Week Sixteen: Shift Happens

That video makes me feel like my education is almost a waste of my time if I was doing it only to be up to date. I know that there is always room to learn so I know that I will have to keep myself educated even after I get my degree, but I guess to better the education system teachers should not only focus on what they are teaching and the material they are given but make current events a more prominent role in education. I feel like teaching what is going on right now on the subject is largely important but also teaching students where the subject is headed, and how they can anticipate its actions. I think also that giving students hands on experience in the field they are studying helps a lot because they can see what is going on for themselves, and they can make educated predictions on where the field is headed for themselves as well.

Week Fifteen: Urban/Suburban/Rural Life

Growing up I always lived in the suburbs of Fairfax in Northern Virginia. Where I was born and grew up has changed over the years and because it was gradual the change was not so overpowering, but if you showed me an areal view of my home now and and areal view of my home when I was born the change would be monumental. When my parents moved to Fairfax it was mostly a wooded area with the closest grocery store about a 15 minute drive away and only a couple different options for shops to shop at. As time went on and as I grew older the area developed at well and more and more stores and shopping centers popped up. Now there are a million options within less than five minutes from our house. There are three different 5 different McDonalds, 5 different Starbucks, 3 Chapotles, and so on meaning to say that not only are there different stores there are multiples of the same stores. Things have definitely built up and now our suburb is more and more like a busy city itself. I feel like more and more people moved into the area than moved out so I feel like this example is different from the examples in the book on the decline of metropolitan areas.

Week Fourteen: Who has the power?

I think that the power in our democracy is held by the rich people of our country. Leaders in business who hold power of our economy like Walmart, and other companies, and stocks are important in keeping things moving. Political leaders hold power in our relations with other countries with different policies. The companies are tied in with this as well in our relations with other countries in trade. Power elite make decisions that effect the rest of the citizens. The power could shift if there was some kind of uprising of those out of power but so far the business men and the government officials hold the keys.

Week Thirteen: "Is Wal-Mart Good for America"

It seems as though, after watching this film that Wal-Mart is not good for America. As the people who were interviewed in the documentary said, because Wal-Mart is outsourcing our jobs to China, we are losing many job opportunities for workers in America today. The U.S. economy is in decline, and as the interviewer said on the show from the way the people were describing the country we are exporting cash crops and importing products more like a third world country than like the first world label we have come to acquire. The deal that Bill Clinton made with China doesn't seem to be helping us as much as it is China. Wal-mart has us in a Catch-22. Their prices are low so we love them, but because they are low, we lose our jobs. If we don't support them we might open up more positions in America, but then we would have to pay higher prices. It all depends on which price we are willing to pay there will always be a give and a take.

Week Twelve: The Domestic Division of Labor

After doing some reading of the text and filling out the Family Duties Chart I realized that after looking at my imidiate family and the families of my parents we all fit nicely into what was discussed. My grandma on my dads side who would have been largely a perent in the 50s and my grandma on my moms side as well both stayed home and took care of the kids for the most part. My dad's mom didn't even have a license to drive, so she was always at home. They both had large families with children closer together in age as they were younger in line. Then looking at my family my mom was a working woman when she started out, and then had children, took a pause from work, and then went back to it later after we had grown up enough to take care of most things ourselves. Looking at the list of duties though, I find that while my mom and dad do assume some stereotypical tasks that man and woman seem to classically do, many of them overlap evenly and the tasks are split up. I feel like with almost all of them my parents switch off on the duties, where my mom used to cook more and do the grocery shopping my dad now does it because he is the retired one and my mom is working. The only things that seem to be set in stone tend to be yardwork or handy work that my dad does because he used to do some plumbing and carpentry tasks, and is more physically able and knowledgable. My mom has always done the laundry, but I'm sure if there was a time when she didn't have time my dad would step in. Sometimes he would do the folding... Anyway I think ultimately as time has progressed these separations will become less evident in most families.

Week Eleven: Social Institutions I: Religion

I think that our society really is secularizing. When I think about religions and people following them I think in theory they are great and important to everyone. You hear a lot of people say things like "Every man should have a religion" and things like that but I feel like while everyone is encouraged to follow no one actually does. I went to a Catholic school most of my life up until college and from when we started to when we graduated....people stopped going to church every Sunday and started to drift away. I notice with myself, that while I think I still believe and still go to church I don't always make it every Sunday and I tend to do the picking and choosing I know I shouldn't when it comes to following the way of the Church. I think many people do this not just myself, and while they subscribe to a certain religion they may not follow it so closely. But I think the same argument could be made for people of our past. I think that the kings and queens of history weren't so strict on religion either, and that maybe the secularizing is not so much a recent idea, maybe its just recently been more out in the open. But I do think that since countries like ours have freedom of religion, there is less thought put into keeping up with it. So secularizing has had an opportunity to flourish.

Week Ten: Stratification IV: Race and Ethnicity

After reading the information on Japanese Americans in internment camps I was discussing it with my mom and realized that while we look at things in our country's past and think that they were terrible and we will never let them happen again...when we think about it things like this are very much still a problem today. I think that genocide in all areas is wrong, and I believe everyone would agree with that statement, but when someone asks the question what are we doing to stop it....there is never a real answer. I think that until we all make a direct decision to not live with the possibility of genocide we will never fix the problem. This is why concentration camps still exist, and why genocide in Africa is never stopped.