Civic Action

What forms a successful community? Great leaders? Strict rules? Harsh punishments? Well, according to Joel Westheimer and Joseph Kahne, it is the democratic ruling system and the teamwork from all the members of a community. Ranging from personal responsible citizens to participatory citizens to last, justice-oriented citizens. All of them play different roles in their society and if they all engage properly, we might have ourselves a perfect society.

First are the personal responsible citizens. They are the cores of a smooth-running society. These citizens make up most of the community’s populations. So what are their tasks? Well, quite simple actually. First of all, and it is actually the easiest one, act responsibly in his/her community. He or she needs to be employed, need to pay their taxes, need to obey the law and even do things like recycle and give bloods to their society. An example of them will be the foot soldiers in an army. Without these educated, philanthropically aware citizens, no community could function properly.

Second are the participatory citizens. They don’t make up more of the population like the first kind of citizen, but their tasks are as important as the first citizens. They are the leader, organizer, commander, chairman, manager…etc of our community. We all know the importance of leaders. He/she has the ability to make things more effective. Having just the first type of citizens, the personal responsible citizens, will be helpful, but not as effective. Lets use a scenario to see the big picture. There’s a flood that destroyed a village. Most people over there are starving and shelter less, so personal responsible citizens started gathering foods and tents for those citizens. BUT, they don’t have proper equipments to get to the village, no safe rout and most of all; don’t have a clear understanding of the situation. Even though their effort will save lives, but it won’t be effective. So there is when participatory citizens comes in. They will first understand the situation and then organize a safe rout for the food and shelter transportation. With their help, the rescue will be far more effective and more lives will be saved.

Last group are the justice-oriented citizens. They are the most educated of all. They go into the core of a problem. When 1^st and 2^nd type citizens solve the problem, they think of ways to prevent the problem from the beginning. They question our system for any possible holes in it, which makes it near perfect. They are pretty much like the critics in some ways. But instead of destroying their target’s self-esteem, they improve their target.

So how could Hsinchu international school adopt this kind of system? First, democratic system. By far, most of the voices from 70~80% of the school are not heard. The idea of SRC is great IF the SRC are actually collecting comments from the rest of the school body. After all, if they want to represent the students’ voices, they should actually ask the students what they think, right? Second of all, we need more love for our school. Higher spirit in a way, almost like patriotism, but toward our school. If we love our school, it is easier for our to give back to the school. So instead of abusing our rights to go to 7-11, we should use it wisely, and even clean up our trash after we finish eating or drinking whatever we got from 7-11. Also, community services are great ways for us to contribute back to our society. Like the personal responsible citizens, we need to encourage students to give more. But most of all, we need a leader. Having no principle can cause many problems. Students looses faith, parents looses faith and even the teachers looses their faith. If all those things are fized, I believe HIS will become a far better school then now.

O God! Look At that those Fe-Men

Sexism has been around for many many centuries. In most culture (Nearly ALL culture) women are being treated with less respects and rights. Even in today's society, women are still being suppressed by dominant men. But while all these sexism is going on, surprisingly, cross dressing culture is also growing. Some schools picked a day in the year to cross dress, and for my school, it is today. But is cross dressing a healthy thing to do? Is making yourself look like the opposite gender a good thing to do? In my opinion, it is very rewarding and didactic. Putting aside the fact that this day brings a lot of joys, it also made you really look at the opposite sex. You started imitating their way of words, gesture and even behavior. And even when we are not aware of these subtle things, we are growing more conscious over the opposite gender, which made us more cautious over the other sex.

Another thing that shouldn't be overlooked is which sex is going to have more trouble cross dressing. Once again, only my opinion, Male. In our society, girls have been wearing so called "guy cloth" for awhile. Jeans and shirt or polo are commonly seen worn by girls. But why aren't there any men wearing girl cloth in ordinary like? It is our culture that hindered us from doing that. Males are brought up thinking one day they are going to be the CEO or manager of a huge corporation and leader of his family. It made them think they are more superior over women, especially their wives. With this in the societies' mind, male automatically block all of their feminine side. So it is very hard for us guys to dress up like females because no one wants to blur this gender binary.

Our class did a little experiment :]
With around 8 boys dressed as girls and 4 girls dressed as boys, we went to the nearest 7-11 to see other people's expressions. First I found out, we are the center of attention. No one, and i mean absolutely no one walk pass us without staring at us for at least 5 min. (except me, they are ogling at me.) Then we saw a senior citizen, around 70 years old, and she was PISSED at our "behavior". She looked at us as if she was going to beat the living **** out of us until we are normal again. So what I got out of this little trip to 7-11 was:
- Our society is still not use to boys dressing up like girls and walk like girls.
- Elder people are more conservative about this kind of cross dressing culture.
- One lollipop and one bottle of milktea.

Innovation

I just finished reading this article about creating innovation for the kids. It basically listed nine ways that the educational system should change into. And here, I am going to give my feelings on these changes.

1: Spur greater parental participation:
Parents are one of the most important characters in any child's life. With these parents participating in their child's education, it is fair enough to say that it will give positive booms. Because parents only wants the best for their kids. They will ask for fairer things for their children. They will also provide the kids a sense of protection knowing their parents are participating in their educational life.

2: Make school smaller:
I could give personal examples for this one. I've been studying in small schools for most of my life. And I found out that knowing everyone in my school really made me think to them as families, and I don't want to disappoint them. There are stronger school spirit and more bonding between teachers and students. These kind of bonding also made me work harder. However, when I am in larger school, I loose that kind of feeling. I stopped pushing myself because I know only a few people will see my achievement.

3: Utilize community service to foster civic engagement.
I really enjoy community services. It is like a spiritual break which you get to really understand your neighborhood or surrounding and do something about it. It allows the students to interact more with the community and build up their philanthropic will. I believe this is more important than any other points.

5: Fund extracurricular activities.
This is very critical. Extra curriculum are where kids find their interest in certain things. Kids learn how to play instruments in after school music class, learn to play sport in sport clubs...etc. This also build up teamwork spirit, leardership abilities and even social skills. We need to increase these kind of activities for our kids, not decrease the fund. These funds are great investments for the kids to do well in their future life.

6: Model a high school on a community.
Students are the core of a school. Faculties are not the main character, students are. And since their are the main character, they should get more camera time. There should be more students taking on harder jobs like teaching other kids. In HIS, we have a period after school called peer tutoring. This is a time when the elder kids can share their knowledge to the younger kids. It is beneficial to both the younger kids and the older kids. Also, students should have more power over school decisions. A lot of the time, faculties are making decisions that they think is beneficial, but when it comes to the core, some of those decisions are not at all beneficial to the children. Only they know what they want, teachers can only imagine what they want.

7: Create opportunities for meaningful youth contribution.
Internship. HIS integrate internship with normal school time. On wednesday, most of the Seniors will go to their internship learning what could possibly be their future jobs. This is a great example of using student's like wisely. Sometime, kids are learning things that are meaningless to them. For example, do artist need biology? Also, having kids doing meaningful things to the community, like after school community services is also a great way to teach kids to be philanthropic.

Changing education could mean so much in the future. We need a better educational system to boost our youth's future!

An inclass essay on Globalization

Globalization has been around the world for centuries. Some said , the Silk Road was the first form of globalization, some said the Romans started it, and of course there are more assumptions. Many historians, economist and scientists have been arguing about the start of globalization, but they never have reached a consensus. However, what we know today, in the 21st century are the effects of globalization. So, for the purpose of this essay, I am going to set the beginning of globalization in the 1980s, the beginning of multinational corporation’s dissemination. Of cause, there are more forms of globalization, but this (corporation) is definitely the major one. So in this essay, I am going to discuss some of the effects of globalization.

Globalization has many effects and forms. As stated earlier, this essay focuses only on multinational corporations. So, what are some positive effects? One of the greatest contributions globalization has brought is the spread of information. With the help of globalization, especially corporations, more knowledge is being shared. There are better satellite systems and information, more available telephony and even internet. Languages are also more globalized. After the spreading of globalization, English has become one of the most common languages. 75% of the world’s mail telexes are in English. 60% of the world’s radio program are in English. 90% of the internet traffic uses English. Also, more people have global views. Westerners are more familiar with eastern culture while the East is also getting used to western traditions. In many ways, we are forming a global village. And because of this, more interaction between countries have started. There are more world games like Olympic, Soccer World Cup (FIFA), and Rugby World Cup (RWC). Most importantly, international agreements are being formed. The copy right laws for example are regulated because of globalization.

Globalization also helps reshape the economy of many countries. Because corporations are starting to build their factories abroad, they give those countries, especially third world countries more job opportunities. As a result, the standard life style in third world countries increase. They have better health care because of the technologies brought in by other countries, more money because they are employed and therefore, a better life style. Mr. Joseph Stiglitz said in his speech, "China has brought several hundred millions of people out of poverty". Chinese managed globalization exceptionally well. Also with the spreading of the companies, more goods are being spread across the globe. Now, we can have a wide range of choice when we go shopping. And this, according to statistics, makes more consumers want to shop.

Another great contribution from globalization is the competition it creates among the corporations. Because of the forming of this “global market” more companies are forced to compete with each other. In today’s world, out of all the 100 biggest companies, 51 of them are multinational corporations. The founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates said, “This is a very exciting time in the world of information. It’s not just that the personal computer has come along as a great tool. The whole pace of business is moving faster. Globalization is forcing companies to do things in new ways.” Globalization has brought an end to many monopolies in the world. Now, even diaper companies have to compete with each other. As a result, more cheaper products with better quality are being produced.

Enough said about the good things brought by globalization, now for its downside. With the spreading of corporation, their business’s size increased dramatically. These corporations have become so rich, they have forgotten the purpose of their companies. Instead of concentrating on their products, they focus solely on profits. These high power CEOs started thinking of more ways to make money, so they started exploiting their workers. In China, McDonald's workers are getting less then 50 cents per hour. They have limited health care, and a lot of them cannot join the unions. For pharmaceutical companies, they only make drugs that treat illness found in modernized wealthier communities. Because they are pharmaceutical companies’ primary consumers. From 1975~1997, 1233 drugs were created, only 13 of them are for tropical diseases. The reason why there are only 13 of them is because pharmaceutical companies know those third world country people won't be able to afford the drugs, and the companies won't be able to make money from them. They even test drugs on people of the third world. The pharmaceutical company, Pfizer was accused of treating their third world country clients with untested drugs. And they got away by that saying their “clients” are illiterate, so they cannot sign a contract. Instead, these clients gave verbal permission, which could never be proven to be true or false in a court of law.

An example of how powerful these corporations become can be seen in the power they have to change regulations. In Papua New Guinea, mining companies forced the governments to stop performing health tests on its citizens that live around the mining site. In Peru, the mining companies forced the government to make a new law, that is “No one is allowed to sue international mining companies.” Sometime, even governments themselves are guilty. In New York, all of the manholes are made in India. They hired Shakti Industry in Haora to make their manholes with a very low price. Most of the workers were working with nearly no protection, in extreme heat and low pay. They received less then one dollar an hour when they could make over 25 dollars per hour in the US.

Lastly, if the government could not handle globalization well, their economy will actually decline, or even crash. Mexico for example is having trouble handling globalization. They have been working for American companies for many years, but the gap between the two countries is still constantly increasing. This is because these workers are being badly exploited. They get low pay, and are forced to work overtime. Since the country does not have many job opportunities, those workers have to stay in the factories. Governments are also forced to borrow money from banks. And of cause, if they borrow, they need to pay the interest. Some countries are even losing money constantly. Jimmy Carter said “Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing…you are talking about the internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn’t affect two-third of the people of the world.” Globalization is too focused on rich companies. Actually, some of the international trade rules are made to favor companies. Especially first world companies.

So, in conclusion, Globalization has many effects. Kofi Annan, the Nobel peace prize winner and former head of the United Nations said “It has been said that arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity.” There will always be globalization. It is impossible to prevent. The problem is to make it fair for all. Corporations cannot be as powerful as they are today. Globalization needs more regulations and we need to keep an eye on them. Globalization could work, and it could bring balance to the world. The problem is how to make it work.