Approaching Education

Education it's apart of all of our lives, and we approach it differently. My education started in a small school A Montessori school, the whole idea is to let kids take there approach on learning and give them more freedom on how they go about their learning process. I think starting off here really changed the way I learn, now that i am in public school I think differently then most kids, or at least that's how i see it. At my school there were no grades so there were no points to get but you had to get  90% or better on a test to pass it and if u didn't pass you had to keep re-taking it until you did pass. That whole idea changed when i got to high school, now every kid is looking for another way to get points. I like to think that I don't do that but when it comes down to it, I do but only in classes that i can't connect with. If I'm not into a class or a teacher doesn't teach they way I learn i have to go out of my way to find ways to learn the material. And if i still don't understand i find myself asking how i can get extra credit. Now this hasn't happened a lot i do well learning on my own thanks to my old school. But every once in awhile you have to attack and fight for those few extra credit points. But common playing a game for points seems a little unnecessary to me, earn your points get something out of it. I want to go on and get a good education and a good job to be well off later in life, who doesn't? So i am trying to take all the classes I can in high school that will help me later in college because in high school they are free. But you can't spend all your time in high school prepping for college and worrying you have to take classes you enjoy, something that makes you happy or you will never get through it. I'm really hoping that all the work I am doing now will help later. I'm doing my best to get good grades but I'm more worried about actually getting something out of what I'm doing. I want to be able to help my children (if I have any) later in life wit their home work and be able to support them because I actually learned and thought about what I was doing in high school while still being able to tell them stories about all the fun things I did. High school does give you a lot of options we have a lot of classes you can take but sometimes people don't have time to take the ones they really want to because their parents want them to take Spanish because it will be useful yeah that's true but is that what their kid wants to take? Parents need to back off a little let their kids grow and do their own thing. I'm lucky because my parents are there for me and support me in what ever I choose, they know I know good from bad and they trust me. The nice thing is they aren't so worried about grades and I don't have to have A's to be a good child, that takes so much pressure off and i feel bad for the kids that have to deal with that. But the requirements at schools are made to be good but sometimes they hold people back like I need to take science because I'm going to be a physical therapist but some people wont and they will never use what they learn in that class, math when will I use that? Maybe to balance a check book but now everything is on the computer so really why do i need to learn fancy math skills? So i think that school sometimes holds you back from other classes that could be helping you.

In school I'm good about asking for help, which seem to help a lot. Most kids are scared to go up and ask a question because teachers are scary. But srating my education interacting with my teachers all the time I got better at talking with adults. The one thing I lack is reading skills, if someone hands me something to read I have to take my time and read the whole thing in order to understand what the points are. I have been working on reading more, over the summer I started reading a lot more books. I have found that it has made me a faster reader. Reading is a really good skill to have it helps you through out your life that's why I have been foucing on getting faster at reading. I'm hoping that all the time I'm putting into it will help me on the ACT. Test taking was something that was hard for me but by the time I got to middle school I got a lot better with the whole rule that you have to get  90% on every test. That whole idea helped me be harder on myself and push me further and further. Back then I freaked out about tests and made about 100 note cards to study. By the time I got to high school everything was mare relaxed on tests and I didn't see the need to study as hard and it worked well for me. Now all I do is look at the study guide and see what i don't know and study that. If teacher ask me to grade myself I sometimes give myself a grade that they say was low but in my mind it was not good enough, I don't know if they are just being nice or being completely honest. I was given the opportunity to go in to honers English next year but i didn't take it because I like how we learn in the regular class, its easy going and makes me enjoy the class. If i don't enjoy a class I'm not compelled to try very hard unless the teacher is good at convincing me, i always do the assignments but not always to the best of my ability. School can help with a lot of things if you don't let anyone hold you back. 

Time to Learn from Our Mistakes

The war on terror, everyone knows about it, it's a part of our lives now you can't really get away from it. Just like the cold war. The cold war created fear of communism and a-bombs, people were always scared and were always preparing for something bad to happen. Now people are scared of the war but not to the same extreme as back then, people built bomb shelters and classes were taught what to do if a bomb went off, the government even had waning horns installed. Now people would probably just take out the iPhone and and ask it what to do, because it can save you. Living then was like living on the side of a volcano that could erupt at any moment. Yet today this war erupted in our home land, 9-11 the destruction it caused was horrible and yet it seems that they had more fear back then of being attacked then we do now. At home for both wars there was extreme hatred for the other nation. In the cold nationalism became huge everyone the young children growing up in it in particular grew so much hate for communist countries that they believed that America was the best and everyone else was wrong in what the thought and did. Another thing that is similar is the secrecy in government. Yeah now we have the news to tells us about everything going on every where, or do we? Are they told what they can and cannot show? Are they kept out of certain meetings and areas so we don't see everything that's going on? We truly will never know the government likes to seems like they are always up to something or that's what it looks like but then they always say they are innocent and maybe they are but ever since the cold war we really started questioning our government because they hid so much then. During the cold war they had the radio and some had TV to they were informed but they found out things they were not told, and anyone that spoke out against the government and the war was assumed to be a communist, and judged by everyone and attacked by the government, the freedom of speech was taken away. And now everything we do is checked so its almost the same thing maybe not as drastic but it's the same idea, what we do on the Internet can be checked now that we are at war, which can be could and could protect us from any more attacks from the inside. But are they going to far? In both situations congress granted the president power to declare war with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in the Cold War and the Iraq War Resolution in the War on Terror, and both wars became the longest wars in history, connection? The Taliban and Vietcong the people we were fighting against, both groups were fighting to take over the government and we didn't like what they believed in so we ended up fighting them. But the fighting was more proxy wars, more so in the cold war but also in the war on terror. All of the similarities really show in the actual fighting and the government but the home life just seems so different, during the Cold War everything was changing on the home front women's rolls were changing and everything that everyone knew was not the same anymore, now things have changed but me growing up in this war i haven't seen any huge changes. Maybe I was just too young when it started to see big changes. In both wars America had to spend a lot of money to support the troops, but during the Cold War people back home were told to cut back on consumption now we don't do that. During the Cold War people in America were more involved now people just think of it as some war that's going on way "over there" just like in WWI. Even the younger generation was involved, college students protested and knew what was going on in the war, grade school students had fathers and brothers that they would write to and schools had them in training for an A-bomb to drop people cared more. Now people don't really know what's going on, because it's not directly effecting them even though the fight actually came to America unlike the Cold War, it just doesn't make scene. Even though the 2 wars had a lot in common to people now they are a lot different especially on home life. If we could see the similarities in the actual war we might be able to learn from it but who knows if the government wants to see that. Maybe people now react different because they have grown from the Cold War maybe we actually got something out of it. There are many similarities in the wars but they are each different and unique in their own way.    

Government paying the Bills

Today it is said we are coming out of a major economic crisis. Our economic downfall was rather bad but, at least it wasn't as bad as the great depression. In 50 years this will be known as the minor depression because it could even get close to passing the GREAT depression. Today our banks and our people came together to make his huge disaster that formed this crisis we are dealing with now. During the great depression banks and people got together made some bad deals and then the stock market added on and then the bottom fell out of that and a lot of people were free falling. There are many similarities with he two, in how they started and how they were fixed. A major difference though was that in the 1930's the economy had never taken such a big hit and they had no idea what o do and had to try all kinda of things to see if they worked, but now we can look back and see what our grandparents and their parents did and figure things out. In the 30's the depression hit a lot of people really hard and they could get back up they needed help. President Hoover wanted to keep the government out of the economy like it is in the constitution, he thought that the people could fix the economy and that people with money and places to work would help the unemployed and hungry. He eventually saw this wasn't happening so he started trying to make jobs for people by creating a dam and hiring people to build it. He made the federal home loan act that lowered mortgages and the reconstruction finance corporation which helped the banks. All of this was great and seemed like it would helped and everyone would be happy. But a lot of people weren't happy and at the next election FDR was elected. FDR was famous for his New Deal it was attempting to help everyone and get America back on its feet. A lot of people ended up not liking it they said it was unconstitutional and though the government was getting to involved in the economy, but on the other hand people also thought that the government wasn't doing enough so it seems that they were doing just enough if people are arguing both sides they are just greedy and want things to go their way. Now today with our economic crisis the government is trying to get involved again and get people working and get the money flowing again. They are paying big businesses like GM so that they can stay supported and keep people working. They have good intentions in doing this but it also looks to many people as if they are making the rich richer. In my eyes the government getting in the middle can be good but it has it's down sides. A lot of people in the great depression needed some kind of help to get back up and they didn't have anyone to turn to because no one in their area was helping them out so at that point the government needed to get in and help as best they could. Now we need to get people jobs and we always seem to turn to the government and i think it might be because people think it's their job. But really it's not, they are there to set the rules and make people follow the rules. When a economic crisis gets so bad that people can't keep themselves up and the unemployment rate is at a certainer point, I'm not saying i want to set what point that is but that is when the government should get in the middle. People just need to see that the government can't fix everything and we will Gore and create a better economy.       

My time machine

Most people live in the moment and don't really think about what it would be like in the past unless they are being told to or are learning something about the past. Well if I was given a time machine right now and I could go anywhere I wanted to it would probably be the 1960's. The thing I really hate most about about living in this era is how people worry so much, not saying I don't worry  but everyone is so judgemental on every little thing everyone does. Yes there was judgment but people were better at just saying what they believed. Like all of the rallies against war they actually stood up and said what they thought and fought for it, almost like fighting in the war. People were dedicated in what they thought was right and didn't care what might happen to them. And at such a young age college students were taking a stand that was unheard of before the 60's. That is was gives kids today so much more freedom and power. They were so creative in the ways the fought for things to, they made songs and poems they didn't just stand there they used art and personality to make something that people would enjoy to get peoples attention. We even listen to some of the songs to day, Blowin' in the wind by Bob Dylan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGO8snK98l0this song wasn't made particularly for are protest but it was a call for freedom and asking fro humans to learn from their mistakes and was played at many protests during the 1960's. Change is gonna come http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbO2_077ixswas another big song it was written in hopes to stop segregation and prejudice it is still heard today many singers still sing it. And who hasn't heard Give Peace a Chance by John Lennonhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhyiqGIJQus? There is so much presser put on people when they feel like they are being judged. Back then I feel like people knew that they were being judged and they just tried to ignore it. In my point of view and from what I know the 60's had less worries and I'm not just talking about the druggies and hippies. People were more care free and everything that was going on was so interesting it just seems so exciting. Yes the war was going on in Vietnam so i'm sure a lot of peoples lives were changed but when are we not in a war it think we have just kind of adapted to it. And now we don't even seem to care, my generation just doesn't seem to care about anything that they should care about and that is not going to be good. But in the 60's kids cared more I mean college student were the ones protesting now college students party and study they don't care about the war or anything else and that's just not right. All of the arts and music then was changing and everyone was listening to it because it was made at the protests that everyone saw and heard. I am a lover of music but I really can't stand the modern music today I'm not against it I'm just not a huge fan of it i don't feel like there is a lot of meaning behind it so i just don't feel a need to listen to it. But the whole music industry was changing then, and so many great artist were alive then and people could be right next to them when they were writing their next big song. A lot of the concerts were kinda crazy but that's what makes it fun, you will always remember it and it will always be a part of your life. I mean Woodstock how could you for get that? So many exciting and new things are going on in the 60's that it would be amazing to be a part of it. We grew a lot from the 60's, even with the bad that was going on during on it many things have changed because of it and it would be exciting to be apart of changing the course of the world.i   

Humiliation of Versailles

   Everyone knows what went down in WWI and if you don't well look it up because i really don't want to get into details about that right now. The biggest thing about World War One was the Treaty of Versailles, it eventually leads to Wold War Two and we all know that was really bad and come on who doesn't know what happened there. Now the Treaty of Versailles was meant to be good and help and make Germany small because everyone hated them so that what they did. They thought everyone would be happy (except Germany) if they split it up and took away a lot of its power  and military witch was mainly true while they were in the meeting because they eventually came to a compromise. They had arguments and some probably ripped out there hair but hey we probably got rogain out of that right? One of the problems with the treaty was that there were only four countries there England, France, America, and Italy so not everyone had a say but if there were more people there who knows maybe there would have been a mass killing, but anyway so with only these four countries all the other countries were left out and didn't get a lot from the meeting. Each country there had their major things they wanted and fought for to make things all complicated. America who was represented by Wilson fought for the League of Nations the other countries didn't really want to start this up but didn't really care about it so America got the League of Nations but, it didn't help them in the long run because they never joined it! One big thing the group decided on was that Germany was completely responsible for everything that happened in the war, Germany had to accept that they were responsible for every thing that happened, that they started the war and had to pay for all the damages. A lot of things changed because of the Treaty of Versailles some were good but the bad is going to start something even worse.       

Modern Imperialism

Imperialism the policy in which stronger nations extend their economic, political, or military control over weaker territories. America the home of the free and the land of the brave. Are we imperialists, could we grow with out it, if we aren't imperialists what are we? It all starts with Louisiana purchase and Manifest Destiny, the only difference is we staid on the land near us we never went over seas to expand into other countries. Now we are half way around the world, how did that happen? Well one things for sure we did not listen to Washington warning us about all the bad that could come with this. It all truly went downhill when we decided to go and take panama from Colombia and build the panama canal. Yes the Panama canal help everyone around the world but did we really have to take Panama and be so rood and selfish? Yet we never admit to being imperialists, according to USA Today the U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated "We're not imperialistic. We never have been." Today we are still imperialists its just different now, we don't go to other countries and fight a war with another country that owns it. Now we go and fight over raw materials that we need for our economy, we don't really need more land and Americans don't go off to the land where we are fighting to make their homes and start a life in the "new land" I mean who would really want to live in Iraq right now everything is crumbled now we just want money money money. It might sound bad that all we want is money but right now we truly need it, America is in so much debt we need some way to get out of it and imperialism might be our way out. In my point of view imperialism isn't necessarily a bad thing, unless you make it bad or make it seem bad. When you look at our world and how it started everyone had to go out and explore and take over new land to we wouldn't have gotten anywhere if it wasn't for imperialism, but back then there was no one to fight for the land. Once most of the land was taken nations wanted to spread but when they started to they ran into the native people but they wanted the land so bad they were willing to fight for the land. If they never fought for the land we would all be separated and not know anything and most likely not trade or have a lot of the inventions we have today. Now that we even know where Iraq is, is an amazing thing in itself. So imperialism has its good points and bad but at the moment it seems to be helping us but that could change in an instant we just have to be careful and see where it goes from here.