Ethics - Case Study Reflection

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/malaysian-couple-to-hang/1024102.html

Who is to blame for the death of the maid?

Ever since I could remember, I've been raised in a family where maids are part of the norm. However, they are not family exactly. Some of my maids had cleaned, fed, raised and taught me things just like any other mother could do, or even better.

Most of my maids were rather young, ranging from barely legal to 30. All these while, I treated them almost like my closest companion while I'm at home but my family had never treated our maids as family. They were always seen as a second class of people and despite my bond with some of them, that perspective sometimes influences me into thinking of them as lesser, hence I find the term of them being "modern-day slaves" rather apt.

I would assume that being a maid is not the first pick of a career option for most people hence most of these maids look as though there is no other choice of earning wages besides being maids. It is the last resort. With the mentality that maids are at our mercy of earning a living, I can easily imagine how some people can become twisted with the image of "owning" them as maids are full time helpers, ranging from a period of months to even years. These helpers live with us, yet we do not fully accept them into our lives, being shadows in the background.

Hence with these workers at the mercy of the agency and employer, the role and responsibility lays upon the latter two as the worker can be manipulated and mistreated when there aren't obvious enforcement of law and regulation towards the maids' safety and when the maids are gullible and at desperation, they will fall into the manipulation.

The maids would not be at wrong even if they are gullible as I believe that people would have the conscience to treat another being with respect and care and only those who choose to ignore them, will mistreat their maids, further concreting the responsibility of the employers ( if they are capable of employing the maid, I'm assuming they have means of making money which also means that they are fairly educated).

Reflecting on personal ethics - What does your response reveal about your notion of ethical decisions?

The story could be turned around where the maid could be a schemingly, manipulative person who takes advantage of an employer's empathy e.g. stealing money, lying.

But as employers and agency managers, the responsibility is high as they are in charge of the welfare of the maid. I think I may be bias towards the fault being of the employer and the maid agency as I feel like those in power should not use their power to manipulate others. The maids often being the less powerful one, should be protected.

Our ethical notion is constantly influenced by our society and as mentioned in sociocultural psychology, culture pretty much shapes us. However, we need to be active members of society that constantly reflects on the world we live in to make better and more ethical choices in life. The practice of ethics is simply not black and white and one must strive to read between the lines and learn what it means to be ethical or not based on knowledge and experience. That being said, theory always look better on paper and we can only try on our part to widen our perspectives to understand ethics better or let the rest of the world determine what kind of world we live in.

Reflection on note-taking

While doing our brief activity on note-taking today based on Jean Killbourne's speech, I learnt a new tip on improving my note-taking.

I noticed how another learner used indents and it is shown in this example:

kdfnskgdfh.gh;fkh;jkhgjgk;j;kjk

1. gmngkgnlkh
2. fkgkhfhlgjl
3. mgnfnh,fm,f

By allowing a little margin on the side to introduce subpoints of a point, it makes notes a lot clearer and readable.

Also, setting aside a column on the left allows us to 'group' up quick notes after as it helps to provide space for smaller headings and subheadings. A column on the left would also make the notes look less packed and 'dense' and helps in terms of visual and spacial view.

Reflection on "Sex in Ads"

What conclusions or generalisations or big ideas can you draw and what are these based on?

So far in our discussions and research into "Sex in Ads", it has been an eye-opening experience in seeing in person, the effects of

As if the video had not highlighted enough of the repulsive sexism and prejudice towards women today, in the comments section below the Youtube video  "How the Media Failed Women in 2013" showed an array of backlash, ranging from comments such as how the video was another "Feminazi act", "Feminist propaganda" or "Feminists have a tendency to portray Men as "The Bad guys"..." while nowhere in the video had they specifically mentioned that men were at fault of the objectification of women.

What we do not realise is, in today's society, it's not only men but women also are in the bandwagon of the objectification of women.

Feminism is not a battle of us (women) against everything and everyone else, but simply the spirit to uphold equality and freedom for women and to embrace the gender as a part of a diverse society not a separate entity. Sure women may be hormonally and physically different but women remain human just as any other men and any men or women are an individual worthy of a same respect and treatment.

Currently, feminism is viewed through a stereotypical lens where it encompasses all women as angry, aggressive sexists as argued by the obnoxious twat who yelled out "I hate feminists!" in the library the other day but after mortifying him and his nonsensical point of view that ALL feminist women aren't respective towards males in front of many innocent others,  I realise just how strong the influence of media could be in inseminating the idea of feminism as being a backwards and demeaning towards equalism while feminism, just like any other religion, is perceived differently by every individual and it is the individual that is ultimately responsible for their act and not their entire social group.

However, it isn't all bad. Society is making improvements in today's world and women everywhere are rising up to voice their opinions and are being embraced more in today's cultures and societies but a stereotype remains strong and will only change if a stronger value can exist to change it. Slowly but surely, women are progressing in achieving equality and I hope that with time, people could be more rational in perceiving what the media tells us and how we should interpret its messages.

Advertisment reflection

The key terms learnt from this lesson were prepositions, pronouns and tenses.

I have a clear understanding of tenses but not as much on preposition and pronouns but upon seeing Danial's Freyer model, it allowed me to understand the terms better as we discussed and cemented each other's definition. Understand the root of the words such as "pro" and illustrating my ideas also helped a lot. After discussing, I understood prepositions as 'connectors' of time and location between two topics and pronouns as the word that refers to and comes before a noun.

When we watched the Berlitz advertisement today, it struck me how short yet impactful it was as the whole class roared with laughter at the punchline. This ad was terrifically comedic and useful in  highlighting the embarrassingly common mispronunciation amongst German native speakers and the end was concluded with the clean, bold logo and it's slogan. I also found out the popular tune that everyone-hears-but-nobody-knows-of-the-title at the end of the ad was "Ode to Joy" by Beethoven and as this was composed by a German composer and was intended to celebrate "Joy", it made perfect sense to be fitted into the ad as well.

To revise new vocabulary terms, Quizlet.com is a great source to build a vocabulary bank and turning it into quizzes. Quizlet is user-friendly like Vocabulary.com and with lots of fun practice, would definitely help to retain our vocabulary banks fresh.