Apocalypto from Mel Gibson

People may be astounded by the magnificence of Great Wall in China, or possibly be amazed at the appealing legend or science coincidence between the figures and fantastic theory numbers, however there did exist an old civilization of Mescoamerican Indian people - Maya, who are noted for their mathematics, astronomy, calender, and hieroglyphic writing system as well as elaborate and highly decorated ceremonial architecture, including temple-pyramids to worship the god of Sun, palaces and observatories, all built without metal tool.

Beyond all these splendid architectures, there were thousands of craftsmen or civilians died for their greatness. Such movie just represents both the prosperous and brutal aspects of Maya through the eyes of a clever and full of responsibilities young man living within a peace and happy clan, who was caught by other clansman being sacrifice to ease the anger of the god of Sun. Through the journey from wild jungle to the big city, it can be observed that the great differences between the jungle clan and the Maya society - social division of labor, social hierarchy system and the industry of dye and pottery. Then people might wander what cause the declination of Maya.

The people use the hot blood and jumping heart of other clansman as the sacrifice to the god to avoid epidemics and impetrate harvest, but the true reason lies in those mountains of rotten dead bodies from the ceremonies and the over disafforestation to break the balance of enviornment. What they do is just to intensify the disaster, but that is part of their culture immersing in every part of soul When the mother dipping the blood of body just roiling down from the top of pyramid and anointing it on the head of newborn baby, all the unreasonable things becomes sensible at such moment. That is the special power of belief and religion. Then we may ponder carefully what is the effect of belief and religion toward the current people or society.

Below is there a short story from the cacique of clan in the movie, which tells the reason from one other side. Many people would lay the blame of war to the aggressive nature or the necessary of survival. But they tell the truth? Or the truth turns out to be the lust of power, money or other material life.

And a Man sat alone,
　　Drenched deep in sadness
　　
　　And all the animals drew near to him and said:
　　We do not like to see you so sad...
　　"Ask us for whatever you wish and you shall have it."
　　
　　The Man said: "I want to have good sight."
　　The vulture replies:"You shall have mine."
　　
　　The Man said:"I want to be strong."
　　The Jaguar said:"You shall be strong like me"
　　
　　Then the Man said:"I long to know the secrets of the earth."
　　The serpent replies:"I will show them to you."
　　
　　And so it went with all the animals.
　　
　　And when the Man had all the gifts that they could give...
　　...he left.
　　
　　Then the owl said to the other animals:
　　"Now the Man knows much and is able to do many things...Suddenly I an afraid."
　　
　　The deer said:"The Man has all that he needs."
　　"Now his sadness will stop."
　　But the owl replied:"No."
　　"I saw a hole in the Man..."
　　"Deep like a hunger he will never fill...
　　It is what makes him sad and what makes him want."
　　
　　"He will go on taking and taking...
　　Until one day the World will say:
　　I am no more and I have nothing left to give."

School Reform

Though China has the reputation of strong basic education especially in Mathematics, the US government seems try to jump to higher grade by the means of school reform. When TNCLBA(The No Child Left Behind Act) gave a sign to require the states to educate impoverished children up to the same standards as their affluent counterparts, in exchange for federal aid. It also shows the deliberate attempt to reinforce reform by the Congress, which began in 1990's when the education system to introduce standards-based accountability systems that quickly showed promising achievements.

According to the part annual survey of Education Week magazine about student achievement which turned out that the student performance made a good progress, especially for fourth-grade math, which had gone up nearly two grade levels since 1992.

Due to the decision and deliberate attempt by the government, the achievement should cover all of the country. However, things did not go as planned. In the comment of The New York Times - " the achievement gains have fallen far short of what Congress hoped of when it passed the landmark federal law and also far short of what the country needs to keep pace with its economic rivals", it wholly gives out the attitude of majority to education system.

There are definitely lots of problems in it. First of all, race is still the cliche but also the most biggest problem, quite huge distance between Black, Hispanic and White, impoverished and rich, though there had been apparently gains of Black and Hispanic and the low-income fourth graders had risen at nearly three times the national average, which had substantially erased the while-minority achievement gap. Another problem is the geographic variation which might be the reasons of different teaching faculties and equipment in different states. And this quite reminds us about the contemporary appearance of achievement and worries about such impermanence success would evaporate soon.

And the journalist also had his foresight - " with the easy achievement gains easily already behind us, the next level of progress will require rigorous systemic change." The National Assessment of Educational Progress also makes its effort to enforce the system of assessment of teaching which will infect their payment to urge highly qualified teachers to fulfill their duties. And it also tries to find out new method to support and transform failing school, beyond labeling them failures and which would be considered as inspiring elements of better performance earlier.

After talking about the school reform in US, let's face the situation of Chinese education system. Though there are many celebrities coming from abroad talking their observation and experiences about the huge divergence between east and west, and give their suggestions and solutions toward current system, however I don't quite get it whether it is because of the self-deficiency of current system or the decisions are out of fully consideration, the outcome seems not very directly. Maybe the deficient of education resources make the problem complicated and many teachers confining themselves within the restriction of exam framework, they can't let the students truly do according to their interests and features. We really look forward to the truly reformation of education, which is key for the future progress for a developing country, no science achievement means nothing to a fast developing giant.