Is This a True Necessity?

While I was out to lunch with my brother and dad today, I noticed my dad checked his email, updated his business schedule, and let my brother play a game of solitaire all on his phone. I started to think whether or not the ability to do all of this and more on a phone is a good thing. I’m sure the ability to check your email has made life easier for people, but is it really a necessity? I remember when my mom got a new phone over the summer; I had to teach her how to just find the phone book because there were so many other applications. It seems like this ‘advancement’ has just made our life more complicated. I thought that Thoreau said it well, “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand” (Thoreau 73). I thought that this was the problem with new phones; they can do a hundred different things when all you need them to do it two or three. I figured I wasn’t the only one who had noticed this, so I looked it up on the internet and found an interesting article. The writer agreed with me, and even connected the complicating phones to new calculators that are out. Concerning a calculator, she asked an interesting question, “how did we manage to take the same classes in school without all this technology?” I think the fact that 25 years ago, students were able to learn the same thing that we learn today even though we have these $150 calculators proves that maybe they aren’t progress. I mean we had to spend the first week of school learning how to use the new, ‘improved’ calculators. Is that really worth it? Although I have to admit these new phones and calculators have at times made my life easier, overall, they just complicate our lives.

Is Getting Accepted the Most Important Goal?

In class today, we discussed an article from the New York Times about how the first well renowned public high school in the country stopped offering AP courses. Scarsdale, a school in Scarsdale, New York, dropped the AP classes and created a class called advanced topics (AT), which covered less material, but in more depth. This class still offered the AP exam, but made it optional. I was interested by this, and when I got home, I looked up the article online. I thought it was very interesting to see the students’ reaction to the change in courses. The article stated that most students “praised” the elimination of AP courses. I was surprised by this, because I believe looking in on it, one would think it’s a great idea because you’re not learning just to pass a test, you’re learning to learn. Many believe that is the way learning should be. But when it comes down to your own future, I believe people do what is best for them, which is learning in order to pass the test. That obviously isn’t the strategy at Scarsdale, which is why I thought it was interesting to see that the students are supportive of the change. When reading this article, I couldn’t help but think; would Thoreau support this change? The idea of going more into depth of fewer subjects is what made me believe that Thoreau would be supportive of this change. The AT class goes into more depth, which doesn’t let them cover all the material on the AP test, but the students get a better understanding of what they learn. When Thoreau said, “I say let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.” (Thoreau 73). In this quote, I believe Thoreau is saying, it is better to do less than more, because when you do less you are able to care about what you do. That is the exact reason Scarsdale changed their AP classes to AT, so they were able to move at a slower pace and learn to have a passion for what they were being taught. I thought it was very interesting how this article related to how we discussed whether or not New Trier should have eliminated its 5 level courses, and how some of the ideas Thoreau spoke of were seen in the reason for changing Scarsdale’s AP classes.

Improvements?

While browsing the internet, I found an interesting article from the New York Times web site. Although we are done studying the Great Depression, I still thought it would be worthwhile to write a blog on how similar the topics discussed in this article were to events taking place during the Great Depression’s time period. This article talks about the public works plan Obama looks to put into effect once he takes office in January. Americans’ have lost 2 million jobs in the past year, very similar to the time period surrounding the Great Depression. Once Obama takes office, he will put into effect a work plan that will create jobs for the middle class. This is very similar to the Great Depression, when FDR created the New Deal to create jobs for the unemployed. The only difference is that the jobs Obama is creating are new-era jobs, such as expanding broadband internet access and making buildings more energy efficient while FDR built highways and railroads. I thought this was very interesting how we have progressed to our improvements consisting of twenty-first century technology. It is thought if he can succeed in advancing our nation in such a way, it will be a major advantage for the United States in the global economy. This made me think about our unit’s topic of ‘Progress?’ I thought that these improvements would be considered progress because it gives the nation an extreme advantage in global economy, which is a major part of how our nation operates.