Ideology is defined as the study of an idea, specifically the science of ideas. Before our classes where we learned about ideologies, I never went into more detail about what an ideology is or how essential ideologies are in our day to day life. Now that I’m 17 turning 18 and almost legal voting age, I need to do research on different political parties that resonate with my ideologies. These lessons about ideology helped me to reflect on my worldviews and ask the question, “what influence does society have on my worldview and ideology?”
During class, we took notes from a lecture our teachers gave us about the different ideologies on the political ideology spectrum. Although lectures are not my preferred way to learn a topic, its excellent preparation for university lectures next year. What I found is that when writing information down in standard note-taking, it didn’t really stick. However, when reading over my notes, highlighting key points and doing research on the topic, I felt needed clarification. I found that I was able to grasp a complete understanding of the different types of ideologies.
<?php echo do_shortcode(‘
Some of the significant ideologies we focused on included liberalism, conservatism, capitalism and nationalism.
In our western society (“industrialized west”) all political parties are part of liberalism, some more left-wing or right-wing than others. The values for liberalism are freedom, individual, reason, justice and toleration. Liberalism believes in justice and tolerance with the belief we can all live together. We can see liberalism all throughout our society, for student council within school exemplifies freedom of speech. From the names of the political parties in our community before this lesson, I only thought that the only party that was followed liberalism as an ideology was the liberal party. This was an eye-opener for me has definitely opened my eyes to the different types of ideologies and the political parties in our society.
Capitalism
The economic system based on profits is known as capitalism. The capitalist ideology looks at the supply and demand of the market and believes that everyone can increase their economic growth. This was an interesting ideology to learn about because last year when I took economics, we talked a lot about the impact of supply and demand on our society. Connecting my prior knowledge to these lecture notes allowed me to put these ideologies into perspective and gain a deeper understanding.
For one of the ideologies, we learned about we were challenged to create a trailer displaying the characteristics of this ideology. Specifically, one of our teachers challenged us to make a trailer using the preset Bollywood iMovie trailer. One of my classmates Izzy and I were up for the challenge and decided to create a communist trailer using the Bollywood preset. This was a challenging yet fun task as we had to portray the communist ideology in the span of a minute without talking. We decided to base the story on a communist school where everyone was the same and was taught to believe that communist is the only way. To show this in the video we created a shot of two students with the exact same school supplies using just Izzy as two people. This represents that every person in communism is treated the same and has the same things in communism. Down below is our video:
One of the things we did each class, which was different then what we usually do in PLP was taking daily quizzes. This bought up a lot of nerve and anxiety when I heard the word quiz as in many other classes, tests and quizzes are used as a marking scale instead of a gauge of if we understand the subject. The first quiz I took about political ideologies, I got 5/10. This was a tough grade for me to get as my mind automatically goes to thinking I won’t be able to understand what I’m learning. However, after taking a step back and looking at my results, I was able to learn from my mistakes and improve my understanding. Each day we were given these quizzes, our teachers gave them to us in a different format from verbal multiple-choice to written fill in the blanks. Through these quizzes, it was interesting to see which style of test-taking suits my learning best. Personally, I found the test-taking that was open-ended and allowed for several answers was the style that suited me best as I was able to expand upon my solutions and truly show my understanding. By the last ideology test, I ended up getting 10/10, which showed that by taking the time to learn and absorb the information being given, I was able to improve my knowledge.
After learning about ideology, we then individually took a quiz to see where we fall on the political ideology spectrum. The quiz we took was on a website called the Political Compass, which gave a very neutral approach meaning the quiz wasn’t geared more so to the left or right side.
Some of the questions on this quiz were difficult and challenging to answer, which made me think deeper about what was being asked. The questions ranged from global to political to personal to really get the full spectrum of areas. An example of one of the economic questions is, “If economic globalization is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.” We then had to answer with either, strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree.
The results for the survey fell on a 4 direction graph instead of just a side to side graph. Once I answered all the questions, I was then given my results. I fell in the areas more to the left and libertarian. This didn’t come as a surprise to me as many of the factors of my life, including where I live, family influence and personal experiences, have led me to my beliefs. Specifically, growing up in Deep Cove has definitely been a major contributing factor to my own ideology. On top of where I live, a massive contributor to my worldview was built at the young age of 11 while taking part in an international camp apart of an organization called CISV. This opportunity allowed me to learn about different cultures, ideologies and global perspectives. Having had the chance to immerse myself alongside people from all around the world has made me want to make global changes in our society for the better. These goals of creating a more equal and loving community resonate with my worldview, which has shaped the ideology I believe in.