Tuesday, September 13. 2016

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

C & B Blocks Social Studies 11 - Today we'll continue with our look at the federal and provincial government structure in Canada. Since we didn't get to it yesterday, we'll begin looking at the "Division of Powers". I have a chart for you to fill in for this and then I'll have you work on another activity connected to this...

You've been hired to be a member of Premier Christy Clark's British Columbia negotiating team and are going to Ottawa in order to meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet. Your job is to convince the Federal government to transfer two areas of control to the Provincial government of British Columbia (and maybe the other provinces too). Don't forget the Federal Government looks after things like national defense, foreign policy, criminal law, aboriginal affairs, most natural resources and taxation. So choose two that you think should be transferred to the provinces and then come up with an argument for each. You should have two to three main points for each and then write a speech outlining your request and the reasons why the Federal government should give those powers to the provinces (Dear Mr. Prime Minister...)
FMI check out: Our Country, Our Parliament The Division of Powers

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

A Block Geography 12 - We'll look at systems, feedback, equilibrium, and thresholds.You'll have four questions to work on tonight (What is a System; Define and give examples of Open and Closed Systems; Explain with examples what Positive and Negative Feedback is; and Explain in terms of systems what Dynamic Equilibrium, Thresholds, and Metastable Equilibrium are). After, 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 Earth Observatory Carbon Cycle from NASA. 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