Obama's State of the Union Address

President Obama said many things during his State of the Union Address. He spoke about several topics including the economy, health care, taxes, and education. The part of his speech that hit home the most was the latter. There is a specific quote that I feel conflicted on.

During his talk on education, President Obama says numerous times that the United States drop out rate in college and in high school is the highest its ever been and the worst out of all the industrialized countries and that we need to do something to fix it. Obama proposes that everyone should get their high school diploma, saying, "And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country - and this country needs and values the talents of every American." I do agree with this to a certain extent. I was very close to dropping out of high school and going for a GED and a job. The only thing that stopped me was my age. Some people are more cut out for high school and the usual social things that come with it. Others don't want to waste time and just already get a GED so they can get a job and go to college or trade school that fits with what they want to do. Two of my friends, one of whom got his GED when he was 16 is already at a trade school to get started on his career, have already done this or started. A lot of other kids aren't motivated enough to get their high school diploma and go to college and don't realize that the benefits it will have. They don't see a goal of getting them and

I think that a lot of the focus should be to help students determine what they want to do before they start high school. though still allowing them to have the freedom to change their minds, and then have different levels of high schools dedicated to what people want to do. This is much like Germany's education system, which goes from teaching kids in elementary school similar to the United states and then from there three different branches: Hauptschule (grades 5-9), Realschule (grades 5-10), and Gymnasium (grades 5-13)*. Hauptschule teaches the same things as the other two, but it does it in a much slower time line, with classes dedicated to specific careers. Once they finish, they enroll part time in vocational school with training until they're 18. In Realschule, there's more vocational options and if the student changes their mind about what they want to do, they can go on to the Gymnasium, which is the higher level. Gymnasium gets students ready for college and universitys and the most common subjects are language, sciences, and math. Teachers in elementary recommend where the student should go based on how the perform academically, confidence, and how well they work alone.*

It's a nice idea of having every child graduate high school and college, but with our current education system and unless we somehow motivate them when they're younger, I can't see the United States having the highest percentage of college graduates by 2020. No one in my immediate family, including my father, mother, brothers, sisters, and 80 year old grandparents have every attented college. My maternal grandmother barely graduated, my grandfather and other grandmother didn't graduate and neither did my mom and dad. Only my siblings, aunt and stepfather have graduated. I think that Obama has a very good thought about what needs to happen in education, but how are we supposed to go to college when our parents didn't?

*http://www.howtogermany.com/pages/germanschools.html

Media Bias

For a long time, the media has been biased. After World War II, the news in America would only show anti-Communist information, movies would be against it and any other small source would be biased. In Communist countries, it would be the exact opposite and against capitalism and America. Today, the media is still very biased. The only thing that's changed is how many sources there are. For example, people can now do a search on the internet for something, but instead of just getting one side of a topic, we can now get both. Movies, books, music, television and local news all have a bias. In class, we read two separate articles about the raid in Pakistan, with one portraying the air strike as necessary and the other said that the raid was just a waste of time and killed civilians.

Many television stations as a whole are biased, although they try not to be. For example: NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX News, and many others. I think that the media will always be biased because everything comes from somebody who has their own opinions; people just need to find out what they believe for themselves and try to find common ground by comparing two or more different sources. Unfortunately, a lot of people may not think this. With the internet, a lot of people just believe whatever they read. Many people got 'Interesting Facts' in e-mails or it may have been a page in websites. Since they were reading it on the internet and they might have seen it multiple times, people assumed those facts were true. If they'd done research, however, they would have come across a site called snopes.com which is a fact checker for things on the internet and what people commonly hear. This website proved those 'facts' to really be false, including, "Each year, you swallow 7 spiders and other bugs during your sleep."

I think things will continue to be biased for a long time, especially with the way technology is advancing. Instead of believing it, people should start finding out for themselves on whether or not information is true.

Graduation Speech

Michelangelo once said, "If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius." This quote is incredibly true for high school; you spend four years of your life, preparing yourself for the rest of it. If you can graduate from high school, you can do anything.