30 Days in Slave Ship

   "30 Days" documentary series shows us people in interesting situations for 30 days. For example, we saw a straight man living among gays for 30 days, and there are other episodes such as a person living with the minimum wage and a Christian living among Muslims. Overall, this documentary series makes people think about other culture, other people, and other lives.

   My original scenario for this document is to hold 30 days in the slave ship. Slavery had been an important conflict in the history of the world, and especially in the history of the United States. Slavery is also on of the biggest shame in human history. Living as a slave was really agonizing, but becoming a slave from a free man should have been equally painful. Africans captured by whites, specifically the white merchants from American colonies, were transported via ships, the slave ships. The most common route of such ships in the 17th and 18th century were from western coast of Africa to south-east coast of America and Europe, and this passage was know as the "Middle Passage."



   To maximize profits, those whites shrank the room for each Africans as much as they could. The Africans were locked in a place with extremely low ceiling, that some of them were even unable to turn their body around. They were chained together, and were provided only a little amount of food and water. The hygiene condition was not good; most ships didn't have any system to remove excrement instantly. The high mortality rate was a corollary. Usually a slave ship carried a couple hundred kidnapped Africans, and about 15% of them didn't make it to the land where they would be slaves.

a short cut from a movie - captured Africans embarking on a slave ship

   I know this scenario can be very dangerous to the participant, but believe under well-controlled conditions, this would make an extremely real documentary of what slaves had to suffer in the history.

Sir Ken Robinson Believes - Education Kills Creativity.

     What is education? Is it teaching facts and information? Well, if the purpose of the education is to make a person, or a kid, capable of establishing logical and scientific thinking or expressing the aesthetic sense, giving information can never be education. Unfortunately, a large part of current society adopts such method; the schools inject information into the students' heads. Teachers tend to give lectures, in which they just read what's on the text book, for an hour. They tend to do this more especially in some nations where public education has short history. They never ask "what do you think?" Instead, they ask "is this right or wrong?" They try to keep their students focused on the class, and they don't care how : corporal disciplines, verbal violence, and mostly, system of public education. This system, so tangled and so stagnant, never actually changed, and it constantly directs students, mostly mandatorily, to university. So, when we look at this system, we can see that it is not for making a student intellectually refined person, but a university student.

     Let's look back in the history. Is there any great man who made his or her achievement with the help of public education? Not even a single person. Some did learn from public education,but mostly when they had grown up, and more felt, and was blamed that they were inadequate. All those people who brought great renovation to human society were not made from public education. Rather they had studied and cogitated themselves, or at most they had a tutor, who chose educational methods far, far different from what public education has chosen. History shows us that public education never gives birth to great mind.

     Public education can be a great way to keep a society working, just like a waterwheel which rotates constantly, but without any change. It will produce a loyal component of the machine called stable society. Still, it lacks the ability to inspire the kids, make them try new things, encourage them to invent something, and to reveal the innate creativity of them.



Oh, the motions.

1. Public education must be optional for those over 13.
2. Firing public school teachers should be allowed.
3. High schools in Korea do more harm than benefit to students.

Moore's High School Newspaper

     Moore is trying to encourage high school students, who he claims to be suppressed by adults, to express their own thoughts and criticism. Some parts of his idea may seem to be too radical, specifically when it comes to be political debates, but in my opinion, at least in South Korea, such chances are welcomed by me, and many other students.

     Indeed, students, and specifically high school students in South Korea are oppressed. No one can say "no."  Almost all the teachers forbid students from doing everything except studying. Regular Korean high school students, who go to the high schools controlled by the government, study from 8 am to 10 pm. (Some students suffer from much severe curriculum.) They are literally "jailed" inside the school; even though ordinary school time finishes around 5 or 6 pm, they are "obliged" to participate in what teachers and others call "voluntary self-studying" time. Many of, or maybe most of, the teachers believe that a student's primary goal, indeed the only goal, is to enter one of the prestigious universities. They do not want students to have any idea of change, to try something new, or to resist the system, but to be a "brick in the wall."

     Even some parents seem to share the same thought. After more than 12 hours of study in school, they force their children to go to private academy, or study with private tutor, just to raise their children's grades. They think that their children are making nonsense because the children are just "temporarily" tired when the children try to express his or her thought or idea about changing the system. Both teachers and parents believe that any student can not change the system, urging the students to "hold on" for just three years.

     In this situation, students in South Korea do need a way, an outlet, to express their idea. They need somewhere to organize their claims, support them logically, and make a rational debates. The idea of students, which adults believe to be excessively and unnecessarily revolutionary, should be listened and respected, for the sake of both adults and students; if not, students will go insane and irrational in a closed jail where their mouths are completely concealed. Even though their are some dangerous topics to be discussed in high school, such problems can never be a reasonable excuse to ban and censor what students want to speak.

Motions

1. THB : the communities of high school students must be censored by adults.

2. THB : students must be kept away from political issues.

3. THB : students have the same full right as adults.