The Class Talk

In class the other day we discussed an issue about a 15 year old girl who told her parents she went to a party, got so drunk that she couldn't remember anything from the night before and woke up seeing nude pictures of her on the Internet. Two football players were convicted of sexual assault yet nothing has been decided about whether or not the football players actually did. Everyone at the party was drinking yet nothing came out in the press about a case about under-age drinking. In the article I read I was surprised that nothing happened to the players that were at the party and were drinking. One of the coaches were in charge of disciplining the players because of the drinking and going to the party. The coach decided not to punish the players because he asked the students if they believed they did anything wrong and they said no so he decided not to punish the players. I was shocked that the coach decided not to punish or at least bench the players from a game. In our school, if a person does something even slightly contreversial while on a team or in a club, they get banned from it for most of their season. One example of this in our school is the girls swim team. During Homecoming the classes all dress up in their class colors yet this year the deans decided it would be a great idea to make everyone just red and grey. The seniors rebelled agianst this idea and wore all black but the girls swim coach said that if he saw anyone wearing black that day they would be banned from one of the biggest meets of the year against our school's biggest rival. It was not against the school rules or policies if someone wore black on the school colors day but the swim coach saw it as going against what the school was trying to promote. Something as little as wearing black on a day where everyone else is wearing red and grey would result in getting benched from a game yet in the article we read, going to a party, getting drunk, and showing up in pictures at a party where a girl was taken pictures of is nude was okay in the coaches decision. I believe that sports players are held up to a higher standard then the average person and I believe this is a good thing. If you want to be apart of something bigger than yourself then you should be living up to higher standards. I also believe that everyone should be held to higher standards because that would effect communities in a posotive way and eventually the world. If everyone lived to a higher standard and tried to be respectful of others and not do irresponsible things such as going out and taking nude pictures of someone while everyone is drunk, the world would be able to be much more effective and many horrible moments would dissappear such as the one about the 15 year old girl. Here is a little video of people raising the social bar and the world becoming a better place and how it could be better, enjoy :)
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s16e09-raising-the-bar

Outside Writing: Final Blog

The book They Poured Fire on us from the Sky has many ideas wrapped within its cover. Some of its main ideas are about government, slavery, war, and disease. This book explores these different ideas by having Lost Boys from Sudan talk about their experiences of escaping the war and living on their own by moving from refugee camp, to work camps and through their escapes from slavery. This book shows the problems that they have as they struggle to find safety within their own country. They eventually find safety in Kakuma which is a refugee camp in Kenya. From there, they get to America where they have help from the author of this book, Judy Bernstein. While reading this book, there are many issues that arise which do not happen in many other countries such as America. A question that begins to come up is: why does one country end up with so many problems that do not exist in other countries? A possible answer to this question is that different countries may not listen to their peoples needs and the government does not do their part to help their citizens. A majority of the problems that happened in Sudan was because of the war that happened. If the government had not begun the war within itself many of the problems that settled within its borders may not have happened. The government should have worked on helping its citizens and listening to their needs so disease, slavery and other issues could be solved. The main issue with that kept coming up was the government would not listen to its people but began creating problems within itself. When a government helps support the people within its borders progress can be made to solve problems but when the government does not help its people but instead brings war on its country, the country crumbles and many of the people have issues that would not have appeared. Without a giving government, the people within its borders will have more issues without it.

Outside Reading 4: War

The book They Poured Fire on us from the Sky all revolves and is written because of the war that goes on in Sudan. This war was against the government trying to make their country Islamic and the SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army). What the government would do is find areas that are not Islamic or that they believed had any interaction with SPLA and destroy that village or area. Sudan's government would come in and take the women and children in the village and lock them in their houses and burn the houses to the ground. The Sudan government would then take the men and kill them and throw them into rivers or ditches. The government did not care if a person was apart of the SPLA or just a civilian, if someone was not apart of their side they were to be killed. Unlike most wars nowadays, people will not just kill someone in war off of a hunch because they are rules to war. One example of this could be the Afghanistan war because the US army gets bombed by civilians often yet they are not allowed to just go around killing civilians just because they may be associated with a terrorist association. One of the Lost Boys describes how he felt the government thought about him and people his age. He says "Thousands die a hundred are born a day. Who cares about your life at your age? Our lives seemed no consequence to them." The government gave no regard to the young people that would be effected by this and how horrible their massacres were. The government would even bomb schools and other community areas. One Lost Boy said that the SPLA wanted to continue education and protect those in danger from the government. It is not right that the side opposing the government is looking out for the civilians education and rights. A government is in place to maintain order and to help its people yet the government is not doing this. War is primitive and is used when people are not able to come to an agreement. War should be something of the past, killing people brutally is not the way solutions should be found. What the government of Sudan was doing was also immoral. They were killing innocent people, destroying villages and schools. It is wrong for war to happen in the first place but it is even worse that when it happens innocent people are put in harms way and in this war, they were some of the largest targets. Stop the needless killing and this will stop the war.

Outside Reading 3: Disease

A common trend that kept showing up in the book They Poured Fire on us from the Sky is one of disease. Nearly every last boy that told his story in the book had a disease or was stuck in a work camp because they had to help their friends and family that would die without their help. An example of how horrible some of the camps such as Kakuma, which was a refugee camp, was in a quote from one of the Lost Boys stating "nutritional diseases were rampant in the camp". Another one of the Lost Boys, Alepho, described his experience of when he got malaria. Since he did not receive the malaria shot he was sick for weeks upon weeks to get over. Many of the diseases that were found in the different camps or that were caused from running from the war could have been easily prevented. When kids in my school get sick they go home where they are safe from other diseases and sicknesses/germs and will try to get better by taking different antibiotics. One of the Lost Boys got pink eye and it took months to heal because there was no way to keep away the sickness or any way to receive remedies that were available. On many of the Lost Boys travels, they recollected their travels through different swamps and their overall experience on the travels to different camps. One of the Lost Boys remembers specifically going through one river where many of the travelers in his group died from snake bites. This is not a sickness or disease yet many of those people could have been saved if there was access to antivenin which cures the body of venom from various snake bites. Diseases were very common in camps as one Lost Boy wrote "kids got malaria a lot and sometimes other diseases".  Malaria is preventable and a curable disease so it is very disappointing that so many children would receive malaria. If they did not receive the shots before they got malaria, it is quite possible that many of these children did not receive the antidote once they got malaria. The largest result from people not getting cured is death. More than half a million people die each year from malaria which is curable! Curable! This means that these deaths did not have to end this tragic way. This book brought awareness to diseases and nutritional inefficiencies which can be prevented and cured. Recognizing this, people can be prepared by finding places that can help with malaria and other disease protection. One simple way to prevent malaria is to sleep with bug nets so mosquitoes that are carriers of the the malaria disease cannot bite them. This is the 21st century, we have outgrown the inability to protect ourselves from many diseases and it is a duty for all people to help those who can be saved from preventable diseases. No person should have to die because of a curable disease because they do not have the resources or are unable to access the cure.

Outside Reading 2: Slavery

A part of the book They Poured Fire on us from the Sky was about slavery. Although slavery seems abolished in the United States yet it still exists in some places such as Sudan. One of the lost boys in this book was enslaved and he says he was forced to a "faraway place where he was sold as a slave". He was then passed as a slave to different people. His jobs varied from working in the fields, cleaning, cooking and doing other difficult tasks. One of the Lost Boys, described what happened and the stories he heard while he was still in his home village. He says "However, their parents were killed and many of the sisters sold into slavery." Slavery in my mind, used to happen and has since been abolished. Yet as I read this book, I discovered that many people are still in the shackles of slavery. The conditions of being a slave were brutal. One of the Lost Boys in the book, Deng, described his experience of being a slave during Sudan's war. He said that if anyone tried to escape the escapee would be punished by death in front of all the other slaves just as an example of what could happen. Being a slave entitled very little food and none of the owners called their slaves by name. Most slave owners such as the one that Deng had called them "Black trash". This was horribly demeaning and this bombarded their emotions. Not only did slave owners attempt to break down their slaves emotionally but they also did physically. Slave owners regularly beat their slaves as the slave owner in this book did with Deng. When Deng tried to escape he was beaten nearly to death and was then sentenced to death for attempting to escape. Luckily for him, the slave owner's daughter begged for his life to be sparred and it was. His new punishment was to not be fed for several days which only made him weaker but he still had to perform at the same level as before. Not only is slavery wrong and should never happen but the conditions that exist for slaves are incredibly brutal such as the story of Deng displays. Slavery should be abolished because no human being should have to experience the horrors that accompany slavery. Having to live your life in fear of another beating, having to work for others doing strenuous labor and never receiving a cent for your labors is unjust and no one should have to live through those kind of horrors. Yet this is still going on in Sudan and people are still in slavery. To think about America and to know that slavery still exists here disgusts me. Slavery should be abolished everywhere, it is unjust to allow slavery to continue. I hope by spreading awareness of this subject will help bring awareness to those that can have more of an impact than me to stop slavery.

Outside Reading 1: Government

The book They Poured on us From the Sky is a book about the children of Sudan and their experience when they escaped the war in Sudan and moved into different camps and eventually arriving to America. A major topic in this book is the government. An issue that continues to rise up is the government trying to take too much control over the country. The Sudan government wants to make their country entirely Muslim and the characters in this book are not Muslim. The government would then take villages that were not Muslim or were supporting any type of uprising and burn them to the ground, including all of the people in it. The government of Sudan began this entire take over by killing off students that attended universities to hopefully have less people realizing what was going on. The government then moved onto elementary schools and started bombing those too. This is a major issue; a government should not try to kill off its inhabitants because it wants to change something in its system. What Sudan did was killed of their students and began burning down villages and killing people who were in anyway not fully for their cause. The book quotes "(the) Government starting killing all the smart students". A government is made to help create order and help those that live in its territories. What Sudan was doing was a take over and stopped listening to the people who lived in its borders. America is a place where people have the freedom to believe in whatever religion that they wish to believe in and praise any god or none at all. This is the way a government should be, willing to have their citizens decide who or what they want to worship. The narrators of the book discussed how they enjoyed that their women were able to have the freedoms that they had. The women were looked upon as respectful people and some would even become the head of the house if their man was absent and would sometimes join the men in battle. The people in this book did not want their women to have their rights taken away. They did not want their women to have to stay covered and to have much of the powers and rights that they owned to be taken away. No person should have to live their life being under someone else or not be able to wear what they want in fear of being beaten up. The government of a country should support its schooling and encourage the education. This is something that many people in America take for granted, a public education. Yet the government of Sudan was killing educated people, students and even bombing elementary schools. No government should be taking the lives of its citizens like they did in such brutal ways such as burning people alive in their houses or just coming into villages that could possibly be against a few of their beliefs. Governments should be supportive of education, the prosperity of its citizens and the freedom of religion.