The glorious conflict solving duelThere is currently an essay competition which is being held across the nation called the "Being An American" essay contest. It's open to all students across the nation and in all 50 states. Last year there were over 31,000 entries into the contest. The prompt is "What civic value do you believe is most essential to being an American?". In my combined English/Government class, we all had to write an essay for the contest for a grade and then after a narrowing-down process, the teachers would choose the top 10 to send in to the contest. There was sorta a semi-finals round where the top essays were chosen and the field narrowed down to the top 20 or so I think. I got into this group and we all got to meet with the teachers one-on-one in order to discuss any possible last changes, they'll then decide which ten they will send in once the 20 revised essays are emailed back to them.
I was really excited when I got chosen to be in the top group, but when I met with my government teacher, he told me that he really liked my essay and that it was really powerful, but, (the dreaded "but") he didn't think the value I chose was a civic value. This baffled me because I asked three people about what they thought of my value and made sure people thought it worked and all of them said yes and they liked it. The civic value I chose was "diplomacy". I chose this because I felt that ever since the nation's founding, America has valued diplomacy and has always used it as a way to prevent confrontation whenever possible. This has had many examples in history, but also in the modern day where diplomacy is used in resolving national and international conflict but also in personal day to day use. Whenever we get into an argument with someone, we try to resolve the issue and be diplomatic towards others rather than head immediately to physical confrontation. The glorious argument solving duel went out of favour well in the past. I go into much greater detail in the essay itself providing the required founding document, historical figure and personal practice examples to back up my claim of diplomacy as a civic value.
Somethign else which bothered me was that looking back at past winners, some of the values they chose didn't seem like values at all to me. While there were the essays about "courage", "perseverence" and "acceptance", some past winners and honourable mentions were about "military service" and "voting". Those there were other civic duties, not values in my opinion and in the opinions of my friends.
I've asked a few of my friends and they seem to agree that my choice works but I want to get the views of others as well. Do you think diplomacy works? if not, what would you substitute?
I was really excited when I got chosen to be in the top group, but when I met with my government teacher, he told me that he really liked my essay and that it was really powerful, but, (the dreaded "but") he didn't think the value I chose was a civic value. This baffled me because I asked three people about what they thought of my value and made sure people thought it worked and all of them said yes and they liked it. The civic value I chose was "diplomacy". I chose this because I felt that ever since the nation's founding, America has valued diplomacy and has always used it as a way to prevent confrontation whenever possible. This has had many examples in history, but also in the modern day where diplomacy is used in resolving national and international conflict but also in personal day to day use. Whenever we get into an argument with someone, we try to resolve the issue and be diplomatic towards others rather than head immediately to physical confrontation. The glorious argument solving duel went out of favour well in the past. I go into much greater detail in the essay itself providing the required founding document, historical figure and personal practice examples to back up my claim of diplomacy as a civic value.
Somethign else which bothered me was that looking back at past winners, some of the values they chose didn't seem like values at all to me. While there were the essays about "courage", "perseverence" and "acceptance", some past winners and honourable mentions were about "military service" and "voting". Those there were other civic duties, not values in my opinion and in the opinions of my friends.
I've asked a few of my friends and they seem to agree that my choice works but I want to get the views of others as well. Do you think diplomacy works? if not, what would you substitute?
diplomacy is a perfectly good civic value. Without it, we'd just have war all the time, ahem, like right now...
ReplyDeleteDon't pay any attention to him JP diplomacy IS good topic to use and this is what America is big on the fact that we are always trying to be diplomatic with everyone else if not I doubt America would exist in the form that it does
ReplyDeleteEven though it isn't all that great it could be worse