AN EXAMPLE OF CREATING AN IDEA CARD

A student is researching Honor Crimes (murdering women for perceived violations of social ethics such as sex before marriage). She is trying to propose a solution for her thesis. 

PROCESS:  The student has the following information on several (quote) note cards.  As she reads the note cards, she realizes how complex and deep this issue may be.  She thinks her readers need to view her proposals in the context of how hard it is to change culture.  After reading the quotes several times, she jots down her analysis on an idea card.

“A Tunisian Intellectual on The Arab Obsession with Vengeance” Reform in the Arab and Muslim World (Special Dispatch), 4 May 2003, No. 499, Page 2: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD49903

Tunisian  intellectual Al-'Afif Al-Akhdar analyzed and criticized dominant values in the Arab world. . . The culture of tribal vengeance haunts... not only in our relations with the other but also our relations with each other, between Arab countries and within each country, from honor crimes [i.e. murder of women] to tribal and factional strife. Rightly, Muhammad Hasannain Haikal(7) called the 20 years of war between the Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya and Islamic Jihad organizations and the [Egyptian] police 'the blood vengeance war between the police tribe and the Islamist tribe.”

"This deep-rooted culture of tribal vengefulness in the [Arab] collective
consciousness is a fundamental driving force. [This driving force] has
transmuted this consciousness into a fixated, brooding, vengeful mentality,
instead of transforming [that kind of culture] . . . and adapt it to the requirements of the time, as did Japan in the aftermath of its unprecedented defeat in the history of mankind in 1945."

Idea card                                                                    “A Tunisian Intellectual . . .” p 2

Comparing cultural change to Japan after the A-bomb

Al-'Afif Al-Akhdar has authority= Tunisian  intellectual, studies culture

 culture of tribal vengeance”.= “dominant value”

from honor crimes to state-to-state relations

compares change need to that of Japan after A bomb

So how fast can Arab society change?  My ideas don’t have the impact of an A-bomb---it might be realistic to recommend slow and gradual results/expectations

Here is what a paragraph in her paper may look like if she used her idea card in combination with her quote cards

Tunisian  intellectual Al-'Afif Al-Akhdar has analyzed what he calls the “culture of tribal vengeance”.  He says revenge is such a “dominant value” in the Arab world, it effects relations between people as well as relations between Arab groups and relations between Arab countries.  He cites honor crimes as one example.  He cites the 20-year “blood vengeance war between (Egyptian) police” and their political adversaries as another.  He compares the magnitude of cultural change needed in Arab society to the change that took place in Japanese society after 1945.  (Tunisian Intellectual 2.)  Since nothing of the magnitude of an atomic attack is prodding change in the Arab world, we can only expect the changes to be slow and gradual. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOUR PAGES OF SAMPLE NOTE CARDS: SUPPORT FOR NOTECARD VARIETY PACKET DUE THURSDAY OCTOBER 23

1.      TWO idea cards: one word processed, one hand written

2.      TWO quote cards: one hand written and one word processed that is copied and pasted from the original source

3.      TWO paraphrased cards: one hand written on binder paper and one hand written on a 3 x 5 card

4.      ONE summary card using any medium you chose

ALL CARDS MUST HAVE CITATION* AND SUBJECT HEADING (CORRESPONDING TO OUTLINE SUBTOPICS)

*except idea cards (your thinking is the citation)

 

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