3/24/2020 Nataly Dubovskaya

3/24/2020
Nataly Dubovskaya
Period 5
Blogger #5

Since we are now doing online learning, there were two aims for our english lesson.
Aim 1: How does Winston's time in the prole district elucidate the theme of "the importance of having knowledge about the past in order to understand the future"?
Aim 2: How does Orwell explicate connotation, denotation, and paradox through doublethink?

For the first lesson, there was a lot to discuss about the influence of the proles. In my opinion remote learning definetely took a toll on education because now there is no way of class discussion. Class discussions help me grasp information about the reading and the message more effectively than learning on my own. However I still wrote some thoughts down from the lessons today.

One question up for discussion in the first lesson was,"Explain and give your opinions on Winston's '2+2=5' example?'' This example Winston gives is his thinking of the control the inner party and big brother has over society. It has come to the point that people blindly go along with anything authorities say because there is no evidence to prove for or against their rules. I think that at this point it will be very difficult to fix the situation and go back to previous times of independance and certain freedoms. A question that came up for me during the reading is how do we know people are actually supporting Big Brother and not just masking their true beleifs to not risk getting vaporized? In addition, regarding the first aim, after visiting the prole district Winston realized that he can't actually say that the way of life is worse under BB than before because he has no evidence or memory of how it was like in the past.

In the second lesson we were given group work to use connotation and doublethink to perform a task. My group had to create a way to tell a friend whose car we borrowed, that we spilled a burrito all over the backseat in a positive way.  Collaborating with a group not in person was challenging and another setback of remote learning. We were still able to get our response together in the end: Guess what? You know how I had that whole interview thing today and I’ve been looking for a job for like forever and I’m kinda in a tough spot right now so I don’t really have a car and I borrowed yours so that I can go to that interview and finally get my life back on track? Well yeah man the interview went really well, I think I got the job but something happened on the way home. I bought this burrito to celebrate the interview and I accidentally dropped it in your car … there’s just a few stains you know but it’s really not too bad, barely even there actually, gotta squint to even see them. In all honesty I think the brown color of the seat  would actually compliment your eyes.So you should only be thankful. And hey, you’ll be smelling the lovely aroma of beans and cheese for months to come! 

Right now we are living through a very difficult time when we don't really know what's to come ahead. Personally, I don't know what to expect because there is always something new that comes up in the news. Along with that, remote learning is completely different from our regular curriculum, for students and teachers both, and it's taking time to adjust to. Right now is feels as if the world is shutting down, starting from schools, to international flights, and even state-mandated quarantine. All I can hope for is to be able to return to schools in safety and for the virus to start it's fall.