TED Community » Patricia Ruvalcaba

More About Me

I'm passionate about

The world.

An idea worth spreading

There's something that really hits me; we are part of this world. It is a self-evident truth, but we rarely think about it. Be it ecology, economy, religion or any other topic, we tend to think in terms of groups. When doing my profile I was allowed to add tags to myself... for religion, the tags were "jewish", "buddhist", "hindu", "muslim", "atheist" and "cristian". Were was "spiritual"? Religions are fundamentally about spirituality, but we have decided that they are also a good topic to create conflict about (as if we didn't have enough!). And that's the thing; why must we always try to create categories so then we can fight about why one is better than the other one? At the end we're all humans.

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• A reply on Conversation: How can SOLEs be implemented without causing students to shun necessary but "boring" skills?

  Mar 10 2013: In fact, that is why I named the subjects I believe everyone should know, even if they have no interest whatsover in them. For example, history and geography are necessary because of geopolitics. If someone doesn't understand geopolitics, they he or she cannot understand what is told in the news, or he or she can cause a faux pas. Grammar is indispensable, no matter the specialization. Mental maths are necessary. Contrary to popular belief, sometimes is way slower to take out the smartphone and do the math, than to do it mentally.

• A reply on Conversation: How can SOLEs be implemented without causing students to shun necessary but "boring" skills?

  Mar 9 2013: You are quite right - critical thinking and critical reading will be THE most important skills students will need, regardless of what they do or learn. I believe debates will help them develop those skills.
  
  Quoting you, "The teachers could put forward a selection of enticing questions that happen to require particular vital skills for later problems and subjects"
  I still cannot think of an enticing question that will lead to students learning to conjugate.

• A reply on Conversation: How can SOLEs be implemented without causing students to shun necessary but "boring" skills?

  Mar 9 2013: Self-Organized Learning Environments

• A reply on Talk: Wade Davis: Gorgeous photos of a backyard wilderness worth saving

  Mar 9 2013: You both raise a valid point - most of the people will care about protecting the wilderness, but will not care about the indigenous people who live there, but at the same time, the indigenous people ARE part of the story and omitting them is telling only half of it.
  
  But, I think the issue underlied here is NOT whether the Sacred Headwaters (or any other natural reserve/virgin territory) should be protected, but to move ourselves and STOP trying to patch up a sinking ship.
  Our economy depends upon the exploitation of natural resources wherever they are, so, naturally, every week there is a new story about such-and-such place or such-and-such species endangered. And, unfortunately, there are not enough resources to save everything, because donating money here or signing a petition there only patches our sinking ship (non-sustainable economy), which we do not need - what we need is another ship (sustainable economy).
  As you say, Peter, we should protect the Sacred Headwaters because it good for all of us, problem is, that it is also good for all of us to protect the Amazon, the glaciers, Antarctica, the Pacific Ocean and every other natural resource.
  
  And here, in my opinion - is where lies the crux of the matter - how to go against the system? Our jobs are, most likely, destroying all those places (and, as you said, Peter, other people's lands) but we cannot easily quit them. Same, everytime we go to the supermarket, we are producing waste (packaging, tickets, the gas for our car,etc.) but we need to buy food and essentials.
  
  Maybe I went off-topic, but I think that the only thing we can really do is to watch this talk, the news, and our environment and tell ourselves "I want to preserve what I see and, for that, I will stop wasting resources"
• +2

  A comment on Talk: Sheikha Al Mayassa: Globalizing the local, localizing the global

  Feb 9 2012: I think that in the arab world is especially difficult to walk the fine line between tradition and modernization/globalization. If they change everything, they are betraying their own culture and identity. If they don't change fast enough, the world won't stop to wait for them.
  
  But she's right - we've got to learn to embrace globalization without loosing ourselves in the way - and the first step is to make the global village one in which culture and art are the means by which we express ourselves, not the means by which we become copies of the western stereotype.

• A reply on Conversation: How would an economic system not based on the acquisition of material wealth work?

  Jan 29 2012: The comment about utopian societies was to illustrate my point about why I believe that a society that offers free things wouldn't survive and I gave a basic analysis about why they failed. I wasn't referring to your social experiment when I talked about capitalism. Still, you're right - I didn't really grasp your idea.
  
  You raise a good point about soup kitchens and homeless shelters and also about how letting people starve proves nothing. But - a big but - the real problem here is what will happen once people do not need to work.
  
  If, for example, low-paying jobs are what they are nowadays, then I can tell you that a lot of people will choose not working over luxuries and they are right, because working conditions are not fair. Others simply won't even try because climbing the job ladder is quite difficult. So it is very probable that a chunk of society will stop working altogether.
  
  If low-paying jobs start being more fair, then part of that chunk of people that chose not working over luxiries will work. But you will still have a segment of society that won't bring any good to the community. Given, as you have stated, every society will have them.
  
  Nonetheless, we as people are quite the copy cats so, if you've got a bum who doesn't work but does reproduce, most probably his kids will be bums who don't work but do reproduce and you can't actually stop them. The incentives for small families may work, but, unless you actually kill the "spare" kids, the parent may or may not follow government regulations.
  
  When I see a kid that's starving, I feel that's unfair, because he or she isn't given the oportunity to have a dignified life. When I see an adult, I think of a bum. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the adult is another victim of our greedy, capitalist society, but I cannot help the feeling that if she or he wanted to better him or herself, he or she could do it.
  
  I think that's a key point: how to offer a dignified life to everyone, but do not condone being lazy.

• A reply on Conversation: How would an economic system not based on the acquisition of material wealth work?

  Jan 23 2012: I really like your social experiment idea. Nonetheless, there IS evidence (most of it empirical) that goods gained without effort are goods not being valued or correctly used. An example would be the utopian societies. All of them failed and none lasted more than 10 years. The reasons? 1. People started wanting to own (capitalism) 2. People didn't make that much effort and lived upon the work of their fellows. 3. Fights broke over how the communities should be managed.
  Another example is the plastic money paradox. Yes, it is money gained, but as you actually don't feel you're giving your money away, you tend to spend more. Same thing happened with the 2008 economic crisis; banks got greedy and started offering credit to people who couldn't actually pay back the credit given, not to mention the interests. What happened? people spent way more money than what they actually gained (that means, the credits they got were used as free-I'll-worry-about-paying-back-later money) and voila! economic crisis!
  
  I think this can be translated to the "giving basic things free" idea. I live on a medium-high class district were we've got our own water wells. Four years ago, the neighbors' counsil discovered we were running out of water because no one was caring about not wasting it. They made us install water meters in our homes and asigned us a fixed quantity depending upon how many of us lived in each house. Results? No more excessive waste of water. The key here was creating a concept of cost. Water's still "free" (we pay maintainance fees), but since we have to actually work for it, we no longer waste it.
  
  In your social experiment, you'll help people? undoubtedly. You'll get burdened with people who live upon what they are given and don't make even the least effort? definitely. Which will be the biggest group? I sincerely don't know.
• +2

  A reply on Talk: Luis von Ahn: Massive-scale online collaboration

  Dec 8 2011: P.O.: We, as society, need translators, but we also need to be able to communicate, even if it is not in the most elegant manner.
  Translators are the ones who helps us apreciate the beauty and fine nuances of language. That is why we still read Shakespeare in olde english, because there is no way a modern english version can convey the ideas the same way.
• +6

  A reply on Talk: Luis von Ahn: Massive-scale online collaboration

  Dec 8 2011: With all due respect, I do not believe von Ahn believes translating is an easy task. Definitely the translations we will get from duolingo will never be as good as if a single well-informed and knowledgeable person does it. But - and here is a big but- the objective here is sharing information. As long as the person at the other end obtains information he or she wouldn't have been able to get without the help of the collective translation effort, then the objective has been achieved. That's the reason why I agree with von Ahn's idea - the person wanting to learn a new language will learn it as good as it can be learned without human interaction (which, by the way, does not happen outside a language classroom, a speaking club, or a daily life interaction with native speakers) and, at the same time, will be helping another person gain information.
  And let me tell you something; I learnt french by reading comics is french. Yes, afterwards I enrolled into a french language class because, although I could understand french, I couldn't speak it very well because I had lacked HUMAN interaction during my learning process. The first month I was on that class I learnt another thing: I was the best speaker in the class! Why? because I had a wider vocabulary than any other of my classmates, gained from real-life interaction with the language. So, please, don't come and say someone does not have an idea of how a language is learnt if neither you know.
  On an ending note, I'm learning to write chinese characters using a japanese kanji book, which explains the origin and evolution of kanji. If you don't know how it is possible, please read your history books. This is the best example I can give you from my experience about the most basic general function of language: communication.

• A reply on Talk: Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now

  Nov 8 2011: Pawel: yes, you're right, more access to more information can make people more critical, but first they must be taught that and unfortunately, schools and society aren't achieving it. I'm a tutor in some online courses my college provides for people who couldn't finish their high school. To the date, I haven't managed to teach my students how to quote from and what to quote from the internet. The reason is that they see all the information as A thruth, and do not analyse from where it came (I've even seen my students quote from say, yahoo questions. That's definitely NOT a good source of information) Also, take in account the amount of hoaxes and scams that exist on the internet. Let me tell you, my mom, who really thinks things through, almost fell for the scam the first time she saw the "you're this sites #254345456 visitor: here's your prize". And why she fell for it? because it seemed so real and legal and true.
  That's my point: internet can help you develop your critical thinking skills further, but it cannot teach you how to think critically and this is a skill you really need when navigating the world wide web.