• By German Anitua Azkarate
  • Rating:( 2853 votes )

We are in the need of thousands and thousands of JACK HARPER.....s among us

Late June and early July is the time of year where I usually have two days culminating a week of preparations. These are two full days back to University and where I have the opportunity to talk and meet the concerns of young people between the ages of 24 and 28.

This small break from customer suits me well because I take the week to put into perspective the work done since this time last year and see how has been the year both personally and professionally.

This year has been a lot like the last 3 years in relation to issues that concern the youngsters. However, I have noticed that this year those same concerns have been even more pronounced.

After so many years of our universities educating, I still find it amazing how the students lower their heads and prepare to write all firmly and concentrated as every time I rise my voice and say, "Attention!, a possible exam question is about to come". Despite the years, and I do not pretend this article to be interpreted as a criticism of our university educational model, since all have their own drawbacks, but would argue the fact that despite everything we still encourage learning by studying concepts that flow from a single source, unlike other models in which the reading of the opinions from various sources on a specific issue is encouraged to the students, and this reading creates their own knowledge. The difference is in generating clones of ideas or Jack Harper ... s.

Just for the landscapes anyone should be encouraged to see the film "Oblivion". A film that puts us in the year 2077, and where 60 years ago the Earth was attacked by aliens who destroyed the Moon initially. Mankind won the war, but half the planet was destroyed by earthquakes, tsunamis, and all human beings survivors were evacuated to Titan, one of Saturn's moons as they had to use nuclear arsenals during the war and land was contaminated.
The film actor Tom Cruise plays Jack Harper, a former commander of NASA, and currently coach of drones, lives with Vika Olsen (Andrea Riseborough) in a space platform, where they both work, through advanced technology, monitoring the skies, and, in his case, also patrolling every day Earth destroyed, reporting their progress to their superiors in the Tet (a kind of space station in Earth orbit); They lead an idyllic existence. However, Jack has flashes of memories, before the war, where a beautiful young stranger appears, which finds it incomprehensible.

I would not say anymore about the movie because you can Google it and find the synopsis of it; but toward the end of the film and having been helped several times by Malcolm, played by Morgan Freeman, Jack enters the Tet where from the small spacecraft he is piloting sees replicas of him to thousands. That's when he confirms his suspicions that many Jacks have preceded him in the past, and the destination is prepared so that many others will follow him. But something was different in him to the rest of the jacks.

When sitting in class my students receive each a document with 107 slides in a PowerPoint format. However, at the beginning of the class I also ask them to take out an A4 blank page, where they will write on all those key aspects of the class. At the end of 4 hours of class the A4 pages are all different, each student has written different words and phrases all on different parts of the folio. Now everyone is Jack Harper, a little more.

If we are born as unique why do we endeavour to limit this individuality of reasoning of our youth?

Let us try to change all a little more to create more Jack Harper ... .s; but not the cloned Jack.


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