Monday, November 10, 2008

Brainstorming for proposal arguement

An issue that I feel would be good for my proposal argument is that bilingual education should be incorporated in the elementary schools in Harrisonburg, VA because the Hispanic population in the valley is rapidly increasing.
I feel that my audience would be the Harrsionburg School Board because they are the ones that can take action and make something happen.

My principle would be that some Hispanic children are getting disadvantaged because of the language barrier in schools.
The consequences would be that
- if bilingual education is not put in elementary schools then more Hispanic children will have difficulty communicating in school as they get older.
- SOL testing scores will be lower than ever because children can not understand the material because they can't speak the language.
- If there are lower testing scores then the state would focus on Harrisonburg, Va more and put more pressure on the teachers to get the score higher.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

" The Hardest of the Hardcore":

I thought it was an interesting story to read about. I had heard about mercenaries but I never really knew much about them. I feel that this paper did a very good job in informing the reader of why mercenaries are bad in our country. I thought it was good to learn that mercenaries are not part of the military and that they do not have to get Congresses approval to work. This was important information for me to learn because it opened my eyes to what some people in our government are doing.When they talked about mercenaries in the paper they made them seem like they were corrupt and morally wrong. I think that the fact that mercenaries are hired by private companies makes it sound illegal. I think it is very weird how we how allow this to occur. It was also surprising to find out that people hire mercenaries to try to cover the actual cost of the war and that they are paid more than the soldiers because of the services that they provide. The more experienced a mercenary is the more likely they will get paid more. It was also interesting to learn that most people that worked in the military end up becoming mercenaries because of the great difference in pay. By private companies having mercenaries they are taking away the people that can have a great impact in our military. I feel that it is not such a great idea to have mercenaries because it is taking away from our government.