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According to "Cecil Rhodes row: Oxford protesters march against statue" (2016), Oxford University has responded to protests by the group Rhodes Must Fall by inviting them to participate in further discussion to resolve conflict over a statue to Cecil Rhodes, a famous alumni of Oxford's Oriel College in whose name the Rhodes Scholarship has enabled thousands of people from overseas to study at Oxford University since his death in 1902. The group want the statue removed from the college because they argue that it represents the colonialism and white supremacy ideas of Rhodes.
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My response
I would not normally blog a news article more than a few weeks old, but this one fits so well with the ideas in our first reading, "National Hero" on page 79 of Skillful Reading & Writing 2, that I decided to make an exception. For the previous century, Rhodes had been seen as a hero who was a successful businessman and then philanthropist, but in the modern awareness of racism and similar prejudices, his fame has been subject to criticism, with many now emphasizing that he was not so wonderful as the original story says.
Although I can understand the protesters who want the monument to the benefactor removed from public view, I also think this is a mistake. A better solution, the one that Oxford seems to favour, seems to me to leave the statue in place, but to add a note that although he was remarkable in many ways, his wealth and power were gained by acting on the prejudices that were socially accepted in his time. Rhodes was morally flawed, and we should recognise this truth about him, but I also think that he was a product of his culture, which was not as developed morally as we are today. Just as we make progress in science and technology, with old ideas that were once accepted as facts, for example that the Earth is the centre of the universe around which the sun and everything else revolve, being proved to be false; that is, these universally believed ideas were never facts at all but false opinions, so too do we make moral progress: in the 21st century, we should be able to do better than our ancestors and their traditions. And the way our understanding of what is fact and what is opinion also fits very well with the ideas that Rogers and Wilkin ask us to think about in the Global Reading exercise on page 78.
Adding the negative details to the story so that it more accurately reflects the reality is a better response than trying to erase history, which the protesters insist is not their goal. This is normal: it was, for example, only long after his death that the ugly details about great English monarchs like King Henry VIII and his amazing daughter the great Queen Elizabeth the First could also be spoken openly as they should be.
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| Rhodes was a student at Oxford and a member of Oriel College in the 1870s |
Adding the negative details to the story so that it more accurately reflects the reality is a better response than trying to erase history, which the protesters insist is not their goal. This is normal: it was, for example, only long after his death that the ugly details about great English monarchs like King Henry VIII and his amazing daughter the great Queen Elizabeth the First could also be spoken openly as they should be.
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My question
Do you think that we are morally more developed than our ancestors?
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Reference
- Cecil Rhodes row: Oxford protesters march against statue. (2016, March 9). Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-35766608
One of the homework assignments for the coming week will be for you to write your own blog post similar to this one responding to a recent (not two years old) article in the news. This is my first example for you to read and think about. Skillful has some useful notes on summarizing on pages 63 and 66. Don't worry: you will get to practice over the coming weeks.
ReplyDeleteOne of the strict rules for these blog posts responding to a news story is that your summary, the "What I read" section, must be less than 131 words: maximum is 130 words. My summary here is a safe 93 words, well within the 130 word limit.
The second section, "My response," should be much longer, at least a couple of paragraphs. Unlike the summary, which is academic writing, your response to what you read and summarized for us should be in a formal style appropriate to an academic context, but is not academic writing: it's OK to go off topic, and you might use language appropriate to a discussion that is not normal in academic work. For example, I've used the phrase I ... think a couple of times, which is not normally used in an academic essay.
The third section, "My question," is for you to write one question to give your readers, your classmates and me, something to respond to, although we might also choose to respond to something else in your post that interests us.
Finally, because the summary must cite the source we are summarizing, we must also write a "Reference" section to give readers the full reference citation for the source in case they would like to check it themselves.
A good indicator that I think is appropriate for measuring moral development of mankind is the law because it can show what we think is right or wrong during that time.
ReplyDeleteIn the past, there were many laws that didn’t respect human right and also treated some group of citizen as objects. For example, it was legal in many countries to have slaves in which the owner could do whatever they want to their slaves. They could punish, rape, torture, sell, buy or even kill their slaves. The owners didn’t even think that those slaves were human beings.
On the other hand, most modern laws are created with respect to human dignity having idea of human beings are all equal in mind. No matter who you are, we will treat everyone equally and respectfully. To see how serious we concern about this issue, if you are going to do an experiment that involves human as experimental subject, in your research proposal you have to convince the ethic committee that there is no issue about violating human rights. You can’t use reason like it will bring a greater good but we need some sacrifices. It is totally unacceptable these days.
In conclusion, I think we have made a great achievement in terms of morality. We respect others rights as well as our own rights.