It was finals week. I was sprinting towards the lecture hall to take my first ever final exam in college. I was about 10 minutes late. I finally entered the room but there was a different professor in the room. I didn’t get too concerned though because I thought “this is how they do it in QC.” I took the scantron and the test paper and went to the back of the room. Before starting, I looked around the room, looking for familiar faces, but I could find none.I brushed that off too because I thought “this is how they do it in QC.” After all, it WAS the anthropology test…
When I started the test, I thought it was a bit weird. The questions weren’t related to what we did in class. At first I thought it was just a hard test. But eventually I got the feeling that I was perhaps in the wrong room. I kept looking around the room for someone, anyone I knew. I thought I saw a few. But still I went down to check with the professor to ask what class this was. She said it was Anthro 101, which WAS the correct class. I went back to the back of the room, but five minutes later, I eventually realized that I was in the wrong room. I apologized to the professor and left.
So why did I think that I had an anthropology test on Tuesday at 1:15 pm in room 250? Because that’s what someone had told me. I had to ask someone else because I always missed the first half or so of that class… But why did that person give me erroneous information? Was it malicious intent? No, because I saw that person also looking for the test on that day. She was as clueless as me.
It was ironic because after all that source checking for online material, I wasnt able to judge the credibility of a REAL-LIFE source…
Flaws of Public Education
December 12, 2008
New York – A student from Queens college missed a final exam yesterday, after being told the wrong exam date by a classmate.
“I missed the test because one of my classmates told me the wrong date,” the student said when asked about why he didn’t know when the finals were.
This is another example that showcases how inefficient and underfunded the public education system is. Students aren’t told clearly about important dates and deadlines. No one is paid to call students to remind them of even about their final exams.
The underlying problem can be traced to the government and elected officials. It all comes down to funding for educational programs. Can students succeed in life when they attend seriously underfunded schools? It is the governments responsibility to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed in life.
It was finals week. I was sprinting towards the lecture hall to take my first ever final exam in college. I was about 10 minutes late. I finally entered the room but there was a different professor in the room. I didn’t get too concerned though because I thought “this is how they do it in QC.” I took the scantron and the test paper and went to the back of the room. Before starting, I looked around the room, looking for familiar faces, but I could find none.I brushed that off too because I thought “this is how they do it in QC.” After all, it WAS the anthropology test…
When I started the test, I thought it was a bit weird. The questions weren’t related to what we did in class. At first I thought it was just a hard test. But eventually I got the feeling that I was perhaps in the wrong room. I kept looking around the room for someone, anyone I knew. I thought I saw a few. But still I went down to check with the professor to ask what class this was. She said it was Anthro 101, which WAS the correct class. I went back to the back of the room, but five minutes later, I eventually realized that I was in the wrong room. I apologized to the professor and left.
So why did I think that I had an anthropology test on Tuesday at 1:15 pm in room 250? Because that’s what someone had told me. I had to ask someone else because I always missed the first half or so of that class… But why did that person give me erroneous information? Was it malicious intent? No, because I saw that person also looking for the test on that day. She was as clueless as me.
It was ironic because after all that source checking for online material, I wasnt able to judge the credibility of a REAL-LIFE source…
In the article New Literacy by Clive Thomson, Clive Thompson takes the position that the internet is improving the literacy standards of the new generation. He provides support of his argument by quoting research done by Andrea Lunsford in Stanford University. In her research, Andrea Lunsford tries to show that the internet is improving literacy rates because people write specific content with the audience in mind. They are very concise and don’t waste too many words.
I agree with the position of Clive Thompson regarding literacy and the internet. However the argument is not very strong since it has only one supporting statement and that is based on someone else’s research. The whole argument sounds like its mainly publicity and exposure for the research of Andrea Lunsford. The argument would’ve been better and more effective if he had included other supporting statements. Also he should’ve brought up the opposing view and showed how they are wrong. His argument and credibility is further damaged when he says things like “…online media are pushing literacy into cool directions.” This makes it sound like he’s trying to show that he knows how young people think and act, when in fact he doesn’t.
The election of Barrack Obama as the president of the United States was historic because it showed that any US citizen with the desire, dedication and talent could become the president. However, in reality, not allUS citizens are eligible to run for the presidency. The constitution prevents anyone born outside the US from becoming the president, even if they are legal citizens of the US. This is a double-standard and against the spirit of democracy and equality. How can someone be told that they can achieve anything they want, only to be told later that they are ineligible to become the president of their own country? The constitution included the native-born clause as a proactive measure due to the political atmosphere of the US in the 1700s; but those conditions no longer exist. It is high time for the constitution to be amended to give all US citizens the right to run for president.
Preventing naturalized citizens to run for the presidency is against democracy. For a democracy to work, all citizens must have equal rights and responsibilities. Denying a basic right to a large percent of citizens creates the illusion that some citizens are better than others. The concept of “citizens with limited rights”, essentially second-class citizens, promotes the idea that “all citizens are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
The book Animal Farm by George Orwell provides a good example of how a seemingly democratic group can turn into a totalitarian regime when one group has more privileges than others. In the beginning of the book, a group of animals take control of their farm and establish a democracy. They create seven Commandments, one of which says “All Animals are equal”. However, as time goes on, a group of animals (the pigs) begin to give themselves more privileges and deny the rights of other animals. Eventually, they gain absolute control over the animals and change the Seven Commandments to “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
This shows how our rights are taken away from us – gradually over time. We don’t lose our rights and freedoms overnight; we lose them gradually, in steps. Labeling and classifying citizens as “native born” and “naturalized”, and giving one group more rights than the other is dangerous for democracy. It is the starting point of more equality and injustice. There shouldn’t be any stratification in citizenship – if someone deserves the right to gain citizenship, they should have the same rights as other citizens, including the right to become the president.
To understand why the constitution disqualifies foreign-born citizens from the presidency in the first place, we must understand the political and social atmosphere of the US during the 1700s. The US had just gained independence from the British Empire and adopted the then-radical idea of democracy. Without the protection of the British Empire and as a pioneer of democracy, the US was very vulnerable from invasion by other nations. It was possible for an enterprising monarch to gain vicarious control of the US by sending one of his or her subjects to the US to become a naturalized citizen, and eventually become the president. In other words, democracy was a liability if everyone was allowed to run for president. The founding fathers reasoned that anyone born in the US would be much more likely to be loyal to the US, which is why they included the clause that only native-born citizens are eligible to become the president of the US. [1]
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There was a need for excluding foreign-born citizens from the presidency during the 1700s because there was a viable threat of invasion back then. But today, in the21st century, such a threat no longer exists. The US is no longer a weak and vulnerable nation; Democracy is the dominant form of government in the world today; monarchy is all but obsolete. Now is the perfect time to amend the constitution and give all citizens equal rights. The founding fathers had the foresight to know that the world would change. They designed the constitution to adapt to changes in accord with the changes in the world, by creating procedures to amend the constitution. This is why the constitution is called a “living document.”
More than 12.8 million Americans are naturalized citizens [2]. Many of them came to the US with their parents when they were infants. They grew up with American culture, they went to school in America, they pay allegiance to the US and they know only ONE homeland – the US. They love the US as much, if not more than any natural born citizen .And for all their patriotism and loyalty, they are ineligible to run for the presidency. Should kids be told that they can achieve anything they want in life if they work hard and do well in school only to be told later that they cannot run for president? And only because they are naturalized citizens? This may make them feel like second-class citizens and create resentment against the government. It may even lead to a loss of motivation and drive to succeed. Sure, not everyone who wants to become the president achieves their dream. But the idea that they can achieve anything they want acts as a placebo to keep them motivated. Without the placebo there will be a significant drop in motivation and desire to succeed.
Opponents of removing the native-born clause claim that naturalized citizens are a disloyal group; but their claim isn’t supported by any facts. They are merely being ethnocentric and xenophobic. Naturalized citizens have more reasons to appreciate the freedoms and opportunities of the US. Many of them had to work hard to gain citizenship and therefore they don’t take the perks of living here for granted. The anti-equal rights people also fail to consider the fact that native-born citizens are equally susceptible of putting their personal interests above the interests of their country.
Other opponents of removing the native-born clause claim that “foreign people could buy their way into the presidency and exploit the US.” People who make such claims obviously lack knowledge about the political institutions of America. They lack basic knowledge about the core ideals of the constitution – about the numerous checks and balances devised by the founding fathers to prevent just that. And more importantly, they ignore the American public. Any candidate would have to win the heart of the American public; and to do so, they would have to understand how the American public thinks; what the American public wants.
The US has changed dramatically since breaking off from the British Empire and becoming an independent nation. It has come a long way - from giving suffrage only to white men who owned land to all citizens; from marginalizing different ethnic groups to celebrating cultural diversity. The election of Barrack Obama broke the race barrier. The next step would be to allow all American citizens, native-born or naturalized, to become the president. We must always stay alert to ensure that our rights and freedoms aren’t taken away. And we must always strive to achieve “perfect democracy”.
