Schindler's List

#1:

We talked about in class once about the education in the US compared to other countries actually made me wonder how well we were educated. It was shocking to me that these other places were learning things that here we don't even learn and that they were forced or required. When I read the "America Skips School" article at first I was really confused. When we started talking about it in class it became clearer to me.

My personal opinion on this is that I don't think I should be forced to have more education. Yet, I feel that if you want it, it should be offered, and put out their as an option. However, I also think that it shouldn't be up to the students. I believe we should have a say but I can hardly imagine a late mass of students saying that want to learn more and spend more of their free time in the class room. If a student was really wanting their education they could take late classes after the normal school day and when school gets out in June that they could take summer courses. Yet listening to all these opinions on other ways you can get more education makes me think how good our education is?

I think that it really comes down to it that, our education compared to other countries is a lot more un structured, and at some times less informative and strict. I think our society it based upon the media and that is what leads us and keeps up "up to date." I think that in America our lives as days go by have become less and less dependent

on an education. You can become very successful in life without a college education or in the rappers Eminem's case a high school diploma. Our society had adapted to that and made it easy to live a fairly decent life without a strict education.

#2:

The comparison of like in the shetles and life now in communities is very different. When we were watching Fiddler on the Roof I noticed that in those times their lives pretty much revolved around traditions and family values, and sadly today that's not how we go about our lives at all.

I think in today's society we base our decisions on what we have been taught. We are raised and informed by our parents, teachers, family, friends etc... to a certain point then we go out in the "real world" on our own and learnt from our own mistakes. Our parents can only guide us for so long. Yet in Fiddler on the Roof the daughter's fathers were choosing who they were going to marry. If a father in this time would tell his daughter who she could marry I think she would have flipped her lid, I know I would. I think in a way that time period gave the children and teens and even young adults no independence, which I find more damaging in the long run. Also, the shetle life and communities seemed to be very closed and they only conversed with in their family.

I defiantly don't think that our communities are like that. I know that my community Shelburne is always brought together for random reasons and everyone seems to get along or at least pretend. Weather it is for sports, church, or even friends. Which brings up the fact that we are a lot more diverse and open minded to new things in today's time than back then. However, there will always be those we are close minded and don't accept anything out of the norm. I also think it has to do with the size of the community, In Shetles they were very small where as the town of Shelburne is a lot bigger.

I went to a private middle school Mater Christi and it was very small 8th grade class, and to be fully honest I didn't