ELAx2 6/3

We had two classes two classes in the mac room:) yay! I had long been wanting to hear Rab’s interesting background, so thank you for telling us today. In Japan, I feel like entering university at the age of 18 is considered “normal” and if you don’t, you will naturally feel secluded from your age group. They even name people who could not or deliberately decided not to enter universities right after graduating High School as “Rouninn-sei”. The term used to refer to a samurai who had no place to go... as if the person is a loafer, so using this term to refer to students seems offensive to me. Rab told us that he left school at 16 and worked in building ships for the navy, and when I heard this, I felt like the “normal routine” (i.e entering university at 18, graduating at 22 and working from there) is not the only option. In fact, I think having work experiences before studying at university helps because you have seen part of how society works. You have more knowledge about it through personal experience, and you know what the problems are.

Rab mentioned that the significance of critical thinking is identifying the biases in yourself and in others. He also said that he welcomes disagreements against his claims and ideas because that gives him an opportunity to reassess his biases. I have to admit that I find it really hard to disagree with Rab when I have way less knowledge than him. Also, the way he speaks is so convincing that I just believe everything he says. Bad habit of mine! Even Loewen or Bakan. It was really hard to find faults in Loewen’s claims in “Lies My Teacher Told Me” because they made a lot of sense to me. Or perhaps I am just not trying hard enough… I just find it difficult to oppose an idea that I have scarce knowledge on.

The Young Turks videos were not only funny but also stimulating. I feel like people should start watching these kinds of channels, which are not sponsored and censored by the government or corporations because this way, people can get nearer to the truth. These videos are biased as well but not by the government; they are biases of people with different backgrounds. For example, in the video about Girls Soccer, the woman reporter expresses a view that the girl should be punished. Her bias may come from her background of never having joined a team sports (This is just a guess), or being a woman. However in that video, it seemed like it was 5 people against the woman reporter, and so she just gave up in the end. I felt a little sorry for her and thought that The Young Turks should have more female crews as well.

After I watched the video on the Rob Ford scandal, I was annoyed how the people in Toronto could not fire this cracks smoker. His firing many of his secretaries and the mysterious death of the scandalous tape owner all suggest that he is trying to hide something, so it is obvious that he did what he denies. And yet, because there is no evidence, he cannot be fired as mayor or taken to court and punished. According to my research, B.C. is the only province in Canada that has a recall system. If 40% of the people want the mayor removed from his or her position, the recall system functions. Not having these recall systems in every province and territory in a democratic country seems absurd to me. If the people cannot choose who their representative is, how is that voicing the opinions of the people? Keeping a person who has the ability to "remove" anyone who opposes him or humiliates him in office is quite too risky, so I think that the people in Toronto are going to do something about this.