Hello to Students who happen to want to take a moment to read my brainstorming for your Essay 2.

I've been looking around the web, using the search terms: Iraq & perspective. This has proved interesting; most sites I get still lean left, e.g. progressive. I'm interested in gathering a variety of perspectives, so that you can work with a view that you are interested in, perhaps one that is different from your own.

Remember that I'm defining perspective as that place from which you view things--U.S. citizen (or not), age group, male or female, from a family with views supporting or opposing the current political agenda in Iraq, etc., rather than opinion.

In other words, it's easy to have an opinion, but it's much harder to listen to, investigate, and try to interpret or analyze someone else's perspective. Actually, I suppose it's impossible--we can ultimately only see from our own very unique point of view, in a sense, but we can try to think about another's perpsective without putting up a defensive barrier formed out of our pre-determined opinion.

Questions: What does it mean to have a perspective, and to know what forces shape and color that perspective? How can we listen to, examine, investigate another, especially differing, perspective without our own opinion or view creating an immediate defense?
I would like students to use this opportunity--the "opportunity" of this essay--to find and use reliable sources (including the ones that we have experienced together--the Vets against the War talk; Gunner Palace, Iraq in Fragments-- investigate them and be able to write something of an analysis as well as perhaps a response. Just as we can look at what informs our own views of what's going on in Iraq, we can ask what informs others' views.

A colleague asked me: "Do you think you are actually making a dent in students' perceptions of what "perspective" is?

Parting thoughts: When we find a source, such as the one I found on forbes.com saying "The Best War Blogs," we have to ask questions. "Who says they're the best?" Forbes... "Who/what is Forbes? What perspective do they represent? What criteria did they use to decide on 'the best'?"