16 = Voting???

Today in class we had a seminar based off the article of text that we read in preparation for our discussion. The article that we read and annotated was titled “You’re 16, You’re Beautiful, and You’re a Voter”. This text was all about Anya Kamenetz’s (The author) thoughts on lowering the legal voting age. The reason that we read this article was because we have been looking at the presidential election for about two weeks now. It seems only right to discuss topics that relate to voting, that will be affecting us in the near future.
After we read this, we combined all of our own thoughts and had a discussion on it. The class was split into two groups based on gender, and held two different conversations. In our group, I was the discussion leader. The point of having a discussion leader is to guide the conversation along. There were often times in the conversation were I was needed to bring it back to the text. I actually liked being the moderator for our group because I like having the responsibility of where our conversation goes.
Some of the most important ideas that were contributed to our conversation were; Lower voting age but still keep restrictions, Only allow devoted teens to vote, Not only test underage voters but voters of all ages to insure people actually know what they are voting on. During our actual seminar, everybody was very polite and was conscious of everybody thoughts. The only thing that could have changed was there were a few times were people weren’t waiting for others to talk, and shooting down ideas. That is not the point of Socratic seminars, the whole intentions of doing this activity is to learn about all the points of view regarding multiple topics.
Definitely there were some things that needed to be changed on the teachers end. One of which being, next time the teacher needs to tell us when to start wrapping up our conversations. We were late to our next class because our teacher lost track of time. Also, i don’t think that we should of split the groups up based on gender, only because each gender has different points of views, that should be integrated with others.
Overall I think that this was one of my most enjoyable seminar. Only because everyone was for the most part respectful of others, and we brought many great ideas to the table.

SAT 7-Barack the vote

A fellow classmate of mine said, “No wonder a lot of students are pumped up over voting and making a difference, Barack Obama has that effect on youth. I never cared about politics but Barack has a way with words that make you want to make a difference.” I think that this quote is very true, Barack Obama is a very progressive leader and is ready for change. “Obama radiates the new. He doesn’t just talk about change; he looks like change.” This quote pretty much sums up Barack Obama, we need a new face in office, and for years it’s only been Bush’s and Clinton’s. It’s time for change. Because he is a liberal and “hip” candidate he appeals to most modern teenagers. He is destine to revive our country to its previous standing, and undo all the bad that our incumbent president-George Bush-has already done.
I personally do not agree with the mass population of the youth. I am actually against Barack, he has no experience to back up his thoughts. Hilary Clinton isn’t as appealing because she is older, but that just means that she has more experience and knowledge. Although I am not in favor of Barack, I think he is just what our county needs to get the youth excited about voting again. The last big thing that got the youth voting was the youth suffrage act. This time it may be Barack Obama. There are many coalitions being created at collage campuses, and websites devotion their time to raise money for the Barack campaign. So as you can see many teenagers are getting fired up about this upcoming election. Everybody keeps saying that Barack is winning over the youth, but that’s not going to win him the election, there are also many adults that are voting in this election. A recent survey given by TIME magazine showed that Barack Obama had more youth votes than all the conservative republican candidates put together. This says many things, one of which being that since teenagers want change, and since Obama represents change the most, most teenagers will vote for him. One of the republican candidates is even evangelical. That means that they take gods word to the grave. They believe that god’s word is law and they think that anybody who breaks the “law” should be punished accordingly.
In conclusion, Barack Obama’s polices appeal to the young constituents in the United States, and getting them to vote for him.

Mock 2008 Presidential Elections

The Presidential Elections only come once every four years, and are a huge part of American democracy. To recognize this year’s election we did a mock election. Leading up to the election, each class was split up into groups of three (one for each candidate). And when we met in our groups we decided on what topic we wanted to specialize on researching. The debate itself took all day. We had to go through every candidate’s issues from both major parties. Now don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all bad, we all learned a lot about major issues that our the U.S. and all other countries are faced with. I thought that this was a very interesting way of learning about the Presidential Elections. The topic I was assigned to research and debate on was Hilary Clinton’s view on stem cell research. While researching this topic I had found some very interesting points. Before doing this I had no idea what stem cells were or what potential they hold. For most of the notes that I got, I had to actually do a lot of research to find them. The reason that it was so hard to find was because stem cell research wasn’t a direct issue that Hilary was focusing on so therefore it wasn’t on her website. Also it was very hard to find research on her views on stem cell research and the other candidates’ views. This leads me to the most useful bit of knowledge that I gained from doing this mini project. Not “book smart knowledge” its “street smart knowledge”, I learned that if you don’t even know anything about a topic, there are still ways of getting out of it. For example, our teachers asked me about stem cell research leading to cloning, I knew nothing about the topic, yet I found a way to avoid it and yet still sounding professional. I think that this skill will help me all throughout life in getting myself out of “sticky situations”. My views are pretty much the same with Hilary Clinton’s regarding stem cell research. I am glad that I wasn’t on the republican side though; they had to fight for something that they didn’t necessarily believe in. But throughout this whole learning experience, I have noticed one thing; if our county wasn’t a democracy it wouldn’t be anywhere near as advanced as today. There are just way to many different opinions, and so many people that all have different thoughts, and yet most citizens don’t realize what power they posses with voting alone, one vote could change a life.