and women, homosexual and heterosexual, inform policy and practice frameworks so that the frameworks that legally bound social work, as well as practice priorities and interventions, differ substantially from country to country. Theory about social life is either used or promoted in particular policy and welfare frameworks in order to make them more ‘effective’ or ‘appropriate’, and is invariably embedded in the social programs that ensue from them. In this way theories make up the premises and assumptions that guide the formulation of particular policies and practices in the first place, as well as their later implementation. Such premises are essentially theoretical: they are ‘imaginary’ in the sense that the conditions they describe, the logics of action and the structures of provision on which they focus are not proven, definite realities. This use of theory in the ways described above developed from the intellectual sea-change of the eighteenth century European Enlightenment. Prior to the Enlightenment, social organization was understood through theological worldviews, and government of the population justified largely according to divine right and religious edict: the Sovereign ruled over a subject population because he or she was divinely ordained to so. However, from the middle of the seventeenth century onwards a shift in intellectual thinking occurred which was to have major implications for the development of European societies. This historical period – The Enlightenment – marks a time when people start to be understood as self-creating, rather than as products of divine creation. A philosophical shift, questioning theological understandings of the human world and establishing the legitimacy of scientific explanations of the natural world, results eventually in a humanist understanding of social or ganization. The Enlightenment sees the establishment of new philosophical systems for understanding both the natural and human worlds and the development of rational responses to social problems. The Enlightenment promises progress and represents a faith in science as a progressive force which can understand, and hence solve, problems in the natural and social worlds. In this intellectual movement, new ways of thinking overlay those they were in the process of replacing, so that the cosmic transcendence of religious thought was replaced by the universalism of philosophy, and the methods and principles of the natural sciences. It was assumed that a theory could be developed that would substitute for the truth of religion. Eighteenth and nineteenth century social thought was focused, in the social sciences, on the search for one theory that could explain the social world and hence provide a guide to action – a theory that could be used in practice – famously captured by the term praxis. However, as the twentieth century developed, this conception of theory came under increasing attack, and this attack is one which has many implications for the use of theory in social work education and practice. Part 2 Some Problems With Theory Several events in Europe contributed to a questioning of the application of theory to practice. The establishment of a communist society based upon the premises of Marxist theory was one such event. As the mass exterminations, abuses of power and repressions of the communist state came to widespread notice, so did the rationales underlying them. The communist leadership, following particular strands of Marxist theory, imposed upon populations conditions which, in theory, were necessary for the development of a communist society. Those individuals who did not fit the predictions of theory, or questioned the premises upon which action was based, were considered ‘deviant’ and sent for ‘retraining’ in labour camps when they were not killed. The endless compulsory ‘self-criticism’ that members of various Marxist groups carried out was aimed at making individual behaviour conform to the tenets of theory. Yet when many thousands of individuals failed to conform, it was their behaviour that came under scrutiny, rather than the premises and assumptions of the theory, resulting in tragedy for thousands. The second tragedy was the application of theory to practice by Germany’s Nazi leadership. These two examples provide perhaps the most extreme illustrations of the application of theory to practice, but the history of social welfare is littered with more mundane examples that nevertheless cause great misery to those subject to theory application. We have seen the eugenics movement in the early twentieth century whose influence contributed to the institutionalisation (and worse) of people with learning difficulties, the widespread use in the mid-twentieth century of lobotomies in treating people with mental health problems and, to take two examples from this author’s practice career, the use of psychodynamic and behaviour modification theory in practice. I observed the use of psychodynamic theory in practice in the social work department of an acute unit in a psychiatric hospital. A senior social worker specialized in dealing with depressed female lone-parents. Reading through dozens of case-notes (meant to aid my practice) I was struck by the way that these women’s depression was attributed to various failures in their early psycho-sexual development, whilst their practical circumstances – victims of domestic violence, poor housing, lack of money – were completely ignored. Needless to say, these women failed to improve, but the point to note here is that this failure was not attributed to the faulty premises of the theory and the way in which it was being applied, but to the women’s innate psychopathology. My second example is taken from two years in a residential home for children with learning disabilities. Here a behaviour modification regime was implemented by management with no critical appreciation of debates in psychology about what it means to be human, what motivates behaviour and how behaviour should be understood. Those children who did not respond to ‘positive reinforcement’ (the majority) were labelled and punished, whilst the underlying problems of the theory itself left unexamined. In short, in both these cases, where service-users failed to fulfil predicted outcomes derived from particular theoretical paradigms, the response displayed a notably similar characteristic as in the examples from totalitarian societies – the users were pathologised, rather than theoretical premises examined.An objection could be made here that these examples merely demonstrate a-typical historical circumstances or incompetent practitioners. However, whether at the level of whole societies, whole social groups, or numerous disparate individuals, a backlash against the conjoining of knowledge and power has been manifest in many locations, including: the overthrow of communism in the Soviet Union, the critical interrogation of ‘totalising’ discourses, the decline in membership of organised, hierarchical political movements, the widespread development of ‘rights-based ’ and user movements, and a suspicion of ‘expert’ practice and bureaucraci es. In social theory, the last three decades or so has seen a particularly sustained interrogation of the status of Enlightenment theory. Under the impact of post-structuralism, particularly that associated with Foucault and Derrida , an unpackaging of the assumptions and premises of theory construction has severely undermined the ‘theory as truth and guide to practice’ position. This is not to say such challenges to Enlightenment theory did not exist before, for a long tradition of hermeneutic and phenomenological thought had posed alternative understandings of human and social action. Post-structuralism, however, has mounted a comprehensive and thorough critique of the epistemological basis of structuralism and realism. In the current examination of Enlightenment thought, Derrida ‘deconstructed’ major traditions in western social thought, showing how accounts of human knowledge depended on the use of key textual devices for obscuring problematic philosophical categories, or for revealing and endorsing particular interpretations and meanings of social and political progress. The construction of any text lends itself to several meanings and interpretations, such that it is impossible to arrive at any one fixed, ‘true’ account. Foucault, on the other hand, examined the epistemology underpinning the Enlightenment belief in the replacement of an institutionalised theological belief system with one which emphasised Reason and the limitless capacity of human knowledge. Enlightenment philosophy suggests that what occurs in the world is subject to entirely knowable and explainable laws that can be discovered and used in the progress of human society and human mastery over the natural and social world. Foucault’s contribution to the unpicking of this position was to show, through examinations of historical understandings of punishment and sexuality, that there are other ways of understanding this history which suggest a very different interpretation of the Enlightenment and its effects on social life, and demonstrate that many truths and experiences of social life co-exist that make it impossible to provide an overarching account that explains everything. At the same time, science constantly shifts its parameters, so that what may be ‘true’ at one historical moment is rendered false later. This brief outline cannot do justice to the sophistication and breadth of the critique of Enlightenment theory, critiques which have resulted in major debates over how we can know our world and what valid knowledge claims can be made (c.f., Lemert, 1999). Even where the foundations of poststructuralist epistemology are rejected there is a much greater appreciation of the problems associated with universalism and linear structures, two of the major props of Enlightenment theory. The permeation of these critiques is perhaps most evident in mainstream emphases on ‘difference’ and social constructivism, ‘difference’ and postmodernism, (c.f.,Briskman, 2001), and a general rejection in many disciplines of overarching, grand theory (Leonard, 1997). Here attention shifts to the assumptions embedded in theory and the way in which these assumptions become embedded in projects of nation-building, in legal and organisational structures, and in policy initiatives. Goldberg’s (1993, 2002) work on ‘race’ and racialization traces this process of embedding through an examination of the ways in which Enlightenment thought depended upon a racialized subject of social action and object of social theory. The pervasiveness of this discourse entrenches and normalizes symbolic representations and values both culturally and materially within the institutions of modern life (c.f., Goldberg, 1993: 8). The social sciences are ‘deeply implicated’ in the building of a racist culture and in the ‘hegemony of symbolic violence’ underpinning social systems (Goldberg, 1993: 12, 9). Roediger (1994) examines a similar process in American history and nation-building, pointing to a normalization of ‘Whiteness’ in the construction of conceptual and political subjects. This legacy enters social work in various ways (see Taylor, 1993), but appreciating the role of theory as cultural artefact, as a cultural product, produced in, and reproducing, social assumptions of normativity and relations of domination and subordination, can be similarly achieved in relation to gendered and sexualized categories, for example. This leads us to a situation in which theory itself can be understood as a key resource in forging a ‘modern’ consciousness, and socio-political spheres shot through with asymmetries of power (Penna and O’Brien, 1996/7), where exploitation and oppression operate through complex and unstable socio-economic mechanisms (O’Brien and Penna, 1996). Not only can the ‘social’ upon which we work not be known in its entirety, not be predicted, not be subject to fool-proof risk assessment, evaluation and so on, but theory production has arguably been a contributory mechanism in the creation of precisely many of those socially problematic circumstances that social work sets out to address. In short, Parton (2000:452) hits the nail on the head in claiming that we need to learn to live with ‘uncertainty, confusion and doubt’. Where then, does that leave theory in social work, if we accept this position? I want to turn briefly, and finally, to some suggestions of the use of theory in social work education. Using Theory At the beginning of this piece I suggested that we all use theory in our everyday lives. Given that this is so, and that theory permeates every aspect of academic work, policy implementation and practice initiatives, even when it is tacit and unacknowledged, I would propose that social work students and, ultimately, service-users, would be better served if students were taught how theory-construction takes place and how to unpackage and critically examine theoretical edifices, accounts and the components through which they are constructed. The task for social work students would be not the mechanistic injunction to ‘apply theory to practice’ but rather to consider how adequate the application of theory to practice might be in X or Y case. To do this, they would have to be taught not so much along ‘who-says-what’ lines, but rather in terms of how theorising as an activity works and how different theories are constructed. Theory building is an exercise in logic, moving from initial assumptions and premises to conclusions, through an argument linked by one or more claims. Taking these components apart can be taught as a skill (see, for example, Phelan and Reynolds, 1996; Thompson, 1996) rather than through the more philosophically based, social theory courses provided in many other disciplines. Tackling theory in a skills-based way has several advantages: it demystifies theory and enables students to see that, with practice, they can take a theory apart and reconstruct it in much the same way as a plumber or mechanic might tackle a job; it leads to a critical scrutiny of practice proposals derived from (often unstated) theoretical premises and to confidence in rejecting the inappropriate; and, when the theory fails to deliver, it leads to critical scrutiny of the theory rather than the person on the receiving end of it. This is not a plea for eclecticism, but for much more modest expectations of the theory-practice relationship than are currently formally embedded in many social work training programmes. I say ‘formally’ because many people have a suspicion of theory but, in my view, for the wrong reasons. Most theories offer insights into the ‘social’ sphere that is the ‘work’ of social workers but, ultimately, a theory is only as good as its critics. This paper considers the demand for social work students in Britain to demonstrate that they can ‘apply theory to practice’ as part of qualifying requirements. It suggests that this demand betrays a lack of understanding of what theory is and what it can do and, at best, leaves students confused, whilst at worst it leads to cruel or ineffective practices in agencies. Understanding the relationship between theory and practice has long been a source of debate and, in many respects, the recent debate continues, and draws upon, consistent themes in social theory over the relative merits or otherwise of positivist paradigms with their underlying assumptions of a social world that can be revealed through the application of correct techniques. The early debates in social theory were structured by a widespread belief in the power of scientific and secular-philosophical knowledge to provide for the direction and improvement of natural and social life. The ‘age of reason’ provided a context of optimism in the possibilities for a collective life informed by justice and representing the march of progress. This paper outlines the historical context that has led to a particular understanding of theory as a guide to action, points to some perils of its application in practice, and suggests a different method of dealing with theory on social work degree schemes. Evidence-based practice in teaching and teacher education What is it? What is the rationale? What is the criticism? Where to go now? Christer Brusling, Oslo University College, Centre for Study of the Professions. Invited paper to a workshop at the conference Professional Development of Teachers in a Lifelong Perspective: Teacher Education, Knowledge Production and Institutional Reform. Centre for Higher Education Greater Copenhagen in collaboration with OECD, Copenhagen, November, 17-18. 2005. What is it? Where does it come from? What is the rationale? This movement, if I may call it that, seems to have originated in the British educational context, and with a lecture given by David Hargreaves to the Teacher Training Agency in 1996. Unfortunately I have been unable to get a copy of it in Norway – there is none in Norwegian libraries1. Lacking this original source I will rely on what comes forward in second-hand sources, in published criticisms in mainly British journals, and in later articles by Hargreaves, where he answers his critics. Philip Davies (1999) from University of Oxford, â€Å"the other place† from Hargreaves’ That doesn’t mean that the movement hasn’t reached Norway. A recent NOK 100 million proposal for educational research in partnership with schools show that at least the former conservative government knew about it, mainly through Demos, a British â€Å"independent think tank† (demos.co.uk) Agora nr. 8 – tidsskrift for forskning, udvikling og idà ©udveksling i professioner www.cvustork.dk/agora 88 perspective, writes favourably about evidence-based education in an article named â€Å"What is evidence-based education?†. He says that it operates on two levels, the first being â€Å"to utilize existing evidence from worldwide research and literature on education and related subjects†, the second â€Å"to establish sound evidence where existing evidence is lacking or of a questionable, uncertain, or weak nature† (p.109). The first level is described thus: Educationalists at all levels need to be able to: †¢ pose an answerable question about education; †¢ know where and how to find evidence systematically and comprehensively using the electronic (computer-based) and non-electronic (print) media; †¢ retrieve and read such evidence competently and undertake critical appraisal and analysis of that evidence according to agreed professional and scientific standards; †¢ organise and grade the power of this evidence; and †¢ determine its relevance to their educational needs and environments2. (Davies 1999, p.109). Davies acknowledges the debt of the education sector to medicine and other health professions, which predated education with fi ve to ten years in the implementation of the idea of evidence-based practices. According to Davies, it is derived from the University of Oxford Master’s programme in Evidence Based Health Care. argreaves explicitly argues for evidence-based teaching by pointing to the success of the idea in medicine, and by the similarity of the work of doctors and teachers: Practicing doctors and teachers are applied professionals, practical people making interventions in the lives of their clients in order to promote worthwhile ends – health or learning. Doctors and teachers are similar in that they make 2 Note that evidence-based education in this defi nition curiously enough comes out as a pure intellectual exercise, lacking the fi nal application to practice. Agora nr. 8 – tidsskrift for forskning, udvikling og idà ©udveksling i professioner www.cvustork.dk/agora 89 decisions involving complex judgements. Many doctors draw upon research about the effects of their practice to inform and improve their decisions; most teachers do not, and this is a difference. (Hargreaves 1997, p. ) One reason to turn to evidence-based education is that doing so would make education less vulnerable to â€Å"political ideology, conventional wisdom, folklore, and wishful thinking†, not to mention â€Å"trendy teaching methods based on activity-based, student-centred, self-directed learning and problem solving† (Davies 1999, p. 109). But what constitutes evidence? For Hargreaves (1997) evidence is evidence about â€Å"what works†. The dictionary says that evidence is â€Å"something that furnishes proof† (m-w.com). To be able to provide proof of the â€Å"working† you need to measure the outcome of the teaching activity in question, and you need a procedure of relating the measured outcomes to the activity to make the relation an evidence3. Hargreaves doesn’t see much of a problem with how outcomes are constructed, but is adamant about what ought to be the preferred procedure, the RCT, the randomized control trial, often called â€Å"the golden standard†4. Davies (1999), on the other hand, is more permissive of a variety of procedures, thus voicing a broader conception of educational outcomes. In addition to RCT, he mentions survey and correlational methods, regression analysis and analysis of variance. He allows for inquiries that seek to describe the meanings different people attach to different teaching activities, and the broader and long-term consequences of them, e.g. on â€Å"students’ and parents’ sense of self and their sense of social worth and identity† (p. 115). Analyses of naturally occurring teaching interactions, conversation and discourse are In keeping with the parallel with medicine, I would say that not only expected and beneficial outcomes should be measured but also non-expected and possibly harmful ones. Hargreaves here echoes the standard text of research methodology from 1963, Campbell & Stanley, Experimental and Quasi-experimental Designs for Research: â€Å"[We are] committed to the experiment: as the only means for settling disputes regarding educational practice, as the only way of verifying educational improvements, and as the only way of establishing a cumulative tradition†. Cited by Howe (2005), p.308. Agora nr. 8 – tidsskrift for forskning, udvikling og idà ©udveksling i professioner www.cvustork.dk/agora 90 also mentioned as worth-while in this context. He further wants to ask normative questions within the evidence-based teaching paradigm: â€Å"whether or not it is right or warrantable to undertake a particular educational activity or health care intervention† (p.115). Davies’ (1999) omission of the necessary last element in evidence-based practice, i.e. how the purported evidence is to be put to use in practice, avoids a difficult and much discussed problem. Hargreaves (1999b) is of course right in pointing out that this problem is different if practice refers to policy making, as in the phrase evidence-based policy, or to teaching in classrooms, as in the phrase evidence-based teaching. The use of evidence in policy making is about deciding on â€Å"large issues concerned with levels and types of resource allocation – decisions which are difficult to undo† while the use of evidence in teaching â€Å"refer to the relatively small-scale professional practices of teachers in schools and classrooms, which can usually be easily revised† (Hargreaves 1999b, p. 245). In both circumstances enter a lot of considerations apart from â€Å"evidence†. Answering critique from Hammersley (1997) Hargreaves (1999b) admits that context sensitive â€Å"’practical wisdom’ pervades (both) expert medical and educational practice. There is some hard science deep in the knowledge-base of doctors, but the closer a doctor gets to an individual patient, the stronger the elements of judgement or of practical wisdom that also enters into the decision. Teachers acquire ‘practical wisdom’ too; but, in comparison with doctors, they have little accepted scientifi c knowledge to insert into their decision-making.† He claims that the infra structure of knowledge available to teachers is far less developed than that available to doctors, and that teachers seem to be less effi cient than doctors in fi nding the scientifi c knowledge there is. He argues that one reason for this is that the knowledge base in medicine is cumulative while that in education is not, but ought to become. This leads to Davies (1999) second level of concerns about evidence-based teaching: â€Å"to establish sound evidence where existing evidence is lacking or of a questionable, uncertain, or weak nature†. Hargreaves’ lecture in 1996 to the Teacher Training Agency stated that teachers only to a small extent base their practice on (hard) scientific evidence, but he didn’t blame teachers but researchers for failing to produce such evidence, especially produced by RCT procedures. With the  £12,000,000 funding for developing evidence-based policy and practice by research he hoped researchers would be encouraged to respond appropriately (Hargreaves 1999a). In another journal article the same year, titled â€Å"The Knowledge Creating School†, he urges teachers themselves to produce the knowledge they need. To sum up: Evidence-based teaching is a concept borrowed from the health sciences and recommended for teachers (you might add: by new-public-management-governments and elite researchers). You may get the impression that it’s use implies a critique of teachers for not including research-based evidence in deliberations on how to teach, but mainly it is a critique of educational researchers for not providing the needed cumulative research-base, built on research of the randomized control trial (RCT) kind. The rationale is that once such research has taken off and its results have been efficiently disseminated, evidence-based, or evidence informed, teaching will become more frequent. Critique of the notion of evidence-based practice Hammersley (1999) challenges Hargreaves’ on three accounts: his description of educational research as non-cumulative, his prescription on how research could contribute to practice, and his argument that education should learn from medicine, which he considers a parallel to education. Hammersley shares the view that educational research could become more cumulative, but researching ‘what works’ has not proved successful in this respect, despite sustained attempts: â€Å"much educational research in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century was devoted to investigation of effective teaching; and one of the reasons for the changes in educational research over the past 20 years is precisely the failure of this work to produce conclusive, cumulative fi ndings† (p.144). But he also reminds us that there are different meanings of the concept â€Å"cumulative†. There are obvious â€Å"problems involved in identifying distinct and standardised ‘treatments’ in education†, Hammersley exemplifi es by the â€Å"problems faced by researchers seeking to distinguish teaching styles†. What about the problems in operationalising the concept of learning? What should be done about the disagreements about what students should learn? What about the problems of how to measure â€Å"the most important kinds of learning†? Hammersley asks if it is possible even in principle to do so. A preoccupation with what is easily measured may very well have profound effect on teaching, narrowing objectives accordingly. To establish fixed, universal causal patterns in teaching seems equally difficult, if not impossible. What might be aspired to is â€Å"local, context-sensitive patterns in which interpretation and decision on the part of teachers and students play an important role. Unlike in most areas of medicine, in education the ‘treatments’ consist of symbolic interaction, with all the scope for multiple interpretations and responses which that implies†. Hammersley thinks that â€Å"the production of information of high practical relevance usually depends on a great deal of knowledge that does not have such relevance†¦for science to be able to contribute knowledge that is relevant to practice, a division of labour is required: a great deal of coordinated work is necessary tackling smaller, more manageable problems that do not have immediate pay-off†. Hargreaves is described as having a â€Å"narrowly instrumental view of practical relevance†, promoting an ‘engineering model’ of the relationship between research and practice. An engineering model assumes that most teaching problems are technical, which is not likely. On the contrary they seem in most cases to be ‘practical’, that is involving making judgements in complex situations, exercising discretion, not following rules. The analogy with medicine is criticised for not taking into account that the practice of medicine is more towards the engineering side of a continuum which at the other side has the practical. Even within medicine the notion of evidence-based practice has been criticised for downplaying practical judgement in clinical situations, that â€Å"the focus of clinical practice is subtly shifted away from the care of individuals toward the care of populations, and the complex nature of sound clinical judgement is not fully appreciated† (Tonelli 2000). Hammersley cites a medical researcher who raises the same critique towards medical research as Hargreaves does to educational research: it is methodological weak, use inappropriate designs, unrepresentative and small samples, incorrect methods of analysis, and faulty interpretations. The blame is put on practitioners doing research without adequate research training, a fact that doesn’t actually support Hargreaves’ recommendation that more teacher research should lead to a stronger body of knowledge with practical relevance. Hammersley concludes his critique: â€Å"The diagnosis (of the current state of educational research) is mistaken and, taken as a whole: the prescription is likely to be lethal†. In the North American context an equally forceful critique of the arguments for research for evidence-based practice has been voiced by Howe (2005). His critique is organised under the headings â€Å"experimentism5 and scientifi c method†, and â€Å"experimentism and values†. The object of his analysis is a National Research Council report, Scientifi c Research in Education (2002), which he means represent a more moderate form of experimentism than other infl uential publications advocating research for evidence-based practice. In short he states that this report: †¢ unconvincingly characterizes the conduct of research as hierarchical, both temporally and logically (p. 309); †¢ offers little defense of its call for a renewed emphasis on randomised experiments against well-known criticisms regarding the issue of external validity (generalisability from research contexts to other contexts) (p.309); †¢ does not take into account Cronbach’s observation that generalizations decay, The word †experimentism† is used by Howe to refer to scientifi c research advocating the randomised control trial as the â€Å"best† research method. thus making the goal of a cumulative education science fundamentally unattainable; †¢ does not take into account that human intentionality signifi cantly complicates how to understand causal explanation in social research; †¢ places outcomes outside educational research, by focusing on means; †¢ places not-manipulable variables, like socio-economic stratifi cation, outside the limits of educational research by insisting on RCT as the method of choice, thus making educational research â€Å"a political innocent exercise†. Howe (2005) turns to Toulmin (2001) to fi nd an alternative to experimentism – an alternative that is without the short-comings described above: Activities for which social research is often seen as a tool for improvement – medicine and education, for instance – call for intentional behaviour on the part of practitioners in the form of craft-based practical judgement. Stephen Toulmin observes that when performed well, these judgements must respond in a â€Å"timely† manner to the unique and unanticipated actions of other persons, as well as to their different ways of seeing things. According to Toulmin, research informing such practices should exemplify a model that is â€Å"clinical† and â€Å"democratic† rather than â€Å"applied† and â€Å"elite† (Howe 2005, p. 317). Teachers’ relationship to research Do teachers experience a lack of research results when planning to teach? How do teachers relate to educational research? Do teachers fi nd some research genres more relevant and practically useful than others? Does teachers’ practice-based research contribute to a knowledge base of teaching? None of these questions are raised in the early discussions on evidence-based teaching, but specific answers to them seem to enter as premises to prescriptions. I would think that the answer to the first question is no. A common place view of teachers’ planning is that it is based on textbooks and concerned with amounts of â€Å"covering†, using standard methods of classroom instruction: a short introduction by the teacher, independent pupil work with textbook exercises, question-and-answer-patterns, summing up by the teacher in class. Twenty years ago research on teachers’ planning was frequent, today it seems to be an almost closed field of study. Perhaps the expectations of the paradigm of evidence-based teaching on teachers to include research results in their deliberations on how to teach may lead to its re-opening. Do teachers find some research genres more relevant and practically useful than others? Kennedy (1999) observes that: Many genre advocates refer to teachers to justify their arguments, claiming that teachers need more authoritative knowledge (so we should conduct experiments), more dynamic portraits that reveal multiple truths (so we should write narratives), or more richly detailed accounts (so we should do ethnographies). (Kennedy 1999, p.511) Case studies and ethnographies, she continues, have long been justified by: †¦contentions that educational events are governed not by universal laws of cause and effect but, instead, by human interactions and by multiple concurrent and interacting influences; that the meanings of these events can be understood only within their context; that detailed descriptions of the full range of these interactions and dynamics are the only way to accurately represent these events and their meanings; that the kind of complex dynamic knowledge represented in case studies and ethnographies is more like the kind of knowledge ordinary people use to store their experiences; and that such detailed and multifaceted descriptions enable audiences to see similarities and differences between the research setting and their own situations, thus enabling generalizations by analogy rather than by statistical extrapolation. (Kennedy 1999, p.54) She sets out to investigate if teachers find some research genres more persuasive, more relevant, and more influential on own practice, than others, and if so, what features of each genre contribute to these evaluations. 100 teachers were interviewed after having read five articles describing research of different genres. Results show that the three evaluative criteria were highly correlated, but also that reasons for valuing them varied across genres. Experiments appeared to be highly valued, but so were non-experimental comparisons and narratives. Case studies appeared more influential than surveys. Independent of genre research studies proved to be particularly useful if they â€Å"helped teachers understand the relationship between teaching and learning† (Kennedy 1999, p.528). Kennedy concludes that a majority of teachers found most of the articles persuasive and relevant, but for different reasons. The genre contentions with which she started were not empirically verified. The TTA itself designed a questionnaire on teachers’ perspectives on educational research, and distributed it as attachments to journals of two teacher organisations, one for primary teachers, the other for secondary teachers. Everton, Galton & Pell (2000) report on the findings. As an unknown number of subscribers were â€Å"corporate members for local education authorities and industrial companies† they were unable to specify teachers’ response percentages. It was however estimated that the first group only returned 15% of the questionnaires, the second possibly a little more. In the second group most, i.e. 84%, were filled out by school leaders. All in all: the manner this investigation was carried out does not justify its analysis in terms of â€Å"teachers’ perspectives†. Does teachers’ practice-based research contribute to a knowledge base of teaching? As a result of Hargreaves 1996 lecture to the Teacher Training Agency the British government allocated  £54000 to the funding of teacher research projects. In an evaluation of the resulting reports Foster (1999) found that â€Å"a significant minority of the projects appeared to be practical: concerned with the improvement of teaching, learning or educational achievement, rather than the production of knowledge† (p. 383). He found â€Å"that only in a minority of the reports are factual claims well established†¦ as a result, it is difficult to see these as much more than opinion based on pre-existing views of good practice† (p. 393). Foster concludes that critical scrutiny of findings from teacher research before dissemination is crucial, but is afraid that â€Å"the view of knowledge production and dissemination which underpins this TTA scheme sees little role for such scrutiny. The priorities are rapid production and immediate dissemination to practitioners† (p. 395). To sum up: There is research evidence that teachers see the RCT research genre as relevant and useful to practice, but no more so than many other research genres. There is research evidence that teachers’ practice-based research does not contribute substantially to a body of knowledge on teaching, not to mention a cumulative one. Concluding remarks In line with the observation that there is more to teachers’ decision making than following authoritative evidence-based rules for practice, the discourse have changed from talking dichotomously about evidence-based/not evidence-based teaching to talking about evidence-informed teaching (Hargreaves 1999b) or the extent to which teaching is evidence-based (Davies 1999). It is interesting to note that while waiting (?) for research-produced evidence on â€Å"what works†, in teaching and in teacher education, British teacher education has become teacher training, managed by the Training & Development Agency for Schools. Its publication â€Å"Qualifying to teach. Professional standards for qualified teacher status and requirements for initial teacher training† lists skills, competencies and understandings would-be teachers must acquire (TDA 2005). Hagger & McIntyre (2000) complains that â€Å"these lists have been accompanied neither by any rationale for the items listed nor by any explanation of the conception of teaching expertise which underlies the lists† (p. 485). Not surprisingly, I found that in this publication the word ‘training’ appears 51 times, the word ‘education’ 15 times (most of these in naming school subjects or institutions), the words ‘research’, and ‘theory’ did not appear at all. My conclusion is that there are serious problems, philosophical, historical, and political problems, with the notion of evidence-based practice transferred to teaching and teacher education, at least in its original interpretation. American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). (1999). Omnibus Survey. Rockville, Maryland Hill, K., & Romich, B. (2002). AAC evidence-based clinical practice: A model for success. AAC Institute Press, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 1-6. McKibbon, K.A., Wilczynski, N., Hayward, R.S., Walker-Dilks, Cynthia, & Haynes, R.B. (1995). The medical literature as a resource for evidence based care. Working Paper from the Health Information Research Unit, Mc,Master University, Ontario, Canada. Sackett, D.L., Rosenberg, W.MC, Gray, J.M., Haynes, R.B., Richardson, W.S. (1996). Evidence-based medicine: What it is and what it isn’t. British Medical Journal. 321: 71-2 American Educational Research Association (2005). Research Points. http://www. aera.net/publications/?id=314 (downloaded 15.11.2005) British Medical Journals Publishing Group (2005). Clinical Evidence. http://www. clinicalevidence.com/ceweb/conditions/index.jsp (downloaded 15.11.2005). Campbell Collaboration (2005). The Education Coordinating Group. http://www. cahs.colostate.edu/r-dcenter/CCECG/home.asp (downloaded 15.11.2005). Davies, P. (1999). What is evidence-based education? British Journal of Educational Studies, 47, 2, 108-121. Everton, T., Galton, M. & Pell, T. (2000). Foster, P. (1999). ‘Never mind the quality, feel the impact’: a methodological assessment of teacher research sponsored by the Teacher Training Agency. British Journal of Educational Studies, 47, 4, 380-398. Hagger, h. & McIntyre, D. (2000). What can research tell us about teacher education? Oxford Review of Education, 26, 3-4, 483-494. Hammersley, M. (1997). Educational research and teaching: A response to David Hargreaves’ TTA lecture. British Educationl Research Journal, 23, 2, 141-162. Hargreaves, D. (1996). Teaching as a research-based profession: possibilities and prospects. London: Teacher Training Agency. Hargreaves, D. (1997). In defence of research for evidence-based teaching: A rejoinder to Martyn Hammersley. British Educational Research Journal, 23, 4, 405- 419. Hargreaves, D. (1999a). The knowledge-creating school. British Journal of Educational Studies, 47, 2, 122-144. Hargreaves, D. (1999b). Revitalizing educational research: lessons from the past and proposals for the future. Cambridge Journal of Education, 29, 2, 239-249. Howe, K.R. (2005). The education science question: A symposium. Educational Theory, 55, 3, 235-321. Kennedy, M. (1999). A test of some contentions about educational research. American Educational Research Journal, 36, 3, 511-541. Tonelli, M.R. (1998). The philosophical limits of evidence-based medicine. Academic Medicine, 73, 12, 1234-1240. Training & Development Agency for Schools (2005). Qualifying to teach. Professional standards for qualifi ed teacher status and requirements for initial teacher Agora nr. 8 – tidsskrift for forskning, udvikling og idà ©udveksling i professioner www.cvustork.dk/agora 100 training. Department for education and skills, London (downloaded 15 November, 2005, from www.tda.gov.uk). Briskman, L. (2001) ‘A Moral Crisis for Social Work: Critical Practice & Codes of Ethics’ in Critical Social Work, vol2, no1. pp1-9 Golberg, D.T. (2002) The Racial State. Blackwell. Oxford/Massachusetts Golberg, D.T. (1993) Racist Culture. Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Blackwell. Oxford/Massachusetts Lemert, C. (1999) ‘A World of Differences: What if it’s So? How will we know?’ in O’Brien, M., Penna, S. and Hay, C. (eds) Theorising Modernity. Reflexivity, Environment and Identity in Giddens’ Social Theory. Longman. London and New York. pp179-206 Leonard, P. (1997) Postmodern Welfare: Reconstructing an Emancipatory Project, Sage, London O’Brien, M and Penna, S. (1998) Theorising Welfare. Enlightenment and Modern Society. Sage, London O’Brien, M and Penna, S. (1996) ‘Postmodern Theory and Politics: Perspectives on Citizenship and Social Justice’ in Innovation, vol 9, no 2, pp185-203 Parton, N. (2000) ‘Some Thoughts on the Relationship between Theory and Practice in and for Social Work’, Brt. Jnl of Social Work, 30, 449-463 Penna, S., O’Brien, M. and Hay, C. (1999) ‘Introduction’ in O’Brien, M., Penna, S. and Hay, C. (eds) Theorising Modernity. Reflexivity, Environment and Identity in Giddens’ Social Theory. Longman. London and New York Penna, S. and O’Brien, M. (1996/7) ‘Inequality, transformation and Political Agency: reflections on Theresa Ebert’s red feminismn’ in Rethinking Marxism, vol 9, no 3, pp95-102 Phelan, P. and Reynolds, P. (1996) Argument and Evidence. Critical analysis for the social sciences. Routledge, London. Roedeger, D. (1994) Towards the Abolition of Whiteness. Verso, London, New York. Seidman, S. (1994) The Post-modern Turn. New Perspectives on Social Theory. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Taylor, G. (1993) ‘Challenges from the Margins’ in Clarke, J. (ed) A Crisis in Care? Challenges to Social Work. Sage, London. Thomson, A. (1996) Critical Reasoning. A practical introduction. Routledge, London. Trevillion, S. (2000) ‘Social Work Research: What Kind of Knowledge/Knowledges? An Introduction to the Papers’, Brt. Jnl of Social Work, 30, 429-432 Sue Penna, Ph.D. can be contacted via e-mail at: S.Penna@lancaster.ac.uk

Intellectual Property Issues - Software Piracy - why is it widespread, Essay

Intellectual Property Issues - Software Piracy - why is it widespread, what are the ethically flawed justifications people use f - Essay Example (Besen and Raskind, 1991) Software piracy may involve the distribution of unlicensed copies of proprietary software on floppy disk, CDs, hard drives, or file sharing programs and websites on the internet. Many of the instances of software piracy involve computer hacking activities where these programs are altered so that users can install and operate them on private computers without registered serial numbers, licenses, or keys. The advantage for the software pirates and their community of users is that they can enjoy all of the powerful functionality of advanced proprietary software applications without having to purchase them. For students learning these programs, the poor, unemployed, or citizens of other countries who may enjoy a minimal standard of living, software piracy may be the only way to afford or have access to these programs. Due to these issues and others revolving around software patents, there is an increasing movement to develop open source software platforms with a ll of the functionality of proprietary applications but freely distributed to download. The question of software piracy relates fundamentally to digital culture and hacking, making the issue a vital part of understanding this subculture internationally. Software Piracy & Intellectual Property File sharing and software piracy actually predated the internet and has been around nearly as long as people have been programming computers. Software is licensed under standard intellectual property, copyright, and business law, usually including a user agreement with the terms and conditions of use stipulated in advance that the customer must accept. Intellectual property law turns source code into licensed property that can be protected from theft under a common law basis. (Besen and Raskind, 1991) Therefore, the legal argument established under the current combination of copyright and intellectual property laws creates the crime of software piracy for anyone attempting to circumvent license d use by distributing cracked versions of the software that can be installed on a computer without paying. The legal argument includes the fact that the software pirate is denying the payment due for the licensed software to the company that developed it, thus weakening its business plan and sustainability. The loss of ROI therefore constitutes a criminal act, similar to copying a videotape and selling it or airing a movie without paying royalties, etc. (Besen and Raskind, 1991) The software pirates themselves refute this by pointing out that they are not necessarily costing the developing companies any income, because people who can afford it or who need licensed copies in enterprise or academia will purchase it anyway. They state rather that software piracy empowers the poor people who would otherwise be without tools and at a competitive disadvantage due to their socio-economic status. This â€Å"Robin Hood† argument can be persuasive as well, because the cost to make a di gital copy of a software title is essentially zero. (Boyle, 2004) File Sharing & Digital Culture Digital culture views hackers as heroes and the â€Å"

European Union Legislation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

European Union Legislation - Essay Example According to the report findings European social model has been directed toward new investments in the skills of Europeans so they will be able to compete more efficiently in national and global labor market. According to Barcelona European Council, sound social, policy is based upon several elements: economic performance, steadfast social protection and social dialogue. The welfare state should induce its citizens to work as the work according to the statements of Barcelona Council is the best guarantee of social participation. As the paper stresses many aspects of the social policy are defined by individual states: the question is whether it is possible to establish effective common social policy of the European Union. As the Union consists of many nations with various historic past and consequently different economic and social conditions, it is imperative to take into account these differences in the developing of social policy of the European countries, however at the same time some basic common social standards that must be followed by all European members are also required, as these states face many common social problems as well. Ageing of the population. Some persons claim that it is one of the greatest social challenges that EU countries currently face. European countries try to resolve these problems by implementing new programs aimed to increase labor participation of older people and reforming new social protection legislations. In spite of the fact that EU countries are trying to promote active ageing of its workforce, (attracting more people to enter and stay in employment) recent protests in several EU countries show that this decision will not be accepted universally. As population of EU continue to grow and fewer younger workers will be entering labor market, another possibility of resolving this crisis-immigration is being studied. However, in order to be successful more active approach is needed as EU still lacks common immigration policy as well. With high level of emigration from new EU countries, this problem has been partly resolved in few states with booming economies such as UK and Ireland. Social rights of migrant workers, who work in various countries have been protected by Regulation 1408/ 71 and 574/72. 3 In order to resolve the second problem, European Social Fund has been created. The main goal of this fund is to increase participation rates of population in labor markets in various countries.4 However, one should take into account the fact that regulations mentioned do not substitute national ones, but rather coordinate them. All nations have right to determine specific elements of their national social systems, provided that they are based on the equality of the treatment and non discrimination approach. EC treaty provides several levels of legislation aimed to guarantee equal treatments of all persons- men and women in the labor market, assure anti-discrimination approach, facilitate free movement of people and protect workers from various hazardous working conditions as well as provide them with detailed information on various

Flying Buttresses and Their Significance in the Structural System Essay

Flying Buttresses and Their Significance in the Structural System Utilized at the Notre Dame Cathedral - Essay Example Even though scholars mention the flying buttress in the late Gothic period, it was until the mid 19th century (1858) that Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Du, a French theorist and architect discussed in details its significance in buildings. Georg Ungerwitter later used graphic statistics towards the late 19th century devoting his effort to the role of flying buttress to the Gothic buildings. Notre Dame Cathedral located on eastern part of Ile de la Cite, Paris France, is the most notable and among the first Gothic buildings in the world to employ the flying buttress, according to Toker (31). This paper seeks to explore the structural significance of flying buttress in Notre Dame Cathedral. Flying Buttress Flying buttress, according to Dietsch, is a masonry structure consisting of a bar that inclines and carried a half arch extending from upper section of a wall to piers (7). Flying buttress mainly carries the vault or the roof and is mainly associated with the Gothic architecture. Flying buttress plays a crucial role in a building in the sense that it provides resistance to the lateral forces thrusting a wall outwards. In this case, flying buttress provides strong resistance by redirecting the lateral forces to the ground, notes Dietsch (8). ... The centering plays a crucial role of proving support to the weight of the building materials used on the walls such as stones, as well as maintain the arch’s shape until that time that the mortar dries up. Carpenters first construct the centering on the ground after which it is hoisted into position and tightened to the piers at both end of buttress. According to Dietsch, the centering is used as temporary flying buttress until the completion of the actual stone arch (9). Analysis of the use of flying buttress in the Notre Dame Cathedral Paris Kleiner claims that the Notre Dame Cathedral Paris is one of the most famous and among the first ever buildings of the Gothic era to use the flying buttress (468). Used as the Catholic diocese of Paris, Notre Dame Cathedral signifies the greatest example of the French Gothic architecture in the world. Kleiner reveals that the building was saved from the verge of collapse during the French Revolution by the French theorist and architect Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Du (468). The construction of the Notre Dame Cathedral spans the Gothic period. The structure of the building shows the great influence of naturalism seen in the manner its stained classes and sculptures are built. As earlier stated, Notre Dame Cathedral Paris was among the first buildings to employ flying buttress. According to Toker, the building was not originally designed to have flying buttress around the naves and choir (32). However, after the beginning of its construction, its thinner walls began growing higher. This created a lot of stress resulting in the development of fractures on the walls. To strengthen the walls and the entire structure, architects introduced flying buttress around the outside walls to provide support to the building structure

Condition Monitoring Photovoltaic Energy Systems-based reliability Research Paper

Condition Monitoring Photovoltaic Energy Systems-based reliability - Research Paper Example Major PV Modules and Types Solar energy is considered as a major basis of renewable and sustainable power which can be effectively generated through the utilisation of the PV method. The PV system consists of constructing blocks which are also termed as modules or cells that are connected together and is able to transform ‘sunlight into electricity’. According to Chow, PV system generates low Green House Gas (GHG) emission and is also recognised as a clean basis of energy. PV system is developed by assimilating variety of semiconductor materials so as to generate power with high capacity. There are four major types of PV modules which are ‘crystalline silicon’, ‘polycrystalline’, ‘amorphous silicon module’ and ‘thin-film module’. Every PV modules have diverse efficiencies owing to which the overall performance of these PV modules tend to rely on the ingredients as well as the operating situations based on various factor s such as temperature, intensity of solar radioactivity and the inclusive design of the system. Furthermore, the orientation and location of PV array also creates a significant impact on the electricity production capacity through the usage of solar energy depending on the weather conditions. The four major types of PV modules, i.e. crystalline silicon, polycrystalline, amorphous silicon and thin film (Chow, â€Å"Modeling Urban Solar Energy with High Spatiotemporal Resolution†). As stated by Mangersnes, Crystalline PV modules are frequently specified as being the most reliable component of the PV system. This presumable reliability is demonstrated through its large warranty periods. Crystalline Silicon PV is the most extensively used PV technology. It is developed through solar cells made by ‘crystalline silicon’. This type of cells is equipped with high level of affectivity and thus is also regarded as an interesting technology. In general, there are two kinds of solar cells which are ‘mono-crystalline silicon’ and ‘multi-crystalline silicon’. Mono-crystalline silicon is developed by cutting wafers from high clarity single crystal lump. Similarly, the multi-crystalline silicon is developed by cutting a cast tablet of silicon into blocks and wafers. In general, mono-crystalline silicon cells have much higher effectiveness in comparison to multi-crystalline silicon solar cells. The crystal type module usually applied for this technology is iron glass which is combined with anti-reflective layer, to make sure that the maximum solar radioactivity spreads to the crystalline solar cells and thus the energy generating capacity can be enhanced (Mangersnes, â€Å"Back-contacted Back-junction Silicon Solar Cells†). Polycrystalline PV modules include small silicon glass pieces. Polycrystalline is generally used for developing gate constituents in semiconductor devices. Polycrystalline modules are most commonly used f or generating electricity, as it is considered to be quite inexpensive in comparison with other PV modules. The reason for polycrystalline modules to be inexpensive is owing to its production procedure. In the production process of polycrystalline, the melted silicon is dispensed into a cast rather than into one single crystal. The components of polycrystallin

Intrinsic Value of Boeing Company Research Paper

Intrinsic Value of Boeing Company - Research Paper Example It is the chief leader in innovation and aerospace products and services. The demands of the customers made the company continue to expand its products and services such as development, design, support, sales and manufacture of commercial jetliners, satellites, military aircraft, missile defense, launch systems and services and human space flight (Intrinsic Value of Boeing Company, 2010). The company expanded to include in their services the creation of new and more proficient commercial airplanes. They included to integrate military platforms and defense systems and create advanced technology resolutions (Boeing in Brief, 2011). The company operates in Chicago with more than 165,000 employees across the United States and other countries (Boeing in Brief, 2011). Most of their employees are college degree holders, with those advanced degrees in technical and business fields thus making the company one of the most diverse in terms of talent and capabilities word wide. Boeing has been categorized into two business units namely, Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Boeing Defense, Space and Security (Boeing in Brief, 2011). Boeing Capital Corporation provides for the financial solutions of the two business units (Boeing in Brief, 2011). ... The direct competitors of Boeing are the following companies: European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, Lockheed Martin Corporation and Northrop Grumman Corporation. Lockheed Martin Corporation or LMT has a market capital of 24.40B, while Northrop Grumman Corporation has 15.28B (Direct Competitor Comparison, n.d.). Boeing and ABC Activity-Based Costing or ABC is a â€Å"method of attributing costs to products based on first assigning costs of resources to activities and then costs of activities to products† (Activity-Based Costing and Quality Management, n.d., p. 453). This method is one of the foremost developments in product costing. As stated in Chapter 8 of Activity-Based Costing and Quality Management, this method is considered as more accurate but requires more time and expense. A research study was conducted to Boeing Commercial Airplane Group (BCAG) in Wichita Division in 1999 to 2000. Paduano, Harris, and Gershenfeld (2000) believed that the Activity-Based Costin g method is worth the study due to its great interest on Boeing’s lean practices involving cost of production and services. With this study, the researchers wanted to find out the effects of using the ABC method and its benefit to the company bearing in mind that ABC management will lead to a more accurate allocation of company’s charges and improvement on costs. According to Paduano, Harris, and Gershenfeld (2000), motivation for the application of ABC rooted from the fact that the method recognizes the true costs which will help the leaders or managers in decision making such as in manufacturing. This method also helps the managers truly understand that in making their critical choices, they

Hospitality and Tourism Strategic Planning Essay

Hospitality and Tourism Strategic Planning - Essay Example The rooms of this hotel had the facility of running water, though cold, and the air condition luxury in its public rooms. It was in the year 1947 when a hotel named Roosevelt Hilton was launched at New York City. This hotel pioneered in providing its guest rooms with televisions. By the year 1948, the Hilton Hotel was identified as the first hotel company to come up with the new system of multi–hotel reservation. This gave birth to the modern reservation system that is used today (Hilton Worldwide, 2012). As years passed, the company paced up its innovations and came up with new concepts and approaches every now and then. The introduction of sewing kit and a booklet containing important and useful names and numbers for the female travellers brought the company to limelight. Improvement in its technical side is characterized by the â€Å"brand–wide direct telephone service† launched by the company in the year 1957. The introduction of airport hotel based concept w as cheered by the business purpose travellers. Hilton came up with its first Airport hotel in the year 1963, the San Francisco Airport Hilton and was a pioneer in this approach. Ten years down the line from this period, i.e., by 1973 Hilton once again came up with an innovative idea of centralized reservation system making a breakthrough improvement in its customer care service (Hilton Worldwide, 2012). Again in the year 1987, Hilton was seen to introduce its first program for guest loyalty called the Hilton HHonors (Hilton Worldwide, 2012). It was later in the year 2008, when Hilton Vancouver Washington made history by being certified by both Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) along with Green Seal (Hilton Worldwide, 2012). Its latest development was in the year 2010 with the launch of the spa facility at various locations such as the United States, China and Thailand (Hilton Worldwide, 2012). This paper intends to analyze the various strategies and the impacts of internal and external environment on Hilton Hotels & Resorts. An effort to develop a strategic plan emphasizing on the risk management factor of business strategy shall also be one of the highlighting sections of the paper. Environmental Analysis of Hilton Hotels & Resorts The purchasing of medium and small–sized hotels has been in Hilton’s practice right from 1970s. The attention towards acquiring a huge amount of real estate was the main focus of Hilton. The lodging assets of Hilton Group Plc amounted to GBP 3.3 billion in the year 2006, thus making Hilton the largest company in the field of lodging (United States Securities and Exchange Commission, 2005). There has been a recent change in trend of the company and it has shifted to expand its operations by the process of franchising instead of merely acquiring real estates. This company mainly operates in the United States but also has its presence in various other major city locations such as Sao Paulo, Toronto, Lo ndon, Sydney, Paris, Shanghai, Rome, Stockholm and Beijing (HotelsGrid, 2012). It was in the year 2007 when Hilton Hotel was acquired by the Blackstone Group for money worth of US$20.1 billion (Morrison, 2007). Prior to the event of

Why the suicide rate is high for teenagers Essay

Why the suicide rate is high for teenagers - Essay Example However, despite suicide being one of the leading causes of deaths there has been little effort to address the menace as used in other causes such as heart diseases, cancer, HIV/Aids and so on (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention 1). Although suicide is preventable, either there is little understanding or loss of concern about its causes and the prevention measures to be applied. This document examines the major causes and the interventions appropriate to reduce the prevalence of suicide among the teenagers. There are various issues responsible for the prevalence of suicide among the teenagers that respective stakeholders need to understand and address clearly in order to reduce the suicide. Depression and other mental disorders are some of the major causes of suicide among teenagers. The mental disorders and depression are caused by various factors especially among the young generation (Huisman, Pirkis and Robinson 282). For example, abuse of drugs, social rejection, domestic conflicts, sexual abuse, academic failure, etc. When teenagers encounter challenges that make them feel demoralized, they are most likely to suffer depression and other mental disorders (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention 1). Depression and mental disorders can result in suicide as teenagers seek for a solution to their problems. In every successful suicide, there are between 8 and 25 attempted suicides (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention 1). The teenagers who undergo treatment after attempted suic ide respond positively to antidepressants. Therefore, it is essential for the people relatives, friends and neighbors to recognize any behavioral change that could result in depression and other mental disorders and address them before they cause teenagers to commit suicide. In American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the use of antidepressants has been reported to lower the rate of suicide among the teenagers (1). Most of

Native Americans in the United States and African Americans Essay Example for Free

Native Americans in the United States and African Americans Essay Introduction Joel Spring’s Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality examines the educational policies in the United States that have resulted in intentional patterns of oppression by Protestant, European Americans against racial and ethnic groups. The historical context of the European American oppressor is helpful in understanding how the dominant group has manipulated the minority groups. These minority groups include Americans who are Native, African, Latin/Hispanic, and Asian. Techniques for deculturalization were applied in attempts to erase the oppressed groups’ previous identities and to assimilate them into society at a level where they could be of use to the oppressors. Techniques include isolation from family, replacement of language, denial of education, inclusion of dominant group world view, and provision of inferior teachers and poor facilities. Relationships between educational policy and instances of racism and patterns of oppression are explored in the following. A section will also compare my prior education to the one presented in Spring’s book. Formatting Understanding how European Americans have been able to perceive themselves as superior in psychological, spiritual, racial, and cultural terms is integral to seeing how cultural genocide has occurred in the United States. The basic program is taken from the Roman Imperium which delegates the authority to civilize others by erasing their laws and culture and simultaneously or subsequently installing new laws and mores from the dominant group into the minority group. This plan has been applied by U. S. educators and politicians in an attempt to carry out a perceived upgrade from an inferior cultural program to the superior Anglo-Saxon mixed with Protestantism point of view. This civilized versus uncivilized and Christian versus Pagan viewpoints reveal themselves throughout the history of U. S. education. Native Americans In the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Native Americans were granted citizenship by the descendants of European immigrants who invaded their territory over 400 years ago. In the years before and after 1924, Native Americans have experienced cultural genocide, deculturalization, and denial of education (Spring, 2010, pp. 8-9). For example, the Naturalization Act of 1790 excluded Native Americans from citizenship, thus preventing them from having a political voice in their rapidly changing world. In 1867, the Indian Peace Commission made 2 requirements for U. S. citizenship: 1) rejection of native religions and 2) acceptance of middle-class American Christianity. The bases of a philosophy that uses superiority and inferiority include racial, linguistic and cultural differences. For European American educators, the â€Å"civilizing† of Native Americans included the installing of a work ethic, the creation of desire to accumulate property; the repression of pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure; the establishment of a nuclear family structure with the father in control; the implementation of authoritarian child-rearing practices; and conversion to Christianity (p. 14). The U. S. government’s program of Native American deculturalization was developed in part because it was less costly than fighting and killing them. Thomas Jefferson’s civilization program called for government agents to establish schools to teach women to spin and sew and men farming and husbandry (p. 18). Educational policies such as this set the stage for purchasing land and avoiding costly wars. In 1830, the Indian Removal Act authorized the President to set aside lands west of the Mississippi for exchange of Indian Land east of the Mississippi (p. 28). Cultural-ecological theory puts Native Americans in the category of involuntary minorities. They were conquered and forced into European American customs and beliefs. Replacing the use of native languages with English, destroying Indian customs and teaching allegiance to the U. S. government became major educational policies of the U. S. government toward Indians in the latter part of the 19th century. An important part of these educational policies was the boarding school designed to remove children from their families at an early age and thereby isolate them from the language and customs of their parents and tribes (p. 32). The Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, PA became the first boarding school for Native American children in 1879. Here deculturalization methods were employed. From this methodology and perspective, the patronizing term cultural deprivation has come to imply that a group is without culture altogether (Nieto and Bode, 2008, p. 176). One of the perceived deficiencies of Native Americans was their propensity to share which caused the European Americans to label them as socialists which was anathema to the dominant group’s philosophy. Richard Pratt, the founder of the Carlisle School, sought to instill individualism and self responsibility in order to break Indians from a socialist style of sharing. All boarding and reservation schools taught in English with exceptions including some Choctaw and Cherokee schools that utilized bilingual education. In 1928, the Meriam Report reversed the philosophy that isolation of children was required. The new view was that education should occur in one’s family and community. Several decades later, from 1968 to 1990, a number of legislative acts addressed the mistakes of deculturalization. It was not until 1974 that Indian students were granted freedom of religion and culture by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Later, in 1978, Congress granted all Native Americans religious freedom. The Native American Languages Act of 1990 commits the U. S. government to reverse its historic position which was to erase and replace Native American culture. However, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 reverses attempts to preserve usage of minority languages (Spring, 2010, p. 135). The destruction of cultural self determination for Native American Indians is saddening. By breaking their connection to their native culture through reeducation camps, European Americans justified a world view that saw color of skin and dogma as beacons of superiority. African Americans. Historically, Africans have been involuntary immigrants who were brought to the U. S. to be slaves. They have faced numerous forms of educational oppression based upon perceived racial differences. For example, from 1800 to 1835, education of enslaved Africans was banned. Spring notes that plantation owners were in constant fear of slave revolts and consequently denied their workers any form of education (p. 43). Furthermore, because of the need for children as farm laborers, planters resisted most attempts to expand educational opportunities for black children (p. 57). Schools for African Americans were underfunded after the Civil War (Nieto and Bode, 2008, p. 44). Segregation of blacks and whites was the order of the day for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This resulted in a racial divide, unequal school funding, and inferior facilities. An exception to segregated schooling occurred in 1855 in Massachusetts when it became a requirement to integrate schools. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment included a clause that appeared to disallow segregation. However this clause has been used to implement segregation in schools also. African Americans from northern states helped those in the transition from slavery to freedom. However there was a division between the philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. Washington negotiated for segregated schools while Du Bois, in 1909, formed the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) which worked for desegregation (Spring, 2010, p. 52). Washington established the Tuskegee Institute in 1881 after attending the Hampton Institute which was founded by General Samuel Armstrong. The Hampton Institute was an educational model designed to keep blacks subordinate. The primary purpose of the Tuskegee Institute was to prepare freed slaves to be teachers who could instill work values in other freed slaves (p. 33). The Tuskegee Institute received support from Industrialist Andrew Carnegie who saw the apartheid model in South Africa as a format for educating black southerners. Conversely, Du Bois and the NAACP fought against the status quo of a permanent African American underclass in education and the economy (p. 62). It was not until 1954 that the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. The court ruled that separate but equal has no place in education. The separate but equal legislation was from the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, established the precedent for using disbursement of government money as a means of controlling educational policies (p. 117). Additionally, much credit is given to Martin Luther King Jr. for helping move forward civil rights legislation of 1964. The Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, in the 1950s and 1960s respectively, gave African Americans political equality as well as the right to vote. African Americans have made significant gains in the past 100 years; however, the pace of change has been painfully slow. The election of a part African American President is a strong indication that we as a country have come a long way. Hispanic/Latino Americans After the conquest of Mexican and Puerto Rican lands, the U. S. government instituted deculturalization programs to ensure that these new populations would not rise up against their new government (p. 84). As with other groups, the Naturalization Act of 1790 blocked them from attaining citizenship because they were not white. Despite the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 1948, Mexican Americans were not given actual citizenship. Citizenship rights were abridged throughout the Southwest through limitations placed on voting rights and segregation in public accommodations and schooling (p. 89). Moreover, in many instances, U. S. farmers did not want the children of Mexicans to go to school, because they wanted them to work longer hours. Mexican students were forced to speak English in schools. In the last half of the nineteenth century, Mexican Americans tried to escape the anti-Mexican attitudes by attending Catholic schools. Here linguistic diversity was respected. Puerto Rico became a colony of the United States in 1898. Again, as with Native American Indians, government policy concluded that it was less costly to instill and replace culture in Puerto Rican schools than it was to employ force with the military. Teachers who only spoke English came from the U. S. to teach students who mainly spoke Spanish. U. S. educational policy in Puerto Rico attempted to replace Spanish with English as the majority language and to introduce children to the dominant U. S. culture (p. 100). Examples of deculturalization methods included U. S. flag ceremonies and studies focusing on the traditions of the dominant white culture of the United States. In 1912, the Puerto Rican Teachers Association resisted the educational policies of the U. S. and defended the use of Spanish in school. One’s native language is the foundation for future learning (Nieto and Bode, 2008, p. 235). In 1951, after 50 years of struggle, Puerto Rico became a commonwealth. Subsequently, Spanish was once again used in the schools without the dogma of English only laws. Additionally, in 1968, the Bilingual Education Act was passed. It was not until 1974 that the Equal Educational Opportunities Act gave protection to the language rights of students for whom English is not their native language (p. 243). Presently, there are many voluntary immigrants from Latin America. These students are often faced with an assimilation policy which is aimed at Americanizing them. Frequently hybridity is the order of the day for these students. Only blind arrogance could make a dominant group believe that they could go to an island of Spanish-speaking people and teach them a new culture in a new language. As with other groups, the denial of schooling or segregation was maintained in order to continue subordinating the minority. Asian Americans Asian Americans, many of whom were voluntary immigrants, include persons from China, Philippines, Japan, Korea, India, Viet Nam, Laos, Thailand and other counties. The combination of racism and economic exploitation resulted in educational policies designed to deny Asians schooling or to provide segregated schools (Spring, 2010, p. 68). In 1872 the California school code provided no public education for Asian Americans while in 1906, the San Francisco School Board created segregated schools for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean students. Finally, in 1974, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Chinese American parents in Lau v. Nichols. The decision required public schools to provide special assistance to non-English-speaking students to learn English so that they could equally participate in the educational process (p. 124). Each group of minority Americans has pushed for improvements in the educational system. By persevering, they have been able to move toward a more equitable educational system. However, there is still the dominant European American paradigm in place. As the percentage of minority Americans rises in the coming decades, I believe we will see a movement toward a more multicultural paradigm. Personal Comparisons My early education took place in an environment of white teachers and students. The furthest my exposure to different cultures went was going to school and growing up with my Catholic and Jewish neighbors. My elementary school and middle school were 100% white and my high school had 2 Hispanic students. For me, this was normal; I knew little of other cultures. When I reflect on my American History and Social Studies classes, I recall a sanitized story presented with many stories about honorable white men. Although I finished my high school education in 1977, I do not believe that Martin Luther King Jr. or Civil Rights was mentioned once. Moreover, a great deal of social upheaval obviously was occurring; however, the only topic related to the turmoil of the era that made it to my awareness was the war in Viet Nam. After high school, I attended a small private college in Pennsylvania where approximately 30 African Americans and 10 Hispanic students attended. I was acquainted with one of the Hispanic students who had a poster of Che Guevara in his room. All of my professors were apparently European Americans and I continued to study mostly dominant culture stories. Recognizing my own lack of personal direction, I dropped out of school and entered into my own version of home schooling. I purchased a bus ticket for Tucson, Arizona; however, I first stopped in Washington D. C. to visit my Aunt. She took me to a book store where I bought some philosophy books. I explored different philosophies and literature. I travelled, worked, read and explored my values and beliefs. I returned to my home town, Lancaster, PA, and decided to return to formal University life at Millersville State University. From 1984-1987, I again had European American professors. In 1991, I reentered Millersville University to take some graduate courses. I looked into getting a graduate assistantship and found an opening in a program called Upward Bound. I interviewed with the director, whom I knew from earlier years, and with a Filipino and African American student. I got the position and subsequently was working in a multicultural enterprise. I prepared lessons for high school children from multiple ethnic groups. The reason Spring’s history of minority Americans was not part of my education was because I was raised in a racially homogenous region. I think that I could have driven east 20 miles, south 15 miles or north 5 miles and everybody would have been white. Going west 2 miles would take me into the middle of Lancaster city where many African Americans and Puerto Rican Americans live. However, I lived a provincial life and did not interact much with people from other cultures in my youth. Furthermore, it was standard policy at that time to teach from a Eurocentric point of views. The effect on White Americans of an Anglocentric and Eurocentric perspective, which does not include minority Americans, is an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of self and world. The effects on minority Americans also leads to an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of self and world include, as well as increased dropout rates and resistance to education. Additionally, cultural discontinuities may contribute to negative academic outcomes (Nieto and Bode, 2008, pp 181-182). Another effect on minority Americans is clearly a net feeling of not being included in the past and possibly being excluded from present and future events. Exclusion’s result is well described in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. In this book, the narrator is unable to be seen or recognized because he is black. From Spring’s book I learned about the many minority groups that were mistreated and intentionally harmed at personal and cultural levels. Furthermore, I was ignorant about the attempts at deculturalization of Puerto Ricans. Additionally, I knew little about the detailed history of denying education to Asian and Mexican Americans. While I knew about reeducation and denial of education of Native and African Americans, I did not know the extent to which political, economic, and social forces combined to prevent these groups from experiencing their historical culture or from participating in the dominant, European American culture. Conclusion European Americans have quashed cultures in the United States through education. Native American, African, Hispanic, and Asian minorities have witnessed a persistent attack on their beliefs, values, and languages by those who either 1) thought that they were better or 2) wanted to deprive others of their pursuit of happiness in order to support economic and political position. Consistent deculturalization efforts were made toward Native Americans by government agents establishing schools for Native Americans and by boarding schools. By controlling the content and context in which education took place, U. S. educators suffocated Native American Culture and resuscitated it with the European mores. The multiple cultures of Americans from African descent were hollowed through denial of education, physical intimidation, segregation, and inferior facilities. Persistent attempts to correct the status quo by the NAACP, Martin Luther King Jr. , and several other organizations and individuals have moved the U. S. government to redress some inequities in the educational system. Mexican Americans were also placed in English-only schools or no school at all. During the twentieth century, Puerto Rican students faced the same threats of deculturalization as did Asian Americans in nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Legislation in the latter part of the twentieth century has also redressed some inequities in educational opportunities for these groups while, the No Child Left Behind Act has reduced some of the multicultural gains in education which disappoints many in the teaching profession. References Nieto, Sonia and Bode, Patty (2008). Affirming diversity: The sociopolitical context of multicultural education. Boston. Pearson Education Inc. Spring, Joel (2010). Deculturalization and the struggle for equality. New York. McGraw-Hill.

The Benefits of Marriage to Society

The Benefits of Marriage to Society Cheng Jiang (Fiona) Martin Behr A marriage is the relationship between two people who are willing to share life together in the future under a legal contract. Marriage is good for the couple, and it also provides the optimal conditions for bearing and raising children. However, nowadays, more and more people start to question the necessity of getting married because they believe that they dont need to get married to share life with others and they also enjoy their lifestyle. Thus, the numbers of single and cohabiting families has increased now in the society. This is because some people believe that marriage is personal. Nevertheless, marriage is the bedrock of society. Therefore, it is necessary for adults to get married for a society to remain strong because marriage helps children become more successful, creates healthy citizens, and contributes positively to the economy. First of all, in order to keep the society strong, adults should get married because marriage enhances childrens wellbeing and development. In other words, children who grow up in a two-parent family are more likely to achieve excellence in the future. In fact, children grown up with their married parents perform better in many ways. Specifically, they have greater physical, cognitive, and emotional achievements than children who grow up in other family forms. (Ribar 12). It is clear that marriage contributes to childrens future development since children who grow up in a stable family do better than others. Some people argue that it is normal for children to live with their cohabiting parents in todays society and they are able to promote health and development. According to Wendy D. Manning, stable cohabiting families with two biological parents seem to offer many of the same health, cognitive, and behavioral benefits that stable married biological parent families provide, (Manning 51). The opponents idea is clear; however, they ignore the fact that cohabiting families tend to be very unstable and the family instability harms children in many ways. In fact, almost 50 percent of cohabiting couple will end relationship and separate while their children are young. And some of them will start new relationships and have other children later (McLanahan and Sawhill 3). Clearly, it shows that cohabiting families are not very stable. Cohabiting couples estimated to have higher possibility that they will separate from each other compare with married couples. More importantly, the instability tends to have great negative effects on children wellbeing. For example, living in an unstable family is greatly related to childrens poor future performances. Children who live in cohabiting families tend to see their parents separate more frequently than married families, which cause them to have long-term mental problems (Manning 51). This clear shows that childrens healthy deve lopment is greatly affected by their family stability. In other words, marriage provides a more stable family for children, which reduces the risks of children being raised in an unstable environment. Therefore, marriage benefits childrens wellbeing. The positive effect of marriage for childrens well-being is clear, but more importantly, marriage helps society to create healthier citizens. Some people argue that marriage cannot create healthier citizens because married people more likely to be obese, which is not related to health. Based on a study done by CDC, married people have higher chance of becoming obese. To be more specific, the percent of married men who have greater possibility of becoming obese after getting married is up to 20, compared with single men (Oliwenstein 37). The opponents point is clear; nevertheless, it is deficient as it overlooks the benefits of marriage towards peoples health. For example, married people are healthier because they are less likely to have serious health problems like cancers. Based on research done by U.S. cancer centers by analyzing the medical records of 734,889 patients who were suffered from one of the 10 most common and deadliest forms of cancer between 2004 and 2008, the numbers of singles who have higher risks of suffering from metastatic cancer is up to 17 percent, which could spread from one organ to another, and 53 percent have lower possibility to receive the best therapy (Lunau 50). This demonstrates that married people are healthier in a way that they have lower risks of having serious cancers. Moreover, according to a 2013 study published in Annals of Behavioral Medicine, Peter Martin, a professor who works at human department and family studies at Iowa State University, and his co-author found that unmarried people have twice the risk of dying early compared with married people (Sifferlin 94). It clearly shows that marriage has significant benefits on peoples health, which reduces the risks of having serious diseases and improves longevity. Therefore, marriage creates healthy citizens, which allows society to remain strong. Despite the benefits to children and health, some opponents argue that getting married cannot strengthen the society because compared to singles, married people contribute less to economy. This is because singles tend to have higher purchasing power than married people. Single people are more likely to eat out, exercise in gyms, take classes, attend public events and volunteer than married people says Eric Klinenberg, an American sociologist who teaches at New York University, Single people fuel the economy and spend more discretionary dollars than those who live with a partner or have children (Klinenberg 128). It is clear that single people spend more money on their personal interests since they dont have to worry about their partner. The opponents idea may be true, but it is insufficient as it overlooks the benefit of marriage towards the economy. This is because economy is not just about its purchasing power. For example, married people contribute more to economy because they typ ically have higher level of household income. Based on a report done by an economist named Adam Thomas and Isabel Sawhill, a senior editor of Future of Children, in 2003, single mother and cohabiting families had 37 and 61 percent of the salaries of married-people households (Ribar 17). This clearly shows that married people have more stable and high-paying jobs, which contributes to economic growth. Moreover, the economic level of married people is higher than others. In Why Marriage Matters for Child Wellbeing, David C. Ribar points out, married-parent households have more financial assets and are wealthier than other types of households, and that lone mothers and cohabiting parents have substantially fewer assets than other households. (Ribar 18). Clearly, it demonstrates that married couples enjoy relatively better quality of life, which they are wealthier than others. Since married people have better economic conditions, it helps them have less reliance on the social welfare sy stem. Thus, the society will remain stable and continue to thrive. To conclude, it is apparent that marriage keeps society strong because it helps children become more successful, improves peoples health, and contributes more to the economy. Since the number of singles in society is likely to increase, some governments make several policies that aim to encourage citizens to get married. For example, married people benefit from lower taxes; some developed countries even reward women who have children. Marriage, which means love, trust, and responsibility, provides society with more chances to be strengthened. Works Cited Klinenberg, Eric. The Solo Economy. Fortune, vol. 165, no. 2, 2012, pp. 128. EBSCOhost, http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?sid=13ca4457-4c07-492e-a882-fe9db800f4d3%40sessionmgr4007vid=3hid=4205bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=edsgaoAN=edsgcl.289999315. Accessed 15 Mar. 2017. Lunau, Kate. The New Science of Marriage. Macleans, vol. 127, no. 1, 13 Jan. 2014, pp. 50-54. EBSCOhost, http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=25sid=6235a22d-4e8d-4f0b-b3a2-8d64ac4891c1%40sessionmgr4008hid=4205bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=edsgcl.355776544db=edsgao. Accessed 12 Mar. 2017. Manning, Wendy D. Cohabitation and Child Wellbeing. Future of Children, vol. 25, no. 2, Fall 2015, pp. 51-66. EBSCOhost, http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?sid=8ab1800e-fc77-405d-acce-19343592f954%40sessionmgr104vid=0hid=119bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=110372682db=a9h. Accessed 12 Mar. 2017. Mclanahan, Sara and Isabel Sawhill. Marriage and Child Wellbeing Revisited: Introducing theIssue. Future of Children, vol. 25, no. 2, 01 Sept. 2015, pp. 3-9. EBSCOhost, http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?sid=97622ac3-4e4c-43a9-bf3b-46f49d771eb9%40sessionmgr4009vid=0hid=4205bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=ericAN=EJ1079423. Accessed 15 Mar. 2017. Oliwenstein, Lori. Please Marry Me. Time International (Atlantic Edition), vol. 171, no. 5, 04Feb. 2008, pp. 35-37. EBSCOhost, http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/[emailprotected]vid=7hid=4205bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ==#AN=28801786db=bth. Accessed 15 Mar. 2017. Ribar, David C. Why Marriage Matters for Child Wellbeing. Future of Children, vol. 25, no. 2, 01 Sept. 2015, pp. 11-23. EBSCOhost, http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=3sid=8501e7f3-73a0-4131-b5ee-1266448f8b8a%40sessionmgr101hid=119bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#db=ericAN=EJ1079374. Accessed 15 Mar. 2017. Sifferlin, Alexandra. Do Married People Really Live Longer? Time, vol. 185, no. 6/7, 23 Feb.2015, pp. 94-96. EBSCOhost, http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?sid=a49fd131-9df8-4882-8287-2a644df82302%40sessionmgr4006vid=0hid=4205bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=100945413db=a9h. Accessed 12 Mar. 2017.