The Caste System: A Point of View

I made a presentation about this a few months ago where I basically explained what I think about caste system. It has been bothered me for a long time. However, as much as I am interested in history, I am in no way an expert or eligible enough to claim truth of what I am saying. Nevertheless though, I am a Hindu, have been affected by caste system, and do think a lot about it, so I guess I know what I am saying.

Let’s just ignore what happened in the society and history and just focus on what is dictated by the Vedas. The caste system the way people think it is was never mentioned; we do have Catur Varna though, which is division of people based on their duty in society. There were four groups people can fall into (think about it like Hogwarts houses): Brahman (scholars, teachers; intelligent people the bearer of knowledge), Kshatriya (warriors, soldiers, people in the government, ministers; basically brave people who fight for the country), Vaishya (businessman, vendors, traders; people with business skills and responsible for the economy), and Shudra (the rest; farmer, artists, sculptor, and other miscellaneous).  

It was long ago, so we can imagine that the society were pretty simple that every person can be roughly put into one of these categories. Since it was based solely on skills, it was not rigid at all. Vedas suggested this, and even without referencing to that, the existence of some important people definitely shows it.  The composer of Ramayana, Valmiki, was from a lower caste. Siddharta Gautama was also a Kshatriya (he was a prince) before became a wandering monk later in his life (Brahmin). Some mythological characters also exhibit the permissive nature of Varna system. Ravana was born to a Brahmin father before becoming a King of Srilanka, as well as Parashurama. On the contrary, Visvamitra was born a prince but became a Brahmin. If the so-called caste system was supposed to be that rigid, these stories would be prohibited to be told. 

As we all know, religion can say whatever, but how people apply it and what happens in society can be a whole other case. Yes, I am looking at you, all religions in the world. Just like the caste system; how come these divisions become a hierarchy then?  It was The British. The widely proven and accepted argument by modern scholars and historian is that the division started to grow in rigidity during the time of British colonial. The British were there to rule almost 1 billion of indigenous people, what’s better way to keep them in control other than not letting them have a sense of unity? What’s better way to destroy a nation for their benefit other than favoring one group while oppressing the other? They would not mess up with the Brahmin who was looked up to by a lot of people, and they also give a special treatment to the Kshatriya and Vaishya with whom they cooperate to exploit India. The rest is the Shudras; easy slaves and rough labor, right there. The British knew they can use the system for their benefit, and they made sure to keep it that way. 

Same thing happened in Indonesia, with the Dutch colony and their devide et impera policy. Well, it was more of putting one influential persona against the other, but a lot of tension also happened (a.k.a. created and exploited by the Dutch) between the patrician and plebeian. 

Well, that was the widely accepted theory, but I also have my argument. First of all, I present you the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

It is “a theory in psychology proposed by Abraham Maslow in 1943 paper ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’ in Psychological Review” (shameless Wikipedia copy-pasteing). This hierarchy is represented as a pyramid. The four bottom and biggest layers are the basic and fundamental needs, while the top layer is the need for self-actualization. Accordingly, the shape of the pyramid depicts how our basic needs are the ones that we have to fulfill first, most frequently and with the biggest amount, before we can even think about fulfilling the top ones.

In my opinion, this explain a lot of people’s behavior; from a student who can’t do her homework while hungry to a person in a third-world country who can’t give a damn about climate change with their children tailing them crying for food; from a feminist and animal right activist in Germany to a street vendor putting borax in his meatball in Indonesia. That also explains why arguments about climate change and gay rights are practically useless in Indonesia. I actually read a facebook comment using word ‘heteronormative’ one day and seriously I want to strangle that person; get your elitist argument out of Indonesia, our broken economy and starving street children ain’t got no time for that. 

Oh, and me, of course. I cannot think and write about statistical literacy if I don’t have caffeine in my system (IT IS BASIC NEED I SWEAR). 

But I pretty massively digress. Back to the point at hand, I strongly believe this is the root of the hierarchy. Religion, culture, tribes and nation may emerge and vanished only to re-emerge again throughout the history, but one thing that stays is our basic instinct as a human. I think what happened is that people simply had needs and they went a little overboard trying fulfill it, that is all. People liked being respected, being treated as special, being above others. When one a group of people being on the top part of the society and benefit from it, they will try to keep it that way. Similarly, people on the bottom may not like it, but if they are hungry or cold or unsafe, they do not care about that. I think that was what happen between the upper and lower caste back then; well, frankly speaking, that was happen between the upper and lower class of society everywhere and every period of time.

It was even worse because the Vedas and most of other scred text are not accessible to every people, only to the Brahmin, so it was really easy for them to twist the knowledge to satisfy their needs. It became really problematic because it happened on such a gigantic scale through decades that the faulty system became really solid and gradually was accepted as the correct one. And there, we have the caste system.

Seems familiar? Yes, because like I said before, it is human basic needs. Hierarchy happens everywhere, in every society, in every period of history - it is not only in India. India just have really fancy name of it called 'the caste system', so it is really easy for people to single that out. Our basic needs as a human, unfortunately, does not care about religion, regions, race, language – whatever (see Babel). Religion is the result of culture; it is the result of the higher levels of the hierarchy of needs (so many people are going to slap me for this). Unfortunately not all people are on this level of self-actualization, hence they ignore or modify it because they are still struggling with more basic needs, or even if they do follow it, they do it out of fear, which is the need for safety or reward, which is again, a basic need. 

What the hell, this is so philosophical I want to vomit.

Regardless though, this whole case of ‘religion can say whatever, but what happens in society is another case’ thing do happen across time and space as far as religion exist.  The oppression of women in Muslim countries, for example, which think is just the Arab culture, not the religion. Also the terrorism, gendercide, sexism, war, slavery – I can keep going on, but I think my point is clear. It is not about religion, guys, but more like social and historical phenomenon.  So if you want to attack Hinduism, leave out the caste system because it has nothing to do with it. Also, times change. Sudras are even richer than the Brahmin right now, and a lot of people can’t even be classified into only four groups so no one really care. And guess what, another hierarchy emerge, but it is based on clans instead of caste. Like I said, it is the basic needs; it is unavoidable, and it will keep happening. Just be sure to self-actualize yourself enough to not get caught in it.

I swear I'm gonna use the phrase 'precipice of annihilation' at least on once in my blog post.

Statistical Literacy: Reforming the Aim of Statistical Education

This video is a vignette of how statistics can be employed in a meaningful way. As a student who formerly struggle to like statistics, you have no idea how much this intrigue me. I believe the other end of the statistics teaching and learning spectrum, which in this case will be statistics teachers struggling to present statistics as interesting, will find this as intriguing as I do. 

I will be a total bore and start from defining statistics, which widely accepted as a science or practice that related with collecting, analyzing and infer from a large sets of data. The more organized a society is, the more important statistics will be, because certainly you cannot handle each individual data from each member of society separately. We need statistics for that; to collect, organize, and analyze the data as a whole, and from there making inference that gives us information about certain aspect of society. It can be economy, population or environment, just to name of view. 

Given the importance, one can say that statistics can be thought as a separate branch of knowledge. Which it is, but for some reason it gets overlapped a lot with mathematics because statistics, embroiling a lot of counting as it is, is certainly very mathematical. But where does statistics stand compared to mathematics? It is actually one of the five strands of mathematics, along with number sense, geometry, algebra, and measurement. Hence its taught in primary and secondary school as part of the mathematics curriculum. But statistics also stands out quite special because well, we have mathematicians and statisticians, but we don’t have calculust or geometrist … okay, this is just a joke of mine, but you gotta admit it makes quite a sense. Most of the non-teaching professions that employ math usually need math in the form of combined application of all the strands, with one or some fields being emphasized more than the other, but statistics have field of application that stand out by itself. In tertiary education, not all college majors have to take math, but statistics are usually taught because its importance for research. 

But I pretty massively digress. The point that I’m trying to make is that although statistics is part of mathematics, it is also stand out quite differently by itself. This by all means does not translate to it being the special snowflake; more of the opposite, to be honest. Mathematics is glamourized by the nerds as the science of logic and statistics is often pushed to the edge because it is thought to only consist of numbers (a lot of it) and counting. Counting a lot of numbers is boring, it gives you no mental satisfaction, and prone to frustrating mistakes. If students who like math think of it that way, how do you think the math haters gonna be. Me, for instance, although not a very accomplished Olympiad participant, am quite fond of math. I avoided statistics like plague, along with real analysis. Yet, although I looked at real Analysis with intimidation and fear, I admit I underestimate statistics a bit. I thought of it only as a matter of numbers and formulas and god it’s boring because I cannot see what I am doing.

Nonetheless, the blame is not on us the clueless child. The way statistics being taught traditionally focuses on the procedures and formulas, and fails to teach children to look at statistical problem holistically and derive meanings from it. This parochial way of learning apparently leads to misunderstanding and misconception in the adulthood. Some research actually reported a series of result from some psychological research that record how adult understand or misunderstand statistical ideas. This article also gives shorter illustration on how misinterpretation of statistical notion can be a disadvantage. Hence, the education stakeholders in some of the major countries in the world suggested reforming the aim of statistics education, which leads to the idea of statistical literacy. 

What is statistical literacy, you ask? I know, nice phrase isn’t it, I thought so too. Although there is no universal consensus about the definition of statistical literacy, Wallman (1993) gave a quite good definition of it which she wrote for the journal of American Statistical Association. Statistical literacy is “the ability to understand and critically evaluate statistical results that permeate our daily lives – coupled with the ability to appreciate the contribution that statistical thinking can make in public and private, as well as professional and personal decision.” 

Why is it important then? Well, one cannot deny that we live in a data and information laden world. Every day we are bombarded with percentage, census, polling result, graph and diagram, as well as sentences like “2 from 5 people choose Colgate” or “people with dilated pupils 77% more likely to be under influence of drugs”. Experts and advocates use statistics to strengthen their argument and to intimidate unknowing peasants. The misunderstanding and misconception I mentioned above shows quite clearly about how the failure in handling and being critical over information can affect us. Even if it does not do any harm, clearly grasping information better and knowing how to deal with it is needed for people to function efficiently as a citizen in society. Being statistically literate gives edge in personal and professional situation (mostly professional), for example impressing your employer or colleague. 

Now it is our responsibility as a teacher to create environment for students to learn statistics such a way that it is no longer a mere procedures, computation, and image, but also a way to make sense of the world.

BookFest Madness

So there is a book bazaar in Utrecht right now - the place is literally a huge warehouse with a sea of books inside being sold at alarmingly cheap price. I went a little crazy there - and this is not even my final form.

I got scared at my purchase halfway and had to put back half of the book I took. In the end I left with 7 books or so, while it could be around 20.

But I bought these!

Those are The Sand Box and The King Speech. The Sand Box is the book I thought Jarhead is based from - I saw the book and recognize David Zimmerman, the writer, but couldn't remember where. Then I read the summary and was like, oh yeah, this is Jarhead.  But apparently it is not. Oh well. Most of the book there were old books. I tried to find The Fault in Our Stars but failed. The King's Speech is, of course, the book The King's Speech is based from. The big one at the bottom is Time's most important photographs of all time - so proud of myself for recognizing almost half of the photographs in there. 100 points for general knowledge :D

Can't wait for my assignments to end so I ca devour all of these. Preferably ouside in the sun, when the weather is no longer crappy.

PISA 2009 Mathematics Framework

My Perfume Doubles As Mace

A boy sprawled next to me on the bus, elbows out, knee pointing sharp into my thigh.
He frowned at me when I uncrossed my legs, unfolded my hands
and splayed out like boys are taught to: all big, loose limbs.
I made sure to jab him in the side with my pretty little sharp purse.
At first he opened his mouth like I expected him to, but instead of speaking up he sat there, quiet, and took it for the whole bus ride.
Like a girl.

Once, a boy said my anger was cute, and he laughed,
and I remember thinking that I should sit there and take it,
because it isn’t ladylike to cause a scene and girls aren’t supposed to raise their voices.
But then he laughed again and all I saw
was my pretty little sharp nails digging into his cheek
before drawing back and making a horribly unladylike fist.
(my teacher informed me later that there is no ladylike way of making a fist.)

When we were both in the principal’s office twenty minutes later
him with a bloody mouth and cheek, me with skinned knuckles,
I tried to explain in words that I didn’t have yet
that I was tired of having my emotions not taken seriously
just because I’m a girl.

Girls are taught: be small, so boys can be big.
Don’t take up any more space than absolutely necessary.
Be small and smooth with soft edges
and hold in the howling when they touch you and it hurts:
the sandpaper scrape of their body hair that we would be shamed for having,
the greedy hands that press too hard and too often take without asking permission.

Girls are taught: be quiet and unimposing and oh so small
when they heckle you with their big voices from the window of a car,
because it’s rude to scream curse words back at them, and they’d just laugh anyway.
We’re taught to pin on smiles for the boys who jeer at us on the street
who see us as convenient bodies instead of people.

Girls are taught: hush, be hairless and small and soft,
so we sit there and take it and hold in the howling,
pretend to be obedient lapdogs instead of the wolves we are.
We pin pretty little sharp smiles on our faces instead of opening our mouths,
because if we do we get accused of silly women emotions
blowing everything out of proportion with our PMS, we get
condescending pet names and not-so-discreet eyerolls.

Once, I got told I punched like a girl.
I told him, Good. I hope my pretty little sharp rings leave scars.



by: theapplepielifestyle

Reflective Judgment: Concepts of Justification and Their Relationship to Age and Education

Kitchener & King

Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is the most referred to when it comes reasoning ability, but there is little discussion about the development of reasoning ability beyond adolescence. In 1977, King and Kitchener develop a seven-stage model of post-adolescent reasoning styles which is called “Reflective Judgment.” This model outlines the process of how a person’s reasoning ability develops over time, spread out in 7 sequential stages. Each stage represents different assumption of knowledge and reality, and how it affects the justification of beliefs. Lower stages are characterized by immense, unexamined dependence on an authority figure, and this develops into higher stages in term of its complexity, comprehensiveness, and ability to consciously reflect on one’s own beliefs. 

An initial test of this model was conducted previous to this study, employing a series of pilot interviews to 18 subjects between 18 and 35 years old. Each subject was presented a problem revolving around 6 intellectual topics, including scientific, religious and historical issues. They then proceed to give their opinions and defend it. The result of this initial study is 1) subjects’ responses could be scored at each of these 7 stages, and 2) older subjects score at higher stages that did younger ones. It was then followed by this study, which is intended to find out whether or not relative judgment is related to age and education, and if so, to what this differences might be accounted for.  To find out about the second question, four additional factors which are related to intellectual development were also tested. These factors are verbal ability, formal operation, socio-economic status and verbal fluency.

There are 60 subjects; 20 high school students, 20 college freshman and 20 graduate students, half of them are male and half of them are female. Each subject was tested on the five variables mentioned above.  The result for reflective judgment was that highschool students mainly scored between 2 and 4, college students scored between 2.5 and 5.5, and graduate students put themselves between 4 and 7. 

For the other 4 factors, meaningful differences between groups were found for verbal ability, socio-economic status and word count, while for formal operation, all groups were found to be more or less on the same level. To find out whether or not these differences are contributing factor to reflective judgment, analysis of covariance was then run with verbal ability, socio-economic status and word count act as covariate (held constant). Aside from verbal ability, for which the result for highschool and college students were almost equal, the result for the other groups on each covariates still shows significant differences. It was then followed by analysis of covariance for combining covariates, for which the result was more or less the same. 

The result for this study therefore can be concluded.  Reflective judgment is related to age and educational level; older and more educated individual tend to have a more complex and sophisticated way in justifying belief than their younger, less educated individual. This cannot be statistically accounted to the other factors related to intellectual development; even though verbal ability was found to be closely related to reflective judgment, differences of reflective judgment’s scores between groups cannot be solely accounted to this factor. It will be the task of future researcher to find out whether or not this is a result of uncovered, confounding trait, or that those variables merely covary within given population. 

Considering this is a study that judge, compares and rank people in term of their justification of belief, the information in this paper was presented very well without being insulting. Regarding the methods itself, the author did a quite extensive explanation on how the study is done, although more information is needed on the scoring protocol. However the sampling procedure creates a room for a debate since the age and education factors are confounded. It is questionable whether or not age and education affect it separately. To find out about that, the study will have to gather sampling which includes subjects in all age, in every educational level.  Unless the age limit of the subjects is set to be older, the study must include 18 years old graduate students, which is not impossible but the sample will not be statistically reliable. The author itself also provided explanation on why the confounding age and educational level are still reliable.

Further and more detailed information regarding this topic is provided in a presentation below.

Kitchener, K. S., & King, P. M. (1981). Reflective judgment: Concepts of justification and their relationship to age and education. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 2, 89-116.