Passing Essay

Everyone has a goal that they work at to succeed. Humanities is definitely one of those things that people who take the course have to work for to be successful. It involves a lot of work that needs to be done right and to the best of your ability. This year I learnt a lot of new things that I will need to use in my everyday life. Taking this course is nothing like taking social and language separate. We didn’t really learn much about history, words or reading comprehension. We learned life skills like patience, presenting and confidence.

We didn’t learn about reading comprehension but we definitely used it. Whenever we read a newspaper, quotation, book, or essay they almost always had something to do with globalization. From taking this course this year I have learned that everything that has been written has been written for some reason, and there is some truth to everything stated. Humanities has taught me how to read into what I am reading and see how it relates to what I am learning about and the world.

          The main thing that I worked on this year to learn is what Globalization means and how it relates to me. Throughout the year we developed our identity by finding out who we really are and how what we do affects our lives. Making logos was one the most challenging things for me to do at the beginning of the year, I had no idea who I was. All that I knew about myself was that I am a fifteen year old girl with brunette hair that enjoys dance. But by the end I have learned way more about myself, I am a trustworthy, respectful girl that works hard when I feel like there is a reward in it for me in the end. This year has made me learn a lot about myself and what potential I have in the world and within myself. I also learnt that globalization is where country’s come together to help other country’s with all their needs that that they cannot meet. I had no idea about government, other country’s or even Canada for that matter before I took this class. Even now I still don’t know everything that’s going on but I have learnt how to find out and teach myself what is.

          Technology played a huge role when it came to doing all my assignments. It taught me how to present, find out information, and to hand in most of my work without having to write it down myself and handing it in. I learned how to use blogger, wikispaces and prezi. I have never used anything more than PowerPoint before I started high school, but now I rarely use it anymore with all of these wonderful sites that I can use to make my presentations look better and way more interesting.

Humanity’s is an amazing course that I would recommend everyone younger than me to take. It has taught me so much about the world and myself, I am really looking forward to taking it next year and I have never really actually said I am excited to go to school but this course is so much fun and is really brilliant. This year I worked hard on my assignments and projects. I definitely did not do good jobs on editing my work or finishing on due dates, but that is what I strive to do better at next year. I deserve to pass because I am able to work to the best of my abilities and I plan to try harder and not take advantage of my time given to me next year.  

Personal Reflection

In this mission we worked on many things that I haven’t done so far in the year, we worked on vocabulary, poems and reading a book then doing assignments on it by ourselves. For the first time all year we had to do an independent study on a book that we had to choose by ourselves. I chose the book I am a Taxi. We had to connect it to globalization and how we know our role as global citizens. I am not much of a reader so I learned how to be determined and how to finish reading a book even if it is not that exciting to read. I also re-taught myself how to make an annotative bibliography and write a book report by myself instead of as a team. The next thing that we had to do was to make a list of vocabulary words that we knew and didn’t know from the whole year and from our text books. We had to choose ten social and ten language words then give a visual representation, definition, definition in our own words and the word used in a sentence. From that task I learnt how to find words that I don’t understand and then use three new ways to teach me how to learn it on my own. In this mission for a group assignment we had to relate our books to each other. My group made a short movie so I learned a new way to present to the class and how to keep them entertained. I enjoyed the stuff we worked on this mission and I am excited to take this course next year.

Review

I am a Taxi is a wonderful story on an unfortunate little boy who lives in the country of Bolivia. His parents get put in prison for an accusation of drug smuggling even though it wasn’t them who was smuggling the drugs they still got thrown into jail for 20 years. The main character Diego goes through many problems with bullies, teachers, adults in the prison and even the men who he goes with to get a job. He had no idea that he was going to a drug camp to make cocaine for the drug dealers to sell. The men at the camp use and abuse him and his best friend and stretch them to their limits. I really enjoyed the book but I think the beginning took too long to describe what the book was going to be about. This book was full of adventure and parts of it made you want to cry, scream and made you scared for what actually happens in reality. The books ending was very well done and makes me want to go and read the sequel because it had an ending that made me wonder what will happen next. This was an awesome book and I would recommend reading it if you like the types of stories that make you feel sorry for someone else and keeps you wondering. 

I Am A Taxi

·        See the interrelationship between globalization, democratization and human rights?

The book I read is I Am A Taxi, this book has some perfect examples for some points from statement above. But not necessarily related to the exact statement or any others. In this book there is multiple times where human rights are shown and how they are being broken and the rights abused.

I Am A Taxi is a book about a young boy that has to go live in prison with his mother and younger sister. The reason they live in jail is because they got accused of smuggling drugs on a bus ride, and the children had nowhere to go so they were granted permission to live in the prison with their parents. The main character of this story is a young boy named Diego; he is a very smart, ambitious boy who has to take care of his younger sister at times and do chores for his mother in the jail. At the prison they have a “taxi” system where boys who are old enough to do chores get paid Boliviano for going around in Cochabamba to deliver mail or buy things for the women in prison who can’t go outside. Diego was one of the little boys who got to be a taxi. Hence the title I Am A Taxi.

Diego had gotten into some trouble at the prison when he couldn’t find his little sister that he was supposed to be watching over, so he tried to sneak around looking for her but he accidently dropped a bouncy ball into an older woman’s pot of soup that she was making to sell. The woman got mad and told the little boy that he and his mother had to pay her enough money for the whole pot. So Diego decided that he had to get away and make money fast so that he and his mother wouldn’t have to go I debt.  Diego’s best friend had a fabulous idea on how he could do that. Diego had no idea what he would have to do but he was sure that Mando (his best friend) wouldn’t lie to him. So one morning a man named Rock came and picked them up so they could go to work. As soon as they got to the site the whole story turns into a nightmare for these young boys.

About half way through the book the boys have to deal with things that are unnatural for anyone to deal with. The worst part about it is that they are little boys having to make decisions that a thirty year old man should make. This part of the story shows how human rights are getting abused by the older men. Diego and Mando get dragged to a drug camp for the work that they thought they were going to make great money doing. But that was not the case Rock made them go through weeks of child labour. He didn’t give the children any say in what was going on. Whenever Diego talked back or even said anything that would intimidate Rock would find different ways to abuse him, “Rock crossed the clearing in two steps and struck Diego across the face.” (page 116) The reason that Rock had smacked him was because Rock had messed up on some math and Diego tried helping him because Diego was a very smart young man. But of course that made Rock feel threatened.

This book shows how human rights were being destroyed because the boys didn’t want to do any of the work but the older men knew how to trick them. Their feet hurt and they weren’t allowed to eat. But the men were drug dealers so they did what they knew how to do best. Give drugs to the kids, the drugs made them feel great and a live but they didn’t last for long, “Could we have something to eat... we will give you something better than food.... he rolled them cigarettes...it will give you the strength of 10 men...” Pages 117& 118. Whenever the boys were tired or hungry they just gave them a smoke. This was unfair to do because they were manipulating the boys.

Those are just a few examples that I could find of how the older men used and abused the young boys. They had threatened them many times with their lives. They would hold guns up to their heads or backs to make them scared so they would do whatever they wanted them to do. I realise that I didn’t answer the question but this book was not related to globalization, or democracy’s.  Nobody helped these boys the only thing in the book that mentioned anything about another part of the world was when they talked about where they would sell the drugs and to who. This book was a wonderful example of a dictatorship because there was one man in charge and everyone took orders from him. Nobody else got say because they just wanted to get paid. 

The book was a good book to read about the misfortunes of others and how in other countries how rights and rules are abused. It was a wonderful piece of writing that taught me a bunch about how not to trust people and that there are some very cruel people in the world. It opened my eyes to what types of people are out there and what I should watch out for and what not to do.

Annotated Bibliography

(Ellis, 2006)

Bibliography

Ellis, D. (2006). I Am A Taxi. Toronto: Second paperback printing.

 This book (I Am A taxi) focuses on the unjust ways in Bolivia; it’s a good story to read if you’re looking for a book that shows how human rights do not always get played into affect. This book helps me with learning about different countries and how people get treated. It was a great book to read when we are learning about globalization. 

My Father

Poetic Devices:

Personification- “the house stands singing”

                         -“coyote’s dreams borne on the dust”

Metaphor         - “Sky long”

                        -“grow sweet”

Reader- first person

In the lyrical poem My Father written by Russell Wallace the “story” is being told through a man’s child. We can tell that the poem is told by the child because in the first stanza of the poem it says, “…my father built his house.” This poem is written about a piece of land that a family’s house was built on, and how beautiful they thought everything on the land was. In the poem there was a few sections with personification one of the sections it says, “the house stands singing.” Another way that there is personification is when the poem states, “coyote’s dreams borne on the dust” It’s referencing that dreams are borne instead of dreamt. Another literary device used in My Father is metaphors. The examples of metaphors that I found were, “Sky long” and “Grow sweet.”

Vocab

Sonnet
Definition: a poem, properly expressive of a single, complete thought, idea, or sentiment, of 14 lines, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to one of certain definite schemes.	My definition: a poem of 14 lines.
Sentence: Class could you please write me a sonnet?

Jargon
Definition: the language, especially the vocabulary, peculiar to a particular trade, profession, or group	My definition: the different ways different groups talk.
Sentence: The dentist uses a different type of jargon than the skate boarder.

Anecdote
Definition: a short account of a particular incident or event, especially of an interesting or amusing nature.	My definition: short telling of a amusing historical incident
Sentence They told us about anecdote in class today.

Bias
Definition: a particular tendency or inclination, especially one that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question	My definition: you are more in favor or on one side of an argument
Sentence I was bias for the conservatives.

Wit
Definition: speech or writing showing such perception and expression.	My definition: a type of writing with clever comments.
Sentence: In the play Romeo and Juliet Romeo has such wit.

Tragic FLaw
Definition:the character defect that causes  the downfall of the protagonist of a tragedy;  hamartia.	My definition: something thats horrible that happens to a character in writing.
Sentence:  Romeo and Juliet is a story based on tragic flaw.

Hubris
Definition: excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.	My definition: someone who is full of themselves.
Sentence: See that little lady right there? She is full of Hubris!

Emergent issue

Bulletin board info...

Taxing

Liberal- Michael Ignatieff has clearly stated he will not raise the GST: “And so we’ve got to be very clear in the next election. We are not going to increase the tax burden on the Canadian family. It’s not going to happen. Don’t believe what they tell you. Don’t believe what they say.”(Michael Ignatieff, speech to the Liberal Caucus, January 25, 2011)

Conservative- Stephen Harper is committed to keeping taxes low for Canadian consumers, and to completing our economic recovery.  He's cut taxes more than 120 times, saving the average Canadian family $3,000 a year.

Green-The Green Party believes in reforming our tax system to make it fairer and more in tune with Canadians’ desire for a healthy environment, a sustainable economy and a vibrant, caring society. It makes no sense to subsidize the wealthiest corporations on Earth

NDP- We will reduce the small business tax rate from 11 per cent to nine per cent to support a sector of our economy that creates nearly half of all new jobs in Canada.

Education

Liberal- Public schools are the best way to educate students.  Vouchers take money away from public schools.  Government should focus additional funds on existing public schools, raising teacher salaries and reducing class size

Conservative- School vouchers create competiton and therefore encourage schools to improve performance.Vouchers will give all parents the right to choose good schools for their children, not just those who can afford private schools.

Green-Work with provinces and higher learning institutions to reduce post-secondary tuitions.Boost participation in cooperative education programs and apprenticeships.Encourage more hands-on learning in our post-secondary education system.Harmonize government programs such as the Millennium Scholarship Fund to provide a single need-based grant program to reduce student debt.

NDP- We will make post-secondary education more affordable by directly attacking skyrocketing tuition costs with a designated $800 million transfer to the provinces and territories to lower tuition fees, as per the NDP’s Post Secondary Education Act;We will increase the funding in the Canada Student Grants Program by $200 million a year, targeting accessibility for Aboriginal, disabled and low-income students, in particular; We will raise the education tax credit from $4,800 per year to

$5,760 per year to help with increasing education costs.

comparison

The mood of a story or movie is the atmosphere and feeling of the location and how the characters are feeling in the specific version of the script. For example we watched a parody of Romeo and Juliet, they used the script that the play had but they made the mood in more modern of a scene. At the beginning of the movie it started at a gas station instead of on the street, the Montague’s family was more of a crazy free spirits. They had pink hair and their shirts were just loose and were always happy. The Capulet’s on the other hand seemed more like they were macho men with greased back hair and leather clothes. In the movie the Montague’s seemed as though they were afraid when the Capulet’s came to fight them and they would run away.  But in the play the Montague’s seemed like they dressed more respectful and more stylish. The Montague’s didn’t dress like they were greasers in the play either they dressed how people did in the time this play was written with more puffy dresses and that kind of style. The mood changes everything about the written material. It can make you think that Romeo and Juliet are dare devils or sweet little children inlove.

Juliet

Juliet has changed since the beginning of the play because...

At the beginning of the play Romeo and Juliet we get introduced to Juliet as a young girl that lives in the City of Verona, with her parents who are trying to convince her to marry a man named Paris..., “Marry, that “marry” in the very theme I came to talk of...” (page 43 line 64). But even though it was her par parents wished for her to marry at that young of an age she felt as though she wasn’t old enough and rejected her parents offer..., “It is an honour that I dream not of.” (page43 line 67). Even though she had said she wasn’t ready to marry later in the play Juliet falls in love with a young man named Romeo. She soon forgot how she had felt about marriage just days earlier and wanted to marry Romeo, because they were madly in love with each other. They got married by a close family friend, Friar Laurence. Juliet has changed majorly since the beginning of the play. She ends up marrying at her young age and contradicting herself by doing so.

I would NOT consider doing what Juliet decides to do because...

Juliet had felt as though she had to do something very dramatic for her family and family’s friends not to judge her and feel as though she is a to the family for loving a Montague. She felt as though it would be best to pretend like she was dead so she didn’t have to marry Paris. She went to Friar Laurence’s call and convinced her to give her a potion to put her into a deep sleep so everyone would think that she was dead..., “Unless thou tell me how I may prevent it... When presently through all thy veins shall run a cold and drowsy humour; for no pulse shall keep his native progress... no warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest;... then awake from a pleasant sleep.” Juliet was nervous and very curious If she should believe him, but in the end she did. When she took the potion everyone believed as though she was dead, including Romeo. I would not have chosen the same path as Juliet because in the end she ended up hurting everyone in her family, and killing her one true love and herself. 

Group project 2.

Link to the prezi:


http://prezi.com/-3l8_r0i--x2/gs-wb-imf/ 


Information:

The gold standard is a monetary system in which the value of the currency unit (the Canadian dollar, for example) is defined in relation to the value of gold. Gold had the ability of free movement around countries.

The monetary authority in the country (which was the Department of Finance in Canada until 1935 when the central bank, the Bank of Canada, was established) then commits itself to buying and selling gold at this fixed price.

The foundation of the gold standard is that a currency's value is supported by some weight in gold. Inherently, it makes sense to value currency by some tangible and precious resource, otherwise, currency is just paper bills. Therefore, by tying paper money to an amount of gold, it gives the holder of the paper money the right to exchange her paper bills for actual gold.

Ideally, this requires that paper money be readily exchangeable for gold. If a bank does not have gold, then the paper money has no value. But theoretically, actual gold would flow between nations to ensure that all currencies would be supported by gold.

A pure gold standard was used between the 1879 and 1914 by many modern trading nations. Under the gold standard system, all participating currencies were convertible based on its gold value.

Mining activities require the clearing of large areas of land. The chemicals used in the mining process often escape into the environment causing large scale pollution.

Besides clearing the mining area, vegetation in the adjoining areas also needs to be cut in order to construct roads and residential facilities for the mine workers. The human population brings along with it other activities that harm the environment.

pollution: Chemicals like mercury, cyanide, sulfuric acid, arsenic and methyl mercury are used in various stages of mining. Most of the chemicals are released into nearby water bodies that leads to water pollutants.

In spite of tailings (pipes) being used to dispose these chemicals into the water bodies, possibilities of leakage are always there. When the leaked chemicals slowly percolate through the layers of the earth, they reach the groundwater and pollute it. Surface run-off of just soil and rock debris, although non-toxic, can be harmful for vegetation of the surrounding areas.

According to later analysis, the earliness with which a country left the gold standard reliably predicted its economic recovery. For example, Great Britain and Scandinavia, which left the gold standard in 1931, recovered much earlier than France and Belgium, which remained on gold much longer. Countries such as China, which had a silver standard, almost avoided the depression entirely.

The connection between leaving the gold standard as a strong predictor of that country's severity of its depression and the length of time of its recovery has been shown to be consistent for dozens of countries. With the value of gold up, this meant that every country could rely on their paper money for the value of gold.

The real value of the dollar lies in the wealth of the county and in what the dollar can buy here and in other parts of the world. For a high amount of gold needs a high value of the dollar.

The World Bank is an agency in the United Nations, but in practice is independent by its 184 countries.

The world bank came out of the Bretton Woods agreement. 

The World Bank provides loans to less developed countries, but in order to get these loans the countries have to meet certain requirements.

These requirements include: reducing corruption, increasing democracy, and adapting to Western- style free market conditions.

Another common requirement is to reduce government spending on social programs, this practice has been criticised by opponents of globalization saying that the free market reform policies are often harmful in receiving countries.

The International Monetary Fund also came out of the Bretton woods Agreement. Its purpose is to work together with the World Bank to bring stability to international monetary affairs to help expand world trade.

IMF is the agency of the United Nations.

IMF is in charge of monitoring exchange rates and providing short-term financial assistance.

The IMF is primarily funded through quotas which are proportional shares that member countries pay.

The IMF helps us by managing our financial affairs and keeping Canada a float. They charge us money to keep us stable.  The IMF monitors exchange rates and it provides financial assistance to communities, who are in a financial downfall. Thus we rely on them for financial assistance and they rely on us for money to help expand our countries world trade and help stabilize our Monetary affairs.

This is Globalization in the workings. Communities and companies working together to create something better for everyone.