Thursday 29 January 2009

generation sex

Sexual problems especially among teenagers are becoming more and more serious nowadays.When you are walking in the city centre at night, you will see many groups of people with girls wearing sexy or drunk boys.It is just a very normal situation existing in every country.
But what are the reasons of changing the vies of values and their behaviors?!!
Someone may argue that everyone can has his own idea to decide how to behave or act that it is none of our business.
In my opinion,this can be attributed into two main reasons below.One is that role models play an important role in this like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.The stars always create some audacious news maybe about sex in order to rise to fame.The other is about feminism. Girls tend to be equal to boys by learning a lot of bad things like drinking,fighting without realising the harmness.
In fact,parents and the society should be responsible for this phenomenon.A father says that perhaps it’s time for everyone to pull up their pants and show each other a little more respect.And, since we’re supposed to be the adults, it has to start with us, with how we behave, how we draw boundaries and what we put in our newspapers and magazines and on our television screens.

Tuesday 27 January 2009

disappearing childhood

According to Neil Postman (1994) childhood has disappeared. Why? (Daisy, Dima and Anastasia and Elvira)
If we want to know why the childhood has disappeared,we should first start by thinking about what exactly is meant by the terms "child" and "childhood". How would you define what a child is? Someone between infancy and puberty perhaps? Someone who is not an adult?
We all have childhood that from my point of view,it is a time of innocence, playtime and freedom from work and responsibilities. Looking around our world nowaday,with the development of new communication ways, television and the media are being improved quickly and they should firstly be blame.They provide abundant information that was once difficult to get hold of - making school less relevant as a source of knowledge that initiates children into becoming adults. The media is also said to encourage adult-like behaviour (e.g. sex, drinking, swearing) in children, and reduces the shame of children being involved in such activities.For instance,children no longer wear specific children's clothes; instead they are dressed as "miniature adults". Secondly,the living environment also should be responsible for this condition. The lag of nature environmrnt makes children can not realise the beauty of nature but involve in the advanced tools,violent games.And the people around them may always teach them to protect themselves which disappears their innocence. Moreover, a lot of pressure from parents,study,peer groups or the society lessen the childhood but decorate it with boringness and reponsibilities.

'toxic childhood'

Are children in the UK today experiencing 'toxic childhood'?

---The term "toxic childhood" entered the language three years ago with the publication of a book by Sue Palmer, which expressed concern about what she alleged was a loss of childhood caused by modern consumerist lifestyles.
Although "toxic childhood" has been questioned and doubted by more and more people, the problem about children is still worth being cared by us. There is a report by UNICEF ranked children's wellbeing in the UK 21st out of 25 countries that it examined. The rank proved that childhood in UK is not so good which resulting in a pervading fear among parents in the UK that while they live in a fast-moving, consumer society where mothers are forced to work, children face exhaustive school tests, and people are more likely to visit a farmer's market than a church, they have lost sight of what matters. Besides,the UK has the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Western Europe and leads Europe for the proportion of young people living in single parent families. There are also high rates of obesity, binge-drinking, and drug-taking. Bob Reitemeier, Chief Executive of the Children's Society, says: "Evidence suggests that on the whole, young people in the UK have more concerns than their western European counterparts.
But now,explicit targets were set on reducing child poverty and although these have not been met, the child poverty reductions are nevertheless "very impressive".

inequalities among children?

Why are there inequalities among children?
---I think this can be attributed to two mian resons,ethnid discriminant and income inequality!
Accounts by journalists of wars in several countries of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s have raised concern that ethnic cleavages and overlapping religious and racial affiliations may widen the inequalities in health and survival among ethnic groups throughout the region, particularly among children.
Susan Mayer, Associate Professor in the Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, has devoted most of her academic career to researching the causes and consequences of economic inequality in the United States. She has especially focused on the importance of inequality for children.Her most recent research focuses on how economic inequality, which dramatically increased between 1970 and 1990, affects children’s educational attainment.Mayer was surprised to find that the effects of inequality are more often due to the effect of other people’s income rather than the individual income level of a household. As the rich have gotten richer, they benefit from positive interpersonal comparisons, while the poor suffer from negative comparisons.

non-industrial societies and industrial societies

Explain how children in simpler, non-industrial societies are generally treated differently from their modern western counterparts. Refer in your answer to the work of Ruth Benedict (1934). (Sairan, Elivira, Maria, Wendy, Daisy, Mary, Rebecca)

----Ruth Benedict (born Ruth Fulton, June 5, 1887–September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist.One of her famous contribution is about the pattern of culture.We can see some introdutions and researchs about different culture between non-industrial societies and industrial societies.
Why do only some children of the same family attain a level of education considered to be socially desirable whereas their siblings do not? The essence of an answer lies in the fact that the same parents could play rather dissimilar roles in the education of their different children. Using part of qualitative data collected in Hong Kong between 1996 and 1997, this paper focuses on what selective parents did for their children's education. The data illustrated that in deciding what they would and could do for each of their children's education, parents responded to their children's academic ability, resource availability, and ideology. The educational attainments of children of the same family could be very diverse not merely because of children's different academic performances but because of the deliberate decisions of their parents in formulating strategies for basic survival or for advancement.
And the differences beween these parents are dueing to the culture and characters of non-industrial societies and industrial societies.Industrial societies are reliable on the technology,money capitals which forces the people to study,work hard in order to gain high certificates and working status.On the other hand,in non-industrial societies,people concentrate more on the labour which makes it can not catch up with the industrial societies.
Finally,the kind of ideology is exerted on the children.

symmetric relationship

What factors seem to be important in influencing how symmetrical the relationship (man/woman) is? (Daisy, Maria, Wendy, Mary and Elvira)

---In my opinion,symmeticical relationship is a difficult situation to achieve.From a macro-view,it exists where the male and female have the same background,status,rights and share the same role in the work or society.If we classify this carefully,it goes to the similar interests,charateristics and the living habits.
But in fact,a lot of people prefer the other relationship between the male and female which is called complementary. (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081108155100AAtaGHr )
Some other things about symmetical relationship between male and female in violence.Early research by Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz (1980) suggested that males and females perpetrated intimate partner violence (IPV) at similar rates,These studies, conducted primarily with college and high school students, measured both perpetration and victimization among males and females (Arias, Samios, & O'Leary, 1987; Makepeace, 1986; Thompson, 1991; White & Koss, 1991). An accumulation of results from a broad range of samples (e.g., Cantos, Neidig, & O'Leary, 1994; Capaldi & Crosby, 1997; Umberson, Anderson, Glick, & Shapiro, 1998) suggests IPV is usually bilateral.

Thursday 22 January 2009

Conducting experiment

The experient in Chris's blog is so hard to understand, so i
decided to see the other experiments and try to understand
it .



This experiment is about the last culture in American as a
lot of Asian American schools grow. The researcher interviews
students from different countries and ask them about the language
they always speak-their first language or English? It is a really
interestingtopic!!! Although the people go to American to study
many years or just ashort time, their country culture is inevitable
in their daily life. Therefore,some parents always ask their children
who will go abroad to study notto speak the first language....it is really
diffcult and sometimes will cause a conflict between two different cultures.

Comment on my blogs

1. Sociology
From the blog, i really realise that to be a sociologist is
a very hard task. In fact, Sociology is an abstract subject
that a lot of things are depend on your own feeling and
understanding.

2.Religion
Luke is a wise man that descrbes the religion about
Jesus so good! But in my opinion, religion is an abstract
belief that everyone can have his own idea and nobody
has the right to prevent.

3.Psychology
Psychology includes so many private things and very
conplicated like the mentalism.

4. Business
As a business teacher, he is so busy but if a man who
wants to be a successful business-man,he has to get used.
A very typical example like you!!

5.ICT
This blog refers to a lot of computer games and discuss
whether children should play or not. In reality,ICT does
not just contain games but other useful technology~

Tuesday 20 January 2009

What is sociology

From my point view, Sociology is always a mysterious subject
that maybe because it contains so many things and so complicated.
Sociology is defined firstly as a branch of the social sciences that
can be considered as an effort to use systematic methods of empirical
investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about
human societies and human social activity. You can just simply think
that to be a study of how society is organized and how we experience life.
Since Sociology is to observe and study the relationship among different
groups of people in the society and how they act, we’d better come back
to our daily life to see our society structure. Societies are groups of people
who share a common culture that refer to intricately structured arrangements
of relationships among people. In nowadays, different societies are formed
by many groups of people where they interact with each other throughout
working, learning, social settings, universities and even fighting.
Studying Sociology can give me a new perspective to think about and
evaluate the incidents that are happening around me. So, it requires me to
read more and be careful with circumstances in the society.

Forums

1. the student educational forum
This forum mainly talks about the student education which
includes a lot of areas like general, curriculum discussions and
also democratic school, pupil sub cultures. The special character
is that the topics are always showed as questions as you do not
know. In my opinion, it is a quite good place for people to share
thoughts.

2. the forum site
This forum is much more interesting to me that includes lots of
different topics appear in the society. What is the important thing ?
The forum has a special place just for sociology and the rank is
very attractive by letter a to z.

3. The Society for Applied Sociology
I have to say that the lay out of this forum is not as good as other
ones and it is a little bit boring about the topics although it contains
a mass of subjecs discussions .

4. INJTs forum
This forum is the most formal one that I’ve been seen. But it can
provide comfortable space for the members to contact or exchange ideas.

5. Worth exploring?
It is very difficult to browse the website.

6. Study room
It is a suitable place for students to gain some knowledge about the
sociology exams well if we make good use of it.

About Family and animal

Scientists always like compare human family with animal in
to observe human behaviors, like the relationship of a family.
In reality, there are a lot of common things between a family
and a group of animals like the way that mothers bring up their
children when they first come to the earth until they grow up
and how they protect themselves dueing to the basically response.
What’s more, it is commonly assumed that animals become important
to people either when they are living in single-person households,
in which case they provide companionship, or as child substitutes.
The importance of animals as companions and the way they are taken
into account in decisions about family activities such as visits or where
to live indicates that pets can also be considered actors in social networks.
Therefore, it gradually ignores the distinction between social and natural
and how the human and animal act in the social network.However, the
distinction remains strong from some experts’ views as me. Animals can
not understand the reasons why they should act like that. As some examples
suggest, animals may be a source of conflict, or at least irritation between
family members; nor is this necessarily or even usually resolved in favour
of the human family members.
This is just like a conflict between nature and culture.

About heredity and environment

As we all know , we born with the genes inside which can
determine our characteristics and appearances. For example,
somebody gets blue eyes from his mother but gets brown hair
from his father. Besides, the most valid evidence that can prove
it is that a majority of people will get genetic defects from their
parents or the other family members which is resulting from the
same genes. However, when we face ourselves seriously, we will
easily find that there are still a lot of differences between our
parents and us especially the characteristics and behaviors.
As is shown in the video, heredity and environment are two decisive
factors as nature and nurture that determine our human's behavior,
intelligence, and personality. We get some characteristics from our
family but when we get into the society or adjust ourselves to the
environment, some of the characteristics will change. Therefore, it
is difficult to say which one is correct or not.