Zimbabwe: Economic and Educational Crisis

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51803825

Zimbabwe has been facing an overall economic crisis which is causing serious issues when it comes to their children’s education. There are almost a quarter of the children not attending school due to lack of money. The high rates of dropping out can be also attributed to the high levels of pregnancy and long distances to school, but the overall absence of money in this country seems to be the most extreme issue.

 They are trying to fix this by creating new laws to promote education for all children. They have extended the necessary years of education from seven to twelve and have reinforced this by giving a fine or jail time to any parents who do not adhere. A law was also made where a child can not be expelled solely due to them becoming pregnant or their inability to pay. This would eradicate countless problems that could occur when trying to educate these children due to the need for prioritizing money.

Parents are forced to decide whether they want enough money to pay for food or to send their children to school. This concept is haunting to me when comparing all the privileges that we have in the United States. We eat too much and complain about having to go to school at all when there are children who would not even get that opportunity. It is extremely humbling when you hear about children not having the basic opportunities that are so taken for granted that you would not even think about them. As a child I would have never thought that getting an education and being well-fed was such a blessing as it really was.

Zimbabwe has worked to make the best of their situation by creating unregistered schools that reside mostly in the poorest areas to provide even the least-fortunate with some sort of education. The conditions of these schools are well below sub-par with no desks and one textbook for the teacher, yet they are a great stride towards allowing education for all.

Working through their drought and economic crisis these new laws and concepts are a great start to prioritizing education. Adding these laws should be an additive to trying to provide free basic education to all and they cannot stop there with promoting schooling. Zimbabwe needs to strive towards a better future where all children of all socioeconomic statuses can receive a proper education. These new laws that were created to encourage schooling for children are a great step in the right direction for their education, yet nothing can be fully fixed until their overall economic standing is more stable and decent.

Coronavirus: Uncovering the Injustice of the Chinese Government

It has been well-known that the Chinese government is unjust in their restriction of their citizens, yet due to this restriction the outside world does not know exactly what they must endure. After the outbreak of the Coronavirus questions began to be raised about the livelihood of the initial infected area. There has been seldom communication with the Chinese citizens about their experience with this horrid sickness, and after viewing this video it is now clear why. 

The Chinese people are not able to speak out, yet this one brave woman decided to risk her life to tell the world about the injustice of her people. She states with such passion in her voice how her government is restricting the people from speaking up by legally detaining them including even righteous lawyers. The fact that I can hear her pain and passion in her voice even in another language shows how much she was pushed before she had to take a stand. She took the dangerous initiative to tell the world of her family and her people’s unheard stories.

 She says how her government most likely conducted this illness through schemes shown by her only seeing normal citizens getting this disease. The fact that this is happening right now is atrocious because this should not be allowed to occur in our twenty-first society. How can a country and its government block their citizens from not only reaching out to tell the truth about their lives but not have medicine and care readily available for this soon-to-be epidemic?

 All these areas of people fighting for their freedom really brings more perspective to life. People in the United States are over-eating and complaining about irrelevant issues while other people across the globe are fighting for their basic rights. Their right of free speak is being greatly restricted by their government, and I completely encourage them to continue to fight against this injustice. This video affected me greatly because I not only saw how privileged we are in comparison but how much power and emotion there was in her speech. 

Her passion made this whole story real to people who were unaware of how much is taken away from the people of China. The fact that I can not understand what she is saying without the subtitles, yet I would still be able to feel her raw passion and anger for what she was talking about. The Chinese government needs to be stopped and changed, and this can happen by the rest of the world not being naïve and blind to what is happening right next to us. We are so privileged today that it seems like it is almost impossible that this is happening even in the same century that we are in, yet it is and not enough is being done about it. The injustice that the Chinese government is doing towards their citizens is immoral and inhumane to the highest extent, and we need people like this woman to sacrifice themselves to educate the rest of the world to make a change. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=51&v=LkpTJXn9_gg&feature=emb_logo

Partisan Press Era & its Correlation with Present Day

Comparing our current times to the Partisan Press Era is moderately alarming due to their obvious parallel and lack of change. During the Partisan Press Era there was high-power people or organizations that would control the newspapers, and this can still be seen to this day. It may be harder to recognize due to our ability to access countless material and resources to find a credible source, but in that Era, this was very limited. The local or state newspaper would be the only source of information that you could receive or would be relevant to you during that time so when that source is biased and focuses on advancing themselves it becomes a dangerous issue. 

Today, we can conduct research to find other sources that would vary in what they support, or you could possibly find something independent and not biased. This parallel is an extremely negative thing due to the fact that we have not advanced in the aspect of partisan news sources since this era. We should be able to read the news without worrying about who it was made to benefit. The only difference would be that it is easier to obtain different sources today, and that it may be harder to decide if a reading is biased or not. Today, we are never aware of that most news online includes or is an ad, so though there is more resources that could have different views it is harder to decide if those sources are credible. 

We make our current time more like the Partisan Era by not caring to take more time to find other credible sources that could support or disprove a biased opinion. We have countless ways to find accurate data, yet most people would not go beyond looking at their social media. Social media would most definitely be the most biased source of information which is worrisome due to how popular this has become. We spend so much time over social media having arguments when the legitimate information could be found on an independent source, yet people have become so lazy that they would much rather go off their beliefs. 

It could also be amplified by the fact that everyone thinks that their opinion is always right and feel that they do not need to back their thoughts up. Even if people did try to certify their ideas their confirmation bias would sully their research. Confirmation bias is when people only search for data that would support their idea while avoiding any conflicting ideas. People are so wrapped up in their own world that they refuse to take a second longer to look at everything we have available now. We are more stubborn today which leads to us not changing our views or being more polarized in how we view things shown by our political views being less independent or mixed.

 We have countless data-driven sources that main focus is keeping integrity and keeping their sources completely unbiased, yet we seem to never see them included in the superficial arguments that happen today. The world has an infinite amount of data that can be found today, yet through our laziness we have resorted back to being relatable to the Partisan Press Era.

Nellie Bly: Trailblazer for Women Journalism

Nellie Bly was a trailblazer for women journalism who was born in 1864 under the name Elizabeth Jane Cochran. She began her journalism career at the age of 18 when she made a controversial response to an editorial piece from the Pittsburgh Dispatch. This piece focused on the ideas that women were meant for domestic duties, and when she submitted this powerful response, she was offered a position at the Pittsburgh Dispatch.

At this point she adapted her pen name of Nellie Bly where she worked to point out the inequality of the patriarchal rule. At the Dispatch she began the start of her career as an investigative reporter where she exposed inequalities and wrongful doings including her report on a sweatshop. There she went undercover as a sweatshop worker where she discovered the poor working conditions faced by those women workers.

After working at the Pittsburgh Dispatch, she felt that her career was being limited to certain topics, so she went to work at the New York World during 1887. This publication worked to rid yellow journalism which focused on flashy headlines and crude exaggerations. During this time here she experienced and wrote one of her most famous pieces involving the cruelty of insane asylums. She committed herself to the infamous Blackwell’s Island where she pretended to be a patient there for ten days. After finishing this mentally scarring experience she made the inhabitable conditions that these women lived in available to the public. The public was abhorred by the neglect and physical abuse that was happening to these innocent mentally unstable women. This expose and her book not only brought to light the hidden horrors of mental institutions, but actually pushed for an investigation that lead to significant changes. Her work lead to larger funds for their care, more physician appointments and supervision, and more regulations to prevent overcrowding and safety hazards. Nellie Bly not only pushed away from the normative and restricting female topics but made significant impacts on the world around her.

Following her Asylum expose she continued to uncover improper treatment found in places such as New York factories or jails. She also found and exposed corruption in the state legislature and interviewed influential people such as Emma Goldman and Susan B. Anthony.   

During the time of 1889 she attempted to beat the imaginary record from the novel Around the World in Eighty Days. She managed to complete this task in less than seventy-three days which set an actual real-world record.

Bly married and retired from journalism until her husband passed away where she was left his manufacturing company. While running the Iron Clad Manufacturing Co. she patented the first practical steel oil drum which would be adapted to our present-day drums. She worked to enhance work environments by including perks and benefits that were not common during this time such as gyms and healthcare. Unfortunately, her generosity costed her too much so she unretired from journalism where she began working for the New York Evening Journal. During the 1920’s she reported on various important events such as the women’s suffrage movement.

Nellie Bly was an extremely influential journalist and one of the most important trailblazers for women during this time. She worked to prove that women are not limited to feminine-based topics and ideas and pushed and improved the equality and treatment of women. Nellie Bly achieved such a large range of achievements during her life in a patriarchal ruled world which showed that with power and dedication anything is possible.     

http://nellieblyleadershipandlegacy.weebly.com/journalism.html