Resistance by Paper Clip

                I recently watched a documentary called Paper Clips which follows the project of Whitwell Middle School in Tennessee as they attempt to understand what the number ‘six million’ looked like as they studied the Holocaust during World War II.  So they began collecting paper clips as a way to get a better understanding for the number.  The students of Whitwell Middle School used the paper clip as their symbol to collect due to its already symbolic nature.  It was created during World War II by a Norwegian by the name of Johan Vaaler.  It was created as a sign of unity, and was used as a form of silent resistance against the Nazi regime that had begun occupation of Norway.  Since publicly speaking out against the occupational government was illegal, this was a safer way to express the citizens’ discontent.

The project started off slow, but with the help of a pair of news reporters by the names of Peter and Dagmar Schroeder who wrote several articles and even an entire book on the middle school project.  The book was entitled Das Büroklammer-Projekt (The Paper Clip Project), and helped to spread the news of the project to other countries such as Germany.  In addition to the website that the students created, a Washington Post article written by Dita Smith helped to bring the news of what middle school students were doing to combat the hatred and intolerance that had built up since the Holocaust.

                Due to the spread of the project, paper clips began flowing in from all over the world to help the Whitwell Middle School classes reach their goal of six million.  Instead of reaching their six million goal, paper clips continued flowing into the school until the total reached upwards of twenty four million paper clips.  After contributions from a school in Germany which filled a suitcase with paper clips with notes attached to them which apologized to Anne Frank, the students began working on a memorial to commit to the people who were killed during the Holocaust.

                The memorial consisted of an actual German railcar that was used to transport the souls to the concentration camps where they would be either worked to death, die of malnutrition, or gassed by the Nazis.  The two German reporters (Peter and Dagmar Schroeder) personally searched for this car and transported it to the school.  By this time, the students’ collection had totaled out at over 24 million paper clips.

                When the project was finished, and the memorial built, the railcar contained eleven million paper clips, six million which symbolized the Jews who were murdered and five million more clips to symbolize the Gypsies, Catholics, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and others that were murdered along with them.  The centerpiece of the memorial was the suitcase, opened and sitting on a pile of paper clips.  The memorial was set up by the students and volunteers from around the town, and a path was set up to lead to the railcar.  Eighteen butterflies were embedded in the cement path to symbolize a poem that was written by a child in the concentration camps called “I Never Saw Another Butterfly”.  Eighteen means ‘life’ in Gematria, further pushing the memorial’s significance in the fight against hatred and intolerance, telling those who died that they were not forgotten and never will be.

Catalyst for Cheating

                In the modern academic culture, the letter grade that you receive at the end of your class sessions is the most important part of schooling.  This grade has become more important than learning the material which is the point of schooling in the first place.  Modern culture has reduced the value of the material in the pursuit of measuring the knowledge (whether it’s studied to be retained or simply dedicated to short term memory via ‘cramming’).  In addition, there is also the matter of grade inflation.  In the past, the standard “A, B, C, D, F” grading scale was closer to its true purpose: to measure the knowledge of the test takers.  An “A” represented truly exceptional work, a “C” would show an average level of achievement, and an “F” would be given to those who didn’t do the work or whose work was below the standards required to pass.  The “B” grade and the “D” grade would act as ‘between’ grades for students whose work didn’t quite deserve an “A” but was better than “C” work (same thing for the “D” grade between “C” and “F”).

                 In modern academics however, a higher level of achievement is expected of students than what was expected in the past.  “B” became the norm and “C” said that the student was passing, but with minimal effort.  “D”s and “F”s dropped down into the ‘unacceptable’ ranges (the students receiving them often being viewed as lazy, bad students).  The “A” grade remained much the same, if a bit less respectable and glamorous than it used to be.  For honors students such as me, it’s expected that we do well, study hard, and learn the material.

                Due to these pressures, cheating has become more prevalent than in past years.  The same students who were getting “B”s and “C”s in past years and still being held in good favor are now being expected to get better grades, grades that they aren’t capable of getting.  So in order to retain that sense of favor, they turn to other means of achievement.  Common methods of cheating include passing notes, peeking off of another student’s paper, or even bringing in and using class notes on tests.  The latter has gotten pretty inventive over the years, ranging from storing notes on papers lodged inside a mechanical pencil to spending hours (which could be used to actually study and learn the material) typing notes into calculators with alphanumeric memory.  This type of cheating is most prevalent in the quantitative aspects of learning in subjects such as the sciences, mathematics, and engineering.

                Another method of cheating is focused in writing, known as plagiarism.  Plagiarism is defined (by www.dictionary.com) to be “the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work, as by not crediting the author.”  This method of cheating is extremely easy to do, but not to get away with.  Some of it may not even be intentional.  In my case, though I do not plagiarize, I type my ideas and put them into a coherent form before I go to look for sources and citations.  This helps to prevent any idea transfer without crediting the original author.

                Grading is one of the many pressures that lead to such cheating.  Not only does grade inflation have an influence, but so does peer pressure (for cheating has become so prevalent that it could be described as a social norm), and family pressures (to succeed, to gain financial support, the need for an offspring to gather the approval of its parent, etc.).  Thanks to these, cheating has run rampant through the modern academic culture.  We need to stop it, but that but can we?  Is it possible for everyone to stop cheating even with these pressures wearing us down?

The Force that Connects the World

                The Internet is a very useful resource, no matter how risky it is to use.  You can get information on almost any topic, from the philosophy on life after death to what qualifies “Jediism” as a religion [or not].  The Internet is also home to games, video hosting services [such as Youtube, Dailymotion, Pandora, etc.], and forums [which ANYBODY can create].  It also serves as a useful teaching tool, providing access to notes and journals from any number of projects that have been done in the past or to give students a place to share their thoughts and expand their minds [such as in my blog].  And then there are people who use this resource for….less than appropriate activities such as pirating [of software and data, commonly songs and movies], slander and libel, and other such things.  Despite this, the Internet remains a useful tool to share information and data.  Of course, this freedom of information comes at a cost: security and privacy.

                The Internet was originally created as a sort of file share system between computers at long distances so that researchers could exchange information without transporting their boxes upon boxes of notes and experimental data.  In the 1950s, the Internet was developed to allow this exchange to take place, connecting various servers together to allow people to access other peoples’ research.  Since then, the Internet has evolved from being used exclusively by scientists and researchers to being used commercially by the general population.  Now anyone with a hookup can access information on ANY topic [using things such as Wikipedia, databases, or just random websites], play ‘flash games’ or watch videos for entertainment, or conduct business.

                This kind of information sharing device allows people such as me to ‘blog’ [“a frequently updated personal journal chronicling links at a Web site, intended for public viewing”à As defined by Bing] and post our very biased opinions on our chosen topics or allow businesses to be run from a distance.  This blog was created to fulfill a requirement in a class I’m taking in college, as I’ve stated before.  This example shows that the Internet can be a very powerful teaching tool, in this case more of an independent study to improve my writing style and give me practice developing my ideas and putting them into text.  It’s harder than I thought it would be, which once again proves its effectiveness as a teaching tool.

                As I mentioned before, this freedom comes at the price of privacy and security of information.  When a user accesses the Internet through a portal such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, or Internet Explorer, that portal tracks all movements that the user makes.  Whether or not you adjust your privacy settings to your liking or you delete your browsing history, a copy of the information is retained by the provider.  Of course this information is normally secure, but courts can order the disclosure of this information for use in a court case.

                But a way to counter this is the use of anonymity.  Keep your personal information secret in non-business interactions and never use your real name in such places as chat rooms or online forums where rather undesirable people can gain access.  Such crimes as identity theft ensues from such interactions.