When She Woke

For my ISU I read When She Woke which talked a lot about the right to abortion. I personally think that abortion should come down to a personal choice because in the end it is your body. Not everyone has the same view on abortion so that is why there shouldn't be a law against it, it should be a personal choice. Nearly all abortions take place in the first trimester, when a fetus cannot exist independent of the mother. That means that the fetus is attached to the women's body it is not living on it's own yet so your really not taking a life away. This counter acts the argument that life begins at conception because truly the baby cannot support itself until later on in the pregnancy. While reading the book I also realized how much religion affects peoples views on abortion. So what do you guys think if the bible was never written do you think people would still be against abortion?

Teen Drivers

The crash on highway 9 yesterday afternoon got me thinking about what society seems to think about teen drivers and new drivers.In the news we hear many stories about teens and young adults getting into serious car accidents. Society then comes to conclusion that the reason so many teens get into accidents is due to inexperience. That is why Ontario introduced graduated licensing meaning that you had to work your way up to your full license. I think this was a very smart idea because then you have at least 2 years of driving experience before you receive your full license. What I also like about these rules are that anyone under the age of 21 has to have zero blood alcohol. This helps avoid serious crashes because mixing a new driver and alcohol could be potentially dangerous. This still leaves us with the question though that even though there is now a graduated licensing why are there still so many crashes? Should we change the licensing system so it takes longer to get your full license or should it stay the same?

Should we still teach Shakespeare?

I agree that shakespeare's plays can be boring and hard to understand but I still think it should be taught in high school. Shakespeare's plays force students to analyize more critically which helps them develop skills for future education. Also I think that Shakespeare's plays can relate to someone of any age or generation. A great example is in Romeo and Juliet, Juilet has problems with her over protective father which I'm sure a lot of high school kids can relate to having problems with their parents. Shakespeare's plays also bring up topics like morality, politics, love, anger and death which can be disscussed with any generation by relating to current events. The play may also widen the students vocabulary making their writing more creative and detailed. Even though Shakespeare's plays are difficult to understand they still can be useful. What do you think should shakespeare still be taught in school?

Memes

Damein, Sara L. Mack

The Ideal Marriage

     I think that the main component of an ideal marriage is love and affection. It doesn't matter if it's a heterosexual couple or same sex couple if they are in love they should be aloud to get married. I also believe that there needs to be commitment or some form of trust within the relationship in order for it to work out. The people within the marriage should also have common interests and feel comfortable around each other. I believe that you should be able to choose your partner I don't agree with arranged marriages. I personally don't agree with parents picking partners for their sons/daughters. The argument is that your parents know you best but I believe that the only person that knows you best is yourself. These marriages are usually arranged at a young age and we know that peoples personality's change over time. So the parents may think they picked the perfect person but they really can't predict who their child will grow up to be. That's why I believe you should be able to choose who you want to be with because you need to figure out who you are as well as who you want to spend the rest of your life with. This is way to big of a commitment in your life to have someone else decided it for you. What do you guys think is best free choice marriage or arranged marriage?

Native Stereotypes and Truths

This video shows both the stereotypes of natives and what natives are truly like. I noticed that throughout this video most of the negative stereotypes were coming from the media.The media likes to show natives as being the "bad guys". The worst one I found in this video was the advertisement for a hair brush that said "will not save an Indian's scalp from his enemies but it will preserve yours from dandruff, baldness, falling hairs and headaches". I found this quite offensive because they portrayed the natives as violent people which in reality they aren't. I liked the truth part of the video because it showed a more realistic view of natives.They portrayed them to be peaceful people that wanted to fight for their rights. This is the way I think natives should be viewed more often instead of the media just portraying them as the "bad guys".

Native Reserve Conditions

This blog post is related to the video we watched on native reserve conditions in class the other day. I found an article that looks at this topic in more detail. http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2011/06/09/living_conditions_on_first_nations_reserves_getting_worse_ag.html

When I read this article I found it quite dissapointing that there are communities within in Canada that are living in third world conditions. In most native reserves there isn't safe housing and there is limited clean drinking water. Also most students don't complete highschool making it very hard for them to find jobs in the future. I personally want to know where all the money the government gives to natives goes because conditions within the reserves are getting worse. I think that the government should sit down with natives and teach them how to spend their money more wisely. I think that if the government worked with natives it would help improve the conditons on the reserves a lot.

How do you guys think we could improve the conditions?