Outcome II (Integrating Ideas) – Be able to integrate their ideas with others using summary, paraphrase, quotation, analysis, and synthesis of relevant sources.
This learning outcome is focused on text engagement, on your ability to represent the relevant “conversation” between texts, and on your ability to position yourself in that conversation.
In writing this research paper, we came across the perfect opportunity to be able to integrate authors’ ideas into our own work. After reading Kwame Anthony Appiah and his piece “Making Conversation” and Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better”, we were able to somehow weave parts of their ideas together and relate them to change. Appiah stresses on “Cosmopolitanism” in his piece, and many of his ideas revolve around this concept. In reference to Cosmopolitanism, Appiah says, “It begins with the simple idea that in the human community, as in national communities, we need to develop habits of coexistence: conversation in its older meaning, of living together, association” (p. 71). Regardless of the local tribe people come from, Cosmopolitanism encourages us to create formal ties to all people, in order to understand their beliefs and practices. Having this understanding will help eliminate that nonstop thought of negativity we have living in our brains at all times, and ultimately, put an end to the judgment that is so evident in the world around us.
Dan Savage stresses the importance of time in relation to change in “It Gets Better”. He says, “What a simple and powerful truth. Things get better– things have gotten better, things keep getting better– for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people” (p. 427). This is something you realize if you’ve allowed time to heal from actions in the past, but Savage’s movement is here to emphasize that if you are in the midst of tough times, time is the most important thing you need. Appiah highlights the same idea when he says, “The recent history of America does show that a society can radically change its attitudes —and more importantly, perhaps, its habits—about these issues over a single generation. But it also suggests that some people will stay with the old attitudes, and the whole process will take time” (p. 81). The slow process of change can be advanced by those willing to fight for change, and with enough people ready to take action, change is well within the range of possibilities in all aspects of the world.
