Fighting for Prayer

Religion and prayer has been a debated since 1962. It's been argued on whether teachers should be allowed to explain their religion and if kids have to pray in school, or if religious acts should be allowed such as moments of silence, praying at athletic games and so forth. Before the  1960's, prayer had been allowed, teachers would have bible study and prayer. The government has often argued about religion and there have been many cases where religion will collide with government. Prayer has had many restrictions by the US Supreme Court. Prayer is part of a religion, and religion is part of who you are, even if you don't have or believe in religion, what you believe makes up your identity, I think prayer, religion, and the freedom to follow whatever you may believe in should be allowed in American public schools.

It's been an issue since the Engel v. Vitale case in 1962, when the New Hyde Park, New York, Union Free District No. 9 told the principal to give prayer in the beginning of the school day, with a teacher present in each class. 10 of these student's parents complained and gave in a suit to the New York State asking that the prayer be banned from schools. The parents reasons for this was because the morning prayer went against their beliefs and religion. The New York State resolved that "so long as the schools did not compel any pupil to join in the prayer over his or her parents objection" The case was that the New York Union Free District had violated the rights of the freedom of religious belief. I don't think students were violated did because they had the choice not to participate. If someone is praying, you can have the option to just politely stand or sit there, you aren't forced to participate. This is like in the school, the students didn't have to be in that position to pray, so to try and sue the school is ridiculous because it's what the school believes and you can't sue them for that because you believe in something else.

Since this case, there has been conflict between religion and the government. One of the most controversy in the government and religions is the US Pledge of Allegiance. "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States Of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God,  indivisible,  with liberty and justice for all". The argument for this is, what if you don't believe in God? What if you believe in something else? Like for example, Wiccan, they believe that there is a Goddess and a God. "under God" is saying that there is only one God, which goes against there religion. Students in the morning repeat the Pledge of Allegiance with their hands placed over their heart. It's required to recite the allegiance in most American public schools, whether they are in elementary school or in collage. It doesn't go against any law or amendment, but it can make someone uncomfortable if it's not exactly what they believe in. To say that you pledge, or promise to a country that is under God, and God might not be what you believe in, can go against what you believe in. There isn't exactly a resolution to this because when this was written in 1954, most of Americans were christian, and pledging under God wasn't a big deal. You can't form a different Pledge of Allegiance because there are still people who do believe in God and there isn't anyway to change it. But to be forced to say the Pledge Of Allegiance, which in some schools students are, to be forced to pledge your allegiance to a God that you might not believe in, can go against someone's religion, which is something that nobody should be forced to go through.

Children's viewpoint on how the Government decides over how they will show their religion, impacted me. In this site, the children talk about how they feel about the Government making laws and rules that aren't swayed by religion. They speak strongly about how they feel about religious people being treated poorly because they can't do things that the laws required, such Jehovah's Witnesses, can't say the Pledge of Allegiance because it is against their religion. They also argue about how in Texas, they can't say prayers at football games anymore. I think that these children have a point. A common argument they have is, that how they pray, how they live their lives is under the protection of the First Amendment, which allows you to worship under your own religion freely. If the law says that they can no longer say prayers at football games, then the law is breaking the First Amendment, these schools wish to pray before games, so why can't they? Why does the law forbid it? Schools should be allowed to follow whatever religious exercise as long as the children aren't forced to participate. This is letting everyone worship whatever way they want.

Religion hasn't been a problem until the 1960's and it shouldn't have to be a problem. The Pledge of Allegiance was written by Christians, which is why they say "under God" but just because you don't believe in God, doesn't mean you aren't an American. Teachers should be allowed to talk and mention or speak freely about what they believe. Schools should be allowed to pray, to follow the religion of their choice, and children should have the choice of how they can worship without being forced to by the schools. Religion shouldn't be conflicting problem. Most religions teach to be peaceful, so why is it so conflicted and controversial? I think that having the freedom to believe in whatever you want, to worship however you want, and to speak about your religion is something worth fighting for.

(Picture URL: http://clearriver.org/jefflingblog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/slpersecution_lrg.jpg)

Fighting for Ourselves

There are many things to fight for in our lives. We can fight for whatever we believe in, whether it be in justice, politics, freedom, we can stand up and defend for whatever we want to happen or change. Our human race has been given the ability to speak with persuasion, using words to convince and coax change out of others. For many years we've had debates about many things such as education, wars, international affairs, but the one thing we've forgotten is ourselves. If we are the change in the world and mold it into something that we believe in, then I think that we should believe in ourselves.

Society has nearly sucked out all the individuality in our teenagers these days. To fit in the puzzle piece of society is so important to teenagers. This is a generalization but there are those who just don't have the courage to be different than what life requires and stand for what they believe. There can be people who can and will fight with bravery in what they think is right, which can result into being shot down or wanting to be heard again. But what about those with the unexpressed brilliant ideas, they are so concerned about what it will look like if they stand up for a religion or stand up for concept that they believe in.
"A heart can be broken
And the world could go on,
A life could be ended
No one will notice, until you speak up,
Do not hold back from the right thing."
The clothes we wear, the songs we listen to, the people we hang out with, aren't the structure of who we are and what we can put confidence into. It's the people who can inspire us and the reasons why we do things that make us who we are and what can spark these thoughts is the abstract mind.  Our voices are the weapons of the mind. To speak the mind is a common phrase, and to me, teenagers are losing their minds in the chaotic ways of society.

To remember who you are is important. We are people. According to the dictionary this is how we as people are defined. "Human beings, as distinguished from animals and other beings" or "The entire body of persons, who constitute a community, tribe, nation, or other group by a virtue of a common culture, history, or religion..." This is what makes us people. What makes a person is, as according to the dictionary, "The actual self or individual personality of a human being" A person who is an actual self, or has an individual personality. What it means to fight for something, is to have something inside of you and want to make it known or cause a change in others to stand up for the cause. A personality would affect this, it's a bias, on how you would see it. The human personality can vary on how you would perceive an idea, this would also change on how you would fight for it. If you don't have a personality, how can you know what is worth fighting for? A person each has their each characteristics that make them who they are, and that is worth fighting for.

It sometimes can be hard to fight for what you believe in. Being our age, it's easy to believe that you can't make a difference and that you are just one person. But that's exactly what can motivate us, being young and knowing who we are and what we stand for. It's so important to understand this. It could be many years before someone comes along and realizes what we stand for. Anne Frank, a young Jewish girl living in Nazi Germany, wrote a diary about her experiences in the secret Annex. She was an upstander because she wrote the truth about Germany and she wrote about hopes and dreams that she had. Her father Otto helped a dream come true after the war, Anne wanted her voice to be heard and she wanted her diary to be published, unfortunately Anne died during the war, but millions have read about Anne standing up for what she believed in. This relates to knowing about yourself because Anne knew what what she wanted and she knew herself so that she could fight for it, she dreamed of getting her diary publicized to the world and that they could her what she had to say about society.

To be an upstander in society its important to know what you are standing up for. Having something like this can make what you fight for even stronger. But to know what you believe in, that is what you need to fight for yourself? People have things that they believe that is worth standing up to and whether its bad or good they believe it's something that makes something worth fighting for, and to have that belief and to believe in yourself is something that is worth taking a stand for.

No Child Left Behind

In America, slowly and sadly, there are children falling behind in school. They can't focus in school, they aren't motivated to pay attention, or do their homework, and this to parents, who care for their kid's education, fear that this is a big problem. So the Congress supported the bill, and gave it to George W. Bush who was current president, and he signed and approved of it, bringing the No Child Left Behind program into action. This act is basically the schools give their kids a test, and if the schools don't reach a certain score than they have to re-think their teaching. People now are beginning to debate against the No Child Left Behind policy, which in my opinion is very smart.

As productive and as effective as NCLB sounds, to test kids and get them to a smarter level, is a big time waster. Students will spend months and months studying for tests, when they could be learning new curriculum, or reading about current breakthroughs or events. One example is Dena, a high school freshmen who wrote that she spent 2 months learning about root words because it was on the test. She thinks it would be better if we could learn critical thinking, or analyzing events.  Even though I think that root words would be helpful to learn, I think that you shouldn't spend too much time learning about them. I think it's more important to learn new strategies and develop your thinking.

NCLB runs on a budget, printing tests, reviewing the average score,  and hiring people to help with the tests. What I think is that American's shouldn't pay for this, it wastes our money on tests that aren't current, and although the studying for the tests are good review of the whole year, what are the chances that the kids are going to remember what they learnt in the beginning of the year? We should spend money on new curriculum, new text books, new technology. If we are the future, don't you think we should at least invest some money for the new generation? Instead of testing, they should use the money to give us new and updated books, technology, and resources, so that we can challenge ourselves with new thinking. Isn't that more important than testing us? We should be treated like stocks in a sense. If you pay for a share of a stock, you can benefit greatly. They should spend money on us, and educate us, and hope that we can create a better future and solve the current problems that we are debating over.

Students and teachers are beginning to wonder if NCLB testing is really helping. They're spending so much time just learning things for the test and trying to review it. Going over the same books over and over again just to make sure you know everything and lets be honest, it can get tiresome, boring, and it can make it hard to focus. Teachers will have to break it up so that the low achiever kids can understand and the high achiever kids will be challenged. But considering how NCLB makes the teachers teach in a way so that they can't break out of the teaching method so they can't teach by their own ideas. Teaching comes from the latin root  Kids can't learn by books, they can read it, but they can't understand it. To me, it's important to not only read something and learn it, but to understand how it happens and why it happens. I think that's what makes school so interesting. Not the learning (although that can be interesting) but to understand the learning. It's so important that what we read and we understand, because when we understand, we learn.

Although there have been many problems with NCLB, the intentions are positive. They're trying to get teachers to work harder and students to pull their weight at school. However, their approach is wrong and summing up what I have said in my blog post, there should be a better way rather than testing us. It's not like testing was a bad idea, but there are better ideas. Using the money for better technology, resources, teaching curriculum, investing time and money towards us because we are the future.

Taking A Stand

We strongly believe that you should go out on a limb.
We implore you to cleverly oppose society.
To challenge with determination the manner that has somehow tragically infected our generation.
We have walked with conviction, yet nothing has happened.
By actually talking we have noticed that somehow
the challenge of wisdom has aggressively frightened society
and disguised conviction.

By Georgina Irvine and Rachel McKinley.

To Turn The Other Cheek

I think the world could learn more about forgiveness. I feel like forgiveness is so important and the world is slowly forgetting how to forgive. When someone does something horrible to you, do you have the humility to turn the other cheek? For some people, it comes easily. They can see the greater good in others, they always see the shining light in others. But to some, it takes all they have to walk away.

I believe in God. I was born into christianity and I know no other life outside of my religion. Every night when I go to pray, I am supposed to pray for those who have done wrong to me, no matter how angry I am. Despite this religious belief, I have the hardest time forgiving others. It's hard to think how they have hurt me and try to walk away or to turn the other cheek. My religion believes in a sermon. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also..." Matthew 5:38-42. Being a teenager, I guess I will have to go through loads of drama, whether I want too or not. There is always going to be something she did to me or he said about me, but that's the thing. What good is it going to do for either of us by hurting each other? Even if I'm telling the world that people need to forgive, I know that I too need to forgive, even if it is the most difficult thing that I can do. Also, you don't have to be a big into society to make an impact. Just forgiving one of your friends can be the simplest step.

One current story that I know about forgiveness is about Fatmire Feka, who was separated from her brother and sister ten years ago in Kosovo. She founded the Kids Club For Peace, which helps kids to see past ethnicity issues that one might have. In an interview, she tells us how horrible it was for everyone during the war. The economy was horrible and houses were torched. She remembers children having to go through horrible traumatic experiences that she herself being a child had to go though. "I wanted peace because.... I had never had peace in my entire life" quoted by Fatmire Feka. I find this person to be quite amazing because even though her family was torn apart by war, she still found the integrity inside of her to help children with stories like hers to change their hearts about those who may have destroyed their lives.

Even in the past we've had people forgiving others and trying as hard as possible to forgive themselves. In 1930's during the start of Hitler's regime, Trudy, a Jew, had her father taken away and sent to a labour camp, however Trudy was able to escape on a boat to America. Weeks after weeks she would get letters from her father asking her to come save him. So by the time she had worked up enough money to bail out her father, she found it was too late. Decades later, she decides to share her father's letter's with her daughter. She was invited to a church organization in Austria for Holocaust survivors. They were coming together to help each other forgive what traumatic experiences that changed their lives forever. I find this so amazing that the Holocaust people are so forgiving. After what everyone has done to them and said about them, that they have the humility to forgive. Trudy was able to forgive those who had done horrible things to her, and she was also able to forgive herself for not saving her father. I think that the survivors are really amazing because they were able to forgive.

There are so many examples of people forgiving each other. So than why are there people going out there to murder, to steal, to lie, and so on? Even if there are good people out there who are so willing to forgive, doesn't mean that the others are willing to say they're sorry. I find it sad when people hate each other. That they aren't willing to humble themselves because they think that they're right. I wish we were more forgiving. In the past we've been able to forgive each other, in the current time we've also been able to forgive, so I hope in the future we are still able to forgive. I hope that we are all able to forgive each other because with forgiveness comes love.

A Democratic New Word

My first few choices that I had to pick for my one characteristic that I would hope for in this new world were equal, just, democratic, multi-cultural, and educated. I figured that equal and just could go into the same category as democracy. Also I thought that to be multi-cultural, you must be educated to have a good open mind to others. So in the end, I had two options, education and democracy. I picked democracy because in the new world that is being created, I would want everyone to have a voice to help improve and cultivate the new world to a fair society.

"Democracy- the practice or principles of social equality" -Dictionary

This was found off the dictionary and I liked how they said social equality. In democracy, everyone has a voice, no matter where they are from, who they are, or what they look like. I reasoned that if everyone has a voice, and the government listened, than we would have a fair or just society. I think that if you have a new world where every one's voice is heard, than you can start building up the foundation of the world. For example, if the government put down some basic laws, and not everyone was happy about it, than those people could speak their mind, they would be able to compromise with the government to make the world a fair place to be in.

"In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme." -Aristotle

I really liked this quote because it talked about how when you have a democracy, your government won't put richer people before the poorer people. In some countries, if you have more money, you have more power. This happens most often in poorer countries with some corruption in government, but in this quote, it tells you it doesn't matter if you have more money than others, you will have the same equality as another. I also really liked this quote because it talks about how in democracy, the majority is supreme. The government doesn't choose for you, the majority wins. This shows how everyone has an opinion and it's fair for society.

"Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely for the safe guard of democracy"

This quote was good because it showed how hard my choice was between education or democracy. To have a really good democracy the people should be educated to make educated votes or when they express their opinions. I would hope that my people would be educated so that they could advance in almost everything at once. These two characteristics go hand in hand. It's like when you're giving a teenager a responsibility. They have the choice to handle it carefully or they can handle it with not such great care, but they can also choose to accept the responsibility or not. So I thought that if my country is to be good in education, they would have democracy because it's a reasonable idea, every one gets their own voice, and they wouldn't tear down the country, they would try and build it up.

Democracy to me is one of the best characteristics for a country. There are other important characteristics, but I feel that democracy comes first. I feel this way because I feel strongly about everyone having a voice. I think it's important that a country is equal and not oppressive. I feel this way because if you want to build up a country, you should have rules that everyone can agree with, and everyone should be able to speak freely. This is what I think will help build a strong community.

The Night Of Chrystal (Kristalnacht)

On November 10th 1933, this is the night of chrystal, when the Nazis came into town and all over Germany, burned the Jewish buisness, and burnt all the synagogues. In the end, after all the windows have been shattered, chaos passed, reality set in and the destruction was seen, an estimation of over 100 Jews, were killed, but an unknown amount of Jews commited sucicude, many died in the hospitial, and 30,000 Jews were forced into concentration camp.

On account of some survivors, they recall this horrific night, and the propaganda used against them.

Susan Strauss Taube recalls how they were about to go to school and than they saw all the synagogues burn, turning on the radio, they were told to stay inside their homes. Her father was thrown into a concentration camp for 4 weeks and told to leave Germany imediately. Her father released but was not seen for a few more weeks, he escaped and fled to Holland. Everything was confiscated. When I saw this I felt awful. I can't believe after the surrounding countries sat around watching and didn't even assisting. What I want to know is, why didn't anyone stand up to the bully? After watching someone go against the flow, don't you think other countries would've been less passive and stand up to Germany? Germany had just went through turmoil, they couldn't have been too powerful yet.

Hitler has been setting Germany up for the worst. I think Kristalnacht was the serious turning point. Actually it was more like the fall. So everything that was happening before Kristalnacht was like little steps slowly descending, than Kristalnacht was like the empty missing steps. Hitler thought he was helping Germany regain her pride, he was manipulating all of Germany and they helped him create Genocide. Than when they knew they had lost, Hitler turned his back on them and killed himself, rather than taking the consequences. People were forced to go in and kill innocent people and they aren't allowed to oppose, only if they wish for death.

The Jews were targeted and along with the Communists. The Communists were targets because they were seen as a threat to Germany. Other people such as Gays, Lesebians, people with mental issues were also put into because they were seen as "staining" Germany. So they would be placed into Concentration Camps

This part of history is horrific and it has scarred many people. However we shouldn't blame Germany. We all stood by and watched. We all just sat there thinking of what we should do. We had thought of helping, but that doesn't matter, we didn't help. Therefore we are also to blame. Think about Canada who didn't come to aid people. Or the USA who came in later rather than jumping in and helping. We all watched Germany build and expand their pyramid of hate. We are as much to blame as Germany is. Despite everything awful that has happened, we have this as an example. To teach generations to come, the horrible actions, the watching, the seeing, the propaganda, we can still learn from our mistakes. We can't turn around the past, but we can turn the future.