Western Civilization

We continued with the presentation of Greece today but first I asked Mr. Schick to see our pop quizzes from the other day. I got questions four and nine wrong. Then I asked to see the questions again. As it turns out, Mr.Schick had misplaced the ‘X’ for which we were to identify the Adriatic Sea. On to the notes: A new form of government, Direct Democracy, is being utilized. What Cleisthenes did was a step-forward in getting regular folks involved in their government. However, the first Democracy had its limits. The system hadn't been polished out yet to be the best governing system in the world as it is today. Citizens could participate but only approximately one fifth of Athenians were citizens, again a citizen of Athens was someone who was an adult landowning male and was born in the city-state of Athens. After several year, Athens practiced a Direct Democracy, in approximately five hundred B.C., remember democracy had been established in five hundred eight 

Hippias was a tyrant who ruled from five hundred twenty seven B.C. to five hundred ten B.C. His brother was murdered which resulted in him being a harsh ruler and becoming mean to his people. Eventually he was expelled from Athens-ostracized. In revenge, began working with the Persian king Darius I. He helped them invade Marathon. Next in line with Hippias is Isagoras and Cleisthenes, both of whom are aristocrats meaning they were engaged in a power struggle. In review, to be an aristocrat you must be a landowning male who is a citizen of the city-state. Isagoras had support of most of the aristocrats and Sparta. Cleisthenes had support of the majority of Athenians. Isagoras turns out to win and become ruler but not for long. Isagoras becomes Archon eponymous, meaning tyrant. He ostracizes Cleisthenes. Cleisthenes' supporters and the ordinary citizens of Athens revolted against Isagoras' tyranny marking the first time in history that any people had revolted against their gover

In Greece, politics was an exclusive club. This means that there were no women allowed in political along with slaves and sometimes certain aristocrats who were excluded. They were excluded due to not having the right connections or who fell out of favor. If some aristocrats felt that the government was doing the wrong thing they would attempt to overthrow them. Therefore the aristocrats would form alliances with with hoplites. Hoplites were well armed-soldiers. A tyrant is someone who rules outside the framework of the polis. This is the Ancient Greek definition of a tyrant. However, the modern day definition of a tyrant is someone who is a an abusive and oppressive ruler. Draco who led Greece in 622 BC, all Athenians equal under law. Death was punishment for crimes. This included something from stealing to killing someone-all yield the same punishment. Debt slavery was okay. Debt slavery is being enslaved because you can not monetarily pay back your debt, instead you work.   The wor

Today we started a new chapter, Warring City-States. This chapter will deal with different government forms used to rule Ancient Greece. We also covered some new vocabulary words. They are polis: fundamental political unit made up of a city and the surrounding countryside. This word is the root of many words we know today like politics, politician, political, and poll. A monarchy is a government which is ruled by a single person, usually a king. Governments like this still exist today. An aristocracy is a government ruled by a small group of noble, very rich people. This does not usually include a single leader who is more important than the rest but rather a group. The members of this group must be, again, noble, very rich, and landowning people. An oligarchy is wealthy groups of people, dissatisfied with aristocratic rule. They seize power of the government usually by military control. The final word is tyrant. A tyrant, based on the Ancient Greece definition, is someone who is a po

Today we listened to Mr. Schick give us a short speech about an email he received. The email was from a parent who was not happy because their child was spending a lot of time watching Youtube. The class then went into a discussion of how it is a matter of respect weather or not you decide to respect the teacher. Mr. Schick then pointed out how John Carroll is a college-preparatory school. In college, the teachers in some cases do not even take attendance. It is up to the students weather or not to do what they're supposed to. The next thing we did was listen to a reading of The Odyssey as it would have been read by Homer. I was expecting a pop quiz consisting of a blank map of Ancient Greece and a word bank. However, we did not get that today and we are still likely to get one as Mr. Schick hinted at one last week. The part of the Odyssey which we listened to today was only twenty five minutes and we listened as a giant cyclops eats men and Odysseus barely escapes clinging onto a

Today we got to choose our seats and continued with the sixty slide presentation from previous classes. Today we read the slides that covered Homer. Homer was a blind, Greek storyteller. He is best known for telling two stories or epics called the Illiad and the Odyssey. The Illiad is about the conquest of the Mycenaeans, or better known as the Trojan War. The Odyssey on the other hand is about the post-war experience for one great soldier named Odysseus. Odysseus is attempting to return home for the Trojan war but the god of the sea, Poseidon, knocks him off course several times. This causes Odysseus's delayed return to his son and wife. Meanwhile other men and soldier who have returned home are trying to marry Odysseus's wife so they can acquire his great fortune. Finally after ten years Odysseus returns home. The Odyssey is 12,110 lines long. Other topics we covered today were the Dorians. The Dorians took control of Mycenae and had control for over four hundred years where

Today in class we focused on the Greeks and Trojans. The Greek diet consisted of grapes, grains, olives and fish. The lack of resources led to Greek colonization. Back in that time, the average temperature in this land ranged from the mid forties Fahrenheit in the winter, to the lows eighties Fahrenheit in the summer. One of the earliest people were the Mycenaeans. Their influence began around two-thousand B.C. Mycenae located on the rocky-ridge, Peloponnesus. Peloponnesus was protected by a twenty foot thick wall. Mycenaean kings dominated Greece from sixteen hundred B.C. to eleven hundred B.C. They controlled trade in the region. In fourteen hundred B.C. Mycenaeans invaded Crete and absorbed Minoan culture. Next, we focused on the fact and fiction of the Trojan War. The Trojans were a clever and skillful people. Weather o not most of their stories and legends are true, they still have an interesting story. Mr. Schick went on to tell us about how when sailing through seas full of sir

Today we looked at Greece in more detail. The Greek land borders some key waterways. As previously mentioned, three key seas which we have to know are the Adriatic, Ionian and Aegean Seas. On to the notes: Greece is a mountainous peninsula. Mountains cover three-quarters of Greece. They had many skilled sailors and shipbuilders. Greece had limited resources and therefore needed to trade with their neighbors. A key idea of today's notes was that all the city-states could not be united as one Greece because of terrain. The Greeks developed small, independent, communities known as city-states. Relative to our U.S. States, North Carolina is fifty-three thousand square miles while Pennsylvania is forty-six thousand square miles. Greece, on the other hand, is only fifty thousand square miles. Mr. Schick had placed Greece over the Delaware-Maryland-Virginia area to show us a size comparison. The entire country of Greece is no larger than the above mentioned American States. 

Today started our Honors Western Civilization course run by Mr. Schick. There are 3 new students who are in our class now who were not in our class before. We got a textbook for this class as well. The textbook contains a large number of pages with numerous words on each page. Therefore Mr. Schick has instructed us to leave them in the classroom in the basket under our chairs. This is very convenient as the load of things to bring to this new class is still the same. The unit one topic is Greece. Mr. Schick gave us an assignment to read pages one-hundred-eighteen through page one-hundred-twenty-six. However, this assignment was cut short due to the two hour delay we had due to ice. The next thing we did was listen to the first few slides of Mr. Schick's first presentation in the new course. All successful civilizations are usually near rivers  or other bodies of water. Examples of these are the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Indians, and the Chinese. Each of these border a body of wate

Today was the last day of the semester, also our final human geography class. We got right down to taking the test. the test was four pages with forty questions. They were all matching. The first three sections each has five countries and we had to pair them with the leader. The next few sections were all about the leaders themselves. This section was the longest and had all of the leaders listed. I had some trouble figuring out which leaders's brother was killed in a counter-terrorist hostage-rescue. This was difficult to figure out since there were many leaders whose brothers were killed. I narrowed it down to Israel's Netanyahu. Justin Trudeau's brother was killed in an avalanche. Now, as we are going over the answers, I realize that I made the correct choice with Netanyahu. On Tuesday I will be taking Honors Western Civilization with Mr. Schick. Thanks to Mr. Schick and the class for making this semester Great!

Today we picked up with Bashar al-Assad. Assad was born on September 11, 1965. He went to med school to be a doctor. His brother was unexpectedly killed in a car crash, then the people looked to him to be the heir to the throne when their father steps down. Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father, Hafez al-Assad in 2000, when he died. When Assad became president he ordered mass crackdowns on the people. Justin Trudeau of Canada was born December 25, 1971 to Pierre and Margaret Trudeau. He defended Canadian Federalism. Today Canada is a federal parliamentary republic, run by PM Trudeau. Israel is lead by President Rivlin but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has the main role. When 'Bibi's' brother was killed in a plane hijacking in 1976,  Israel ordered that an armed guard be onboard each flight going in and out of Israel. In the USA, President Donald J. Trump is ranked, by Forbes magazine, the 248th richest man in the world. President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya is the son o

Today Mr. Schick gave us a presentation of all the leaders of the fifteen nations he selected, which had a lot to do with the USA. This presentation was very similar to the project we had to do but it included a whole extra slide with more details on the person. First up was Mexico's Enrique Peña Nieto. Enrique has been in office for ten to twelve years now and has low approval ratings; twenty-eight percent. Enrique is believed to have had a wife of his killed so he could marry Angelica Rivera. He is known as the Teflon candidate. China's Xi Jinping is actually the son of the Chinese communist party's founder. A common theme which we will see in other countries is the son of the current leader going into the family business of politics. Xi is married to folk singer Peng Lijuan who is also army general and for awhile was more well-known than he was. India's Narendra Modi came from the socially and educated 'backwards' class of society. Modi is Right-Wing and has

Today we were assigned a project on the leaders of the world. 

Today we were introduced to a new unit of our Human Geography class: Political Geography. On slide one of Mr. Schick's presentation was the question, 'How is the world organized?' The world is organized first by country, than by nation, and finally by state. A country is an identifiable land area. a nation is a population, or group of people, with a common culture. Finally, a state is a population under a single government and this term can be synonymous with 'country'. In the 'Nation' status a group of people with a shared identity, think of it as a culture group. Here is the 'not-universally-true' definition of Nation: nations are groups of people larger than a single tribe or community, which may share a common language, institutions, religion, and/or historical experience. The institution part of this definition stirred a bit of confusion in the class. The dictionary definition for institution is a significant practice, relationship, or organiza