Tolerance and History

History has a lot of impressive passages which are studied nowadays. In this essay I will try to relate one of our virtues that we have lost these days which is Tolerance with the England History, specifically the Elizabethan time. Tolerance in other words means “respect” to the things we don’t understand, practice or believe. I’ve seen many discrimination episodes during my young experience as a teacher and I would like you to see it as I do.
The film “Elizabeth the golden age” shows pretty much what my aim is: To show you genuine tolerance and that it can be usefully used with a certain purpose.


First of all I will mention some facts that happened during the Elizabethan time and I will relate those topics with Tolerance. Then I will express my point of view about the main topics and if they are actually important for us, as teachers, to consider nowadays.


In the film we can appreciate the differences between England and Spain, country which was doing some sort of inquisition and trying to rule the whole continent and even the entire world by spreading their Catholic religion. The reason why they spread the Catholic religion was because it was easier for them to take more power in control if there was only one “set of rules” .The Spanish people didn’t like Queen Elizabeth because she was protestant and she never punished her people because of their beliefs. She respected every kind of religion and of course she didn’t impose the protestant belief to anybody.

Spain had its own representative Queen to reign England: Mary, who was Catholic of course. They set a trap to the authentic Queen and by mistake Elizabeth ordered Queen Mary’s execution. Spain got the perfect excuse to attack England and to begin their possible invasion. As Queen Elizabeth understood that if her people fight back just with their free men they were going to lose the battle she set free every English prisoner because she thought that every English man had the right to defend their country. As she thought and did that, the people believed her and defend their country against the Spanish desire of conquest over England.


As I mentioned before Elizabeth respected every kind of belief and religion, which was a very open minded thought because she could have done the easy way to rule her people and take all the control of the country but she didn’t.
Tolerance was something extremely important in this episode; if the situation would have been different her people would have rejected her as a Queen. Let’s take this situation to our daily lives, what would happen to us, as teachers, if we wouldn’t be tolerant inside our classroom? Our students probably would reject us as their teacher. If we don’t tolerate different opinions from different people it would be like authoritarianism.

Inside the classroom you will find different kind of people, different opinions, behaviors, ways of seeing life and we need to be respectful with all of them, otherwise we would be falling into discrimination. It also has to do with being respectful with different Cultural aspects. There are so many different cultures and beliefs that we need to be aware of them in order to create a comfortable environment. When we are teaching is completely important that the learning environment gives us a chance of relating each other in equality of conditions.

So, as Queen Elizabeth we have to have tolerance. The Elizabethan time, as it is shown in the film, was a great era. England had lots of victories in all the possible aspects such as political, cultural, economical and of course about religion too. It was a successful reign.

In my point of view I can say as a conclusion that tolerance is an important virtue that we need to learn and remember these days. The film “Elizabeth, The Golden Age” reflects the topic in its entire form; to what extend Tolerance is important and essential in the development of a huge nation. Of course I take the topic to our daily lives and we can see to what extend tolerance is important and essential in teachers’ way of thinking. It opens lots of doors in order to get a better development of education. As a young teacher with a little experience I can say that this film is extremely recommended. It has different aspects about tolerance that will be very useful for the students to analyze. It can be used in a dynamic sort of class which is not the traditional one with all the children looking to the board. It will help student to understand History in a very enjoyable way and, most important, it will give them and the teacher as well a complete understanding about what genuine tolerance is and why it is important.

Modern Times

First of all I would like to say that I don't fully understand this period but what I can say about this film and period of time is that the main thing that I can appreciate is the industrialization.

During that period people was pretty unhappy because there was no job for them. Industrializations is about factories and hard work and what I could appreciate there in the film was that sort of "power abuse" with the factory workers. There was this fear of losing their job that they accepted every miserable working conditions; their salary was completely unfair and of course not enough to have a good life but unfortunately they didn't have other option.

That was the reason of those strikes that happened: the unfairness.

Here began the "boom" of machines which was the reason why so many people was afraid of losing their jobs , because machines came o replace men's work.

About the movie I can tell that it was pretty funnny in spite of the real message it has.

I could see that Chaplin was exhausted, stessed even crazy about his job and his work conditions.

I liked it a lot.

Elizabeth's reign...

First of all, I have to say that I really enjoy the movie (Elizabeth, The golden age) but the thing that I really found amazing was the way you started teaching and showing us this different episode in history. I think it was pretty unusual and enjoyable. Personally I like history a lot but when you have a little help to understand it better (like a movie) it is way more interesting.
Talking about Elizabeth I's reign I would say it was essential in England’s development, in every aspect: political, social, and economical.
I really think that her "performance" as a queen was awesome.
She was a really strong woman and the main thing that is still in my mind is the way she thought. She was raised with this protestant thinking about religion and I completely agree with it. She wasn't going to punish the catholic people as queen Mary (the queen before her) did with the protestant people.
That was a very open minded thought, I think. Because she could have done the easy way to rule her people just like the Spanish did with the inquisition; they started to spread Catholicism by punishing people who had other beliefs just because it was easy to control the people.
She really thought that if you were protestant or catholic you were “Son” of the same country: England.
When the complications with Spain began she set free every English prisoner because she thought that every English men had the right to defend their country. As she thought and did that, the people believed her and defend their country against the Spanish desire of conquest over England.
She never got married, that was the reason why everyone called her “the virgin queen”, even though she wasn’t a real virgin. ( I saw that in the previous movie: Elizabeth).That was just the image she wanted to show because she claimed she was married with her country and was the mother of her people.

natives&immigrants

After reading the book, I realized that the mixture of cultures could bring possitive and negatives aspects.

Speaking of native people I think it was extremely difficult to face all the new culture that the immigrants brought with them , and to assume those differences would be even more difficult. They had had learned how to deal with "strange"people with the best agreement they could think in that time.There was room to some fights and disagreements as well, and that's the worst part of immigration. You get to a land which is already populated and you are bringing a new kind of life style that would obviously annoy and bother native people.

Bringing this part of history to now, I would say that the U.K forming process way pretty much alike to ours.
Our current culture is a mixture of cultures as well, traditions , food, ways of perceiving life, religion , etc.
for instance: Enlgish language had many important influences: French, Latin and Escandinavian,and from there they built their current massive language .
If Chile hadn't had the Spanish influence we would still be speaking Mapudungun.
Everything is a mixture, and I kind of agree with it , why should people be narrow minded and not allow other culture mixture like it is happening here right now with the U.S.A culture?. We need to open our eyes and look beyond our nose to know the world better .

-.Civilization-Culture-Critical Thinking.-

What I think these 3 concepts are is kind of difficult for me to explain because some of them are so much related to each other...but I'll try my best to explein it in the clearest way.

In my opinion "Civilization" is an organization, in every way : political , economical,cultural,etc., of a group of people who live together but , more than "live together" are people who are related with each other by necessity, these people are complex and organized and with a sort of power in making decisions and that work together in order to progress and develop in a better way its own civilization and of course transmit their culture to others.

Civilization, in my point of view, is closely related with culture, because every single "civilization" has its own particular and unique culture. It may be a homogeneous culture, where everyone has the same customs and the same kind of code to relate between them, or, it maybe a civilization plenty of different kind of cultures like ours.
In Chile we have different kinds of culture and customs, we can appreciate that in people who don't have a good economical situation, poor people, actually. They have a different language code, we can't even understand them when they talk, and different values , behaviors and conventions too.
But at the same time, they have our Chilean culture as well, so, I think Culture is a very complex word to define and, personally I think that "plurality" may work well with the word culture.

On the other hand, Critical thinking is the hability to actually THINK! where we have to analyze some situation or problem and realize which are its defects and its virtues, or mistakes or whatever, but we have to be able to criticize it and to give its solutions, and of course make the appropiate decisions of what are we going to consider or not. Finally, make a good conclusion about our "problematic situation".
We as becoming teacher should have critical thinking to improve our current and most important problematic issue, which is education.

Expectations.

"Culture and Civilization", That's a pretty and interest name for this course. I really hope this course to be really interesting and enjoyable.

My bigger expectation of this course is that we can see how important is the culture in the process of the creation of a nation.

Of course that there's a reason for every little event that is happening today in the world and we should be able to understand it.

I'm really looking forward to extend my knowledge about the American and British history, I have to admit that eventhough I've improved a lot since I started to learn English as a foreign language, I'm a little bit lost in the history af this amazing culture, but I'm anxious to learn from this course everything I need to be a good and complete teacher in the future.

I know it might be a little difficult to understand the English culture because it is a completly different one and completly unknown for me, and the way they see the world and the important events is completly different too , so I will try my best to learn and understand everything.

I would like to give my personal opinion here and to develop my ideas in order to learn much more from the teacher , the assistant and from my classmates' opinions too. I think this way we can discuss very interesting topics with some interesting and different points of view.

I think that's all...

tell me about your expectations...