Blog Entry - Week 4 - Feb 2

Our fourth class we had a special guest, Sandy from Praxis International.  She works towards eliminating violence in the lives of women and children.  She noted that violence is a problem all across the world and referenced Mayan women in Mexico who were battered.  One thing that she pointed out is that women are no longer considered sacred and children are no longer considered as gifts in cultures and civilizations.  Makes you wonder what happened to the saying “Women and Children First”?  For some reason, I thought of the coward from the Italian cruise liner where the captain fled the ship with many women and children on the boat and he was more concerned for his safety.  It is amazing to me that the values of women are sacred and children are gifts are no longer important.

Then the moment we were all waiting for…. the QUIZ.  Curtis surprised us with a closed book, open mouth quiz.  We were allowed to discuss the answers of the quiz and collectively submit our answers as a group.  I felt I was well prepared for the quiz.  Thankfully the class bailed me out on some answers that I knew I would have gotten wrong.  Now if I retain the knowledge it would be WIN-WIN.    I think if the groups would have been smaller and we would have had more time we could have had more discussion to defend our thoughts and retain our new knowledge.

The next part of the class we discussed Manifest Destiny which was a 19^th century American belief that the United States was destined to expand across the continent.   They expanded to Central America in hope of building a canal. The original choice was Nicaragua as it had the natural waterways and rivers.    William Walker proclaimed himself the president of Nicaragua in hopes of building a canal through Nicaragua.  The canal was in the best interests of investors and the United Fruit Company and was eventually built in Panama.  The canal allowed companies to decrease transportation costs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific and vice versa.  Who knew bananas could be this important to United States and Central American History?  Perhaps the beginning of American Imperialism.