Isaac Bravo Salazar
Yachay Tech University, Hacienda San JosĂŠ s/n y Proyecto Yachay, San Miguel de Urcuqui, Imbabura - (Ecuador)
July 13th, 2016
Dear Portfolio Reader,
Hi! My name is Isaac Bravo Salazar and this is my portfolio (the coolest one). In this work you will find all my development in the English language area of Yachay Tech. This portfolio contains four essays, a research paper and a couple of reflections. I have put a lot of effort in all of these papers through this last level, the level 6. Since I started in level 6, I noticed that my knowledge about English has started to increase. I feel really glad about all the effort I put into every essay. I became more responsible with my work. Also, I have realized that through every mistake I had in an essay or in an assignment, I got better so I cannot make it again. One of my favorite facets of this English semester is that I have developed a lot the idea of working in groups. I have learned how to be more confortable with my classmates and create a lot connection in the time of doing some class work.
Through all this semester in English I have learned how to give a right focus for my ideas. Also, I have learned how to express my self appropriately and clear. For example, I have done three essays about ethical problems in society, and in every essay I always had the same problem. My problem was that I had a lot of ideas that I wanted to expose to make my point, but not always I’ve took the right form to do it. But now I can realize that through these essays I have learned a lot about this. I’ve learned how to be organized about my ideas and be clear when I can to expose them, all the time. There is a difference between the first essay and the last one. I am too glad and also happy that I can be more precise with my ideas when I am writing. I feel more responsible with my work now, and I think that by this I can even be better in the rest of the classes I have. And the most important part is that now I can connect with my partners to do work, and this is thank by all the group work we have done in every class. I think I am ready for the next levels and also for the entire English world. I really never thought that English was something such important, but now I realized how important en beauty is to learn this idiom. It represents like a step to the success of my professional carrier. Now I feel more ready to complete my “formation” of this idiom, even though learning never ends. So thank you a lot for reading my English portfolio, it means a lot for me. This is the proof of all my effort and hard work I have put in every class. Hope you like it!
Sincerely,
Isaac Bravo
The Imaginary Idea of Morality Isaac Bravo University Yachay Tech 29/04/2016
The idea of ethics and moral is relative, or that’s what Friedrich Nietzsche was trying to tell us in his book: “On the Genealogy of Morality”. We as humans are selfish by nature. We follow our instincts in the search of our welfare, but these selfish instincts have a lot to do with morality, so: can the morality change the selfishness of a person? As we know, we live in a world where science is constantly looking to understand human behavior, maybe to figure out whom we are and where are we going. But one of the biggest features about human behavior is the reasonability about what is good and what is bad. The idea of establish “good” and “bad” is based on morals and ethics. Therefore moral is the concept concerned with the judgment of what is right or wrong with human actions and characters. When we talk about morals, we also talk about ethics, and we can refer to ethics as the set of principles that we create to follow the patrons of what is good and what is bad, and all this based in the society (Moral, 2011)(Ethics, 2011). The article, “Unmasking the Motives of the Good Samaritan” by Claire Andre and Manuel Velazquez shows us how selfish behavior is human nature. The main point of the article is to show us a selfish behavior that the human being has by nature. The text starts giving an example of a situation in where we find out that people do things only by their own benefits, even when is to try to help somebody else. This opinion, about the selfinterest of the human being, is give by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. Also this writing shows that there can be altruistic feelings, and this is shown with an experiment that University of Kansas carried out. In this social experiment, they found that all the selfish reactions people may feel about helping a person in need. They would leave the situation
if they can. But in the other hand, all the people that can feel altruistic motivations, they would stay, even thought is hardly than just leave (C. Andre, M. Velazquez). I am agree with the authors in a lot things, but I really have the idea that the moral changes a lot in society, what I mean with this is that, who we are in from of the society depends on the moral lessons we have received throughout of our lives, the experiences we have lived, the things we have learned, we way our parents have taught us. I really believe there can be a social ethics in which every person of a community is agree with, but the moral is more relative, in community there can be a lot of ways of see a moral fact. Not everyone see the world in the same way, and because that, not everyone responds to an event with the same likeness. In my opinion I think too that we as human beings are selfish and I believe it because we are also animals, and as animals we do what is best for us, what is best for welfare, but there is a thing that makes a different between animals and humans is that we have rules. Rules that we call: ethic principles. However, I am not agree at all with the experiment that this article shows. Because is not sufficient to say that there can be persons with altruistic motivations. It is not even giving enough information for concluding that idea, should have given more data of the experiment and maybe have said where was made, how many person realized the experiment. I stand the idea that we are selfish, but not because we want to, it is because we need to as evolutionary specie.
In conclusion, I would say that we are selfish by nature, but maybe selfishness can change in the way our moral affect us, for example, if someone has lived with the idea that the best for him is to help everyone else, and he just can be happy like that, maybe he
would act less selfish than someone that has not lived like that. The ways we see the world affect the way we involve in society, but we always will find the way is good for us; we will follow rules that can satisfy our self-interest. We also need to understand the importance of knowing about the behavior of the human being. I have the idea that if we know how we are, if we really know who we are; we can know where we going and what are we going to be.
References -Ethics.
(2011).
In:
The
free
dictionary.
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from:
dictionary.
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from:
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ethics -Moral.
(2011).
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The
free
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/moral - C. André, M. Velásquez. (n/d). In: Unmasking the Motives of the Good Samaritan. Retrieved
from:
gvfNbX5OXVkQzVQcGVQTU0
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B5RL-
The Cultural Problem Isaac Bravo University Yachay Tech 20/05/2016
“Education must not be only a transmission of culture, but also a provider of alternative views of the world, and a strengthener of the will to explore them.” – Jerome Bruner. Ecuador is a small country situated in South America, with a population of almost 16 million of people. Ecuador is still considered as a third world country. The economy of Ecuador is established by the sale of raw material, to be more specific, the mining and commerce of oil. As we know, the development of the economy of a country is based on what it sales to the world. In the world, there are a lot of countries with a good economy, and it is just because these countries do not only trade raw material, but because these countries offer to the world technology and human talent. And this is exactly why our country has a big economy problem. Ecuador does not have a sustainable economic development based in the interchange of technology and human talent. But this is not because Ecuador cannot make it. It is because the people that shape Ecuador are not culturally able to do it. But why the cultural level of Ecuador is a problem for the country? And how it affects the country? One of the meanings for culture is: “the development or improvement of the mind by education or training” (Culture, 2008). So we can say that the level of the culture of a society is based in the education and the ethical principles that have every person that conform it. And this is why this means a problem for Ecuador, the bad educational system and the retrogressive beliefs that people has, makes the cultural level of Ecuador poor and undistinguished. It affects the development of the country in all senses. Because Ecuador does not have a good educational system it does not create good professional, and because Ecuador do not have good professionals they cannot
create technology, and also it creates poverty for the country. It has shown that families with parents with a college degree reduce poverty (Child, 2011). Also because there are not professionals, the country depends from other countries to be more adapted. This is a cyclical problem that stars with education and ethics. In the actuality, the government of Ecuador has noticed why this cultural problem is a big deal in the country. The government form by the President Rafael Correa and the vice-president Jorge Glas, has decided to invest in education and also in the research in new area to produce something profitable for the country. Also the people is changing the way they thing by the new educational system in which kids have to study about the philosophic history of Ecuador, and like the article “Teaching kids philosophy makes them smarter in math and English� I am agree in the idea of teaching the kids how to think in different ways, and trying to understand every point of view so they can understand the world (Bachillerato, 2014) (Anderson. J., 2016). The government has invested a lot in the superior education in which congregates all the future professionals that would run Ecuador. But this is not enough. There are still a lot of things to do. My solution for this problem would be to change the idea of religion, by separating the government and religion. Religion must not be something essential that we have to teach to our kids, it just has to be something secondary and optional. And I would do it by prohibiting religion in schools, even if it is a private school. Also I will delete the exoneration of religion to not pay taxes like everyone. Another thing I would change is the level of motivation kids to study what they want. I will do this by performing the idea of just be dedicated in what young people want. Giving them more options, investing in
public university, making test to every university and checking every university has the correct structure to be good. I will do a quality control. Is really important to understand what culture is in the setting of the internal development of all society of a country, like Ecuador. Also, we have to understand, that if we want to change de society and the basic ethical principles that Ecuador has established as good, we need to change first in side of us. Proposing to ourselves a main goal and fighting for it. If we change the education by the basis so in the top we will have the best.
References
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Anderson J. (2016). Teaching kids philosophy makes them smarter in math and English.
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Quartz.
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https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B5RLgvfNbX5RTlBTjA5Nz BTTTg -
Bachillerato General Unificado. (2014). In: Ministerio de Educaciรณn. Retrieved from:http://educacion.gob.ec/bachillerato-general-unificado
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Child Poverty and Access to Education: Adding Up the Hidden Costs on the U.S.-Hispanic Community. (2011). In: Colorlines. Retrieved from: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B5RLgvfNbX5RTlBTjA5Nz BTTTg
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Culture.
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“Fear No More the Heat O’ the Sun” Analysis and Interpretation Cynthia Arias, Isaac Bravo, Carlos Bustamante and Andrés Orozco Yachay Tech June 17th, 2016
“Fear No More the Heat O’ the Sun” Analysis and Interpretation Nobody knows what there is after death, and because of that, most of people feel awareness to think about death. William Shakespeare, a famous British playwright, poet and actor who lived in the XVI century, thought about death in a positive way (Bio, n.d.) One example of his way of thinking is the poem “Fear No More the Heat O’ the Sun” written in between 1608 and 1609. He wanted to share with people his positive feelings about death in order to show us that we should not fear to death because death is only a part of the normal life cycle. The poem “Fear No More the Heat O’ the Sun” written by William Shakespeare describes death as a natural event that we should not be afraid because death is the end of a long path where we are going to rest in peace without worrying for the bad things. Firstly, it is important to understand the Shakespeare’s message. The most important characteristic of Shakespeare’s poem is the use of multiple metaphors to make abstract the message that death is something natural. A metaphor is a figure of speech, which makes an implicit, implied or hidden comparison between two things that are unrelated, but share some common characteristics (Literary Devices, n.d.). Most of the metaphors used in the poem have the same meaning. They mean that people should not be afraid to die because death could be a new life. In addition, Shakespeare used several times the phrase “Fear no more” to show that we do not know how death is, but despite of this we should not have fear. In addition, his last poem’s stanza talks about ghosts, witchcraft and exorcism. People could associate these things with fear, so all of these words are metaphors to talk about bad moments, bad feelings or maybe bad people that
could disturb our peace or could cause us problems while we are alive. However, all of these will end at the moment of death, allowing people to rest in peace. Then, it is important to identify the characteristics like symmetry that make the poem beauty. Symmetry could make us to think that life and death is the same thing, so that we should not fear to death. Symmetry refers to something that has both sides that are exactly or very similar to each other. The poem has four stanzas, and each one has six lines. It is possible to appreciate symmetry between the first four lines and the last two lines. So, by using symmetry Shakespeare was trying to express that there is another life after death where we are going to rest of the things we used to care in the past life, such as the job or the money. According to David Anderson, senior editor of Religion News Service, it is very possible that Shakespeare was Catholic. Therefore, the Catholic religion, belonging to Christianity, has beliefs in life after death. So, if we based on religious beliefs of the author of the poem, we can to say that he wrote the poem “Fear No More the Heat O’ the Sun” thinking in a new life after death, and he used the symmetry as a mean to express his positive thoughts about death. Moreover, other characteristic that makes beauty the poem is rhyme Moreover, other characteristic that makes beauty the poem is rhyme. This poem is composed by four sextuples that have rhymes that give the poem a beautiful sound, making reference that death could a good thing. A sextuple is a six-line stanza of eightsyllable lines rhymed either ababcc or aabccd. In this poem, each stanza is rhymed according the ababcc scheme, which means that the first line verse rhymes with the third, the second line verse rhymes with the fourth and the two last line verses rhyme with each other. It kind of writing the stanzas makes the poem to have musicality. If we read or
declaim the poem, we can heard it nice and we can identify that the poem has rhythm, so it property could make us feel good. In this case, the rhythm helped the author express his ideas in a positive way, so we could catch the message about death in a positive way, too. Furthermore, the language of the poem is another important factor in the beauty of the poem. Furthermore, the language is other important aspect that makes the poem more beautiful, and helps to make people forget their fear to death. This poem is too deep and really confusing when we are trying to understand it at first time. It is because the poem was written according to the old English, which corresponds to the English that Shakespeare spoke in the middle age. Although it is a little bit difficult to understand, the poem’s language is accessible and becomes understandable after reading it many times, so we can understand the author’s message and maybe we can change our point of view. Also, we can appreciate how much beautiful could be the end of life, and we could forget our fear about death. In conclusion, William Shakespeare had positive thoughts about death, which is reflected in the poem “Fear No More the Heat O’ the Sun”. The most important characteristics found in the poem are metaphors, symmetry, rhymes, and language. Metaphors mean that death is a natural event that we should not fear, and symmetry symbolizes that death and life are the same thing. In addition, rhyme and language help to make the poem more beautiful and make people forget the fear they have about death. So, the poem “Fear No More the Heat O’ the Sun” written by Shakespeare refers to death as something natural that will happen sometime, and that we should not fear because when death comes we are going to rest in peace.
References Anderson, D. (2014). Was Shakespeare Catholic? Retrieved from: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2008/04/25/april-25-2008-wasshakespeare-catholic/5519/ Bio. (n.d.). William Shakespeare Biography. Retrieved from http://www.biography.com/people/william-shakespeare-9480323 Dictionary. (n.d). Symmetry. Retrieved from: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/symmetry Eberhart, L. (2014). Sextilla. Retrieved from: http://poetscollective.org/poetryforms/tag/ababcc/ Literary Devices. (n.d.). Metaphor. Retrieved from: http://literarydevices.net/metaphor/ Shakespeare, W. (1609). Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun. Retrieved from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/50428
Should censorships be practiced in schools? Isaac Bravo Salazar L6 – 003 June 30th, 2016
In these days, we all know how hard it’s to educated young people. It’s also important to understand that education is in some ways the bases of culture and society. So, by the correct “forming” of our children, we’ll create a better future for us. But of course, educating is not easy. One of the difficult points of education is the idea of limiting and blocking the access of certain information to kids, for a god reason. We can see this as a violation of the human rights, but is it really something bad? There are things that a child should not be able to know. And this is because, this kind of “things” are not for the educational development of the younger. But I really think that there are other important issues in this world that we should talk! As we know, we live in society and as a society we should all chose our ways. First of all, kids sometimes do not understand this world as adults do. We should know that the fact that a child is learning should be enough. We cannot introduce ideas into a kid that only knows a little portion of what is life. And even if we do, it maybe does not change anything. What kids do are just being kids. I do not really think this is a problem. Some things that parents should teach at home is that we can do and be what ever we want, but they also must teach where are the limits of what we do and who we are. Obstructing ideas to kids can change the world. There are things that a kid does not need to know. One idea that every single year since I was 13 is that “I must not do drugs or being involved with drugs”. This is a prohibition that schools around the world do everyday. This has created just two single situations: 1. We create scary and discriminatory ideas for kinds to think that any kind of drug is the worst thing in this world, being involve with it is just a step to “hell” or a step to devastation, and also that
we should refuse, discriminate, and eliminate everything involve with any kind of drug. 2. And we create a kind of interest for young people to use it. Because is forbidding is more interesting. So, we create higher expectation and we create more hopes for take drugs into kids. In general, even if we prohibit drugs there would be persons that want to take them. So, this is the same case with censorship, we can forbid everything we want, but it still will be there. I would say again that the idea of censorships is not relevant. And even if it’s relevant we have to let it happen or be. Every society has created values, and these values are like rules, I know that everybody should be able to pick what they want do or be in this world. But also there are things that people chose and are against society, like in schools, even if you can wear what you want, every child or younger has to be respectful. This is because respect is an important value in almost every society. You cannot go to class in pajama. We must obstruct these things. Every thing that goes against ethical values of a singular society should be blocked. I understand the important fact of human rights that talks about the free and accessible information for everyone, also the idea of being what I want… etc. Actually there are two things that the opposition could say: 1. Respect for the rights of children. 2. By limiting, we only would create more interest in kids for the things we have limited. (I’ve explained this in the paragraph before this). But, if kids use their rights of doing, bring, seeing, etc.… what they want, and is going against by the rules that society, family, education, etc.… has set, it has to be block. My parents limited me a lot of things, because as parents, they knew that there are
something that are not good for me. So, sometimes there is a limitation in society for do things. The first point is that censorship is not a big deal in this world. There are more important things to talk or debate about. And the second point is that even if is relevant it is necessary for society. Because censorship brings more values in society.
Should we be able to change life in the lab? Isaac Bravo Salazar Yachay Tech University July 07th, 2016
Should we be able to change life in the lab? “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.� –Albert Einstein. Today we can say that technology has made a big change in our lives. Of course it is useful for us in a lot of ways. For example, we can use technology to give us more comfortable ways to do things in our normal life. And all in all technology has made us better in a lot of ways, like giving more facilities to us as students to get better education. Also we have developed as a population and society, always by the development of more technology. But, there are a lot of big problems too, problems that we have created by using technology in wrong ways. We have created new dilemmas in our lives, in our society, by trying to find solutions for others problems. We have created new problems by using technology to fix another ones. One big example of this is the idea of genetic manipulation. The idea of genetic manipulation is kind of a new idea in this era, and is a method to manipulate the genome of an organism in order to create especifically traits (Genetic Manipulation: Definition, Pros & Cons, (n/d)). Sometimes when we think about genetic manipulation, immediately we can think about the idea of designing babies. We think about the possibility of using technology to change life even when this life in not born. We think about this because it can be helpful for us as a species to be better, but the option of design our baby is really good for us? Is this the best way of developing our world? Should we really be able to change life in the lab? We should not use technology to modify the genetic structure of human lives because the use of this technology is dangerous and will eventually deteriorate our humanity.
We can say that the main idea of gene transfer in humans or in any organism is the insertion of unrelated genetic information into the structure of the DNA that is inside the cell. This unrelated genetic information is in form of the DNA too, so the central DNA of any cell can read it and take in (Definition of Gen Transfer, 2012). There are different reasons to do gene transfer. Perhaps foremost among these reasons is the treatment of diseases using it to supply patients with therapeutic genes; this is possible by changing the damaged DNA with a new one. There are also different ways to transfer genes. Some of these methods involve the use of a vector such as a virus that has been specifically modified so it can take the gene along with it when it enters the cell and put this piece of the new DNA into the cell changing the spoilt one. This virus technique, which is still not yet available outside clinical trials, was originally envisaged as a treatment of monogenic disorders, but the majority of trials now involve the treatment of cancer, infectious diseases and vascular problems. Human gene transfer raises several important ethical issues that affects society, in particular the potential use of genetic therapies for genetic enhancement and the potential impact of germ line gene transfer on future generations. (Germ Line Gene Transfer, 2006). Also is really important to understand how much, we as a society are losing our capacity of humans. We are changing life by technology and we are doing this by modifying what we really are. The risk of being better is too high; we really need to pay so much to be “good�. We should think about it. The scientific term "designer baby" means or makes refer to a baby whose genetic structure has been artificially selected by genetic manipulation or genetic engineering combined with in vitro fertilization to ensure the presence or absence of
particular genes or characteristics (Designer Babies, 2015). In simpler terms, we can use biotechnology to choose what “type” of baby we specifically want. It really sounds dehumanizing, but now in these days we are able to do it. We can choose characteristics such the gender, the appearance like the color of the eyes, the heir… and even fix genes for prevention of diseases. The ultimate goal of gene editing technologies that we already have developed is the capacity to make precise and controlled modifications to specific areas of the genetic code of a baby, so the result is the perfect kid we want. Gene editing in babies can unlock the access to a set of novel ways to fight diseases, which has been unreachable, We can fight diseases like the syndrome of Dawn. Around 7.9 million children each year are born with a serious birth defect that has a significant genetic contribution (The Case for Genetically Engineered Babies, 2015). Now with the power of engineering and the advance of technology we can fight all this problems, even before the kid is born. In a kind of way this idea brings safety to us. There are two options of changing the genome on a baby. The genetic manipulation can be use on somatic cells or on germ cells. In somatic gene manipulation the recipient's genome is changed, but the change does not affect the next generation, it means that the genetic offspring of this recipient is not going to be alter. In germ line gene manipulation the parent’s sperm cells are changed with the point of passing on the change to the next generations. This kind of manipulation is totally opposite with the somatic cell manipulation (Germ Line Gene Transfer, 2006). However, both kinds of genetic manipulation in babies have significant risks. Being specific, in cases in which the gene has failed to be introduced or a kind of mistake has occurred in the insertion of the new gene, the problems resulting from errors like
those can be really severe, even lethal. In moments this errors cannot really make worse the child than what it is already, but those with partial or multiple copies of a gene could be in significantly worse condition. Sometimes, this kind of worse effects might not be evident until the child has born or growth. Also, the worst part is that this specific kind of errors could be passed on to future offspring. For these reasons, and knowing the limits of current technology, the germ cell manipulation has been considered ethically wrong or inadmissible (Germ Line Gene Transfer, 2006). There are also many fears and ethical issues with the idea of designing babies. We as humans should think and be shudder at the idea of picking and choosing genes to give the characteristics we want to our kids, as if we are just choosing the “ideal” accessories. And we have good reasons to be concerned about this prospect. A full access to gene editing technologies making the perfect kid could damage the gene pool. By using the “ideal” characteristics can create an only class of genes. In addition, parental control of the gene pool could reduce valuable forms of diversity, if every parent picks the same immunity genes for their children, it may make them collectively. We can think about designing babies as the answer to lot problems, it can help for a better develop of babies that will become the future population. There are also a lot of worries about developing new technics of gene manipulation it can bring new problems in others topics, like the concept of “cloning”. Creating organism by the genome of another organism. Just thinking about that we are not changing life, we are “creating” life with technology. It also brings a couple of problems with the ethical concepts of a good society. As a conclusion I can answer the principal question saying that is easy for us to use technology to make life better and confortable in different ways, but in my opinion
we can use technology to make things right, to make ourselves better and to try to fix diseases, which can be helpful and also really good for the development of the population on the world. But, there are things that we cannot change and we should not change, like the conception of life, because we just want it. Sometimes when we do these things we create even worst problems. It is a high risk for us; sometimes we need to understand that we just have to let life be. We need a better way of using technology in those wrong cases. We need to judge what is good and what is wrong for society and create a better understanding of the problems for a better solve.
References Definitwion of Gene Transfer. (2012). In: MedicineNet.com.
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cons.html The Case for Genetically Engineered Babies. (2015). In: theguardian. Retrieved from:
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babies-shouldnt-distract-us-from-the-goal-of-healthy-babies