Corporal Punishment :: essays research papers

"The fundamental need of American education is to find ways of engaging today's children in the thrill of learning. Fear of pain has no place in that process." - The Christian Science Monitor. Because Ms. Peà ±a and I are in compliance with this statement, we have decided to bring to the attention of the community, the corporal punishment of Sinton High School. There are many effective ways of properly punishing a disobedient student, but there are also limits to certain disciplinary measures. Grant it that a student from Sinton High School may now choose their own punishment, with consent from the parents, it is up to the administrator to keep in compliance, and with in the limits. Bruises, cuts, and/or broken skin should not occur in the process of administering corporal punishment. The eight constitutional amendment clearly states that â€Å"no cruel or unusual punishment should be inflicted.† If markings are found on a student, the boundaries and law have been broken. Rupturing these boundaries surfaces the question, â€Å"Just exactly WHY are we administering the corporal punishment to students, to hurt them?† "...the use of corporal punishment in schools is intrinsically related to child maltreatment. It contributes to a climate of violence, it implies that society approves of the physical violation of children, it establishes an unhealthy norm...Its outright abolition throughout the nation must occur immediately." - U.S. Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect. It has been made known to the students of Sinton High School, and now to the parents and community, that the administrators of the corporal punishment, Mr. Mike Burger, and Ms. Linda Harrison, have left numerous marks on students through corporal punishment. Many of the marks have lasted at least a week and many up to two. Physical child abuse is defined and characterized by inflicting physical injury by several means, and result in bruises and many other markings. Although the injury is not an accident the person may have not intended to hurt the child. The injury may have resulted from over-discipline or physical punishment. Dennis Randall of www.familyeducation.com once stated, in relation to the corporal punishment he received, â€Å"When I think back, I can’t remember why I was punished, and the only thing it taught me, was to loathe that teacher.† How can we teach children that violence is such a horrible thing when if, for say, they do something violent, they will get punished with violence.

Project success: success factor and success criteria Essay

1.Since the 1960s there have been an increasing number of Project Management scholars that have expressed concerns regarding the ways to manage the success or failure of a project. Crawford (2000) theorised that there are two major avenues of thought in this area being: how success is judged and the factors that contribute to the success. These two avenues were later crowned ‘success factors’ and ‘success criteria’ respectively of which both will be discussed in depth during this essay to provide an insight for future project management scholars. SUCCESS CRITERIA 2.The way by which a project is judged as to whether it is successful or not has long since been deliberated by many Project Management scholars. Crawford’s (2000) efforts to detail these criteria has helped however a better understanding is required such that each project manager or key stakeholder can choose as to what criterion will defined whether the project is a success or failure. This section will elaborate on Crawford’s (2000) studies by drawing on one of her principle advisers, Atkinson. Atkinson uses the Iron Triangle as the foundation of the work and then building on it to develop a robust methodology for success. 2 Figure 1: Iron Triangle (Atkinson, 1999) 3. Iron Triangle. Oilsen (1971) over fifty years ago stated that the Iron Triangle (Atkinson, 1999) of Time, Cost and Quality were the key success criteria for any project. This triangle was reduced to just time and budget by Wright (1997) however Turner (1993), Morris (1987), Wateridge (1998), deWit (1988), McCoy (1987), Pinto and Slevin (1988), Saarinen (1990), and Ballantine (1996) all agree that the Iron Triangle should be used albeit not exclusively. Temporary use of criteria can be used during certain parts of the project to ascertain whether or not a project is going to plan. An example of temporary criteria that was used by Meyer (1994) was the earned value method. The Earned value method in a project can demonstrate it the project is on track, specifically when earned value (what the project is worth at that time) is less than actual costs it means the project is over budget. This is countered however by deWitt (1988) that states when costs are used as a control they manage progress rather than project success. Atkinson (1999) adds that some projects may need to be bound by time; he uses a Millennium project (e.g. a computer system with a potential year 2000, Y2K, bug) as an example, if the project doesn’t meet the time constraint it could have catastrophic consequences. 4. Alter (1996) considers process and organisational goals as another measure, utilising the concept of ‘did they do it right’ and ‘did they get it right’; this gives rise to the concept of measuring success both during and after the project. Atkinson (1999) reflects this concept by the introduction of the ‘Square Root,’ which proposes three additional criteria to the Iron Triangle. The three additional criteria for determining project success are: the technical strength of the resultant system, the benefits to the 3 resultant organisation (direct benefits) and the benefits to the wider stakeholder community (indirect benefits). A detailed breakdown of the Square Root is explained in table 1. Iron Information Benefits Benefits Triangle system (organisation) (stakeholder community) Cost, Maintainability, Improved efficiency, Satisfied users, Social and Quality, Reliability, Improved effectiveness, Environmental impact. Time Validity, Increased profits, Personal development, Information– Strategic goals, Professional learning, and quality use Organisational-learning, contractors’ profits. Reduced waste Capital suppliers, content project team, economic impact to surrounding community. Table 1: The Square Root (Atkinson, 1999) Figure 2: The Square Root (Atkinson, 1999) 5. The Information System. Whilst Atkinson (1999) doesn’t detail the information system success criteria other than what is described in the table it is reasonable to suggest he was concerned with the ‘ilities’ of the project. Essentially Atkinson was considering the maintenance of the project to ensure that it was not only resourced but also governed that the information would support its continued success. 4 6. Organisational Benefits. Success of a project must not only be considered from an individual perspective, rather it must look at how it will also benefit the organisation. Table 1 presents these areas however there are two areas that must be considered individually, namely efficiency and effectiveness. Success of a project is not necessarily guaranteed due to efficiency, reducing the amount of workload due to shortening of processing won’t necessarily help without the consideration of effectiveness. Effectiveness considers whether or not the goals are being achieved thus when placed with efficiency it ensures that the goals are being achieve quickly and in full. 7. Stakeholder Community Benefits. The final area of the Square Root that Atkinson considers is the success criterion that benefits the stakeholder community. These criterion consider the wider benefits of not just the direct outcomes of the project rather this area considers the stakeholder satisfaction and the social and environmental impacts that the project provides. These areas in a house project for example are criteria that  improve the socioeconomic factors of the community around the actual house. Thus this project could use improved gardens or visual impacts of the housing project that will improve the community’s view of the suburb rather than just that particular site. These secondary and tertiary impacts provide success criteria for the project. Furthermore in the acquisition of a new aircraft for military the stakeholder community benefits that could be used as success criteria could be the level of host nation employment or involvement to improve their knowledge base. Thus whilst it may not improve the actual new aircraft it will allow the host nation to build the aircraft themselves next time that that nation wishes to purchase a new aircraft. SUCCESS FACTORS 8. Since the late 1960’s Project Management scholars have been trying to establish the factors that lead to project success (Baker, 1988) (Pinto, 1988) (Lechler, 1988), which have led to conclusions being published for project management practitioners. Despite decades of research and countless articles being written (Kloppenborg, 2000) (Morris, 1994) projects continue to disappoint stakeholders (O’Connor and Reinsborough 1992) (Standish Group, 1995) (Cooke-Davies, 2000). So what factors actually lead to successful projects? Cooke-Davies (2002) states that project success 5 factors are based upon answering three separate questions: â€Å"What factors are critical to project management success?†, â€Å"What factors a critical to individual success on a project?† and â€Å"What factors lead to consistently successful projects?† 9. What factors are critical to project management success? Cooke-Davies (2002) analysed a selection of 136 mainly European projects which varied in size and scope however had an average of $16M over a period of two years, a  detailed breakdown is at (Cooke-Davies, 2000). The analysis found a surprising differentiation between the correlation of schedule delay and cost escalation, only a small amount of cost escalation was accounted for schedule delay. This analysis found that when adequacy and maturity specific project management practices are compared with the performance of each criterion then different practices are found to correlate significantly. This correlation relates to nine factors (the first nine factors depicted at Table 1). The analysis for â€Å"Adequacy of documentation of organisational responsibilities on the project† is depicted at figure 1 with the vertical axis showing the 95% confidence interval of time predictability and the horizontal axis showing ‘not at all adequate’(1) to ‘fully adequate’(4). Essentially it shows that the more adequate the factor the more confidence can be shown that the project will achieve its schedule target. Figure 3: Adequacy of project documentation improving schedule confidence (Cooke-Davies, 2002) 6 10. What factors are critical to the success of an individual project? Cooke- Davies (2002) suggests that there is a single factor; which leads to individual project success. He states that the existence of an effective benefits delivery and management process that involves the mutual co-operation of project management and line management functions (Table 2, Factor 9). Without this factor an individual project is likely to singularly fail. Essentially this factor requires a process to which the project outcome is delivered and managed. This factor further requires the cooperation of a project team with a single goal to achieve this project benefit outcome. 11. What factors lead to consistently successful projects? Cooke-Davies (2002) now moves away from the individual project and considers that corporate functions that enable a project to succeed. Whilst this analysis was complex to derive from analysis it was found via extensive questionnaires three main factors corporate influenced the factors for project success. These three factors are identified at Table 2 (Factors 10-12) however directly relate to resourcing, feedback loops and learning from experience. 12. Resourcing (Table 2, Factor 10) being governed by corporate is essential to project success, for if a project is not able to have the right people or assets at the right time a project is unlikely to succeed. If a project management corporation sets up the correct plans, processes and procedures to ensure that each one of its subsidiary projects are adequately resourced, Davies-Cooke (2002) envisages that it is set up for success. An example of this is the development of Standard Operating Procedures for purchase of support equipment in a large-scale acquisition project. The standardisation of this resource alignment by corporate enables the factors for success later in the project. 13. Feedback loops (Table 2, Factor 11) are essential to a line manager knowing if what they are doing is appropriate and in line with the project manager and the stakeholder’s perceptions of what the project needs to succeed. Whilst it is acknowledged that if a feedback loop is too short it will tend to misguide a line manager rather than improve the chances of success. This is the job of the project manger to ensure that the loop is correct for the particular project, for example a long lead time project is suited to a larger feedback loop whereas a rapid prototype project 7 needs to have potentially daily feedback to key line managers to ensure the project is going in the right direction given the potentially fast  innovations in technology. Cooke-Davies (2002) finally proposes the success factor of learning from experience (Table 2, Factor 12). Corporations should in order to succeed implement plans, programmes, and procedures to ensure that the lessons learnt from previous projects are not re-learnt the hard way. Constantly (Pinto, 1990) (Robertson, 2006) (Baker, 1988) (Atkinson, 1999) when project scholars analyse how a project has performed it is recognised that a lot of issues that cause failure are not ground breaking rather they are just repeated with a delay loop. Thus project management corporations should endeavour to ensure that as a project is finding solutions to problems they are documented to ensure that in the next project they are not realised again. 14. These three questions relate directly back to a vicious ‘oval’ of influences as depicted by Cooke-Davies (2002) of four key elements (Figure 4). These influences from a project management, individual project and corporate area all play out to enable success of a project. Figure 4: Corporate Project Success Model (Cooke-Davies, 2002) 8 Factor F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9 Factor Type Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Project Management Success Factor Individual Project Success factor F10 Corporate success factors F11 Corporate success factors F12 Corporate success factors Description Adequacy of company-wide education on the concepts of risk management. Note Factor that correlates to on time performance Maturity of an organisation’s processes for assigning ownership of risks. Factor that correlates to on time performance Adequacy with which a visible risks register is maintained. Factor that correlates to on time performance Adequacy of an up-to-date risk management plan. Factor that correlates to on time performance Adequacy of documentation of organisational responsibilities on the project. Keep project (or project stage duration) as far below 3 years as possible (1 year is better). Allow changes to scope only through a mature scope change control process. Factor that correlates to on time performance Maintain the integrity of the performance measurement baseline. Factor that correlates to on budget performance Factor that correlates to on time performance Factor that correlates to on budget performance The existence of an effective benefits delivery and management process that involves the mutual co-operation of project management and line management functions† Portfolio and programme management practices that allow the enterprise to resource fully a suite of projects that are thoughtfully and dynamically matched to the corporate strategy and business objectives A suite of project, programme and portfolio metrics that provides direct ‘‘line of sight’’ feedback on current project performance, and anticipated future success, so that project, portfolio and corporate decisions can be aligned. An effective means of ‘‘learning from experience’’ on projects, that combines explicit knowledge with tacit knowledge in a way that encourages people to learn and to embed that learning into continuous improvement of project management processes and practices. Table 2: Success Factors (Cooke-Davies, 2002) 9 CONCLUSION 15. This essay has discussed the ways to manage success of a project via two means being how it is judged and the factors that contribute to its success. The success criteria have been shown to be wide and varied however they ultimately boil down to the Iron triangle, the information system, organisational benefits, stakeholder community benefits. Furthermore the factors that lead to this success are multiple however they are mostly governed on the project mangers competence to ensure that the project is maintained within the triangle of time, cost and scope. 10 BIBLIOGRAPHY Alter S. Information Systems a management perspective, 2nd ed. Benjamin and Cummings, California, 1996. Atkinson RW. Effective Organisations, Re-framing the Thinking for Information Systems Projects Success, 13–16. Cassell, London, 1997. Atkinson, R., Project management: cost, time and quality, two best guesses and a phenomenon, its time to accept other success criteria, International Journal of Project Management, Volume 17, Issue 6, December 1999, Pages 337-342, retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0263-7863(98)00069-6. Baker BN, Murphy DC, Fisher D. Factors affecting project success. In: Cleland DI, King WR, editors. Project management handbook. (2nd ed.). New York: John Wiley, 1988. Ballantine, J, Bonner, M, Levy, M, Martin, A, Munro, I and Powell, PL, The 3-D model of information systems successes: the search for the dependent variable continues. Information Resources Management Journal, 1996, 9(4), 5-14. Cooke-Davies TJ. 2000. Towards improved project management practice, PhD thesis, Leeds Metropolitan University. Crawford, Lynn (2000) Profiling the Competent Project Manager. In: Project Management Research at the Turn of the Millennium: Proceedings of PMI Research Conference, 21 – 24 June, 2000, Paris, France, pp. 3-15. Sylva, NC: Project Management Institute (ftp://ns1.ystp.ac.ir/YSTP/1/1/ROOT/DATA/PDF/MISC/PMI2000%20Research.pdf) de Wit, A, Measurement of project management success. International Journal of Project Management, 1988, 6(3), 164-170. Kloppenborg TJ, Opfer WA. Forty years of project management research: trends, interpretations and predictions. Proceedings of PMI research conference paris project management institute. Paris: Project Management Institute, 2000. Lechler T. 1998. When it comes to project management, it’s the people that matter: an empirical analysis of project management in germany. In:  Hartman, F., Jergeas, G., Thomas, J. editors. IRNOP III. The nature and role of projects in the next 20 years: research issues and problems. Calgary University of Calgary. pp.205–15 McCoy FA. Measuring Success: Establishing and Maintaining A Baseline, Project management Institute Seminar/Symposium Montreal Canada, Sep. 1987, 47-52. Meyer C. How the right measures help teams excel. Harvard Business Review 1994, 95-103. Morris PWG, Hough GH. The Anatomy of Major Projects. John Wiley, 1987. Morris PWG. The management of projects. London: Thomas Telford, 1994. O’Connor MM, Reinsborough L. Quality projects in the 1990s: a review of past projects and future trends. International Journal of Project Management 1992;10(2):107–14. 11 Oilsen, RP, Can project management be defined? Project Management Quarterly, 1971, 2(1), 12-14. Pinto JK, Slevin DP. Critical success factors across the project life cycle. Project Management Journal 1988;19(3):67–75. Pinto, J.K.; Mantel, S.J., Jr., â€Å"The causes of project failure,† Engineering Management, IEEE Transactions on , vol.37, no.4, pp.269,276, Nov 1990, http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=62322&isnumber=2268 Pinto, JK and Slevin, DP, Critical success factors across the project lifecycle. Project Management Journal, 1988, XIX, 67-75. Robertson, S. and Williams, T. Understanding project failure: using cognitive mapping in an insurance project. Southampton, UK, University of Southampton, 43pp. University of Southampton Discussion Paper Series: Centre for Operational Research, Management Sciences and Information Systems,2006. Saarinen, T, Systems development methodology and project success. Information and Management, 1990, 19, 183-193. Standish Group. 1995. Chaos. Available: http://standishgroup.com/ visitor/chaos.htm. Terry Cooke-Davies, The â€Å"real† success factors on projects, International Journal of Project Management, Volume 20, Issue 3, April 2002, Pages 185-190, ISSN 02637863, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0263-7863(01)00067-9. Turner JR. The Handbook of Project-based Management. McGraw-Hill, 1993. Wateridge, J, How can IS/IT projects be measured for success? International Journal of project Management, 1998, 16(1), 59- 63. Wright, JN, Time and budget: the twin imperatives of a project sponsor. International Journal of Project Management, 1997, 15(3), 181-186.

Organic Food and Wild Oats Essay

Strong revenue growth Focused growth strategy Wide product portfolioWeak international operations Conservative international policy Increasing rental expenses OpportunitiesThreats Higher demand for organic products Expansion in the UK Growth in private label productsIncreasing competition Labeling and other regulations Slowdown in the US economy StrengthsWeaknesses Strong revenue growth Focused growth strategy Wide product portfolioWeak international operations Conservative international policy Increasing rental expenses OpportunitiesThreats Higher demand for organic products. Expansion in the UK Growth in private label productsIncreasing competition Labeling and other regulations Slowdown in the US economy AI Global Management. 8-26-14. INSTRUCTOR: Who wasn’t here last week? I’m looking at Michelle. So you are the only one that wasn’t here last week? Mrs. Johnson were you here last week. I’m going to pass out the assignments for next week for you. STUDENT: The PowerPoint one. INSTRUCTOR: Whole foods. So what you had to do just to remind everybody you have to take a look at those two companies, and do some research, did find out strategically what really happened? STUDENT: Do you have extra copies? I wasn’t here last week. INSTRUCTOR: I thought I asked who wasn’t here last week? Okay. We have to strategically do some research on both of these companies. You have your case study in front of you very thorough. You have to find out what kind of decision was made that created really an issue for Wild Oats — because initially when this company was put together, they were killing Whole Foods. They were Whole Foods before Whole Foods existed. They were doing wonderful. Growing, expanding in the same type of market. I know both cases, so I know a lot of answers, but all of a sudden some decision was made in their minds relatively strategic, but it turned out to be some pretty bad decisions. How many of you has heard of Wild Oats. All of us have heard of Whole Foods because they are in existence. So you have to run this as if you are the CEO of both take both sides. Compare and contrast and take a look at Wild Oats, and what happened to them. Take a look at the great decision, and then things started going south relatively quickly for them. Yet Whole Foods was the underdog. Now Whole Foods is doing. Well, I guess. Manufacture moving forward.

The Need for Protecting the Environment

Environment, the word is a bit common, everything that surrounds us consist of our environment. We can say that environment is something which provides us everything. But can you think of a single thing we do for our environment ? The answer would most probably be NO. Today we humans hardly care what would be the effects of it on our environment. For thousands of years man has exploited the environment in the name is development and in return we humans defile it and pollute it. We are cutting trees at a large scale which is leading to higher levels of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. We kill animals for their skin and that in turn is disturbing the food web which causes unbalance in the nature. We can see that every little thing we did and we are doing is ultimately causing harm to us. Increasing levels of CO2, depletion of ozone layer, global warning, floods, droughts, earthquakes and all these things are gifted by us to our precious and priceless environment. If we go on exploiting our environment in the name of our use and needs, we are certainly inviting destruction and disasters . Be it forests, naturals resources, water, soil, rain, mountains, flora or fauna, we have destroyed it all . The point is not that how much wrong we have done and how much right we need to do now but simple actions such as planting trees can help us a lot. One does not need to be a great environmentalist or ecologist it protect our environment, it is simply human instinct.

Policy and Politics in sports and gender Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Policy and Politics in sports and gender - Essay Example The sports policies, as they are made by men keeping the development of men in mind have failed to bring any significant change for women. The example is an adoption of ‘woman and sports’ format where a woman is expected to change according to the rules of the policies rather than policies being changed according to the woman’s need ( Talbot 2002. p.277). The meetings of the organizations are held on weekdays when women are busy with their family duties and are held in such locations that women members find it difficult to travel there. These are the things which show that there is a resistance to women participation in the decision making process by sports bodies. There are no written experiences as women usually withdraw after the resistance. However, the author says that to change the situation, these experiences and discrimination should be recorded in written format and a creative way should be found to create a change ( Talbot 2002. p.278). A research conducted during the commonwealth games in 1994 showed that the women participants from different levels of the team from different countries felt that they were not supported at all and experienced many barriers through ignorance and neglect by the male authorities. The response to the questionnaire revealed that women get very less share of attention and resources available and because of their gender, they experience negative feelings by their male managers and coaches (Talbot 2002. p.284). It was found that the establishment of The Working Group and Sport by European Sports Conference in the year 1989 to bring in practice the gender equity in sports led to nothing new. In 1991 and 1993 there

Mentorship program Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Mentorship program - Research Paper Example Mentors eventually act as informal partners with previous mentees. To foster continuity of collaborative relationship, educational and skills training are maintained in surgical ward, while specifically indicating the significance of scheduled meetings per week for peer and administrative evaluation--be reduced to quarterly meetings. The direct people involved, mentors, mentees, administrative and support personnel, consistently work up the conducive work conditions and modify identified weaknesses with the entire training process. In the long run, stable interactions with higher-ranked colleagues promote the work empowerment for struggling novice nurses (Laschinger, Purdy, & Almost, 2007). Extended in appeal, the efficacy of nurse mentorship program in work competency frequently carries the project beyond the targeted program elimination. In a mentorship program by a tertiary care institution, the project continued for more than two years, indicating its success in hurdling resistan ce of social work cultures and psychological challenges of novice nurses (Hurst & Koplin-Baucum, 2005). More importantly, its low cost expenditure gives this the advantage compared to more expensive retention pursuits. In the evaluation pattern by Mills and Mullins (2008), the institutional savings by the mentorship program reached to almost $5.8 million, a large amount that can be deviated to support quality improvements in other clinical fields. In both technical and financial aspects, the mentorship program more than adequately meets the expectation of nurses and administration staff in JVHA. In realistic terms, reasonable revision must be performed for a more dynamic mentorship approach. In the instance where nurses are assigned in other clinical wards, a problem in continuity of interactive mentor-mentee associations may occur. Hence, the pilot mentorship program must manifest a more universal approach during education and skills enhancement training, consistently depending on the area of clinical expertise required. Addressing the break in mentorship relationship, long-term social and professional interaction in the surgical ward assures that work satisfaction is met and retention is improved. Project Data Dissemination and Feedback In a given utilization project, it is important to relate the results to key institutional groups. Aside from meeting the objects of the project, the applicability of the research goals may serve as solid foundation in entirely resolving the expensive and taxing problem on low retention rates of nurses in clinical areas, even with newly graduate nurses. In this paper, two practical methods can be performed to aptly communicate the preliminary initiation and concluding outcomes of the project--during annual staff meeting and circulating institutional newsletters. With annual staff meeting, the whole nursing personnel gather together to discuss things related with their practice as professionals, airings discrepancies and areas of improvements. Thus, this is the ideal time for the team involved in the mentorship program to inform them on the outline of the project, zeroing on outcomes

Architecural Theory Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Architecural Theory - Essay Example One is the external world, while the other is the hypothetical or internal world of our thoughts, imaginings, and interpretations, the world of psychology. The internal world houses our conceptions of the external, molded by notions handed down or across generations persuading or convincing; it is the realm of our rehearsals, associations, ideals, expectations, and hopes for it. This paper attempts to analyze a single architectural theory. Within the discipline of architecture, theory is a disclosure that describes the practice and production of architecture and identifies challenges to it. Theory overlaps with but differs from architectural history, which is descriptive of past work, and from criticism, a narrow activity of judgment and interpretation of specific existing works relative to the critic’s or architect’s stated standards (Johnson 9). Theory is different from these activities because it poses substitute remedies grounded on observations of the existing cond ition of the discipline, or presents new thought paradigms for approaching the issues (Ots and Alfano 17). It is tentative, anticipatory, and catalytic character makes theoretical activity different from history and criticism. Theory operates on different levels of abstraction, evaluating the architectural profession, its intentions, and its cultural relevance at large. Theory deals with architecture’s aspirations as well as its accomplishments (Johnson 11). Theory can be characterized by several attitudes towards the preservation of its subject matter: for the most part of it is prescriptive, proscriptive, affirmative, or critical. All of these differ from a natural, descriptive position. Prescriptive theory offers new or revived solutions for specific problems (Bertens 22). This theory functions by establishing new norms for practice. It, thus, promotes positive standards and sometimes even a design method. This type can be critical or affirmative of the status quo. The ton e in either instance is often polemical. Almost similar to the prescriptive theory is the proscriptive theory. However, it differs in the sense that the standards state what is to be avoided in the design. Good architecture or urbanism in proscriptive terms is defined by the absence of negative attitudes. Functional zoning is an example of proscriptive theory (Ballantyne 15). Broader than descriptive and prescriptive writing, critical theory evaluates the built world and its relationships to the society it serves. This kind of polemical writing often has an expressed political or ethical orientation and intends to stimulate change. Among many possible orientations, critical theory can be ideologically based in Marxism or feminism (Hays 36). A typical example of critical theory is an architect and theorist Kenneth Frampton’s critical regionalism, which proposes resistance to the homogenization of the visual environment through the particularities of mediated, local building tr aditions. Critical theory is speculative, questioning, and sometimes utopian (White 24). Throughout history, one can identify recurring architectural themes that demand resolution, both conceptually and physically. Physical questions are resolved tectonically, while conceptual or intellectual questions are problematized in the manner of philosophy (Ots and Alfano 31). Perennial theoretical questions include the origins and limits of architecture, the relationship of architecture to