Tok Entry: Even International Schools have their Own Culture

Social Learning Theory (Bandura 1977) states that people learn behaviors from observations. This means that the people who we surround ourselves with influence our behaviors. I think this is very true, as I have experienced it myself.

observing others

In 7th grade, I moved to Korea and went to an international school. The entire school consisted of Korean students, a lot of whom were culturally Korean as well. I, as a Korean American, felt so different from these people. My classmates spoke Korean in the hallways after our English classes, spoke Korean on the bus, ate ttuk-bok-ki, twi-gim,  shopped at Korean stores, and did so many other Korean things. I observed the people I surrounded myself with, and I found that I was becoming more like them. After creating new friends and settling down, I found that my Korean was improving exponentially, more than I had ever been with my failed attempts of Korean class in America. I was even speaking English with a Korean accent, because it seemed so normal with the people around me. I also started speaking Korean in the hallways of our international school.

That's why when I moved to SFS two years later, I was really confused. The Koreans at this school were so different! I had not known that English-speaking Koreans could be so drastically different. With my stay in SFS, I actually found my speaking skill of Korean deteriorating. Everyone here spoke English in the hallways, and acted very American. I almost felt like I was in a different country every time I walked up the SFS hill. Again, however, I found myself slowly becoming like one of them. I was conforming without even noticing it. I started to speak more American, and I naturally stopped listening to k-pop and found myself listening to more American songs.

My move between international schools was a strange experience. I had no idea that two totally different cultures could exist in something that should practically be one culture. I've also learned that observation, and continuously being exposed to behaviors every day of the year, can change a person's tendencies. I still become very confused when I meet my friends back at my old school, or my old friends back in America. However, I also enjoy that I can adjust into multiple different behaviors. It's fun to do (in a non-psychopathic way, of course).

IB Psychology: Social Learning Theory

Social Learning Theory was one of the first topics we learned about in the SCLOA (socio-cultural level of analysis) unit last year. It is a theory proposed by psychologist Albert Bandura (1977), and states that our behavior is learned from our environment through observation. Through our observations of others, we actively process information and think about our consequences if we too did those actions.

To support his theory, Bandura conducted the Bobo Doll Experiment (1961), which is pretty silly and hilarious to watch. In the experiment Bandura basically tests the influence of television violence on children. Children are told to watch a video (in which an adult violently hits a Bobo Doll), then are brought into the exact same room as the one that appeared in the video. Experimenters then observe what the child will do.

The results showed that the children, too, start to kick and punch the Bobo Doll. I remember our psychology class laughing at the children who like little devils kept repeatedly punching the doll. The control groups, who were shown a video of a non-aggressive adult, were less violent towards the Bobo Doll. It was a weird experiment, but it was one that I wouldn't forget easily.

When we're talking about shared knowledge in TOK, we also have to consider how this knowledge becomes shared. I think that observation is important to delivering a behavior or information to others. Things in the news, television, friends and teachers, are all people that we observe. In our daily lives, we look at these people and learn from them.

Prescribed Title Essay: Shared Knowledge and Memetics

My prescribed title essay is: With reference to two areas of knowledge discuss the way in which shared knowledge can shape personal knowledge.

I decided to examine the types of shared knowledge in our world, and came across concepts like knowledge management, big data, and memes. All of these terms relate to how knowledge is shared and changed among cultures and businesses. For my PTE, I want to further examine memes and its influence and importance in the world of business, human sciences, and natural sciences. 

Richard Dawkins coined the term "meme" with a different intention from what we use today. A meme, according to the biologist, is a “unit of culture” that spreads from person to person within a culture. It was a termed coined by Dawkins in his 1976 book, and came to rise in the 1990s as people gained interest in the concepts of cultures and ideas. The concept of a meme is that like genes, memes are a living idea that can be imitated, spread, and mutated within a society. Some memes can become extinct, or evolve through natural selection.

Susan Blackmore is a psychologist who expressed her own thoughts on memetics in her book “The Meme Machine.” I watched her Ted Talk, and she talked about Darwin and evolution. According to Blackmore, Darwin had proposed that evolution went beyond physical traits. Cultural traits, thoughts, and behaviors also undergo change through natural selection and mutation. This is the Darwinian theory of human cultural evolution.

I want to investigate the concept of memes in today's digital, globally connected society. With the presence of the internet, smartphones, and whatnot, a lot of people in our world think that we are more connected than ever. The unique personal knowledge of millions are shared to the public through social media sites, and are categorized into sets of data by computerized machines. In return, we see things in media that influence our opinions into one. I think that a lot of the development of the digital age has caused a lot of shared knowledge to control personal knowledge, almost like monolithic thinking. With references to psychology, science, and business, I hope to write an essay related to memetics in today's world. 

TOK Post: The Flaws of Big Data (Shared Knowledge)

Big Data. It's a concept that my dad talks about a lot, and something that I don't fully understand. According to some sources, big data is "a popular term used to describe the exponential growth and availability of data, both structured and unstructured." Big data is essential to discover trends in business, science, and opinions of people in society. The presence of Internet users and the growing volume and variety of data today makes it important to organize the data into something analysts can understand. 

Big Data is great. In 2012, Target was able to detect one teenage girl's pregnancy before even her father did so. Despite its appeal for predictions, however, big data isn't as universal as it seems. The flaws of big data were shown with the outbreak of Ebola last year in an article, “Why big data missed the early warning signs of Ebola.” The Ebola outbreak that started in March of 2014 was one of the most terrible, devastating cases of the year. The first deaths of an unidentified, severe disease were reported not through the detections of HealthMap, which is a website that collects disparate data sources of diseases, but through a local French-language news report in Guinea. Long before the news report, however, local medical workers and citizens around the Guinea region had reported cases through social networking. So what had caused the sophisticated data detecting HealthMap to miss these early signs?

The problem was this: the early reports were not written in English.

It's a surprise. Although we tend to believe that the world is more globalized and connected than it has ever been before, most of today's data monitoring systems emphasize material written in the English language. The article mentions that the GDELT Project translates global media into English. However, this translation process can cause a delay, and it's not always the case that all media coverage becomes translated. Thus, the early French-written reports of Ebola symptoms in Guinea weren't detected until later by HealthMap. And instead of the revered data of social networking that is emphasized today, the traditional local news was the first to report the start of the Ebola epidemic.

HealthMap's detection of global diseases. HealthMap also has a timeline of Ebola outbreaks.

I think this article is a great reality check on where humans are today in social and technological advancement. It seems that we have tendencies to come to quick to conclusions, rather than meticulously investigating flaws.

As the article mentions, "Instead of trying to beat the international news through massive investments in computer models, we should instead be focusing on listening better." Big Data looks at the broader spectrum of data around us. However, some important pieces of data are found in local communities of small numbers, rather than in large numbers in social networking. In relation to TOK, I examined the relationship with shared knowledge. This example has shown that there are many levels of shared knowledge, and that not all shared knowledge yields results. The shared knowledge of the early signs of Ebola between the local medical workers in Guinea were not yet shared with the rest of the world. Through the news report and subsequent reports, however, the knowledge of Ebola has become a large global issue. I hope that as our society delves deeper into advancements in technology and computer systems, we don't forget to consider everyone on the globe. 

TOK Entry: Natural Science and Genes

The truth of science changes once we make new discoveries. As we advance through science, we end up "disproving" old theories that we once thought were true. Thus, with each and every new discovery we make, we can only name them "theories," because hypothetically in the future someone is ought to disprove it. 

In class, we read an article titled "When Science Gets it Wrong." The article showed several examples of scientific discoveries that disproved old ones. One example was of genes and DNA. 

The genes of a chromosome were once thought to be like instruction manuals for writing who we are, our bodies. Each gene would represent some trait of our body, as believed by the biologists of the 1950s. However, it turns out that a strip of genes can actually be cut up into different areas, and create new forms of instructions. The strands are cut up into introns and exons - the introns are removed from the strand, while the exons are kept in the strand. This is happens when proteins modify the RNA strand before it exits the nucleus. This results in a totally new strand that is made out of pieces from the original DNA, that can code for other proteins in the body.

I think it is amazing how science can move forward and prove itself wrong after time. I think that science is a very humbling subject, because scientists will eventually have to admit flaws in their theories as new theories are made. When we are young, however, we were taught theories in science as if they were facts. I remember some of my old-aged science teachers, who used to attend school long, long ago, used to say that some of the theories they are teaching now were different from the ones they learned when they were young. Even in one's lifetime, "scientific facts" around us can change. I think science is amazing because we are discovering the world while we are naive. We try to discover, with the knowledge that we will never eventually be able to discovery everything in the world. Yet, people still continue to discover.

IB Course Entry: Biology

Biology is my favorite subject at school, because you can apply what you learn in class with everything you see in this world.

One of the most fascinating topics we learned just a few weeks ago is the immune system of the human body. We learned that there are white blood cells and anti-bodies that fight against the pathogens that enter our bodies. There is such a complex and ingenious system in our blood that I had no idea about.

We then got into the issue of using modern technology to help our immune system. Some advancements included the use of vaccines, antibiotics, and cloning our anti-bodies using the cells of mice. Our biology class then side tracked into a conversation about CSI and other criminal movies, about snake bites and venom. We then questioned: was this technology actually helping humans advance, or hurting us?

In a way, modern medicine allows humans to "play god," and avoid sickness and death. Meanwhile, our population growth exponentially increases. We are left on a crowded earth, harming the environment around us. Our medicine can also harm humans as well. Viruses and known to mutate very quickly. When we use antibiotics, we are killing off the weak viruses and bacteria in our bodies. The stronger viruses, the ones that have mutated, are able to survive and reproduce in our bodies. Patients must then intake a stronger anti-biotic. It is almost a dangerous, repeating cycle.

I think that technology in science has helped humans advance in many ways, but it has also allowed us to live in an unnatural environment. I do wish that everyone in our world remain healthy and happy, but technology in science is a power that must be held by responsible, wise people.

IB Course Entry, Music: Modes and Cadences

Music, after all, is just a collection of sound frequencies produced by instruments or speakers that enter our ears. How does music make us feel? How does it make us feel happy, sad, angry, or annoyed?

During our course of IB Music, we learned about musical cadences and modes. Musical cadences is a change in music intervals at the end of a phrase. They are like small conclusions. When you hear the end of a verse or chorus, you are hearing a cadence. Modes consist of major and minor modes, as well as other complex ones.

In music class, we are required to interpret cadences and modes both from looking at them on music, and hearing them. The interesting thing was that these cadences and modes could be interpreted into emotions. The minor mode, for example, conjures a very sad and melancholy emotion, while the major mode often generates a happy and cheery feeling.

There is a similar concept with cadences. The picture above consists of four types of cadences we learned in music class: authentic cadence (or perfect cadence), half cadence (or imperfect cadence), plagal cadence, and deceptive cadence (also called surprise cadence). Each of these cadences, no matter what key they are in, generate a different feeling of conclusion to the end of a musical phrase. Cadences are very mathematical. The authentic cadences is the movement of I - V - I , which means the chord of the first note of the scale, the fifth note of the scale, then back to the first (example: in C major: C major - G major - C major). The result is a conclusion that sounds like a perfect end to a song. Returning back to the tonic (I, first note of a scale), makes us feel that the song is very complete.

The plagal cadence is also called the "Amen cadence," because it is often used in church songs and hymns (I - IV - I). The very familiar "Ah~men" at the end of any generic hymnal song is actually a plagal cadence. The result is a holy and concluding finish.

The deceptive and half cadences both sound unexpected. They both surprise us, because it appears that they will return back to the tonic (first note of a scale). But it doesn't. The result is that listeners are surprised. Many composers use this strategy in their pieces.

Below is a Youtube video showing audio examples of cadences.

I thought it was amazing that frequencies and maths of music can generate emotions in people. I think this relationship is something I'd like to investigate in more in the future.