Antisemitism in Canada - Education

So I've finally finished all my research about my Antisemitism in Canada project, and it's finally time to put it all together. What I intend to do is create the Facebook account of a Jewish person living during the 30s and WW2 in Canada. I want it to be as accurate and representative of the Jewish population as possible. I just started making the account and I've already run into my first problem: Education Facebook asked me what high-school and university I graduated from. This was something I had not looked into before. So high-school was not a problem because I decided to assume that this person had immigrated from Europe as did many others, and would therefore have undergone high-school education before coming to Canada. University was more of a problem. I found out that antisemitism extended even as far as University enrollment. Jew were not banned from university; however, it was difficult for them to get into some universities because the universities capped the number of Jewish students allowed. So after doing some research, I found out that Queen's was the least strict on the quotas, and allowed the most Jews in, including Jews escaping Germany during the 30s. So that's why I have now decided to put Queen's University as education. "Universities and Antisemitism." Wikipedia. N.p., 1 Nov. 2012. Web. 01 Dec. 2012. . Millar, Anne. "Education During the Second World War." Wartime Canada (200?): N. pag. Web. 01 Dec. 2012. .

Palestine - Israel Situation

With the recent news of the U.N. election, it seems to me that the situation needs to be cleared up a little bit. On the one side you have all the countries that were in support of making Palestine a non-member state that could monitor U.N. proceedings. On the other side, were several countries including U.S., Canada, and most importantly Israel.
So the obvious question arises:
What's the deal between Israel and Palestine?
Personally, I think this video is a pretty good explanation of the situation.



Seems silly, but it's the truth. Now that you've seen this you should turn a critical eye towards any media you've seen related to Palestine and Israel. Then find out the facts of what actually happened in that event. Take a look at media from both sides of the story. You'll probably notice that it becomes quite similar to this video.
What would you do in this kind of situation, defend yourself or allow yourself to be bullied?
If you can answer this question easily, then you should probably be a president or leader of some sort.
Otherwise, you're just another mundane individual. Sorry.

Learning from the Past - Brainwashing

Learning from the Past - Brainwashing

While we were learning about World War II an obvious question came up when we learned of Hitler's atrocities, why would people follow him. We watched a movie entitled the Wave to answer this.

In the movie, an experiment is conducted in America where a history teacher attempts to build a Hitler-like following from his students. The students go along with it, and quickly give up their individualism in order to join the teacher's movement which is called "the Wave". This continues to escalate until members start threatening nob-members.

What the point of the movie is, is to show how easy it is to just give in to preachings of others. Especially if you get brainwashed from a young age.

http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/effectiveorganization.aspx

What's interesting is that this still happens today.

Kids are brainwashed to say, do, even believe certain things. They are brainwashed to such a degree that they lose all individuality. They are made into an army that does anything they are commanded to do, because they were brainwashed from a young age. The techniques used on kids today, mimic those used by Hitler to brainwash the Hitler Youth into believing Nazi ideology, hating Jews, and being able to even go as far as killing for the Fuhrer.

How could this happen you say?

Who could possibly do this?

Why has nobody stopped this?

The kids I'm talking about can be seen in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACyLTsH4ac

This is brainwashing at its best. Even at their age the kids are already brainwashed and it will only get worse as they age if they keep being exposed to this brainwashing.

The sad truth is that the lesson, apparently, that we have learned from the war and Hitler,  is not that we shouldn't brainwash people because this can allow them to commit atrocities, but rather we learned how to more effectively brainwash people, especially children.

Hopefully, future generations will be able to see this as wrong. Meanwhile, let's just hope this 'army' won't follow in the Hitler Youth's footsteps.

Learning from the War

Learning from the War

Now that we're done studying WW1, I have a couple thoughts.

This is the first one:

So what's the point of learning all this?

I personally think there's two very important reasons:

The first is so that we don't make fools out of ourselves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJuNgBkloFE

To become part of the "educated adult Canadian club" we have to know Canadian history. 

In fact, we at least have to know some history, unlike the people in the video.

The second reason is to learn from the past.

At the end of World War 1, the Treaty of Versailles was signed.

It held Germany as the sole party responsible for the war.

It also forced Germany to pay massive reparations and give up resource rich lands.

What did this lead to?

The rise of Hitler and World War 2.

Learning about WW1 and what happened afterwards, teaches us important lessons about the economy, and politics. It can help us prepare for future situations like those in the past.

My next post will be about Hitler and brainwashing. Another main pint will be not learning from the past.

History can teach us alot, but the question remains are we learning to learn?