The 16th Man - Sport as an Area of Knowledge

Ex. Knowledge Issues: To what extent can history help us understand the current global situation? How can sports play a role in ending prejudices such as racism? 


Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to inspire, it has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to youth in a language they understand. Sport can create hope, where once there was only despair. It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers. It laughs in the face of all types of discrimination. - Nelson Mandela


CAS Activity: Cape Cod Challenger Club 


I wholeheartedly agree with Nelson Mandela that sport has the power to change the world, having witnessed this firsthand with my experience with Cape Cod Challenger Club. The mission of the Cape Cod Challenger Club is to "enrich the quality of life for young adults with physical and/or developmental disabilities by providing non-competitive opportunities for them to participate in a variety of athletic, recreational, and social activities that most often are not available to them under typical circumstances." (http://www.capecodchallenger.org/about-us/). Last fall, I was a volunteer during the Challenger Club's soccer season, and working with these kids inspired me to be more thankful for blessings in my life such as my health. While I readily admit that I can sometimes be quite impatient, these kids taught me that I need to be more patient since I often had to repeat directions when talking to them. Soccer united me to the children in that while our everyday lifestyles stood in stark contrast, we all enjoyed playing soccer. Additionally, while not all of the children were literally not able to comprehend my words, I attempted to reinforce the important concepts such as teamwork and sportsmanship through the medium of soccer to the children. Lastly, it was evident that soccer created an outlet of hope for these children and their parents. It seems that in most towns the ability for disabled children to regularly play sports is limited, but the children have the unique ability to do so with this program. While unfortunately these children may be discriminated against at school for their disabilities, the power of sports in the lives of these children makes it evident that sports overcome discrimination.

Decision-Making: Emotion vs. Reason

1. The high-reason view values pure reason and logical deduction above all else, and it assumes that in order to get the best results, emotions and passions must be set aside (since they cannot be objectively verified) and a pure 'cost/benefit analysis' must be calculated. A somatic marker is an bodily feeling (either positive or negative emotion) that is experienced prior to making a decision and that influences the decision. 
2. Teen brains work differently than adult brains in regard to decision-making because the myelin sheath, the fatty tissue coating the nerve cells that connect teenagers' frontal lobes is sluggish and not fully developed, causing poor communication between the frontal lobe and the rest of the brain. This lack of development makes teens less equipped to use insight and reasoning for decision-making than adults. 
3. The cerebellum helps coordinate thoughts in a similar way it helps coordinate movement. The cerebellum shapes our reasoning and thought processes, although it is not fully developed until we are in our early 20s.  
4. Although evidence corroborates the thesis that humans have a rudimentary moral sense for the very start of life, socialization is critically important since it refines a baby's sense of right and wrong, which significantly differs from what we adults want it to be. Studies have shown that babies have a small understanding of mental life from the start: expecting inanimate objects to move as the result of push-pull interactions, expecting people to move rationally in accordance with their beliefs or desires, and expecting someone who reaches for an object to reach for the same object even if its location has change. As babies grow, they continue to form a moral code. As adults, this moral code eventually becomes a fully- developed universal code that is the a product of cultural development, of the accumulation of rational insight, and of hard-earned innovations for each of use.  
5. When making decisions and taking actions, I know that the benefits outweigh the costs by determining how much I want something. For example, for the past several months I have woken up early each Saturday morning to study for the SAT (which I will take next week). If the colleges I hope to possibly attend did not want high SAT scores, then this extra studying for the test would surely be unbearable to me. To me, attending a highly competitive institution outweighs all costs. Making choices such as these matter since any choice affects a person's life for good or for bad. Making wise decisions (such as putting in extra time studying for the SAT) make me feel I am living my life to the fullest while making unwise choices (such as not putting in time to study for such an important test) muy ruin some of my hopes and goals. 

WOK Emotion - Contemporary Links

Article: SAT's Student Photo Database Draws Comparison to Facebook Profiles
URL: http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/sats-student-photo-database-draws-comparisons-to-facebook-profiles/

This article provides varying reactions to the College Board's decision to grant college admissions officers access to a database of student photographs. Starting next fall, in an effort to curb cheating on the SAT, the College Board is requiring that each student who registers for the SAT provides a photograph. The College Board first stated that these photographs would be available with a student's test results, but this rule was reversed after the College Board received significant backlash for it. Instead, colleges will simply have access to this database. College Board employee Katherine Steinberg, believes that the standards of procedure will prevent the photos in the database from being used inappropriately. On the other hand, one critic suggests that giving admissions officers access to these photographs may but him in violation of his school's race-blind policy.

Knowledge Issue: To what extent can sense perception sway the college admissions process?

Thoughts on IB World Student Survey

1. Which word best describes the IB program at Sturgis? - The word 'challenging' best describes the IB program at Sturgis. In addition to taking 6 IB courses (3 HLs & 3 SLs), full IB diploma candidates such as myself take a Theory of Knowledge of Course, complete approx. 150 hours of community service over two years for CAS, and write a 4,000 word Extended Essay. Students who take AP classes surely challenge themselves in these classes but do not have these supplementary requirements. 
2. What are the most important qualities for an IB student? - I agree with the students surveyed that hard work, academic excellence, and time management are all important qualities for an IB student. However, I would probably rename 'time management' balance and put this as the number #1 key quality. As an athlete and IB student, I have realized the importance of keeping up my studies while devoting significant time and effort to my sport. 
3. What are the best and worst aspects of being an IB student? - I enjoy the language opportunities, the international perspective, the independence, the self-responsibility, and the great teachers. I also feel that we are in some ways a big family all tackling the IB program. Heavy workload, the impact on social life, and the question "What's IB?" (since it isn't offered by many schools) are probably the worst aspects of being an IB student. 
4. Which traits in the IB learner profile do you consider to be most important in your life? - Knowledgeable, open-minded, caring, balanced, and risk-takers are traits in the learner profile that I consider most important in my life. 
5. What is the biggest difference between the IB and the national (or state) curriculum in the U.S. or Massachusetts)? - In my opinion, the biggest difference between the IB and the national curriculum is that the IB allows for more creativity. Instead of being confined to textbooks, students are given a chance to learn for themselves. For example, in environmental class, we use the book as a supplement and learn about our environment by visiting various ecosystems such as the deciduous forest near the future home of Sturgis West and the marine environment at Veteran's Beach. Also, in English HL 1 at the moment, we are reading the book 1984. While students at schools around the country are probably reading this novel too, I doubt many have the opportunity to experiment by casting parts for the movie, designing a set for the movie, and writing a short script for a few of the movie scenes. 
6. What type of career would you like to pursue upon leaving school? - Upon leaving school, I hope to pursue a career in public policy in education. 
7. Question: To what extent has the IB program made you more open-minded? - I believe that the IB program has made me much more open-minded. In math class, for example, I may choose to solve a quadratic equation using the quadratic formula. However, I have begun to realize that others may use other strategies such as splitting the middle term, and obviously both methods are equally acceptable. IB Spanish has also made me more open-minded. In Spanish class this year, since we have already learned most of the grammar, we have focused on culture. We have had debates on subjects ranging from euthanasia (after watching a film called Mar Adentro - the Sea Inside) to bullfighting. While I may be strongly against euthanasia and bullfighting, someone else might be in favor of continuing both of these practices, and I have grown to respect their opinions. 

Happiness

1. If you want happiness for an hour -- take a nap. If you want happiness for a day -- go fishing. If you want happiness for a month -- get married. If you want happiness for a year -- inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime -- help someone else. - Chinese Proverb (Source:  http://www.quoteland.com/topic/Happiness-Quotes/72/)

2. I know that am happy when I have a giant smile on my face because I am doing something that/with someone I love. Similar to the author of the quote above, I would consider taking an nap an hour of happiness but playing an hour of tennis or hanging out with family and friends for an hour is also happiness to me. I also agree with the author of the above quote that long-term happiness comes from helping others; every summer for the last few years, I have been a tennis instructor to children who live in the town of Barnstable, and I sincerely enjoy going to work everyday because I love both tennis and teaching the children. This job makes me so happy that I am consider a career in elementary education (happiness for a lifetime). 

3. Feeling happy can promote learning in the area of knowledge of history. I am extremely happy with history at the moment because (definitely not to brag) I have the highest grade average for all HL 1 students according to the teacher's gradebook. This happiness has motivated me to continue to work hard in the class because I want to continue to have the best average in that class out of all HL 1 history students.  

Save the Yiddish Language!

Language: Yiddish

People & Culture: Yiddish is a 1000-year old language of the European Jews, and it is spoken by Jews today in several countries including in the United States and Israel. The basic grammar and vocabulary of Yiddish, which is written in the Hebrew alphabet, is Germanic. However, Yiddish is not a Germanic dialect but instead a language which is part of the family of Western Germanic languages. The Holocaust contributed to the endangerment of the Yiddish language; while 11 million Jews spoke Yiddish prior to World War II (2 out of 3 Jews spoke Yiddish), the U.N. estimates that only about 1 million people worldwide speak Yiddish today. Although the U.N. still classifies Yiddish as an endangered language, some argue that currently there is a Yiddish revival (http://languagesoftheworld.info/geolinguistics/endangered-languages/yiddish-revival.html).

Sources: http://www.germanic.ucla.edu/yiddish, http://www.yivoinstitute.org/yiddish/yiddish_fr.htm

Why save Yiddish?: Yiddish is a rich language, full of unique words and phrases. The richness of the language is expressed through a variety of mediums including poetry. An example of such a poem is "Gracious Angel" by Arthur Esselin.

Poem (translated into English from Yiddish): http://www.esselin.com/poetry.htm#graciousangel

Image: http://i1.squidoocdn.com/resize/squidoo_images/590/draft_lens8331701module71802611photo_1259595862over-under.jpg

The above picture shows a Yiddish proverb both in the original Yiddish and in English. Although translated into English, some of the richness of the Yiddish language is 'lost in translation.' If the Yiddish language is lost completely, many Yiddish texts and proverbs will be 'lost in translation.'

Knowledge in Symbols

Image Source: http://www.medart.pitt.edu/_medart/image/glossary/GREEKCR.JPG

1. This symbol, a cross with arms of equal length, is a symbol whose origin cannot be traced back to a single culture but to many. The cross is found in every part of the world including in prehistoric caves and on engraved rocks .  
2. The symbol has a variety of meanings, and these meanings vary for different societies. In pre-Columbian America, the sign seems to have been associated to the four points of the compass (north, south, east, & west) and the weather gods. Contrastly, the symbol means perfection or 10 (the most perfect number) in China. Additionally, to alchemists, this was a sign where the four elements (water, wind, fire, air) were represented by the four arms. 
3. This image can be classified as ambiguous because of the variety of its meanings.  
4. Problems of knowledge include misinterpreting the meaning or being unable to understand the meaning if someone is not a member of a particular cultural group (i.e. not alive in pre-Columbian America, not Chinese or not an alchemist.) People may also mistakenly believe that this symbol represents only the Christian cross.