Monday, November 26, 2007
| | class room politics in the 5th grade, a choice I regret
Category: News and Politics When I was in fifth grade it was election year and the teacher wanted all of the kids to understand the American way of politics.
I felt the teacher was not properly teaching the way elections properly work.
Generally in our class we had several different kind of people, the outcast (that was me), the nerds (I was also a member of that group as well), possibly the nerds and the outcasts were the same group.
In addition there was the Jocks, and the pretty girl group, the nerd group, and several other areas.
The teacher had us make up posters and campaign for two days to run for different positions in the class (President, Vice-President, Treasury, Secretary, maybe others?). I decided to go for Vice-President. I did everything that the teacher said making posters etc. I realized this wasn't how elections really went. And they weren't going to make any difference either. In real life there were special interest groups and the mob, and threats on other peoples life.
I realized all of this in 5th grade.
So since no one else was teaching everybody about the seedy side of politics I felt I needed to enlighten the rest of the class. I was running against a very nice pretty girl (I just can't remember her name at the moment). So I decided to show others the bad side of politics. I made some posters about how bad other people were, and then I decided that what the mob does is break people's legs. I felt that would be a little harsh but I caught the nice girl walking around so I said something mean to her about the election. Before I did it and after I did it I felt awful about doing this. And I felt it was the wrong decision too; but I did it anyway because I had a conviction that it was the right thing to do as I was sure it had to be done in order for people to truly understand elections.
Of course I lost the election I had a few of my friends support me but generally everyone voted for the really nice pretty girl even though I did feel I understood politics better then she did.
Now looking back I realize maybe it was her who understood politics and not me. I still feel bad about what I said to her even though at the time I felt it was the correct thing to do. Ever since then I have analyzed stuff a lot more and try to predict and weigh the good and bad and plus and minus behind doing stuff. I don't always succeed in this but.. anyway this happened 18 years ago.
It's interesting my thought process that I went through making a bunch of decisions while feeling terrible about it all in the name of the greater good.
weird huh? 10:12 PM - 4 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove |
0 comments:
Post a Comment