Hi guys, welcome back to another blog. In this post we are going to be talking about my latest project on authoritarianism. This project was apart of my 20th century world history course. The main idea of this project was to take a dive into authoritarianism and learn how it occurs and how people of the past have stopped it. We also looked at present day countries that are on the path to authoritarianism.
At the start of this project we watched an interview of Timothy Snyder. In this interview Timothy is asked questions about why he moved to Canada, he explains that he wanted to move to Canada because of thier education systems and how Canadians are some of the most educated people in the world. Later he speaks on how he was happy about this decision because of the direction United States is heading towards now. In this interview he speaks on the signs of facism in the United States. The most notable example he brings up is how the government is going after institutions. Universities in the United States have renamed departments and have stopped teaching classes that the government doesn’t agree with. The reason they do this is because they don’t want views that challenge theirs to be taught, because people thinking for themselves threatens a dictatorship.
We then moved onto to reading a book, the books author was none other than Timothy Snyder. The book “On Tyranny” dives into the twenty lessons on tyranny. I won’t go through all of the lessons but I will include a link to my literature note on the book. These twenty lessons act like guidelines on how to avoid and take down authoritarianism.
After finishing the book we held a Socratic seminar discussing all of our thoughts and opinions about everything we had learned thus far. I was happy with my performance in this seminar, I was probably one of the people who spoke the most, I believe I learned and helped others learn from this Socratic seminar. I do believe I was one of the drivers for this seminar and I showed an extending understanding of the what we had learned at the time.
We then moved onto the pinnacle of the project, our documentary on Authoritrianism. This documentary is called “The Cost Of Silence”. We were divided into four groups, each with a different topic. My groups topic was how the people fall under the rule of a dictator. My part specifically was about how a dictator gains control. After all the knowledge I had built from past assignments I was able to explain how dictators gain control with ease. I mainly talked about how they use big events or disasters as a way to gain popularity and control the masses. I backed this claim up with examples, like Putin and hitler. Here is a link to my groups script.
I think my part of the documentary is quite creative and interesting. At first it needed some tweaks like all good works of art do, I’m happy with the end result and so was my teacher, she complimented my editing and transitions. There are a couple things I could have done better, for example maybe a better use of animations and text, but as a whole I am happy with not just my performance, im happy with everyone’s performance in the documentary.
During this project my learning intent was to really focus on tracking my work.
I mainly decided this when I was told we would be doing a documentary. I made the decision because I knew that it would be a lot of work. For the most part I accomplished this goal, in this class my part was finished on time even with my revisions, I was also able to take my group members feedback and apply it to my video. I struggled with my Work from other classes because of a recent personal issue, I believe I handled it well despite having a rough start to the year. Looking back to my VMV I can confidently say that I paced my work well in this class, I could have done better in my other classes, but part of the reason for that was rooted within my personal life. To summarize, I am happy with my performance in this project, I took my goals from my VMV and acted on them, as well as bounced back and stayed focused during a rough time. I owe my success to my teacher Mrs. Madsen and my family and friends who helped support me. Thank you for reading.