Philosophical versus Rhetorical Approaches to Education Essay

Philosophical versus Rhetorical Approaches to Education - Essay Example Surely, polished speaking at the expense of truth is not the way to go, but unfortunately we live in a society were people are judged based on how they speak as well as how they act and what they truly believe. Therefore, the ability to speak well and influence people is important in a liberal arts education. In addition, being a truth seeker is just as important if not more important in the liberal arts. This is why a combination of the two is necessary. Isocrates school of thought is much more practical when compared to Plato’s school of thought. However, both of them deal with higher education and are not in complete conflict with each other. Although there is a continual debate in liberal arts between Isocrates’ rhetorical tradition and Plato’s philosophical tradition, certain experts would argue that the debate is necessary and adds to the culture of higher education. The debate does have wider implications. Currently, it can be observed that many people do not trust their government officials because they feel they are purely rhetoricians and hardly ever speak the truth. This is something that Plato warns us about and it is why he believed that those who are in positions of power should be focused on seeking and professing the truth and not just speaking cleverly to gain power and money.

Engineering Products Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Engineering Products - Case Study Example The largest of the three business areas is automotive components, employing 60% of the group's workforce. The division is a first-tier supplier, dealing with several of the multinational final producers of cars, and is less concentrated in the UK than the company as a whole; Table 11.2 shows that only a small proportion of the division's sales are made in Britain, while an even smaller proportion of the workforce is employed there. Continental Europe is the base for a much larger proportions of sales and employment, with most of this being in Germany, France and Spain. The case study concentrates on this division of the multinational. In recent years the pressure from the automotive division's customers has become a central force in shaping how it manages its international operations in general and its international workforce in particular. The customers themselves have sought to standardise their methods of production and working practices through a process of sharing 'best practice' across sites. This has meant that, while the cars sold vary in minor respects between countries, they are produced in increasingly similar ways. One consequence has been that the components they purchase need to be of exactly the same specification in different countries. Since many of the first-tier suppliers in the motor industry are themselves multinational and in many cases supply the same companies in different countries, the effect has been to persuade the components manufacturers to standardise their own operations internationally. The Standardisation of Production across Borders The impetus for international integration in Engineering Products, therefore, came from the demands of its customers. Management at the HQ of the division have been faced with the task of integrating what had previously been disparate plants, serving customers in their own country and operating in a largely decentralised way. A key part of forging greater integration was to create management structures at the international level in order to bring together managers from different parts of the group, facilitating the exchange of information between them. In Engineering Products there are several such structures which serve this function. The division operates 'manufacturing councils' which periodically bring together senior manufacturing directors from the plants to examine the processes which are adopted in each of the plants. A different structure fulfilling a similar function is the 'International College of Engineering', located in Germany, at which engineers develop and learn about new manufacturing methods. A further way in which the HQ has sought to drive integration at the international level is through the creation of an international cadre of managers who are expected to spend time on assignments in countries other than their own. One element of this has been the creation of internal consultants; these are managers who have been responsible for pioneering a new practice and who are subsequently given

Artificial Reproduction in Humans Research Paper

Artificial Reproduction in Humans - Research Paper Example In IVF or in-vitro fertilization, where the egg is fertilized by sperm cells outside the womb in a glass container, is a major process that is undertaken when all other methods of artificial reproduction have failed. AI or artificial insemination is the process where the sperm cells from the husband or an anonymous donor are placed within the uterus of the female recipient, by using methods other than sexual intercourse, for the purpose of impregnating her. Embryo transplantation is the process where one or more eggs that have been fertilized under in-vitro conditions, is placed within the uterus of a recipient female that carries the embryo to its full term. Thus all the three processes aim to procreate for childless couples and also for gay partners, that is, for all those who fail to have children normally or cannot adopt, due to certain reasons. However, as in all latest techno-medical innovations, here also, there are certain ethical considerations to be made. The concept of hav ing ‘designer babies,’ and opting for embryo sex selection, have all been made possible with advances in the assisted reproductive technology, and these are the very ideas that have come under controversy in the recent times. Religious morals and certain medical ethics have placed these processes under considerable scrutiny, with a debate going on as to whether having children by artificial means is indeed morally or ethically correct. It will also consider the various ethical and religious sentiments that speak against the procedures, and also scrutinize the various medical benefits of these techniques. This article has taken up a topic that is very interesting, yet extremely controversial too.

European Monetary Union without a Banking or Fiscal Union cannot Essay

European Monetary Union without a Banking or Fiscal Union cannot succeed. Please critically evaluate this statement with s - Essay Example Before going into detail as to why and how fiscal and banking union can facilitate success of monetary union, it will be prudent to delve deeper into the aspects that are responsible in creating a state of financial instability in the European Union. It is worth noting that unlike the United States, fiscal measures are not exercised by the EMU and that is where the major crux of the issue lies. Genesis of Crisis EU witnessed a sovereign debt crisis and an unprecedented banking crisis in the recent years. It is important to note that both did not surface in isolation but they were interrelated. Sovereign debt crisis had its genesis in poor fiscal management over several years violating Maastricht Treaty. A fairly large number of Spanish banks are afflicted with their own sovereign debt and because of that have lost their substantial Tier I capital. Thus, banking crisis has its roots, albeit in an indirect way, to the fiscal mismanagement. It is also true that the US subprime crisis di d contribute to the woes of the European banks. When seen in terms of the fiscal mismanagement, the genesis of debt crisis is old. ... The irony was that much of the borrowing was not revealed because each successive government had to meet the euro norm that restricted borrowing at 3% of GDP. Everything was fine until global financial crisis surfaced in 2008 that exposed many EU countries for their imprudent fiscal policies. Debt levels went so high that it was impossible for the country to repay them. While providing the rescue package, the European Union attached several conditions that further compounded Greece's woes. In May, 2010, Greece was provided with funds of 110bn Euros so that government could pay its creditors. It was soon realized that given funds were not enough and another tranche of 130bn euro was planned. Maastricht Treaty among the member states specifies that total debt should not exceed 60 percent of GDP. Even this norm was flaunted by the member countries considerably. For example, in 2000, Greece had total debt of 103.4% as a proportion of GDP that rose to 145% and 165% in 2010 and 2011 respec tively. Italy too had the total debt-GDP ratio of 108% in 2000 that rose to 120% in 2011 (BBC News, 2012). Fiscal Discipline – A Necessity In the above perspective, it is quite obvious that monetary union cannot achieve desired results in the euro zone area as far as the financial stability is concerned. A fiscal discipline is extremely necessary; however, monetary union has no control on fiscal imbalances created by the member states. Cottarelli (2012) from the IMF argues that in view of the current situation and to bring the EU out of crisis, a Fiscal Union is an absolute necessity built on the following criteria. 1. The Fiscal Union can enforce stronger constraints on state deficits and debt creation that will help

Realist and Feminist Structures in Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Essay

Realist and Feminist Structures in Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and Kate Chopin's The Storm - Essay Example Another similarity is the use of naturalist devices to construct both stories. Each story depicts the life of a single female protagonist who is mired in realistic situations that the reader can easily relate to. In addition to these similarities, both stories carry overriding feminist ideas and critique which essentially form the bulwark of both stories. This paper will compare and contrast both stories based on these structural, thematic and literary devices. The development of climax in both stories is gradual, uses symbols and both stories tend to end as soon as the climax is achieved. Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper depicts the protagonist as going mad over time as her husband John locks her up in her room. The author has chosen the yellow wallpaper as a symbol to reflect changing attitudes and mental state on the part of the protagonist. The yellow color itself is something that the protagonist tends to loathe from the first time she looks at it. As the story proceeds to i ts climax, the yellow wallpaper tends to indicate and enhance the climax. According to Gilman (Carnley 23): â€Å"It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw—not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper—the smell!† Again towards the end of the story (Carnley 26): â€Å"For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.† At the climax, the protagonist goes mad thinking that she just managed to extricate herself from the yellow wallpaper which signals and symbolizes the climax. The story ends immediately afterwards as the protagonist’s husband John enters the room and faints while the protagonist continues her mad movements across the room. This is comparable to Chopin’s The Storm where the author has used the storm as a symbol while she moves slowly towards the climax. The behavior of Calixta and Alcee tends to change as the storm develops gradually. At the start of the story, the author states (Gale 81): â€Å"She stood there with Bobinot's coat in her hands, and the big rain drops began to fall.† However, as the story is about to end the author expresses the character of the storm as (Gale 82): â€Å"The growl of the thunder was distant and passing away.† This indicates that the gentle rain at the start of the story developed into a large storm with thunder and lightning that subsided as the protagonists were done with their adulterous affair. What is noticeable is that the story’s climax is symbolized by a storm and that the story tends to end as soon as the climax is achieved. The end is again abrupt much similar to Galmin’s The Yellow Wallpaper. In addition to this similarity, both stories employ naturalist devices in order to develop the story. The characters and the imagery provided by either author are realist and the reader c an relate these characters and scenarios to common life with ease. The protagonist in Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is a common housewife while her husband is a physician and predictably they have a middle class background. The protagonist’s thoughts and emotions expressed in the story signify that she is an ordinary person like anyone else. The fastidious nature of the protagonist’s husband is also attributable to the trends of the time. In the late nineteenth century physicians were still discovering new methods of treatment and took their time to differentiate right treatment from wrong. The

Outlining research area that would like to pursue for my doctoral Proposal

Outlining area that would like to pursue for my doctoral dissertation - Research Proposal Example An example of a leader who has demonstrated servant leadership is Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who is the current President of the Unites Arab Emirates. Using Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, this research study proposes to investigate how servant leadership that has been demonstrated by him has contributed to the peaceful political environment in the country, which is contrary to other Islamic states such as Syria, Yemen, and Egypt that have continued to witness political arrest over the past few years (Beaumont, 47-49). Secondly, the research study proposes to establish how the President’s servant leadership has created a condusive environment for economic progress that UAE has recorded over the past years. The research will employ an investigative approach, which will apply the use of secondary and primary research methods. Under primary research methods, the researcher will randomly select participants from the UAE in order to get their view on the effect of servant leadership in creating a peaceful political environment and condusive environment for economic progress. This research study will be based on the concept of total quality management but it will take a detour from the common studies that have been undertaken in regards to this concept, which have largely been centered on management issues. Moreover, studies conducted by Creech stated that total quality management (TQM) at creating excellence and due to this fact (8); it focuses on promoting the right attitudes within organisations and even implementing control measures in order to avoid costly mistakes (Evans and Lindsey, 45-48). The detour will lead to a research study that seeks to investigate the impact of TQM on the level of productivity amongst the employees. Productivity in this context will refer to the performance measure of both employee effectiveness and

To what extent was John Maynard Keynes' principal contribution to Essay

To what extent was John Maynard Keynes' principal contribution to political economy a re-conceptualisation of optimal relation - Essay Example This is often the case between Keynesian economists and other reformists’ theories. Keynesianism or Keynesian economics is an economic theory based on the ideas John Maynard Keynes, as put forward in his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, available in 1936 as an answer to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Keynesianism advocates for a mixed economy, in which the state as well as the market or the private sector have both significant functions to operate. It should be noted that the advent and eventual rise of Keynesianism saw the collapse of laissez-faire economics which was of the view that both the state and the market could function, each on its own. Keynesianism also emphasizes of the significance of aggregate demand for goods as the lashing factor of the economy, particularly in periods of recession. For this reason, government plans or policies could be made use of to promote demand at a macro level, to counter high unemployment as well as deflati on. A significant conclusion of Keynesianism is that there is not a tough and automatic propensity for output and employment to move to full employment levels. Effective demand is therefore the fundamental idea underlying Keynesianism. Post Keynesian Criticisms After Keynes, a good amount of concentration has been dedicated to the problem of probability and uncertainty in Keynes’s General Theory by a set of economists frequently called ‘Post-Keynesians’. Over the years, there have risen a lot of economic theories and propositions which no longer see Keynesianism as a spur. As Chick and Tily (2004) mentions in mainstream economics, Keynes is dead1. Leijonhufvud (2008)2 gives explanations on the hypothetical blindness of the economic profession vis a vis interpretations from Keynesianism of the present financial crisis to conventional reliance on market efficiency theory, expectations based on reason as well as the representative agents3. Wray and Teymogne (2008) m ake us reminiscent of the fact that â€Å"the efficient market hypothesis, like all approaches derived from the old neoclassical theory, relegates money and finance to the sidelines.4† A latest volume, cataloguing the commentary of twelve prominent economists on Keynes’s Economic possibilities for our Grandchildren5, offers an outstanding incident to assess the space between conventional Keynesian views of capitalism with ‘love of money’. Keynes’s disapproval for the money drive and the demanding â€Å"purposeful money-makers (who) may carry all of us along with them into the lap of economic abundance† is dismissed as the befuddled and elitist phrase of moralistic narrow-mindedness and an ideal case in point of an irrational approach to economics. For example, Boldrin and Levine (2009) challenge Keynes for not being clear between real and monetary factors6. On his part, Phelps (2009) considers Keynes condescending approach towards the pursuit for wealth as unusual for an economist7, representative of anti-materialism as well as obscure to every scholastic satisfaction in business. Ohanian (2009) illustrates Keynes’ approach as that of a judgmental and critical social commentator who uses his economist’s pulpit to make a rather puritan-based vision of the future8. Fitoussi (2009) acknowledges that Keynes’ negative response to capitalism, with its acquisitiveness and inconsiderate conduct, is not so badly founded9. He however goes on to coin Keynes’