The Morality and Politics of Justice Project
Reflection
The most significant lesson I learned was from the chapters from Zinn’s book. From this reading, I learned that there is often a part of history that we do not learn from most textbooks, a negative and bloody side. This section of the readings also challenged my perspective in a similar way. Before reading the chapter on the discovery of America, I had no idea about the horrors that Columbus had committed upon this discovery and considered him a man worthy of the holiday that was named after him. After reading about his genocide of the native peoples, I now understand fully the reasoning behind changing Columbus Day to the Indigenous People’s Day. A different part of the project made me feel a strong emotion of shock. This feeling came after seeing a specific portion of the movie Reel Indian. During the movie there was a scene from the old Bugs Bunny cartoon. In the portion of the carton shown, he is killing Indians and singing, “One little, two little three little Indians,” as he kills them. This came as a shock to me because I had never before realized how racist Bugs Bunny and pop culture in general could be before watching this movie.
The readings, experiences, and knowledge we accumulated over the course of two and a half weeks became the substance of a seminar final. During this seminar, many different views and opinions were expressed, but one that stuck out to me was a statement from Domi on affirmative action, “Instead of affirmative action, improve the living standards on reservations.” I connected this opinion to a fact found earlier in the project, that very few native peoples are even in a position to take advantage of affirmative action. This perspective enlightened me and made me realize that there are other ways we can make up for our mistakes, and more effective ways we can aid the native peoples; this was a thought that I had never even considered before.
The readings, experiences, and knowledge we accumulated over the course of two and a half weeks became the substance of a seminar final. During this seminar, many different views and opinions were expressed, but one that stuck out to me was a statement from Domi on affirmative action, “Instead of affirmative action, improve the living standards on reservations.” I connected this opinion to a fact found earlier in the project, that very few native peoples are even in a position to take advantage of affirmative action. This perspective enlightened me and made me realize that there are other ways we can make up for our mistakes, and more effective ways we can aid the native peoples; this was a thought that I had never even considered before.
Project Description and Relection
The point of this project was to learn about morality and how to use that morality to find justice. To achieve this goal, first we learned about several moral codes, such and Libertarianism, Utilitarianism, and justice as fairness. We also studied some of the philosophers behind these ideals, such as John Stuart Mills and Jeremy Bentham, two men who believed in Utilitarianism. In order to learn about these topics, we read The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail and Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do? We also used our new knowledge to solve some moral dilemmas and saw some of the philosophies applied to civilizations, such as in the short story “Harrison Burgeon.” After we had completed these preparatory steps and other assignments, we had obtained enough knowledge to take a stand on a political issue, write an OP-ED on this current event, and create an art piece to accompany the OP-ED.
Not only did our minds grow in this project, but we expanded in other ways as well. I, for example, had never been very interested in current events or politics in general. This lack of interest made it difficult for me to find, choose, and write about an event in the modern world. Finding a political issue became my largest challenge in the project, however, I overcame it and learned that current events can be just as interesting as historical, or fictional events, and I was able to find an appropriate amount of information because of this expanded perspective. I chose to explore freedom of speech in the school system. I felt that this topic was more close to me than other broader political issues.
I think that out of the categories in the rubrics, I was strongest in my evidence for my OP-ED. Each of the body paragraphs of my OP-ED was full of information summarized from a different source, and this evidence allowed me to make a stronger attempt at persuading the target audience. However, I was also lacking in a category. This was the refinement category for my art piece. My art piece was a video I shot at my house for about forty-five minutes to an hour. Because I spent less time on it, I did not have my lines as memorized as I should have, and I spoke in a halting manner at times. In order to improve this portion of the project, I would have done more takes until I had completed the skit with fewer mistakes that needed to be edited out, thus making the video look and run more smoothly.
The above example is one thing I would’ve done if I had had more time to work on this project. I should have spent more time memorizing my lines prior to actually making the video. One line of the skit was a direct quote, so I needed to be particularly careful to be accurate in stating it. Also, with the amount of time I had, I was forced to turn in the OP-ED portion of my project without reviewing it one last time. Had I had another week, I also would have looked through my OP-ED a final time after my peers had reviewed and corrected it to catch any spelling or grammatical errors they may have overlooked.
Not only did our minds grow in this project, but we expanded in other ways as well. I, for example, had never been very interested in current events or politics in general. This lack of interest made it difficult for me to find, choose, and write about an event in the modern world. Finding a political issue became my largest challenge in the project, however, I overcame it and learned that current events can be just as interesting as historical, or fictional events, and I was able to find an appropriate amount of information because of this expanded perspective. I chose to explore freedom of speech in the school system. I felt that this topic was more close to me than other broader political issues.
I think that out of the categories in the rubrics, I was strongest in my evidence for my OP-ED. Each of the body paragraphs of my OP-ED was full of information summarized from a different source, and this evidence allowed me to make a stronger attempt at persuading the target audience. However, I was also lacking in a category. This was the refinement category for my art piece. My art piece was a video I shot at my house for about forty-five minutes to an hour. Because I spent less time on it, I did not have my lines as memorized as I should have, and I spoke in a halting manner at times. In order to improve this portion of the project, I would have done more takes until I had completed the skit with fewer mistakes that needed to be edited out, thus making the video look and run more smoothly.
The above example is one thing I would’ve done if I had had more time to work on this project. I should have spent more time memorizing my lines prior to actually making the video. One line of the skit was a direct quote, so I needed to be particularly careful to be accurate in stating it. Also, with the amount of time I had, I was forced to turn in the OP-ED portion of my project without reviewing it one last time. Had I had another week, I also would have looked through my OP-ED a final time after my peers had reviewed and corrected it to catch any spelling or grammatical errors they may have overlooked.
Art Piece
OP-ED |
Artist Statement |