The Rwandan Debate.

On November 19th we had a debate about the Rwandan Genocide. We each got a group that represented different people involved in the genocide. My group was the U.N. and I was surprised that we didn’t get attacked as much as we did, I was grateful Belgium was attacked the most out of all of us.

What we did in the Rwandan genocide as part of the United Nations was really nothing at all! We sent troops in Rwanda and after 10 soldiers got killed we fled the country to be safe from the Interhamwe and Paul Kagme. It was hard to defend ourselves but after a little bit of understanding from different parts of the debate it just sort of, clicked. WE tried to point the finger at the Interhamwe for killing the 10 soldiers, and Paul Kagme for “brainwashing” the Interhamwe but hey shot us back with some pretty convincing evidence that the killing were someone else’s fault, and of course no one pointed the finger at the Red Cross because they didn’t even do anything wrong in the first place. They could have stayed quiet and no one would have ever noticed or cared.

Belgium was accused so much and I didn’t even know what part they took on the Rwandan Genocide because I completely forgot to figure out what they did when they were there… if they were there at all! I guess they did something wrong though with I sort of figured out in the end. When Romeo Delair spoke nothing he had to say even made any sense or connected to the Rwandan Genocide debate what so ever. I think I learned more from the debate then I did learning any other way, the that was probably the point… wasn’t it?

The American Scholar

Emerson’s argument in "The American Scholar" still holds true today.


Emerson’s argument is, in the past people learned a variety of skills but now they focus on one specific job and define themselves by whatever job they have. People today only do one thing and only learn the skills associated with this thing. “Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all.” Which means we shouldn’t be putting ourselves into a situation where we only learn one thing or have one job, but we should branch out and learn other skills. People don’t need to do other things, but have lost hope in learning other skills by doing so.

People are labeling themselves and other people with their job. For example if someone was a doctor, you would probably think they were extremely smart, and if someone worked at Wal-Mart you would probably think that they are uneducated. If we think of people by their skills and ideas instead of their job we’ll be able to figure out who they really are, and we can define them as smart or uneducated.