Work Changes Much like Culture

          Today many people have a motivation to attend school and later college to become educated and eventually be able to get a job that they will be able to support themselves and possibly their families with. However, this has not always been the case. Work prior to the Industrial Revolution for most meant labor intensive jobs working in the fields and growing their own food. The only training given was on the job training. Not many people went to college and few graduated from high school. Once the Industrial Revolution took root, people started to shift towards moving to the city and working in factories that would mass produce various important goods, like cars. Although these were still labor intensive jobs, they were a step up for most because of their increased wages. Eventually this type of “factory work” changed and evolved with the creation of labor unions.

          Labor unions back then held meetings to discuss working conditions with the company the employees worked for as well as wages. At first, many companies made labor unions illegal. In fact, Henry Ford himself is to have believed to have a goon squad that would go around trying to break labor unions up within his company. However, membership in labor unions today is sometimes required in order to be employed with certain companies. But, recently the state where many of these labor unions were founded, Michigan, is slowly fading away. With the creation of new legislature called the Right to Work laws, it is now illegal to require financial support of a union as a condition of employment in Michigan as well as twenty-three others. Indiana, a neighboring state to Michigan, has seen vast improvements in their job market by passing the Right to Work laws. However, several labor unions like the AFL-CIO disputes the claims of Indiana’s increased job market by saying it was bound to happen for other reasons. What do you think about the decline of labor unions? Do you think that they are important in how our culture has been shaped? Do you think they are a necessary component and should be mandatory that all workers be a part of?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/28/right-to-work-impact-uncertain/2026755/

Culture and Its Impact on Literacy

          Literacy to most people is learning how to read or write. However, there are many more perspectives of literacy then the simple definition of knowing how to read and write a language. Did you know that the early alphabet was used for accounting purposes? Back then, there were no written stories the only records were of business transactions so that people could be taxed. The only people who understood this system were the elite and tax collectors. The first tax collectors were not believed to be honest men because they always had an edge on everyone else since they were literate on how the alphabet and record system worked. In this example, knowing the tax system is considered being literate without writing or reading any prose or poetry. Because the tax collectors had an edge on most people by being literate, they were able to take advantage of people and no one would know it because they were illiterate.

          This same idea of using literacy to have an edge on people still takes place today in other countries like in China. Min-Zhan Lu is an English teacher at the University of Louisville who writes a lot about the importance of literacy. In her article, “From Silence to Words: Writing as a Struggle” Lu talks about her struggles between being forced by the government to only write in standard Chinese in school and forced by her parents to speak and write in English at home. She found this a challenge because she was more fluent in English then she was in Chinese. This made writing her essays much more time consuming because she would know the word to say in English but not know the word in Chinese. Although this article focuses on a less imperative oppression, it still shows that not all people can be literate because of the countries they live in. In other places, they just flat out lack the resources to become literate, but they are able to be literate in the jobs they do for their culture.

          Culture is important when considering literacy because in different cultures literacy takes a higher precedence then in other cultures. In the cultures most people consider literacy to take a lower precedence, these cultures maybe more literate in survival skills since they are constantly fighting for their life in the wild every day. In the end, more civilized cultures are thought of as being more literate, but a day may come where the tides will change and the civilized cultures may become the illiterate culture.

http://www.junkyardwisdom.com/2009/06/08/literacy-as-oppression/

Memory Cloud

           A new fascinating art form was finally revealed and put into operation last Friday at the newly remodeled Memorial Student Center. The Memory Cloud is described as "an ethereal constellation of light points in a sculptural cloud form." The cloud is made up of LED nodes flickering on and off to create a 3D effect since they hang from the ceiling. The hanging of the LED nodes gives the art form the look of a cloud because the projected pictures on the LED nodes look like they are floating in midair, much like a cloud floats in midair. To see a live animation of the Memory Cloud, watch this video.

           The images that are shown on the cloud are “archived footage of time-honored traditions such as the Corp of Cadets, the Aggie Band, Kyle Field traditions, and past Aggie graduations.” In addition to past memories, the cloud has the ability to show a “real-time feed of everyday student life” from a closely mounted camera by the flag room in the MSC. By incorporating this real-time video feed, the Memory Cloud is able to involve the students into the art form and bridge the gap between the culture of the University’s past with its absolute present culture.

           This is interesting in regards to culture because this art form itself encapsulates the culture not only of today’s tech savvy technology era, but it shows how Texas A&M’s culture continues to change and evolve, much like in my last post I explored how music seems to evolve. When some people mention Texas A&M University, they think about the Corps as the Memory Cloud mentions. When my Grandfather went to Texas A&M the only students allowed were males and they were all in the Corps. The Corps, itself is a very traditional aspect of A&M, but much has changed since he went there. Today, A&M is a co-ed university that not only has a Corps of Cadets, but also non-corps students. Besides allowing a co-ed non-military student base, A&M has become one of the top research institutions in the United States and offers education in a vast amount of disciplines. However, with all of these changes the core values of Texas A&M are the same and so are its traditions! With this Memory Cloud, the University is not only trying to express its enthusiasm for our culture past and present, but also for the advances in science and technology.

http://tamutimes.tamu.edu/2013/02/18/traditions-depicted-in-art-when-memory-cloud-opens/