The 'Pledge'

In the primaries for the upcoming 2012 election, we have seen a number of so-called 'pledges' that the candidates have the option of signing, essentially binding them to a set of goals, such as the 'No Death Tax' pledge (http://www.nodeathtax.org/deathtax/currentfight/2012-republican-presidential-candidates), and, famously, Grover Norquist's 'Taxpayer Protection Pledge' (http://www.atr.org/taxpayer-protection-pledge).

As Norquist's pledge itself says, 'the pledge has become de rigeur for Republican's seeking office,... is offered to every candidate...'. In this way, these pledges polarize the political scene. In fact, according to an article at the appropriately-titled website 'Politico,' every candidate had signed the pledge except Jon Huntsman, who, it is worth noting, fell out of the race rather quickly (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70111.html).

My junior theme discusses the potential causes of the current two-party system wherein a Senator is not a person with opinions, it is just a red or blue vote. It seems to me that such efforts to pigeonhole senators and candidates into certain views lead to support for only people who believe with the majority (or one of two majorities, in this case), thus homogenizing the beliefs of Congressmen.

The Word 'Bipartisanship'

While certainly the current two-party system in Congress has some serious problems, many people seem to be of the opinion that bipartisan policies, that is, policies that have components that appeal to both political parties, are the solution. However, Stephen Dinan at the Washington Post disagrees: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/01/b-word-stymies-both-sides-of-the-aisle/?page=all.

In this article, entitled "'Bipartisanship' in Congress: Good or Bad?", Dinan points out the inherent flaws in these 'bipartisan policies,' largely in the words of the lawmakers themselves. For example, when Charles Chamberlain, head of a left-wing group called Democracy for America, sent an email to all of the groups constituents about a new bill that was being proposed, it was titled "good policy, not bipartisan junk. This view is shared by the right: Republican Senator Jim Demint says that every effort that Congress has passed in his 12 (at the time of the article) years in the Senate that has been labelled 'bipartisan' has ended up being detrimental for the nation as a whole.

Later on in the article, Dinan brings up an interesting possible cause for this dissatisfaction with new bills that claim to be a compromise. He claims that moderates no longer exist to anywhere near the extent that they used to. The term 'liberal conservative' is now seen as an insult, as is the term 'rightist leftie.' Whereas in the past, he says, there were large enough numbers of people whose votes were not decided solely by their parties that bills would pass based on their merit, not just the majority in Congress, it is increasingly becoming the case that a Republican Congressman will always vote Republican. Moreover, he gives several examples of points in the past where this was not the case and major legislature passed, such as Medicare in 1965.

'Compromise'

     Congress faces perhaps its most impeding issue in the way that the two main political parties, Republicans and Democrats, cannot reach a consensus on seemingly any issue; a prime example of such indecision, and the problems that arise from it, is the debt ceiling crisis. During this crisis, which took place last summer, the US had reached its self-imposed 'debt limit,' whereby it could not spend any more money, and and debts that it owed above this limit would have to be defaulted.
     Because of an unwillingness to compromise from both parties, a deal to raise the debt ceiling was not passed until after default, and because of this, the US's credit score was downgraded. The interesting thing is that both parties see the other in much the same way. Consider Mitch McConnell's portrayal of Obama, and by implication, Democrats in general:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DyltUbi0Bo

     Compare this with the way Obama claims that the Republicans are unwilling to compromise on issues, or 'move at all with their ideals:'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FDMcagS6sM&feature=relmfu

     The similarities in the way each party describes the other is, I think, the real problem here. Because each party is exactly the same to the other, there is no way to say 'this party is correct' just based on behavior.

Favorite Post

Please read 'The Evolution of Music.'

The Junior Theme

Since we're supposed to be posting about our junior themes now, but I haven't really picked a topic yet, I figured I'd talk about the idea of a junior theme as a whole.

I'm not an expert on the curriculum of junior English as a whole, but I imagine that it is a schoolwide requirement that each class write a junior theme. To me, it seems like a relatively arbitrary requirement; most (if not all) junior year english classes are writing research papers all year long to some extent, and the junior theme, then, is just a way of saying 'make sure at least one of them is really long.'

It's almost like the way that each class is required to have a final. It's not as though each teacher isn't trying to assess the students' knowledge, which includes their cumulative absorption of the material, but the final is a way for the school to say 'make sure you have a test that tests the students equally on all the material they've learned.'

I think that in some classes, such as American Studies, where the learning tends to be more self-directed, requiring such an assignment from students almost stunts the amount of work they can choose to put it, or pushes them away from genuinely looking into a subject because they are forced to put so much work into it in a short time.

Act Prep Classes

     As a junior, I hear a lot of people talking about the ACT, and particularly the ACT prep classes in which they are enrolled. Since I'm going to school for music, I thought the time that would've been spent in these classes would have been better spent practicing, so I didn't take any, but the impression I get is that something like 50% of students take some form of ACT prep, be it a personal tutor, or a sunday class.
     However, I question the appropriateness of these classes. While personally, I think the whole idea of standardized testing needs quite a lot of fine tuning (and maybe some not-so-fine tuning), if we take it for granted as a part of the college admission process, ACT prep classes really undermine the goal of the college admissions process, which is to assess the readiness of a student for college.
     First, consider the things that factor into a student's 'college readiness.' While I'm sure the criteria differ among schools, most of them probably include things like ability to work under pressure, ability to think on your feet, ability to manage your time, and the base of knowledge you come into the school with. While some of these are more clearly assessed by the ACT than others, for the purposes of this argument, I will just assume that they all are, because the issues with standardized testing could be another blog post entirely.
     Now consider the way that ACT prep classes influence the test results. It nullifies the test as a measure of your ability to work under pressure, as having taken what were probably months of preparatory classes, one could reasonably expect to be pretty confident going into the test. The ACT no longer assesses your ability to think quickly, as, once again, you have spent months preparing for the test, so you pretty much know what to expect. Your time management is also less directly gauged, because you've spent time directly talking about testing taking strategies, which are far more narrow than the skill that the ACT tries to judge. Finally, since you have been taking practice ACT's, your actually general knowledge base is not being tested; instead, a smaller facet of your knowledge is evaluated, one that you have been purposefully improving.
     While these are certainly not the only things that colleges look for, they serve as examples of how the general concept of the ACT only works when a student goes into it without having specifically prepared for it. It would be as though your math teacher only taught you the material for the problems that would be on the test, and nothing else; of course you'll ace the test, but you have no idea how to actually use the mathematical concepts.

Office video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn6MM6nohAI&feature=youtube_gdata_player