Every group made a good effort in this project. Elections are a seedbed of discussion for a wide array of political topics that they each had to discuss. Group 4’s presentation was about equal rights, Group 3’s was about the education system, and Group 2’s covered immigration. I’ll go from order of presentation, starting from Group 4.
This group was all about equal rights, which mainly covered LGBT and women’s rights for legal abortions. I have my own reservations about the topic, but this is criticism of the presentation itself. This group actually presented two separate times. The first time they presented was frankly not good at all. I can understand people not giving their all for a class that is forced upon them, but a lot of people could tell that they did not make an effort in delivering a good speech. I do not think there was one instance where they did not read off their own slides. The slides themselves were also blocks of texts that disengaged any audience retention. Those two problems are one of the first things you should know to avoid when it comes to making a good presentation. I don’t like to be harsh over something that is inconsequential, but making an effort to avoid those two issues are the bare minimum in making a decent presentation. This is why Group 4 prepared a second attempt at their project, and it was a drastic improvement. They utilized visual elements like graphs, a video of a little girl speaking out against pro-life legislation, and most of all they did not read off the slides. My only issue with the presentation was that it barely touched upon the side of pro-life. I know the presenters are allowed to have their biases and I’m personally in the middle when it comes to abortion, but there are interesting points from the pro-life side of the movement that would have raised some good questions. These points being the fact that a lot of abortion patients have trauma and regret after their operation due to having no education on how the actual procedure goes, and how patients can seek pro-life alternatives. It isn’t a huge deal, but I feel like it is preferable to have both sides presented to an extent.
Group 3’s presentation was about the educational system. From what I remember, this included the issue of uniforms, tolerance of bullying, and the budget schools get. My main takeaway from this was that it did not touch upon the political side of the educational system, and there is plenty to talk about there. There’s the issue with “woke” ideology being forced in some schools for the left side of the argument, while the right side wants to bring the Bible back to classes. The speech was delivered well, as expected from this group. However, I don’t remember much from this presentation since most of what they did was make agreeable statements. The only thing that stuck out for me was that they essentially said to give the schools more money and most of the problems will go away. It’s an understandable conclusion to make, but personally I think bad teachers should be fired. Currently it’s very hard for bad teachers to get fired unless there is a scandal of some sort. There’s a lot that gets in the way, such as tenure, the amount of time it takes to fire a bad teacher due to performance (it can take years in some states), and teacher unions protecting under performing teachers. That’s not to say the issue of our failing education system rests solely on teachers. I’m not sure if I’m remembering this correctly, but the presenters drew the conclusion that the reason why some European countries rank higher in education is only because they allocate more funds to their programs. That disregards the different factors such as class sizes, how personalized the lectures are, etc. It was technically very well presented, but it fell short on the relevance to educational policies.
Group 2’s presentation was about the hot-button topic of immigration. I’ll say it right off the bat, I am extremely against an open border. I was 20 minutes late to class so I may have missed them covering the pros of a closed border, but I still believe the majority of the presentation was very biased and disregarded the big issues of illegal immigration. First, I’ll say that they did do a good job in making the audience listen, such as one of the presenters giving a personal story about her experiences as an immigrant. They didn’t dwell on one topic too much and seemed to have rehearsed their presentation. My criticisms are with the actual arguments presented rather than how their assignment was done. I’m of the belief that the American government should prioritize its own citizens first rather than funnel money towards illegal immigrants so that they can live a better life than struggling American citizens through government benefits. The Biden administration’s open border policy worsened the economy, increased the crime rate in many places where the illegal immigrants end up, overwhelming and disrupting communities, and contributing to the housing crisis. One of the arguments brought up by a speaker was that something along the lines of the statistics of crime going up due to immigration is false. No offense to the speaker who said that, but that level of denial made me laugh on the inside. There were gangs that crossed the open border and took over apartment complexes, forcing the residents to pay them rent. There were rapes and murders done by illegal immigrants that were released into the country despite being identified as a criminal at the border. The side of the open border touts itself as being compassionate, but the truth is more death and family separation is caused because of an open border. Human trafficking is up over 30% ever since Biden became president because cartels have free reign over the border. Over 300,000 kids have gone missing at the border. I don’t think that exotic culinary dishes, different art and music are justifications for the negatives that an open border brings. I should stress that this is in regard to illegal immigration. Legal immigrants are fine because they want to assimilate into America.
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