Richard III: The Man and his Ideas.

Sat, 26 Jun 2010
2 min read
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I know some of you are still confused about the characters and the action in the play, so I’m going to share some web resources with you, which I hope will provide you with more guidance in your study of Richard III.

What’s important is that you invest some time and effort into reading all the material including your text. You must also actively re-read your materials and refer to them continuously e.g. refer to the family trees as you read the history. This will help you make the connections which you need to better understand the play.

If you do this diligently and in a disciplined fashion, I guarantee that you will see the academic pay-off sooner than later.

  1. Student Guide to the Play.
    This Insight Text Guide may be a six-page preview but I think it will help to clarify some of your doubts.

  2. A Brief History of Richard III and the War of the Roses.
    I covered this in my introductory lecture, which can be found on Moodle along with notes for revision. If you feel that you need more background context/information, you can find it here:

    • You Can’t Tell the Players without a Scorecard.
      This is a simplified history which is quite different from the action in the play. Please bear this in mind when you read this article.
    • Richard III – A Man and his Times
      Another summarised history, which again is very different from the play we are studying. I’d like you to read this for insight into writing style; the tone of this article differs from the previous as it tries to dissuade the reader from believing the traditional portrayal of Richard III.
  3. Family Trees.
    Last but not least, many family trees which you must refer to when you read the above material or the play, so that you can attempt to map the interactions between each character, or at least differentiate one similarly-named character from the other. A gentle reminder: there is also a Plantagenet Family Tree on p. 262 of your text.

The Effort Effect.

Tue, 27 Apr 2010
2 min read
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Who said 'can't'? Someone else is doing something someone else said was impossible. Try trying.

According to a Stanford psychologist, you’ll reach new heights if you learn to embrace the occasional tumble.

(via)

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This was quite meaningful for me because of two portions, one of which was this:

Such zest for challenge helped explain why other capable students thought they lacked ability just because they’d hit a setback. Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a while—so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. Dweck realized … that the difference lay in the kids’ goals. “The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something,” Dweck says, and “learning goals” inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than “performance goals.”

It’s helped me to realise why I took a certain something too seriously – I had been too focused on performance as opposed to learning, considering the stage I was/am at. I guess it was also, in part, due to mismanaged expectations. But better to learn this later than never.

The second thing which I found meaningful was this:

Dweck’s study showed that praising children for intelligence, rather than for effort, sapped their motivation. But more disturbingly, 40 percent of those whose intelligence was praised overstated their scores to peers. “We took ordinary children and made them into liars,” Dweck says. Similarly, Enron executives who’d been celebrated for their innate talent would sooner lie than fess up to problems and work to fix them.

Am going to start saying ‘good effort’ instead of just ‘good’ from now on!