Noah's English 11H Blog

 My final project is going well overall... just slowly. I am researching autodidacticism during different points in history and in different geographical regions. My home text is "Hayy ibn Yaqzan." So far, I have found a few options for primary sources. What I am struggling with is that I want a range of different types of texts. What I mean is "Hayy ibn Yaqzan" is mainly a literary piece that shows the philosophy of autodidacticism through a story. We learn about what autodidacticism means for an individual who is forced to experience it, and so the reader directly understands what autodidacticism means in practice. I also want to study autodidacticism from a deeper philosophical standpoint. The main text I am considering for that is "Plato's Republic." This studies the belief that all knowledge available to humans exists independently in the cosmos. Humans' job is to find that knowledge—a task Socrates believes is possible simply through independ...

The microlecture gave a really interesting context into the broader cultural factors around stories written by Native American authors. Most of the history I was taught about Native American cultures, tribes, and communities, was from a US History standpoint. So, from a colonization point of view and how Native peoples interacted with European settlers. I seldom learned about the Native cultures themselves. This microlecture gave that important context around Native Americans to shape how I interpret different themes in "There There." Knowing the historical and cultural context allows for a more informed reading of the book. The microlecture also showed how different cultures communicated and portrayed ideas differently. When I think of nonverbal communication from the point of view of my society, it is generally written or typed letters. We have essays, notes, books, articles, etc.—which are all very similar in nature. The microlecture showed how vastly different methods of ...