SCIENTIA EST POTENTIA

Part I: Explication

To be honest, I have no idea what this song/poem is about. Of course, that probably has to do, in large part, with the fact that I decipher poetry about as well as I dunk a basketball. Alas, I cannot dunk a basketball. Soooo...yeah. Anyway, there is a reference to the Ides of March, the time in which Caesar was assassinated, I believe. There are references to violets, which, for me, elicits the image of spring, of growth, of new life. The first line seems to talk about the development of a child--late bloomers, perhaps. Then you have diametrically opposed elements: water and fire. In the next couplet, also oppositions: first and last. There also seems to be more reversals what with "first things first" being switched to "first things last." Then you have contradictory lines: "and the night is long" and "the night is brief." Could this be about life and death? It begins with images of spring and ends with a reference to Caesar's assassination. You also have the lines: "ashes to ashes" and "dust to dust." As a unified whole, the best I can come up with is a nihilistic view on life. All of the contradictions could be an extended metaphor for life's disappointments: things never turn out the way you expect.

Part II: Did the song change anything?

Besides sounding decidedly different than the cadence I had imagined in my head, no. I think the message remains the same. To me it's all a bit esoteric, though. I can't quite wrap my head around this one.

Hello, all. My name is Chris and, truth be told, I have no intention of teaching at the secondary level. That may surprise many of you, as, after all, I am an English Subject Matter major. Instead, I’d like to teach at the collegiate level, probably junior college to start. To those of you brave enough to willingly enter the madness that is high school, I salute you. I just don’t have the patience. Oh, and dealing with parents would be a nightmare—seriously.

As for media technology in the classroom, I can’t see how it would be anything but a huge boon for teachers. The standard lecture/homework/quiz…tune out/procrastinate/regurgitate model is archaic and, I believe, part of the reason the educational system as it stands, is failing. Kids need to be engaged. Teachers have to compete with Xbox 360s, iPods, Hulu, Torrents, Facebook, and all other manner of instant gratification in this world. How can a teacher possibly keep a child’s attention with all of these distractions? The outside world is so much more appealing than the classroom. That is, unless, we begin to incorporate some of the technologies these children have begun to embrace, into the classroom. Take this course, for instance: we’re updating a weekly blog via the internet, a place where most of us spend hours a day anyway. I can only speak for myself, but I would much rather update a blog than read through three chapters of dry material, only to answer a slew of inane chapter questions. And I’d imagine, most high school students would agree.

Imagine a classroom that had access to JSTOR and Project Muse. A classroom that not only explored metaphor, simile, and foreshadowing in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but also demonstrated the aforementioned in Apocalypse Now. A classroom that taught the concept of a phalanx through a video game like Rome: Total War. The possibilities are endless. The point is, times have changed; so, too, must our methods of teaching. Media technology not only should be incorporated in the classroom, but must, if we are to change America’s educational slide.