Draft three

Even though it is known that the military doesn’t get paid enough for the work they do, one might believe that because they get so many extra benefits the budget should be left alone.  Along with guaranteed pay, the military receives housing assistance, clothing assistance (for the many required uniforms), medical insurance, dental care, and other extras that come along with deployments. When they get stationed in a different state or country they don’t have to pay travel costs and they get help moving all of their things. Many of these aren’t added into the annual income statistics because they aren’t received as cash income. The work factory men do is also considered dangerous, and worthy of good pay. Both works are important on the macro and micro levels, in the economy and at home. Another benefit not added into cash income is the bill that allows the service member and potentially their families to go to college for little or even no costs. Getting an education these days is almost priceless (while still being extremely pricey) and very necessary. Many people might believe that we already spent too much money on war efforts and that the national budget is already way too high. Working in a factory comes with very long work days with many hours on your feet. Most of the time they end up working 3rd shift for some period of their lives, which cuts out a lot of time for family and friends. To really, really succeed in a factory job the person will have to stick with it for many years, sometimes all the way until they stop working. Fixing the budget would cause many other problems, not just good.

It is true that the military gets perks, just as much as it’s true that they deserve those perks. Knowing the benefits doesn’t change the fact that they are volunteering their lives to protect the country we all live in. In order to be persuasive the reader must not side with the military, or believe the work they do is as important as the work of factory jobs. The argument I posed is still very true and more persuasive because there are many factors that help it out, mostly the emotional appeal. The counter argument only has logical appeal, dealing with the nation’s budget. Most of the country today is still very patriotic and believes in the good of the military. 

Draft 3

In the last few drafts I have been arguing why college athletes should be paired fairly. However, there are a few counter arguments that can be made on the topic of paying college athletes. When talking to people that believe that college athletes should not get paid the argument that I hear most often is that these athletes already receive scholarships for a free education to there universities. So if you think about it, assuming that they stay all four years of college, these athletes are getting sometimes over a hundred thousand dollars. So, if these athletes were to be paid an extra amount that it would be pretty unfair to other students that may work just as hard as these athletes and do not get any sort of scholarship money from the university.

            Another major argument that could be made is that it would be almost impossible to fairly regulate how athletes are going to be paid. For years there has been two main sports that bring in the NCAA all the money that they receive. But, it would be unfair for the NCAA to only pay the athletes of these sports. Also there are five major conferences that bring in the major money for the NCAA. But, just as it would be unfair to pay only the basketball and football players, it would be unfair for the NCAA to pay the athletes of these five conferences. It would be very difficult for the NCAA to regulate the amount the athletes should get paid because of these reasons. Major universities would argue that there athletes should be paid more and the smaller universities would argue that this is unfair which would just make things worse than they already are.

            Both of these arguments are very good ones and definitely have a negative effect on why I think college athletes should be paid. The first argument is fair and pretty good, however, I think the second one effects the argument of paying college athletes a little bit more. If you look at the statistics over the last decade they show that on average athletes make the NCAA and there universities is way more than what they receive with the scholarship money that they get. The argument that it would be difficult for the NCAA to regulate how the athletes get paid is one that I personally agree with. That being said I think that the NCAA is smart enough to come up with some kind of process of paying each and every one of their athletes fairly no matter what sport or what university that they attend.

Zach Olson

There are many different arguments stated in this article. One of them is that the Industrial Revolution is the main reason for the rise in IQ scores. They say it is because of easy access to information. It is a lot easier to get a hold of information in today's world because all you have to do is get on a computer and type in what you want and thousands of suggestions will pop up and you are done. Although this may be true, there are a few reasons why technology may not be the answer to the question. One reason someone may argue that technology is not the answer because you do not know if everything you read on the internet is true. Some websites are reliable, but not all of them are and if you do not know which ones are reliable and which ones are not, you might be reading wrong information. In past generations, people went to the library, where the information is all correct, to learn and write down what they need. I think that technology is still the biggest reason for the rise in IQ scores. I think this because a lot of the information on the internet is correct and if some of it is wrong, it gets changed pretty fast by someone else to the correct information, so it is not that big of a deal.
Another argument is that family size helped the scores rise. "The intermediate causes are things like smaller family size. If you have a better ratio of adults to children in the home, than an adult vocabulary predominates rather than a child vocabulary."(Gambino. par.7). They say this is a factor because if you have a smaller family, the kids will pick up their parents vocabulary and will learn to speak like them, which will be the correct way and will help them in school. The only problem with this is that not every adult talks with correct vocabulary and that is where you can get a counter argument. Most likely adults will talk with correct vocabulary, but if they do not, it will not help their kids develop a strong language. I agree that smaller families will help, only if the parents talk correctly and watch what they say because if an adult cusses a lot, their kids will listen and start to cuss, which is obviously a problem. If a family is bigger, the kids will pick up what they are saying from each other and that can become a problem also. Again, I agree with a smaller family size, but the adults also have to watch what they say if they care how their children will be brought up and how they talk to you and other kids because they feed off of each other when they are around each other, like at school.

                                                                     Works Cited

Gambino, Megan. "Smithsonian" December 3, 2012. November 24, 2014.

U.S Education System (Draft 3)

Having experienced an educational system other than United States’, I must say that the U.S is trailing behind many developed countries in quality of its system. Before moving to U.S, I lived in Russia where I went to 1^st through 3^rd grade. And after starting my education in U.S, surprisingly, I had no trouble adapting to school. I guess you could say that it’s because the content for 4^th grade math here was similar to 2^nd grade math in Russia. And once I learned English, I had no trouble with any other subject due to the difficulty levels being lower here than my classes in Russia.

But of course, I was not paying attention to these types of issues while still in school. Now that I’m done with school, I can easily point out the faults in the system and the society. And yes, it’s not only the education system, but also the society that brings down the quality of education here.

And I can give many examples. For instance, getting good grades is not very important for many students. However, I’ve observed that grades are valued more than actually learning here. As long as you have good grades, you don’t care if you actually understand the concepts being taught in classes. And honestly, you can’t really blame the students for doing this, because there is a 99% chance that you will never put that knowledge to use in real life. Also, in my opinion, parents’ expectations from their kids aren’t as high as they should be. As predicted by the Eccles socialization model (Eccles, 1993), parents’ educational expectations had both direct and indirect effects on children’s academic achievement scores. And that’s very obvious, if your parents don’t care about your education, the chances of you not caring either are very high.

With that being said, what kind of actions can the government take? First of all, I believe that teachers should be selected carefully, and there must be more competition for jobs. Teachers shouldn’t be so laid back. It is without a doubt that students decide their own future, but teachers can guide them to the correct paths. I’ve had many teachers who let kids sleep or use electronics in their classes, and they don’t even call them out once. Teachers are educating the leaders of tomorrow, so they must spend more effort preparing them for the future.

In order to fully understand how the countries with the best education systems got to where they are, we must figure out what they’re doing right. So let’s analyze the Finnish education system. Not because they have the best system, but because they worked their way up from the bottom. This way, we can see which steps Finland took to be the best.

For a very long time, Finland had one of the worst education systems in Europe. And it wasn’t until 1970s that the Finnish government started making major improvements and launching reforms. Now let’s take a close look at these changes. One of the first steps they took was eliminating the practice of separating students into different paths based on their test scores. Later, they got rid of these examinations altogether. Another great move by Finland was making higher investments on teachers. Nowadays, their teachers get a lot more education and training. Matter of fact, Finnish teachers receive a three year graduate-level teacher preparation program, completely free of charge, including a living stipend. Whereas in the United States, teachers have to go into a lot of debt for their profession, knowing that they will get paid poorly. Also, in Finland, teachers are picked very carefully. Only 15 percent of those who apply get admitted. So their schools are filled with teachers that know what they are doing. Here is a quote that gives us a visual of what Finland’s schools are like:

"Most visitors to Finland discover elegant school buildings filled with calm children and highly educated teachers. They also recognize the large autonomy that schools enjoy, little interference by the central education administration in schools’ everyday lives, systematic methods to address problems in the lives of students, and targeted professional help for those in need." (Sahlbert, 2009, p. 7)

According to nea.org, the core principles of the Finnish system are:

·         Resources for those who need it the most

·         High standards and supports for special needs

·         Qualified teachers

·         Evaluation of education

·         Balancing decentralization and centralization.(Laukkanen, 2008, p. 319)

What has United States been doing all of this time? Forcing more and more standardized testing.

When we focus only on the flaws of the United States’ education, it may seem as a terrible system, when it’s not. Although I am for a change in the system, I can’t say that it’s failing. A country with a perfect education system is yet to exist. All systems have their flaws. And when we compare U.S to a country with very few of these flaws, it makes the system look bad. We can always compare it to a bad system and feel good about our own, but that is not the purpose. Our intention must be to find the flaws and get the U.S educational system where it belongs.

Despite there being a lot of proof about U.S lacking a good system, there are still arguments about how it’s fine as is. One of the most common arguments against a change is freedom. Some people claim that the United States offers freedom to students unlike many other countries. For example, you get to decide on your own future here, whereas in China, students are told what careers they should pick in order to be successful. Also, there are some heavy punishments in some countries for poor academic performance. So one can argue that kids are “forced” to have achievements. However, that is not an excuse. You can still upgrade the system while maintaining the same amount of freedom.

Another advantage of U.S education is that it guarantees education for all students until the age of 21. And it doesn’t limit access to those who can afford uniforms, supplies, and transportation like in many countries. No school system anywhere in the world exceeds the United States in providing free access to education for everyone. And I don’t think anyone can argue with that.

When we compare test scores, the scores of other countries likely don’t include the ones of poor rural children without education. Some believe that the broader the spectrum of students that take the test, the lower the average score will be. But this is a false impression, and I can back that up. According to a recent study by Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG), the percent proficient among U.S. students whose parents are college-educated or who are white is significantly less than the percent proficient among all students in countries such as Korea, Singapore, and Finland.

No matter who says what, the United States must make some serious changes in its educational system. There is a reason why people are working on these studies. And thanks to their efforts, we can easily see what areas we must improve on. Some people just want to ignore these studies, but numbers don’t lie. It doesn’t take much to realize the need for improvements. Let’s hope that these improvements will come sooner rather than later.

Works cited

• Kean, Pamela E. "The Influence of Parent Education and Family Income on Child Achievement." Journal of Family Psychology 19.2 (2005): 294-304. Print.
• Eccles, J. S. (1993). School and family effects on the ontogeny of children’s interests, self-perceptions, and activity choice. In J. Jacobs (Ed.), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation: Vol. 40. Developmental perspectives on motivation (pp. 145–208): Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
• http://www.nea.org/home/40991.htm
• Paterson, Paul. Lastra-Anadon, Carlos. “The International Experience.” 12.1 (2012). Web.
  <http://educationnext.org/the-international-experience/>

  
  

Paying College Athletes- Counterargument (Paper 4: Draft 3)

According to uslegal.com, the definition of a profession athlete is “an individual who is employed as an athlete by a team that is a member of an association of 6 or more professional sports teams whose total combined revenues exceed $ 10,000,000 per year, if the association governs the conduct of its members and regulates the contests and exhibitions in which its member teams regularly engage; or any minor league team that is affiliated with such an association.”(uslegal par.1). If we begin to pay our college athletes then we would be considering them to be professionals. Student athletes are not professionals who receive salaries as an incentive for a career in sports. They are students who receive an education through the opportunity given to them to play sports. Sports are their way towards an education not a way out of it. For student athletes grades and education should come before scoring touchdowns and slam dunks. Professional athletes are professionals for a reason; they have one job and it is to perform well for their team. Paying college athletes will mean that they are professionals. College athletes are not professionals because academics come before sports. Their main focus in college should be their schoolwork not sports. We should not twist college athlete’s priorities by paying them.

These athletes are not professionals. If paying athletes does not end at a college level who’s to say where it will end. Why not pay high school athletes for their efforts in their respective sports? If we go by the logic “They are making money off of the athletes so why not give the athletes a cut?” then we will never find an end. The high-schools that make profit off of their successful sports teams will pay their players and so will the grade schools and so on. The argument of profit will not work in every situation. Where do athletic salaries stop if we adopt this mindset?

While the argument for not paying college athletes does a good job of explaining that student-athletes’ priorities should have academics first but it does not consider the well-being of the student-athletes. This aspect of the entire debate is by far the most important. The bottom line is that student-athletes should be able to support themselves. Whether their college expenses are paid for or not, it still has to be taken into account that these players have to support themselves monetarily on a daily basis. In order to be effective any argument about college athletics should have the players’ health and well-being at the top of the priority list.

Bibliography

"Professional Athlete Law & Legal Definition." Professional Athlete Law & Legal Definition. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2014. <http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/professional-athlete/>.

Paper 4 Draft 3- GMOs

GMOs. Genetically modified organisms. What do you think of GMOs when you hear them? More specifically, what do you think of GMOs in your food, perhaps even as your food? I believe that GMOs aren't as okay as most proponents portray them. If nothing at all, the government should at least make it mandatory for farmers and manufacturers to label their products as "GMO" or "non-GMO". However, people that are in favor of GMOs say that GMOs have less of a drastic impact on the environment, are adequately tested, and GMOs are used to feed the world, thereby ending world hunger.

In regards to their safety and potential environmental impacts, some people say they are very much safe. Proponents of GMOs argue that ever since GMOs have been used, the amount of herbicides and pesticides has been greatly reduced (Wager, par. 19). This is actually true-- but only when GMOs were a new invention. In a study by Charles Benbrook (published in 2012), the amount of herbicides and pesticides used for GM crops was calculated between 1996 and 2011. The results are pretty mind-boggling. Benbrook found that herbicide-tolerant crops (HT) contributed to a 527 million pounds of herbicides used. Pesticide use has went all the way up to 404 million pounds by GM crops. If GM crops were tailored to not use as many pesticides and herbicides as non-GM crops, shouldn't these numbers be significantly lower? In his study, Benbrook compared these numbers in non-GM crops. It turns out that non-GM crops used 20% less pesticides and 24% less herbicides, both per acre. In addition, according to a study done by the USDA and the EPA, the amount of weeds present in farms that were tolerant to herbicides was triple the amount in 2011 that were present in 2001 (Hoffman, par. 7). Ultimately, this means more herbicides will be used to rid farms of the weeds that never seem to go away. Natural selection is like an arm's race-- the other organism will constantly be trying to catch up. Organisms killing the GMO before (when it wasn't GMO) will at first start to lessen, but as they adapt to their new environment, it will be the same situation as it was before. Pests and other organisms will have reign on their food again. When that happens are developers going to alter the genes again? Is this literally going to continue to happen until the GM crop or organism will be nothing like how it was before?

Those in favor of GMOs also say that they are tested and reviewed properly (Wager, par. 6). Wager says, "Even though the present federal regulations declare FDA evaluations to be voluntary, every commercialized GE [genetically engineered] crops has undergone FDA evaluation. The legal and reputation consequences for not undergoing a careful FDA evaluation and then facing court challenges are so catastrophic that the system is considered de facto legal" (par. 6). I honestly want to question the validity of that statement. For the third unit of this course, I chose to analyze Maria Godoy's article "Did Congress Just give GMOs a Free Pass in Courts?" In it, she describes how in 2010 GMO sugar beets were allowed to be planted even though they weren't reviewed (Godoy, par. 10). And now, Monsanto doesn't have to abide by any judicial rulings that say they can't plant GMOs until they are sufficiently tested (Godoy, par. 4). In other words, Monsanto, with this act, has the ability to plant and distribute GM crops even though the crops weren't tested adequately enough. The sugar beets situation was back in 2010. Wager wrote his article this year. It is really hard, to me at least, to understand why he would use the phrase "every commercialized GE crop" when there is this blatant example completely disproving his statement. We can see just how properly GMOs are tested and reviewed. His argument still wouldn't be as convincing because Monsanto, the world's leading GM-crop producing company, has had more than a decent amount of lobbyists working with the government and has spent the most money lobbying since 2008-- the record being $8.8 million (Boschma, par. 9). Based on this one could argue how legitimate the "proper" reviews really are. Are they just political favors or are they something that's actually valuable?

Finally, I come to my last point-- the issue on world hunger. Advocates of GMOs argue that this is like the light in the dark tunnel of world hunger. Wager in his article says this: "A review of global yield data showed 154/168 studies of GE crops neutral or increased yields. Most striking was 101/107 studies in the developing world with neutral or increased yields. This explains why the developing world farmers are adopting GE crops faster than the developed world; they now grow over 50% of all GE crops on the planet." However, it should be noted that in most GMO producing countries, more GMOs are consumed by livestock, not people (Beville, par. 6). In fact, in the U.S. alone, 98% of soy and 79.5% of corn is used to either feed livestock or manufacture fuels for cars (Beville, par. 8). Thus, we can clearly see that GMOs should not be considered as something that will end world hunger, at least not at the stage we are in right now. Until these numbers change, until the crops (no matter how bad they are) are given more to people than livestock, we cannot make the claim that GMOs will end world hunger. Even though I don't like the idea of GMOs, it is true that at least they are food. Food for all the starving children and adults in the world. In reality, we are denying this right even to those that are starving, and making the false claim that they are the ones getting the bulk of the food that is being mass-produced in the form of GMO when nothing could be further from the truth.

While some people can argue that GMOs are indeed something good are nothing to be scared or frantic or skeptic about making statements about being good for the environment, adequately tested, and ending world hunger, I stand by my decision and opinion that GMOs have no place in the market.

 
Works Cited

Wager, Robert. "Not all Science Created Equal: The Genetically Engineered Crops Story." Genetic Literacy            Project, 28 Oct. 2014. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.
Benbrook, Charles. "Impacts of genetically engineered crops on pesticide use in the U.S.- the first sixteen              years." Environmental Sciences Europe 24.24 (2012): n. pag. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.
Hoffman, Beth. "GMO Crops Mean More Herbicides, Not Less." Forbes. Forbes. 2 July 2013. Web. 23 Nov.              2014.
Godoy, Maria. "Did Congress Just Give GMOs a Free Pass in Courts?" The Salt. NPR. 21 Mar. 2013. Web. 23        Nov. 2014.
Boshma, Janie. "Monsanto: Big Guy on the Block When it Comes to Friends in Washington." Open Secrets.            The Center for Responsive Politics. 19 Fe. 2013. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.
Beville, Ryan. "How Pervasive are GMOs in Animal Feed?" GMO Inside. Green America. 16 July 2013. Web. 23        Nov. 2014.

Technology Dependence Draft 3

                Forming a dependence on technology is not always a bad thing according to many people because it was created for many respectable reasons. Knowing that we do rely on technology for entertainment and for things like work and school are not always a bad thing, and can be used many times to an advantage. It makes things a lot easier for things that could be extremely disorganized without it. If you don’t own a computer it seems primitive and not correct for this time or generation per say. According to Debate.org 79% of people say that technology is a good thing and 21% say that it’s not a good thing. The 79% of people that said it was a good thing mainly argue about how it creates a lot more jobs, which does help the economy a great amount. The 21% that said it isn’t a good thing argue that it’s making us all lazier by the minute and that we rely on technology to do everything for us. They’re both very good sides of the argument but I find myself that one overrides the other.

            The number one thing I think that technology is a good thing because it’s very entertaining. We might not be engaging in other people but we always seem to have something to do. Where I mainly see it is on things like social Media. This means that you have to own a piece of technology to access this kind of thing. It lets us get connected with the world and makes it easier and quicker to talk to people that we need to talk to at that moment no matter if it’s a text message a phone call or a Facebook post or message

            It also helps with many jobs like working in health care, computer science, something between the lines of fixing certain pieces of technology, and even a sales person that knows everything to know about the certain piece. In health care there are many people who come and go and they need to have a bundle of information for each person. So instead of searching a while for a paper file you can type in the information and it’ll be in front of you in seconds. In computer science there is a lot to know how the things inside the computer are created and how to access it all, as well as fixing things like a virus. Fixing certain technologies are pretty self-explanatory, like if a phone breaks there needs to be people there to help repair the mistakes, and the same goes for computers.

            While the counter argument does a really good job of supporting the argument I still think that having a dependence on technology isn’t a good thing. When mentioning the main points of the argument they also forgot to state a lot of things that could go majorly wrong with almost all of it. The results would not be a good thing either, and support the point that relying on technology is not the best thing for mankind.

Work Cited:

Anonymous, Blog. "Is Technology Good for Our Society?" Is Technology Good for Our Society? Debate.org, 1 Jan. 2013. Web. 23 Nov. 2014. <http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-technology-good-for-our-society>.