Is the glass empty, or is it half full?

I remember sitting in the lounge on the first day of grade eight. There I was in the front row, listening to Mr.Wiens talk about our wonderful years to come. Silently wishing in my head that he’d stop and we’d get to see our lockers already! I’d be lying if I said that I gave him my undivided attention, or that I felt as if everything he talked about was of importance. But what I can say is that during that speech he gave us the best advice for beginning a new journey. He told us that “high school is what YOU make it”, and that piece of advice has been engraved into my head permanently ever since. The way I look at it, Spirit Weeks are what students choose to make them. I understand that they aren’t always easy or convenient to participate in and sometimes you may feel that you simply just don’t want to take part in them. But remember, you’re only going to get out of them what you put in. At the end of the day, Spirit weeks are what you choose to make them. They can be an opportunity to dress up and have fun with your friends or they can be a hassle; it all depends on your perspective of the situation. Student Council can come up with millions of different spirit days but whether they are interesting or convenient are determined by you. It all comes down to your individual attitude and how you choose to look at things. So, are Spirit Weeks an opportunity to have fun or are they a waste of effort and time? You tell me; after all they are what you choose to make them ;)

The Aging Spirit AKA As Time Moves On

Like everything else as we grow and change, our views on things change. One of the things that changed for me was my interpretation of Spirit Week. I realize that in its purest form Spirit Week was designed as a way for people to show there love of there school; to raise "Palmer Pride". However each person may interpret that in their own way, I for one interpret it as being able to say what school you are from without any embarrassment for care for harassment. Anyway continuing on, I'll explain how spirit week for me changed as I grew. Well not literally, I haven't grown a centimeter in years. Anyway, as I was saying, when I first came to Palmer, I didn't know anyone and was just glad when school was over because I could get rid of the awkward feeling that came when you were in an environment where every single person was a stranger. I felt lost and afraid because I had no life line to hang on to. So it came as no surprise that when the first Spirit Week came by I eagerly participated. However as the year progressed, I saw less and less of Spirit Week. The simply reason would be that I thought that it was stupid and pointless. A viewpoint that many carry at this point in time.
However in grade 9 it had less to do with that and more to do with accessibility. As many of us know, some of the Spirit Days and Events are rather inconvenient. Things like pajama day and come dress in your Halloween costume. Neither of which I had. It had less to do with my feelings and more to do with practicality. I participated in some because they were convenient and not in others because there were troublesome. I think that might have been worse. Instead of choosing either side I merely waded in both ends and didn't pick one. Now this year, Spirit Week has become something that I acknowledge exists and i also acknowledge that it is a way to create memories, but for someone like me where as time passes memories that were fuzzy to begin with completely disappear, I don't think I'll use that a medium to remember. It's just that there are so many other things in the school that are a whole lot more fun than Spirit Week. I know that in the future I might regret it, but to begin with I suck at planning my future. My past has been chipped away by the ruthless waters of time, my future is uncertain and it's existence is questionable, so I turn to the present and make the most of it.

Why don't the incentive guys have spirit?

Whether people participate in spirit week depends on their interpretation of “spirit”. People have false sense of information and say that spirit week demonstrates Palmer spirit, and more importantly, Palmer pride; but how does wearing pyjamas to school or bringing bananas shows other outsiders that you are from Palmer? The intention of spirit week is to add more color to a normal-day school live. For those who participate in spirit weeks, it provides them with more excitement. I belong to the larger group of people whom do not participate in spirit week. Why I do not participate is due to a combination of multiple reasons. I believe spirit week is too childish. That is just my opinion, but I can say that the majority of the non-participants will have the same idea. Whether or not to participate in spirit week also depends on the environment and social circles, and peer pressure plays a crucial role as well. In my case, participating in a spirit day will make me look out of place. I seriously cannot imagine myself dressed in pyjamas in school, nor will I expect any of the boys in incentive. Now talking about incentive, I observed that incentive guys are extremely not involving in any school activities. Many of us might want to participate from time to time, but that is against the “tradition” of our gr10 incentive class, thus resulting in being afraid to be out of place. This is why nobody dared to start it off. If one day a few of us (incentive boys) agreed to take a step away from tradition, I can predict a chain reaction from the rest.

Spirit Week With or Without the Spirit

Spirit Week is an interesting concept, to say the least. As it’s name suggests, it is supposed to be about school spirit, in our particular case Palmer Pride. But in the end, Spirit Week generally winds up devoid of Spirit. Rarely is anything actually about school spirit. By no means am I blaming this on anyone, nor am I saying that our school is the only school at which this “Spirit Week without the Spirit” occurs; I am simply saying that the Spirit isn’t there, which results in activities which are generally uninteresting to many people. Now at this point in my discussion, many student council members might take offense. They might say something similar to: “Excuse me, but I put my time and effort into planning and running Spirit Weeks, do you realize how disheartening and hurtful what you are saying is?” To which I would have to reply: “Yes, I understand. At the last school I attended, though we had no student council, we still ran Spirit Weeks. The teachers handpicked students, like myself, from their classes to be the student leaders. I ran numerous Spirit Weeks at that school, each with varying degrees of failure.” Welcome to the twenty-first century people. The world sits at our fingertips with our technology and our made ready to use products, whether they are frozen pizzas or toy trains. We never have to get off our seats for anything; we never have to work to do things for ourselves. Our teenagers are a group of lazy, passive, stereotypical robots. Occasionally one student comes along who is bright, passionate, an outside-of-the-box type person. Someone who is very one-point-O. These people are different; these people have Spirit. These are the students that bother with things like Spirit week. They know that years from now the grades you got won’t matter to you anymore, instead you will look back and say: “Remember that time that I dressed up like a Christmas Tree in high-school? Those days were the best.” So what are we doing waiting on our couches for the world to come to us? Spirit Week is a principle we can apply to real life; we have to be active, spirited participators in our world: we can’t just watch life as though it is a movie! Good things may come to those who wait, but great things come to those who take a step out of the comfort zone and reach for them.

Pride, Prudence, and Conceit-are these what we celebrate? Or is it more?

  Spirit Week holds no difference from the Olympics-both are events to celebrate the so called "pride". If one is to appreciate one, there is no point not to appreciate the other. I cheer for both for they hold values that are important to some: honor, perfection, and unity, but not the others. In a society that fits narrowly under the category of "open-mindness", I will say that Spirit weeks are some what important to the Palmer Community. Spirit week is not about making friends-that is too weak a purpose for anything-but rather about unity and smoothing out the rough textures we see daily. It is like Santas breakfast, where atmosphere of friendship can be established between each small communities that share the tiny space under the Palmer roof. It brings the once seperated groups, such as Incentive/Nonincentive, grade levels, racial ethinics, people-in-the-same-class, togather. Ever wondered why the Olympics is brought back from its thousand years of sleep? Why are we wasting such tremendous amount of money on celebrating festivals? We humans need to be reminded that we all share a bond and helping one is similar to helping yourself-regardless of how we are to be subdivided, we are still one.

Up, up, up and spirited away!

Spirit Week is what the Student Council put effort into so Plamer students could show their "Palmer Pride" and perhaps meet new friends and get into trends. I personally do not participate when a Palmer Spirit Week occurs inasmuch as others may (same as half the school). The notion that I do not participate in these events is very simple, but the mechanisms of the many reasons is complex.
It is my psychology that drives myself to avoid such occasions. I am an intrapersonal person, so I make little friends. The friends I make are tightly selective and perhaps over time rejective. I lose contact to old friends and make new ones (no offense intended to my current friends). My spirits are between my interests and I. I contact friends via face to face and only use e-mails for extracurricular organisations and sometimes my father's friends. Although I do not communicate much outside of my home, I am still a happy person, living contently in my safe home. As I have stated before, Spirit Week is for people to gather, show "Palmer Pride" and perhaps make new friends. This is not how I make friends or show "Palmer Pride," thereupon I hardly participate during spirit week.

Spirit Week

After thinking about your comments in class today, I thought Spirit Week would be a good topic of discussion. We have people in our class who help run Spirit Week, as well as people who do not participate in Spirit Week.

Here's your topic:

Student Council puts a lot of effort into Spirit Week here at Palmer.

Some possible topics to explore:
Do you participate? Why?
Are Spirit Weeks important for Palmer’s community?
How do you feel about Spirit Week?

These are just some ideas – you can write a paragraph on anything involving Spirit Week and Palmer.

Please keep your responses to ONE paragraph this month. Pick one idea, and stick with it!

Due: Jan 15

the younger folks

"What is the significance of Old Man Warner bringing up the "young folks". What role do young people play in our society?"

Young folks should be pointing the later generation, and not surprisingly, their opinions and point of views will not be the same as the older generation. In the short story "The Lottery", Old Man Warner viewed the young folks as simply uncivilized people, whose ideas were irradical and not worth attention. The old man had once said, "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live hat way for a while." This proved his belief in that the young folks are people who could never be satisfied with any situation.

Young folks in our society were completely different, however. They were always at the top of the priority for most of the adults, as they would be responsible for the world in the future. Adults used every chance they could to make the young folks more "civilized", although their intention was positive, most commonly parents still had the tendency to "civilize" the young folks to become the same as them, although the situation were up to a new level and age. The rights of young folks were slowly getting better as years went past. For example, the young folks 300 years ago never had a say when deciding whom they must marry, it was all planned out by the parents, and regarded as a way to improve business or relationship with other families. 50 years ago, young folks choose the person they liked to marry, although the parents still had the final say to decide. Young folks nowadays, not surprisingly, are more wild, and do not listen to their parents (this might not be a "improvement"). Overall, young folks has the key to changing society, and their decisions are becoming more and more independent.

Generation X

What is the significance of Old Man Warner bringing up the "young folks". What role do young people play in our society?

When Old Man Warner brings up the "young folk", it is his way of ridiculing the next burgeoning generation of leaders. I believe he see's them as a threat to his ways of life. He see's them as uneducated and unwisely taught by the older generations. The young people are, admittedly, stopping the lotteries in other towns. This is something that Warner has done in all of his seventy something years. So they are, to a point, changing his lifestyle in lengths that Warner does not approve of. He brings up the younger people to complain about them, to express his frustrations that the world is changing - and he can't do anything to stop it.

This is the role that the "young folk" play in our society. Young people represent change and development. They are the innovators of civilization and the torch bearers for the new. They make things different in the way they want - whether for better or for worse. Young people decide the future of culture, the future of government, the future of family. And even though each generation may look bad at first, there is always hope there. Because no matter how lazy, or stupid, children and teen and adolescents, they all grow into adults. Yes, adults do make mistakes, but adults also learn from mistakes, much better than anyone else. They grow, become mature and wise, and they create a clear path in the uncertain tomorrow. Young people embody hope that the next day will be better than the last.

The Largest and Ongoing Role

What is the significance of Old Man Warner bringing up the "young folks". What role do young people play in our society?

Through Old Man Warner’s eyes, the young folks represent the new changes within society that he dislikes. He is accustomed to his own traditions that he grew up with, and therefore, he is threatened by change. The young folks are the future of society, and with them comes the breaking of tradition, and therefore, the frightening uncertainty of the future.

The young people play a colossal role in our society. We are the people who will make or break everything, for everything we do greatly impacts the present and the future. A typical stereotype of young people is that they are lazy, unappealing, underachievers who don’t do anything to make a difference in life. However, this is completely untrue. If anything, we are the people who make the most difference in life and in our society, especially with all the freedom we have. We are hopes and dreams just waiting to happen. We are the ones with our whole lives ahead of us, so if we want to make changes in our lifetime, we can. We are people who can break tradition if we believe it is wrong and improve it, or even make our own, which we constantly do everyday. Through school and life, we have learnt about mistakes past generations have made, and we learn from them to improve things in life. Of course, we have made mistakes, and will continue to do so because it is inevitable, but because of some of our mistakes, some older generations view us as unworthy of all that we have, and that we are not on the same pedestal as them. However, we should not be defined by these mistakes, and we should be trusted that we can do well in life. It has been shown that all it takes is one person to change the world. However, instead, it is one generation that can change the world, and it is ours. We have a mind set that we can do anything if we want to, so if we apply that to everything beneficial we do in life, and for society, something amazing will happen. Also, we not only play a substantial role for society now, and in the future by what we do, but also by who we are as people. What we do and who we are affect future generations of people as well. Therefore, if we have a positive role in society and in life in our lifetime, the next generations will hold onto that, and "pass it on" to their future generations of people. Thus, we really do have the largest role in our society and in life presently, and in the future.

The Change in the Future?

The significance of Old Man Warner bringing up the "young folks" is saying the future will be decided by the next generation (young folks). Old Man Warner knows it is the younger ones that will choose whether to keep old traditions, or get rid of the old ones and bring up new ones. Adults have different views of what is best for our society, so in Old Man Warner's eyes it is not a good idea to think of giving up the tradition of "The Lottery." He has been around for a longer time than all the others, so he has a better view of what the tradition is all about, so he tries to warn others of what will happen if the lottery is diminished. However, because its the younger generation that will shape the future they will act upon their own views and make the future the way they want. The views of the young can still be influenced by the adults, since we soak up any information given towards us. But the young are able to see the mistakes in which the adults are blind to see, because it is their own views so they will think their way of looking at things is correct and defend it. That is one of the better qualities the younger ones have that adults are usually clueless to notice. We as the next generation have a duty to help our world to advance rather than ignoring the faults and not fixing them. The young have a lot to learn from the adults but they have a lot to learn from us as well. The concerns of Warner are important as well and should not be ignored. Adolescents have a tendency to be easily persuaded and influenced to do certain actions and can be brainwashed into thinking a certain way. For example, teens today are smoking, drinking and doing drugs more often, mostly due to peer pressure from peers and the desire to fit in. However, sometimes adults have to trust us that we will help push the society forward and even though we make mistakes we will fix them in time. Just like in the northern village, that Mr.Adams said the young are talking about giving up the lottery, the one individual who thought of that is one of the many that will help our society grow. That one person was able to see the fault of the older generation, and found the tradition to be unreasonable and useless, since it only creates death. But even though we should think for ourselves, we still need the older generation to guide us along the way to adulthood and teach us what is right from wrong. Until we are shown we can be trusted, restrictions are put up around us to prevent us from doing actions that will hurt us, because not all of us are the best people to trust, at least not yet. That is why Old Man Warner does not trust the young. Until then, we must lean on each other and listen to what everyone has to say and decide together what the future should be. The young advance the society and the old prevents it from getting worse, we still have a lot to learn from each other, both adults and kids and must keep on moving forward.

The Future Generations

Young people have a lot to give to society, both in the present and in the future. In the present, young people are everywhere. They are on beaches and forest cleaning up the environment and also in the community helping and volunteering to make society better. They can even help out the previous generations by going to retirement homes to help out. However, it is in the future where young people play a huge role in helping move society forward. They are the next generations of doctors, lawyers, scientists, teachers, business people, police, firefighters and many other things. They are the ones that may find a cure for cancer or a way to stop global warming in the future. They are the ones that help run cities and towns for the years to come. Without them, society will cease to continue or move forward. Young people learn from the mistakes that previous generations have made to prevent the same mistake from happening and to also improve society. When Old Man Warner said that young people were a "pack of crazy fools", it was just because he did not understand how the new generation thinks. He only believes in what his own generation thinks and does not understand how everything around him is changing. What he does not know is that maybe when he was a young teenager, adults used to say the same thing about him. If everybody in the world was like Old Man Warner, then the world will not progress because everyone will not change. They will do everything exactly like their ancestors so there will be no improvement to society or any aspect of life. Society is like a car and young people are the fuel that powers it to make it go forward. Like a car with no gas, a society without young people will not move forward. It will only stay in one place.

To comment on the comments…

Hello my lovelies.

Thank you for being so active on your class blogs. The discussions are great to see!

It has been brought to my attention that some people feel like the comments are a bit “harsh”.

I have now read through almost all of the comments, and I appreciate the connections you are making to each others’ posts, world events, other literature, and life in general. It’s great to read your opinions! I truly enjoy it.

This is probably one of the first times you’ve had to “publish” formal writing in a public forum, so remember it can be scary for some of your peers. Be careful that you do not attack others' views in a negative way. It’s great to have differing opinions, that’s what makes our world interesting! But present a different opinion in a way that invites discussion, rather than silencing people.

Some language that may help you to comment more positively –

“I understand what you are saying, but have you thought of this?”

“Good points, but I disagree with some things you’ve said”

“Your post got me thinking… what about this?”

On the other hand, if your post is commented on, feel privileged. You have started an intellectual discussion! If someone disagrees with what you have said, stand up for what you believe in, and keep arguing your own points! This will help you make your points clear, focused and well argued. Take the time to reflect on what is being said – you may want to edit your post after you hear from your peers. I do not mark them until the due date, so you have time to go back and make sure your thoughts are in order.

Keep commenting! It’s great.

The Right Track

What is the significance of Old Man Warner bringing up the "young folks". What role do young people play in our society?

Although it may seem like young people don’t play much of a role in the society today, they will in the future. This is why in the short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, old man Warner mentioned young folks. He brought them up because he saw the importance of their existence in the society. The old man might be wrong about how his society doesn't need changes, but his concept on the significance of young folks is correct. Whatever is done now is what young people will learn from, and that is why he was trying to be a good role model.

Old man Warner understood the importance of young people in the society, but he dealt with it in the wrong way. Like a typical parent, old man Warner pushed his expectations on young people. Setting a good example and leading the young generation on the right track is necessary, but the impact of elders on children only goes so far. At some point, children needs to learn to go on with life on their own, and eventually they will start to have their own opinion. They take the old concept, add new ideas to it, and then they reproduce a whole new society. The more the elders restrain young people from expanding their ideal world, the greater the violence would be when they finally demand revolution. People now lay out a train track for the younger generation to follow, but the younger generation is building their own at the same time. Ultimately, the one that will end up having to make the decisions are the young people, so pushing expectations on young people the way old man Warner did is not the best approach to making a better future.

Learn from yesterday, Live for today, Hope for tomorrow

Old Man Warner knows only of his time, and fails to understand the developing world around him. He views new ideas as absurd and sees young people as senseless beings. Old Man Warner rejects the ideas of newer generations because he believes they are incapable of making decisions and therefore, should not have a say in significant affairs. He prefers that important matters be left in the hands of the experienced and mature elder citizens. However, young people and their contributions are crucial in the development of society. If new ideas are not taken in to consideration, our society will live following a continuous pattern preventing all from developing and flourishing. The young are the owners of fresh new minds which offer an innovative approach and perspective on matters. The opinions of the young should always be taken in to consideration because they often have the best understanding of the current world. Their opinions enable us to put new ideas in to play and allow society to grow and prosper. Learning opportunities should always be given to the young in order to prepare them to run the world tomorrow.

Young people are the foundation of our future, the root of it, and the core. If today’s young are instilled with good values, those values will reflect in their approach of running the world tomorrow. As well, the young should be given the opportunity to learn lessons through means of people, events, and mistakes. Their ability to both learn from and to apply these lessons will supplement a prosperous future. However, if the youth of today are not instilled with good values and lessons it will negatively reflect in times to come. If the youth of today are unable to learn lessons and apply them to life, the foundation of our future will not be very stable nor will its roots be able to emerge. Therefore, in order to form a secure foundation for the future, the learning and engaging of youth in important matters should always be encouraged.

Maintaining Order

Why do we live according to customs in order to keep things in order? Order is not maintained by rules or guidelines, but by the man holding the gun. A system has been set up by our government, to stop us from doing the things we would instinctually do, and why? To maintain order, an elusive destination with which we are so out of touch that we no longer know it’s meaning. American troupes walked in to Afghanistan to maintain order. Hitler shipped Jewish women and children off to concentration camps to maintain order. The town folk in The Lottery stoned people to death each year to maintain the order of a good harvest. How far will we go to achieve order, how far will we go before we realize we have waltzed over the fine line of “erring on the side of caution” and into the oblivion that is overreaction? Do we need to have a thousand and one laws to determine what is and is not safe?
Life is a gift, a gift meant to be enjoyed. The customs, the laws, are they all necessary? If love of all things guides your steps, what harm can you cause? And if Hatred is the demon on your shoulder, have you ever wondered who put it there? A law tempts even the strongest of wills to break it, but a freedom encourages a man to do what is right in the eyes of his people. So why not live in caves, cease to work and live that way for the rest of forever? If this is what shall bring us peace and quiet then we shall and must do it. Take up the torch; hold it high, it’s time that we realized there is more to life than technology and society. It’s time that we realized that in order to obtain order, one must first leave it behind.

Questions, Questions, Questions.

Are there any things in our society now that should be questioned? I believe the correct answer would be: yes. It's always a good idea to question the things you do. Question everything, don't every just blindly follow something without ever wondering why. Everything in this world should be constantly questioned. That leads to innovation, that leads to enlightenment, but more importantly that's what makes it so fun. The world would be a dull place if no one ever questioned anything, if no one ever thought "what if..." if no one wondered "why did I...". That kind of world is about as fun and vibrant as stale bread.
It disgusts me that there are still people that don't question anything and live without ever wondering about the way they're doing things or about the things around them. They never wonder about things and simply go with the flow. That's not living, that's merely existing. By questioning things we can get information about things, amend mistakes that we have or have made, and more importantly it will change our moral compass. Whether you're a die hard environmentalist or a corporate business person you should always question everything that you do and sometimes question the things other people do. Because when you start to wonder, that's when things start to change, that's when things get interesting, and that's when you change the world. While it is true that sometimes you can't think just feel, it is not true that you should not question things. Because the world we know is wholly perceived from our physical five senses and nothing else. So everything is made up of what we think and know. So if you don't question things you'll only ever get to bask in the glory of a small part of this flawed yet flawless world.

One Point for Adults!

The previous discourses have been on the proponents of the role of young people. However I would like to refute and point out the insignificance of young people in today's society.
Who influenced the youth population? Who announced war in Vietnam and Iraq or initiated the Manhattan project? The answer is adults. Adults built our society and founded laws to suppress the world of sins. One might ask why children and teenagers are so limited? There are two reasons: Dependency and naivety. Young people are here to learn from adults and are dependent on the guidance of elders. The youth are among the most impressionable of the general population. "Young folks" are gullible and lack the fundamental training of rational thought. That is why "young folks" are forced by law to attend school and receive this education in order to change the world of tomorrow when they reach adulthood, in which they are less credulous and attained rational thinking (creative thinking is perfectly rational). The future is the world of today's youth but the roles and actions are done by tomorrow's adults.

Reply to the First Blog Question

Young folks in our society are the ones who bring changes to it. It can be in the form of scientific discovery or something as unimportant as a way to speak. Influence of the younger generation is often vital to a society's survival as a society without dynamics is well, one that lacks constant vigilance to the fore coming disasters of the world we are in. Every rule is made to be broken and every law is made to be shattered. Old customs are always subjected to changes whether it is necessary or not. Some changes are so dramatic that the entire culture is washed clean of its existence.

Certain traits are often preserved in each generation of change due to its importance to the society. For example, the stoning of the lottery winner from The Lottery is something that we have in our society but just in a slightly mutated version. It is called hazing. The purpose of hazing is not to punish someone for their bad luck, but to connect people together. "Only hardship can allow sweet fruits to be harvested." Serfs said that 600 years ago and they have sour and rotten apples. Anything that one fought for and won, is valued more than its actual value.

Lincoln said that "give (him) freedom or give (him) death" after he won the presidential seat and abolished slavery. However, the Africans right now in Africa will happily trade freedom for some food that they have to struggle to get a few crumbs of. Hazing allows people to value each other more, and to be grateful of the society as whole more. Some of the customs such as hazing were so strongly supported that so far, very few of them are abolished. Even most of those who survived through the hazing process supports it. I had once read a documentary about hazing a while back. In it, a father sent 3 of his loving sons to a freezing chamber and you don't want to know the rest of the story. In the end, one of them ended up in hospital for a surgery. The father actually cried and said that "it was necessary."

It is not to say that hazing is something that we should keep, but it is one of the few ancient methods that hold us together even today. Camp Squamish is actually, in my opinion that is, a minor version of hazing. We all have a miserable experience which binds us together since we complain together and trust each other more. In a more precise way of speaking, hazing is not all that bad.

I agree that no society is perfect and therefore all parts of our society are subjected to constant re-evaluation. For example, Kennedy won the national debate against Bush about invading Iraq, but he still lost the presidential seat because he did not support the war.

Regardless of the how absurd and bizarre is the nature of politics, Bush is able to win with 90% support which means that less than 10% support Kennedy even though the general public agree that Kennedy is far more logical than Bush. This proves that our society does not really value logic as much as emotion or perhaps even belief. Our society are filled with flaws as almost anything else in this world. Therefore, all of our society are subjected to change and every change must be debatable as no one side can be completely right or wrong. As each generation is to replace the worn out cover and brings forth change, the change itself can be questioned but only no right answer can be given.



By : Jisong

RE: First Blog Question

1) Our attitude towards violence should be modified. Today the average citizen has seen hours of violence on television by the time they reach adulthood. Compare that to what life was like a few decades ago when most people don't experience that amount of violence throughout their entire life. Perhaps our increasing exposure towards violence is responsible for the growing rate of conflict in the world (most notably the United States). We must also modify the way we treat certain commodities such as water. We treat water as if it is never ending and we pollute and waste it. But in the near future it may become a scarce commodity and we may experience serious shortages even in the developed world.

2) In a decade the youth today will be responsible for the world. If the lessons they learn now will affect how they run the world tomorrow then we must ensure that they learn the right ones. If we teach them the same lessons we learned then when they grow up they may find themselves with out of date information and advice that no longer applies. For example with the advent of global warming and the dwindling supplies of natural resources the behavior we exhibited in the past will only accelerate the speed at which our civilization is drawing to a close. Some may think that we can easily fix these problems and continue acting the way we did before but it's not as simple as it seems. To sum up the problem I will provide the following example. To increase our energy supply we must develop more sources of renewable energy. But to develop those sources will require the input of vast amounts of natural resources. To meet the demand we extract more resources but this in turn requires more energy creating a vicious cycle. Thus we must teach our youth different lessons such as conserving energy and recycling.

P.S. I like a bit of violence otherwise life is boring =)

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FIRST BLOG QUESTION!

After our great class discussion about Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" I thought it would be appropriate to continue our thoughts on here.

We didn't get to discuss this in class, but I want to look at one section of the text that may pertain to you:

"They do say," Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, "that over in the north village they're talking of giving up the lottery."

Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools," he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live hat way for a while.

Comment on one, or all of the following:

What part of our society should be re-evaluated? Is there anything that we do that should be questioned? OR is it acceptable to live according to customs in order to keep things in order.

What is the significance of Old Man Warner bringing up the "young folks". What role do young people play in our society?


Due: Nov 20

This blog is for...

1. Timothy
2. Sydney
3. Clement
4. Jim
5. Karnpreet
6. Oliver
7. Jeremy
8. Helen
9. Jisong
10. Pag
11. Tina
12. Steven

The rest of your peers are writing on this blog

Welcome to your class blog!

Every month or so I will ask you one question to respond to on our class blog. The questions will change from month to month. You may have to reflect on world news, yourself, or think about what we did in class.

The requirements:

• Minimum of ONE paragraph, maximum of TWO.
• Do not repeat what someone else has said! If you agree/disagree with someone, say that and explain why.
• Make sure your responses are on topic.
• Support your opinion. If you use outside sources, make sure you submit the citation information or link.
• Proof-read! Do not submit something that is not edited or is grammatically incorrect.