Tuesday, April 26. 2016

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

C Block Law 12 - Today with Mr. Elliott...we will take the first half hour of class to do questions 1-5 on p.244 of the textbook. Make note of any questions you have and we will debrief the sections (obscenity, child pornography, terrorism and criminal harassment) once the questions are done. Following that we will wrap up our study of criminal code offences with a look at street racing and other driving offences.

D Block Social Studies 10 - Today we'll take a look at the Metis, Louis Riel, William McDougall, Thomas Scott, the Metis Bill of Rights and the Red River Resistance of 1869-1870. I'll show you three Canada: A People's History episodes on the Resistance; "If We are Rebels"; "War is Upon Us"; and "A Single Act of Severity"...from the CBC site:

Confederation is barely accomplished when the new dominion must face an enormous challenge: extending its reach into the vast prairies and beyond, to the Pacific Ocean. But Canada blunders catastrophically in seeking to take over the west without the consent of its inhabitants, especially the Métis of Red River and their leader, the charismatic, troubled Louis Riel. The resistance of 1869-70 lays the groundwork for Manitoba to join Canada, but it also sets the stage for decades of conflict over the rights of French and English, Catholic and Protestant in the new territories.

I have five questions you need to answer:

1. Who were the National Committee of the Metis and what were their goals?
2. Who was William McDougall and what conflict did he get involved in at the Red River?
3. What is a "provisional government" and why did Riel establish one?
4. What was the Metis Bill of Rights (list out the 5 points the text addresses). Was this Bill reasonable? Why or why not?
5. What was the Thomas Scott affair? How did it affect both the Metis and the the settlers in the Red River? How did the Canadian government respond?  

A 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

B Block Social Studies 10 - Today with Mr. Elliott...we will discover the dramatic events of the Northwest Rebellion. We will finish the worksheet we started yesterday and watch some more of Canada a Peoples History. Remember -tomorrow is the quiz so we will take a few minutes at the end of class to do a mini review.