Thinking on Thursdays!

     After enjoying two wonderful "cold days" of relaxing and enjoyment, the class was able to quickly snap back into school mode starting with our final Fishbowl. We had two special guests join us today, which were Mr. Fisch and Ms. Smith's brother in law. Our discussion consisted mostly of whether security or privacy was more important to us and how Little Brother had represented how our privacy is becoming less and less in our government due to the government trying to add security to our country. Also, we talked about the media's effect on our privacy and security. The inner circle and outer circle both made some excellent points as well, which consisted of.

• Terrorism is meant to cause fear among people.
• Sometimes the government only posts one side of the story. Most people just go along with it and don't bother to do any of their own research on it.
• We trust the media too much for our information.
• A certain level of fear can keep us safe. 
• If the laws get stricter, our freedoms change too. Our freedoms are dependent on how many laws there are. 
• If there was a terrorist attack, I would choose security over privacy. 

In the Fishbowl, we also dealt with some important questions about our society.

• Should things be simplified for the common people or should the common people become more educated in order to understand these things better?
• Should the government need to make laws in order to protect us from ourselves?

Homework:

• Look at the rubric for the Wikipaper on Smith's teacher page.
• Think of what we have learned and haven't learned in society from reading these two novels. It would be a good idea to look at the news.