Importance of learning history by Eun

Title: Importance of learning history                                                                                    10106 김은

 

Hello ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming.

 

What comes to your mind when you think of learning history? Most of you probably associate learning history as a boring experience. Trust me I’ve been there, sitting in history class wondering why time passes by so slowly. However, you would be surprised at what you can learn from history besides… well… history! So today, I would like to talk about the importance and the benefits of learning history. But before I start let me introduce myself.

 

Hello, my name is Eun Kim and I am currently in my first year at Incheon Gonghang High School, I have lived abroad in America for over 9 years. I simply always knew I was Korean, I would cheer for Korea during the Olympics and I’d be proud to say I was Korean but I didn’t have any knowledge of Korean history nor did I think it was that important to learn. However, my moment of realization from my ignorance of my country’s history was on the 26th of October; our class went on a field trip to the Seodaemun Prison. As soon as I entered the facility was in shock for a few minutes. In America, we learn about the Holocaust and the massacre of the Jewish people inside concentration camps. I couldn’t have ever imagined that such pain existed in our country’s history. There had been so much suffering and sacrifice made by our ancestors and I had not known a single thing about it. Which is why I want to emphasize the importance of history, to learn history is to learn your identity, history shows us who we are, where we come from and how we’ve changed. From this, I’ve gained so much pride and respect for Korea and our ancestors.

 

A majority of people do not recognize that history is a very important asset in today’s society. It helps us when we speak and when we write and it provides us with moral understanding. Whether we speak or write something, history provides us with a backing and sets a great foundation to build on.

 

Another way learning history is beneficial would be that history enhances judgment and decision making because we learn from past mistakes and opportunities, and in this process, we strengthen our ability to learn from others. Knowing the mistakes of the past, we can keep from making those mistakes in the future. We must understand and learn from them, and change our course to reflect that understanding. No one is above the influence of the past. What we truly understand of our past is what shapes our future. To succeed, we must educate ourselves about the world both around and behind us. After all, it is because of the past that we have accelerated into our current society.

 

Like this, we take reference from history all the time, almost everything in our lives were due to the efforts of our ancestors from democracy to the invention of the pizza. We are merely heirs to this legacy and our duty is to remember and offer our part to history. We must stop thinking that history is not important, it is! It will become a great tool for us in both the present and the future. Philosopher George Santayana once said “Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it.” We learn from the past, they say that the past tends to repeats itself, so it is up to us to understand and change the outcome. People can learn their roots through history, opening their eyes to their roots and to the ties we all share, as mine were opened when I entered the Seodaemun prison. Learning history itself is a way to change the world. I want my future to be a part of making that change and to do so it starts with all of you.

Thank you for listening. 

Nam hee’s speech

If you are student in Korea, you will be familiar with the topics like bullies in school. School violence is one of the rising issues even among elementary students. The source of these issues being propagated through out the whole country was a middle school student committing suicide in Daejeon, leaving a note about the reason of his death-school violence. He was bullied by his classmates for no reason but his parents didn’t know about this until his death. No wonder adults were unaware of seriousness of the school violence since it was what happened in school, which we call a small society, with the effort of teachers and students to prevent incidents happened in school from imparting to media. Moreover, there are some factors which made the current situation of the school violence worse.

First of all, most of the victims of school violence often try to hide what happen to them in school. Main reasons of this phenomenon are victims’ isolation from society which makes them feel they don’t have any proponents and being afraid of the reaction of the bullies. In fact, not so many victims aver who the bullies are or even whether they are bullied or not. Continual harrassment made their courage deficient and resulted in them to maintain silence. On the other hand, they are threatened or forced to keep quiet. The bullies made not only the victims but also other classmates believe that they would take revenge if they concede that the school violence took place in school. In addition, current law for adolescent in Korea is not strong enough, which allowed the bullies to avenge to victims who accused them. The victims, who sometimes are made not to have willing to ask for help or can not tell anyone as they are scared of violence are in a situation of being unable to embody their willing or even speak out for themselves.

To my second point, the reaction of the bullies parents is another problem. There are various types of reactions. Some parents have their own dogma-they think that their children have the most pure and kind humanity and can not imagine them picking on other people. They believe they know their children better than anyone in this world and have ascendancy over kids, thinking they can control single actions of their children. This type of parents deny their children’s ‘crime’ as they have no doubt in their kids. Even when evidence tells their children are the bullies, the parents make vociferous opinions saying their children are so kind that they can not beat others. The others, on the other hand, try to minimize the affair. For example, they consist that it was just a small fighting between kids and it’s ‘normal’ in that age. Furthermore, there are some parents who claim both the victims and bullies have responsibility due to apropos fight between them or worse, say that the victims had problems in characteristics and it was natural thing for their kids to bully them since it was them who were weird. These kinds of parents’ reaction makes the victims discouraged and distract the police investigation by denying all those evidence.

In spite of improved laws after the death of middle school student in Daejeon, which lead the bullies related to that incident to a few years’ sojourn, there are still so many students who suffer from their classmates. The serial suicides continued until today tells us that we still need some significant changes in rudimentary perception, such as assessing people by their appearance or wealth. Also we should not give attention to the oratory of the parents who have blind faith in their kids. We still have a long way to go.

 

 

 

 

●apropos-때마침

●ascendancy-우위

●assess-(재산 수입 등) 평가하다

●aver-(진실임)을 확언하다

●concede-(마지못해) 인정하다

●deficient-부족한

●dogma-교리

●embody-(정신)에 형체(육체)를 주다; 구체화하다

●impart-(정보, 비밀)을 알리다; 주다/부여하다

●oratory-웅변

●propagate-(동식물, 균)을 번식시키다/증식시키다; (뉴스, 사상)을 널리 퍼뜨리다

●proponent-지지자/옹호자, 제의자

●rudimentary-기초의

●sojourn-묵다/체류하다

●vociferous-큰소리로 외치는

Sunwoo’s speech/essay

표선우

This is my first essay since I join AP English, so please understand my writing ability. I am going to talk about my dream and concrete aim.

My dream is announcer. Announcer is a person who announce some information in front of audience. Typically announcer, for example, there are Ji-yeon Baek, Ji-ae Lee, Hyeon-jeong No. Among them, my role model is Hyeon-jeong No. She is the strongest announcer in Korea. Evidentially, She engaged in 4 programs such as KBS 1TB News, 상상플러스, TV는 사랑을 싣고, 스타 골든벨. Many experts praised to her about her progress ability. Also She has beautiful face, so many people liked her. In 2006, She married Dae-sun Jung, who is the heir of Hyndai. Because of this situation, she was attacked from netizen, but it is true her ability is the strongest announcer in Korea.

So, To achieve my dream, Fist I should go major of Journalism and Broadcasting. And my concrete aim is going to Yonsei Universty. It is true that I’m still insufficient. But I would go that school. So I have to study hard. Particularly, I have to study math specially. Frankly speaking, my math ability is terrible score. Also I should take care of my language score. It is essential for going universty.. It is sorrowful, but it is my destiny that many students accepted already. Frankly speaking, sometimes I felt lethargy because Korea’s education system is so intense. For example, a boy who is 19years old died himself a day before College Scholastic Ability Test. His primary cause of stress is go to great universty. Also, there is terrible occasion that son killed his mother because his mother was nagging about her son’s degree. Her son had a great score, but she wasn’t satisfied with her son’s score. In severe cases, she did violence for 10 hours!! She wanted the best score. And it leaded to her son’s crime. It is very terrible incident, but court understand his crime few because his motive shows Korea’s student’s tragedy. I think our president should repair our instruction system immediately.

Finally my final dream is make our country strong. Lately, in 2012 London Olympic, our member of the national team was received unfair score. I think it happens our national power. Sometimes judge made unfair score when strongest country’s member plays like China, USA, England. Watching this happening, I promised made our country strong. To achieve this, I will be competent person and I will improve our national power and inform Korea. In order to this, I will be global announcer.

Sad to say, my first essay is end at this. I am not good at writing essay yet, but I will improve my ability in AP!! So my service to you :)

sun’s speech

As you can feel, the world is getting hot and usage and sales of electric devices for cooling is dramatically increasing. This is causing deficiency of electricity in Korea. On 2nd of August, KEPCO announced that only four million two hundred twenty thousand Kilo watts of electricity is available for reservation. The apropos amount of spare electricity that KEPCO considers as a minimum is five million kw and if it goes under four million, they will run all the power plants that are currently stopped including Kori Nuclear Powerplant which was shut down due to a safety issue. Korea has got 22 nuclear power plants and is running almost all of them. Oratories of NPP proponents propagates that nuke power is safe, clean and cheap but is it? Nuke is the most efficient energy source on earth, if it does not produce any waste and radiation. As you know extremely dangerous radiation coming out from the waste and plant causes mutation and kills any living thing. Accidents in Fukushima and Chernobyl can happen to any NPP. Also the waste must be kept under tons of ferroconcrete for millions of years. This requires a lot of money. NPPs in Korea have never caused any problem but we cannot aver that it will be safe forever. However, assessing from the amount of electricity usage of us, we cannot stop them. There is no way all the members of this nation can have rudimentary electricity supply since more than 75% of supply is produced by NPPs. What I think we should do is looking for a new energy source. Wind power or solar energy cannot replace nuke energy. They are eco-friendly but cannot produce energy. The most efficient replacement is nuclear fusion. This energy source does not make any waste or require dangerous material. The most important advantage is that nuclear fusion reactors are very stable than the nuclear fission reactors we are currently using. Fusion reactors can hardly go wrong. This technology is already possible. I think we should shut down the nuclear fission reactors and replace them with nuclear fusion ones. This is the only way we can enjoy our electric powered life and keep our planet clean. kepco: 한국전기

Claire’s speech/essay

Let’s say that you saw someone getting bullied or bullying someone by apropos, what would you do? Do you have the courage to go up to them and say stop? Or are you a type of person who usually hides? However, you might not be able to go up to them even if you want to because no one is doing. And you just want to act as if nothing is going on. You don’t have to think that you’re coward because most of the people follow what other people do and this dogma is called crowd mind or mass psychology. Why does crowd mind happen? How do they affect our lives? Is it rudimentary to our lives? Eventually, Mass psychology results in many different aspects of life and our society in a positive and negative way.

 

To start off, the reason why mass psychology happens is because it is our innate habit. Long time ago when women collected fruits and took care of kids while sojourning inside the shelter and men went hunting in deficient animals, doing something different than others meant death. For example, imagine that you’re living in old times and you have to evacuate because of fire, or natural disasters. Everyone is going to the right side and you’re going to the left side, you’ll be abandoned and die. As the time passed, this became our innate habit. Also, how do they affect our life? For example, there was an assembly for FTA between U.S and Korea. The chief of police went out to calm people down, but the proponents of stopping FTA start to beat him, assessing severe damage of the police officer. Embodying this, would you beat a police officer if there was no one around you and you didn’t have any ascendancy? You wouldn’t but you would if there’s a vociferous and rowdy crowd around you yelling at the police officer. However, crowd mind makes us to propagate and impart our attention on important topics of our society such as Dokdo problem between Japan and Korea, welfare policy and volunteering. If we don’t have crowd mind, I aver that we would ignore other people but will act selfish and ignorant. Crowd mind helps us maintain our society with bonding each other.

 

So Crowd mind is a good thing or bad thing? Crowd mind can be a good or bad thing based on us because if you use it to attack someone, it’ll be used in bad way. However, when you stand against someone with proper reason or you support something that can change the world in a good way, it’ll be used in a good way.  Basically, crowd mind is your weapon. You can use it to help people or kill people. We surely have to learn how to use crowd mind and oratory or how to stand against somebody for better world with a proper reason. This is because you don’t know when you’re going to be the weak person or treated unfairly. There’s an old saying that ‘Do as you would be done by’. If you want to bully someone, use crowd mind. If you want to gather attention for donation, use crowd mind, too. But always remember that crowd can always change, the results will be always pointing at you and also you have to concede that what you have done was wrong.

 

Eun’s speech/Essay

Imagined going in to a doctor’s office with your spouse? Imagine the doctor handing you and your spouse a catalog, sectioned by Hair, Eyes, Mouth, Body, Special traits, Special skills?  I would like to inform you that this may soon be the case in the future.

BCC recently covered a topic called Human Genetic Engineering with Alice Roberts, a BBC reporter and Dr Jeff Steinberg who is currently helping couples conceive designer babies. During Alice’s sojourn to The Fertility Institutes in LA, Alice becomes a proponent of genetic engineering for humans after her conversation with Dr. Jeff Steinberg. 

The recent issue of genetically enhancing our future generation has brought up a question of ethics. Should parents be able to genetically modify their unborn offspring? In the future, there is a possibility that parents literally assemble their children apropos to their satisfaction. Much research in genetics and studies on genotype, phenotype, and stem cells has been done. This idea is being embodied by researchers, however, it is still rudimentary as they are merely in the experimental phase. 

This idea of evolution could be the turning point of man-kind, it could go wrong. Which is why Dr. Jeff Steinberg (who has been assessing some of these studies) says that HGE has to be dealt with caution. Scientists aver that without the support of society, it is impossible to go forth. Genetic engineering has brought up much debate because of its many negative aspects.

Although propagating through genetically enhanced children can come with positive effects like being born with special traits such as a stronger immune system and being able to cure most genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis. New technology often comes with complications and consequences. Many vociferous religious people have been expressing concern that human genetic engineering is against god because “it is wrong to play god.” The human genome is a complicated maze, which means a positive outcome upstream may cause a negative outcome downstream. Also there have been questions of safety; scientists concede that there have been deaths during gene therapy trials. Another area of concern is genetic diversity, although it is a considered as just a dogma, it has been raising eyebrows. HGE can limit our genetic diversity, which means that a hitherto disease could wipe out the population with deficient genetic diversity.

Currently, the ascendancy on this procedure is society and the government. The government is being urged to weigh out the pros and cons of HGE and decide what should be carried out and what should be illegal. There are many things to consider, would it mean an end to genetic breast cancer and other forms of genetic diseases? Faster metabolisms, a photographic memory, perfect oratory skills, blonde hair, blue eyes, the perfect height and weight, the epitome of the human race… would it be worth it?

So the question ultimately comes down to whether you would be willing to subjectify your future child to a dangerous procedure risking not only a great amount of money but also life of both the child and the mother. 

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