How Do I Love Thee: Abstracting

Abstracting is the act of taking a complicated subject matter and stripping away all other details to focus on one important characteristic of that subject. In a way, it is asking someone to describe or represent a complicated issue or topic in a simple way. Abstracting can be very difficult. It is a process of looking for only the essential qualities of something as a way to define it or describe it. Try thinking about how to abstract something complicated like justice or beauty. There is an infinite number of ways to abstract justice or beauty. The wonderful part is that there is no wrong answer and no wrong representation. The key to abstraction and the benefit of abstract is the thinking that goes behind it and the learning that occurs as a result of it.

For this series of assignments, I have been focusing on rights.  It has also been a topic that we have been discussing quite a bit the last week in my classes.  We recently had a student bring a gun to school.  As part of the discussion about the incident I had with my students, we talked a lot about rights and freedoms, the importance of those rights and freedoms, when you loose those rights and freedoms, and how those rights and those freedoms are maintained.

When you think about freedom, many ideas will pop into the mind.  For Americans, it can be easily abstracted as symbols of freedom in the United States such as the national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner.  The Star Spangled Banner actually started as a poem titled Defense of Fort McHenry written by Francis Scott Key, a witness to the British bombardment on Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.

From this famous poem we now have key principles like "land of the free" and "home of the brave".  Once it was set to music, the first stanza of the poem became our national anthem, and when played, gives Americans the sense of freedom and pride in that freedom. Here it is played by The U.S. Army Band, under the direction of Colnel L. Bryan Shelburn:


http://www.thenationalanthemproject.org/sounds/Sing%20America%2001.mp3

Some might be interested in a vocal abstraction of the piece:


See more Audio at TeacherTube.com.


Or perhaps you might prefer the Jimi Hendrix abstraction:


Though, maybe fr some, the national anthem does not fully depict the essential aspects of freedom.One cannot fully understand freedom without understanding the lack of it.  Therefore, we might think of freedom when we see images of chains and shackles broken and images representing release.  All of these images below evoke the strong sense that now that freedom has been obtained, there is now the option of choice.

Freedom can also be abstracted in poetry.  Below is an acrostic poem I wrote.  I tried to include as many of the essential characteristics of freedom that I could think of.  Disclaimer: I do not proclaim it to be good poetry.)


          Free to think, say, or do what we choose
          Rights that are protected by others
          Every person deserves it
          Equality for all
          Democracy for all
          Opportunities for all
          Many died to preserve it for us



Perhaps we can abstract freedom in another way by depicting another essential aspect of freedom: its importance.  Freedom is so important to us that we celebrate those who serve us to protect that freedom and we lament the loss of those who die for that freedom.  Below are pictures my husband, a police officer, took at another officer's funeral who had died in the line of duty.  (I wrestled here with which pictures to use.  There were some extremely heart wrenching ones that would have had a deeper impact, though I did not want to use them out of respect for this family.)  These images and each funeral he has attended over the years reminds the two of us of how precious that freedom is that so many others are willing to risk their lives to protect it.

Finally, to end this on a lighter note, I would like to share one last thing: a video on freedom from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. This video is a spoof on "Freedom Packages" offered by the United States to other countries uses abstractions. The video itself is an abstraction of infomercials, keeping the key elements of an excited host or announcer with a headset on. Further along we see more abstractions. Notice that Sudan is represented by a bowl of sand; Egypt is represented by the bowl of sand with a pyramid on top; and Iraq is represented by the bowl of sand with oil on top. Not accurate representations, but commentary on how they believe the United States or perhaps Americans view these countries. Finally, the entire video represents the comedians' abstractions on American foreign policy. It strips away all of the complicated details related to foreign relations, revealing a simplistic view on how the United States deals with freedom and rights of citizens in other countries. Political commentary after all is naturally an abstraction that focuses on one important aspect and leaving the complicated details out of the explanation.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Resources:

1. Image, Defense of Fort McHenry by Francis Scott Key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Fort_McHenry
2. Star Spangled Banner, as played by the U.S. Army Band under the direction of Colnel L. Bryan Shelburn: http://www.thenationalanthemproject.org/sounds/Sing%20America%2001.mp3
3. Vocal of Star Spangled Banner: http://teachertube.com/members/music.php?music_id=6872&title=Star_Spangled_Banner___Full_Performance
4. Jimi Hendrix, Star Spangled Banner, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L3JbKimTdMg
5. Image, Celebrating Our Freedom: http://www.saralandchristians.com/featured/celebrating-freedom/
6. Image, Broken egg, http://gargarita.wordpress.com/2008/02/16/libertate/freedom-2/
7. Image, Broken handcuffs: http://www.wednesdaynightservice.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Broken_Handcuffs.jpg 
8. Police Officer Funeral images, used with consent from Michael Jain
9. Video, America's Freedom Packages, The Daily Show:  http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-21-2011/america-s-freedom-packages

How Do I Love Thee: Patterning

What do you call a cow with no legs?

The answer: Ground Beef!

Based on the previous joke, you might be able to guess the answer to another joke. What do yo call a cow with two legs?

Lean beef! (Sorry no picture this time!)

The opening of the Chapter Six in Sparks of Genius by Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein reminded me of these corny jokes my father used to tell. The fact is though, once you notice a pattern, you can learn and predict a great deal from it. How we dress for the day based on how the weather looks outside is a result of patterns. Knowing how your boss will react to a new problem is a result of learning from patterns. Learning a new way to multiply by nines or twelves is the result of patterns. Patterns are vital to our everyday life and they are a key to learning from the world around us.

Often time in Social Studies courses we focus too much on history as the underlying pattern in the concept. What can we learn from the past? Often times, we overlook other patterns that exist that connect the difficult and more abstract concepts, like the one I chose for this project: rights. We can easily describe rights and many governments have a written list of basic rights and/or rights guaranteed by the government. But how can you show a pattern in rights? One way to "see" a world-wide pattern is through the use of maps.

Below is a map showing the different forms of government throughout world.

via chartsbin.com

On the map, we see all types of governments from Full Presidential Republics (like the United States) to military dictatorships (like Libya, Niger, Mauritania, and Burma) to one party states (like China). Not only can you think about the patterns in where the different types of government are found and link it to the history of each country and even more specifically the history of exploration and colonization,, you can also look for how these forms of governments reveal a link to a pattern in different rights.

Take freedom of speech for example. If you were to walk into any high school classroom and ask for the class to name the American Bill of Rights, the most popular response would be freedom of speech, just one portion of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Teenagers love to exercise this right and can easily relate to it. So lets compare freedom of speech and press to types of government. Below is a map of the World Press Freedom Index:


via chartsbin.com 
(Click the Key button to lower or raise the map's key/legend.)

Right away, you might notice that Burma and Libya, two of the military dictatorships listed previously, are ranked the worst for freedom of press ("Very serious situation" on the map's key).  One might also notice that Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy, is ranked this poorly as well.

But does the pattern always hold true?  Where would you expect the United States to fall?  Did you expect it to have the best rating and the most freedom of press?  Were you surprised that we were only given a satisfactory rating?  And you would expect countries with Presidential Republics, a system we have in the U.S., to have similar ratings of at least a satisfactory situation.  This does not seem to hold true, especially when you look at South American and African countries with Presidential Republics.  While patterns can help us link important ideas, we must know their limitations.   They are not always the rule but can provide important insights.

We often associate rights with freedom.  The more rights you have, the more freedom you have.  (Another pattern.)  Now let us compare what we have learned so far to a map of "Freedom in the World" which looks at political rights and civil liberties:

via chartsbin.com

Here we see a map that reflects patterns that we see in history and we see in the current events throughout the world:  the United States, Canada, and most of Europe and South America are considered free.  Areas that are rich in a history of conflict are not free, such as many countries in Africa and Asia.  Now let's look at the same data in a different form:

Now we see that the countries that are free or partly free are considered electoral democracies, or countries that have governments founded on the principle that elected officials represent the people. By this definition, the electoral democracies would be the presidential republics, presidential-parliamentary systems, parliamentary republics, and constitutional monarchies we saw in the first map. Thus we can see a link but we also see exceptions to the pattern: not all presidential and parliamentary systems provide their citizens with rights.

Finally one more connection to make and one more pattern to bring to light. Are rights connected to peace? If you lack rights, are you more likely to have conflict in your country? Compare this map to the map above on freedom:


via chartsbin.com

You see again that Africa and Asia, areas of the world that are known for civil war, conflict, and terrorism, are the same regions with a low or very low peace index.  You can of course, look country by country and compare.  You could even look at each country's individual history and link it to it's peace index rating.

Patterns are everywhere.  Understanding the patterns and the connections can help us understand the turmoil that we see in the world today.  You can even choose to look for the patterns that show us that the glass is indeed half-full and see the positive patterns that are happening around the world.  The important thing is that we open our eyes, start seeing those connections, and find those patterns!

Citations and Resources:

1. Ground Beef picture courtesy of: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/2432588
2. Systems of Government by Country Map: ChartsBin.com, http://chartsbin.com/view/6kx.
3. World Press Freedom Index: ChartsBin.com, http://chartsbin.com/view/1329
4. Freedom in the World Map: ChartsBin.com, http://chartsbin.com/view/1250.
5. Global Peace Index Map, ChartsBin.com, http://chartsbin.com/view/1529