Aiden's Western Civ Blog

Today in class we finished watching the videos we started yesterday. It was pretty good. It finished by saying certain parts of certain countries are a lot more poor and a lot more rich than others. For example, Shanghai is a very rich part of China. Guizhou, on the other hand, is very poor and not doing so well. It is in the rural area of China and not near the city.

Today in class we took the entire 55 minutes to watch a 7 minute TED Talk video. It was very interesting, nonetheless. The first video was about population pyramids and how they can be used to estimate how fast a country will grow or die out. The second video was about Hans Rollings (That may not be his name), a man who calculates how much a country grows and their wealth. He showed a graph abut how every country progressed over the years. 

Today in class we reviewed the answers to the test. There were many 100%'s in the class. I was not one of them. I still got a good grade, if you consider a 97 a good grade. The test was pretty fair. I'm very thankful for the 4 possible extra credit points that I earned. Mr. Schick said he wouldn't be mad if we didn't donate to the Kiva website, but he also said he was greatly disappointed in our lack of donation. The only people who donated were Mr. VP, Chase Vogel, and Maddy. Major respect to those two participants. 👍

Today we took the test while Mr. Schick was relaxing in Boston with his daughter (not meant to be mean, but that is what happened to the extent of my knowledge). The test, to me was pretty easy. First page, we had to use the CIA world fact book. Then we had some fill in the blank for the second page. Third page was some different statistics and push and pull forces. 4th page was the continuation of push and pull forces along with population pyramids. 5th page was the actual population pyramids. 6th page was extra credit.

Today in class we reviewed for our test tomorrow. It is on a number of different things.We have to navigate the world fact book on the CIA website in 15 minutes, find if a country's population is rising or falling, find out if a country has more people entering or existing., some vocabulary terms and analyze a population pyramid. He said the test is 6 pages long but it isn't front and back so its not that bad. We also have to name push and pull forces and give specific examples for different countries.

Today in class we shared our population pyramid projects. My group already shared so I just had to watch them. Some were better than others but they were all good. We also talked about the John Dau Foundation. John Dau is a man from South Sudan who came to America to get an education so he could help his home country. He raised a ton of money to help build a school in his home country. It was soon burnt down after being built.  

Today in class we took the (pop) quiz again because everyone was mad they got a bad grade. I got a 90% on the quiz but I was more than happy to take it again and get the easy 100%. After that, we shared our projects from the night before. Vlad, Michael and I's project was pretty good if I must say so myself. First we had to make questions and answer them about 2 drastically different countries. Then we had to compare different organizations that try to end world hunger. Mr. Schick said we got a good grade and I am holding him to this until I see it. At the moment, I am trying to find out what his birthday is because he so desperately does not want us to know. I have narrowed it down to 5 days. I'm betting that it is December 9th but I can't be sure.

Today we did more population pyramids. We looked at a bunch of different kinds. The world, the USA, China, Chad, India and many more countries. We also looked at past years and their different pyramids. We also looked at possible future pyramids and how the world population may increase.

Today in class we ate cake. It was was pretty yummy. After that, we started talking about population pyramids. This topic made Mr. Schick giddy with joy. What it basically is, is the percentage of different age groups and the amount of people in that population are that age. There are two sides to it. Male and female. Population Pyramid for Maryland, 2010

Today in class we talked about TDR or Total Fertility Rate. What it is basically is how many babies are born and survive into adulthood each year. To have a positive TDR, your countries average must be 2.1 or higher. The USA's TDR is 2.01, almost scratching the surface of positive. Nigeria's TDR is 6.89. That is very high. Japan's is a measly 1.84 which is very low. It also means more people are getting old and not having children which could be bad for the country. We also researched some facts on the world factbook. Here are the ones we did in class today:  Population of the USA: 326,625,791 (July 2017 est.) Infant Mortality Rate of the US: 5.8 deaths/1,000 live births (169th Place) Highest percentage of Catholics: US: 20.8% Canada: 39% (includes Roman Catholic 38.8%, other Catholic .2%) Mexico: 82.7% What country has the largest population in Africa: Nigeria (190,632,261)