Friday, November 18, 2011

Nov. 14th debate.

The price
We choose what we want to learn. Just, as we choose the subjects at the beginning of each year. Prohibition leads to taboo. The more something is prohibited, the more people would be curious about it. If you think the Internet filter works, you are wrong. Students are smarter than you think or at least when they want to. TASIS education is incomplete; we can get a diploma for the things you learn is school, but at the end students doesn’t fully understand how their bodies works.

Jorge & col.

Students' handbook
If it is not written in the handbook, then it is permitted. In page 25, we see how pornography & coed visits are prohibited. But nowhere does it say that public display of affection can’t occur outside of dorms or outside of school. So, it is allowed or not?
Alejandro & col.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Drug Discussion

  • Many question if this [drug addiction] is really something that affects people at all levels, what do you think? Is it really a global issue?

During our presentation, many different opinions were said about this. It was discussed that it was, in fact, a global issue since it affects a wide range of people involved in it, and even some not so involved indirectly. Drug addicts clearly destroy their lives slowly, they put aside activities that they really enjoy to put time on either looking for someone to buy drugs from, or time to consume.

Besides this, the family of any drug addict would, in most cases feel concerned about one family member involved into this type of dependence. The same thing happens with friends, in a long term pushing them aside.

  • Who do you think has th most responsibility for drug trading and the consequences that such practices bring to society: producers or demanding consumers?

Different perspectives also came out of this question during the discussion.

Some people mentioned that the blame is all on the producers, since they are the ones who make possible any kind of addiction to these substances. They are the ones who create the source of the problem, so they are responsible for it, some argued.

On the other hand, others said that some of the blame should be placed on demanding consumers. At times, producers are not malicious people who want to cause problems, but people who is willing to do anything to put some food on the dining table.

  • Many regulations already exist to control drug trade, do you think that this is enough to adress the problem? In your opinion, what else could be done?

Yes it is true that there are many regulations against drug consumption, trafficking, dealing, etc. However, the real problem exist in enforcing these laws and regulations that already exist; furthermore, educating people about drugs and their side effects given the fact that missinformation about drugs' addictive properties is a very common factor among prospective drug consumers.

Not Feast, but Famine

Despite the overproduction and overconsumption of food in most of the world, many developing countries, especially those in Sub-Saharan Africa, cannot produce enough food to feed their total population. Is this starvation and famine a crisis? Who is responsible to help and in what ways?

We made a presentation about the points above. We presented it for the students who were interested in this topic, and it was really successful. We had the power point presentation, answered a lot of questions, showed the video about starvation in Ethiopia and one of our students, whose name is German made the amazing speech about the same topics.