Week Four

Journal

John Glenn

American Visions and Values LA-400

September 25, 2007

Week Four

The week that I have been waiting for finally came. So far in this program, this week was the first week where I understood and enjoyed all the readings. I really enjoy reading about the history of America and the people that made this such a strong country. Looking back through the readings it is amazing the wisdom of the men who structured our government and how much they truely cared about the people that they served.

I enjoyed some of the lively discussions that took place this week on the discussion board. I enjoyed the discussion on how people feel on where "we" are at this time when it comes to the topic of race. You can see where their still is a lot of racism in parts of our country. It is sad we still have not come as far as some people think we have on this topic. According to some of the discussions, it is still alive and well in certain aspects of some of our other students. My hope is if we can pass on a better example to our generation, then thatwas passed on to us. Then we can eliminate another layer of this ugly side of our country.

Of the readings this week, I enjoyed the writings of Ben Franklin and Crevecoeur the most. For Crevecoeur, it was intersting to see the thoughts of America from someone that was raised in Europe. He could compare the difference between America and Europe from first hand knowledge. I appreciated the way he described America, "It is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who process everything and a herd of people who have nothing".

Ben Franklin has always been a person that I was interested in and recently they had a outstanding exihbit on him at our Natural History Museum. It was incredible the influences he had on so many subjects. From the identification of the positive and negative charges in electricity to weather and meteorology. His contribution to America in its beginning was one of the foremost contribution he gave, plus he started the very first firefighting company in America.

I am planning to use a fair amount of the information from this week in my final project. This is what America values and beliefs were founded on. It dose not get much better then this.