Professional Cheating Websites Essay

Random interview is the method that we are going to use for gathering data because in interviews information is obtained through inquiry and recorded by enumerators. Structured interviews are performed by using survey forms, whereas open interviews are notes taken while talking with respondents. The notes are subsequently structured interpreted foe further analysis. Open-ended interviews, which need to be interpreted and analyze even during the interview, have to be carried out by well-trained observers and/or enumerators. Generally, structured interviews are conducted with a well-designed form already established. Forms are filled in by researches, instead of respondents, and in that it differs from questionnaires. While this approach is more expensive, more complicated questions can be asked and data can be validated as it is collected, improving data quality. Interviews can be undertaken with variety of data sources, and through alternative media, such as by telephone or in person . The people who are going to interview are the maritime students of Dr,Yanga’s Colleges at DYCI. The interviewee came from any level of BSMT and BSMarE maritime student .It could be ages 16 to 18 above male or female. Confessions of a Professional College Cheater. IT WILL COME as news to no one who reads Dave Tomar’s new book that college kids cheat as enthusiastically and ritually as they tailgate and copulate, especially since Harvard recently announced that nearly half of the 279 students in a single â€Å"Introduction to Congress† class are under investigation for academic dishonesty. In the ethically challenged haze of freshman dormitory life I did it myself, writing an occasional paper for an attractive or underperforming friend, and it never really occurred to me that this was wrong until I became a college professor and sat outraged on the other side of the desk, interrogating a barely literate student who had suddenly blossomed into an eloquent critic of Milton’s Paradise Lost. And after reading The Shadow Scholar I’m eyeing my current crop of students with an entirely new level of suspicion. Tomar’s book grew out of an article, penned under the name â€Å"Ed Dante† in The Chronicle of Higher Education in November 2010, that became the most widely read piece in the Chronicle’s history. The article, and now the book, document the astounding scale and sophistication of cheating in today’s wired world, which the author knows well: he worked for ten years at highly organized Internet companies, writing term papers, class projects, and even a dissertation. In the wickedest of ironies, he found his employers through a website that aims to prevent cheating by exposing the worst offenders. At this website, an interested reader will find links to two hundred such companies, all accepting Paypal, MasterCard, and Visa, and all eager to make your college experience utterly painless. One site (CustomWritings.com) provides statistics, including (at press time) a 97 percent satisfaction rate and 1,373,890 pages written. I don’t now how much to trust a company that relies on its customers’ willingness to lie, but if those numbers are true, then this firm alone has produced over 170,000 of the 7-to-10-page papers usually assigned in introductory level classes. Many sites promise that their writers hold at least an M.A. or a Ph.D., and nearly all of them guarantee that the customer’s essay will cruise through the plagiarism-detection software that most American universities have purchased, at a tremendous cost, as the silver bu llet in their anti-cheating arsenal. As Tomar describes the process, the writers for his former employer log in to the company’s website and select an assignment from an online bulletin board. Students provide the topic and the deadline, and specific guidelines from their instructor, and the desired citation style. Some students even ship required course texts to their hired hand: Tomar claims this practice larded his shelves with thousands of dollars worth of books on constitutional history, literature, business, and psychology. But that was one of the few perks. Like a high-tech whipping boy, Tomar says he took on so much work that he ruined his health and his relationships, all so that the pampered and unprepared could enjoy a painless college experience. The cheery photos of carefree students on the professional cheating websites bear this out. As in the promotional materials distributed by the universities themselves, everyone is always smiling. Tomar is very, very angry, and although he comes to loathe the students who hire him, the real target of his ire is the universities. He is himself a graduate of Rutgers, and he seems genuinely traumatized by his own stint on the banks of the old Raritan, which he believes left him without the skills to land any real job other than writing fraudulent college papers. From this experience he gleans several ways that higher education in America has gone awry. â€Å"It’s not simply that some colleges are structured more like corporations than like places of learning,† Tomar notes, but that they are structured like failing businesses that â€Å"don’t give a crap about customer service or quality assurance.† This is one of Tomar’s more astute observations. While nimble businesses, from Lego to Apple, have made customers fall in love with their reinvented products, universities still persist in replicating the early twentieth-century factory model espoused by Henry Ford: customers can have a car painted any color they want â€Å"so long as it is black.† As a teacher of Shakespeare, I benefit from this model all the time: students from across the disciplines are forced to take my classes to fill various requirements, whether or not they will ever use iambic pentameter. It pays my bills. But where such requiremen ts do not correspond to clearly defined and valuable outcomes for students, they also contribute to the truly frightening $1 trillion in outstanding U.S. student debt that, as Tomar notes, has mostly been accumulated in the past four years. The driving engines of that debt remain the for-profit degree mills such as theUniversity of Phoenix, which do not escape Tomar’s fury. â€Å"The work assigned at such institutions was so easy, the standards so low, and the priorities so far removed from the interests of honest student evaluation† that students might be forgiven for turning to the free market to meet their intellectual needs. As the Harvard cheating scandal has affirmed, however, even the best universities have some such slack in the system. Students caught up in the investigation have reported that the course was notoriously known as â€Å"an easy A† with take-home exams and low standards. Combine such factors with the universities’ generally sluggish stance toward technology, Tomar suggests, and the cheating he documents is nearly inevitable. These points are well made, but not much else in this padded book has the same force. In discussing his erstwhile career, Tomar has called himself a master â€Å"bullshit artist,† and he boasts that he knows all the â€Å"little tricks† for churning out papers, â€Å"like fluffing sentences with unnecessary clauses or adding gratuitous lines summarizing previous claims.† Yet Tomar’s book may prove to be his bullshitting pià ¨ce de rà ©sistance, as it employs these same techniques at length, including notes and a bibliography drawn mostly from blogs and websites. For a brief moment, it seems as if this might be some sort of brilliant meta-narrative: a Joycean performance of the sloppiness, clichà ©, and superficial analysis that passes for writing in our universities today. But as Tomar reaches his solemn conclusion, explaining that he has attempted to describe â€Å"the things that I had come to know, with the hope that it could help all of us,† this begins to seem less likely. The problem is that The Shadow Scholar’s argument never really achieves the escape velocity that would propel it beyond the author’s own miscellaneous grievances. By his own admission, Tomar doesn’t know how to use a library and doesn’t have â€Å"a fuck’s clue how to do research if my Internet is down and my phone battery i s dead.† For Tomar this is a point of pride, because the ease with which he manipulates the system—tricking all those doddering professors—shows that libraries and library-based curricula are hopeless anyway. Again, I half-sympathize: if any professors still ask students to conduct research without online resources, they are clearly acting negligently. But surely the more responsible—and the more common—approach is to guide students through the digital archives, accepting that they use Wikipedia and Google, but teaching them that this should be the beginning rather than the end of their research. But Tomar obviously never learned this lesson, and his argument rarely reaches beyond the level of Googling, like one of those machine-authored books that use an algorithm to collate information about a given topic. (If this is unfamiliar, see the 345,000 titles by â€Å"Lambert M. Surhone† on Barnesandnoble.com.) When arguing, for example, that American education l oads students with debt without providing the skills to pay it back, Tomar writes that â€Å"according to the Guardian, ‘student loans have been stripped of nearly all basic consumer protections.’† Nothing wrong with that, except that after continuing this quotation for some length, he launches directly into a new paragraph on â€Å"An article in Mother Jones,† and this takes us to a paragraph relating what â€Å"the Washington Post† surmises, before a final section provides the truth â€Å"according to the New York Times.† The already underdeveloped argument must also share space with a memoir of the author’s misguided youth, and while Dave Tomar finds his lead character fascinating, his will probably be a minority response. After the tenth account of Tomar getting stoned, or reeling out of a bar to vomit, it seems worth asking whether he may have borne some responsibility for his failure to find academic fulfillment and develop marketable skills on campus. One suspects that Tomar was very good at churning out â€Å"C-† papers and that some of his clients got exactly what they deserved. Although The Shadow Scholar is a failed invective, it is an extremely timely reminder that we would be unwise to brush off accounts of cheating at Harvard or our local junior college as a few bad apples. To prevent the offenses that Tomar describes, professors will also need to become more proficient at pedagogies both old and new. Our first priority may be teaching students to navigate an online world where the meaning of intellectual property is in flux. Universities clearly must also do a better job teaching students actual skills rather than running them through hoops until they accumulate enough seat time, measured in dollars and hours, to graduate. Just as important as such innovation, however, is the very traditional work of forming tutorial relationships that will model intellectual responsibility and demonstrate that thinking, rather than paying someone to do it for you, can be its own reward. Studies find more Students Cheating, with High Achievers no Exception. Large-scale cheating has been uncovered over the last year at some of the nation’s most competitive schools, like Stuyvesant High Schoolin Manhattan, the Air Force Academy and, most recently, Harvard. Studies of student behavior and attitudes show that a majority of students violate standards of academic integrity to some degree, and that high achievers are just as likely to do it as others. Moreover, there is evidence that the problem has worsened over the last few decades. Experts say the reasons are relatively simple: Cheating has become easier and more widely tolerated, and both schools and parents have failed to give students strong, repetitive messages about what is allowed and what is prohibited. â€Å"I don’t think there’s any question that students have become more competitive, under more pressure, and, as a result, tend to excuse more from themselves and other students, and that’s abetted by the adults around them,† said Donald L. McCabe, a professor at the Rutgers University Business School, and a leading researcher on cheating. â€Å"There have always been struggling students who cheat to survive,† he said. â€Å"But more and more, there are students at the top who cheat to thrive.† Internet access has made cheating easier, enabling students to connect instantly with answers, friends to consult and works to plagiarize. And generations of research has shown that a major factor in unethical behavior is simply how easy or hard it is. A recent study by Jeffrey A. Roberts and David M. Wasieleski at Duquesne University found that the more online tools college students were allowed to use to complete an assignment, the more likely they were to copy the work of others. The Internet has changed attitudes, as a world of instant downloading, searching, cutting and pasting has loosened some ideas of ownership and authorship. An increased emphasis on having students work in teams may also have played a role. â€Å"Students are surprisingly unclear about what constitutes plagiarism or cheating,† said Mr. Wasieleski, an associate professor of management. Howard Gardner, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said that over the 20 years he has studied professional and academic integrity, â€Å"the ethical muscles have atrophied,† in part because of a culture that exalts success, however it is attained. He said the attitude he has found among students at elite colleges is: â€Å"We want to be famous and successful, we think our colleagues are cutting corners, we’ll be damned if we’ll lose out to them, and some day, when we’ve made it, we’ll be role models. But until then, give us a pass.† Numerous projects and research studies have shown that frequently reinforcing standards, to both students and teachers, can lessen cheating. But experts say most schools fail to do so. â€Å"Institutions do a poor job of making those boundaries clear and consistent, of educating students about them, of enforcing them, and of giving teachers a clear process to follow through on them,† said Laurie L. Hazard, director of the Academic Center for Excellence at Bryant University. In the programs that colleges run to help new students make the transition from high school, students are counseled on everything from food to friendships, but â€Å"little or no time is spent on cheating,† she said. A 2010 survey of Yale undergraduates by The Yale Daily News showed that most had never read the school’s policy on academic honesty, and most were unsure of the rules on sharing or recycling their work. In surveys of high school students, the Josephson Institute of Ethics, which advises schools on ethics education, has found that about three-fifths admit to having cheated in the previous year — and about four-fifths say their own ethics are above average. Few schools â€Å"place any meaningful emphasis on integrity, academic or otherwise, and colleges are even more indifferent than high schools,† said Michael Josephson, president of the institute. â€Å"When you start giving take-home exams and telling kids not to talk about it, or you let them carry smartphones into tests, it’s an invitation to cheating,† he said. The case that Harvard revealed in late August involved a take-home final exam in an undergraduate course with 279 students. The university has not yet held hearings on the charges, which may take months to resolve. Officials said similarities in test papers suggested that nearly half the class had broken the rules against plagiarism and working together; some of the accused students said their behavior was innocent, or fell into gray areas. Mr. McCabe’s surveys, conducted around the country, have found that most college students see collaborating with others, even when it is forbidden, as a minor offense or no offense at all. Nearly half take the same view of paraphrasing or copying someone else’s work without attribution. And most high school teachers and college professors surveyed fail to pursue some of the violations they find. Experts say that along with students, schools and technology, parents are also to blame. They cite surveys, anecdotal impressions and the work of researchers like Jean M. Twenge, author of the book â€Å"Generation Me,† to make the case that since the 1960s, parenting has shifted away from emphasizing obedience, honor and respect for authority to promoting children’s happiness while stoking their ambitions for material success. â€Å"We have a culture now where we have real trouble accepting that our kids make mistakes and fail, and when they do, we tend to blame someone else,† said Tricia Bertram Gallant, author of â€Å"Creating the Ethical Academy,† and director of the academic integrity office at the University of California at San Diego. â€Å"Thirty, 40 years ago, the parent would come in and grab the kid by the ear, yell at him and drag him home.† Educators tell tales of students who grew up taking for granted not only that their highly involved parents would help with schoolwork but that the â€Å"help† would strain the definition of the word. Ms. Gallant recalled giving integrity counseling to a student who would send research papers to her mother to review before turning them in — and saw nothing wrong in that. One paper, it turned out, her mother had extensively rewritten — and extensively plagiarized. The Good News in the Atlanta and D.C. School Cheating Scandals With the possible exception of tot-murdering moms and professional basketball players who jilt their fans on live television, there is no more reviled figure in American life than Bernie Madoff. Portrayed on the cover of New York magazine in Heath-Ledger-as-Joker makeup, he has been variously described as a sociopath, a financial serial killer, and the devil incarnate. What nobody has said, however, is that Madoff was the victim of a profession that puts relentless pressure on money managers to publicly report their success in the market. And, while plenty of deserved scorn has been heaped on the auxiliary financial institutions and hapless federal regulators who allowed his fraud to unfold for decades, nobody has suggested that those lapses in any way mitigate Madoff’s culpability in his crimes. Society has taken away all of Madoff’s money and freedom, but it has left him with one thing: the dignity inheren t in possessing moral responsibility for doing wrong. It has been less respectful, unfortunately, to educators in our public schools. Recent weeks have seen reports of a terrible cheating scandal in Atlanta; a Georgia state investigation implicated scores of teachers and principals of systematically falsifying student test scores. Earlier this year, USA Today revealed evidence of test score manipulation in the District of Columbia. Similar scandals have erupted over the years in Houston, Oakland, Dallas, Chicago, and elsewhere, all tied to the pressure educators feel to show evidence of student learning on standardized tests. And, every time news of cheating breaks, opponents of standardized testing and accountability in public education have been quick to deflect blame from morally challenged educators and aim it toward the tests themselves. When asked about Atlanta, noted school reform apostate Diane Ravitch pointed the finger at the federal No Child Left Behind law, saying that, when high-stakes incentives are attached to test scores, we are â€Å"virtually inviting† teachers to cheat. At the Daily Kos, r eaders were told that â€Å"the tests, and the stakes attached to them, are the issue. No rational person can look at cheating this widespread and decide its existence is about the individuals, however blameworthy their behavior may be.† One Atlanta-area teacher put it this way: â€Å"Anybody whose job is tied to performance, it is a setup.† In search of a theory to back up these assertions, testing opponents often invoke â€Å"Campbell’s Law,† an adage put forth in the 1970s by social scientist Donald Campbell. It holds that â€Å"[t]he more any quantitative social indicator [e.g. standardized testing] is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures.† As a way of understanding education policy, or anything else, Campbell’s Law is both inaccurate and banal. In reality, most people are quite adept at resisting corruption pressure, which is why the vast majority of teachers whose students take standardized tests do not cheat. And, while some do, the fallibility of humankind has been known for a long time. So I hereby coin Carey’s Law, which holds that trite observations are more likely to be regarded as sacred principles if someone happen s to describe them as laws. TO BE SURE, people (and teachers) will succumb to dishonesty. They cheat on their taxes, spouses, and golf partners. Cheating corrodes trust in all things, especially education. Students whose test scores are manipulated upward don’t the get the extra attention they need. And, since teachers are increasingly being evaluated by how much their students’ test scores improve, a teacher who inflates scores could potentially cost her colleagues in the next grade of their job performance. But cheating also means that public schools finally care enough about student performance that some ethically challenged educators have chosen to cheat. This is far better than the alternative, where learning is so incidental and non-transparent that people of low character can’t be bothered to lie about it. Blaming cheating on the test amounts to infantilizing teachers, moving teaching 180 degrees away from the kind of professionalization that teacher advocates often profess to support. Instead of doing away with the pressures of a performance-based system, the best way to combat cheating is by buil ding institutions that have systems and organizational cultures that minimize the amount of corruption and abuse that occurs. This is harder to do in some places than in others. The District of Columbia, for example, is not exactly a bastion of civic virtue. Half the members of our city council currently stand accused of some form of misconduct, including council president Kwame Brown, who is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney for matters regarding the use of hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds. Nobody, by the way, is blaming the corruption pressures inherent to our vote-intensive election system for Brown’s alleged misdeeds. Indeed, it’s not a coincidence that cheating scandals tend to erupt in municipalities whose public institutions suffer from corruption. But, when the Atlanta police department was rocked by accusations that officers falsified warrants, planted evidence, and gunned down a 92-year old woman in a botched drug raid, national commentators didn’t pin the blame on a system that holds police departments accountable for solving crimes. Corruption, educat ional or otherwise, should be fought with strong law enforcement, the election of public officials with integrity, and the vigilance of citizen’s groups and a watchful press. The Securities and Exchange Commission exists because lawmakers correctly assume that the pressures and temptations of making money are so great that companies and financial actors can’t be trusted. Other than lunatic objectivistsand Wall Street water-carriers, nobody reacted to Madoff, Enron, or WorldCom by calling for less enforcement and public reporting of information. Instead, they rightly called for more. Finally, we should never forget that cheating in public education long predates the advent of standardized testing and accountability. Back then, it happened in the form of students who were ill-taught and passed along through grades until they were handed a diploma despite their inability to read, write, work with numbers, or otherwise perform any of the skills and tasks necessary to make a decent life in the modern world. Often, their children were sent back into the very same dysfunctional systems to begin the cycle anew. The only difference was, that kind of cheating didn’t result in state investigations, newspapers headlines, and calls for the responsible parties to be thrown in jail. The new way we structure testing and reward and punish people for their actions with regard to that testing is better for students—and even teachers—in the long run. Kevin Carey is the policy director of Education Sector, a think tank in Washington, D.C. Cheating is Cheating is Cheating. MANILA, Philippines — DEAR CHICO AND DELAMAR†¦I do a little tutoring on the side to earn some extra money while in college, and I’ve become friends with most of my students as they are mostly just a few years younger than I am. We often still communicate with each other even after I’ve stopped tutoring them. One of the guys that I’ve become close to has recently come to me and tearfully confided that he cheated in an exam and ended up winning an award because of it. I was very disappointed by what he did, because he’s a very smart kid and has a generally sterling academic record. He says that he only did it because his family was going to a really rough patch and he didn’t want an academic failure to compound their problems. He certainly seems guilty over it, and has promised me to never do it again because it wasn’t worth the guilt. What I’m torn about is whether I should tell the school about it. I feel bad about what heà ¢â‚¬â„¢s done, but telling the school would possibly ruin his reputation and his chances at getting into a great college. Should I just let it go and trust that he won’t do it again? -Leonard CHICO SAYS†¦I must admit, this is a tough one. It’s the classic choice between doing the kind thing and doing the right thing. I can’t tell you what is the right thing to do, but what I can do is tell you is what I’d do. I don’t know if I’d have the heart to turn him in. Even if I knew that on paper it’s the right thing to do, I don’t know if I’d muster the resolve. If you can’t choose between the two, you can always try and convince him to do the right thing for himself. Besides, it’s his misdeed that’s causing all this guilt, so he is the best person to right this particular wrong. I’m sure most people would be like, what’s the big deal? He’s learned his lesson, and everybody cheats every now and then, so why ruin a promising future? But remember, somebody who deserved that award was robbed of it. No matter how big or small the accolade, someone else deserved to get that award. And if a young mind gets the idea that he can get away with robbing someone of something as long as he doesn’t get caught, then who is to say that it will stop here? Who is to say that some of the crooked people in high places didn’t get their start with petty â€Å"crimes† like cheating in exams? Leave this sliding doors moment for him to decide. He can opt to leave things as they are and move on, or he can step up to the plate and right the wrong with his own hands, the very hands that caused the injustice in the first place. If he thinks the right thing for him to do is to own up to the cheating, then there is no other recourse but to bite the bullet and confess, just like if you feel it is your duty to report him, then you are beholden to yourself to do so. For all you know, him confessing may be a bitch to handle now, but it could also be the best thing that ever happened to him. Character is hard to come by these days. Something like this could actually build him some. Do what feels right to you at this moment; in difficult situations like these, it’s the best you can do. DELAMAR SAYS†¦There is no way you can be sure he won’t do it again. There is no way that you can be sure that the next time a similar situation happens he won’t take the easy way of cheating again. In his mind he might justify cheating as long as he can say he did it for his family. And did he really do it just to not add on to his family problems? And would it really have added to his family’s problems? Isn’t it understandable that when families go through problems children’s school work do suffer? Did he really do it for family? Or, did he do it for himself? If there was a way to make sure this really was a one time and only a one time thing, most people will say why not let it pass without consequence? But that’s the thing, there is no way you can tell. And the one thing that needs to be considered more than just whether he will do it again or not is this — him cheating earned him an award. Which means: his cheating deprived someone of an award that would have been legitimately earned. He took it from somebody else who would have rightly earned it. And in my opinion, that is certainly not fair. I think this problem is a question of being understanding to someone who was just really pushed to the edge or do you consider this as a great opportunity to learn a very hard lesson too. The lesson that cheating is cheating is cheating. No matter what your justification is it is still a wrong that has consequences. The consequence that is so great, at the cost of his good reputation being tarnished and risking his entrance to a good college, that he will never cheat again. Cheating can destroy all your previous honest efforts. That is a great lesson he will never forget. And also he has to learn that his cheating deprived someone of that award. And these things if he has to pay the consequence will surely send a message that cheating isn’t worth it. He will learn that he just has to live with not performing well when his family is going through something rather than to automatically cheat. Your decision lies with how well you know your student. Will this serve as a lesson he will never forget and never do again? Or, is this his chance to learn at this point and painfully that there are consequences to the actions we do? What can your conscience live with? Whatever you decide I just hope the person who might have been deprived of that award the student earned with his cheating efforts will still get what he deserves. Maybe you can figure out a way to punish the act of cheating but at the same time give him some leeway because he did come forward to admit his wrongdoing? In my opinion the best way is to show him that this act cannot go without consequence, some consequence. You can argue on his behalf that the punishment be less severe so as not to risk his college entrance but he certainly has to understand that he cannot get away with cheating without paying the price. Trick or Cheat. Cheat. It’s probably something that we’ve done at least once in our academic life. Whether through hidden answer sheets, information shared with friends from different sections, or just taking a peek at a seatmate’s paper, not very many of us can claim to be innocent in this regard. Penelope (not her real name) a college senior at a school in Manila’s University Belt, admits to be cheating in exams since she was in fourth year high school. â€Å"I needed to,† she justifies. â€Å"We had to memorize the formulas in our Physics class and we weren’t allowed to have an index card to look at. I was a candidate to become an outstanding student at the time and I didn’t want to fail that exam.† Aside from looking at her seatmate’s paper, she also had a small paper with all the needed formulas hidden in her socks. Penelope has never been caught, but on the occasion that she is, she says she plans to apologize to the teacher. â€Å"But t hat doesn’t mean I’ll stop. I believe cheating is one of the elements of being a student,† she says. Penelope’s story is something that is replicated in the lives of other students across the city. Just like Penelope, Nicole (not her real name) began cheating in exams in high school, mainly because everyone else in her class was doing it. â€Å"It wasn’t intentional at first. The examiner was out of the room, and I took the liberty to check my notes in Biology and compare if my answers were correct. I found it really rewarding to get a perfect score,† she recalls. But unlike Penelope, Nicole was unlucky enough to get caught. â€Å"I decided not to do it anymore and try to rely on my full capacity to answer all subsequent tests,† she says. However, â€Å"try† is the important word in Nicole’s statement. When asked if getting caught stopped her from cheating, her reply is short and direct to the point: â€Å"Not really.† MODERN CHEATING The temptation to cheat is even easier for today’s technologically-advanced youth. With mobile phones making the transmission of messages easier and the Internet making the sharing of information much quicker, today’s Filipino student can just as easily download his answers from a computer as he can from looking at his seatmate’s answers. However, it would seem that the tried and tested technique of looking at the answer of seatmates, passing around notes, and â€Å"reliable† classmates are the methods preferred by today’s young Filipinos. â€Å"If you give people answers, they give you answers back,† says Elle (not her real name). â€Å"My two friends and I would form a triangle with our seats — we call it the Triangle Offense. It gave us good angles. I also ask people who’ve taken the tests earlier for questions and answers.† Mark (not his real name) also relied on his classmates to get a higher grade than the one he would have otherwise received on his tests. â€Å"Back in high school, teachers would have us exchange papers with our fellow classmates and we would have to honestly mark each others tests. It wasn’t me who changed the answers, but my seatmate who’s marking it. That’s what made it possible,† he says. Just like Nicole, Elle has already been caught cheating. And just like Nicole, Elle says this hasn’t stopped her from cheating. â€Å"I’ve been caught, and I just made pa-cute and joked around. I charmed the teacher,† she says. â€Å"Getting caught didn’t stop me from cheating. It empowered me even more.† CHEAT BUSTERS If cheating seems unavoidable, what can school administrations do? Preventing behavior like this from occurring in the first place seems to be the approach being taken by educational institutions. The De La Salle University, for instance, has a Discipline Office (DO), which promotes students discipline, maintains peace, order and cleanliness in the University, and seeks to prevent, rather than correct, unseemly student behavior. Nimpha Baldeo, the DO head, says that her office conducts regular seminars and lectures on values for teachers, parents, and students, and comes out with publications on these topics such as modules, a DO Guide, and a DO Bulletin. â€Å"Discipline awareness is also celebrated every October by the academic community with exhibits and forums to intensify the information drive on University policies, rules and regulations,† she says. â€Å"The University also recently established the Compliance Office to ensure that all significant requirements necessary for compliance with law, regulation, or other binding rules in and outside the University are in place.† Students who are caught cheating are not immediately suspended or expelled, rather, they are put under probation and exposed to a series of seminars and related activities on values formation and clarification. DLSU also curbs plagiarism and protects intellectual rights. Academic papers have to cite its sources, whether from open source references like Wikipedia or from traditional materials, and written permission from concerned faculty members are required if a student intends to submit the same work to another course for extra credit. A MATTER OF TRUST Alexandra (not her real name), a literature professor for two years at a prominent university in Quezon City, has a much more personal view of how to stop cheating among the student body. Alexandra says that in her short years of teaching, she has not yet encountered a case of cheating in her class. While part of this is because most of her examinations are essay-based, she also says that this is because she trusts that her students know better than to cheat. â€Å"When I give objective tests, I don’t patrol. You could say I don’t even really check,† she reveals. â€Å"I feel it’s a very obvious sign of not trusting them. These kids are in college. it’s no longer high school or grade school. What they do with their education is their business. I’m there to guide and instruct, but I’m not there to be their mother. Show them that you trust them somehow, and hopefully, they’ll live up to it.† Alexandra says that rather than looking to change how students behave, educators should instead look into themselves and find out if they are the ones contributing to the problem. â€Å"I think cheating can be curbed, because I honestly think that students cheat if they feel that it’s impossible,† she says. â€Å"And impossibility is a result of demanding too much output when you haven’t even put much in to begin with. If you’re a good educator, students won’t feel the need to cheat.† ——————————————– [ 1 ]. New Republic, by Blaine Greteman, September 12, 2012 [ 2 ]. The New York Times, by Richard Perez-Peà ±a, September 7, 2012 [ 3 ]. New Republic, Kevin Carey, July 19, 2011 [ 4 ]. Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation, Chico and Delamar, November 9, 2011 [ 5 ]. Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation, Ronald S. Lim, November 12, 2009

Concert Etiquette

Before going to a concert you should think about concert etiquette (good concert manners) to show respect to the fellow musicians. When going to a concert you should dress up in a way that would show the most respect to the musicians and the audience members around you. You should refrain from putting on perfumes fragrances since many people would be distracted by the smell, or be highly allergic to the product. In many concerts, you should arrive at least five to ten minutes before the concert begins. You should do this in order to get a program, find your seat, be seated.Remember to use the restroom before the concert starts, so you would not need to during the performance. It is very important to stay in your own seat and quietly seated while the concert is in progress. The reasons you should do this because it would be very disrespectful to the musicians, who put many hours into performing high quality music. Also it would be disrespectful to the audience trying to enjoy the musi c the musicians are performing. You should never leave the concert, while it is in progress unless you absolutely need to. Leaving a during a performance will distract others around you.If you do need to leave early, try leaving when there is a break or intermission in the program. When a concert is in progress, it's very important to stay as quiet as possible. During the concert you will want to whisper, hum, sing along, or tap your shoe don't do these things. It will distract others from the performance and will make unnecessary noise during the performance. If you bring a baby to the concert. When it cries or make another noise please try to exit the auditorium as quiet as possible. This will help others to not get distracted.Do not wave to your children(if they are performing) during the performance. They most likely already know that you are there and who you are. Please don't take flash photography, it would most likely blind a musician and won't be able to see their music. Do not walk down one the aisle to video tape the concert ( the light is usually not good enough for you to tape the concert ). Remember to not use your cell phone during the concert. Please turn them off before the concert begins. Refrain from unwrapping candy or cough drop wrappers during the performance. (If the omposer wanted the sound of crinkle paper noise, they would have written it in the piece. ) During a performance, you should never eat or drink. Just imagine sitting by someone chewing and drinking loudly. You would want to leave wouldn't you. While the concert is in progress, there will most likely be silence in some pieces. These are called movements. You would want to clap, but don't clap. A good way to know if it is a movement is if the conductor's arms are still up in the air, or if his/her back is turned to the audience. A good way to show appreciation during a performance is to applause.Even if you didn't enjoyed the music that was played, you should still show respec t and appreciation to the performers. Sometimes the audience will show more appreciation or enthusiasm for a good performance by standing while clapping. This is called a standing ovation. It would be more respectful to join and stand up even if you didn't think it shouldn't deserve one. It's completely acceptable to shout out words of appreciation, but not hateful comments towards the performers and conductor. Knowing this information will help you show respect to the performers, audience, and conductors during a concert.

The Odyssey – What Is a Hero

Ashley Literature and Composition 1 8 March 2010 â€Å"The Odyssey† by Homer What is a hero? One who holds a proud countenance or obtains a strong build? Different cultures and ethnicities may have their own, unique definition of a hero. Although the Greeks believed that such a principled individual is someone that people look up to, and a title such as this cannot be bestowed upon the ordinary. In Homer’s â€Å"The Odyssey†, it is Odysseus who possesses the true characteristics of a hero wisdom, loyalty and showing moral improvement.Homer describes Odysseus as an intelligent individual; this statement is proven fact when in the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus, Odysseus’s first thought was to kill the giant. Instead of acting upon his first thoughts Odysseus takes the time to use his intelligence and realize that Polyphemus is the only way out of the cave. Odysseus offers wine to Polyphemus who then asks his providers’ name, Odysseus wittily replies with â€Å"Nohbody: mother, father, and friends, everyone calls me Nohbody† (Homer Lines 360-361). Even as he spoke, he reeled and tumbled backward, his great head lolling to one side and sleep took him like any creature† (Lines 360-366). Odysseus and his men blind Polyphemus while sleeping which results in the giant yelling to his brothers that, â€Å"Nohbody, Nohbody’s tricked me. Nohbody’s ruined me! † and no one came to his aide (Line 443). In this example, Odysseus shows his intelligence, a trait one can infer that the Greeks admired, by lying to Polyphemus to save the lives of his men.Also, after 2 eturning home to Ithaca to find many suitors begging for his wife’s hand in marriage, Odysseus disguises himself as a beggar to avoid attention. The seemingly beggar at first glance enters the home of Odysseus to witness the emotional destruction of his wife Penelope. Odysseus is disguised until the last possible moment when he eventually rev eals himself after completing the task to win Penelope’s hand in marriage. Odysseus is a marvel character whose characteristics allow readers to infer that the Greeks held the trait f intelligence in respect for a hero. During 720 BC, when â€Å"The Odyssey† was first published, the book explained that Odysseus preferred not to go to war, especially a war fought for an unfaithful woman. The Greeks showed no signs of disloyalty as a respectable trait for any man or woman, therefore when Odysseus is described as a faithful man, he is immediately categorized as a hero. To an extent Odysseus’s bravery can be substantiated by Athena’s constant support, and also proving his loyalty to the Greek Gods during his twenty years away from home.Locked away on the goddess Calypso’s island, Odysseus, despite the attraction he feels toward the nymph goddess, stayed as faithful as possible to his Penelope proving his devoted love for her. Calypso had offered him im mortality and a life bound her, but with his one goal in mind, (to return home) Odysseus declines the offer proving his loyal character. Along with the promised loyalty to his wife, Odysseus was equally faithful to his men. When in the face of danger, his men looked to Odysseus for help and guidance knowing that he will come to their aide.An example of this mutual relationship is when Odysseus and his followers landed on the island of Aeaea, where they rested to replenish their strength. His men were divided in half and Odysseus and his half of followers stayed behind when the rest of his men journeyed through the island to investigate. After finding the palace of the goddess Circe the men were 3 welcomed into the palace by the goddess herself. One man, Eurylochus, sensed danger and stayed hidden outside while the others ate and drank the pleasures provided by Circe.The win was drugged, causing the men to forget all memories of their home. After drugging the men, Circe used her twis ted magic and transformed the men into swine. Eurylochus quickly returned to Odysseus and explained the evil doings of Circe. Odysseus traveled to the house of the goddess alone, where she invited him in and gave him the same drugged wine. With the help of the Messenger God Hermes, Odysseus managed to escape the magic of Circe and threatened her with his sword into changing his men back.Taking responsibility for his men’s lives and sacrificing his own instead of running away from the danger is proof of his loyal character. Odysseus’s principle attribute is loyalty which the Greeks believe, is in belonging to a heroic figure. Everyone deserves a second chance; learning from your mistakes provides evidence of your improving character. Throughout â€Å"The Odyssey† one may make comments about the numerous faults they find in Odysseus’s character such as; his love of glory, and his abiding arrogance.However, nearing the end of the tale Odysseus does not immed iately react violently upon the dreadful sight of the many suitors destroying the heart of his Penelope. Instead of acting quickly, Odysseus patiently waits until the right time to reveal his identity and surprise the suitors with their own death. Learning and improving your reputation are the qualities one can infer from the epic that were greatly admired by the Greeks as a heroic trait. During the period where heroes were described as intelligent, loyal, and dedicated, Odysseus is described as a model warrior in Homer’s â€Å"Odyssey† and a true heroic being.With his intelligence Odysseus saves the lives of his devoted followers when a desperate situation calls for hero. His loyalty provides reassurance to his wife 4 Penelope and his men that he will soon return home. Odysseus shows his improving character by learning from his past mistakes to improve the future. These traits are just a few traits that the Greeks, during Homer’s time period, held in the highes t regard for a hero. 5 Works Cited Homer. â€Å"The Odyssey†. New York: Ballantine Books, 1973

Discussion Question 2 Week 1 Supply and Demand Assignment

Discussion Question 2 Week 1 Supply and Demand - Assignment Example Discuss two ways or reasons in which business organizations may utilize the information on determinants of demand and supply in their economic decision making. The factor that influenced supply and demand for iPhone 6 included the determinants of demand: price of substitute goods, the price of complementary goods, income, preferences or tastes, and the number of buyers (ECO550 Week 1 Scenario Script: Models of Supply and Demand, and Non-Price Determinants of Each, 2014). Likewise, the determinants of supply include the price of the iPhone 6 as well as the quantities of units produced (initially pegged at 10 million). The reasons in which business organizations, like Apple, utilize information on determinants of demand and supply in their economic decision making are: to achieve the targeted profits and to plan for future growth (McGuigan, Moyer, & Harris, 2014). With targeted profits being achieved, the organization could plan on venturing into other profitable endeavors which would be consistent with their mission and vision, as well as the overall goals of the firm. Etherington, D. (2014, September 22). Apple Sells 10 Million iPhone 6 And 6 Plus Devices During Launch Weekend. Retrieved October 8, 2014, from Tech Crunch:

Individual Design Report Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Individual Design Report - Assignment Example Pumping fresh water out causes the increase in the degree of salt water intrusion, hence a sustainable and practical method of fresh water extraction mechanism must prevent the furtherance of such phenomenon. This design is a practical application of the mechanisms design by Dr. Bhattacharya and Dr. Basack where, a practical design for groundwater extraction was created specifically for arid regions using qanats that aims to, aside from extracting fresh water from aquifers, would create least, if not negligible, damage to the natural underground water system. Solution Both proponents of the theory based their mathematical equation to the equilibrium between saline water and that of the fresh water in the aquifers, where an interface can be calculated using the Ghyben-Herzberg relationship with the assumption of (1) homogenousity; (2) separation by a sharp interface; and (3) absence of mixing zone. Aside from using the equation and the assumption above, it is important to consider the theory of up-coning where the interface (where salt water and fresh water meets) lowers due to the extraction of fresh water (which is less dense than salt water). As the pressure above is considerably reduced, the shape of the rise of the saline water is conical and once the conical mound has been reached, the saline water mixes with the fresh. Given this scenario, it is vital that we determine the height of the cone created and from there, we can establish the amount of water to be extracted at a certain amount of time before fresh water is replenished in order to a avoid salt water intrusion. Recommendations (development and testing) Determination of the number of qanats to be used and the stratification of the bed rock present and the soil decomposition should be a preliminary resort before the implementation of the project. List of Contents Introduction Background Detail The water crisis is a looming peril that not only the third world country will have to face, but is becomin g a worldwide phenomenon at that. Water crises such as shortages and the lack of access to potable water resource suggest lack of governance and an overall mismanagement of use. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, the huge bulk of those affected by the water crises are the residents of poor countries who are gulled by the total lack of accessible water as well as the presence of water-borne disease. These are the places that suffer shortages due to the topography and the natural features of the place where it can easily be infiltrated with wastes. Even if the water crisis is the symptom of another problem, it should be given top priority. A proposal for immediate resolution is the development of sustainable water extraction facilities, especially in aquifers proximate to salt water sources such as the sea. Why the design was undertaken The main objectives for the development of a reliable water extraction system aside from effectively drawing out water from an underground sourc e is the removal of the contaminants and prevention of salt water intrusion deeper into the fresh water aquifer. There are also other important aspects such as remedial operations. Under a remedial system, it is to be kept in mind that the levels of contaminants present in an aquifer should be reduced otherwise removed. Based on the different objectives of

Strategic issues in banking and insurance Essay

Strategic issues in banking and insurance - Essay Example In developed world where most of the sector is de-regulated and enjoy substantial degree of freedom and autonomy, political influences may not be there however, in developing countries, this may not be the case. Developing countries do not have very well grown financial sector and most of the institutions are either directly owned or controlled by the government themselves or governments have the substantial share in them. This allows the government to largely influence the banks especially to engage into practices which may not be in direct interest of the deposit holders of those banks. The era after 9/11 have seen a new shift into the industry in terms of influence of political forces on it. The anti-money laundering rules, terrorist funding etc were some of the key strategic issues which put extra pressures on the banks and insurance companies to devise methods and strategies which can effectively help in tackling issues like illegal money laundering, channeling of funds through SWIFT etc to the supposedly terrorist organizations etc. The current economic trends especially the crisis emerged due to the subprime mortgages is considered now as one of the great strategic challenge faced by most of the players in the financial sector industry. Subprime mortgages are considered as the threat which has largely been created by the banks themselves as they tend to violate their own prudent lending policies in order to capture the market. This has therefore provided them an opportunity to earn at the cost of incurring high cost. â€Å"Sub-Prime lending typically has been characterized as lending at relatively costly interest rates and fees to credit impaired or otherwise high risk borrowers.† (Lax, Manti and Raca). Subprime loans are among the newly popular mortgage products, such as interest-only loans, for people with strained budgets, including first-time buyers. Homeowners increasingly use them to refinance and consolidate household debts

Organizational behavior paper Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Organizational behavior paper - Essay Example People often work because they have to and for money. To be a better manager, it is significant to understand what motivates employees to maximize output. Douglas Mc Gregor uses Theory X and Y to explain the human behavior in the workplace (The Wall Street Journal editors, 2015). In Theory X assumptions, human being has an inherent dislike for work and will evade if he can. Because of work dislike, most people must be coerced, directed, controlled and threatened to ensure they achieve organizational objectives. Besides, employees prefer to be directed, wish to avoid responsibility, have little ambition, and want security. However, in Theory Y assumptions, the expenses of mental and physical effort in work is as natural as rest and play. External influence or threat of punishment is not the only way of achieving effort toward organizational objectives. People have self-control and direction in meeting the objectives. Employees seek and accept responsibilities. Therefore, the aim of management should not be to direct and control employees seeking to shun work, but instead make conditions that enable people want to offer maximum effort. Rewarding employees for an achievement is an effective way to reinforce and share commitment rather than punishing them for failure. Giving responsibility enables employees to rise to challenge hence employee motivation influences organizational behavior thus

Elasticity of rubber Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Elasticity of rubber - Assignment Example Rubber substances are not confined to natural rubber, however. They take account of a great variety of synthetic polymers of comparable properties. An elastomer is considered as a polymer that shows evidence of rubber elastic properties, i.e. materials that can be possibly stretched to a number of times its original length without breaking and which, upon release of the stress, instantaneously returns to their original lengths. A rubber is more or less an elastic material, since its deformation is instantaneous and it further shows almost no slither (Bjork, 1988). The distinctive nature of rubbers was ascertained by John Gough in 1305, and described his findings and experiments as shown in this subsequent paragraph. A person has to clasp one end of the slip of a rubber between the thumb and forefinger of each hand; get the central point of the piece into slight contact with the lips; further lengthen the slip swiftly; and you will instantly make out a feeling of warmth in that sectio n of the mouth that is in contact with stretched rubber. For this resin evidently grows warmer the further it is lengthened; and the edges of the lips possess a higher degree of sensibility, which facilitates them to discover these changes with greater facility than other parts of the body. The augment in temperatures, which is recognized in the event of extending any pieces of Caoutchouc, may be obliterated in on the spot, by allowing the slip to contract again; which it will do quickly by desirable quality of its own spring, as soft as the stretching forces cease to act as soon as it has been fully exerted. Gough made these comments regarding his second experiment: In any case one end of a slip of Caoutchouc is fastened to a rod of wood or metal, and some weight is fixed (added) at the other extremity/end; the thong will be seen to become longer with cold and shorter with heat (Mark, 1984). To make certain this concept, it is necessary for a self experimentation. One will only nee d a strip of rubber, a weight and a hair-dryer. Gough presented no better explanations to the unexpected findings, such as that the expected stiffness increments with rising temperatures and that heat is progressive throughout stretching duration. It took approximately fifty years prior to the formulation of thermodynamics of the rubber elasticity. Rubbers exhibit predominantly entropy-driven elasticity through measurements of force and specimen length at varied temperature levels. Thermo-elastic effects of rubber shows that stretched rubber samples which are subjected to constant uniaxial load contract reversibly on heating, and the same sample can give out heat reversibly if stretched. These two observable concepts are true and consistent with the view that the entropy of the rubber decreased on stretching. Molecular picture of the entropic forces is dated back to the theoretical work of 1930’s, when it was suggested that the covalently bonded polymer chains had been orient ed during extension (Gumbrell, Rivlin, &, Mullins, 1953, p. 1495). Methods and procedures This study involved an investigation in the thermo-elastic behaviors and thermodynamics, with regards to the energetic and entropic elastic forces. At minimum strains, characteristically less than ? = L L 0 < 1.1 (where L and L0 are the dimensions of the unstressed and stressed specimens, respectively), the stress at

34 of 34 Discuss interdiction, prevention, and treatment programs as Essay

34 of 34 Discuss interdiction, prevention, and treatment programs as components of the national drug strategy. Include a discussion of the effectiveness of each strategy - Essay Example Increase in drug prices reduces their consumption. The prevention action plan which is part of the national drug strategy aims at avoiding drug use among the youths. This is one through providing information about prevention to affected stakeholders such as parents, law enforcement authorities, educators, young people and the community. It also aims to achieve this through national campaigns against drugs and funding community projects for the same purpose (Gaines & Kappeler, 2008). This has been seen to be successful in reducing car accidents resulting from drug abuse as it is seen to reduce consumption of illicit drugs to considerable levels. Although it is not easy to get the exact number of how this has been successful, since the implementation of the prevention there has been a notable degree in use of drugs among the youths. Treatment as a strategy involves taking the people who are already addicted to drugs to drug rehabilitation center where they are helped in recovering through therapy and counseling. The national drug strategy supports the treatment plan and encourages the use of new collaborative an innovative strategies that will yield better results. This has been through funding territories and provinces to reinforce drug abuse treatment systems thereby increasing the access to drug treatment services to meet the high need. Treatment has been successful in turning around the lives of drug addicts who have collaborated and who are now able to live without dependency on the drugs. United States. (2005). Drug prevention programs and the fiscal year 2006 drug control budget: Is the federal government neglecting illegal drug use prevention? : hearing before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Ninth Congress, first session, April 26, 2005. Washington: U.S.

Context - historical, cultural or social Essay Example for Free

Context historical, cultural or social Essay The level of efficiency of a literary work does not depend solely on the story, but also on the context of that specific stories. Some stories are only powerful when they are set in a specific context, otherwise they would reach the effect that was wanted. This is exactly the case with Woman at Point Zero by Nawal El Sadaawi, and The Crucible by Arthur Miller. The Crucible is set in a historical time different then that of the author and the reader. In the 17th century people thought in different manners, and believed in different things, in this case witchcraft. If the work wasnt set in this context it could not have been so effective since because witch trials are no longer present, and the whole story would be meaningless. Culturally it is important what people think, what and who people believe in. In the culture of Salem all the citizens were highly religious, and questioned everything not related to religion and beliefs. This is why they believed the girls when they were saying that the good spirits in their souls can detect the evil ones in other people, and never thought, even for a second, to question them. In a social sense this society was ideal, and perfect for the story. Their beliefs and their actions helped the development of the witch trials. In a smaller society the news of witch hunt would not have had been so important for other larger cities, then it was in the case of Salem. Albeit Woman at Point Zero is set in the same time period as the reader is, historically it recalls earlier version of European society, when women were ruled by men, as it is in the Arabian society in the present. This means that although it is hard to understand for someone living in a European society, if it was set in this society and the reappearance of an old historical period. The Egyptian culture is different then almost every outside of the Arab area, but it is necessary to make this work meaningful and powerful. It is clearly started from the beginning of the text that the men are always in charge, and never let the women make their own decisions. This only makes sense in a culture where it is the norm. In other areas it would be meaningless, which is why culture is extremely important. In conclusion it can be seen that story is not the only thing that make a work enjoyable and understandable, but also its context. Without them the whole book would become meaningless and no one would be able to make sense of it.

Comparing Chinese Herbal Medicine And Modern Medicine Sociology Essay

Comparing Chinese Herbal Medicine And Modern Medicine Sociology Essay This project is to compare Chinese herbal medicine with modern (Western) medicine in terms of culture, sociological and human well-being effects. An online system has been created to showcase a number of popular Chinese herbals in order to gain better understanding on the way that these herbs keep body balance and harmony. The system also help people to check the translation of Chinese herbs Also the users can comment on the web site,and exchange their ideas with others. Also, some sociological and philosophical reasons that can affect peoples opinions are discussed in the research section of this report. 1. Introduction 1.1 Project background The background of this project can be thought asthe points shown below. At any time, healthy is an important element for a human well being. Especially at present, everyone is thinking more about their health while working and living under the pressure of economic recession. Research has shown that most people choose modern medicine, i.e., western medicine to cure diseases. But not only modern medicine costs too much but also it has side defects. In 2009, after the American singer Michael Jackson died, many people have realized that taking more medicines can get sometimes unpleasant side effect, and sometimes, fatal. Furthermore, because of the pandemic of Swine Flu, people have started to think more about disease prevention than just curing them. To this end, Chinese herbal medicine can help and has since become more popular than before, which is a very natural choice. So, more and more people are interest in Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM). According to World Hearth Organization (WHO) webpage, the following description has been given: During its 3000-yea r history, traditional Chinese medicine pioneered interventions such as diet, exercise, awareness of environmental influences on health, and the use of herbal remedies as part of a holistic approach to health.(1). Chinese Herbal Medicine can be used as in evidence.However,, similar to any other medicine, CHM is complicated, even to Chinese people. To understand Chinese Herbal Medicine is not easy. So, a system thatcan provide the information of Chinese herbal medicine can help people who are not used to CHM in many ways. 1.2 Problem definition From the questionnaire conducted in this project and shown in Appnediex, more than 80% non-Chinese people heard about Chinese Herbal Medicine,.Whereas , more than a half of them prefer modern medicine. So, why donot they like Chinese medicine is the first question to ask. Secondly, According to the questionnaire, more than 60% people use Internet everyday, which means, with the development of e-commerce, Internet can be a tool that provides people with different views on Chinese herbal medicine. But, during the research, until now, just a few web site can support this, which are A) http://www.herbalmedicineuk.com/ B) http://www.holisticchineseherbs.com/ C) http://www.holisticchineseherbs.com/ On the other hand, there are some problems in these three web sites. Figure1: the first web site at http://www.herbalmedicineuk.com/ . The web page A can be used to purchase some herbs on line,i.e., it is a on-line shopping web site. There is not any information regarding the background of these herbs. From this web site, users only can buy the herbs, but can not learn the knowledge of Chinese herbal medicine. Figure 2: the second web site. Similarly, web site B can only provide general information on CM, but not information regarding each individual herb and its functions. Figure3: the third web site On the other hand, webpage C provides amount of useful information on CHM. However, again when it comes to each herb, the knowledge is not there with a number of translation errors. In summary, although there are a few web sites that provide information on Chinese herbal medicine, for people with little knowledge of CHM, a new web sited is needed to work as an educational tool as well as an online shopping site, which is what this project does. 1.3 Aims The aim of this project is to design and build a web site system that allows users with little knowledge of CHM to learn and understand Chinese herbal medicine. Another aim is to start an online discussion forum to find the reasons behind that why so many people dont know or dislike CHM. 1.4 Objectives Gather information on the knowledge of CHM based on questionnaires. Interview with doctors who practice CHM.Carry out research on these topics Design and build an online system. Evaluate the online website. Write final report on project. 2 Literature review This chapter will review three books on Chinese medicine, which include Chinese herbal medicine -A practical guide to the healing power of herbs by Guang Xu (Give reference in the end), Medicine East And West: Two Ways of seeing, two ways of thinking by Ted J.kaptchuk (reference), Chinese herbal medicine Formulas and Strategies by Dan Bensky and Randall Barolet (reference) and Chinese Herbal Legends by Zhu Zhongbao (reference). 2.1 The healing power of herbs In the book written by Guang Xu, the author tries to give a general overview about Chinese herbal medicine. The related chapters can be divided into two parts, one is Chinese herbal medicine history, another one is the elements of Chinese herbal medicine. Chinese herbal medicine has a long history of more than 5000 years. The history can go back to the time of Sheng Nong, when Chinese people used plants to treat the illness further than a few thousand years. As explained by the author, Chinese herbal medicine is rooted in the culture of centuries, it cannot be easily explained or measured by modern scientific language and methods. Without a total understanding of its background and its history, it is very difficult to understand. [reference] . According to Chinese Culture, basically, there are two different elements that can affect Chinese Herbal Medicine. One is Yin (darkness) Yang (brightness), another one is Five-Element Theory. By understanding these two elements, it is easier for people who dont know CHM to comprehend Chinese Herbal Medicine. 2.1.1 Yin and Yang (darkness and brightness) Yin Yang, which is from traditional Chinese philosophy, is the name of two related things that are opposite in the natural world, i.e., everything in the universe can have two opposite, such as sunshine, fire, light, which are Yang. On the other hand, grey, dark, cold, belong to the element of Yin. In Chinese Medicine, Yin-Yang theory is an important element through the whole medicine system and can be employed to explain the body system and guide the treatment. For example: Yin-Yang implies that everything in the world has an opposite, such as sky and land, sun and moon. Although they are opposite, they also can be an unity. Through this unity, the natural world can keep the balance well. Yin-Yang depends on with each other, meaning if there is no Yang, there is no Yin. When the balance of the relationship of the substance of Yin-Yang are destroyed, the life might reach its end. On the other hand, Yin-Yang has a special relationship. If one wanes the other will wax. For example, just as the four seasons, if winter changes to spring, the weather should be warm. It is the process of Yin waxes and Yang wanes. Five-Element Theory The Five-element theory includes fire, metal, water, wood and earth, as well as their motions. The ancient Chinese people found these five elements are the basic substances in universe. These five kinds of elements have relationship of generation and restriction, as found in Chinese Herbal Medicine, Chinese doctors use them to describe the problems of disease as explained in the following: Reinforcing the spleen (earth) to strengthen the lung (metal) ; Failure of water (kidney) to nourish wood (or failure of the kidney to nourish the liver) ; Five movements and six climates; Wood tending to spread out freely; Depression of the liver (wood) generating fire; Fire of the liver (wood) impairing the lung (metal); Fire tending to flare/flame upward ; Excessive fire impairing the lung (metal) ; Failure of fire to generate earth ; Coordination between water (kidney) and fire (heart); In coordination between the kidney (water) and the heart (fire) ; Being restricted and restricting ; Philosophical concept Traditional Chinese herbal medicine, however, can be based on two treatments which are on philosophical concept. 2.1.3.1 The Holistic Concept By this concept, there is a general meaning, i.e., the human body is a unity and a universe is within a body. On the other hand, it has a close interaction with the world. Traditional Chinese Medicine maintains that a human body is composed of different organs with each organ having its own distinct function, as a part of the whole body. Also, Chinese medicine regards the whole body as an organic body. Its constituent parts are inseparable in structure, interrelated and interdependent in physiology. Man has a nature life, and nature provides an environment for mans survival. So, human can be affected by nature. Traditions Chinese Medicine states Physicians have to know the law of nature and geographical conditions when diagnosing and treating diseases . That is the reason of Tradition Chinese Medicine not only stresses the human body is a unity but also regards the interrelationship between the body and nature environment. 2.1.3.2 Treatment by Differentiation of Syndromes Chinese herbal medicine, on the other hand, is also understood as treatment by differentiation of syndromes. The meaning of differentiation is to analyze the diseases by comprehensive, implying that the patients symptoms and signs collected by the following four diagnostic methods are analyzed and summarized in order to identify the etiology, nature and location of a disease, and the relationship between vital qi (air) and pathogens, thereby to determine what syndrome a disease in concern belongs to. According to the relationship between disease and treatment, traditional Chinese medicine is based on two different ways. One is to treat the same disease with different therapies. Whilst another one is to treat different diseases with the same therapy, i.e., different disease can be manifested in the same situation may be treated in the same way. In summary, using different methods for the treatment of the disease is the core of Treatment by Differentiation of Syndromes. 2.2 Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine The book by Ted J.kaptchuk discusses the difference between East and West medicines, such as why some westerners dislike Chinese Medicine? There is a philosophic reason, which is that Chinese culture is hard to understand. But, another reason is sociological. That is the way of western people thinking about Chinese Medicine. In this book, author gives two different views on seeing and thinking via westerners view, If a non-Chinese person can found these two ways, he/she might become interested in Chinese Medicine. The first one is concerned with treatment result. Many non-chinese have strange notions about Chinese medicine, Some of them see it as hocus-pocus-the product of primitive or magical thinking. If a patient is cured by means of herbs or acupuncture, they see only two possible explanations: Either the cure is a placebo effect, or it is an accident. To many people, when they heard about CHM, the first feeling in their mind is that, Chinese medicine is magical, but not science. The reason can be understood that Western medicine is based on data. Western doctors prefer using data to treat disease, whereas Chinese doctors are in favor of their experience. Another way of thinking, as described in the book, is Other Westerners have a more favorable but equally erroneous view of Chinese medicine. Deeply and often justifiably disturbed by many of the products of Western science and culture, they assume that the Chinese system, because it is felt to be more ancient, more spiritual, or more holistic, is also more true than Western medicine. In this way, some Westerners like Chinese medicine, but, because of different background, different culture, different history, their translate Chinese medicine of their own way based on their own culture. Also, they learn Chinese medicine through TV, Internet and some other media. In their mind, that is what Chinese medicine should look like. By and large, there are two groups of people. One group use Chinese medicine, but, think that Chinese medicine is less logical and is not based on science. It depends on a patients fortune. Another group of people think Chinese medicine through their own culture. Their minds are often mixed by this culture and other media. So, in their head, they have a different image of Chinese herbal medicine. But, many times, this image is incomplete. In Summary, the sociological reason that why westerners dislike Chinese medicine is based on a whole system. The Chinese method is based on the idea that no single part can be understood except in its relation to the whole. Understanding this overall pattern, with the symptom as part of it, is the challenge of Chinese medicine. The Chinese system is not less logical, just less analytical. 2.3 Formulas and Strategies The book on Formulas and Strategies by Dan Bensky and Randall Barolet has divided Chinese herbal medicine as Chinese herbal and Chinese medicine. Whereas the book by Zhu Zhongbao on Chinese Herbal Legends focuses on the use of herbs. Recently, more and more Chinese doctors found it hard to translate Chinese herbal names. Because, the herbal name is based on Chinese culture and history, and there are so many acceptable solutions. Since these books work as a reference text, for our project, our information is to reflect as closely as possible the meaning and syntax of the original CHM. We use anglicized Latin names for medicinal substances. The right translations of herbal can be found from these two books. The following examples are given in the webpage designed in this project. 1) Cang zhu Name English name: Swordlike Atractylodes Rhizome Pharmaceutical name :Rhizoma Atractylodis Nature and flavor: Pungent, bitter and warm Actions Dries dampness and strengthens the spleen Dispels wind dampness Induces sweat, releases the exterior Indications Syndrome of dampness stagnation in Middle Burner Impediment syndrome due to wind damp Exterior syndrome of wind , cold and dampness Chickenpox, mumps and scarlet fever Infantile rickets Night blindness and dry eyes Diabetes 2) Jin Yin Hua Name English name: Honeysuckle Flower Pharmaceutical name: Flos Lonicerae Japonicae. Nature and flavor:Sweet and cold Actions Clears away heat and resolve toxin Disperses wind and heat Indications External contracted wind-heat, the onset of warm disease Carbuncle and clove sores Bleeding due to heat toxin More information about translation will be given by chapter 3result and disscuess. Methodology Based on the study of literature review, two methods have been applied in the development of this project. One is to conduct questionnaire to gather information from the point of view of Chinese doctors. The other is to design and develop an internet based information site providing educational tool on the explanation of what each herb does and a prototype of potential online shopping site to deliver the herbs that people require. 3.1 Interview with a Chinese doctor Location: Brent Cross Doctor Herb Student Name: Yuanlei Wang Following the recommendation by the supervisor, Dr. Amaldi, this interview took place at Brent Cross Doctor Herb in order to gain insight useful information from a professional CHM practitioner. The Chinese doctor of the clinic described the changing of Chinese herbal medicine during the last 10 years. After recording, translating, and analysis, the main points can be summarized as follows. As discussed in Section 2, there are two main reasons that Chinese herbal medicine is not as popular as Western medicine. They are sociological and culture. Sociological In the past, because Chinese government had closed door policy, Chinese were hardly known to the other world. Nor was Chinese Herbal Medicine, which has led less people being interest in China culture, history, and Chinese herbal medicine. On top of this, Chinese government imposed a culture revolution and ignored CHM, leading to less and less people know this medicine, even in China. Culture In Europe, every medical practice needs license to ensure patients safety, which can only obtained by field trial through gathering large amount of data. As discussed in Section 2, CHM is mainly based on experience. Therefore CHM cannot be used in many hospitals, but can be used as additional therapy, such as acupuncture. Because the differences in culture, it is hard for non-Chinese people to understand this invasive technique, On the other hand, the UK National Health Service (NHS) has only introduced limited CHM. Many GPs (general practitioner) think Chinese herbal medicine is an accident not a science. Because NHS is free to the UK people, whereas CHM cost a lot, people will think twice before go to a CHM shop. Chinese herbal medicine (CHM) in the UK Since China started an open policy three decades ago, more and more people have visited China and are becoming more and more interested in Chinese culture and therefore CHM. Now, in the UK, there are over 3000 Chinese medicine shops all over the country, an increase by over 30% in the least 30 years. More and more people have started to take Chinese herbal medicine. Furthermore, the UK government has a plan to legitimate Chinese herbal medicine as part of NHS. So, CHM is getting more and more recognized in improving peoples well being and healthy life. (More information will be given in result and discussion ) 3.1.4 Media Effect British Broadcasting Cooperation (BBC) has also made huge contribution to introduce CHM to the UK. For example, in January 2006, BBC Channel 2 did a programme on Acupuncture Deactivates Brain and again on Back-pain Acupuncture Effective in Septmeber. In these programmes, doctors try to use the acupuncture instead the general anaesthetic. During the first programme, it is said: The pain matrix is involved in the perception of pain it helps someone decide whether something is painful or not, so it could be that acupuncture in some ways changes a persons pain perception. But he added: The thing about acupuncture is that it does not work on everyone. It is more likely to be effective if you believe it.I think it is a psychological manipulation technique, a distraction. We are not going to get to the stage where this could be used instead of a general anaesthetic. In the second programme, the message is that acupuncture for low back pain is cost-effective and works, according to medical researchers. According to the interview during the questionnaire time, the doctor remembered that after this TV programme, many people found that Chinese herbal medicine are useful for their body. More and more people have visited Chinese medicine shop. This example has shown that media can provide a good way to spread a news. Other means of media should also be applied in this regard. Design and Build an internet based Herbal Shop Although TV is a extremely useful way to broadcast a news, it has the limitation of time. Like the two programmes discussed in Section 3.1.4, they were shown near mid-night when most people are gone to bed and missed many viewers. Internet, however, is 24-7 and can be viewed at anytime, any location by using any means (e.g, mobile phone, computer, TV, etc). Therefore in this project, an online system has been created to introduce Chinese herbs plus their relevant information. The web page is at http://image.mdx.ac.uk/leilei. Figure 1 display a use-case UML (Unified Modelling Language) diagram showing the design. Figure 1. A UML diagram showing the developed Chinese Herb webpage (http://image.mdx.ac.uk/leilei). The system interface is consisted of three main parts, including product viewing page, search engine, input page, and guest book to send users feedbacks, and has client-server structure. In the server, the database is built using MySQL language, a rational database language. While the web interface is constructed using PHP (Personal Home Page) language, a c-like language. When users use this product, the process can be described as follows. Figure 2. System structure. When users enter data through internet interfaces which are coded in PHP. Then the interface through PHP sends/retrieves data to/from MYSQL database that is resided at the web page server at http://image.mdx.ac.uk . 3.2.1 Functions of the system This system has three parts, including Guest book, information, and history, which are describe in review. Homepage About Chinese herbal medicine Chinese herbals Guest book The history of Chinese herbal medicine. The first function is the information of Chinese herbal medicine., in this web page, users can know the history of Chinese herbal medicine, and other information. Guest book The second function is Guest book, in this function, the users can write some words in the browser. This part just provides a environment for exchanging ideas. Chinese herbal The last function is Chinese herbal to introduce its function, flavor, condition, and many more. 4 Result and Discussion This Section will discuss the results obtained from the interviewing with a Chinese medicine doctor and the developed prototype online CHM shop and information system. 4.1 Results from the interviewing Through the questionnaire and the interview with the Chinese doctor at Brent Corss Clinic, it can be concluded that nearly half of the population dont like to dont know CHM, as illustrated at Figure 6. A considerable number of people have not heard of CHM. And a quarter of people do not know the places to purchase CHM. Many people do even like the taste of CHM, which is similar to many Chinese people who take herbs. Figure 3. Pie chart showing the group of people thinking of CHM. These differences again can be associated to the issues of 1) Culture 2) Translation.3) Media 4) Government 5) The tastes of Herbal. In these data, culture belongs to philosophic reason, whilst media, translation, government and the tastes of herbal relate to sociological reason. Culture Chinese Medicine has following characteristics. Preventing is more important than treatment According to Chinese medicine book Yellow Emperor, people should treat disease before they have it, i.e., people should take care of their body before they have illness. Another book Hua inan zi (Chinese medicine) also claims that a good doctor often treats non-diseases, hence there is no disease. I.e., if a doctor can find a persons disease before this person get it, he will never get this disease. This prevention-oriented medical thought that people should take care of their health from an early age, can transform as a measure of dialectical philosophy, which is the essence of Chinese culture. Nature and Man should be together The overall concept of Chinese philosophy focuses on that human and nature world should be together, like a body. That the world and the human are not isolated, and they are interdependent, interacting, and interrelated. When it comes to Chinese Herbal Medicine, it also has the same pinciple. Chinese herbal medicine advocates astronomy, geography, and persons should be a whole entity. A nature human cannot leave the social world to survive. The factors that influence health and disease, are concerned with not only biological factors, but also social and psychological factors, So, Chinese Herbal Medicine also advocates treatment that should focus on the change of nature world. To adjust the balance of Yin-Yang (YY) Chinese Medicine mentions that the Yin-Yang is two sided, which is relatively representative of the body. The formation and growth is inseparable from the development of YY. In the bodys normal physiological conditions, the relative balance of YY is maintained, which is important. If one is changed, the mis-balance will cause the change/disorder of bodys normal physiological function. All the actions that a human is doing in the nature world are inseparable from the balance of YY. Therefore, the purpose of the coordination shows that traditional Chinese culture focus on symmetry, the bedrock philosophy of the balance. Static and dynamic idea of the constant combining From the early age, Chinese Philosophy already found the relationship between static and dynamic understanding , as stated in the Book of Change (Zhou Yi). The static and dynamic things are happening constantly. The substance in the nature world should keep moving and changing. In the whole human life, everything in the body, should keep changing until the end. Motion is the rule of nature world. It is the basic element of human health. So, Chinese Medicine stresses dynamics that can treat disease. Just as the same way that people know that sporting is good for health. On the other hand, comparing with dynamic view, Chinese Herbal Medicine also found that silence can also be a healthy habit. Qi Gong (i.e., marshal art) is based on this opinion. So, Static and dynamic element should be completed. Translation A good translation can help people with different culture background understand Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) better. Because CHM has its own culture and history , sometimes, it is difficult to translate the words exactly, which can cause frustration and lead more people lose their interest in CHM, which is explained below. The philosophic meaning in the medicine name. Some CHM names are based on their own philosophic meaning, such as Yin Yang, Yuan Qi and so on. If people do not know Chinese philosophic culture, it would be hard to translate. For some CHM doctors, when they translate medicine names, they sometimes copy some western medicine names. Whereas actually those medicines are completely different. Because of the long history of China, Chinese Herbal Medicine is based on an old knowledge system. Through more than thousand years, some of them have already lost their meanings with only a few people understanding. So, even to some knowledgeable Chinese people, translating medicine names is a hard job. Other factors include Media. According to data analysis from the questionaire, media is a very important means in order to let more people know Chinese medicine. However media can be limited, such as the wrong time of a TV programme leading to many people missing the show. Another factor is Governmental: In the past, Chinese Government had a closed door policy, which has limited knowledge of CHM. The questionnaire has also concluded that bad taste of herbs may also have some effect to prevent people taking them. Online shopping system Figures 3-6 illustrate the snapshots of web interfaces of the developed prototype online information and shopping system. Figure 4. The interface showing the Herb information. Figure 5. Input interface. Figure 6. Search engine. Figure 7. Guest book for sending users feedbacks. The system now contains more than 20 herbs information. System Evaluation The evaluation of the developed web site is based on heuristic evaluation. That can give a general overview of the web site, also, through this way, it can give a good idea for developers to improve the system design. The purpose of this evaluation is that, users have a task to browse the complete web pages. This task should start on the home page and finish when users get the feedback. Through this way, users can have a general view of the system by following the rules shown below. User control and freedom Users control and freedom can be understood that system can support users undo or do. Through the task we choose, users can find that it is not easy for them to control the web sites. ie, in the comment page, when users submit the words, they will find that there is a button for them to resubmit. Fun and enjoyment According the purpose of this web site, the web site should give the information of the Chinese herbal medicine to users. That means that the web pages should be fun, but these web pages are very plain, i.e., 1) All the background colours are white. 2) The web site is too simply , There is no enjoyment for users. Feedback Feedback is important for users to understand the information of the web site. In this web site, users can comment and see the other feedbacks. Provide short cuts Short cuts are easily for users to find what they want. In general, the web site is useful. Users can find the information regarding Chinese herbal medicine that need from the home page. Aesthetics and minimalist design Normally, users can have a good feeling with a good minimalist design. But, this web site is boring at this point. Through all web pages, there is no colour, no pictures, all the buttons are closed with each other. That might be caused some mistakes of users. On the other hand, there are some positive feedbacks. The users can find buttons easily, especially on the last page, where there is a comment page, providing a good interaction between users and the web site. In summary, this web site is fine, users can get some general information about Chinese herbal medicine from this web site, also, this web site has a guest page. Users can have a good interaction with the system. According heuristic evaluation, there are some negative aspects. Such as, 1)This system is very simply . 2) The colours are not very good. 3) It is boring for users 4) Some steps are not useful. All in all, this web site can give users a general opinion of Chinese herbal medicine. Recommendations There are some aspects which need to recommend. It should change colours of the web pages. The system should not be simple. The web site should increase some enjoyment. It should provide the search function for users. The web pages should give more freedom to users. Conclusion This project aims at introducing people Chinese Herbal Medicine and has developed an online system providing information on Chinese herbs. The design of the system applies client-server structure and employ

The Dead Poets Society By Peter Weir

The Dead Poets Society By Peter Weir Neil Perry is a confident and popular student who excels in his studies. He is well-liked by both his peers and teachers and is a natural leader. Inspired by his passionate English teacher, Mr Keating, he re-establishes the Dead Poets Society. This shows that he is prepared to challenge the schools authority. Neils aspirations to become an actor are snuffed by his controlling father who refuses to give Neil any choice about his future. As a result, Neil commits suicide at the end of the film. à ¢-  Todd Anderson Todd is a shy and introverted student who is new to Welton Academy. Todds older brother was a previous valedictorian of Welton and both the school and his parents clearly have high expectations of him. An obedient and studious young man, Todd tries hard to please his teachers but lacks confidence at the beginning of the film and this prevents him from reaching his potential. However, both Neil and Mr Keating support and encourage him and he consequently develops considerably as a character. At the end of the film, he is the first student to stand on his desk in support of Mr Keating. à ¢-  Knox Overstreet Though shy and academically focussed at the beginning of the film, Knox develops considerably as a result of his inchoate relationship with Chris. Romantic and idealistic, he pursues Chris relentlessly, applying Mr Keatings philosophies to his circumstance. By seizing the day and taking risks, he ultimately wins Chris, in spite of the fact that she is practically married to Chet Danberry, the son of a family friend. Knoxs character is evidence of the positive effect of Mr Keatings teachings. à ¢-  Charlie Dalton or Nuwanda Rebellious, recalcitrant and reckless, Charlie Dalton is the most extraverted and daring of Weltons students. He resists the authority of the school and is ultimately expelled for refusing to sign the document condemning Mr Keating. Attention-seeking and chauvinistic, he also invites two girls to the Dead Poets Society meetings. Though he admires and respects Mr Keating, he takes Keatings principles too far and takes several imprudent risks. à ¢-  Richard Cameron Cameron is an assiduous and ambitious student who conforms totally to both the schools and his parents expectations. Keen to succeed academically and win the favour of his teachers, he is very compliant and is prepared to betray his friends in order to further his own interests. Cameron is ultimately responsible for the dismissal of Mr Keating as he selfishly accuses Keating of encouraging Neil to commit suicide; he is complicit with the schools administrators. à ¢-  Steven Meeks Meeks is the most academically gifted of the boys and; this is certainly his reputation amongst his peers. Though studious and compliant, he is well-liked by the others and is a strong supporter of Mr Keating. Like others, he reluctantly joins the Dead Poets Society but ultimately embraces all that it stands for. à ¢-  Mr. Perry Mr Perry is Neils paternalistic and dominating father. He is determined that Neil will finish school at Welton and study medicine. To this end, he ensures that Neil is focussed and not distracted by unnecessary extra-curricular activities such as the school magazine. Neil rebels against this but unable to confront his father, ultimately decides that he is trapped. Mr Perrys refusal to support Neils acting aspirations ultimately lead to Neils death. à ¢-  Mr. Nolan He is the director of Welton School illustrating the four pillars of the institution tradition, honour, discipline, excellence. He is the opposite character of Mr Keating and represents the conformism of the high class society at this time. He assures to send his students in elitist colleges and possesses the complete trust of their parents. à ¢-  Gerard Pitts Pitts is an insignificant character but is part of the core group of boys who form the Dead Poets Society. Tall and lanky, he is socially awkward and somewhat withdrawn. Though he is introverted and does not seem to take risks, he rises from his seat at the end of the movie, demonstrating that he clearly respects Mr Keating. Different styles of Leadership Charismatic leadership vs. Authoritarian leadership In this part, we are going to focus on two characters and their difference of personality and behaviours through their leadership styles: Mr Keating and Mr Nolan. à ¢-  Mr Keating: a charismatic leader Charisma is linked to a number of criteria that we will develop. During the entire movie, Mr Keating seems to be someone who pays much attention to the person he is talking to. Hes making that person (the students) feel free to be who they are and feel like the most important person in the world. Hes able to create a climate of intimacy which is linked to the trust. For example, during his first class, hes talking to the students as individuals. He wants to make them realize that they all have their own desires and he wants them to follow their own path. Mr Keating pays a great deal of attention in scanning and reading his environment, and is good at picking up the moods and concerns of both individuals and larger audiences. In this way, he knows how to answer to the students needs and to adapt himself to these others. A good example is when he teaches in class: he knows hes subject to a number of interrogations but he adapts his exercises to the concerns of the students. He also uses a wide range of methods to manage his image. He engenders trust through visible self-sacrifice and takes personal risks in the name of his beliefs. He shows great confidence in his followers (the students). He is very persuasive and makes very effective use of body language as well as verbal language. Mr Keating has a deliberate charisma in a theatrical sense: he makes effective use of storytelling, including the use of symbolism and metaphor. Especially when he talked about The Dead Poets Society for the first time, he described the world of poetry which is linked to passion and aim of life. In the same time, we have the impression that all along the movie he tries to build a group, his group of students, by making it very clear and distinct, separating it from the other classes. No other group has classes outside or on a football field. In this way, he is building the image of the group, in particular in the minds of his students, as being different to all others, so superior in a way. Also, he attached himself firmly to the identification of the group, such that to join the group is to become one with the leader. In doing so, he creates an unchallengeable position for himself. Furthermore, Mr Keating appears as a Charismatic Leader because he may not want to force anything. His beliefs are by themselves highly valuable. As we saw, Mr Keating tends to be a charismatic leader. A number of criteria are relevant to emphasize this theory as his vision, his sensitivity to the environment, to students need, his personal risk taking and his unconventional behaviour. Besides, according to Emily Spencer charismatic leaders are the product of follower perceptions and attributions that are influenced by actual leader traits and behaviour, the context of the situation, and the individual and collective needs of the followers, we will study later how Mr Keating influenced his students and answers to their fundamental needs. A charismatic leader uses his personality and charms rather any form of external power or authority this characterizes Mr Keatings behaviour compared to Mr Nolans one. He never forced the students to do anything and he encourages them to find their freedom. Also, charisma is linked to a unique vision, which we will develop below. Mr Keating has his own vision and uses unconventional ways to express it. But because of his confidence in his own beliefs, he thought they were infallible, he didnt think about the impact of his changes even when he received adequate warning from others. Although he meant well, it was the cause of a lot of problems. à ¢-  Mr Nolan: an authoritarian leader A leader is a person whose charisma helps them to guide a group of people in a direction they believe is desirable. Someone with authority uses their power to guide a group of people in a direction they believe is desirable. Mr Nolan is the director of the School. Tradition, honour, discipline, excellence is his key words and his power is based on it. He is from the aristocratic and traditional society; his role is to preserve the integrity of the school and to prepare his students to get into the high society and to be their new models. If a person has the ability force a person to perform a certain act, or the ability to otherwise coerce them, than that person is an authoritarian. Mr Nolan can be recognized by how he makes his decision. There is no discussion or the discussion begins with a foregone conclusion. Also, he guides the students with negative motivation that leave them in a bad position. They feel that they are the only ones who disagree and that is why they have to be exiled. Ultimately, this means that the only way to really oppose Mr Nolan was with the support of a sizable percentage of the group. Mr Nolan will speak of betrayal in this case. Mr Keating would not, as a disagreement is never a betrayal unless there is an expectation of being followed and obeyed. In comparison, Mr Keating guided students by the infectious nature of his vision. They wanted to follow him, but they were free not to. à ¢-  The relationship between Neil and his father Neils aspirations are to become an actor but they are snuffed by his controlling father who refuses to give Neil any choice about his future. Mr Perry is a paternalistic and dominating father. He is determined that Neil will finish school at Welton and study medicine. In this part, we are going to show that Neils character has a charismatic behaviour and his father an authoritarian one. Thus, we will try to establish a comparison between the Mr Keating and Mr Nolan relationship and the Neil and Mr Perry relationship. From the beginning, Neil appears as a bright student, he is engaged in a lot of activities within school and he is recognized as the leader of the group of students. But this character feels a deep contradiction between his own dreams and the ones his father has for him. He is going to fight again the morality of his parents following Mr Keating beliefs. We notice that Neil has a charismatic attitude towards the other students at the beginning of the movie You say things and people listen. He is the one who decided to re create the Dead Poets Society and used of his power to convince the other. He became more and more attracted to Keatings philosophy and acted as if it was a revelation for him. He is discovering a new state of mind through Keatings words and poetry and he is ready to listen to his feelings. The scene when Mr Perry enters in Neils room is quite relevant concerning the relationship between the two characters. Neil had decided to follow theater courses but he didnt advise his father. When Mr Perry find out, he orders his son to quit. At this instant, the illusions of Neil are falling apart and he cant express his feelings. He feels trapped and he acts as a child who did a mistake. Mr Perry uses the expression absurd acting business and refers to the deception he might have feel. He gives orders and Neil has no other choice than answering Yes Sir and crying. Mr Perry concludes with You will not let me down. We observe that the relationship is based on authority. The two characters are quite different: Mr Perry is cold, quiet and he hides his feelings and Neil is full of hopes and dreams with a deep emotional sensitivity. Mr Perry character refers to Mr Nolan one. He thinks that his way of thinking is the best for his son; he doesnt consider creativity, pleasure and feelings. Both characters express their power in the same way: they order, people have to follow. They dont let the opportunity to other to discuss and they are acting as if they were carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. We also can say that this kind of character is complex because in away they are following their own beliefs, as Mr Keating does, and are convince its the right one. We have no doubts concerning the good intentions of Mr Perry to encourage his son to follow a medicine career. He thinks it is the best for his son to succeed. This kind of character has difficulty to open up the box and to extend the horizons. Two values can be differentiated concerning these characters that we will describe later: realism versus creativity. We also notice that after his conversation with his father, Neil goes to Keatings office to ask him for advice. Neil realized that the teacher always had a dream and that he is actually living for it. He expresses his feelings concerning his father hes planning the rest of my life, he never asked me what I want. Neil decides to not quit his role in the play and invites his friends and Mr Keating to watch him. Unfortunately, his father heard about it and comes to the theater. On stage, Neil talks to his father through the character he is playing and his last sentence in the play is I have a dream. The last interaction between Neil and his father takes place at home. Mr Perry is desolated, he accuses Neil to have defying him and to have run his life. At this time, we know that Mr Perry would never change his state of mind and will never allow his son to follow his own way. Mr Perrys refusal to support Neils acting aspirations ultimately lead to Neils death. Other personality and behavioural differences: the followers The movie is based on different characters and we will focus on this part on the evolution of the group of students through the leadership of others. Even if we saw that Neil for example was considered as a leader within the group, all the students are characterized as followers concerning or the leadership of Mr Keating or the authority power of Mr Nolan. The movie shows a lot of personality and behavioural differences concerning the characters. We can analyze the evolution of the characters in three times which correspond with the three classes of Mr Keating and we can focus especially on the influence of Mr Keating in their interactions. First of all, we have to remind that they all are part of the tradition, honour, discipline, excellence system. They grew up in this environment and their life has been predicted depending on these criteria. Their model is obviously Mr Nolan who is trusted by the entire community and also the teachers of the school. When Mr Keating introduced himself at the first class, they are all already prepared to receive a poetry class as they have been taught last years. Keating starts by asking them to open their book and to read the preface which sum up the poetry as a mathematical figure. Then he asked them to rip out the entire page. They are all shocked and dont know what to do because they know it goes against the system they are used to live in. Then, Keating asked them to get out of the class room and to look at the important figures of the school in the hall way. They are not either used to be taught outside of a class room. Most of them are wondering if its not a trap, no one is moving until one decides to do it. The rest follows. This attitude towards this new teacher is going to last during three classes. They dont dare to do something different, something which goes against their principles, to open up their perspectives and thats exactly what Keating tries to emphasize. But we notice that no one will directly be opposed to Keatings methods. They will all follow. They wait for someone to take the initiative, most of the time Neil. Someone who is recognized as their leader, they trust him. There is only one scene during the classes which shows that one student is opposed. At the third class, when Mr Keating asks his students to walk through the garden and to find their own way of walking, one student told Keating you invite us to find our own freedom, Ive the freedom to not do it. But the others continue because they found their new leader, Mr Keating. Thus, we notice that the characters of the movie can be considered as a group: they are re creating the Dead Poet Society under Neils recommendation, they are united by a group, a secret society which they are all members ofà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ But in the same time, they are becoming less dependant on each other because they are all trying to find their own way. Their independence within the school is significant during the scene which shows two of them dancing on the sound of Radio Free America or when one of them declares For the first time of my life, I know what I wanna do. As we talked about in the characters description, all the students are differentiated by their own actions in the movie. At the beginning they are characterized by being students from the same school then they can be perceived as different individuals. Through Todd Anderson and Knox Overstreet characters, we can analyse the evolution of the characters. Todd Anderson is really shy and seems a bit younger than the others but he likes writing except that he doesnt have enough self confidence to do it. At the beginning, he is not able to stand up in front of the class and is always trying to hold Neil back from his desires. But at the end, he appears as the first one to show his opposition to Mr Nolan and to stand up on his table to show that he is grateful to Mr Keating. Knox Overstreet is a shy and academically focussed student at the beginning of the movie but influenced by Mr Keating he is going to listen to his feelings and to believe in himself. He will fall in love with a girl who is actually engaged and is decided to conquer her. Before kissing her for the fist time, he repeats to himself carpe diem and after telling his friends that he wrote her a poem, he says She didnt say anything but at least I did it. Besides, when the school is trying to accuse Mr Keating for being responsible for Neils death, we can note some different attitudes and behaviours. As we analysed before, their behaviours are linked to the notion of dependence or independence and its relevant to notice their different attitudes towards the institution at the end of the movie. All along the movie, these students formed a group. They have been influenced by Mr Keating, he was defined as their mentor and for some of them, their life changed considerably. As we saw, they were united by the Dead Poets Society and the beliefs of Mr Keating were ingraved in their mind. But at the end, under the pressure of Mr Nolan and their parents, they all betray their new principles and sign a paper which attests that Mr Keating had a bad influence on them and that he is the direct responsible of Neils death. Ironically, the only one who refuses it is Charlie Dalton, the only one who was opposed to Keatings exerciseà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ Their dependence to Welton academy is stronger that their dependence to Mr Keating and in this case, we can say that the Mr Nolans authoritarian model wins. The direct consequence on this is the break of their friendship. The group doesnt exist anymore because of the different attitudes they have towards Mr Keating or Mr Nolans influence. Different thematic The power of a myth : a necessity to unit Welton Academy versus the Dead Poets Society Even if Welton School and the Dead Poets Society are perceived as two different institutions and are opposite by their beliefs; nevertheless they have a similarity: they both are based on strong values established a long time ago constituting a model for students. In this part, we will focus on the power of myths and we will establish a comparison between tradition, honor, discipline, excellence referring to Welton and carpe diem referring to the Dead Poets Society. Besides, we will see that in both cases, the myth is a necessity to unit. à ¢-  Welton Academy tradition, honor, discipline, excellence The story of the movie is set in Welton Academy in Vermont in 1959, a conservative and aristocratic preparatory school where education is understood to be a rigorous academic learning program combined with the shaping of the students characters according to explicitly traditionalist ideals. The movie begins with a processional march of the students into the main auditorium of the school, where teachers and parents are awaiting the address of Mr. Nolan, who inaugurates the new school year by reminding everyone of the high standards of the institution, and the schools high success rate in sending its graduates to Ivy League universities. Students carry banners on which are embroidered the four pillars of Weltons pedagogical program: Tradition, Honour, Discipline, and Excellence. The key to your success rests on our four pillars. These are the bywords of this school, and they will become the cornerstones of your lives. Most of the students at Welton are from respectable families; most are destined to follow in the footsteps of their fathers and become doctors, corporate lawyers, or bankers. Also it is really clear that Welton has a conservative spirit and is dedicated to give to the students its traditionalist way of thinking. The school represents tradition and the teaching methods are very established, which is opposed to the innovative and creative way of teaching of Mr Keating. Honor represents the renown that the school receives by placing a lot of students in elite universities. The institution is well known and prestigious; Mr Nolan has for role to maintain the reputation of the school and to keep high standards. He is only here to watch that the students are taught in a traditional way. Discipline means repression in Welton. Its goal is to establish a framework for the students by controlling them. In the movie, the respect of discipline is really important to insure uniform behaviour and the repression of the students individuality and creativity. Their personal desires cant exist without discipline. Welton has a lot of rules. Fist of all, the school is only for boys and girls are not allowed in the institution. The students have to wear a uniform and have to spend their free time to study. Some extra activities are planned but even being part of the redaction of the school newspaper is a lost of time for Neils father. The code is really strict and can be perceived as old school concerning the punishments. Concerning the excellence, it refers to not simply succeed in what you are doing but being the best and get the approbation of the institution. In the movie, we notice that it is more important to get good grades than understanding what the subject is about. The school is a preparatory school to get into prestigious universities and all parents are counting on Welton to make their child succeed. It doesnt matter how they are treated and if they are happy or not, they just have to be excellent and behave the way the institution is expected them to. As we saw in the movie, with Mr Keatings influence, most of them realize that they have desires but the school will not allow them to develop their instincts. The authority of Mr Nolan and the pressure of their parents emphasize the importance of academic studies to get a successful career and also to answer to their parents dreams. Also, they cant recognize excellence if it is out of the frame. Neil could be really good at acting but his father doesnt even take that into consideration. Welton is an institution based on a philosophy where tradition, honour, discipline and excellence are the key words. It is also a school where the self reflection, the personal development, the creativity, the non conformityà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ are not recognized and not tolerated. Students nickname the school Hellton. Mr Nolan, model of authority and obedience, represents the traditionalism and the conservatism of Welton: an institution opposed to the individualism of Mr Keating and the Dead Poets Society philosophy. à ¢-  The Dead Poets Society Carpe Diem One day, Neil finds an old yearbook with Mr. Keating in it. After seeing that Mr. Keating listed Dead Poets Society as one of his activities, the boys ask Mr. Keating what this was. He replies that the Dead Poets Society was dedicated to taking the meaning out of life. To do so, the members would sit in an old Indian cave near a certain pond and in the enchantment of the moment . . . let poetry work its magic. When Knox has doubts about a bunch of guys just sitting around reading poetry, Keating claims that they were not just a Geek organization, that they were romantics, that they didnt just read poetry. Spirits soared, women swooned and gods were created, gentlemen That evening, under Neils leadership, the boys reconvene the Dead Poets Society. Neil honors tradition by opening the new chapter of the society the way Keating and his classmates used to open it, by reading the passage from Henry David Thoreau. I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately I wanted to live deep and suck out all the narrow of life To put to rout all that was not life And not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived This first meeting of the renewed society is a tremendous success. The boys really get into reading poetry, including the concluding lines from Tennysons Ulysses, which Neil reads and which, in the context of the movie as a special significance. Come my friends, its not too late to seek a newer world We can notice at this time that Neil is completely influenced by Mr Keating character and curious about The Dead Poets Society. When he starts reciting poetry, he seems to have discovered a new way of thinking, it is a revelation for him. The words that he pronounces have an echo in himself. The Dead Poets Society is also the link between the past and the present which makes the students think about their future. It is also a way for them to avoid their parents values that are really heavy: it gives them the opportunity to have a special time to avoid constraints which create a strong link between all of them. Now the group of students is united by this secret. This intimacy allows them to act on their own, they are using it as a way to know all the things which are forbidden inside the school. They are smoking, drinking, playing music or bringing girls. We can say that they are experimenting the pleasures of life which give a real sense for Keating and which represent the devil for Mr Nolan. Also, we observe that tradition, honor, discipline, and excellence are represented in having taken the initiative to reconvene the Dead Poets Society, despite the fact that the school would not look too favourably upon it. Furthermore, The Dead Poets Society which could represent a place of decadence for Welton Academy is illustrating the values that Mr Keating is believing in. It refers to one of the first sentence he pronounces in class Life exists and identity. We see all along the movie that the Dead Poets Society will take more and more importance in the students life and that it will become their creed. I promise. The Dead Poets Society is my word Mr Keatings vision Carpe Diem, seize the day is the phrase that the movie is focusing on and is reflecting the vision of Mr Keating, an English teacher who has just been hired, and who displays ideas and a spirit that deviate sharply from the established Welton practices and norms. Keating propagates an anti-authoritarian philosophy of life and he will soon profile himself as the provocative and inspiring educator of the students of whom he is in charge. During his very first class session Keating demonstrates that he is not just there to convey academic information, but also to show what students can do with such knowledge in their everyday lives. The first class session is, indeed, not so much a lesson in English literature, but a dramatic philosophical wake-up call. Word and images can change the world The human race is filled with passion Examining some poetry lines, Mr Keating interpolates his students Why does the poet write these lines?. He answers Because we are food for worms, lads! Because were only going to experience a limited number of springs, summers, and falls. One day, hard as it is to believe, each and every one of us is going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die! To drive home this point Keating makes the students look at the old photographs of former Welton students that decorate the hallways. They are not that different than any of you, are they? Theres hope in their eyes, just like in yours. They believe themselves destined for wonderful things, just like many of you. Well, where are those smiles now, boys? What of that hope? The students are sobered by what Keating is saying. Then his vision is directly highlighted after pronouncing But only in their dreams can men be truly free. The students thought it was another quoting from famous poets but Keating revealed them it was from him. Here, we see that Mr Keating really want to express his vision and to change the way of thinking of Welton Academy. When the students leave the building after class, most of them are in thought. Keatings words are having an effect on their feelings, and Carpe Diem is becoming a firm reference point in their reflections and activities. Some of them will have occasion to quote the maxim while they are pursuing their various goals during the fall term. Then, we will see that Keating will manage to underline his conception of the liberal arts. He told them to not focus only on academic fields but to be interested in what seems at first only secondary importance. The human race is filled with passion! Medicines, law, bankingà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ these are necessary to sustain life. But poetry, romance, love, beautyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ these are what we stay alive for. Mr Keating wants to make them think about their own life, about what makes them happy and what their absolute needs are. Passion is the word for him. He knows that these students have been sent in this school to succeed in their career but he wants them to understand that they only have one life and that the human race is filled with passion. Consider what you think Its not too late to sick a newer world Boys, you must strive to find your own voice We will see through this part that the vision of Mr Keating is underlining some values, opposed to the traditional Welton values. In this way, his teaching methods appear as unusual (by the standards of the 1950s). During the whole movie, he is attached to tell the students to keep an open and flexible mind and to and to look at things from different and changing points of view. We must constantly look at things in a different way even though it may seem silly or wrong, you must try! To illustrate his point, h