Advertisements are omnipresent in our current society. Everywhere we see, whether it be magazines, newspapers, or even the internet, has some kind of advertisements. Because they are so closely tied to our lives, the influence that advertisements have on people is huge. Although advertisements do have some benefits, such as providing the public useful information and advices, their negative effects – alluring people to buy unhealthy products and manipulating the costumers – easily overweigh their benefits.
Advertisements frequently make people buy unhealthy or even harmful products by giving the public positive images of such products. In particular, the widespread advertisements played a huge role in the success of cigarette during the 20th century. “From the birth of the cigarette industry, advertising was instrumental in creating a mass market and apportioning shares among brands.” (Shaw) Furthermore, even after people became increasingly aware of the potential harm that smoking cigarettes can bring, advertisements still enlarged the market for cigarettes by implementing carefully devised consumer research. The companies’ constant advertisement moreover promoted “the continued social acceptability of smoking and encouraged the incorrect belief that the majority of people smoke.”(Shaw) The public, because it was constantly exposed to cigarette commercials, came to consider cigarette as “household items” that is to be consumed in our daily lives and thus took smoking as “socially acceptable”. As such, advertisements promote the public’s consummation of harmful products by making people falsely believe that those products “universal”.
Commercials can also be blamed for “manipulating” the consumers, for these commercials play a crucial role in forming an individual’s life-long shopping habits. Such influence of advertisements is especially big on teenagers who tend to get easily swayed by their environment. These teenagers, once they start buying the advertised brand of clothing or coffee, will continue to buy the same brand for their remaining lives. According to the studies conducted for Seventeen, “about 29 percent of adult women buy the brand of coffee they preferred as teenagers, and about 41 percent buy the same brand of mascara.”(Day) This statistics clearly show how advertisements are prone to manipulate the teenagers into buying specific products for their entire lives. Even those who claim to be uninfluenced by the advertisements are in fact vulnerable to ad’s attack, for the effects of advertisements work under human consciousness with “psychological hooks.”(Schrank) Thus, advertisements must be criticized for their “propaganda” in making people buy certain products by using unrecognizable persuasive techniques.
Despite such apparent disadvantages that ads bring, some people still promote the advertisements, saying that they give some valuable information to the public or promote altruistic behavior, such as donating blood after countering the Red Cross advertisement that encourages people to do so. (Red Cross) Some even claim that advertisements educate the public by informing them about “candidates running for office, and important issues such as the benefit of seatbelt use.” (Day) Nonetheless, how many percentages do such public campaign ads take up in this massive advertisement pool? Furthermore, a click on the Internet soon gives out the public all the information it needs – obviously including the candidates’ name and the importance of using seat belts. In fact, what we really need know not need to be informed using advertisements (Sesana), because we will look it up beforehand from other sources if it is that important. People’s claim that advertisement is necessary because it provides information is clearly invalid for these reasons.
Nowadays, people are so immerged in the ocean of advertisements that they often fail to recognize the schemes that these advertisements play. Although some advertisements clearly have positive values, such as delivering people essential information and persuading people to do altruistic acts, the majority of the advertisements floating in our society focuses in manipulating the public to buy certain products by persuading people under the conscious level. Thus, advertisement is more of a mere propaganda than something that fosters prosperity.
2011년 3월 20일 일요일
2011년 3월 13일 일요일
Education: Finland vs. Korea
This is a video clip on Finland's education system. When it comes to international Standarized testings, Finland scores one of the highest - along with South Korea. However, these two countries' educational systems differ greatly.
There is also an article posted on BBC that talks about Finland's education success.
By Tom Burridge BBC World News America, Helsinki |
Last year more than 100 foreign delegations and governments visited Helsinki, hoping to learn the secret of their schools' success.
In 2006, Finland's pupils scored the highest average results in science and reading in the whole of the developed world. In the OECD's exams for 15 year-olds, known as PISA, they also came second in maths, beaten only by teenagers in South Korea.
 | Education in South Korea  In South Korea, the school day is long and pupils have a much stricter study regime.  |
This isn't a one-off: in previous PISA tests Finland also came out top.
The Finnish philosophy with education is that everyone has something to contribute and those who struggle in certain subjects should not be left behind.
A tactic used in virtually every lesson is the provision of an additional teacher who helps those who struggle in a particular subject. But the pupils are all kept in the same classroom, regardless of their ability in that particular subject.
Finland's Education Minister, Henna Virkkunen is proud of her country's record but her next goal is to target the brightest pupils.
''The Finnish system supports very much those pupils who have learning difficulties but we have to pay more attention also to those pupils who are very talented. Now we have started a pilot project about how to support those pupils who are very gifted in certain areas.''
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The BBC's Tom Burridge talks to Henna Virkkunen, the Minister of Education and Science in Finland.
According to the OECD, Finnish children spend the fewest number of hours in the classroom in the developed world.
This reflects another important theme of Finnish education.
 Children walk around in their socks at Torpparinmäki Comprehensive |
Primary and secondary schooling is combined, so the pupils don't have to change schools at age 13. They avoid a potentially disruptive transition from one school to another.
Teacher Marjaana Arovaara-Heikkinen believes keeping the same pupils in her classroom for several years also makes her job a lot easier.
''I'm like growing up with my children, I see the problems they have when they are small. And now after five years, I still see and know what has happened in their youth, what are the best things they can do. I tell them I'm like their school mother.''
Children in Finland only start main school at age seven. The idea is that before then they learn best when they're playing and by the time they finally get to school they are keen to start learning.
Less is more
| Education in the United States  "If education is expensive, try ignorance" |
Finnish parents obviously claim some credit for the impressive school results. There is a culture of reading with the kids at home and families have regular contact with their children's teachers.
Teaching is a prestigious career in Finland. Teachers are highly valued and teaching standards are high.
The educational system's success in Finland seems to be part cultural. Pupils study in a relaxed and informal atmosphere.
Finland also has low levels of immigration. So when pupils start school the majority have Finnish as their native language, eliminating an obstacle that other societies often face.
The system's success is built on the idea of less can be more. There is an emphasis on relaxed schools, free from political prescriptions. This combination, they believe, means that no child is left behind.
This is how BBC portrayed Korean education system
2011년 3월 2일 수요일
Pink Plastic Flamingo
In her essay “The Plastic Pink Flamingo: A Natural History”, Jennifer Price carefully examines the beginning and influence of “plastic pink flamingo phenomenon.” Furthermore, she also delineates the bright nature of real flamingos. However, Price’s main purpose is not to introduce the readers of either real or artificial flamingos. In fact, Jennifer Price tries to reveals her view of United States culture by talking about these plastic flamingos. In doing so, Price incorporates certain rhetorical devices, such as strong diction, anecdotes, and listing to reinforce her arguments about the United States culture.
Jennifer Price’s use of strong diction clearly reveals how the “plastic pink flamingo phenomenon” reflects popular cultures of America in the 1950s. She uses the word “boldness” very frequently to describe this pink flamingo’s “splash” into the market. She also argues that the flamingo stands out “strikingly” in a desert. Her use of such emphatic words let readers imagine strong, or rather bold nature of American culture in the 1950s; these words give the readers a chance to feel how suddenly the pink plastic flamingo appeared in American culture and how impressive its effects were. Thus, such use of strong diction helped emphasizing Price’s opinion that this new wave of American culture in the 1950s was rather abrupt and forceful.
Furthermore, Price incorporates an anecdote in her essay to fortify her point. In the second paragraph, she narrates a story of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and how he could successfully conjure the riches with flamingo hotels. This story tells us that flamingos in the middle of the desert were very conspicuous, and that this “conspicuousness” attracted the riches to come to this hotel. By accommodating this anecdote, Price implicitly claims that American culture was obsessed at things that really stood out, and that it even liked things that were so striking as to be considered absurd in some ways. With an anecdote, Jennifer Price points out the fact that Americans by then wished to show off and distinguish themselves from all others.
In addition to italicizing the word “pink” in the third paragraph, Jennifer Price also uses listing to underline how American culture was obsessed with celebrating its new affluence. In the last sentence of the third paragraph, Price relates “Washing machines, cars, and kitchen counters proliferated in passion pink, sunset pink, and Bermuda pink.” Her listing of many different kinds of “pink” color successfully emphasizes her argument that Americans blindly sought after flashy colors – especially pink colors - to declare others that they have risen up from the Great Depression, and that they were now ready to take this new era with ardor.
1950s was definitely a time of change for many Americans. These people had overcome a great hardship, and were ready for a new start. Jennifer Price relates in her essay that American culture was very strong and powerful at the time, and that it really wished to stand out and show off its wealth. Price’s incorporation of rhetorical devices – including powerful diction, an anecdote, and listings – certainly does a job in delivering her opinions to the readers in a much clearer way.
2011년 2월 23일 수요일
"China Blue"
How “China Blue” Represents Current Chinese Society
During the last couple of decades, China has developed at an almost unprecedented speed. After the [1] Reforming and Opening-up Policy led by Deng Xiaoping, almost every economic sector of China made significant developments. The economic growth rate has mostly exceeded 10% per year after the late 1970’s. Furthermore, according to the World Trade Organization (WTO), the total amount of US trade with China is $231.5 billion, making China one of the biggest exporting countries in the world.[2] In addition, China holds by far the most foreign-exchange reserves, which are worth more than $ 2.3 trillion in total. Therefore, with such rapid growth of its economy, China ranked as the second largest economy in the world, pushing Japan aside for the first time since the ranking started. How could China achieve such rapid development? One may attribute the cause to the massive investment that the Chinese government put in. Others may say that lowering the tariff and activating free trade was the main cause. Nonetheless, many people seem to overlook the fact that the cheap labor that China could offer was the key factor in its industrial development. In order to maintain the lowest possible price, many factory owners abused cheap laboring population such as children or women. The documentary “China Blue” carefully illustrates the reality of poor working conditions and maltreatments inflicted upon the child labor force in China.
“China Blue” carefully observes the life of Jasmine, a Chinese 17 year old girl. She moved from Sichuan province to Shaxi, Guangdong, a big industrial city in China to work in a blue jean factory called “Lifeng Clothes Factory.” At first, Jasmine is excited to earn money and give her family some financial aid. However, the reality that waits in front of her is much harsher than what she imagined. In order to remain as a worker of the factory, Jasmine has to deal with massive amount of work, frequently staying all night up in order to finish them all. Furthermore, despite such harsh works, Jasmine’s monthly pay is neither high enough nor consistently given. Presenting a poignant story of a young girl in China, “China Blue” evokes a rational responses from the viewers by introducing a real situation that is currently happening.
The film accurately delineates the poor working conditions in China with objectivity. One of the most unique characteristics of this documentary is that the film maker or the narrator is not inside the film itself. Rather, the film simply shows the audiences daily life of a girl named Jasmine working in a blue jean factory. Thus, the maker’s opinion is not directly shown in the documentary, making the presentation much more restrained and fair minded. With no extra narration, the film shows Jasmine’s room that she has to share with 12 other girls, which is barely large enough to sleep in and has no water or bathroom facility. In addition, she has to work from 8 a.m to 2 a.m. every single day without any proper break time. More than these, when the deadline for shipping the jeans comes close, she even has to work all night, pinching her eyelids with laundry clippers to keep herself awake. After all the toil, the amount of money she gets paid is not even enough to support her own life. Although she gets 48 cents per hour, which is much lower than what is expected, in the fear of getting fired, there is no way for Jasmine to protest. Surprisingly, Jasmine’s case is rather a lucky one, since many other workers get even lower payment since the minimum wage itself is extremely low in China compared to that of other countries. The minimum wage in China is [3] 31 cents per hour while it is [4] $4 per hour in South Korea and [5] $7.25 in the United States. With such low minimum wages, there’s not much for the workers to say about their wages to their bosses, resulting in such despairing working conditions.
Throughout “China Blue”, there is a stark contrast that catches the viewer’s sight between the workers and the owner of the factory. While the workers of the Lifeng Clothes Factory have to suffer in harsh conditions and environments, working days and nights inside the factory, Mr. Lam, who used to be a police officer and is currently the owner of the factory, enjoys a luxurious lifestyle. He enjoys various hobbies, including calligraphy, to appeal himself more to the western buyers. The documentary clearly tells the viewers that there is only one thing that Mr. Lam cares about: the profit. To get more orders from western countries and earn more money, Mr. Lam has to agree to lower prices, and therefore this exacerbates the worker’s conditions. In addition to the factual representations of the lives of the two completely different classes, this contrast also evokes sympathy from the viewers. The wealthy and comfortable lives of high-class Chinese people emphasize the sufferings of low-class workers, and evoke stronger emotional responses. The representation of how the company solely pursues profits and nothing else is also shown in another film, “The Corporation.” According to ‘The Corporation’, the only goal for a corporation is to meet the maximum profit, regardless of the process used to achieve this goal. Using both logic and emotion, “China Blue” tells us that one of the reasons for such poor working conditions in China is solely due to the greediness of the owners.
Besides its concern for the working conditions in general, “China Blue” also focuses on a more specific issue, “The reality of child labor in China.” In the documentary, it is easy to notice that most of the girls working in the factory are teenagers, who are supposed to go to schools rather than to work in a clothing factory. Although there is a law in China that bans the factory owners from employing children under 16 years old, this law apparently is not working very well. According to the Hong Kong Economics Newspaper, Child labor in China is currently on the increase. What is more shocking is that not only Chinese corporations such as Lifeng Clothing Factory, but also globalized western companies exploit cheap child labor. [6] In particular, Apple, a world famous computer corporation has recently admitted its use of child labor with unjustly low salaries in some of its Chinese factories. [7] Such problems have risen to the surface when, in 2009, 13 children were killed or severely injured as a result of a factory explosion in Guangxi, all of them in between the ages of 7 to 15. The documentary’s objective representation of the child labor problem in China induces the viewers to think once again about the problems in a logical manner.
Overall, the documentary objectively explores how severe the problems of child labor are in China, and how these workers have to toil themselves in a terrible working conditions to earn the money that is not sufficient enough to support one’s life. The main feature and the strongest point of “China Blue” was that it did not solely resort to emotional responses. By excluding the narrator from the story, the film achieved much stronger logic and evoked much more reasonable responses. However, it did not neglect the need of emotion; the film evoked sympathy from the viewers not by using emotional and strong language, but by presenting a clear contrast between the lives of the poor and the rich.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_economic_reform
[2] http://www.economist.com/node/17257777
[3] http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue/humanrights.html
[4] http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/06/113_47717.html
[5] http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/minimumwage.htm
[6]http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/02/27/apple-child-labor-china-history-sketchy-manufacturing/
[7]http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=104&oid=001&aid0002977860
2011년 2월 21일 월요일
AP Lang essay - Muckrakers
Is it honor to be called a "Muckraker?"
Although President Theodore Roosevelt coined the term ‘muckrakers’ to insult some journalists, many journalists nowadays including Jessica Mitford take the term as a praise. In fact, Muckrakers play an important role in keeping our society clean and just by exposing faults and misconducts of famous individuals or companies. The works of the journalists in digging out the unjust side of the public is, in some ways, what protects the citizen’s freedom and rights in a nation, as shown in the cases of the Watergate scandal, Domino Pizza, and North Korea.
The Watergate scandal accurately delineates the power of the journalists to correct socially unjust events. President Nixon, who was later on found to be guilty, at first tried to conceal his misconduct by firmly denying his part in the scandal. Because many people who were involved in the scandal were closely related to CIA and FBI, the investigation on Watergate scandal was not very active. However, when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, journalists in Washington post, started their independent research on the scandal, the public started to pay great attention to the incident. With the attention of millions of American citizens, it was nearly impossible for Nixon to evade his guilt. Consequently, when Nixon’s guilt was about to be confirmed, Nixon eventually admitted his misdemeanor and resigned from the presidency.
Journalists play an important role not only in uncovering an individual’s faults, but also in exposing certain companies’ misconducts. In particular, Domino Pizza decided to annul its “30 minutes delivery” system after the journalists’ criticism on such policy. A couple of days ago, one 18 years old student died while delivering pizza. Later on, when it was found out that the student had to speed up and ignore the traffic light in order to deliver the pizza on time, many journalists criticized pizza companies for exchanging adolescents’ lives for their profits. Such criticisms brought massive responses from the previously indifferent public, and eventually led the companies to abolish the policy that used to risk the deliverers’ lives.
The crucial role that journalists play on the justice is more clearly shown when we take a look at the case of North Korea: a country where there is no true journalist. Unlike most of the other countries in the world, North Korea is under the dictatorship of Kim Jong-il. Therefore, freedom of journalism is not guaranteed – in fact, the journalists are only allowed to write the articles that praise the meritorious deeds of their dictator, Kim Jong-il. As a result, the citizens have no way to know the serious crime that their leader is perpetrating – many of them firmly believe that North Korea is the best country to live in and that Kim Jong-il is the best leader in the world. Unlike Egypt, where the journalists were at least allowed to write independent articles, the complete blockage of journalism in North Korea left the citizens unaware of their own situation, and led to the sufferings of the North Korean citizens, taking away their freedom and rights.
It is true that some journalists tend to go too far in the pursuit of their stories. Some reports are frequently found to be exaggerated and even misinformed. Nevertheless, as the aforementioned cases show, the role that journalists play in keeping the society’s justice and people’s rights is so crucial that it should never be overlooked. In this aspect, it is not surprising to know that Jessica was happy to accept the term given to her, “Queen of the muckrakers.” Without the journalists, our situation may not differ so much from that of North Korea.
2011년 2월 20일 일요일
“I like turtles”- The Viral Infamy
“I like turtles”- The Viral Infamy
Just a couple of centuries ago, people were living in their own separate pieces of world. Each of them was an expert in knowing what’s happening in his small town – who’s getting married, who’s moving in, or even, who’s in a good mood and who’s not. In contrary, they were completely blank on something beyond the bound. The Europeans found a new continent, but no one in Asia was aware of it. However, as the media developed, such barriers all over the world started to collapse. People started to receive the news from all around the world within couple of seconds. And this is not the end. Not only important news that would make up the first page of the newspaper, but also trivial happenings without any significance started to spread out virally in the internet. Granted, such phenomenon surely has some benefits. However, the problem is, when such videos are spread rapidly via internet, certain people that are inside the video may be extremely criticized, and as a result, socially alienated.
In fact, the “turtle boy” could be considered as a beneficiary of the viral videos. His simple three words, “I like turtle”, which would normally provide some chuckles and then be forgotten gave the boy immense spotlight and money. Same case applies to the “Double rainbow guy.” The man’s exclamation on sighting a double rainbow may bring out some laughter from those near him, but that would be it. Nonetheless, with the help of Internet, the Rainbow Man became one of the most nationally-renowned people, and as a result, earned both fame and money. Some even use such aspect of the internet as a chance to achieve their goals: a man uploaded a video of himself following Yuna Kim in the hope of getting recognized and becoming an actor.
Despite the aforementioned benefits of viral videos, the side-effects that the Internet has should not be overlooked. The suicide rate of Korean celebrities is higher than most countries. Korea also has the highest rate of Internet users. A coincidence? Probably not. There are numerous articles and clips that include uncertified facts or rumors regarding celebrities posted daily in the Internet and there are hundreds and thousands of replies that condemn the celebrity based on such rumors. Moreover, when the video of “Dog poop girl” was posted on the You Tube, the girl was so severely criticized from the people all over the nation that she had to quit her job and stay at home all day – basically a complete alienation from the society.
The development of the media was apparent during the last hundred years, and the final form of such development is the internet. Although the rapid spread of information – both important and unimportant- through the internet certainly benefits the majority, people should not forget that the Internet is also capable of giving incurable wound to some people.
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