12/2/2009
Normally I don’t pay much attention to what is happening around the world but since this class started, I find myself watching more CNN and ABC news reports. The past two class meetings have been very interesting and varied in the information that we received. Our first class was an overview of what is happening right now around the world. One fact he gave was us was that the United States is 800 trillion dollars in debt and all that debt is owned by China. At any second, China could shut the United States down. The United States try to sell things to China but we have nothing to sell to them. China’s education is focused on math and science which helps them in the economic world. In regards to all the wars going on, I do not understand why we go to war with a country and then we stay in that country for countless years trying to rebuild it. Dr. Sherer stated how we are currently 40th in the nation for innovation and blames it on primary and secondary school. I don’t agree with this statement because teachers are in situations where they can not just fail all their kids that are not passing and meeting all the standards for their grade. It is everyone’s fault for not challenging themselves and expecting the best out of themselves. If we want to step it up we need to build more math and science academies so we can compete for jobs. We need to stop blaming things on people and start acting. Mr. Morris came in Tuesday and discussed globalization and how soccer has changed the world. I liked his speech about how police in the soccer stadium made walls between the fans because of riots that would happen if they weren’t there. At one match, 150 people were killed because of how crazy the fans get with their teams they support. When I read the “Walls” article, I was thinking the whole time why people didn’t just resolve their problems instead of putting up a physical structure to resolve their problems. Our second speaker was Dr. Pillay from South Africa. He reinforced the fact about China and how they owned our debt. He also talked about how companies only cared about money. There may be a cure to HIV/AIDS but the companies will not give money towards the research instead they pay for pills to help them live. They also will not lower prices of the pills for very needy people in Africa just because they want more money. So a different company made one pill to substitute 5 pills that HIV/AIDS patients had to take and sold them for only one dollar. I thought that was really cool that that company did that because there were a lot of deaths from HIV/AIDS. The Geo-Genius questions have so far not related to class discussion but have challenged me in finding the answers.
Posted at 11:16 PM by Sydney Hase