Freedom of Religion

The issue of freedom of religion can and does extend to schools of all kinds, unlike some cases of freedom of speech. I recently read an article about the issue of freedom of religion and how it should be portrayed in schools. Some schools believe in the "moment of silence," which in fact was done for a couple of weeks at my high school. The problem with this is that a "moment of silence" on a daily basis can imply an integration of religious "slient prayer," even if that message was not originally intended. The way I see it, this "moment of silence" can essentially "disrupt the learning process" in schools if it is done every day, and forces students and teachers to pray, whether they believe in the same things or not. The problem that I immediately see with "moment of silence" is the objection by the minority of students and teachers in a single school who are athiest, and don't believe in any sort of prayer whatsoever. The question that should be asked by them, is why there would be a need for such silence every day. If someone doesn't believe in praying to a figure that a single person does not see fit to looking up to, how would they react to such slience? And what about people who don't want to share their religion with others? Do they hide it by pretending to pray? Perhaps prayer in a school setting is only a neusence,and just gets in the way of education. If that were to be
Another aspect with freedom of religion, is how it is expressed in schools.The article I read from http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/rel_liberty/publicschools/topic.aspx?topic=school_prayer said that the U.S. Deparment of Education made a statment in 2000 which said,

"Students may express their beliefs about religion in the form of homework, artwork, and other written and oral assignments free of discrimination based on the religious content of their submissions. Such home and classroom work should be judged by ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance, and against other legitimate pedagogical concerns identified by the school.”

This statement means that students can express their own religious beliefs through certain forms of academic activities, but it cannot be in a discriminatory way. This is a very reasonable statement, because it does not restrict students from expressing their religious beliefs, and it prevents students from being judged based on their beliefs. The implication of how teachers should grade these adademic activites is vaguely stated, however, when it says, "Such home and classroom work should be judged by ordinary academic standards of substance and relevance, and against other legitimate pedagogical concerns identified by the school," it specifies how it should be viewed by the viewers, but does not restirct whom should view it besides (the implied) educator. This can be good or bad, depending on how one may feel about expressing their relgious beliefs in a non-religious setting.

September 11th

My Issue's class at DHS watched an interesting documentary about September 11th. Keeping in mind the fact that my classmates and I were only in 3rd grade when the Twin Towers were crashed into, it was important and very informative to be watching a documentary that showed what really happened, and how the people in New York City changed, as well as how that didn't change. When film showed each plane crashing into the Twin Towers, it was extremely painful, even for myself to watch such a tragedy occur live. I remember watching the first attack on TV in my mom's room on that day as I was getting ready for school. The most significant thing about the film though was what happened when each tower was actually crashing down to the ground. I didn't realize that there was so much smoke and dust that caused everyone, including firemen and policemen, to have to wear masks. I did not ever think about the actual moments of when the towers were crashing down, I had just known that the planes crashed into each building. The other thing that I noticed today, as we were watching the 2nd part of the film, was how much pain New Yorkers were suffering through. There was a ton of debate about whether America should go to war or not. This debate, however, in the eyes of the filmmakers, was just a way to show how much pain everyone was in. Living in New York had to be tough, because many families had at least one familiy member or friend that died from the crash, inside the plane, or inside the building. The other small detail was how some people held hands on the top floors of the towers and had to jump to their death, probably because the crash was underneath them, and they had no way of escaping.
As sad as this whole thing was, though, the city became stonger and more united, sharing the pain rather than taking it out on each other. Children in NYC also knew what was going on, and it was impressive that an 11 year old boy knew about the decisions that the Government had to make about what kind of war America needed to get into. Of course, no one really understood the truth behind who was the real threat, but during that time, the kid knew what most adults didn't think about. It didn't necessarily make him smarter, but just more aware than most kids his age.

Halo Reach

Now I'm personally not a fan of the Halo series, but I have played it before. The times I've played it, I've sucked, but there are some modes that aren't quite as competative that I can enjoy at a friend's house. Obviously many people have been anticipating Halo Reach to come out, but I've also heard some rumors in the air about Halo coming to PS3. Owning 2 PS3s (one at my mom's house and one at my dad's house), I have found games like Killzone 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 to be very enjoyable, with a nice challenge.
Now that Bungie is no longer under Microsofts reign, my personal prediction is that Halo may not come to PS3. Why? Because I have a feeling that Bungie could come up with a whole new series for PS3 and 360, or better yet, as a PS3 exclusive. Yes, that would be a betrayal to Microsoft and Xbox fans worldwide, but,  if you think about it, the developers for Little Big Planet, tried to make a deal with Microsoft, and Microsoft turned them down because they feared the lack of success because it was not the violent M-rated FPS of 3PS (3rd person shooter) that they were looking for. When they went to Sony, without a problem, as far as I know, Little Big Planet became a "game of the year" a couple of years back, at least on the PS3.
The PS3 is far more powerful than the Xbox 360, and it will be interesting to see what Bungie does next. In the mean time I'm going to wait (and I've been waiting 5 years, not even playing GT5P) for the game I got a PS3 (and a 2nd one too) for, which is Gran Turismo 5.

Speech Code

While many groups at universities such as fraternities decided to engage in offensive behavior, such as taking pictures of themselves mocking blacks in America, it can potentially be a problem if the admististration of a university decides to get themselves involved too much with offensive behavior. Arguably the only thing that they could do is shut down the university, but that would create a case if that scenario worsened. A university could argue that such "wrong" behavior "misrepresents" what that school stands for, and that seems fair, doesn't it? Well the problem is that legally nothing can really be done, except for a chat with the students in charge of such racist behaviors. With the hypathetical case of Evan Earl, the only thing that the presedent of the university could do is chat with him and his friends, and make them "aware" of what they were doing. If there was talk about a specific student, then the school would need to get involved with what exactly is going on, and take action against Earl and his colleagues.
Now time to define what Speech Code is. Speech code can be described as a policy that restricts certain expressions of speech, that a school would find offensive. The issue here is that speech code usually restricts speech that is indeed under the protection of the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution. If a student feels like insulting a race, or a specific group of people, eithnicity, country, etc, then they should not be punished by the school. Speech Code usually leads to a student or students who get in trouble for behaviors or things that they say that are protected as free speech. Usually the Supreme Court rules against a Speech Code, because they find those policies too "overbroad" or "vague" This means that a policy is too general and almost any expression of speech could fall into the category of "not allowed."