-- "To me education is a leading out of what is already there in [students'] souls.
[. .. Putting] in . . . something that is not there. . . is not what I call education. I call it intrusion."
Spark, Muriel. (source) Do you agree?
I don't really. And I believe there is a way to receive knowledge not as an intrusion or imposition: to open ourselves to learning and to interact with what we have learned.
This take-home exam aims to help you recollect and interact with what you have learned.

Postmodern City Texts: Toronto, Montreal and Taipei

2007 Spring
Final Exam

FinalVersion

* Instructions:
1. Four altogether: Altogether you should answer four questions, two from part I, and two from Part II.

2. Group and Individual work: You are encouraged to answer orally (with a written outline) one of the four questions with your group or some members from the group. If not, be ready to present your answers in class.
Note: A group's answer is to be presented orally and with
an outline which shows the group's job division. On your final exam file, please also indicate in a few sentences
which topic you have answered with your group and the part you are in charge of.

3. Fair Coverage: In your final exam answers, there should be a fair coverage of the important elements of our class.
In other words,
1) you should be engaged in
-- both theoretical discussions and fictional texts, and
-- the texts set in Taipei,Montreal and in Toronto.
2) You should avoid using the same text to answer different questions.
There will be grade deduction if you do not follow the two principles of fair coverage listed above.

II Essay Questions

I. Close Analysis: (3 paragraphs) choose two from the following film stills and excerpts to discuss
1) their meanings and how these meanings are presented;
2) their significance in their contexts, and
3) whether you can find examples similar to or contrary to them.

A. --> B

A. 1

They raced, swerved, fell and rolled on the ice to avoid each other but never let go of the rushes. When they collided sparks fell onto the ice and onto their dark clothes. This is what caused the howl of laughter--one of them stationary, struggling a fragment that had fallen inside his sleeve, yelling out for the others to stop.

Patrick was transfixed. Skating the river at night, each of them moving like a wedge into the blackness magically revealing the grey bushes of the shore, his shore, his river. A tree branch reached out, its hand frozen in the ice, and one of them skated under it, crouching--cattails held behind him like a flaming rooster tail. (In the Skin of a Lion 21)

A. 2

She waited. "Let me tell you a little parable about the power of education. On this continent at the present time there are approximately six million French Canadians--am I right?"

"Yes," I admitted. It depended on how you counted our lost brothers and sisters in the West, New England, and Louisiana. I'd just been reading about them, grieving for them, in my history class. My palms were sweating, my neck hairs rising.

"And there are approximately five million Jews on this continent," she said. She smiled briefly. "End of parable. Do you understand what I am saying about education? Do they teach you that in French school? Do you know how the minds of those people have been wasted? How they continued to be wasted? Have they taught you anything about Freud?"
"No," I whispered.
"Einstein?"
"Back in Pittsburgh."
"Karl Marx?"
I felt a terrible pressure in my chest. All that talk of the workers and the people and the candidates who never got elected. There had been a cartoon circulated in school on the eve of the latest election: Karl Marx in a Santa suit, with "Parti Liberal"* stenciled on his sack of toys.
"No!" I retorted.
"They're doing a splendid job of educating you, aren't they? You should be spending your time learning about science, politics, history and literature--"
"--And how to get electrocuted for being Russian spies?" I demanded. ("North" 224)

Note: 1) Parti Liberal--Quebec Liberal Party, traditionally supported Quebec federalism; i.e., Quebec remaining within the Canadian confederation. (source)
2) Blaise describes teachers, parents and other models as they blaming poverty, unemployment, drinking, violence to[sic] on English-speaking Canadians (who in Quebec are simply called "les anglais," even though they're not British) the Protestants & the Jews. (source)

A 3

當然你對劍潭所知全非如此，你五歲時，穿戴整齊的由父母第一次帶你去動物園兒童樂園，下了公共汽車，你哪兒也不想去，眼前現成一個又大又繁華的嘉年華廣場，其歡樂氣氛勝過三十年後你帶女兒去過的狄斯奈樂園所全力營造的，只覺滿天都是五彩氣球和吹泡泡的音樂，各式各樣小吃攤的香味和叫賣……

其後兩三年，山上清除神社遺跡，建起中國宮殿飯店，專門用來接待外賓，山下的違建因此被清除一空，好像馬戲團班子表演結束一夕遷移他地，要到二十年後你旅行開羅，坐在冷氣充足的觀光巴士裡，發現塞車的街頭有好多販賣了醜陋透的零食、塑膠玩具、……你看到一對深膚巨眼的年輕父母牽著小孩在認真的喂老闆這個多少錢，你又駭異又恍然大悟，原來他們遷徙到這兒來了，你臉貼在窗玻璃上，流戀不已。（古都 p.164）

A 4

..."Tell me, first, where you live."
"Are you crazy? Here on Oven Street. Where else?"
"How do you know?"
"How do I know? I'm here, ain't I? I pay my rent, don't I? I get my mail here, don't I?"
Marc shook his head patiently.
"None of that is evidence," he said. "You live here on Oven Street because it says so in my filing cabinet at City Hall. The Post Office sends you mail because my card index tells it to. If my cards didn't say so, you wouldn't exist and Oven Street wouldn't either. That, my friend, is the triumph of bureaucracy."
Louis walked away in disgust. "Try telling that to the landlady," he muttered. ("The Street that Got Mislaid" 66)

A 5

推測四︰不規則的立體

這塊天空如果存在 必然摘自童年遙遠的記憶 靠著一小塊失重的取樣 在漫步時緩緩灌溉培養 讓他長大 這塊天空曾經明亮地漂浮在田園的豐收上 不過年代已久 不得不褪成蒼白的 思考纖維 甚至老得泛黃了 邊緣是那麼模糊 一會兒膨脹 一會兒又自轉成一塊蒸散中的乾冰
	不斷冒煙 縮小 向核心處節節退卻 消散 。

(上班族的天空 p. 198)

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