Journals for the week of 4/15/2013

Monday: One of the purposes of school is to teach students to think critically about social issues.  What issues should public school deal with and what treatment should they recieve?  Should teachers- paid by the government- be permitted to express their own views to students who may be very impressionable?  (alt: What prepares you best to face the challenges of adulthood and how does it do it?)

Tuesday: Losing someone to a slow, incurable disease. (alt: The skills everybody should have in order to survive and why.)

Wednesday: Hitler is to evil as X is to good or Too late for Earth, too early for the stars.

Thursday: The argument goes that the reason we have full days of school on AIMS testing days is so that we don't have to spend extra time in classes at the end of the school year to make up missed days.  It has also been stated that going to school just for the test (and then going home immediately thereafter) is a waste of a day.  On the other hand, some people feel that having a full day of classes on testing days increases discipline issues.  They also believe that having short testing days would allow students to relax more between tests and thus help them to perform better.  Which side do you support and why?  (alt: Imagine you are making first contact with an intelligent alien life form on their own planet.  What sort of first impression do you want to leave them with?  What do you want them to think about humanity in general from their experiences meeting and communicating with you?)

Friday: Anterograde amnesia refers to an inability to form new memories after a traumatic event.  Essentially, the victim can remember everything up to the event, but nothing that happened after the event (typically, short-term memory remains intact, but events that happened as little as an hour previously are forgotten).  Retrograde amnesia refers to an inability to recall events that happened before a traumatic event (this is the traditional amnesia, where the victim can't remember details of who they are or what they were doing).  If you had to choose whether you had anterograde or retrograde amnesia, which would you choose?  Why?  (alt: If you had a choice between always telling the truth (without being able to evade or not answer) or always lying convincingly (without ever being able to choose to tell the truth), which would you choose and why?)