Yes, instead of describing all the quality features of this ever so precious Infiniti vehicle, the commercial decides to just make it look really good next to a BMW. How do these producers go about doing this? They show the guy, who comes off as a jerk, getting into his BMW and throwing a snowball at another guy who owns an Infiniti. The next scene shows the Infiniti pass the BMW on the road, and when both of them get home (apparently they are neighbors), the Infiniti guy’s son got all his friends in the neighborhood to throw snowballs at the BMW guy. I must say that I do not feel compelled to buy an Infiniti, but those were some pretty impressive snowball throws.

Now I want to tie this in to more serious matters. Politics. Yes, we have all seen those 30-second commercials where the candidate bashes another candidate. But I have a problem with this. If you are trying to get elected, I think it would be much more beneficial for the public to describe how awesome you are, and that you’ll do such a good job in office. Promote yourself, that’s fine. But these days, they are spending millions of (our) dollars putting other candidates down. It’s not about finding the best person to be president; it’s finding the guy who was shown in the least negative light. I haven’t been keeping up with all the campaigning, but I’ve heard the Republicans are doing a great job attacking each other. That’s first of all not classy, and second of all whatever happened to “mind your own business”? If the candidate’s best strategy is to put the other person down, then I don’t think the candidate has the qualities we need in a president. Because when he’s in office, we only heard so much about how awful the other guy is, and we need to cross our fingers that we’ve made the right choice.

Here’s another example. When a person applies to college, they should try to promote themselves, as all students should. Flaunt good qualities and talents. What a student shouldn’t say is “you should accept me into this university because everyone else isn’t good enough”. That’s not true, and the college doesn’t know anything about this student except that they are an A+ jerk.

I am ashamed at what political campaigning strategies have come to. Now, I know that these candidates do in fact promote themselves, very convincible to the point of lying, but when I see those thirty second clips of just negativity, it really makes me look down on that particular candidate. Show America why we should vote for you and not why we shouldn’t vote for the other guy.

First of all, I found this incident more humorous than serious- probably because it has nothing to do with me, and anyone would have to admit that the idea of “buying” quiz grades sounds ridiculous. The superintendent commented, “This is one of the most disturbing events I’ve seen in my 40 years”. If that’s really true, than this guy is pretty fortunate.

The teacher would have his students staple or paper-clip money, in cash, to their quizzes to boost their grade. Now, I have to empathize with these students. I don’t know what kind of math he taught, but I know how outrageously hard math can be. It’s ironic that I read this article today because I actually had a math quiz today that was rather difficult. Honestly though, even if it was legal to “buy” your quiz grades, I probably wouldn’t do it. It’s more of a moral issue to me, and it wouldn’t feel right.

Anyway, I laughed when they said a kid paper-clipped two twenty-dollar bills to his quiz. Obviously this teacher wasn’t concerned about subtlety. It’s not surprising that he was caught since he let the students staple the money right to the quiz. Also, it’s not like the students signed a contract to never tell anyone. I bet there were parents who were curious when their kid started blowing seventy dollars here and there on higher quiz grades (though the kids probably didn’t tell their parents that).

Lastly, that’s a pretty expensive price for a quiz! The article said that someone spent $45 on his quizzes, and it didn’t even impact his quarter grade! Someone else offered $200 to change his or her grade from a B to an A, which by the way was turned down because the grades have already been recorded. No, the teacher did not turn down the $200 because he realized that taking that amount of money from a high school student is just plain wrong. He turned it down because it was impossible to change the submitted grade.

I do think that what this teacher did was sneaky, immoral, and, of course, illegal, but I was slightly entertained by the article. People will joke around about bribing the teacher, but I never heard of an actual case where it happened. The article said that the teacher was having financial difficulties, and I have to give him the award for creativity for his tactics of receiving money.

I think this issue would certainly be more serious if this was a college class, but honestly, it’s high school math. The teacher responded to investigators by saying “Maybe I see the kids as desperate as I am.” Yeah, not quite. High school math may be hard, but I would be more concerned if I was going bankrupt. I think the students just took the convenient opportunity at raising their quiz grades without all the effort. I mean, heaven forbid the students actually spent the time studying for a free A!

I guess the old statement “time is money” is validated in these incidences.

I do wonder, though, how many students at Westborough High School would take the opportunity to just buy their grades. Being a senior myself, there is a lot of pressure to get good grades for college. I personally wouldn’t do it, but it would surely be an interesting survey. Also, how much would a student be willing to pay to change their grade?

The article doesn’t say if the students themselves were charged or got in trouble, though I’m assuming they got some kind of punishment. It’s not like they weren’t at fault too.

The article, written by Alyssa Newcomb, was published on the ABC News website.

I have just recently created an account, and I have already signed about ten petitions. Some petitions are more popular than others, but even the ones with fewer supporters can easily gather more! I know that not all petitions created on this site will be “won”, but I can’t begin to explain how good it feels to click the “SIGN” button. The site also allows you to give a reason why you signed the petition.

Also, I love how the site gives tips and guides for how an online petition works, starting an online petition, how to promote the petition, and more. The websites name pretty much describes everything. Registered users want to make changes to the world we live in today.

The website is easy to navigate, and easy to use. I would highly encourage anyone to check it out. You don’t even have to make your own petition. I plan on writing one someday, because I sure have a lot of ideas, but for now I enjoy reading other people’s petitions, and I smile when I see how much they want to make a change. I can’t help but support someone who is passionate about a certain issue…especially if I agree with them.

Anyway, here’s the site, and please at least check it out!

www.change.org

The opening slide was an introduction, and the first point was that every five hours, a child dies from abuse or neglect in the US. The statistics didn’t really shock me, what did shock me was that America has the worst child abuse record in the entire world. Our child maltreatment death rate is THREE TIMES that of Canada and ELEVEN times that of Italy. Give me a break, America.

Now, I have to say that this was a well-done presentation. Because US reporters did not do this, there was not one part of the presentation where they tried to justify the child abuse and neglect in America. Not one excuse, in fact, the reporter, who was British, seemed ashamed of America. I have to say that I am too.

One of the sections was titled “Expert View”. This was more of an article about why America has a bigger problem of violence against children. Well, again, the results didn’t shock me.
Here’s the direct quote from the article-
“Part of the answer is that teen pregnancy, high-school dropout, violent crime, imprisonment, and poverty – factors associated with abuse and neglect – are generally much higher in the US.”

Shocker? Not in the least to me. We even have reality TV shows about teen pregnancy! It’s like the United States glorifies it. And of course, we hear about the other factors on the news all the time. So the results of more child abuse are not surprising. I just think it’s sad that another nation is investigating this story and exposing it to the public eye rather than us. I’m sure someone somewhere is working on some sort of solution…. hopefully. The presentation says that in Washington, politicians are beginning to recognize this as a national crisis. Better late then never I suppose.

This was mentioned in the article too, but I know that child abuse is hard to detect. Parents/guardians can be great liars, and our court system isn’t always efficient/ effective *cough * Casey Anthony *Cough *.

It’s really easy to get frustrated at society and start blaming the government- you know, the usual procedure Americans take when something is wrong on the local or national level. But BBC made great points that actually supports this- they say that some people believe it’s the federal government’s drive to keep families together that is the problem. When I think about this, I have to maybe agree. We do value family here in good ol’ America.

One of the video clips showed an interview with a man, unfortunately I do not know who he is, but he had an American accent. He said something that scared me because it’s true. He said, “We are breeding an army of future child abusers”. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that one. It’s a cycle; “you abuse me so I’ll grow up to abuse someone else”. In Psychology class today, we actually learned the name of this defense mechanism. It’s called “Identification with the Aggressor”. A person will start projecting qualities of those who abused them because the more they act like the aggressor, the less they act like the victim. This is easily applied to bullies at school, but it can also be amplified to describe a situation with a child whose parents abuse them. It’s agreeable to believe that if you were abused growing up, the odds of you abusing your kids are higher than someone else who wasn’t abused.

This issue is so frustrating for me because there is very little action that takes place until the child is actually dead. I always felt that way about America- like we have to wait until someone dies to convict someone of abuse/ address the problem. Maybe it’s that way all over the world? I have no idea. But, I am really ashamed at what this issue has become. I saw this article as if BBC is scolding America, and I think we deserve that. The problem is, I can talk about how awful child abuse is and people need to do something about it all day, but I don’t have a solution. Who has a solution?

I do believe that we, as citizens, have responsibilities. We have the responsibilities to protect our family, our friends, the ones we love, etc. But in my opinion, we don’t always take this seriously. Also, there are obviously people in America who don’t take this responsibility at all, because if they did, they wouldn’t abuse their children.

I know America has major economic issues at the moment, but BBC took the time to do an entire investigation and create an entire presentation about OUR OWN problem of child abuse. That says something about us and our priorities.

So why him and not Bin Laden? Well, for one thing, we were not directly involved in Gaddafi’s death. Yes, we supported the Libyan rebels and were involved in affairs regarding Gaddafi, but unlike Bin Laden, our own soldiers were not the direct cause of Gaddafi death. I believe this means that our government, who had the power to ban the release of a picture of Bin Laden or a videotape, had little to no influence in what the media can do regarding the footage of Gaddafi. But that doesn’t mean it’s right to just show the footage on national television. I mean, what if a ten-year-old kid walks into the living room while CNN is on showing this video?

So my opinion on all of this, well, I don’t really have one. It makes no difference to me whether they show it or not on television. I find it fascinating that they do show it because I honestly did not expect that. And I know, once one station shows it, all the others need to show it too. It’s the media, there’s nothing else much to say. They want views and money, and we want entertainment and news.

So now here’s another question- was showing the video on national television an essential part of the story of his death? Or is it entertainment? I believe that the media knows we are fascinated by it. I’m also sure there are people who find it entertaining. So was there a morally acceptable purpose of it? I’m not sure, but I know it all comes down to competition and money. Would you rather hear the story from Source A, who has all the information but no footage, or Source B, which has the entire video? I’d go with B. Source B wins.