6 Days...

Six days until I get my braces off.... But who's counting? :P I'm getting my braces off on Canadian Thanksgiving, I definitely have a lot to be thankful for! Too bad we won't be able to have a Thanksgiving meal, Mom and I are going to a "homeschooling through highschool" type seminar thingy. I'm looking forwards to it.

Today I had my classes. In the Civil War history class I am auditing, we learned about the four turnings which are exactly that, four turnings that America has been going through since the start of our nation. Each turning is about 20 years long and the complete cycle takes roughly 80-100 years.
The first turning is the high which is an upbeat era where people and communities come together, the strengthening of institutions, and the weakening of individualism. An example is the '40's-'60's when all the stuff with World War II brought the nation together.
The second turning is the awakening which is a passionate era where new values attack the civil order. An example is the '60's-'80's when people were just... weird.
The third turning is the unraveling which is a downcast era strengthening individualism, crumbling civil rights, weakened institutions, computers, the "Me" generation.
The final turning is the crisis era where values are challenged and replaced with a new order. As of now, we are in the crisis period.
We also leaned a bit about the Lincoln-Douglas debates and talked a bit about them.
We also read and discussed the supreme court's ruling in the Dread Scott case.
Dread Scott was a slave who, with his owner, moved to a free territory. Really, Scott should have been free because he was living in a free state, but he wasn't. Friends suggested he sue the government because he should have been freed and Scott listened to them. In the circuit court (local court) he won his case but then it moved to the supreme court where they said he wasn't categorized as a citizen so he shouldn't have even won his case in the circuit court. The things you read in the supreme court ruling... It just makes your blood boil. I wanted to get up and start yelling at no one in particular during class, but of course, I couldn't do that.

Moving on. In my second class, which is Youth and Government, we did a lot of Parli-Pro (Parliamentary Procedure) which features the introduction of bills, debate about the bill, introduction of amendments to the bill, debate about the amendments... IT'S SO FUN!!! =D I LOVE government and debate!
Next Spring everyone in my state who is taking Youth and Government will be going to our state capitol and we will present bills that we wrote and we will debate them over a four day period. I seriously cannot wait... It sounds like so much fun, although my class has a long way to go before we're ready to go to congress. It's a good thing we have a few months to practice proper Parlo-Pro!

Expect more from me on the subject of Youth and Government, but for now I must go to bed as it is nearing 10:20 PM.

I yield the floor.