After just completing our previous unit on significant events in history, we are now moving on to politics. Everyone’s heard of the political spectrum. You have the left wing and the right wing. Each end of the spectrum has a place for a political party. For example the Conservatives fall on the right and the Liberals fall on the left. 

For this unit we received our information in lecture format. We took notes on each topic so we could better understand the topics to be able to do well on the daily quizzes we would have. Our teacher challenged us to take notes in a different format than we usually did. We were given the note taking options of Memory-Key, Cornell, Standard, Concept Map and Mindmap to chose from.

When I first looked at the notes options, I chose Standard but looking back now I think that a Mind Map would have been the best option. I initially chose Standard because I was familiar with it and wanted to ensure I got all the information written down but Mind Map would have complimented the topic better and summarized the key points and ideas clearly.

Here are my notes from the lecture.

After going through multiple amazing lectures from Mr. Hughes and Ms. Willemse about ideology and the different types of political views that are in our societies around the world, we had to look back at our notes. We edited our notes to refine them and make them better. This is a great skill that I will use to study more often. Editing your notes after a lecture gets you to think more about the topic at hand. The ideologies that we looked at were Liberalism, Conservatism, Socialism, Fascism, Capitalism, Totalitarianism, Anarchism, Environmentalism, Feminism, and Nationalism. Each of these ideologies fall on a different section of the political spectrum. The factors that lead to the placement of an ideology on the spectrum are the values of each party. Each ideology has different views and values. For example, Liberalism believes in equality, individual liberty, supporting private property and individual rights. These are also the factors someone would consider when choosing a ideology to be a part of or who to vote for if you could vote for a leader.

As part of our homework one day we were assigned to take a quiz that would tell you which political party would best fit our views. The quiz asked you questions on different problems that our society faces. An example of the question to help place you in a political party was “ What is your view on the death penalty?” The political compass quiz plots you on a chart along with the location of the other parties. This quiz really helped me understand where each party falls on the spectrum. Here is the outcome of my political spectrum quiz.

 

The last part of the assignment was to create a poster. This poster helps explain the knowledge that was gained in this study.  While looking back at my notes I remembered all the important information that I learned during this unit that I can take into every day experiences. I found it hard to wrap my head around the entire topic of ideology’s and the political spectrum. I created this poster to help people that may be in the same place I was. This post makes it easy to understand the spectrum and literally puts faces to parties.

Here is the poster that I made