What woman love most

After reading the poem and the discussion I realized that people often believe that women are weak, in other words, that what they are looking for is someone who can look after them, in this case, a man. If you ask me I believe that the ones who believe this are completely wrong.

I think that what the woman in the poem was looking for was to have men under her control. She has her own life as an example, she married five times, and I believe that with this she wanted to have power over them. In the class discussion I realized that my classmates think that we are looking for someone who will treat us as a princess, but I think they are completely lost.

Even if men like it or not they depend on us, they are worried about us, and they need us. I am sure that we are not naïve, on the contrary, we are really intelligent and at the end we know what to say or what to do in order to have what we want.

"Truth"

I believed Chaucer called this poem “truth” because he thought he had the truth in his hands, in other words, he thought that he had the recipe to be a good human being. In the poem Chaucer wrote “For greed entails hate and social climbing uncertainty” in my opinion, he wrote this because he wanted to show that people is worried about trivial things. Money is the only concern they have and they are capable of doing horrible things in order to have it. Also religion has an important part in this poem, I believe that he expected people to change their way of living and to ask for forgiveness in order to take the “good” road.

I think this poem not only reflects how people lived in the past, it also reflect how people live in the present. We are always worried about what our neighbour is doing and what new unnecessary thing is on the market for buying it. We live in a materialistic society and we need to change that.

Epic Poem

According to my experience with books, poems, pieces of writting, etc. epic poems are poem in which a writter narates a fiction story or a myth. In those poems is very commmon to see a heroe and an antagonist. As far as I know all epic poem refers to heroic actions that someone did in the past and that someone decided to tell.

Knowing myself.

First quotation (slide 11)

After reading this quotation the first thing that came into mi mind was how difficult is to express how reading makes me feel.

Literature is every single piece of writing that is able to make me feel something, a letter of a friend, a novel of a famous writer, an article of a well known magazine, etc are literature .
I believe that there is a “book” for each person, those who say “I don’t like reading” is because they still do not know what they like or what they enjoy.

Reading is not only a way to interact with the rest of the world, is also a way to escape from it when you need to be alone for a while. For me, literature is the most effective way of knowing who I am, how I feel and what I think.

References

1- Montagna, Joseph. "The industrial Revolution" 2008. 12 Nov. 2008
<http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/2/81.02.06.x.html>

2- Hines, Richard. "The European enlightenment" 6 Jun. 1999. 12 Nov. 2008
<http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/ENLIGHT/INDUSTRY.HTM>

3- "The industrial REvolution" 2008. 12 Nov. 2008
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution>

4- Sarah. "Industrial Revolution" 21 April 2005. 12 Nov. 2008
<http://www.essaydepot.com/essayme/3436/index.php>

5- The age of reform.

6- "The victorian age" 2003. 12 Nov. 2008

Teaching From The Past

Did you like the history class when you were at school? What would you think if I tell you that knowing some historical facts would help you to understand nowadays world?

We should know a lot about the industrial revolution. As matter a fact, that was a content of world's history when we were at school. For the ones who do not remember or did not pay attention I will develop this topic and related to education and teaching. It may sound not interesting at all, but you should read it and then critizices it.

The industrial revolution took place in Britain during the late 18th century and early 19th century. This revolution brought a lot of changes in England and Europe. Manufacturing, family structure, transport and economy were the main issues during those times. When we think about the industrial revolution we tend to associate it with technology. Although this association is not wrong, the industrial revolution not only has to do with that. The most important aspect, the industrial revolution brought, was the social changes. Before I start talking about the consequences it brought to Europe and the rest of the world, I am going to explain some of the reasons that make the industrial revolution such an important issue.

One of the most important causes of the industrial revolution was the economic changes that were taking place in Europe. “European trade and manufacture stretched to every continent except Antarctica; this vast increase in the market for European goods in part drove the conversion to an industrial, manufacturing economy.” (Hines, par. 3) In other words, Europe was developing so fast that in front of everybody’s eyes, their economy, which was most focus on agriculture, changed to an industrialized one.

Another important cause was the increased of population in Europe. It is a fact that when economy evolves, also does the population. Due to the developing of the economy new jobs were created, so people had different opportunities to make money.

Those were the main causes of this revolution. As I have said before, the industrial revolution started in England; therefore most of the changes started there.
Transportation was something that was improved during those days. The first public railway was open in 1825, and the whole way of transportation was changed because of that. People from the countryside were now able to move from one town to another faster than before. They also were able to go to the city and to come back in one day.
The railway not only helped people to move faster from town to town, but it also helped the new towns to grow. Now the people who lived in those towns were enjoying fresh food, fresh milk and fresh fruits.

Up to here it was all fine. Everyone was happy because they were doing what they wanted and they were having enough money to feed their families. The problem began a few years later. Hundreds of workers, with their families, started to migrate to the industrial cities. Those workers are the ones who created the working class.
Salaries were really low, the working conditions were not human and they were suppose to worked 14 hour per day or even more. That was not fair for them, but they had to accept that, at least for a few years. After a while, the employers began to hire woman and children, because they worked more for less money.
The workers with their families were having a difficult time. They accepted that for a while, but after a few years they realised that they could fight for their rights. The workers decided to make a revolution against the factories and their owners. During the beginning of the revolution, many Reform Bills were made in order to change the legislation which was in force during that time. The problem was that many of them were rejected by the parliament. Different characters appeared during this revolution, but most of them did not success to help their friends, families, etc. They were treated as slaves and they wanted to change that.
In 1833 their efforts received a reward, a new law was approved which made illegal to hire children under the age of 13.

Obviously some of those problems continued after that, but what I want you to understand is the importance of some of those issues in today’s world.

You would be amaze of how much we can learn from the past. I want to be an English teacher, and that is why I am studying English pedagogy. My purpose is not only to teach English, but to teach culture, and also to teach how to learn and how to think. It is important that we teach our children how to think on their own. To be critical and reflective are two abilities students should develop during their different learning stages.
I chose the industrial revolution as a clear example of how something that had already passed can affect our present. If we study what happen during that time we could easily understand many of the thing that are happened now. For example: People began to fight for their right, as they do now. Children and woman were trying to be protected by different people, nowadays we have organizations that are trying to do that, etc.

To finish I would like to say that it is important that we learn from our mistakes. We have to teach our students how to learn from their mistakes too. The industrial revolution brought a lot of changes in today’s societies. Technology is something which is helpful for us, but if we do not know how to manage it, it can cause a lot of problems. Teaching is one of the most important things in the world, but we must not forget that we are teachers but at the same time we are students.

A Trip To The Past

It is shocking to realise how the industrial revolution changed people’s lives. We will never know how much people suffer during that period, we only have some hints that writers left in their different stories, poems, novels, etc. But not only writers left something about that period, also Charlie Chaplin did. He created the movie “Modern Times”. Why I say created? Because he directed, produced, wrote, and act in that movie. He did everything by himself.

The movie starts with Chaplin working in a factory. During the whole day he was doing the same thing several times. At the end of that day he suffered a mental breakdown and he was sent to a hospital. After all of this, his problems began. He left the hospital, and he was sent to prison by mistake. At the beginning he was not happy there, but after a while he realised that he was better there than in the outside world. One day 3 men enter to the prison and tried to help some prisoners to escape. Chaplin, because he had consumed cocaine by mistake, helped the guards by hitting the criminals. He saved the prison after all, so he was rewarded with his freedom.
After that incident, he did everything he could to be sent to prison again. While he was trying to do that, he met a beautiful girl, and he fall in love with her. They did a lot of different things in order ro be happy. They found a home, they worked, they danced, and they escaped from the police many times. At the end of the movie, the girl says that it is really difficult to cope with all of what they have been through. Chaplin convinced her to keep going, and they began to walk along the road looking for something better.

In my opinion the movie is great, and Charlie Chaplin is a genius. He figured it out how to do a movie in order to show what was happening during that period and to make it funny at the same time. It was really sad for me to realise that people were treated as machines, their lunch time was ridiculous, and what they were supposed to do in the factories was stupid. I can say that what called my attention the most was the fact that in the movie Chaplin was trying to show that he was better in jail than in the outside world. What I understood from that was that during that period to find a job was really difficult and to earn money was even more. It was sad, at least for me, to realise that being in prison could be a better possibly than to be free. People’s rights were not respected, children did not have anything to eat, and women had to work if they wanted to feed their families. The movie also reflected how wealthy people was living the industrial revolution. They did not suffer at all, they had everything they wanted and they even had time to have fun. It was not fair.

As a conclusion I can say that the movie is a piece of art. Even though it is not a production from Hollywood, is a movie which has a lot to say. With a low budget, Chaplin was capable to do a great movie. I recommend this movie for the ones who are interested in world’s history. It is a good way to understand what was happening with most of the people during that process.