Assignment 6 Create Your Own: Jessica Nelson

Idea 1: What are your thoughts on international adoption? If given the opportunity how would you change the laws and procedures surrounding it? Now consider the conditions of the children sitting in these orphanages worldwide, what effect does this have on your views about abortion?

Idea 2: Some TV shows are glittering tellings of a fairy tale and some are more of a cautionary tale. Consider your favorite TV series, what lessons has it taught you? Think about the target audience of said show, is the message appropriate in your opinion for the audience they are trying to reach? How are the same/similar lessons taught to other age groups?

Idea 3: How should society handle the task of teaching teenagers to drive? Is it really humane to put a protective parent in a car with a tense teenager and watch them explode? Should we only teach driving in a car or is it necessary to spend time in a classroom learning from a lecture or a textbook? What should driving instruction cost, if anything, or should people of all economic status have equal opportunity to learn how to safely drive a car? Lastly should driving classes be required, for example added back in as a mandatory class in the school system, or is it a private decision for each family to make?

Response to #3:

You don't get to chose who you drive next to on the road. You can't guarantee that they have ever been taught how to properly drive a car, and most likely they haven't. Most likely they are carrying the same bad habits their parents passed on to them when they "taught" them how to drive. Sure a little habit like driving with your hands at 10 and 2 instead of 9 and 3 makes no difference 99% of the time, but what about the day that a 4 year old pedals his tricycle right out in front of you and you have to do a 180° cut accident avoidance maneuver that is only possible if your hands are at 9 and 3 to avoid hitting him. What if you didn't know that maneuver even existed.

    You wouldn't be alone. We lose tens of thousands of lives on the roadways yearly. This raises a question in my mind, what is the value of human life? When I took a $200 defensive driving course we learned this life saving maneuver in less than 20 minutes. So would you give up 20 minutes to save a person's life? That's less than 1 episode of a TV show. But that's too long for the government. Driver's ed was taken out of schools for 2 main reasons cost and time. They prefer to lower monetary cost (although ignoring the raise in human cost) and to give time to things like PE instead of driving. Not to say PE isn't valuable, getting kids healthy could save their life, but what about the lives of the family of 4 they crash into driving home from school, whoops.

   Driving instruction should be mandatory and I feel that the easiest way to do that is to find a way to make it part of the school curriculum. After all, what good is knowledge to a dead person or a prisoner serving time for involuntary manslaughter?

Lessons should begin with a brief discussion of the laws that apply to driving and identifying various car parts and road signs before having students actually get in a car and drive. Once students display mastery of basic driving skills they should be exposed to defensive maneuvers like the 180° cuts I spoke of earlier.

   The above course of action only really addresses my views on the time costs, now for the monetary costs. I think this driver's training should be free. Kids who aren't affluent enough to pay for a course like I did are still a danger on the road and their lack of knowledge is a safety concern to themselves and others. Surely if people are writing our school technology grants for a new TV in the cafeteria someone would be willing to write a grant to save lives, right?