Who's idea was it to have ideologies anyways?

In high school, the social classes are divided between what's 'cool' and 'not cool'. Politics are known to be divided between democrats and republicans. Things were not always split up in these ways. This past week, my class focused on the major political ideologies of the 19th century and how they influenced social and political action. We were divided into six groups and the three ideologies (liberalism, conservatism and nationalism) were assigned amongst the groups. As it worked out, each ideology would be presented by two different groups. This lead to a "show down" in which we would vote on the group that best presented the each ideology. Three groups, including mine, used an app called chatterpix, which allows you to make a picture talk. One group made a common craft video, one group made a movie in educreations and another group performed a skit. The class then worked together to come up with a definition for each of the ideologies. Once the hard work was done we voted on who's presentation was best. My group, being the winners, got two delectable  Hershey kisses.

Our chatterpix about liberalism

My group was assigned liberalism. We used chatterpix to make a photo of Adam Smith describe what liberalism was in the form of a haiku. If you remember from my past post, Adam Smith created the theory of the Invisible Hand. He wanted everyone to contribute to the economy. By "everyone", I don't mean everyone in society. I mean everyone accepted by society, which is really only the middle class and higher. Our haiku didn't really go into an indepth explanation of liberalism, as it is very hard to give specifics when you're given a limited number of syllables. We gave the main points of liberalism such as the focus on meritocracy and the opposition to traditions. Liberalists promoted constitutional rights as opposed to a monarchy. They tried to end the traditional rights belonging to the aristocracy as well as the church. Taking power away from the church was a big change at this time in history because it had previously had an enormous effect in the everyday life of society.

Conservatism is the opposite of liberalism. One group used chatterpix to show Edmund Burke describing the main ideas from his book about conservatism. The other group used educreations to show a family enforcing the traditions of the monarchy in the household. Our class defined conservatism as a system of government that wanted to protect the monarchy and keep the old traditions. These traditions include the rights of the aristocracy and monarchy, as well as the role of the church. Conservatives view revolution as troublesome and, for lack of a better word, dumb. Change is not a priority. The last ideology is nationalism. The first group made a chatterpix displaying a group of m&ms arguing over which color m&m is best. The candies eventually unite to defeat a skittle because, despite their differences, they're all chocolate and the skittle is most definitely not. The other group performed a skit which included three students fighting over who was better, only to eventually unite, because of their shared cultural background, to defeat a foreign invader. Nationalism is the belief that people should unite through common traits in order to prevent foreign rulers from taking over. The common traits are usually along the lines of similar cultural practices, religion, languages, beliefs and traditions. These contradicting ideas still play a part in our society today.