Adopt me

A story that I've been following relatively closely these past few weeks is the Madonna adoption story. For those of you who have been living under a rock, here's the deal: Madonna went to Malawi, a nation in Africa on a humanitarian mission. While she was there she met a one year old boy who she later decided to adopt. Evidently, she and her husband had discussed the possibility of adopting a baby before even going there. Madonna has since taken the child to her home in England and plans to make him an official part of her family.

It sounds nice and like she at the very least is giving this child the chance to have a very nice life. Critics, however, say that she should not have been allowed to adopt the baby since Malawian law requires a person to live in the nation for a significant amount of time before the adoption can be finalized. They say that she was allowed to bypass that law because of her fame and fortune (she did donate $3 million to the orphanage). Additionally, many are saying that she is taking the child away and by doing so is taking him away from his culture. There has even been an analogy between the increasing amount of international adoptions of African babies with as a new type of slavery. Pretty strong language!

We will be examining this issue in Global II when we discuss imperialism of the late 1800's and discuss the forms that imperialism takes today. In the mean time, here are some articles that I have begun to gather on the subject. Take a look and them and then report back. What do you think, are these adoptions a generous thing that westerners are doing that is good because it is helping one child at a time or is this new trend working to rob African people of their cultural identity one by one?

Adoption workers see pros, cons to high-profile celebrity adoptions

Alternative to adoption bleak for African orphans

Born in America, adopted abroad

Dad in Madonna Adoption Blasts Critics

In Britain, Madonna's Either a Saint Or a Sinner

International Adoption: Opening Pandora's Box

Inter-race adoptees say worried about Madonna child

Madonna's adoption statement

The ethics of celebrity adoptions

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New Links
CIA Factbook page on Malawi
Wiki Page on Malawi
Malawi City Travel Guide- with news flashes
Clinton Global Initiative- Explains help that is being given to developing nations
The ONE Campaign- Organization created in part by Bono from U2
African Orphans- organization to help the orphans of Africa
EBAY adoptions of "orphans"
The other orphans
Human trafficing

Happy Halloween!

To keep up my rep as being one of the coolest people around, I spent this evening playing around on the computer with my Free Cell game (a kind of solitaire) and trying to improve my score. Since I didn't think that alone would qualify me in the coolest of the cool category, I also was playing around with a game that Mr. Burns sent a bunch of us Social Studies teachers.

Now, don't let the fact that it was Mr. Burns who sent it to me deter you, this game is really awesome! It's called the "Place States" game and the object is to put each state in its rightful place on a map of the US. The challenging aspect is that there are no state borders given and you just sort of have to know where the states are supposed to go. Too nifty, huh?

So far my high score is 94% accuracy in 331 seconds with a 6 mile error. See if you can beat that!!!! It's a great way to prepare for a 50 state map quiz which we will be having at some point! Good Luck!

Constitutional Convention?

Well, I hope so! Click this link to see what my Period 8 class is up to!

School Violence

In the past few weeks there have been a rash of school shootings around the nation. As we have learned about these shootings and discussed them in class we have all had a variety of reactions: anger, fear, concern, surprise, etc. I wonder, however, how many of you had the idea that we as teachers and students should arm ourselves against potential intruders of our school? A school district in Texas has done just that!

Burleson Schools, in a suburb of Fort Worth Texas, has mandated that all students (including elementary students) and teacher be trained to fight back if a gunman enters a classroom. This training was even a part of Freshman Orientation for high school. The kids are being taught to "rush him and hit him with everything they've got -- books, pencils, legs and arms". Additionally, the students are being told that they should "not to comply with a gunman's orders, and to take him down".

The school district got this idea from events like Columbine in 1999 and Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. They state that"At Columbine, teachers told students to get down and get on the floors, and gunmen went around and shot people on the floors. I know this sounds chaotic and I know it doesn't sound like a great solution, but it's better than leaving them there to get shot".

Critics of the plan say that students are being put in the position that typically specially trained tactical officers are usually in. Their concern is that this plan could result in more students being killed or injured if this type of event were to occur.

I was wondering what you all think about this. Would you feel better having some sort of options in case someone were to come into the school or do you feel like this is a huge responsibility for a student of any age to take on? If you had the training, would you be willing to give your life to protect your fellow students? Let me know what you think!

Crash

As you all know, my weekends are packed with excitement that is so intense that I couldn't begin to describe it to you! ;)

Anyway...

Tonight I caught the movie Crash on TV and I was blown away by it. If you haven't seen it, you really have to. It has several interconnecting stories which all deal with race issues in America. Think of it as American History X without some of the violence and dealing with more racial stereotypes on an everyday basis. I'm actually going to try to get Ms. Dahl and Mr. D. to consider showing it in class. It really makes you think about the way that we all view each other.

I hope that you get the chance to see the movie. Let me know what you think about it!