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Leighora Avery

Professor William Reader

ENG. 111. W01

22nd, April 2023

Individualism and being open to change

This semester of college I took an ENG 111 class, over the course of this class we have had 4

conversation essays to write along with 3 articles given to us to use for each one. These articles are all

different in many ways but also have many common themes among them. During this essay as I was

annotating each article I noticed a common theme to be Individualism and being open to change. In the

first anchor reading we received titled “ The Politics of Remediation”” by Mike Rose which was a

reading based on several different students' learning problems, and how they worked on overcoming

them. Many of these students were very different from each other but we can see when learning about

their troubles. They each had individual ways of dealing with these problems and what helped each of

these students. The second anchor reading titled, “Transformative Learning: Theory to practice” by Jack

Mezirow talks about how you make your own decision and think for yourself. This article also talks about

how you need to have your own beliefs, feelings, and values and not those of others around you such as

friends and family. This reading also discusses ways we think for ourselves. Lastly, a reading titled

“Cosmopolitanism” by Kwame Anthony Appiah which is about how there are many different ways for

people to live in society and if we are open to everyone's ideas, beliefs and values we can live in a

judgment free world while we all may not understand things others.

Growing up it can be hard to form your own opinions, values and beliefs against certain things in

society. As someone who grew up with a religious and a conservative family with certain beliefs and

values it was hard to realize what my own were. It was hard for me to realize that even if my beliefs were

different from those around me it's okay to be who I am and I don't have to follow in my family's

footsteps like everyone else did. Another common theme I noticed is being open to change, which can be
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hard for many people including myself, knowing when you need to change something whether it's the

way you act, feel, see certain things, or the people around you. Being open to change is a very important

aspect in life today. After reading each anchor reading I have noticed that each author points out the

importance for peoples openness to change.

Being yourself in a world full of people who have different values, beliefs and feelings can be hard

there's people out there who don't accept others due to different opinions. Starting off with an article titled

“Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice '' by Jack Meizrow in this anchor reading he mentions the

importance of thinking for yourself and forming your own beliefs, feelings and values which he calls

“Autonomous thinking” He states that “But in contemporary societies we must learn to make our own

interpretations rather than act on the purpose, beliefs, judgements, and feelings of others''(5) Meizrow is

saying in the society we live in with many different belief systems learning how to act on yours and not

someone else's such as your parents, or friends is important. Sticking up for what you believe in is

important for society, if your friends have different beliefs going along with them just because it doesn't

make sense in any way. Relating back to an article by Mike Rose titled, “The Politics of Remediation”

Rose, states “When I was growing up, I absorbed an entire belief system- with its own characteristic

terms and expressions-from the worried conversations of my parents, from the things I heard and saw on

South Vermont, from the presets fairy tales”(42) he talks about his own struggles with developing his

own beliefs, values and feelings due to what he saw and heard. His own struggles with forming himself

was due to the beliefs of those closest to him. He goes on with “That there was one true religion. I had

rigid notions about social roles, about the structure of society, about gender, about politics”(42) Appiah in

“Cosmopolitanism” would reply to Mike Rose in a way relating to him expanding his knowledge on those

he is around. He should take the work to learn why people do what they do, or believe what they believe

because everything has a meaning to it. People are different depending on the society you are in and that's

what makes everyone themselves. The statement in “Cosmopolitanism” that leads me to believe this

would be Appiah's response, is “Will enter in a society and make judgements all over the place

immediately without having done the work to figure out what's going on and to understand why people
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are doing what they're doing, what the meaning is of what they're doing, what the effects of it really are in

the minds and the lives of people who are there. But if you are engaged with a place and you do

appreciate and understand those things''(Appiah,25) he would say that Rose needs to not judge others if

he has not done anything himself to figure out why people are doing what they are doing. I think it is very

important to understand the meanings things have for people from a different background than me. To be

able to analyze what's the same versus what's different. Understanding other people's values, beliefs, and

feelings and analyzing them in different ways will be important as I further my education

Many families have siblings, parents, maybe aunts or uncles that have different beliefs about

things such as culture, rights, sexuality, or mental health. No matter where you go, every single individual

will have different values, beliefs and feelings. In “Cosmopolitanism” by Anthony Kwame Appiah states

“There isn't only one good or best way for humans to live, and therefore you have to have a deep

appreciation for the way a form of life works before you can disguise what's good or bad in it” Appiah, is

saying that there is no singular way for individuals to live, there are many different cultures, beliefs,

feelings and values out there. Everyone lives differently, everyone has different outcomes to their life

story but in the end that's what makes everyone unique makes them who they are. We can relate this back

to the article titled “The Politics of Remediation” by Mike Rose. Mike Rose talks about 3 struggling

students, and what helped them succeed in their education as he was tutoring them. Each of these students

had similar problems but each in their own way, these three students each came from different

backgrounds and had different solutions to their problems. Mike Rose states “Martia was adrift in a

conversation she didn't fully understand; she offended without knowing why”, due to Martias background

information on writing she didn't fully understand how to do this yet. He then talks about a student named

Lucia who had struggled with a reading she was given in class due to beliefs of her own. He states “A

frame of mind or traditions or set of assumptions that was represented by a single word, phrase, or

allusion was either unknown to her or clashed dramatically with frames of mind and traditions of her

own''(34) Lucia, a students who majored in psychology because she has experience with mental illness

from her brother who had struggled her whole life but in the reading she was given to read states that
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there is no such thing as mental illness. Due to Lucia's own beliefs and feelings she couldn't get this

passage through her head to understand where Szaszs was coming from. Mike Rose states “Lucia's

working-class Catholicism made it difficult for her to go along with, to intellectually toy with, the

comparison of Freud to God”(35) This statement made me think of the article “Cosmopolitanism” by

Kwame Anthony Appiah, when Appiah states “One kind of person who is open to strangers, open to the

world, accepting in a way that abandons all judgment”(Appiah, 25) Lucia instead of clashing with

Szaszas beliefs and his opinions in his writing she should've been open to the idea that mental illness isn't

a thing even if she has her own feelings over this. Being open to everyone's opinions, values and beliefs

will help you live in a nonjudgmental world where individuals feel free to be themselves. Even though

Lucia has her own beliefs she needs to learn how to take others into consideration, and not be

judgemental towards them. Appiah would tell Lucia to open up her mind to the beliefs of others with no

judgment, and to be an open minded person even while she has formed her own beliefs, values and

feelings because he understands the importance of being non judgmental.

There are many ways that these connections can be useful to me. As I continue my education at

Mid Michigan, and continue moving forward to being the person I want to become. As I made

connections throughout these three anchor readings I have thought of ways these connections can connect

back to me in some way. In my second body paragraph, I mention the need to form your own beliefs,

values and feelings in today's society. Rose struggles with forming his own beliefs, and Appiah would tell

Rose to expand his knowledge, and learn more about the society he is involved with now because it may

have a meaning Rose has no idea about. While forming my own beliefs has been a challenge i've been

faced with before, just like many others have I would say expanding your knowledge is not easy at first,

it's hard to know where to start but it's important to try and understand that everyone is different, from

culture, education, mental health, race, or sexuality but there is no point in going out of the way to judge

others based on what they do. If society learned to expand their knowledge instead of judging people

daily, think about where we could be? What differences would be made? Forming my own beliefs,

feelings and values as I move forward towards who I want to will lead me to learn who I am.
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Lucia a student who was struggling and was being tutored has a hard time understanding Szaszas

beliefs due to her own, while she was majoring in psychology because of the experience her brother had

with mental illness as she grew up, Szaszas point of view was different he wrote a passage stating mental

health was not a thing. While Lucia did form her own beliefs over time, it's important for people to know

how to take others' beliefs into consideration even if we have no clue how to understand them fully. This

is something that will be highly important as I continue my career in Social Work where I will come in

contact with many different beliefs, values, and feelings that I could have no familiarity with. Social

Workers every single day witness or hear something new and the way that you react to that is based on

how open minded you are towards other people or towards change and the things they value, feel and

believe in today's world.

To conclude, in ENG 111 I was able to broaden my knowledge on many different topics, starting

this class I was worried about the conversation essays but overtime I have learned how to write in

conversation, and write without going off topic.There are many common themes shown throughout these

anchor readings we were given throughout the semester, the biggest one which was individualism which

is important in society. If everyone had the same feelings, values and beliefs we would never learn new

things and everything would always be the same. Being open to change is something that doesn't come

easy to some people, but knowing when you need to change certain things such as your actions, words,

values or feelings is the key to growth.

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Works Cited:

Appiah, Kwame. “Chapter 6/Cosmopolitanism.” Kwame Anthony Appiah, pp. 20–35.

https://moodle.midmich.edu/pluginfile.php/4600534/mod_resource/content/1/Appiah%20Cosmo

politanism.pdf

Mezirow, Jack. “Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice.” New Directions for Adult and

Continuing Education, pp. 5–12.

Rose, Mike. “The Politics of Remediation.” Conversations in Context: Identity, Knowledge, and

College Writing. Kathryn Fitzgerald, et al., eds. Heinle & Heinle, 2004, pp. 32-45.

https://moodle.midmich.edu/pluginfile.php/4600494/mod_resource/content/1/Mike%20Rose

%20The%20Politics%20of%20Remediation.pdf