What Does It Mean to Be Well Educated Essay Example for Free

What Does It Mean to Be Well Educated Essay What it is that constitutes a well-educated person is a much-debated topic. The answer to this question has got to be more than simply the amount of time that a person has spent gaining knowledge. What use is that knowledge is the person is not able to use and apply it to their everyday lives? By looking at and defining certain terms we can come to a conclusion that people who exemplify the title of being well educate are able to show some level of success in the area of their learned knowledge. There are people that have had little formal education that could be considered well-educated, while there are others who have had extensive formal education who wouldn’t be able to carry that title. A person who is considered well educated shouldn’t be able to hold that title just because they have attended a large amount of schooling. Education should be near to the heart of every person on the face of the planet. Without education of some level we’d still be hunting caribou with spears and beating two rocks together and hoping to get a spark for a fire. But the question, though, isn’t â€Å"is education important†, but rather â€Å"what constitutes a well-educated person? † This is a highly discussed topic. But I believe the answer to it is quite clear. A well-educated person is someone who can be successful in real life application of what he/she has been taught. The dictionary defines well educated as being highly educated or having extensive information or understanding. (thefreedictionary, 2012. ) It would be presumptuous to claim to be more intelligent than a dictionary, but I disagree with this definition. The key to accurately defining this term is correctly understanding one word, well. In going back to the dictionary we see that the word well is translated as meaning satisfactory. (thefreedictionary, 2012. ) We have to say that the appropriate question then is not what is well-educated person, but does this person have satisfactory education. So how do we know is a person has a satisfactory education? It has got to be more than just the amount of education or information that the given person has received. Just because a person has been in a higher education course for 10 years doesn’t mean that when a task comes up the person proves to be satisfactorily educated. Well-educated means a person has a quality education and not just a quantity of education. Two close friends of mine prove this point. Bobby is an incredible seventy-five year old man in who much is to be respected. At first glance you wouldn’t know it, but his â€Å"proper† education level only reaches the eighth grade. He was forced to drop out of school to help provide for his struggling family as a teenager. He is one of the most well respected and honored leaders in our community. Through a series of events he started a company that was very successful. His net worth is over five million dollars. Bobby’s wisdom and knowledge would take a college degree to even begin to dissect. On the other hand I have a friend named Anthony. Anthony is in his thirties and is really an incredible person. He has committed much of his life to furthering his education and now has two masters’ degrees. If Anthony were to write you a letter you wouldn’t even recognize half the words because he is such a bad speller. Also, he often seeks the guidance of others in his job because he lacks confidence to do it well in spite of his vast education. There, then, is a big difference in the definitions of the words well education and highly educated. If being well educated is more than just a great amount of knowledge given to a person, what are the signs of a well educated person? The first indicator that a person is well-educated is that they have learned how to learn. Anyone can be force feed an immense amount of information, but what really makes someone successful is being able to be a life long learner. Douglas Everett said, â€Å"A mark of a well educated person is not necessarily in knowing all of the answers, but knowing where to find them†. This describes a person who doesn’t just know stuff, but instead knows how to learn and the process it takes to do so. Another way to gauge if someone is well educated is by looking at their competency in the area of their education. It is different to be able pass a written exam on a subject and to truly understand how to apply what is that has been taught to the real world. The term well educated alludes to competency while highly educated refers to the amount of education given regardless of the retention or pplication of that knowledge. If you don’t understand what it takes to use what has been learned, then the time spent gaining the knowledge was to no avail. The last thing that for me that exemplifies a well-educated person is by looking at their level of success in their area of study. It doesn’t matter how much you know if what you know isn’t useful to make you successful. This brings the last point to a higher level. It says that you are not just competent in your understanding of a subject but you are successfully implementing that in your life. What’s the point of education if it doesn’t help us succeed in life and how can we be considered well educated if that knowledge isn’t breeding that success? If this definition of well education were adopted, would that have to change the way that students are being taught? Students need to be taught by first looking through the filter of this definition. Are these students learning the art of learning? Do these students really grasp what is being taught? Do students understand what it takes to make this principal successful in real life applications? When answering these questions, I believe it’s safe to say that most high school graduates aren’t well educated, but have rather had a lot of information given to them over a long span in a â€Å"career† of education. The key is finding the way to bring students from just â€Å"knowing facts† to being well education and successfully performing tasks that reflect that. For me, the best was to learn something well is by doing while learning. The term for this style of learning is experiential learning. But that’s just it, it takes looking at the individual student and teaching to his/her learning style and that’s not going to look the same every time. So what really is it to be well educated? In order to have a satisfactory education you must be able to perform successfully in the areas that you have been taught, if you cannot, then the time and effort put into learning was of no use. Even in stating that, I agree with Alfie Kohn in his article â€Å"What does it mean to be well educated† (2003) when he states that its really more important to figure out the qualities of a school that gives a good education instead of debating what it is to be well educated.

Identity :: Technology, SNS Profiles

Some young people create profiles as their friends have, they desire to join in their peer group and to share a common experience with their friends. Joining like-minded peers appeals to their collective self-esteem, which eventually, gives them the unexpected pleasure in expressing themselves on SNS profiles. Often, young people provide specific information (e.g., name, birthdate, relationship status) on SNS, although such disclosure is often considered as personalized. Profile generation is an explicit act of writing oneself into being a digital environment (Boyd D., 2008) and participants must determine how they want to present themselves to those who may view their self-representation or those they wish might. With the ability to post, share and tag photos on SNS represents an important advancement in the ability to communicate. Before, if one wanted to share digital photos, one had to email everyone to let them know. With SNS and News Feeds, when one post new photos on Facebook, the friends get automatically notified in their News Feed. People will see the photos on the wall when they visit the profile page. Apart from being a place for self-presentations, profiles are a place where people gather to converse and share. Conversations happen on profiles and a person's profile reflects their engagements. Consequently, young people do not have complete control over their identities. Users are asked to invite their friends to the SNS once they have create their profiles. When relationship is confirmed, the two become Friends in SNS and their relationship is included in the public ‘News Feed’ wall. These four features – profiles, photos, friends and news feed - differentiate Facebook from other types of computer-mediated communication. Many young people join SNS to maintain connections with their friends. While viewing profiles, they are given links to their friends’ friends and so they can spend hours surfing the network, clicking from ‘Friend’ to ‘Friend’. By looking at others’ profiles, young people often get a sense of what types of presentations are socially appropriate; others’ profiles provide critical cues about what to present on their own profile. (Boyd D., 2008) Many young people also manipulate the profiles to express themselves with the choice of pictures and the answers to questions. As Manuel Castells (1997) points out, identity is people’s source of meaning and experience. From a sociological perspective, humans come into the world with an identity based on qualities such as their gender, race, family’s economic status, etc.

Irony in Guy de Maupassant’s “The Jewelry”” Essay

Introduction â€Å"Expect the unexpected,† is something that I heard many times. We should follow this rule while reading different genres of writing, because writers use irony to keep readers’ attention, and make their works more interesting. This research paper deals with one of Guy de Maupassant’s short story â€Å"The Jewelry† and with his virtuous ability to use irony in it. It is sometimes said that we live in an age of irony. Because nowadays even politicians in their speeches use ironical device, in order to catch attention of society. Barry Brummet (expert in Techniques of Close Reading) in one of his speech mentioned that â€Å"Irony is a kind of winking at each other, as we all understand the game of meaning reversal that is being played.† The story was first published in Maupassant’s short-story collection â€Å"Contes du jour et de la nuit† in 1885. Since that time people have been reading it, and it won popularity among them. So it has a lot of interesting opinions and analysis which were made by famous critics and writers like Leo Tolstoy. Maupassant is considered one of the finest short story writers of all time and a champion of the realist approach to writing. â€Å"The Jewelry† is interesting to read because it contains irony. Irony has always been fascinating object to study, and it is widely known and popular  to use in modern time as in literature so in speech. It is splendid story; despite of being short it has deep sense and contains interesting topics to discuss. In â€Å"The Jewelry† reader can see what ironical games life can play with us and to what conclusion it can lead us. Chapter I Irony The Greek etymology of the word irony, ÃŽ µÃŽ ¯Ã Ãâ€°ÃŽ ½ÃŽ µÃŽ ¯ÃŽ ± (eironeia), means feigned ignorance (a technique often used by the Greek philosopher Socrates), and from ÃŽ µÃŽ ¯Ã Ãâ€°ÃŽ ½ (eiron), the one who makes a question pretending to be naive, and ÃŽ µÃŽ ¯Ã ÃŽ µÃŽ ¹ÃŽ ½ is also a verb radical of the Greek â€Å"to speak†. The verb ÃŽ µÃŽ ¯Ã ÃŽ µÃŽ ¹ÃŽ ½ (eirein) itself is probably from the Proto-Indo-European root *wer- say. Irony is a stylistic device in which the contextual evaluative meaning of a word is directly opposite to its dictionary meaning. There are very many cases which we regard as irony, intuitively feeling the alteration of the evaluation, but unable to put our finger on the exact word in whose meaning we can see the contradiction between what is said and what is implied. The effect of irony in such cases is created by a number of statements, by the whole text. Many examples of irony are supplied by D. Defoe, J. Swift and many others. Types of irony There are 3 main types of irony: 1. Verbal Irony: This occurs when a character says one thing but suggests or intends the opposite. For instance in Julius Caesar, Mark Antony says â€Å"and Brutus is an honorable man,† when he really means that Brutus is dishonorable because he has betrayed Caesar. It is very similar to sarcasm, although sarcasm is rough and direct while verbal irony is implied. 2. Dramatic Irony: This is the contrast between what the character thinks to be true and what the readers know to be true. Dramatic irony occurs when the meaning intended by a character’s words or actions is opposite of the true situation. Further, the character cannot see or understand the contrast, but the audience can. For example, in Othello, dramatic irony occurs when Othello refers to Iago as â€Å"honest Iago.† Unknown to Othello, Iago is a villain who deceives him into thinking that his wife has been unfaithful. For this, Othello unjustly kills his wife, believing the whole time in Iago’s honesty. Note the difference in examples for verbal and dramatic  irony: Antony calls Brutus â€Å"honorable† and knows he is not honorable, while Othello calls Iago â€Å"honest† and does not know of Iago’s deception. 3. Situational Irony: It is the contrast between what happens and what was expected or what would seem to be more appropriate to happen. This type of irony appears from the events and circumstances of a story. When we see situational irony, we might think circumstances are unfair or unfortunate – for example, if a greedy millionaire buys a lottery ticket and wins additional millions. Irony in literature Here I wanted to list several examples from literature, by means of which, we could understand what irony is more clearly. Firs examples are from â€Å"Romeo and Juliet† by William Shakespeare. I have chosen them, because this story is widely known across the globe. â€Å"Two households, both alike in dignity†¦Ã¢â‚¬  The opening line of Shakespeare’s play leads the reader to believe that both Capulet and Montague families are worthy of respect that they are given in Verona. As the story progresses, we realize that neither household is dignified. In fact, several of their actions are unworthy of their place in society. Another irony in Romeo and Juliet is that the reader remains aware of the fact that Juliet takes a sleeping portion to simulate death, and at the end of the day, when Romeo kills himself after thinking that Juliet is dead, the reader is astonished by the tragic irony. Next examples come from short stories, which I was supposed to read on my first years in university. The Casque of Amontillado, Edgar Allan Poe: In this story, the reader is conscious from the very beginning that Montressor is planning the murder of Fortunato, but Fortunato remains unaware of this and he considers Montressor his friend. It is very ironic how foolish people could be. Fortunato forgot about his past relationship with Montressor, and it led him to fatality. The Necklace, Guy de Maupassant: The protagonist Madame Loise, in order to look good, borrows jewelry from a prosperous friend and then loses it. With her husband she replaces the  jewels but the replacement effects on their financial conditions. Years later, when she meets the same friend again, she learns that the jewels she replaced with real gemstones was mere imitation jewelry. Conclusion to the Chapter I Generally, Irony is the difference between what someone does or says in relation to what is understood about what is done or said. Often there is a bit of confusion over what is ironic and what is simply accidental. The two ideas can be easily confused, but there is however, a very distinct difference between what is ironic and what is simply good or bad luck. Irony has several different types and it appears not only in literature, but in ordinary life also. It is a contradiction between appearance and reality. Irony is a widely known method of explaining something, and is popular to use as in writing and in everyday life so in media. It points on how many different people don’t pay attention to what is happening around them, and how many ironic games our fate can play with us. It is not only when we don’t mention, but it can happen every day and any time with anyone. Chapter II. â€Å"The Jewelry† by Guy de Maupassant Plot summary The story of â€Å"The Jewelry† takes place in Paris. It tells us about Monsieur Lantin, who worked as a chief clerk at the office of Minister of Interior. Story begins with M. Lantin’s falling in love with young virtuous girl(whose name will never be told) and their marriage. The story tells how they happily lived together during several years of their marriage. We can see that Lantins’ wife enjoys going to theatres and loves fake jewelry. She was the best housewife man can ever imagine, and she provided her home with everything. One cold winter evening she came back home from opera freezing and coughing, and after 8 days she died because of inflammation of the lungs. Mr. Lantin loved her very much, so he saved things staying as they were while she was alive. His life completely changed, he couldn’t rule his accounts and soon got into depts. One day he decided to cell one of his wife’s fake jewelries in order to have some money for food. When he went to the jeweler he learned that his wife’s jewelry wasn’t fake. Mr. Lantin was shocked, while she was alive, they didn’t have so much money to buy such  kind of expensive jewelries, so, she had deceived him with somebody. After learning that all of her â€Å"fake† jewelries were not fake, he decide to sell them, after that he decides that he is reach enough and quits his job. He was very happy and pleased with it, so he visits expensive restaurants, orders expensive meals, and boasts to everybody that he is rich, but, he is telling different amounts of money to everybody. After that he marries another girl. They didn’t live happy and loving life together as with the first wife. ii.ii Analysis of the story This story takes place in Paris, which is in France. As it is the general place of setting, there are also specific ones. For instance, in the beginning M. Lantin meets his future wife at a reception at the house of the second head of his department. After we see places like their house, theater, jeweler shops and so on. However, setting doesn’t play major role in â€Å"The Jewelry†, so author doesn’t pay much attention on displaying it. Two main characters of â€Å"The Jewelry† are Monsieur Lantin and his first wife. These two characters are very important for this story, because all of actions in it are connected with them. M. Lantin is a middle class man, who desperately loves his wife, and thinks that she loves him too, because they had very warm relations. Think like unfaithfulness of his wife wouldn’t even come to his mind, and when he learns this fact, he understands that everything is not as it seems to be. In my opinion Lantin is boastful person, and he likes to exaggerate. Maybe because of this characteristic feature, he looked to his family life as if it was ideal. His wife, whose name remains unknown to reader, is professional liar, who is arrogant and narcissistic, even though we don’t see it with unaided eye. I came to this conclusion because in the story it is said that â€Å"Happy the man who wins her love! He could not find a better wife.† Everybody thought that she was a perfect woman, who was able to make happy her man. In fact she could, but, because of hearing these words she became proud of herself, and inside she came to conclusion that she might deserve better man or better life. We don’t know what type of man she was dating with, but it is obvious that she could hide her feelings easily, so, she had two faces. One was how she was acting during staying at home with her husband, and the second is outside of  it. While she was near her husband, she was the most caring wife, tender and kid. She was also very smart, because she ruled household perfectly, but, with the help of her lover’s finances. I can say that her place was on the stage of the theater, because wife of M. Lantin was a perfect actress! The theme of â€Å"The Jewelry† by Guy de Maupassant is that life can be full of irony. Each of the ironies shown in â€Å"The Jewelry† reveal how people keep secrets from one another or themselves, and reveals how they ignore a situation that upsets them if they are com pensated enough. That compensation in this story is money. In this story, Guy de Maupassant as a main literary form of writing uses ironical style. â€Å"The Jewelry† is full of irony from the beginning. It awaked several feeling in me. First, I felt happy, that M. Lantin got married and was living pretty good life, but, I wondered why didn’t he also took a part in house holding or even look in what sphere and what amount of money was spent by his wife. I wasn’t surprised when it turned out that Lantins’ wife had a lover, because he wasn’t paying much attention on her, go out and have fun. It is possible that because of these reasons she was tired of that routine and wanted to try something new. Her lover may have paid more attention to het or shown his love more clearly. ii.iii Irony in â€Å"The Jewelry† The plot of â€Å"The Jewelry† moved from one irony to another. The first couple of paragraphs show how respectable M. Lantin’s wife was supposed to be. But even this early in the story, the author states that â€Å"The young girl seemed to be the very ideal of that pure good woman to whom every young man dreams of entrusting his future.† That â€Å"†¦seemed to be†¦Ã¢â‚¬  lets the reader know that the young girl was not chased woman as everybody took her for. This indicates that the girl was hiding something, although what that something was we didn’t find out until she died. The second irony which we come across in this story, is the fact that they â€Å"†¦seemed to live in luxury†, but in fact they didn’t just simply seem they really did. Unknown to M. Lantin, his wages were being supplemented by his wife’s lovers. They were paying for his good food, fine wine and luxuriously furnished house. I suppose if he had open ed his eyes, and looked through the household expenditures, he would  have learned that the money was coming from somewhere other than his salary. At that point M. Lantin was being fooled by his own self as well as by his wife. But anyway, during that time he was happy! After that comes our third irony. If M. Lantin hadn’t stopped going to the theatre with his wife, then probably another man wouldn’t have had an opportunity to flirt with her, and become her lover. Her attention would have been on her husband or on the stage, not on another man. In every other way, other than the theatre and her jewelry, M. Lantin’s wife devoted herself to him. We can understand it in lines â€Å"It would be impossible to conceive of any attention, tenderness, playful caress which she did not lavish upon her husband†¦Ã¢â‚¬  I think she loved her husband. And then of course, there is irony of the jewelry itself: the fact that the jewelry was real, while she had been acting like it was imitation of it. Even so far as to let the light catch the crystal, and say, â€Å"Now, look at them – see how well the work was done. You would swear it was real jewelry.†, when he would revile her for wearing the fake jewelry instead of being â€Å"adorned with one’s natural beauty and grace.† At that time she might have been mocking at her husband, thinking how stupid he was. After her death, M. Lantin found out that his wife’s entire jewelry was real. The jewelry that the wife’s lovers gave her paid for their luxurious life. After he realized he could get rich by selling all â€Å"fake† jewelry, M. Lantin forgot all about his wife’s affairs, and deceived himself that everything will be okay as long as he became rich. Six months after his wife’s death, he married again to a good virtuous woman which made his life miserable. Conclusion to Chapter II In conclusion, the story emphasized that looks can be deceiving and that sometimes we are blind to what really is going on. We can question if being happy by dishonest values is worth the financial gains or if the unhappiness from honest values is worth the pain. As we see â€Å"The Jewelry† is a little complicated story, and everybody has its own point of view on it. As it is ironical story, and there are people who may not understand it. In fact, I even feel sorry for M. Lantin, because even after his wife’s death, he deceives himself as if he were happy. Nowadays many people may face this problem, and no one is insured from this. Conclusion During writing of this research paper, I learned more about irony, its types and its usage in language. There are very many cases, though, which we regard as irony, intuitively feeling the reversal of the evaluation, but unable to put our finger on the exact word in whose meaning we can trace the contradiction between the said and the implied. The effect of irony in such cases is created by a number of statements, by the whole of the text. Ironies are easy to find in our daily activities; whether in statement, situation, or unexpected event. The simplest irony of our lives is that we feel happier having fun and not worrying about what we are doing or who we are doing it with. At that time ironical situations might occur. Guy de Maupassant was a great French short-story writer. He became famous around the world by the help of his great works. In other words, we can call him â€Å"father of modern short-story writers†. As I read responses of people about his works, they admired him, because his stories contain the face of our everyday life and problems. He points to our negligent treatment for our lives. Maupassant’s stories was popular nowadays is they were in 19th century. The story, which is discussed in this research paper, â€Å"The Jewelry†, points out how unaware we can be of things that happen around us. So we can call it realistic story. I think it would be suitable to finish my research paper by this quote: â€Å"The simplest of women are wonderful liars who can extricate themselves from the most difficult dilemmas with a skill bordering on genius† Guy de Maupassant Bibliography 1.Edgar Allan Poe, â€Å"The Casque of Amontillado†, The Norton Introduction to Literature 8th edition 2.Guy de Maupassant, â€Å"Original short stories†, translated by Albert M. C. McMASTER and others, Plymouth edition, South Australia 5005 3.Guy De Maupassant, â€Å"The Jewelry.† The Norton Introduction to Literature. 9th edition 4.Short Story Criticism, Gale Cengage, 2004 5.William Shakespeare, â€Å"Romeo and Juliet†, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow, 1951 6.William Shakespeare, â€Å"The tragedy of Othello†, Foreign Language Publishing House, Moscow 1963 7.http://article.ranez.ru 8.http://en.wikipedia.org 9.http://schoolworkhelper.net 10.http://www.slideshare.net

Argumentative Essay on Does Violence in Television Programs Breed Violence in Society

Argumentative Essay on Does Violence in Television Programs Breed Violence in Society Does Violence in Television Programs Breed Violence in Society? Today people are often complaining that TV programs are filled with negative news and events, that for people’s psyche it is detrimental and it urges them to behave aggressively. But is it really so? What are the reasons of such negative programs appearing on TV screens and what is people’s true reaction to them? Let us face the reality: people don’t do anything in the world of media that isn’t in demand and won’t bring them real money. They always strive to raise as much cash as it is possible, which can’t be so without attention drawn to their product and enough response. Thus, we can conclude that the tendency of showing cruelty and violence on TV screens is in demand. And it is really so, although being unacceptable as for an average person. But if people really want to watch such programs, why they complain about them? The reason is also very simple. People hate admitting that something bad happens due to their own fault. They would rather blame everybody else than admit that it is them who created this trend and continue to pour oil on flames by constantly discussing this problem. For marketing purposes this situation is ideal, as no specific advertising is needed. As soon as people see an ad with some terrifying news, the majority of them will become interested in it and will want to watch it. And what happens if people see some positive piece of news? They either criticize it by saying that everything cannot be so cloudless, as people are constantly speaking about catastrophes and different misfortunes, or simply won’t pay attention to it at all. This is a peculiar feature of our psychology, but to my mind it is better to admit it, than blame all the people around you in the interest to programs showing inappropriate content. On balance, to watch or not to watch TV and negative programs in particular are a choice of each and every person. Those who complain about