Laura Zoccarato

Giovanna Foschini

 

Hello all, here I will post what we do in class on Mondays and, therefore, what you will be expected to do online by Monday evening.

Monday, 17 March   Discuss questionnaire answers to "politics" and "a good citizen is someone".   Discuss what you know about terrorism in Italy and the ‘anni di piombo’. In Dickinson they are currently studying: "movimento degli  studenti" in 1968 and going through the political turmoil of the 70s." and will watch the film "Buongiorno, notte." Do you know anything about it?   Brainstorm some questions about terrorism and politics in the States that you can ask your peers during Skype next week. Post your questions on the wiki homepage.   Monday, 31 March   Sorry guys, I got here late this time (too much to do with exams at Engineering!). Yesterday in class we compared the two Italian videos on the blog with the Obama Girl videos on YouTube. You could discuss them here on the wiki. I asked students to identify: - who is the target group of the videos? - what message are they trying to send? - what cultural symbols are used? - cultural references? Compare the three, come up with some conclusions and post your conclusions on the blog as a group. Read what your peers have written before you make a post so that you don't repeat what they've written.   Students were also supposed to write questions about contemporary politics to use for the skype exchanges. You can use a page your peers are developing (Elections08) for some information if you want.   Sarah

 

Politics

In a period in which both the US and Italy are living in a very hard time and are waiting for elections, the words that come to the minds of young Americans and Italians are above all corruption, stupid, ingiustizia, corruzione even evil…that is very depressing, but obvious! Not a single positive word!

America

America is such a big country and there are so many words we can associate with it…but the first words that came to our minds were dedicated to its “greatness” (in terms of size) and power, but also to big multinational companies such as McDonalds or Starbucks and politicians. Only the Italian students -a couple of them- used the word film as we often associate America with Hollywood and its movies.

Italian lifestyle

The words that appear the most in the description of Italian lifestyle are relaxed –above all from the American side-, famiglia, and words which are related with good food!!I would imagine that, but I wouldn’t use the word relaxed..maybe life is less frenetic here…but nowadays it’s definitely not relaxed.

 

 

 

I liked the expression “A good job entails gratification- you lose yourself in your work and work for the common good”, I really think that it would be great to have that kind of job and live on it!

Another sentence I liked is about teachers: “A good teacher pushes and motivates her students to the limits they otherwise would not reach on their own”. I think this should be the aim of every teacher.

 

Valentina

 

 

 

SENTENCE COMPLETION

 

 

 

Since I hope to become both a parent and a teacher, among the sentences we had to complete I chose those regarding the characteristics a good parent and a good teacher should have. From the analysis I made there are not so many differences between the opinions of the American students and the Italian ones: we all agreed that they have something in common. Their role is important for our education because both a teacher and a parent have to motivate their children or students to do their best; they have to teach how to handle life problems, how to respect other people… A constructive communication must be their main tool to create good relationships.

 

Obviously a parent should love his children unconditionally while a teacher could have preferences and support only some students. This is the bad aspect of schools and the reason why many of us wrote that a good education should be ‘meritocratica’.

 

 

 

WORD ASSOCIATIONS

 

 

 

Politics, freedom and immigrants are the words I chose from the list of word associations: they all are very important to me and I was really curious to know if Italian and American students have the same attitude towards these topics that are so important in our contemporary society.

 

 

 

As regards politics most of the words used have negative connotation such as ‘corrupt’, ‘complicated’, ‘stupid’, ‘false’… this shows the common feelings of mistrust among young people for the government and the politicians. 

 

 

 

Freedom is linked with positive words. It’s something difficult to gain but it’s ‘essential’ and ‘a right’ for almost everybody. It’s interesting to point out that most American students wrote ‘America’ probably because they feel that this word is connected with democracy and politics of their country… They strongly feel to be part of their nation. Italian students wrote words with a more general meaning and only one of us wrote ‘Statua’ (probably thinking of the Statue of Liberty). The word that appears only once in the Americans’ answers is ‘eagle’.

 

 

 

As far as the word immigrants is concerned I noticed that American and Italian students have different ways to consider immigration. We (Italians) wrote many negative words like ‘povertà’, ‘diffidenza’, ‘discriminazione’, ‘spacciatori’. I expected many of us would write the word ‘criminals’ while it appears only once… and that’s good, I mean, everyday newspapers talk about immigrants committing crimes and it’s so easy to be influenced and stereotype!

 

Also some American students wrote about ‘discrimination’ and ‘poverty’ but they also used many positive words such as ‘change’, ‘equality’, ‘important’, ‘let’em be’, ‘desire for better life’.

 

Laura

 

Freedom

 

The word that appear most often in the American students' answers is America. I think this is due to the fact that they strongly feel to be part of this nation and they consider it the pillar of civil and human rights in the world. Italian students wrote essenziale and diritto several times to point out that freedom is one of the most important thing in people's life. The word eagle appears only once and I think it refers to the symbol of United States. Only one of us wrote statua, probably referring to the Statue of Liberty which is not mentioned in the Americans' answers. Most of the words have a positive meaning and stress the importance of achieving the right to be free.

 

 

Politics

 

I chose this word because many answers seem to be more or less the same on both sides. The most frequent word is corrupt and corruzione, which means that both Americans and Italians are not happy with the present situation. Most of the words have a negative connotation and the positive ones appear only once, like democracy for example. As Elisa pointed out, this means that we are all sick and tired of this situation and that there is very little hope for the future.

 

 

Italy

 

I chose this word because I was curious to see what young American people think of our country and I noticed that there are both positive and negative comments. The words that appear more often are beautiful, arte and casa(the last one obviously written by Italian students). I was surprised by the fact that the word mafia appear only once on both sides. Maybe because we got used to it as part of our country and maybe because Americans wanted to be polite in their answers, I don't know. Perhaps it is not the first thing that come to their mind when they think about Italy and that's a good thing. One of them wrote the word dirty, maybe referring to the problem of garbage in Naples. Fortunately, no one else wrote it.

 

People from the south...

 

I noticed that most of the words here have a positive meaning, above all on the Italian side and I didn't expect it. We wrote aperta, ospitale, solare and only few negative sentences like poco incline al lavoro, vive sulle spalle della gente del nord. Americans wrote that southern people are more relaxed and nice but they also feel this judgement to be a little stereotyped. They also wrote southern gentleman and ladies raised on good manners, which made me think of the movie "Gone with the wind". The word confederates caught my attention, so I checked it in the dictionary and I found "supporter of the Confederate States of America" which existed from 1861 to 1865. I don't know if this answer was given in a positive or negative way, maybe this could be something to ask Chiara on Monday.

 

A good neighbour is someone who...

 

I chose this group of sentences because there were two identical answers from both Americans and Italians that made me smile: someone who lend you some sugar when you've run out. Apart from this, there seems to be a more friendly relationship between American neighbours. I think that this depends a lot on where someone lives and on how the neighbourhood is structured. However, most of the answers point out that it is important to be polite and kind and give help if requested. Another interesting answer is compra i dolci per me; I've seen in many American movies that when someone moves into a new house there is always a neighbour that brings a pie or something to the newcomer. I think this is a cultural habit but I don't think it is a general rule in all American countries. This could be another thing to ask Chiara.  

 

-Giovanna Foschini-

 

 

 

Discussions on politics and the sentence “A good citizen is someone…”

 

 

 

As we have already pointed out politics is described only with negative words.

 

Politics is a very important and useful aspect of a country because the life, the society, the economics and obviously our future depend on it. It should be based on fundamental principles such as democracy, freedom, equality and justice while everything we see nowadays is dishonesty, discrimination, injustice, mafia and politicians that care only about their power and money. As we have noticed, both Italian and American students share the same opinion and the word that appears the most is corruption.

 

 

 

Discussing the sentence “A good citizen is someone…” we found out interesting observations such as the fact that a good citizen should take care of the environment, respect its co-citizens and obey the laws of a country. This last point was the most common but we think it is not enough. A good citizen should also participate actively to the life of its community, contributing to the improvement of everyday society and standing up for his or her beliefs.

 

 

 

 

Terrorism in Italy during the so called “Anni di Piombo”

 

 

 

Unfortunately the word terrorism has become widely used in modern times and no generation can escape the consequences of it. A bomb in the train station of Bologna in 1980, the murder of the anti-mafia magistrates Falcone and Borsellino in 1992, the attack of the Twin Towers in 2001 and so on…these are only few examples that show how terrorism is always a current subject and can act in different ways.

 

Italy was renowned for political terrorism during the 70s and 80s, this period started in December 1969 when a bomb exploded in Piazza Fontana in Milan and killed many people. In those years Italian citizens were not satisfied with the political situation and the most extreme part of the population took part in acts of violence and terrorism in order to subvert the government, kidnapping important people and killing them as happened to Aldo Moro (as you can see in the film “Buongiorno, notte”). As always the problem of terrorist attacks is that they involve innocent people and that’s why governments should firmly fight against it.

 

Valentina, Laura, Giovanna.

 

 

Discussion about the videos

 

 

Hello guys!!

 

We’ve just watched the videos and we can’t stop laughing!!

 

They are rather ridiculous, above all the Italian ones (“Meno male che Silvio c’è” and “I’m PD”)…it’s the first time, as far as we know, that Italian politicians use the web as a means of propaganda and it sounds very strange. However we think that it is an effective way to promote their parties both because the web is known and used by everyone and because music and songs can be easily kept in one’s mind…Hasn’t it happened to you to sing the silly refrains?!?!

 

This is why we all agree that the target group of the videos is mainly represented by young people, actually if you pay attention to the videos you’ll realize that they are the “main characters”.

 

The two videos, though they correspond to two opposite political ideas, are very similar: the words used are almost the same (dream, future, believe…), the scenes show typical aspects of everyday life and those who sing are ordinary people such as workers, students, families, teachers, businessmen. In this way each party wants to express simple values and give the idea that they are close to everyone with the same problems and the same needs. This is what made us laugh…there is a big difference between their words and real facts. Moreover, Italian people are hopeless and tired of hearing the same promises over and over again…this is why we can’t trust them anymore!

 

As far as the Obama Girl video is concerned we think that this kind of propaganda is mainly based on the sexual image of the singer, she obviously wants to attract voters’ attention on herself and as a result on Obama (“If you like me, vote for Obama!!”).

 

The main difference between the 3 videos is that the Italian ones, through the representation of a big variety of people like you, aim at making you part of that happy family while the American girl expresses only her own point of view.

 

In any case we don’t like them and we feel disappointed by politicians in general.

 

Valentina and Laura

 

 

I completely agree with Laura and Valentina.