[Student Profile]
[Prompt & Essay]
Who does Sally sell her seashells to? How much wood can a woodchuck really chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Pick a favorite tongue twister (either originally in English or translated from another language) and consider a resolution to its conundrum using the method of your choice. Math, philosophy, linguistics... it's all up to you (or your woodchuck).
CAST: Anuraag, Douglas Adams, Alexandre Manette, Katherine Johnson, Karl Marx, Sherlock Holmes, Elizabeth Warren, Noam Chomsky, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, Milton Friedman, Abraham Maslow
All enter and are seated. Anuraag makes his way to the central podium and adjusts the microphone.
Anuraag (in a dramatic voice): Hello everyone! Gathered today, we have some of the most prominent figures from Science, Politics, Philosophy, Literature - you name it - all here to answer one riddle.
Faint murmurs...
Adams: The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?
Anuraag: (chuckles) I’m afraid it’s slightly less important than that. Here it is: “Susie works in a shoeshine shop. Where she shines she sits, and where she sits she shines.” As you can see, it’s a tongue-twister.
Manette (muttering): I’ve had enough of shoes for a lifetime! He shakily exits.
Holmes: What’s the question, exactly?
Anuraag: Analyze the situation. Who is Susie? Why is she working at a shoeshine shop? And, most importantly, how does this apply to real life? Address any other questions that arise in this discussion.
Johnson: Well, first of all, there seems to be an ‘iff’ relationship between shining and sitting.
Anuraag: True, the statement does strongly imply that Susie shines if-and-only-if she sits.
Marx: (sighs) Yet another example of the oppression of the proletariat.
The others look at him, confused. He sighs again.
Marx: She’s forced to shine shoes every time she sits down! Abysmal working conditions!
Anuraag: I hadn’t considered that…
Holmes: You hear, but you do not observe.
Warren: This is why we need to raise the minimum wage - to ensure that workers are paid fairly. $7.25 an hour is not a living wage!
Marx: Do we even know whether Susie is an adult?
Chomsky: This isn’t my area of linguistics, but the name ‘Susie’ is a diminutive, suggesting either a young age or some level of intimacy. Since we know nothing about Susie, it implies the former.
Anuraag: So we now have oppressive working conditions and child labor… that escalated quickly.
Mill: We shouldn’t draw conclusions without all the facts. What if Susie’s work is necessary to prevent younger siblings from being forced to work in harsher conditions? Or, if shining extends to shoe repair, what if the shoes she repairs protect the feet of hundreds? Wouldn’t her work be a good thing, then?
Johnson: Mathematically speaking, if professionally repairing a pair of shoes takes 30 minutes, even if she worked 40 hours a week, she would only be repairing 80 pairs of shoes, which wouldn’t make a significant enough difference to justify her poor working conditions.
Friedman: This is why I’ve always supported a negative income tax, which, like universal basic income, would provide for the poor without creating perverse incentives.
Kant: People should only act according to maxims that can be made universal. If we allow child labor in this instance, it cannot be moral unless we allow it in all cases, something which is clearly immoral. Good will is far more important than consequences.
Mill: By that logic, we would have to outlaw all forms of children working, from internships to household chores. It’s totally impractical!
Holmes: We need to draw some sort of distinction here.
All are in deep thought. Anuraag suddenly realizes something.
Anuraag: The key difference is exploitation. When children are exploited for their labor, the negative impacts range from decreased adult wages to severe physical and emotional harm. From a utilitarian standpoint, this is a net negative result, and so should be considered immoral.
Holmes: Logical.
Anuraag: And by the principles of Kantian ethics, exploitation is inherently immoral because it treats workers as means to an end instead of ends in themselves. Both rival theories, in this case, reach the same conclusion.
Warren: Let’s bring this back to Susie. Regardless of whether her employment is exploitative or not, she is unable to rest, seated. This needs to be addressed.
Chomsky: Technically, we don’t know that she isn’t able to relax while seated - she may choose to work continuously of her own volition.
Everyone looks at him incredulously
Marx: Are you suggesting that she feels fulfillment from shoe-shining?
Johnson (rolling her eyes): Yes, because girls derive such fulfillment from domestic tasks…
Maslow: Looking at my hierarchy, the shoe-shining does not satisfy physiological, safety, or belonging needs. For Susie to feel fulfillment from shoe-shining, it must either satisfy esteem needs or maximize her potential through self-actualization.
Anuraag: Which seems highly unlikely.
Maslow: It’s more likely that she is motivated by a wage, which would fulfill her basic physiological and safety needs.
Awkward silence…
Anuraag: Going back to the original question, how do we apply everything we have discussed to real life?
Holmes: Elementary, my dear Anuraag - we should look deeper and search for hidden meanings in our daily lives as well. After all, what started as an innocuous tongue-twister ended up as a discussion on child labor. Be more inquisitive and curious!
Warren: This was also a reminder that, despite the world’s progress in humanitarian issues, like child labor, we still have a long way to go as a society.
Friedman: Finally, the only reason we were able to fully explore this discussion was the different perspectives everyone contributed.
Anuraag: Excellent! That concludes today’s session. Thank you!
All exit