ch. 8 Small Group Discssion Wrap-up

1. What is Leopold's Ghost?
When will the rest of the world believe the cruelties that occur in the Congo?
Will Leopold run out of money?

2. I think that our small group discussion worked pretty well. I think that we did a good job using support and at least paraphrasing places if we couldn't find the text. I think we could improve by making sure that everyone is involved equally. I think that we still could support more, but we did a good job incorporating multiple questions into 1 response. We brought 2 questions together to make them more like a super question. I think everyone could pay a little bit more attention to the discussion and not be focused on finding your next comment or support for your comment.

King Leopold's Ghost Reaction pgs. 1-32 and 2 discussion questions

I think that Henry Stanley is a very interesting person. It is really hard to tell what type of character he has because in all of his accounts he never has a consistent story. People at the workhouse describe him as a teacher's pet, but the way he seems to act in writings describe more of a person who wants all of the attention or more of a class clown. I think he is pretty lucky to not have been found out yet that he is from Whales and not New York or St. Louis. I would like to meet him in real life to see if he tries to make everything so fantastic and crazy.

I think that the entire story is pretty interesting because I have never heard about how Europeans massacred millions of Congolese. I also think it is pretty amazing that it took European explorers so long to find the source of the Congo river after finding the mouth of the river.

Questions:
Why were the Africans so welcome to trade with the Europeans in the first place?
Why is the book called King Leopold's Ghost?

Current Events #1

Name: Jimmy Alverson
Source: Future Hiring Will Mainly Benefit the High-Skilled, The Associated Press, The New York Times, 5 September 2010.
Summary: This article discussed the spike in unemployment and the creation of new jobs in the future. Economists predict there to be two types of jobs in the future. High-skill, high-paying jobs or low-skill, low-paying jobs. That leaves less mid-level jobs which used to make up the bulk of the work-force. A further division between the affluent and poor is expected to occur if the type of jobs do become more or less specialized. Currently the unemployment rate is 9.6% or 14.9 million people. This shift in the reduction of mid-level jobs stems from an economy led by manufacturing to one led by service industries. The hardest sector of unemployment has come in the real estate industry. Some of the sectors that are going to see the most growth in the number of jobs are health care professions, information technology jobs, and newly created industries.
Analysis: This is important to the world and, at least, the United States because with unemployment comes reduced spending, and with reduced spending there less stimulation to pull the country out of the recession. People from the United States would also buy less imports as they might cost more due to import taxes and the country that the products are bought from will get less revenue and not help their economic situation. This is also important for the rest of the world because it could show that their is a global movement for less middle-income jobs and more division between rich and poor. This is an interesting development because typically the middle-class, at least in the United States, held the majority of jobs in the workforce. I think, in order to create more jobs, the government needs to give tax breaks to middle to lower income people to create more spending which will then help create more need for labor or employment. As far as getting people to have more knowledge or skill for a job, college should be more affordable to people with lower incomes. The government should also have more initiative for keeping kids in school and showing the benefits of higher education. Another way to create more jobs in the United States is to stop outsourcing jobs to other countries by providing incentives to the companies or put a higher tax on imports.

Thoughts at the end of class- September 9th

1. I learned about the SPRICER technique. I have never really though about looking at a certain event and looking at all the different kinds of affects that one event could have. I also learned the it is mostly Europe who is doing all of the Imperialism in the time period we are talking about.
2. How long did it take for some of these countries that were affected by imperialism take for them to revolt?
3. I want to learn more about current day imperialism and what type of imperialism is most prevalent around the world today.