For my research project I will be looking into the topic of teachers’ empathy toward students. The question that I specifically will be answering is “How empathetic should teachers be toward students with learning disabilities?”. I choose this topic because I am a student with a learning disability. Learning disabilities come in all shapes and sizes so to speak, from ADHD to dyslexia. And in some cases, like mine, the disability is obviously there, but can not be identified. These students go about their days just like everyone else, but having to deal with there own personal handicap. Some teachers are very accommodating while others refuse to believe the disability even exist. Which goes back to my question of how empathetic should teachers be? Too much and they hinder their teaching and the students learning while too little could cause a student to give up altogether. I hope to answer this with my research project. I feel the relevance my subject has toward this class is that the way my question is, and what the answer should be, the empathy has everything to do with a writing class about Empathy and ethics, writing.

Works Cited

Atherton, Helen, et al. “The Social History of Learning Disability.” ProQuest, RCN Publishing Company Ltd., search.proquest.com/docview/1784798886?pq-origsite=summon.

Bryant, Brenda K. “An Index of Empathy for Children and Adolescents.” Child Development, vol. 53, no. 2, 1982, pp. 413–425. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1128984.

Judd, Sandra J. Learning Disabilities Sourcebook: Basic Consumer Health Information about Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, Speech and Communication Disorders, Auditory and Visual Processing Disorders, and Other Conditions That Make Learning Difficult, Including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, down Syndrome and Other Chromosomal Disorders, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders, Hearing and Visual Impairment, Autism and Other Pervasive Developmental Disorders, and Traumatic Brain Injury; along with Facts about Diagnosing Learning Disabilities, Early Intervention, the Special Education Process, Legal Protections, Assistive Technology, and Accommodations, and Guidelines for Life-Stage Transitions, Suggestions for Coping with Daily Challenges, a Glossary of Related Terms, and a Directory of Additional Resources. Omnigraphics, 2012.

“Kids with Learning Disabilities Require Empathy, Expert Says.” Find Text @ UR, tq7xh3ee6l.search.serialssolutions.com/find?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fsummon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Kids%2Bwith%2Blearning%2Bdisabilities%2Brequire%2Bempathy%2C%2Bexpert%2Bsays&rft.jtitle=The%2BGuelph%2BMercury&rft.au=JOHANNA%2BWEIDNER&rft.date=2005-05-03&rft.pub=Torstar%2BSyndication%2BServices%2C%2Ba%2BDivision%2Bof%2BToronto%2BStar%2BNewspapers%2BLimited&rft.issn=0841-6834&rft.externalDocID=831442481¶mdict=en-US.

“This Is the 360 Link Sidebar Helper Frame – Use This to Find Other Links to This Content or Links to Additional Library Resources.” Find Text @ UR, tq7xh3ee6l.search.serialssolutions.com/find?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fsummon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Empathy%2Band%2BTeachers%E2%80%99%2BRoles&rft.jtitle=Procedia%2B-%2BSocial%2Band%2BBehavioral%2BSciences&rft.au=Zlatkovi%C4%87%2C%2BBlagica&rft.date=2012-12-01&rft.issn=1877-0428&rft.eissn=1877-0428&rft.volume=69&rft.spage=960&rft.epage=966&rft_id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1016%2Fj.sbspro.2012.12.021&rft.externalDBID=n%2Fa&rft.externalDocID=10_1016_j_sbspro_2012_12_021¶mdict=en-US.

Noah Mullane

Summary

For my research paper I need to have two sources summarized so I shall start by summarizing “Online Shaming and the Right to Privacy” by Emily B. Laidlaw first and “Taming the Internet Pitchfork Mob: Online Public Shaming, the Viral Media Age, and the Communications Decency Act” by Kristine Gallardo second.

“Online Shaming and the Right to Privacy” starts by telling the read what to expect and lets us know that this paper is focusing more on the broad subject of public shaming in the present day and how it is dealt with legally around the world. Specifically the United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, and the United States of America. Shame is considered not to belong to any one category and more of a tool employed by all. It talks about the difference between shaming and privacy invasion vs. shaming and offense taken. It does this by splitting shaming into vigilantism, bullying, bigotry, and gossiping. Vigilantism is people going out of there way to find people doing wrong. Bullying, “any behavior performed through electronic or digital media by individuals or groups that repeatedly communicates hostile or aggressive messages intended to inflict harm or discomfort on others” ([30], Robert Tokunaga quoted, p. 3) was quoted in the text as a definition. This part was mostly what you expect when it comes to online bullying, ruined lives and lost lives. Bigotry “concerns an identifiable group attacked on the basis of their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, colour or ethnic origin” (quoted from text). Seems that mostly women are in trouble when it comes to this and it’s not be they started it. Finally gossiping, not inherently bad but can lead to large problems. After going over these forms the paper moves on to the structure of online shaming. That some of the worst comments, the ones the law can do something about normally appear in larger groups of public shaming. In this portion it is acknowledged that the law has very limited response ability for large group shaming. It is also in this part that talk of change of a behavior is acknowledged as a hard if impossible window to stay in. After that the paper enters its main topic, privacy.  Privacy is broken into three parts dignity, privacy in public places and social privacy. Dignity is involved in many instruments for human rights and yet go undefined. Here shame is seen as something that can get to one’s core and and shatter it. Dignity is fragile and dependent on many different things while equally affected by many things. Privacy in public is a difficult thing to deal with legal due to the fact that it is happening in the public domain. As far as the laws in America are concerned privacy in public in none existent. Though the same can be said about the internet in general. Over all public privacy is more the ability to leave the public and not protection from what is done in public. Social privacy is the want to be apart of society without the fear of being publicly shamed. The thought of being social and safe. Though the question of is anything private in public comes up again. Which goes to privacy being up to the person and yet it is flawed in so many ways in that the person is their own defence. Finishing up the paper talks about if regulation public shaming is possible with so many ways for shame to be achieved.

Now on to “Taming the Internet Pitchfork Mob: Online Public Shaming, the Viral Media Age, and the Communications Decency Act”. First we are ment with the introduction of public shaming quickly followed by Justine Sacco’s story of shame. Which is followed by the best advice to avoid public shaming in my opinion, think before you speak, tweet, post, or comment. This leads into not stories but examples of people who had their lives ruined with public shaming. Then it starts to hit the main topic, it is hard to take any real legal action due to many difficulties. Farther in we see a breth history on public shaming and move onto the start of online shaming. The focus from there was the point that if a social norm was violated then the chance of public shaming grew. It was also seen that public shaming could be used in any sense as long as enough people joined in. This lead into anonymity while online, simply put if no one knows it’s you  it is much easier to say hurtful things. It also goes back to the difficulties of finding who ever posted the comment, in the actual off line world. After that the paper enters the field of torts and explains Defamation which is a state-law claim, so the applicable elements vary slightly from state to state, as  existing to curb undue harm to individuals’ reputations. The problem is how hard it is to meet all the requirements or to use it against someone as it relies on falsehood. Next it gets into the Communications Decency Act and ways of regulating with their individual downfalls. It also talks about whether holding the site responsible for post was possible or not. Site with no filtering actual didn’t have to worry about this due to not taking responsibility from the start of what was on their site. While the 21st century policy, any site that had filters to stop obscene content couldn’t be held liable for a user’s post if it insulted someone so they could continue to censor obscene things. This meant that just about all sites couldn’t be held liable about their users. Issues did arise but judges have been weary in how they handle cases due to the difficulty of getting around Section 230 (section in Communications Decency Act) immunity for web sites. Section 230 has been the center of many legal debates on whether there should be change or not, due to the change  having a chance to go wrong. Though this is not to say that Section 230 can’t be used against public shaming, for example it allows the site to check post for shaming or even give warning that they may start to shame someone. The idea of the warning is to make a would be shamer think about the effects of there would be shaming post. At this point the paper talks about the conser of freedom of speech. Though the warning idea answers that question because it doesn’t take down or stop the post it just makes the poster aware. After that the paper enters the conclusion wrapping up with the simple think before you post.

Works Cited

Gallardo, Kristine. “Taming the Internet Pitchfork Mob: Online Public Shaming, the Viral Media Age, and the Communications Decency Act.” Heinonline, drive.google.com/file/d/0B0ljeoGlfu6MSDZtSEpUWUYyYk0/view?ts=59e8b27e.

Laidlaw, Emily B. Online Shaming and the Right to Privacy. www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/6/1/3/htm.

“God That Was Awesome” is an essay written by Jon Ronson, is about public shaming, the different ways it comes about, and should public shaming be stopped. The essay starts with Ronson talking us through the day of one Justine Sacco. Ms. Sacco had made some bad jokes on twitter. These jokes were meant to mock stupid white privilege ideas, but ended up being miss interrupted as racist. Unfortunately for Ms. Sacco her tweets  ended up becoming famous in a bad way. Long story short Ms. Sacco had he life ruined, thanks to thousands and thousands of people posting on her twitters. She lost her job and she was turned into this racist monster online. At this point Ronson filled us in on how his interview went with her. While it was obvious that she was not ok at the moment, there was some hope that she would bounce back. At this point public shaming looks like it is the worst thing imaginable. Then Ronson went to talk with Ted Poe. A judge known for using public shaming as a legal punishment in court. Ronson is ready to meet the devil when he goes to see him. Though as he talks with him he finds out that while public shaming sounds cruel, it can have some benefits. Ronson finds that this shaming can be what it takes to set people on the right path, and can even be healing. This is were he gets to talk to a man sentenced by Mr. Poe, Mike Hubacek. Mr. Hubacek killed two people while drunk driving. His punishment was to stand outside a school with a sign that said “I killed two people while driving drunk”. Ronson was expecting to hear the worst, but got something else entirely. Mr. Hubacek what happy that he was punished as he was. He said that be for the punishment he was losing himself and that after he had a purpose again. People even encouraged him that things would be ok while he was holding the sign. Now Ronson had a dilemma, he was supposed to find public shaming as a horrible thing but now he had prof of the opposite, though he also still had his original evidence that it was bad.  It is here that his essay goes from just being a popular writing piece and starts asking the scholarly questions, or at least allowing you to grasp them yourself.

Ronson’s essay is good but it by no means is a scholarly research paper. Though that does not mean we can’t take the message and make it into one. As I said in the beginning Ronson’s essay is about public shaming, the different ways it comes about, and should public shaming be stopped. With this knowledge we can look up things revolving around these things. Find so actual facts and make real arguments about something instead of this point of view written paper.

When watching “A Time to Kill” one cannot but feel empathy at one point or another. Whether it’s for Tonya Hailey, the little girl that was raped, or Cora Mae Cobb, mother of Billy Ray Cobb. This movie brings you on a moral roller coaster filled with many emotions. While most of the empathy is felt by both the characters and audience, there are moments when the only empathy felt is by the viewer. One of these moments is when Carl Hailey is paying Jake Brigance for his lawyering services. As Jake finishes counting he points out that there is only nine hundred dollars of the thousand he’s due. Carl’s only response is that he has kids to feed. Jake promptly retorts so do I. This simple interaction brings forth much empathy from the viewer. Yet it does it in such away that it is not obvious.

Empathy is felt because of the simple fact everyone knows how it feels to have money troubles. The movie up to that point showed that Jake has been experiencing income problems. This is observed while talking with his secretary about how behind on payments they were. The fact that Carl was a black man working in the south meant money was also tight for him too, not to mention having four children. This build up leads to this main point of neither of them having cash to spare. That added to the feeling of hopelessness, the view can’t help but have empathetic feels to both. Though the best selling point of this scene is how they both respond physical. Jake’s frustration is and has a look that matches. Though Carl has the look of someone thinking, not giving up. People upon seeing both can be moving to two different types of empathy, sorrow for the situation and or a push of solidarity, belief and want of them to keep going. The reason why this is not obvious is because no one is asking for empathy, no one is asking for understanding. That’s why when you feel empathy in this scene you barely feel it unless your looking for it.

Now some may question if this is real empathy or just something fake. What has to be remembered though is that the emotion of empathy is felt by the viewer here. While the situation may be fake, an act, just some movie, emotion is not that simple. While watching any movie the view sets themselves into the story. Anything they feel is real in that time the movie is running. The feeling of empathy for this scene is far from fake and since it is almost hidden, it can’t anything but real. It is a subconscious empathy, one that can’t be faked even if one wanted too.

“A Time to Kill” is an intense movie, with many moments for empathy. Though the jail scene where Jake and Carl work out the payment, in Carl’s cell, is one of the few scenes were the only ones allowed to feel empathy are the viewers. Neither Jake or Carl can afford to be swayed by the other, which in my opinion makes viewers all the more empathetic towards the two. Making this scene one of the best instances of empathy invoked.