Friday, December 9, 2011

Current Events Practice Scholar - due Jan 6

Most everyone was caught up in their reading of the Thousand Year War, so we discussed that book today, including guerrilla warfare and the causes of the causes of such conflicts.

The Republican Primaries are coming up in January, so this is a good time to do some research on the candidates.  Each student has chosen a candidate to research.  Next class, we will all give a short (around 5 minutes) presentations on the candidates positions on various issues.  Some of the issues you may want to research are: Taxes, Debt (deficit, budget), Afghanistan, Iraq, other wars and military issues, Entitlements such as Healthcare and Social Security, gay rights, abortion, Trade (free trade agreements and other foreign relations issues).  You should also check into their background to see what sorts of affiliations and biases will be revealed by their past activities.  We already did this in the other class, and the information was easy to find by checking the candidate's own web site and a couple others.

Here are the candidates you selected:

Emily: Mitt Romney
Ari: Michelle Bachman
Audrey: Ron Paul
Myla: Barack Obama
Kirk: Newt Gingrich
Br. Williams: Gary Johnson

Assignment Summary:

1. Read or Watch the news, and make a blog post about something interesting.  Tell us why you liked it or found it interesting, so we know why we should read it too.  (I sent new invitations to those who have not accepted one yet.)

2. Research your presidential candidate and prepare to give a short summary of his political platform.

3. Finish reading the Thousand Year War.  Some of the appendixes can be skimmed.

By the way, if you did not yet watch the movie Manufacturing Consent, you may be able to find time to complete that assignment over the holidays too. 

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