Wednesday, February 18. 2015

Today's schedule is B-AG-A-D-C

We have an altered schedule for programming today. Although the afternoon blocks remain the same the morning looks like this:

8:58-10:00 B Block
10:05-10:45 Extended AG for Programming and Grad Assembly
10:50-11:52 A Block

B Block Social Studies 11 - Today we'll continue looking at the "legislative process" - creating laws in Canada.

An idea to make a new law or to change an existing law starts out as a "bill." Each bill goes through several stages to become law.

1. At first reading, the bill is considered read for the first time and is printed. There is no debate.
2. At second reading, Members debate the principle of a bill — is the idea behind it sound? Does it meet people's needs?
3. If a bill passes at second reading, it goes to a committee of the House. Committee members study the bill carefully. They hold hearings to gather information. They can ask for government officials and experts to come and answer questions. The committee can propose amendments, or changes, to the bill. When a committee has finished its study, it reports the bill back to the House. The entire House can then debate it. During report stage debate, Members can suggest other amendments to the bill.
4. Once report stage is over, the bill is called for third reading debate. Members who voted for the bill at second reading may sometimes change their minds at third reading after seeing what amendments have or have not been made to the bill.
5. After a bill has passed third reading in the House of Commons, it goes through a similar process in the Senate.
6. Once both Chambers pass the bill in the same form, it is given Royal Assent and becomes law.

You will have to draft a simplified bill that you would like to see made law, where you'll write the idea in a simple sentence or two and then use the Make It Law handout to organize your ideas. Here is the legislative agenda for the Canadian parliament. Here is the legislative agenda for the British Columbian legislature. After this, you'll create a comic strip demonstrating the process of how a Bill becomes a Law in Canada for next Monday.



D Block Criminology 12 - Today we'll look at the difference between deviance and criminal behaviour (acts that are criminal but not deviant and deviant but not criminal). What is deviant behaviour? A simple explanation of deviant behaviour could be any action that violates cultural norms (formal norms like laws - or informal norms like nose picking). This is a difficult concept because what an individual or sub culture in society defines as deviant is contextually situated (meaning what I think is deviant may be different for you; it is subjective - influenced by personal considerations).

Take smoking in public. You may think that this behaviour is acceptable because an individual has the choice to consume a cigarette and they are merely harming themselves...no problem right? You may, however, think this behaviour is unacceptable. Second-hand smoke is hurtful to others because they could be harmed by someone else's behaviour. So what is deviant in many cases is subjective. What is criminal is the codification of what a society as a whole deems as deviant. Homicide is criminal because as a society we believe that taking another life is unacceptable and deviates from the accepted cultural norm that we wish our country to be like.

So using the text and your brains you need to come up with a list of things that are deviant but not criminal and a list of things that are criminal but not deviant. After you'll need to take one act from either list and explain why it should be criminalized or why it should be decriminalized. This will help us understand the Conflict, Interactionist and Consensus views on crime.
BC Open School Intro Sociology text Chapter 7
Relationship between Deviance and Crime (Jlaw)
Cliff Notes Theories of Deviance
Tutor2U Deviance and Crime

C Block Geography 12 - Today we'll move on to geographic spheres within the Earth system (the Lithosphere, the Atmosphere, the Biosphere and the Hydrosphere). After a few notes, you'll need to look at figure 1.8 (p.13) and figure 1.9 (p.14) in the Geosystems book and try to interpret the relationships amongst the four spheres as a result of humans burning fossil fuels. If you're having trouble with this consider the carbon cycle (pages 634-5 in text) or look at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Library/CarbonCycle/. You could also look at Annenberg Media's "The Habitable Planet" Carbon Cycling website. For more help with positive and negative feedback loops take a look at Chapter 2 of Gerry Martin's on line Human Ecology textbook.
The Carbon Cycling Game