THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2013
PAGE 4A
TEXT FREE FOR ALL
Text your FFA submissions to 785-289-8351 or at kansan.com
Can we be done with uggs already.
"I'm the Andrew Wiggins of math." - Jeff Lang
Shout out to the Christian frat guys passing out hot chocolate in Anshutz last night, you guys made the whole library a better place!
My advice to everyone who has been freezing today: wear a snuggie.
If a tabler has a creative line they use to give me a flyer that makes me 500% more likely to accept it.
So my physics 114 class has turned into "teach each other dirty phrases in other languages". Shout out from the second row.
ou know it is going to be a good day when you watch Prince in class.
The leaves are so crunchy today...
MUST STEP ON ALL OF THEM!!!
Signs you you've been an English major too long: You read books while walking to class like a pro, and the only FFA you laugh at is technically a neon
I've started taking snap-chats of random people on campus with the quote "Is that Wiggins?" The more random the better.
learned today that spandex is owned by the Koch brothers. Now I'll be conflicted every time I gawk at a fine ass in yoga pants.
I hate driving on campus because of pedestrians. But I love being a pedestrian on campus.
Another hilarious one-liner cast out into the void...
The only schadenfreude better than seeing Kentucky lose is seeing mizzou lose.
Perrold Ellison is my favorite dunketeer on the Jayhawks basketball squadron.
You ever been so flustered that you drank a candle?
My hobbies include wearing actual coats outside and laughing at all the idiots shivering in sweatshirts and oversize sweaters.
One time i peed off the fire escape of Pearson Scholarship Hall during a thunderstorm with my roommate.
"The out-of-staters say kansas people are used to the cold". Us Minnesotans and Coloradans think people in kansas don't know what cold is.
LOCATION
Online coursework dilutes educational experience
I'm willing to make you a bet, which is unusual for someone about as lucky as Wile E. Coyote with a third-grade level grasp on probability. Here is my wager; if you were to ask a fifth grader why geography is his favorite subject, or ask a college professor to pinpoint the root of her passion, or ask a politician to trace the nexus of his motivation—more often than not—their answers would have to do with a human and not with a screen. Chances are, their inspirations came in the form of an influential figure, a person who brought the text on a page to life, who made the static dynamic.
Thinking back on your own education, surely there is a teacher or a mentor who stands out above the others, someone who challenged you and sparked your interest, who transformed the potentially mundane into something complex, something relevant to
the world outside of the school walls. If you told me that your love for economics came from the riveting online course you took, I would call you a liar or look for a barcode tattooed behind your ear (telltale sign of a robot, the Internet says so). In reality, that online class probably consisted of a lot of finicky formatting of punctuation, races against the clock before it struck 11:59, and untimely browser crashes due to the 15 tabs you had at once. It was not to be enjoyed, but endured, alone at your desk, laden with heavy sighs and fruitless Google searches.
The shift towards online education certainly isn't unfounded. In a large, pre-requisite style lecture class, it's simply unrealistic to expect someone to hand-grade 500 biweekly homework assignments. With frequent reading assignments, it makes perfect sense to hold students accountable in the form of short online reading
quizzes. Online assignments save paper, save time, and keep robust records of grades. These are effective uses of online educational tools—here they are complements, not replacements. The true danger lies in the trend towards entirely online classes, especially the push for these classes even as early as elementary school. We may live in the technological era, worshiping speed and efficiency, but what is the trade-off? What are we sacrificing for the sake of easy scheduling? What are we withholding from students when we replace their teachers with a
clean, accessible web page layout? From the most painfully introverted to the aggressively extroverted, people need people. For it is people who bring concepts to life; it is people whom challenge and foster discussion and it is relationships that provide a context for ideas to root themselves. Education has a historical role in American life that transcends merely skill-set learning or test passing; it teaches socialization, empathy, kinesthetic learning, adaptation to diversity and challenges us to ask questions. Full, complete understanding of classroom material requires some degree of emotional engagement that Google and Blackboard simply cannot provide.
What sort of a generation will online education produce? One that is wholly uninspired by learning, one that views completing an assignment not as a journey towards learning, but as seeing
a blinking 16/16 points after they've texted their friends for the answers. Sure, online education gives us time, it spares us energy, but in return we lose an invaluable life and vigor amidst megapixels and an empty notion of "cyber-community." Perhaps I'm being a little apocalyptic, but I see a generation of students, already under intense economic and academic pressure, unable to reconcile the boundaries of technology and never having been grabbed by the shoulders and shaken, never having been inspired by a figure that transformed their notion of education.
And I'll make another bet; if you asked a fifth grader whose education had been mainly online what his favorite subject was and why, I set hed struggle to give you an answer.
Erin Calhoun is a sophomore premed student from Naperville, III.
CULTURE
Student studying in China observes cultural similarities
Roughly 100 years ago, some representative of America was invited to England where he met with various European and African and South American delegates of the world. At one point the Portuguese delegate asked the American if he was a fan of football.
"Football?" asked the American.
The British delegate looked up from adjusting his pocket watch. "Why it is the greatest sport in the world!"
"Yes," agreed the Brazilian representative, "the sport where you kick the ball around with your feet, and attempt to score a goal."
The American representative rubbed his chin as his eyes glazed over in a mist of deep thought, "No." "He said slowly, "no – if it is true that we are speaking of the greatest sport in the world, then football must be the sport where you run with the ball." There was a hush of disbelief in the room as the American cheerily added, "but your quarterback can throw you the ball as well!"
It is an odd feeling to live in a country where traveling 80 in a car is slow, 25 degrees is comfortably warm and a good conversation about the greatest sport is as rare as winning a prize from McDonald's Monopoly.
still, some things seem to be more or less the same everywhere. Winter is coming, and as if on cue everyone has gotten
By Scott Rainen gmurnan@kansan.com
appropriately sick. If you're lucky enough to stay healthy, and were blessed with a good sense of smell in the first place, you may detect a balmy Chap Stick smell circulating around all of the classrooms, but with chapped lips comes sweaters and fierce debates over whose home is truly the coldest.
I typically argue that Kansas City's hot summer renders us less prepared for the winter, and the lack of snow leaves us in a state of particularly acute hopelessness. The Russians down the hall have provided a formidable attack upon my line of argumentation, but my pride is resilient. I refuse to back down.
Almost two and a half months into my stay at Nanjing, the romance is approaching its highest point. In Shanghai people walked too quickly and in Hong Kong they found investment schemes too interesting. These two cities are beautiful places to visit, but they are certainly no home. Nanjing, on the other hand, reminds me a great deal of my home: the buildings are not too tall, the people are not too busy and the sports teams usually lose.
so perhaps I've said too much; late Saturday night you can hear constructions crews tearing up the road to make way for a new subway line. Still, it is hard to say who is responsible for what in a country where five separate time zones are all in accord with the clocks in Beijing.
There is a certain charm of a place that doesn't have to worry about protecting some illustrious throne. That said, Nanjing is currently preparing to host the Youth Olympics next year.
At the end of the day, I like Nanjing because, relatively speaking, it has a feeling that I am used to. Most of the locals I've talked to curiously discuss the prospect of moving to a glitzier city like Beijing or Guangzhou, but eventually the conversation boils down to what really defines second-tier cities: assertions of an easier life ("we walk at a more comfortable pace") and idiosyncratically placed pride ("the summer here is the worst").
More than half way around the world, my own assertions and pride have only grown in magnitude. For example, the other week I saw a Chinese student wearing a New England Patriots t-shirt. I asked how he became a fan and he simply informed me because they were the best.
A smile crept across my face as I took a seat next to him and explained at length just how far from the truth his statement was; 1423 miles, to be exact.
Scott Rainer is a senior majoring in Geography and East Asian Language and Culture from Overland Park.
CHILDHOOD
FFA OF THE DAY
CAMPUS CHIRPS BACK
truelife I've been wearing the same bra for a week. #sadlife I'm the only person who knows that.
Overprotective parents rob kids of experiences
A few weeks ago, in a Michigan middle school, a handful of students were prevented from honoring a classmate who they lost to leukemia. In the name of protecting the other children from grief, the administrators banned t-shirts with her name. It backfired spectacularly.
From putting children on leashes (which I'm convinced parents do for the comedy more than anything) to putting children on vegan diets, a sizable chunk of the population is convinced that the world is out to eat their children alive. It's an unfortunate attitude of overprotecting kids from themselves that I'm convinced will do more harm than good.
As a pre-teen, I ran with a small pack of other neighborhood hoodlums around a set of ponds that ran through all our backyards. In a slimy, scrap-metal filled corner, we made our "base" in a sewage drainage pipe. Every day we could, wed climb through an obstacle course of thorns, muddy hills and huge slabs of unstable rocks to reach it. We came out with cuts, bruises, and a genuine sense of adventure. While other kids played Nintendo 64 until their eyes bled, we fought off geese while scooping up frogs with our bare hands.
This little oasis of the unknown—a small, 100-square foot block of swamp—gave us stories to tell about wildlife, nasty pieces of algae we dared each other to lick, and a perfect platform to play "Vietnam" in the mud.
play. If you so much as mention that sort of place to some parents these days, you'd get slapped. These sorts of "dangerous places" are harder and harder to find. And if you do find one, there's not a kid in sight. Their parents have trapped them inside eating apple slices and playing cheap video games that teach arithmetic and vocabulary. If they ever emerge from their cave, pale and emaciated, they hide from the sur like Gollum.
Why is "Calvin and Hobbes" so wildly popular? It's the antithesis of that style of parenting. Everyone in retrospect wishes they'd built a tree house and raced
wagons down their street after reading a healthy dose of Bill Watterson.
It's easy to cast aspersions on parents from afar. These are all people doing the hardest job of their lives and improvising most of the time. It's true that times are changing. Schools are now battlegrounds. Food is filled with lead and toys with mercury. Paranoia is becoming standard.
Around a month ago, I watched my mom pull out her cell phone and puff up like a blowfish. "She's cussing again!" she declared to the car. She'd installed an app that let her remotely monitor my sister's text messaging like Big Brother went 4G. It wasn't just the creepiness of the spying that confused me, it was the indignity and disbelief that her child was cursing. Here's a woman that congratulated me when I caught a bucket full of tadpoles and named them all Chuck.
And that's what I'm really worried about: that maybe the second I'm responsible for another human life, I'll grow a Castro beard and start banning comic books. I'm terrified that this new social landscape has redefined parenting to a totalitarian dictatorship.
These scrapes, broken bones and fights in the schoolyard build character. The cuts heal into scars that eventually fade. But the sense of independence and confidence never leaves you. Without my sewage-pipe fort, I'd be half who I am today.
With that in mind, all I ask is that once you find yourself taking care of a tiny human, you take your kid out of his cage, put him on the leash and take him for a walk every once in a while. And refill his water-bowl; the water gets funky after a day or so.
Wil Kenney is a sophomore majoring in English from Leawood.
What's the biggest nuisance on campus?
@ChazSchneider
@Davis_Samuel
KatarinaMaryen Resnet! Can I hear an
amen?!!!
@Cait_Carroll11 KU parking, those tickets are practically robbery.
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