Project Scholar Current Events class #2

Today is the 10th anniversary of the Afghanistan War, so we discussed the Afghan and Iraq wars, and compared them with the Vietnam war.  Some people claim that the Afghanistan War is the longest war the US has ever had, but it turns out that they are counting the start of the Vietnam war from 1964 when Lyndon B. Johnson decided to escalate the war.  But there were already 16,000 troops in Vietnam at that time, and when you compare that with Afghanistan where we had less that 16,000 troops for the first three years, it doesn't seem like a fair comparison to me.  We were supporting South Vietnam with limited combat troops as far back as 1956, and before that we were supporting the French occupation of Vietnam.  We also compared troop levels, where we had over 500,000 troops in Vietnam at the peak of the war, verses between 150,000 and 200,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We did a geography quiz on the United States, and I'm happy that everyone knows their states pretty well.  If you happen to want a copy of the map I used, follow this link.

We also discussed some of the biases which appear in the media, particularly the difference between liberals and conservatives.  I assigned the students to watch a documentary video about Noam Chomsky and his book called Manufacturing Consent.  The video talks about Noam Chomsky, whose book Understanding Power we will be reading later, and it lets Chomsky talk about how the media works in America and the ways biases can show up.  The video is called "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media."  It is available at the Orem Library if you want a DVD version, or you can watch it online at hulu (you may have to wait for ads before it starts) or google video. 

We are continuing the assignment to read or watch the news.  I recommend watching 3 shows each week or reading 6 news articles each week.  I also want them to give a brief oral presentation on something they found interesting in the news.  (By "brief", I am expecting 30 seconds to a minute, but you can take longer if you want to.)  Some of the topics they mentioned seeing in the news since last class were the new Provo temple, the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, and the Occupy Salt Lake protest.