What up guys welcome back to my blog. We just wrapped up our first project of the year, and you may have seen a couple of my previous posts on this project, but it’s all about politics. When we started this project we were asked the question “How should we govern ourselves?” Kind of a weird question to ask to a group of teenagers, but I suppose our teachers believed in our ability to form ideas. The final product of this project was a campaign video my group made (Gabe, Matthew, Julia and Anders) for the political party we created(check here to see my post explaining my party). I’ve always personally had an interest in politics, but trust me when I say this project has taught me I didn’t know about our country.

Our final product!

This was not a particularly long project filled with a lot of steps but I think I had one piece of work that hands-down stood out as my best piece, and that would definitely be my government structure post. In this post we has to show our understanding of Canadian government structure by forming an argument or opinion about the government. In my post I argued that the most important principle of democracy was citizen participation. This is an opinion that I very much believe in and so I think I did a good job of telling my story of why I believe it and a decent job at supporting it with evidence. This whole evidence thing is a real bummer sometimes, but I think it’s something I’m slowly getting better at, because it’s kind of pointless to have strong opinions without proper evidence to back it up. And it’s something that doesn’t fly as an adult and especially in University. However overall I think this post showed that I am able to form arguments and opinions, and share them alongside evidence to support them.

If I had to go for an opposite example however, my last post was definitely less strong. I don’t think it’s the worst work I’ve ever done but I’m disappointed in how it turned out. The post was supposed to be explaining our party. We were supposed to explain what made our party unique, why someone should vote for us, and how it related to our previous post (mine was on the importance of citizen participation). I think I did a fairly good job of explaining our party and what makes us unique, but I completely missed the mark on relating it back to my previous post. It was supposed to reference and use our previous post as evidence, which I did not do. I think overall in this post I didn’t do a particularly good job of both having an opinion, I basically just stated facts, or supporting any opinion with evidence. These were both things that were the main focus of this post and will be things to remember for our next project.

“How should we govern ourselves?” What a big question to ask a bunch of teenagers, I’m almost certain most adults wouldn’t really have a strong answer to this question. However my answer at this time would be in whatever way allows the most ideas to be shared and opportunities for people to express their vote. I think that’s the best way to achieve that dream would be through proportional representation. It’s a system that would bring about a lot of new parties and would allow for a larger range of ideas in politics as we discussed in both class and on CBC. I personally think that this would encourage more people to vote as you’re more likely to have new ideas that correspond with your own, and people aren’t stuck with as many limited choices. And as I’ve demonstrated in posts previously (like here), I am a very strong believer in an engaged populace, as I believe it creates stronger democracy.

In the end I really enjoyed this project. Aside from our driving question of “How should we govern ourselves?” There is also a second idea behind this project which came from a school called high Tech high as well as the BC curriculum. The goal was to make us “educated citizens” in at least some small sense, to allow us to better perform as people once we are out of school. And I think that’s why this project is both interesting and important. I think being able to form some of our own opinions about government in an educated way outside of our homes is really crucial. The biggest thing I took away from this whole project was how little I previously knew about government, and honestly how little most other people probably know as well. Obviously I’m no expert, and every election brings new circumstances to educate yourself on, but I’d like to think I’m at least one step closer to being the educated citizen my teachers strive for. 

Thanks as always,

Holly