Animal Farm-- Squealer's speech in Ch. 5

[Spoilers ahead for Animal Farm. Be careful. ]

In chapter five, Napoleon unleashed his dogs to chase after Snowball, driving him out of Animal Farm. Trusty Squealer came by to put the animal's doubts at rest by stating,
"I trust that every animal here appreciates the sacrifice that Comrade Napoleon has made in taking this extra labour upon himself. Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure! On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"

Now, there's something fishy about his reasoning here. In Animalism, all opinions should be regarded equal to other opinions. After all, isn't that what all animals being equal means? However, this directly contradicts Squealer's following sentences by essentially saying that other animal's opinions will be disregarded in case they make the "wrong decisions". According to the logic here, Napoleon is the one leading the farm and is therefore most qualified for making decisions.
I myself am not too impressed with the reasoning here but I must admit that the effect of manipulation Squealer covers over the animals is well done.

Those poor animals...

What makes a leader?

Let's see here, what makes a good leader? Is it intelligence? In my opinion, no. While intelligence is needed  to critically think and analyze how to deal with situations, Basing leadership on simply how clever they are might yield disappointing results. First off, it depends on what kind of intelligence they have. I myself make no claim to understand intelligence in the slightest, but there has been theorized to be multiple forms of intelligence by others in the past. 

A good leader should be empathetic to others and an excellent listener and thinker. Good social and verbal skills would be a plus.

In my group, I'm almost ashamed to say that since we didn't know what being a leader entailed, we simply selected Vinh, who eagerly volunteered to be the leader.

Question of the Day + Class' report of December 3, 2013

Class report of December 3, 2013!

I was chosen to be one of the three 'student leaders of the day' and two of the tasks that needed to be rationed out was to write the daily report of today's session on your blog and to volunteer the 'Question of the Day' that correlates to our lesson.
[If you want to skip this great wall of text and jump to the answering the question of the day, then go for it. Sorry for writing so much but the board did say "detailed"... ]


The class day started out with Saurabh holding the door open so everyone to enter. That was really kind of him. After we were all seated down, Miss Kritzeck, our teacher, had a discussion with our class about the act of opening doors open for others. Do you think we should do so? Is it right? If someone doesn't acknowledge your gesture do you feel unappreciated and/or angry? After a few responses from students, it turned out that most did not notice that the door was held open for them.
[Which, in my humble opinion, I think is fine. People are occupied and might not notice everything with so much going on. I do "acts of kindness" (--as Miss K. puts it--) for other people. Not for me. ]

Then she directs the question as to why she's making the student leader holds the door open for everyone. Is it to build a sense of community? The conversations deviate into students making attempts at naming everyone in the classroom. Privithi just nearly made it; she was so close! Yet lack of luck made it so that she messed up at around the last people left.

Miss Kritzeck talked about third period being very displeased with this new rule and all the students were "up in arms" protesting passionately about why they shouldn't have to do this. Raeek too opposed this decision and constructed arguments as to why third period may be upset toward this new development. Most were sound however at his last point he said something that none of us could comprehend very well. Sounds of  "huh?" were erupting across the room. Miss Kritzeck followed up by saying that Raeek's "point" was not even a point. She then apologized to the people sitting at his table (that would be Valerie, Shreya, and Saurabh) for having to deal with him. [T-that was a bit cruel...]

Miss K further asked our opinions as to what opening doors for our class might have to do with Animal Farm. There were plenty of well thought out and unique interpretations of it. I was impressed by one saying that opening doors for others might be a symbol of power. Once they're in a classroom whose door was opened up by you, they're under your control and they know it. It was sort of like "Hey! You're under my influence now. Just letting y'all know."

Afterwards we stamped our last night's homework and wrote the definitions of the vocabulary words given from the study guides chapter 1-4. Our homework today is to make sure you fully understand chapter 1-4 of Animal Farm and to finish the study guides if you're still not done. Bring your ID cards tomorrow so we can finally check out the books. Also, remember to add Miss Kritzeck's blog on to your Reading List to keep in touch with her.



Now here goes the Question of the Day. When someone does something generous to a stranger without any prompting, do you think that the stranger is obligated to at least acknowledge the gesture? Why or why not?
Be honest, here! I'm curious as to what you think.