Month: June 2018

Welcome back to one of my last blogposts ever. This time I’ll be talking about the Iranian Revolution.  

So back in April, about half the class went to Cuba to study the Cuban Revolution but about half the class stayed behind for various reasons. Instead of studying the Cuban Revolution, the people who didn’t go to Cuba studied the Iranian Revolution. Since many people from Iran immigrated to Canada and more specifically Vancouver, there would be a lot of people we could receive information and stories from. 

So for our project, we would have to make a book. Each of us, in partners, would have to create one chapter of the book and each chapter would focus on one of the historical lenses we learned about earlier in the term. Each chapter would also focus on one part of the Revolution. 

To begin, we started researching significant parts of the Revolution. Once we had a good idea of what was important, we chose our topics and our historical lenses. I chose the seizure of the US embassy as my topic and would be using the cause and consequence lens. I would also be working with my friend Tom which made me very happy because me and Tom have created some quality work together in the past. We would be focusing on what caused the seizure of the embassy and how it effected relations between the USA and Iran. 

Tom and I began reaching out to Iranian people we knew and asking them if they would be interested in doing an interview for us. We also began researching out topic in a variety of different ways. We searched the internet for more information about our topic and even watched the movie Argo for some more background knowledge. 

Argo was extremely interesting because even though it is a Hollywood movie, it was based around fact and we actually learned a lot from it. It really captured the feelings of hatred between Iran and the USA and it gave tom and me a good general knowledge of the event. 

Luckily, two people agreed to let us interview them, one in person and one over the phone. 

The first interview was extremely eye opening. The person we interviewed (who wished to remain anonymous) grew up in Tehran during the time of the Revolution. He witnessed the first spark of the Revolution up until the Ayatollah gained power. In fact, he didn’t leave the country until the Iran-Iraq war, to escape the mandatory enlistment. He “didn’t believe in that war”, so his parents paid a guide to help him leave the country. He said that the experience was scary, since he was only 19 years old, but also exciting. He told us about one night when he was riding through the mountains past a military fort, when the guards started shooting at him. His horse panicked and got stuck in the mud but luckily was able to free itself and he narrowly escaped. 

He did not agree with the Revolution and did not believe many of the rumours about the Shah, which contrasted greatly with our second interview. 

Our second interviewee had quite a different opinion. She was very critical of the Shah and her father even marched in revolutionary protests. She gave us great insight into the oppression faced by many citizens in Iran during the Revolution and it was great to get two different interviews with very different information. We questioned both interviewees about the seizure of the embassy and they both provided great information on the event. 

Tom and I were very confident that we had the necessary information to create a great project, but unfortunately we had some technological issues. The mic we used for the first interview only worked for 10 minutes out of the 30 minute interview so we lost 20 minutes of valuable footage. Also, we recorded the second interview on our android phones so we couldn’t get any of the sound clips into pages, but at least we could use the information. 

We began working on putting the book together and arranging our chapter. We also narrowed down our topic a bit so that we would be focusing on how the seizure of the embassy affected relations between Iran and the USA. We inserted a couple of the audio clips and then we were done. 

Here it is, the finished book:

Recently in one of my classmate’s facilitation Friday, a debate arose on the topic of cults. People were debating what the definition of a cult really is and what separates most cults from most religious groups. There didn’t seem to be a definite answer to this, so I decided to do some more investigating until I could find a more concrete answer. 

So, what separates common religion from most cults?

To begin my research I first needed to know exact definitions of a cult. Of course there are many different definitions, but eventually I settled on these:

A cult is: “A relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.”

However this definition does not account for the secrecy with which most cults operate. So I would write the definition a little more like this: “a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister, who operate with a fair amount of discretion.”

I then started researching differences between cults and religions. Many people stated that cults are harmful whereas religions are not, but I disagreed with that. Not all cults are harmful and there are many harmful religious orders, such as religious hate groups. 

I even found one article that claimed that religions receive tax breaks while cults do not but this argument seemed a little basic and I wanted to find something about their practices that differentiated religions and cults. 

Eventually, I came to a realization: We see churches everywhere in most societies, but where do cults practice? I wasn’t too sure. I also realized that most religions have public information via websites and other medium but cults are harder to find out about than that. 

I then began to research the secrecy of cults and I came to the conclusion that what separates  a cult from a religion lies in the degree of secrecy that operate. 

Here is my paragraph proving this point:

Religion is everywhere. From the church down the street to the Vatican to online sermons, it is hard to find a place without religion. But what separates common religion from becoming a cult? It’s simple: Cults rely on secrecy and discretion while religion is dependant upon openness and transparency. Think of most churches. They usually have informational pamphlets as well as signs promoting upcoming services and events. In addition, most religions’ holy texts are readily available and their core beliefs can be found online. In contrast, most cults are more private about their views and actions and practice their beliefs discreetly. Churches can be seen on many street corners, but no one really knows where most cults operate. For example, many people often consider Scientology as a cult but this is a misconception. Churches of Scientology are very public and the holy texts of Scientology can be found easily. Most Scientologists welcome the media and appreciate attention towards their beings. Cults however, shy away from the media and prefer to stay in the darkness. When Jonestown was visited by American reporters, Jim Jones was mortified and his followers ended up killing the reporters before they could return to the the United States. It is this type of secrecy that separates most cults from commonplace religious orders and keeps us assured that our local church is not a harmful sect. 

Resources:

What is the definition of a cult?

What makes a cult? | Rick Ross | Opinion | The Guardian

The Seven Signs You’re in a Cult – The Atlantic

Cult – Wikipedia

Difference Between Cult and Religion | Difference Between

What’s the difference between religions and cults? – Quora

The 20th century was a time of immense change. Many factors lead to social and political changes around the world. Perhaps the country that experienced the most change in the 1900s was the Unites States. Assassinations, rights movements, terrorism, and political scandals altered the path of the free world and changed a stable country into an unpredictable land. 

In his 1989 hit “We didn’t start the fire”, Billy Joel explains that despite the radical change of the 20th century, it is no different than any other time period in history. In the song, Joel lists off key events and prolific people which altered humanity from 1949-1989. Joel also tries to explain that his generation actually worked to make progress on the failure’s of the previous generations. 

Ok so now that you have some background knowledge, it’s time to get into the project. For this assignment, we all picked a single lyric from the song “We didn’t start the fire”. We needed to research the lyric and it’s significance, and then use it to answer an inquiry question. 

At first I wanted to research the lyric “punk rock begins”, but as it was already taken I decided upon “Brooklyn’s got a winning team”. This lyric refers to the Brooklyn Dodgers, a baseball team who had seen little success throughout the early 20th century but still had a massive fan base. The team finally won the World Series in 1955 which inspired the lyric in the iconic Billy Joel song. 

Some people would argue that the success of a sports team is not important and shouldn’t be placed in a song about influential events, which gets me to my inquiry question: How was the Brooklyn Dodgers’ growing success in the 1940’s and 50’s significant to societal change?

Although the Dodgers won as a team, their impact on society revolves around one man: Jackie Robinson. In the 1930’s and 40’s African-American athletes were not allowed to play Major League Baseball. Instead, they were forced to play in the “Negro Leagues”, a league specifically designed for black athletes. Players in this league earned next to nothing and were the victims of horrific racial abuse. 

In the early 1940’s, Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey looked to change all that when he drafted Robinson and placed him in Brooklyn’s farm system (a minor league team whose players are technically owned by the Dodgers). However, this proved to be troublesome for Rickey. Brooklyn’s Spring Training field in Jacksonville, Florida refused to let an African-American athlete onto the field. However Rickey, who was a devout member of the Methodist Church and advocated strongly for social justice, didn’t give up so easily. Instead of continuing to play in Jacksonville, Rickey tried to move the games to Sanford, however their stadium refused as well. Rickey finally found a stadium in Daytona Beach which would house the team’s Spring Training games. All this solely because Rickey believed in Jackie Robinson. Many people would have overlooked Robinson simply due to the colour of his skin, but Rickey ignored that and saw the standout athlete, and more importantly, standout person, that Jackie Robinson was. 

Robinson endured much abuse while playing in the minor leagues. He constantly had boos and catcalls directed in his direction, and fans sometimes threw things at him. However the fans weren’t the only ones who were critical of Robinson. Some of Robinson’s own teammates refused to take the field if Robinson was on the team. Opposing pitchers tried to hit him in the head and runners tried to spike him with their cleats. He received death threats in the mail and restaurants and hotels refused to give him service.  Despite the abuse, Robinson was extremely level-headed. He never retaliated and kept on playing with the team. His strength of character and will was amazing and is a testament to his determination. The fact that he could keep playing when other players were trying to injure him and fans were saying he should be murdered shows his courageousness and passion. He knew he had a message to prove and he would not rest until he had shown people that the colour of his skin did not determine his worth. Jackie Robinson was truly one of the most brave people the world has ever seen. 

On one iconic night in 1947, Robinson finally got his chance, as he was called up to the big leagues. Robinson was met with boos and jeers, yet he didn’t let it dissuade him. He ended up having a great season with the Dodgers and won the Rookie of the Year award (which is now named after him). Robinson breaking the colour barrier was a momentous event for people around the United States and changes the course of sports forever. 

Now the Dodgers were known as one of the most unlucky teams in sports. They made it to the World Series 5 times in the next 6 years yet fell short to the New York Yankees in each one. One of the catchphrases that followed the team was “there’s always next year”. 

Some fans argued that the Dodgers’ bad luck and lack of success stemmed from Robinson’s presence on the team, but manager Rickey laughed off these claims. Infamously in 1952, the Dodgers were a whopping 14 games above the Giants who were in second place, when a fan released a black cat onto the field as a jaw towards Robinson. From that point on the Dodgers went into a downward spiral eventually losing the pennant to the Giants. So you get the idea, the Dodgers were extremely unlucky. 

Yet the hapless Dodgers, like Robinson, never gave up.  Despite their core players getting older and slower, they came out firing every year, and the fans loved them for it. In 1955, the Dodgers finally achieved their ultimate goal, defeating the Yankees to win the team’s first ever World Series. It was a unifying moment that was enjoyed by Dodgers’ fans of all races and walks of life. Famously, Dodgers’ infielder Pee Wee Reese hugged Jackie Robinson, a moment which seemed to symbolize the unity of the team’s success. 

This was not just a victory for the Dodgers, but a victory for African-Americans throughout the country. The only team with a black player had just won the World Series. Robinson was no longer booed, but received ovations every time he stepped up to bat. 

Robinson did not just break the colour barrier of baseball. While he was in college he had a brief stint in the militaries. One day he was asked to sit in the back of a military bus, but he refused. Robinson was put in trial but was later honourably discharged. Shortly thereafter, the army was integrated, and Robinson played a large part in that. 

So how did the Jackie Robinson and the Dodger’s success change society. It showed people around the world that in the face of horrible prejudice and discrimination, people can still fight and change the world. The Dodgers unified fans and brought together different types of people people all rooting for a common cause. Robinson and Rickey integrated the Major Leagues and Robinson helped integrate the army. 

It was moments like these that aided in the success of the civil rights movements and Robinson was one of the pioneers of this movement. Through his charisma and determination, he showed that racial prejudice may be a setback, but it is not insurmountable. Jackie Robinson proved the racists wrong, and for that America owes him one. 

This is a photo album/timeline that I made illustrating the Dodgers’ and Robinson’s effect on the world:

Resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Brooklyn_Dodgers

https://www.biography.com/people/jackie-robinson-9460813

https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/robinson-jackie

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/bb9e2490

Welcome back to another history blogpost. This one deals with a very prevalent issue in this day and age: Terrorism. 

Let me backtrack a bit. So about halfway through the term, our teachers changed up our remaining assignments. Instead of continuing with the baseline, honours, and challenge assignments for every topic, we would now have just three assignments for the rest of the year;  a discussion we would have to lead, and two research blogposts. This made me very happy as these new assignments played to my strengths. I enjoy leading discussions as well as researching and gathering information, so I was rejuvenated by the way the term would play out. This post will focus on the class discussion, or facilitation Friday as it is known. 

The Preparation:

To start off the process, we all signed up for a decade (from the 50’s to the 90’s), and a specific topic within that decade. Then every week from Monday to Thursday we had lectures and also watched the CNN series about different decades in American history. I found this very engaging as the documentaries are extremely informative and interesting, and gave us a good insight into our topics. 

So where does the facilitation come in? Every Friday, everyone who had signed up for a certain decade would present. So for example on the first Friday, all the 50’s people presented. Well I guess presented is the wrong word. Basically what we had to do was first provide some insight into our topic (with some visuals to reinforce our message) and then lead a class discussion. The facilitator would pose a question and then other people would take turns answering it. 

My topic ended up being terrorism in the 1970’s, something that I didn’t know too much about. When I think of the 1970’s I think of music or Watergate, but I definitely don’t think about terrorism. However, after watching the CNN documentary and doing extensive research on the subject, I found out that there was a lot more terrorism in the 70’s than I initially thought. 

First there was the constant IRA bombings in the UK. I actually already knew about these bombings because of my Irish heritage. Interestingly enough my grandma was from Ireland, and my grandpa was Northern Ireland so I guess they would disagree about the legitimacy of these bombings. But anyways I also knew a fair bit about this topic from a movie I saw last year, In the Name of the Father. 

There were also major terrorist attacks in Germany, as well as a spree of hostage takings on airplanes. 

At first I contemplated presenting about all three of these topics but I realized that if I did that I would only be able to skim the surface and I wanted to delve deeper into a topic. Since I already knew a bit about the IRA, I decided to focus on something that I knew very little about: the Munch Massacre. 

The Facts:

The Munich Massacre was a hostage taking that occurred at the 1972 olympics in Germany. Palestinian terrorists took 11 Israeli athletes and coaches hostage. The hostages were eventually killed. 

A few days prior to the olympics, a Palestinian terror group known as Black September infiltrated the Israeli athletes’ quarters and took 11 hostages. Shortly after the crisis began, the group demanded that 234 Palestinian prisoners be released immediately. The group was helped by Neo Nazi supporters in Germany. Israeli police trained in dealing with terrorism quickly offered to step in but German forces quickly dismissed their offer for help. However many German authorities claim that this is a rumour. 2 hostages were quickly killed after one tried to escape, and a bullethole riddled corpse was placed by the bound hostages to serve as a warning.

German forces offered the hostage takers an unlimited amount of money but they refused. German police then attempted to infiltrate the quarters, but quickly retreated. Finally as the hostages were being transported to an airstrip, German police attempted a rescue. These were regular police officers with no training in dealing with such matters and this quickly became apparent. After a standoff on the airstrip the 9 remaining hostages were eventually killed along with 5 of the Black September members. 

This event was terrifying. It left civilians shocked and rattled. Interestingly enough the only Arab leader to publicly denounce the attack was King Hussein of Jordan who stated that the attack was “a savage crime against civilization”. Part of what caused the widespread fear was the fact that the event was televised globally. 

The Presentation:

These are the slides that I presented throughout my facilitation:

Throughout my presentation I asked a few key discussion questions all leading up to the final question: Is fear the greatest weapon of all?

I thought that the discussion went very well as everyone had great ideas and weren’t afraid to share them. People also weren’t afraid to disagree with each other and they seemed genuinely interested in the topic. 

Most people agreed that fear is the greatest weapon as it is very crippling. I brought up the point that people who live in fear cannot experience true freedom and I think that most people agreed with that. 

In all, I really enjoyed learning more about one of the most infamous events of the twentieth century and I also enjoyed leading the discussion. I look forward to more engaging debates next Friday. 

Welcome back to my blog. Now that we have English 12 behind us, it’s time to focus on history. This term I will be posting around 5 blogposts or so, reflecting on things that we have done throughout the last few months. 

To start the term, we were introduced to how our work would be structured for the rest of the year. For every topic, we would be given baseline, challenge, and honours assignments to illustrate our learning. We would stitch together these assignments in a blogpost centred around the themes of the topic as a whole. This was part of a new system that we were the guinea pigs for. To be quite honest, this new system made me extremely stressed out. I have been attempting these past few terms to maintain a 95% average in order to receive an entrance scholarship for university. Since I am applying with history 12, I am trying to get above 95% in this class, which would require a lot of work considering the new system. In my opinion, giving a group of grade 12 students extra work makes it very tough to hand in our best quality work. Being the perfectionist that I am, I cannot really hand in work when I know that it can be improved, so I have spent a lot of time this term revising and re-revising assignments and projects. Luckily, we had a lot of time to do some of this work over spring break, however I was away the whole break, so I started out a few assignments behind and I feel like I’m still catching up. Again, this is just my opinion, I know that everyone learns in different ways and this new system may work for some of my classmates, it just didn’t work for me. I see the potential in this system and I think that it could work for a younger grade. 

Our first topic under this new system was political ideologies. An ideology is “a more or less coherent set of ideas that provides the basis for organized political action, whether this is intended to preserve, modify or overthrow the existing system of power”. 

So to start the topic we had a brief summary of different political Ideologies such as socialism, communism, fascism, and all the other things that people argue about. This was done in a lecture style fashion and we were tasked with taking notes. However, we had to take notes in a different style for every lecture that we had throughout the term. I didn’t really see the point in this since the reason for taking notes is retaining knowledge and I feel like I have been in school long enough to know what style of notes works best for me. So it seems counterintuitive to me to have to take notes in a style that doesn’t help me retain knowledge. I know that different types of note styles work for different people, but since I already knew what style of notes works best for me, I would been more efficient if I could have done all the notes in this style. 

But back to the Ideologies. So I took the notes for Ideologies in the first note style which was standard. This is my favourite type of notes so I was able to make simple, organized notes which gave me a solid understanding of the topic. These notes were the baseline component of the Ideologies theme. These are the notes that I took:

For the challenge component of this topic, we needed to create a movie trailer about a specific ideology, however, I talked to my teachers and they said I could write a short story instead. I decided to write a short story about a person living in a fictional totalitarian society. In my story, I wanted to illustrate the blending that occurs between different ideologies as well as the struggles that people can face under different political ideologies. Here is my story:

****

The Time of Reckoning

My shoulders ache. My calloused hands sting incessantly. The clanging of the factory has deteriorated my ears to little more than useless tunnels into an empty soul. The foreman turns his back and I rest momentarily. This is what society has become. They call it communism but it is anything but that.

I remember when I first heard of communism. The leaflets were passed around from neighbour to neighbour, and when one finally arrived at my doorstep my eyes scanned the Manifesto eagerly. It seemed like such a perfect system, no social classes, no divide, only equality. 

No one saw the problem until it was too late. A communist society must be regulated by the government. And therein lies the problem for my small town; the government is corrupt. We labour day in and day out and for what? The leaders go home rich while we suffer in pathetic slums. 

It’s a joke really, that they still call it communism. It may have started that way but it quickly turned closer to fascism. We know what it is now. Most people call it totalitarianism. 

The state controls everything, but who controls the state? A handful of officials who were “democratically elected”. It’s easy to win an election when you count your own votes. 

We have all come to terms with it now, living in a totalitarian state. Every day is a nightmare, we are free citizens yet we live as slaves. But the leaders will pay eventually. They always do. 

There are already murmurs of Revolution. They spread through the streets like wildfire. Oppression and corruption never lasts. 

I snap out of my daydream but it is too late. The foreman’s whip cracks across my back and I fall to the ground. The whip lashes again and I scream in pain. The foreman gives me one last kick for good measure then walks off. 

I may be down, but I stand up. I always do. The time of reckoning is near. 

****

For the honours component of this topic, we were tasked with creating a new visual to represent the political spectrum. I actually quite enjoyed this assignment as I am very interested in politics and I have spent a lot of time thinking about the political spectrum. The way the most common political spectrum is drawn has its problems. A line with communism and fascism at either end seems conclusive. What I wanted to do was make the spectrum into a circle instead of a line. Each ideology would be across the circle from its opposite. I also feel as though a circle illustrates the blending that occurs between people’s political views. I placed communism next to fascism which is very different than most people would do. Although they are usually portrayed as polar opposites, many fascist governments become communist and vice versa. Look at Mussolini’s Italy or Stalin’s Russia. Is either really truly communist or fascist? I don’t think so. 

Here is my new and improved political spectrum:

In all, learning about ideologies was a good way to start the term and gave us the background knowledge that would be necessary for future topics. Understanding ideologies is key to understanding history and the motives of past leaders, so we were now ready to continue learning about the 20th century.