Yesterday in class, we learned more about the Declaration. We split into two groups, each partnership divided one into one group, one into another. In the groups, we shared the summary of each section that we had to read and shorten. Things like that have a good side and a bad side. Ont he one hand, it saves a pretty good amount of time by eliminating the necessity of reading the entire Declaration of Independence, or any other document that we do the same thing with, and it also enforces discussion and interaction with peers. On the other hand, it makes it so that you never really read the entire document, which could have significance. If you only read a small part of the document, how can you know that the people who read the other parts put down an accurate summary? It might be better to summarize the entire document in some cases. Towards the end of class, Mr. Boyle put out a question- What is your word worth? What is a promise worth these days? Can you trust someone to keep a promise? We made connections to Julius Caesar. Was Brutus right to trust everyone involved in the conspiracy with just their word, or was it better for the writers of the Declaration to make everyone who agreed with the cause to sign the page in their hand? It was an interesting discussion.
Today, Mr. Boyle was absent. In his place was an essay assignment to go along with Thomas Paine's "These are times that try men's souls" paper. It was pretty cool to read, but I did not have very much time to write a full essay. It was rather stressful because by the time the substitute finished talking and because she made us read the entire, dense document, I was only left with about 25 minutes to write an entire essay. I did not finish, but I came pretty close. I hope that I have some time to finish it in another class period.
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