Word: phenomena
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...opponents have been deeply engaged in black magic battles for dominance of the country for several years. "Both sides have been casting curses and spells upon each other," says Wassana who has written a book on the subject in Thai called Secrets, Trickery and Camouflage: The Improbable Phenomena. According to Wassana, Thaksin believes he is the reincarnation of a Burmese king who killed many Thais, and so has engaged in elaborate cleansing rituals to wash away the sins of his past lives. While in power, Wassana says Thaksin performed several saiyasat, or black magic rituals, that he hoped would prolong...
...four out of the past five presidential elections, Democrats have won the popular vote. That show of force at the national level has roughly coincided with the decline of Republican dominance of the big-state governorships. There is a significant and often overlooked cause and effect between these two phenomena, which, given the current political climate, should make Democrats even more worried than they already are about the November midterm elections. If Republicans can take advantage of the prevailing political winds to reassert control at the state level this year, that could in turn provide an opening...
...takes the study of gender, race, and imperialism as seriously as it takes all other important topics. More to the point, Social Studies is quite explicitly taught at a high level of abstraction because the purpose is to show how social theories are applicable to all kinds of social phenomena. The theories are not straightforwardly linked to the gender, class, or ethnicity of their creators. For example, when reading Marx, students learn about how ideologies sometimes take the form of statements that appear universal, but hide interests or points of view. Anyone can use this idea to perform an ideology...
...further problem is that Lee seems to believe that Social Studies tells or should tell its students what to think. She does not say students ought to learn different approaches to the study of social phenomena, but rather that they ought to learn to criticize not just capitalism but sexism, racism, etc… That is dogmatism, not education or critical thinking. Social Studies exposes students to many different approaches and views –Marx and Smith, Freud and Foucault, Mill and Beauvoir. Indeed, students read not just critics of, say, imperialism and capitalism, but also its defenders...
Embedded in these highly subjective decisions exists a social studies ideology. Because Social Studies 10 provides concentrators with a common set of tools for confronting social issues and phenomena, not including gender theorists or postcolonial theorists (many of whom are female and/or nonwhite) is an implicit statement about how the department understands and encourages its students to understand these topics. By including Marx but not including feminists on the syllabus, the department communicates that capitalism is an institution worthy of criticism, but sexism is not. Furthermore, allowing concentrators to read Hegel, Tocqueville and Polanyi, to name a few, without providing...