Friday, April 23. 2010

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

B - Social Studies 10 - Today I'd like you hand in your completed topographic study of Lulu Island - Richmond B.C. After you're finished this, we will begin a quick two week unit on Aboriginal peoples and the expansion west leading to early contact and trade. Today you will get into groups of four to work on a collaborative poster assignment. Each group member will be responsible for one First Nations group (Pacific Northwest, Plains, Plateau/Interior, and subarctic/arctic) and you will need to research:

1. landscape & location
   
2. Climate
3. Food and Resources
4. Adaptions to location

Once you've finished the work on each separate group you will place your information on a large poster sheet with a map of Canada in the middle showing where those groupings of First Nations peoples lived.

A - Earth & Space Science 11 - Today, you are in the library for your fifth day to work on your major semester long project. You can find the assignment on the school computers in K:\Mr. A. Young\Earth and Space Science 11\Earth and Space Science Major Project.pdf. Remember that your First Milestone is April 30th and on that day you will need to submit five completed pages (of which I will choose one to grade). Six topics that you could work on are: minerals, rocks, geologic resources, plate tectonics, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Remember too that these topics need to be related to class discussions or subjects covered in the course. April 30th is next Friday so please make sure that you're on top of this assignment!

C - Criminology 12 - Today we'll work on what we didn't get to on Wednesday. I will be giving you a few notes on: past criminological theory; crime and deviance; where our law comes from; and what a crime is and the goals of criminal law.

Then, 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.