During Humanities class previously we have been discussing the China one-child policy as well as reaserching a woman who is 33 and has recently had octuplets making her total children count be 14. So in humanities we discussed how much the government has control over the birth of children. My teacher made a long line and on one side it said 'Octomom' and the other end said 'China's one-child policy'. We had to write on a post it note which we thought was better and place it towards china's policy or octomom. If you agreed on both, you put your post-it note in the middle of the line with your explanation written on the post-it.
I put my post-it more to octomom but close to the middle.
( Octomom ________x__________China's One Child Policy)
China: I am against the china policy because it clashes with human rights. The right for humans to do what they want and so on. They should be allowed to have as many kids as they want! I am for the policy because if they didn't enforce this law, China would run out of recourses and basically everyone would die. They need that law to keep living and have to use it.
Octomom: I am against octomom because she is divorced, poor and is living in a 3 bedroom apartment with her mom. She should have stopped at 6 kids. That is already a handful! But I don't think that the U.S needs that law because they aren't running out of recourses right now like China is because its not too overpopulated. The U.S is doing fine without this law right now and there would be no point enforcing it however people should be smart enough to know when to stop.
Our class came up with the same conclusion that there should be counselling centers where people advise woman on how many children they should have depending on their wage.
Octomom and the child law are very different but the laws that apply to one place depend on where you are and depend on what the country has to use.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
A Fishbowl Of Children
You might be a little confused by my title. Let me explain, in Humanities today we read a long article about a girl lives in California. She is bankrupt, is divorced and is living in a 3 bedroom house with her mom. She had 6 children and her husband left her because he didn't want any more. So with no husband, she went to a bank and had 8 embrios put into her womb. Suprsisingly, 9 months later not only 1 baby arrived but 8 BABIES!!! So she now has 14 babies total with the 6 previous ones.
Back to what we did in Humanities; we read the article and talked to a partner about what we discovered and found interesting. We then came back together as a class we did a certain discussion called a 'fishbowl'. This is where we but 5 chairs in the middle of the classroom in a small circle and a big circle of chairs around it. In this excersize 5 people start in the middle and discuss what they think and share their oppinions. The outer circle is not allowed to talk. If they would like to talk they need to tap the shoulder of someone in the middle and take their spot in the middle. This routine continues to happen. This time we discussed if we thought that the government has the right to control how many children one woman has.
Money was brought up a lot and lots of people mentioned how she shouldn't have 14 children because she has no money and can't take care of them well. Some people even said that the government shouldn't have allowed her to have 14 children in the first place. I agree with most of this. I agree that she should have been smart enough to know not to have 14 children if she knew that she couldn't handle it. I mean, I guess that she can't actually control if she has octuplets or not but she could have aborted. I would have been happy myself after having 6 children because that is already a big responsibility. But when people said that the government shouldn't have allowed her to have so many children, I started thinking about that and came to the conclusion that the government isn't going to do a full background check on one person's financial success and they also aren't going to know every person who is going to have a child. Its not like when people are pregnant they ring up the government and tell them! Thats just not how things work so I think it was a good idea but a little impossible.
So after that explanation, I hope that you understand what I meant by my title. Technically our fishbowl was full of children in the first place but I mean it as a fishbowl with the discussion of children. Hopefully she can raise these children and plans not to have any more!
Back to what we did in Humanities; we read the article and talked to a partner about what we discovered and found interesting. We then came back together as a class we did a certain discussion called a 'fishbowl'. This is where we but 5 chairs in the middle of the classroom in a small circle and a big circle of chairs around it. In this excersize 5 people start in the middle and discuss what they think and share their oppinions. The outer circle is not allowed to talk. If they would like to talk they need to tap the shoulder of someone in the middle and take their spot in the middle. This routine continues to happen. This time we discussed if we thought that the government has the right to control how many children one woman has.
Money was brought up a lot and lots of people mentioned how she shouldn't have 14 children because she has no money and can't take care of them well. Some people even said that the government shouldn't have allowed her to have 14 children in the first place. I agree with most of this. I agree that she should have been smart enough to know not to have 14 children if she knew that she couldn't handle it. I mean, I guess that she can't actually control if she has octuplets or not but she could have aborted. I would have been happy myself after having 6 children because that is already a big responsibility. But when people said that the government shouldn't have allowed her to have so many children, I started thinking about that and came to the conclusion that the government isn't going to do a full background check on one person's financial success and they also aren't going to know every person who is going to have a child. Its not like when people are pregnant they ring up the government and tell them! Thats just not how things work so I think it was a good idea but a little impossible.
So after that explanation, I hope that you understand what I meant by my title. Technically our fishbowl was full of children in the first place but I mean it as a fishbowl with the discussion of children. Hopefully she can raise these children and plans not to have any more!
Thursday, April 23, 2009
One Child Rule; Helpful or Horrible?
In humanities today, we spent the class discussing about the rule in China that permits each family to only have one child. We had a class discussion about whether we agreed with the policy or disagreed and that is where the inspiration for my title came! Towards the begining of our discussion many people thought it was unfair to the people and it was even brought up that the government doesn't have the right to stop people from having children because some people thought that interfered with human rights.
I decided that this is both fair and unfair. It is unfair because it was China's fault in the first place that China got too overpopulated when a baby boom occurred in the 50s-60s in an attempt to bury the USA in a wave of humans. (If you would like to see what I'm referring to you should really check out this site: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3452460.ece.) I also realize that this is fair because if people who lived in China continued to have children, China would run out of recourse's such as food and water -all very necessary if you want to live!
After a long and very detailed discussion about pros and cons of the rule, I stuck with my original opinion and decided not to change it though many in the class did. (They changed it to believing more that it is a good law and a necessary one.) China has stopped 300 million babies from being born and that is really helpful for the issues occurring in China. The law is necessary and needs to be enforced to help for the future of China. That doesn't mean that I think it is right of just to prevent children from being born but they have had to go to such matters or else the future of China could be in serious jeopardy!
I decided that this is both fair and unfair. It is unfair because it was China's fault in the first place that China got too overpopulated when a baby boom occurred in the 50s-60s in an attempt to bury the USA in a wave of humans. (If you would like to see what I'm referring to you should really check out this site: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3452460.ece.) I also realize that this is fair because if people who lived in China continued to have children, China would run out of recourse's such as food and water -all very necessary if you want to live!
After a long and very detailed discussion about pros and cons of the rule, I stuck with my original opinion and decided not to change it though many in the class did. (They changed it to believing more that it is a good law and a necessary one.) China has stopped 300 million babies from being born and that is really helpful for the issues occurring in China. The law is necessary and needs to be enforced to help for the future of China. That doesn't mean that I think it is right of just to prevent children from being born but they have had to go to such matters or else the future of China could be in serious jeopardy!
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Shakespeare Sonnet 7 shown through performance. Practice makes perfect!
If you've read my previous post, you will know that recently in my humanities class, we have been discussing Shakespeare Sonnet 7. (If you're not familiar with this poem, it was written in the previous post.) Today we did more on this poem and the art group presented their piece, the actors performed again and so did the musicians. During class, we spent some time talking about the differences between all of our pieces and the similarities. I think that genuinely, we all had the same idea. The artists drew a picture of the suns progress through the sky from rising to setting and a group of people watching. The actors made a skit about the life of the sun and how it is similar to a humans and the musicians showed the power point of the sun and its progress through the sky. Basically, we all had the same idea that the poem was talking about the sun. I still believe that it is talking about the sun and haven't changed my opinion based on people's performances today and I don't still think this because other people do too, I think this because it makes sense to me through my own understanding. I almost 100% understand this poem now but there are a few words still that I'm unfamiliar with because they aren't used nowadays.
I think that a way to improve our musical performance would be to relate more to the poem and maybe stop making inferences about the poem. Other than that, I honestly like what we did because for me, since I'm not very musical, it was hard to show an audience something through music and not being able to use words.
A big question I have is: Why did Shakespeare choose to write about the sun in the first place?
In conclusion, I am happy with my opinion and fully understand the poem which is good because when I first read it, I couldn't make head or tails of it. I think that discussing the poem really helped me understand more of it.
I think that a way to improve our musical performance would be to relate more to the poem and maybe stop making inferences about the poem. Other than that, I honestly like what we did because for me, since I'm not very musical, it was hard to show an audience something through music and not being able to use words.
A big question I have is: Why did Shakespeare choose to write about the sun in the first place?
In conclusion, I am happy with my opinion and fully understand the poem which is good because when I first read it, I couldn't make head or tails of it. I think that discussing the poem really helped me understand more of it.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Shakespeare Sonnet 7 (understanding through music)
Recently in humanities we have been discussing Shakespeare's Sonnet (#7) and we have discussed the structure. Today we split off into 3 different groups and discussed what we thought it meant. First of all, here is the poem:
Lo! In the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
So though, thyself outgoing in thy noon
Unlooked on diest unless though get a son.
My teacher asked us each to write down what we thought the poem meant. The vocabulary is old English so I didn't understand much of what Shakespeare was trying to say but I went for it anyways. I thought that the poem was talking about a god and him having a child because of clues like: 'Doth homage to his new appearing sight.' So I thought that could have been referring to a baby seeing for the first time. And also: 'Attending on his golden pilgrimage: But when from highmost pitch...' meaning a god sitting on a high throne or the god climbing his way up to success. The highmost pitch could have been a baby crying. At the end it says: 'Unlooked on diest unless though get a son.' To me, that meant that the god wanted a son really badly.
My idea has definitely changed about the poem from thinking it was about a child to the sun. The sun to me makes a lot more sense and I'm glad that my group partner brought that up because I had never thought that it could have been the sun.
I'll just have to wait and see the 2 other performances tomorrow and see if they change my mind!
Lo! In the orient when the gracious light
Lifts up his burning head, each under eye
Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,
Serving with looks his sacred majesty;
And having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill,
Resembling strong youth in his middle age,
Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,
Attending on his golden pilgrimage:
But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,
Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day,
The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are
From his low tract, and look another way:
So though, thyself outgoing in thy noon
Unlooked on diest unless though get a son.
My teacher asked us each to write down what we thought the poem meant. The vocabulary is old English so I didn't understand much of what Shakespeare was trying to say but I went for it anyways. I thought that the poem was talking about a god and him having a child because of clues like: 'Doth homage to his new appearing sight.' So I thought that could have been referring to a baby seeing for the first time. And also: 'Attending on his golden pilgrimage: But when from highmost pitch...' meaning a god sitting on a high throne or the god climbing his way up to success. The highmost pitch could have been a baby crying. At the end it says: 'Unlooked on diest unless though get a son.' To me, that meant that the god wanted a son really badly.
As I said earlier, today we split up into 3 separate groups. One was a group that had to act out what they thought it meant, one had to draw what they thought the poem described and my group had to use music to describe our opinions. It sounded really difficult at first because we couldn't say anything and all we could do was use instruments. But we decided to worry about that later and focused on what we thought it meant. There were two common ideas, one suggested that it was a god or a ruler of some sort and another group member suggested that maybe Shakespeare was talking about the sun. After I thought about that, it made perfect sense. I was convinced fully by lines such as: 'Lifts up his burning head' because the sun's head would be very warm and also: 'and having climb'd the steep-up heavenly hill.' I first thought that line meant metaphorically like climbing to success but I realized that the sun every morning "climbs" over the hills and higher and higher into the sky. And then I also realized the line: 'Like feeble age, he reeleth from the day'. That gave me a slight clue about how the sun then sets.
My idea has definitely changed about the poem from thinking it was about a child to the sun. The sun to me makes a lot more sense and I'm glad that my group partner brought that up because I had never thought that it could have been the sun.
I'll just have to wait and see the 2 other performances tomorrow and see if they change my mind!
Monday, January 19, 2009
Mesopotamia, any thoughts?
I created a headline about what we did in Humanities class today. It is the title of this post. Mesopotamia, any thoughts? First of all, in class we watched a video from 'Google Earth' and we had to list what we saw, our inferences/thoughts and our wonders. In the clip, it had two maps. Our class agreed that one map showed the early Mesopotamia and the other one showed us what it developed into. I thought it was a really good excersize because it made me pay attention a lot more to the map and what was important than I normally would because I wouldn't stop and think so extendedly. I also learnt a few things from the activity. I learnt where Mesopotamia actually was. It is near Egypt, Turkey and Iraq. I also learnt that the old names of a lot of the places were very peculiar to me because they didn't seem to be in English. After we wrote down our 'Sees, thinks and wonders' we shared to the class and asked each other questions such as 'Why do you think that?' and 'Where do you see that?' When I heard the thoughts from my classmates, it made me think more and opened my eyes to things I hadn't even thought about or seen. It was definitely interesting. I chose the title 'Mesopotamia, any thoughts?' because we wrote what we thought about the subject and the map that we saw. We also shared what we saw and wondered. Basically to sum it all up, I really enjoyed this activity and I liked looking at the maps. It was a fun class!
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Why do civilizations have laws?
I am here for another debate! My question this time was 'Why do civilizations have laws?' My simple answer to that would be: because civilizations need laws to have civilizations work properly and to protect their people, sources, land and heritage.
For example, if there wasn't a law that said something like 'you cannot murder people' than many humans in the civilization would die. Or if a civilization didn't have traffic lights, there would be many accidents that could seriously injure people and possibly kill them. But the people's physical protection also ties inn with the protection of sources and land.
People need food to live. It is as simple as that. If you cut of people's recources, (for example, food)you are putting humans in physical danger. And to grow things, you need land to grow it on.
Heritage is a very important aspect in a civilization. It makes it so the civilization has something special and in some way is unique. Heritage is an important part in any civilization and that is why laws protect it.
Another good question is: 'what I think about Hammurabi's Code.' If you guys don't know what Hammurabi's Code code is, I will explain. Hammurabi was this king in Babylon. He ruled from 1796 BC – 1750 BC. He was a very strict man and carved on a seven foot, four inch tall basalt slab. On it, he inscribed laws.
Below are a few of the laws: (translated)
195. If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.
200. If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out.
202. If any one strike the body of a man higher in rank than he, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-whip in public.
205. If the slave of a freed man strike the body of a freed man, his ear shall be cut off.
229. If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.
230. If it kill the son of the owner the son of that builder shall be put to death.
I don't think that Hammurabi's laws were correct because they weren't fair at all! Some things can be accidents and I don't agree with punishing an innocent person. For example, 230: It says that the son of the builder shall be put to death. Why is that fair? The son didn't do anything! If anyone had to die, it should be the builder.
Information from:
http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysources/d/267/whm.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
http://www.phillipmartin.info/hammurabi/hammurabi_law251-282.htm
For example, if there wasn't a law that said something like 'you cannot murder people' than many humans in the civilization would die. Or if a civilization didn't have traffic lights, there would be many accidents that could seriously injure people and possibly kill them. But the people's physical protection also ties inn with the protection of sources and land.
People need food to live. It is as simple as that. If you cut of people's recources, (for example, food)you are putting humans in physical danger. And to grow things, you need land to grow it on.
Heritage is a very important aspect in a civilization. It makes it so the civilization has something special and in some way is unique. Heritage is an important part in any civilization and that is why laws protect it.
Another good question is: 'what I think about Hammurabi's Code.' If you guys don't know what Hammurabi's Code code is, I will explain. Hammurabi was this king in Babylon. He ruled from 1796 BC – 1750 BC. He was a very strict man and carved on a seven foot, four inch tall basalt slab. On it, he inscribed laws.
Below are a few of the laws: (translated)
195. If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.
200. If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out.
202. If any one strike the body of a man higher in rank than he, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-whip in public.
205. If the slave of a freed man strike the body of a freed man, his ear shall be cut off.
229. If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.
230. If it kill the son of the owner the son of that builder shall be put to death.
I don't think that Hammurabi's laws were correct because they weren't fair at all! Some things can be accidents and I don't agree with punishing an innocent person. For example, 230: It says that the son of the builder shall be put to death. Why is that fair? The son didn't do anything! If anyone had to die, it should be the builder.
Information from:
http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysources/d/267/whm.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
http://www.phillipmartin.info/hammurabi/hammurabi_law251-282.htm
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