What's New at Kyoto NHK ESS?

新年明けましておめでとうございます。
旧年中は大変お世話になり、本当にありがとうございました。
本年もどうぞよろしくお願い致します。

さて、早速ですが12月のニュースレター報告をさせて頂きます。

【Practice Report】
12/4
Mr.Sugiuchi "New Year"
出席者：22名
（New Comer1名:Mr.Kobayakawa）

12/11
Mr.Tanaka "Where do you recommend in Japan?"
出席者：16名

12/18
Mr.Nonaka "Jewish quotes"
出席者：29名
(New Comer 3名:Ms.Tanaka, Ms.Uramoto, Ms.Hayashi)

12/25
Mr.Yamamoto "Let's look back on the year 2010"
出席者：26名
(New Comer3名:Mr.Sugimura, Mr.Kawakami, Mr.Oishi)

【Topic】
昨年度は色々とご協力頂いたり、ご迷惑をおかけしたりと、周りの皆様に助けて頂いた一年でした。
本当にどうもありがとうございました。

早いもので今年度のスタッフ業務もあと三ヶ月、あっという間の一年となってしまいそうです。
最後まで走りきっていきたいと思います。
イベントも来週のNew Year Partyで終わり。
参加してくださる皆さんが楽しめるよう、頑張りたいと思います。

さて、今年のESS始めは今週末の1月8日からです。
いつもどおり、お寺でお会いしましょう。

Presenter: Mr. Sugiuchi
Genre: Talk
Title: New Year's Resolution

Description:
Make groups consist of 4 to 6 people as usual.
Share your new year's resolutions with your group members.
If you remember your year 2010's resolutions, please introduce as well.

Presenter: Ms. Takesue

Genre: Talk

Title: Share your childhood memories.

Description:

1. Make some groups of 4-6members.

2. I will give you a sheet with some hints of the practice and a blank one to write down.　

Hints：

What type of child you were, active or quiet? Tomboy or bully?

How many siblings did you have and where did you stand in them?

How did your parents treat you? Let you alone or meddle with you?

What were your favorite TV programs or books and did they have influence on you? How?

Where did you spend time for fun and what kind of play did you enjoy most?

Tell us about your friends you played with most in those days.

Tell us about your memorable events.

Were you an athletically gifted child or had rather slow reflexes?

Did you keep pets? What were they and tell us about them.

Did you have any lessons(music,art,swimming,etc)? What were they? Did you like or enjoy them?

Other than above, tell us whatever childhood stories you could remember.

I hope you enjoy this practice and this will help you understand more of you each other.

Presenter: Mr. Tabata

ESS members,
Many of you may know “Justice”which is one of the most popular courses
by Prof. Michael Sandel in Harvard University.
The course is well known as ハーバード白熱教室. in Japan.
In this practice, I would like you to discuss “Justice”

Genre: Discussion
Title : Justice　－ What’s the right thing to do? －
（ハーバード白熱教室 without Sandel）
Description:
1. Make about 6 groups.
2. Read the handout and express your opinion for some questions concerning
about “Justice”

(Q1) Suppose you are driving the car at a speed of 100km an hour and find
the brake is broken and 5 people　are on the road in front of you.
There is not enough time for you to stop. If you keep straight,
you will hit and kill them, but if you swerve left into side way, you will
collide with a worker and kill him (only one person).
What would you do? Is it always permissible to harm a smaller number in
order to prevent harm to a large number? What’s the right thing to do?

(Q2) An ordinary teacher can gain about 4 million yen a year.
Baseball player Ichiro can gain about 1.5 billion yen a year.
Obama, President of the US, can gain 36 million yen a year.
Thus, Obama earns about 10 times as much money as an ordinary teacher.
Ichiro earns about 42 times as much money as Obama, about 400 times as much
money as an ordinary teacher.
Is it the fair redistribution? Should Ichiro be given 42 times as much money
as Obama?

3. Share with your group members.
I will give you a sheet with some hints of the practice.　

The content of it is very difficult, but I’ll try to prepare hard so that
you can discuss easiily

Just feel the old philosophers’ idea and enjoy sophisticated discussion!.

If you preview the following HP, the discussion will be easier.

http://www.nhk.or.jp/harvard/archive.html
http://www.nhk.or.jp/harvard/index.html
http://www.justiceharvard.org/index.php?option=com_sectionex&view=category&id=8&Itemid=46
http://www.visualecture.com/wordpress/?page_id=3139 ←重いです。