Outcome II (Integrating Ideas) – Be able to integrate their ideas with others using summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis, and synthesis of relevant sources.
This learning outcome is focused on text engagement, on your ability to represent the relevant “conversation” between texts, and on your ability to position yourself in that conversation.
When I am bringing other peoples ideas into my writing it is to back up something that I am trying to state and most of the time it connects to the other authors ideas. And when I’m using someone else writing I like to re-explain it in a way I know me and my audience will get and be able to follow as my writing continues.
In my essay I choose to write about the problem of religion being forced upon children and people not being able to make their own decisions. Religions cause a forced set of rules in a community that make either different communities despise each other or cause a rebellion within itself. I read two pieces while writing my paper by the authors Appiah of Making Conversations and Dan Savage who shared his story about the “It Gets Better” movement. While reading these I noticed they both had a common idea of cosmopolitanism and the fact that action is what creates change. Appiah said that the more we talk about something and become familiar with it the more everyone will understand and be able to use it effectively. Savage started a video movement which sparked up an enormous change within the LGBTQ+ community. Both proving that everyone can be equal in their own right while taking action and doing something about change. I pulled a ton of evidence from both but only used a few. “ It won’t solve the problem of anti-gay bullying, everywhere, all at once, forever, overnight. The point of the project is to give despairing LGBT kids hope”(p. 429). I took this piece from Dan Savage’s story because I feel like it really captures what my piece is really about. In summary making a change does not take one person or one day but instead a community coming together to share stories or in truth real hope for the future.
Here’s the essay I’m referring to and the highlighted parts are the parts that I integrated including direct quotes, the explanation of the quotes, and summary:
When we say local tribes what do we think about? I think of the community I grew up in and just that but it is so much more. A local tribe is everything that makes a community a family and what makes a person from that community the person they are outside of it. We have traditions such as celebrating a holiday or a family having a family dinner every Wednesday night. Then things like what people practice for a religion or the views they see politically. How one can be very Christian and very left politically from where they grew up or a different branch of Christianity and right politically. It all depends on the beliefs of the local tribe someone was born and raised in. With these beliefs and ways of life we develop habits within ourselves and expectations of what we are and should be and do. All about when we do things and how we do things and how our local tribes play into it.
When people adapt to these habits and routines they become a part of who we are. Eventually one will start to notice that everyone surrounding has the same if not close routines and beliefs they do. In one way it’s kind of like cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitanism in a short definition is the equality between lesser and greater fortunate people around one’s community and society. Also the consideration of everyone’s thoughts, feelings, life. There are many who believe this to be true and a very achievable goal but unfortunately the hard truth is this world will never be able to treat anyone in it as an equal to themselves. When reading the essay “Making Conversations” author and professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, I found that this man of philosophy and psychology had the realism behind cosmopolitanism all down. There are a lot of difficulties that come with change and in the essay Appiah stated a focus point of this idea: “Cosmopolitanism is an adventure and an ideal: But you can’t have any respect for human diversity and expect everyone to become cosmopolitan. The obligations of those who wish to exercise their legitimate freedom to associate with their own kind…are the only same basic obligations we all have”(p.72). In summary we all can’t have the same ideas and opinions because then no change would actually be made. We share the right of rights to freedom which allows us to all live differently and express differently.
But what if cosmopolitanism was something that was truly achievable? I am not saying it is not achievable but I am saying it’s unrealistic and people don’t have the capacity of care eto do it. But on a smaller scale I feel it can be done. Cosmopolitanism is a mixture of habits and beliefs all equal among the community it lives in. Thinking back to my ideas about the church, what if it practiced this method. Of course my plan would not work because it would not treat others as equals but instead the kids as the lesser and the adults as the greater based on comprehension and belief alone. In a way my method for the greater comprehension and religious enjoyment for kids is a form of cosmopolitanism. Extracting kids to a better, more equal environment for the greater chances of learning and enjoyment among equal peers with the same level of habits and beliefs. Behind my idea for change in the religious system for kids I feel like cosmopolitanism would work very effectively and perhaps prove Appiahs’ idea of change in some way or another.
The truth is storytelling is what I am trying to do with my change. Takes stories from a lot of different types of kids in different religions living different or the same lifestyles. Social change comes from storytelling as seen by countless movements and individuals trying to make a change within a community. We talked about local tribes earlier. Now we are talking about what makes local tribes be able to thrive through generations and generations. An amazing connection between storytelling and social change comes from the creator of the “It Gets Better,” a viral video campaign aimed at the LGBTQ+ community, Dan Savage. Savage used a story from his own experience and shared it saying that it gets better. This then created this flood of videos coming from other members of the community and even President Obama himself spreading this message of “It Gets Better”. A specific relation between social change and storytelling is when Savage states, “ It won’t solve the problem of anti-gay bullying, everywhere, all at once, forever, overnight. The point of the project is to give despairing LGBT kids hope”(p. 429). Social change doesn’t happen overnight in fact it takes years for even the little things to change but with these stories at least there is a change happening. It has some base and from there can take off into what it became which was one of the best messages to reach the youth of not only that community but spread awareness to other communities. Even in this quote you can see that cosmopolitan attitude toward the situation. Sure everyone is equal and treating each other with care and respect, that’s what it’s trying to do. And that is how cosmopolitanism, social change, and storytelling all come together when trying to make a realistic but exponential progress of change in something.
