Iyck Igbinedion
Semester Reflection
Social Studies 10: Reflection
What was the topic of my Inquiry Project?
This semester, I talked about the propaganda behind cars, how they turned the streets of mainly North America into the motorist dominated territory that they are today.
The main way I found information for this project was YouTube. I watched videos on the subject and then using the info I learned, transform my ideas into the project with extra fact-checking by multiple articles as sources. There was a Vox video and article that I found that explained the subject pretty well, using some images that you can’t find anywhere else on the web. I find it well to get acquainted with a subject so it’s easier to just start writing on all the things you know without having to stop to find more info online.
Evidently, cars take up a big piece of our modern lives. All of us take the car or the bus to school or work everyday, we’ve all experienced the absolute horror of a traffic jam, or walking in a not so pedestrian friendly neighborhood, where sidewalks are non-existent. And the emissions that our vehicles output that significantly impact our world too. Even modern battery-electric vehicles still put out insane waste in the manufacturing process, the highly unethically obtained lithium which is later thrown away and piled up in a junkyard, then not even being guaranteed to be good unless your city gets its power from good sources. (Thankfully, Vancouver is 97% green energy in the form of hydroelectric dams, mostly.) There’s been a lot of urbanist movements recently to change our city streets to promote public and active transportation. Without cars, this probably would’ve been the easiest thing ever. Now, they had to cancel 3 stops of a RapidBus line because they wanted to keep 24 street-level parking spots.
Core Competency Reflection
I gather and synthesize information to develop logical conclusions, such as when…
Watching the last movie of the class on Dr. Strangelove, the movie ends and leaves you thinking. I answered by comparing the characters actions at the end of the movie on the Cold War back to World War 2, with the Nazi theory of eugenics.
An example of where I built upon someone else’s ideas is…
In our table group discussions, we had a talk about military hierarchies. I took my turn in the conversation by building on the idea that the harsh discipline inflicted on soldiers lower in the hierarchy with a metaphor, being trees in a forest. Young trees being covered by shade from bigger trees, fighting for light from the sun and water from the rain. Once those trees grow big, they block the ones below it.
I have valuable ideas to share about… and do so by…
About most of our class discussions. I do so by raising my hand and saying my observations to the class, or sometimes with just the teacher. The things we discuss in history I really didn’t think I would be so talkative about, but it seems to appeal to me a lot more now that I’ve gone through the class.