Alex's Western Civilization Blog

Our cyber assignment for today is to write a reflection on the thoughts that Mr. Schick posted on his blog. The Coronavirus has completely changed everyone's current lifestyles and routines making it difficult for a lot of people to adjust to the change. It sucks but there isn't anything anyone can do about it because the situation is out of our control. The best thing that we can do is try to make the best out of the situation and also put effort into our school. Mr. Schick mentioned how students are tempted to look up an answer or ask a friend, which doesn't help you understand what you are learning. I can relate to this because sometimes some things are really hard or I don't feel like doing them so I want to give up, but that isn't helpful to me because I'm not learning anything and it'll just push me further behind. He also mentions how we should "rise to the occasion,  and actually strengthen our resolve to be good people who do excellent work.&

Our cyber assignment today is to compare the  plague that hit Athens during the Peloponnesian War with COVID-19. In 430 BC while Athens was under the Spartan's siege, they were struck with a deadly plague. The plague ended up infecting 75,000 - 100,000 people over a span of three years, and about 25% of the population died. The plague was brought to Athens from a cargo ship. This is similar to the Coronavirus because like the plague in Athens, it's spreading like wildfire. There are currently over 500,000 cases in the world and there are over 20,000 deaths. The difference between the two is that Corona is a pandemic and the Athen's plague only affected Athens because they were not allowed to leave the city walls of Athens to protect themselves from the Spartans. We also have an advantage over the Athenians because we have a lot more knowledge about hygiene and a lot more advanced technology. We haven't been able to find a cure, but we have better safety precautions to

Our cyber assignment today is to write brief biographies on Phillip II, Alexander the Great, and Darius III, and make not about their connections to each other. Phillip II or "Philip of Macedon" was the 18th king of Macedonia. During his rule, he restored internal peace to his country. By 339 BC, King Philip II had gained domination over Greece by military and diplomatic means. He laid the foundations for expansion for his son, Alexander the Great. He was assassinated in July, the assassination might have been initiated by Darius III. Alexander the Great was born in Pella which is Macedonia, Ancient Greece Kingdom. His leadership reigned from 336 - 323 BC. During his rule, he united the Greek city-states and led the Corinthian League. Alexander the Great also became the king of Persia, Babylon, and Asia, and created Macedonian colonies in those places. He died of malaria in Babylonia while considering the conquests of Carthage and Rome. Alexander defeated Darius III's

Our cyber assignment today is to do some research on the relationship between Alexander the Great and his horse Bucephalus, then write about our research.  The story of their relationship begins when Alexander's father, King Phillip II, was offered a horse for a gigantic amount of money. The horse that the man presented to King Phillip II was untamed and he did not want to buy it. Alexander on the other hand really liked the horse and begged his father to get the horse and promised to tame it. Alexander ended up surprising everyone in the town by taming the horse and naming it Bucephalus. For the next two decades, Alexander was the only one who could ride Bucephalus. They went through great battles together and built Alexander's great empire. In 326 BC during Alexander's last battle, Bucephalus dies of battle wounds. Alexander ended up founding the town of Bucephala in honor of his great companion.

Our cyber assignment today is to write about our thoughts on cyber school so far, So far I think that cyber school has been a little confusing and overwhelming because it's hard sometimes to know what some of my teachers are asking me to do, so I don't really understand my assignments. It's also hard for me to organize all of my documents and making sure I'm submitting them to the right teacher. Other than those two things, I think that my teachers have been giving me reasonable amounts of work to complete each day. My teachers also have been helpful in answering my questions about their assignments, but it's still sometimes confusing. Another thing that can be confusing is that all of the teachers have different ways they want us to submit things and I'll get confused forget which way they want me to submit the assignments. I think it's a confusing thing for everyone and we are all still adjusting to online learning, so hopefully, it'll get easier as

Our cyber assignment for today is to write about why we think Socrates and Sophists like Protagoras started questioning traditional beliefs. I think the thing that sparked all of the questioning and philosophers in Greek was when Socrates stood up in front of the assembly on the ship home, stating his belief that the generals shouldn't be put to death for leaving behind the oversea soldiers. No one really listened to Socrates, but this was one of the first times that someone was trying to contradict/question the public's ideas/Greek tradition. Another thing that might have sparked the philosophers to question traditional beliefs was after the war when the Athenians started to lose hope in their democratic government and started questioning things. The Sophist philosophers questioned people's unexamined beliefs and ideas about justice and other traditional values. Protagoras was a famous Sophist known for questioning the Greek Gods. I think that he might've questioned

Our cyber assignment today is to watch part of the "Crucible of Civilization" episode 3 and analyze the video in a paragraph. The video starts with the Spartans invading Athenian property and burning all of their farmland. All of this took place outside of the city walls, so all of the Athenians stayed behind the city walls and watched to Spartans destroy their land. Pericles wanted the Athenians to stick to his plan and stay behind the walls not fighting back. A year into the war, one of the cargo ships brought a plague to Athens. The plague quickly spread like wildfire, it became so deadly that people stooped caring about religion and the law. People also stopped being good due to their mindset of "why be good if the good and bad die just as easily." The plague ended up killing over 1/3 of the Athenian population. The plague then struck Pericles. Plutarch, Pericles' biographer, wrote about the suffering he went through while he was sick. Six months later, in

Our first cyber school assignment is to read pages 134-139 in the textbook and answer Mr. Schick's question in paragraph format: Pericles was a wise Athenian ruler who held onto support from the citizens for 32 years. He helped Athens thrive from 461-429 BC (aka the Age of Pericles). Pericles had three main goals for Athens: 1) strengthen the Athenian democracy 2) hold and strengthen the empire 3) glorify Athens. Direct democracy is a type of government where citizens rule directly and not through representatives. This was one of the greatest attributes of Periclean Athens. Athens was one of the only-city sates that had a direct democracy. After the Persian defeat, Athens formed the Delian League. The Delian league was an alliance of Greek city-states that would be used to protect each other from Persian rule and other possible attacks. Thanks to Pericles, Athens had the strongest navy in the empire, which helped them strengthen their safety. Some of the cities in Peloponnesus, S

Today in class prepared for cyber school. Since we will not be in school for 2+ weeks, we are having cyber school so Mr. Schick told us what we will need to do for his class while we are away. We will get assignments every day we are scheduled for a class, and we will write about assignments in our blog and post them. Each assignment will be due by 11:59 pm of that day. We took pictures of pages in our textbooks because some of our assignments will be from the book where we will have to answer questions from the reading. Mr. Schick said that'll be posting our assignments on veracross since that's what all of our teachers are doing, so it'll be easier. After he finished explaining what we'll be doing for cyber school, Mr. Schick answered more of our questions about coronavirus. After that, the class was over.

Today in class we talked about the coronavirus. The first thing we did was switch our seats, then Mr. Schick properly told us how to wash our hands because he saw on the news that they were showing how to wash your hands incorrectly. The right way to do it is to wash your hands thoroughly with soap while your hands are not under the water, then rinse your hands. After you wash your hands, you shouldn't grab the door handle because you'll get more germs, instead, you should open it with a paper towel. During class, Mr. Schick couldn't tell us what would happen with school because they haven't had their meeting yet. He told us that he thinks that we will be getting out soon because of the NBA canceling, HCC closing, and a bunch of other colleges are closing. We asked a bunch of questions about the coronavirus and Mr. Schick answered them. He told us about his Facebook post about the coronavirus that got 800+ shares. He told us that we should always use hand sanitizer befo

Today in class we continued watching the Crucible of Civilization video. Mr. Schick was out today, so we had a sub and watched the rest of the video on the projector. The video pretty much-summed everything that we learned up, so I took notes on the important events that we already knew to just make sure I remember them. The notes I took were: - the vase was Athens first really good artistic creation - in 527 BC Pisistratus died and Hippias took over - in 514 BC Hippias' brother was murdered which made him vengeful and had a very harsh rule - Cleisthenes decided to overthrow Hippias for himself and his family - during 510 BC, Cleisthenes was one of the most powerful citizens in Athens - the Olympics were the highlights to any visitor and they began in 776 BC - the Olympics gave the Greeks a chance to show their heroism - the Greek lifestyle was to "Seize power however and whenever you can" - Isagorus was an Athenian aristocrat who gained power by turning outside

Today in class we started to watch a video about Ancient Greece called "Crucible of Civilization". Since we had finished all of the notes in the PowerPoint and read all of the important parts in the textbook, we watched a documentary that sums up a lot of things that we just learned. While watching the video, we paused it during the important information and took notes, some of the notes I took were... - 508 BC --> first revolution known to man - 570 BC --> Cleisthenes was born - Herodotus --> first great Greek historian - Aristocrats were members of the ruling class - Acropolis: a big outcropping of rock in the center of Athens - life expectancy was about 15 years in Athens - helots --> slaves forced into labor - The heroic ideal is what drove everyone; you should try to be the greatest person you could possibly be - Pisistratus: gained power from Athena; reduced taxes and provided free loans We watched about half of the video, and then we had about

Today in class we had a pop quiz on Ancient Greece and finished the notes for Ancient Greece part two. The pop quiz was 10 questions mainly about the Greek gods and philosophers. I got 8 out of the 10 questions right. The two I got wrong were the one about the god of music and wisdom, I said Artemedis instead of Apollo, and I got the question about the Persian war wrong, I said that they didn't take over Greece in Ionia, but the answer was is that they didn't defeat the Greeks in certain battle. After that, we took notes about Aristotle on the last two pages of the PowerPoint. The notes that I took were: - Aristotle   --> student of Plato   at the academy; helped foster the idea of Athens as an intellectual destination; his school, the Lyceum, focused on cooperative research, building on knowledge gathered from all over the world. - Did Aristotle invent the internet?: not exactly, but he did dream of having the sum of mankind's knowledge easily accessed in one locati

Today in class we read and took notes about some of the Greek philosophers. Some of the notes I took were: - Philosophers:  "lovers of wisdom" - based their philosophy on these two assumptions: (1) the universe (land sky and sea) is put together in an orderly way, and subjected to absolute and unchanging laws and (2) people can understand these laws through logic and reason. - Sophist: a  group of philosophers that questioned people's unexamined beliefs and ideas about justice and other traditional values - Protagoras --> one of the most famous sophists; he questioned the existence of the traditional Greek gods - Socrates believed that absolute standards did exist for truth and justice; he looked to science and logic for explanations of how the world worked - the Socratic method fostered critical thinking; "the unexamined life isn't worth living" - Socrates was charged with two serious crimes: impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens; he didn&

Today in class we took notes on part two of our Ancient Greece unit. The notes that I took were: - Greeks, especially the Spartans, were certainly warlike people - Spartans were known for their tough, ruthless infantry - infantry: soldiers who fought on land - The boys in Sparta trained from the time they were seven - Athens had a great infantry too, but nothing could compare with their navy - their most effective weapon was the trireme - trireme:  the fastest ship in the world at the time; it rowed up to 170 men on three levels; could be used as a battering ram, and it was agile and fast - phalanx: close-rank, dense grouping of warriors; armed with long spears and interlocking shields; soldiers would advance slowly toward the enemy until they broke through their ranks - Persian Wars: Greece vs Persian Empire; on the map, Greece appears to be little and significant and the Persian Empire appears to be huge and dominant; the Persians have a huge army and nearly unlimited resou

Today in class we went over ou Greece part one tests and started to take notes on part two of the Greece unit. I got a 90 on the test, and I only got four questions wrong. The first question I got wrong was about who invaded Mycenae burning palace after palace, I said the Dorians, but the correct answer was the "sea people" I was confused during the test because I thought that they were the same thing, but Mr. Schick confirmed in class today that they are different. The next question I got wrong was "which of the following was not necessary to be a citizen of Athens?" I said that you didn't have to be an adult, but the correct answer was that you didn't have to be born in Greece. Mr. Schick told us that that was somewhat a trick question and probably the hardest on the test because Athens is in Greece, so you did have to be born in Greece, but it had to be specifically in Athens. The next question I got wrong was if you stole a head of cabbage in 621 BCE, wh