December 18, 2013

Today was a very eventful day. At 1:00 Rebecca wrote, "I am resigning as D.O.D." though she did not announce to the class until 1:07, before the "State of the Kingdom" speech. At this time, Ivan, our Speaker of the Council, was appointed the new D.O.D. and Nathan is the new Speaker of the Council. Bryant was appointed to fill in the empty spot in the Supreme Council.
At 1:11 we learned that "our class's grades aren't very good." (Nathan Santiago) We have a very low average, below C. We have only two A's and ELEVEN F'S. NOT GOOD GUYS. Our class stock might hit rock-bottom because of this... We're really not doing well anymore guys...
However, we're doing better than Period 2, who had ANOTHER cheating scandal. This time, however, it was directly in the class instead of from other classes. Apparently, five people had the same vocabulary definitions. Honestly, it really doesn't take much effort to reword the definitions.
At 1:27, Mr. P. pulled another cruel lesson on us. He told us common core was forcing him to make his classes harder, so he was lowering everyone's grades by 10%. All of us were devastated, though I caught on early. After all, the idea made no sense. Lowering the grades doesn't make the class more challenging, it just makes getting good grades harder. I wasn't the only one who had doubts. At 1:36, Kent Hirano wrote "No way Mr. P. is for real right now..." and other people complained it that common core is crap.The lesson behind this was to teach us about point of view. After Mr. P. said this, he had us write two short letters, one to a friend, and one to the principal, to see how our tone changes depending on who we speak to. I think that the real lesson behind this is: Don't trust Mr. P. He's a damn good actor.
After that, he gave us the Jamaica letter and instructed us to annotate the letter.
Now, this didn't happen today, and I don't know how many of you guys were paying attention when this happened, but I'm bringing it up now.
A few days ago, at the end of Daily Announcements, I asked Kent how much Supreme Council members get for going to meetings and voting.

He replied that they get 300 points. Is anybody awake out there?

It sure didn't seem like anybody cared. Did you guys not hear? Supreme Council members get 300 points for sitting in a classroom for thirty minutes at lunch and voting. Let me stress this:

300 POINTS.

They also get more points every time they do the Daily Announcements, even though they mostly stand there and ask other people for certain things. Doesn't seem like a very hard job now does it? 

And yet they get paid way more than the rest of us.

WAKE UP GUYS. 

Have you connected the dots? We are running a smaller version of today's government. Politicians (Supreme Council Members) get paid a lot more than the rest of us, though we do more. 

AND HERE'S SOMETHING ELSE NOBODY NOTICED: 

THEY KEPT THEIR PAY A SECRET FROM US. 

In case nobody was paying attention, Kent didn't look especially happy when I asked. None of the Supreme Council members ever told us, and none of us thought to ask (I'll admit I didn't, I only found out about asking from Mr. P. after school one day). 

WAKE UP. NOBODY'S PAYING ATTENTION. THE GOVERNMENT IS PLOTTING RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES AND WE DON'T EVEN KNOW IT.

-I

Speaking of government, I think this video would also wake you guys up, though not to our government, not to their secrets, but to the secrets America is hiding right in front of our noses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RYBDTnS7dg