Dear First Year Students

I hope you are glad to have been accepted at Sandvika High School. This will be, I promise you, three fantastic years. You will learn a lot, meet new and fantastic people. This is the time you will create the friendships that will last. This is the time you will grow up and learn who you really are, and the perfect place to do it, is here.

Nevertheless, there are some things you need to know. As you probably are aware of, this school is the flagship in use of technology. We have personal computers, which of course is extremely practical. Taking notes and collecting all your work at one place makes it easier than having ten different note books.

Since we use computers all the time, it can be hard to focus. There are a lot of temptations out there which seem more fun. But this will actually do you wrong. Participating in class will help you to achieve great grades. This comes from a student who has achieved great grades in the subjects she has participated in, but almost failed in the ones she only had her nose into the screen. Be clever and use the remedies wisely. This is a great advice; just you guys follow it and do your best.

Martin Luther King Jr.

As my final assignment I wrote about Martin Luther King Jr. He was a freedom fighter and bettered the Afro Americans’ situation. For his work he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 as the first Afro American. King Jr’s career started in 1955. In Montgomery Rosa Parks, as we know, refused to give up her seat to a white man. Montgomery was a Southern State where Afro Americans struggled and segregation was normal. Because of this, Parks’ action got an enormous response, not just there, but all over America. People got aware of the Afro Americans’ situation. King Jr took advantage of this and used it for the better. Together with his companions they acted quickly and planned a Bus Boycott in 1955 to mark their position. The boycott was effective. It lasted for 381 days and the Supreme Court decided to prohibit segregation at the buses in Montgomery. In 1963 he marched to Washington together with 250 000 freedom fighters, where he held the speech “I Have a Dream”. He talked about equal treatment at work, protection against brutal behavior from the police and total elimination of segregation. An outcome of the protests and his speech was the passage of The Civil Right Acts, as a statutory law in 1964.

Receiving the Peace Prize pursued him to continue the battle. In 1965 he led a protest march from Selma to Montgomery together with other African Americans. They wanted political equality. According to the law they were allowed to vote, but doing it, was extremely difficult. By casting their vote they risked being victims of racial hatred. , King Jr attracted several protesters. As he reached Montgomery, 25 000 had joined him. In Montgomery King Jr delivered yet another magnificent speech, “How Long, Not Long”. That they got there was a picture of African-Americans winning the battle. King Jr once again managed to win the battle with no violence. All of this led to the Voting Rights Act, signed in 1965. Political equality was now induced.

Martin Luther King Jr. is today the good example of a freedom fighter. He epitomized what it was being a great leader. He will always be remembered for his courage and vitality. He made the living standard of sub-standard Afro American better and they no longer had to worry about segregation. He dedicated his life to fight for the Afro Americans’ rights, and is therefore extremely important for them and the history. He will always be remembered.

Afro American History

1619: First slave ships to Jamestown

1808: Slaves outlawed , 10-15 million kidnapped and forced to work in North-America in English colonies. Slavery died out in the north- the industrial part of the country

Grew importance in the Southern states- cotton farms, tobacco farms etc who needed cheap labour.

An ideology of racism developed to justify exploitation, saying that blacks were biologically inferior to all whites. They were pore primitive, less intelligent, had a lower moral, no civilization. They were forbidden to speak their native language, given new names, prohibited to read/write, families were split up and they were treated like animals. They were denied any kind of humanity.

Resistance and Civil War:

Yet the treatment didn't crush all oppositions. Slaves revolted and ran away. Slavery was accepted in the Constitution of 1787, but an idealistic movement developed in the North, they wanted to abolish slavery- Abolitionism. Abolitionists wanted to free them, together with the slaves the Underground Railway, an illegal escape route to the North and Canada was created.

The two regions developed differently. Slavery was ended in the North, but grew in the South. In 1861 the Civil War broke out between the two parts, not fought to free the slaves but to preserve the Union after Southern states left it. They formed the Confederate States of America. An odd thing was that many Northerners believed in the humanity of the blacks, but not in equality. The Freedmen's Bureau was therefore established in 1865 to guide the newly freed slaves back to the normal life as a free civilian. This was to better the situation of blacks. The period of 1865-1877 is known as the "Reconstruction", northern troops occupied the South.

Jim Crow:

In 1877 troops were withdrawn from the Southern states. They had tried to reform the South but wasn't able to do it. Civil rights the slaves gained during the Reconstruction was handed back to local authorities. Black Codes or Jim Crow laws were passed: they could not vote, marry whites or mix with whites, attend the same schools, buy or rent farmlands. This made blacks inferior to the whites. Different rules made it hard for the blacks to vote, such as taxes and they had to live at one place for two years. The Ku Klux Klan watched them. But they protested the segregation. They appealed a unconstitutional protest, but the Supreme Court didn't listen. Slavery had been abolished but they had to accept to live in a second class citizenship.

A dream deferred:

Segregation left the blacks two choices: try to make the best out of it or to change the situation itself. Booker T. Washington: former slave, wanted the slaves to focus on being good citizens, hard work- not protest=the road to equality, he formed the Tuskegee Institute.

W.E.B. Du Bois, a black Harvard professor found equality impossible. Ceaseless agitation from the blacks was the only thing to do. He founded the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People in 1909. Whites rioted black successful business districts. Blacks protested, but the conditions remained grim.

When IWW broke out many blacks got jobs in the war industries. They then created black communities, culture without interference. Harlem in New York became their centre, there hopes for equality raised. Blacks also created jazz music. But the Great Depression made it hard for them. They had to live in ghetto homes in the North, were last hired and first fired. The IIWW they had to fight the Nazis. But they were inspired to fight the segregation in the South.

Fighting for black rights:

Blacks fought in the IIWW and in 1948 segregation in the armed forces ended. In 1954 the Supreme Court decided to declare the "separate and equal" as unconstitutional. A campaign was required to force the South to end the segregation. During the 1950s and early 1960s the Civil Rights Movement mobilized. Blacks and whites protested peacefully with non-violent actions. Freedom Riders went to de-segregate restaurants, swimming pools and public facilities. In 1963 250000 protested in the March on Washington, where Luther King Jr. delivered his famous speech "I have a dream". Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, in 1964 the Voting Rights Act passed. It didn't tough, end racism or economic equality.

Black Power:

Even though blacks had had their civil rights in the North, they were poor and exploited. They rejected the non-violent approach from King, which turned out in horrible riots. Black Pride was now the importance, not seeking integration with the whites. People who supported violent riots: Malcom X, Stockley Carmichael, Huey Newton and Angela Davis. The Black Panthers defended black communities with violence if they had to. By the 1960s things worsened. The political coalition that had worked hard for the civil rights in the Congress, but they broke down. The non-violent movement ended when Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Now they had to use the rights they had already achieved to improve the condition.

Parliaments in Britain

The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy, that is to say it has a monarch (a king or a queen) as its Head of State. Nevertheless, the Monarch has very little power and reigns with the support of Parliament. Parliament consists of two chambers known as the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
The Parliament
The Parliament (Congress in the USA and Stortinget in Norway) is made up by the House of Commons-the Commons or the Lower House, and The House of Lords- the Lords or the Upper House.
The House of Commons are the legislative ones. They have most of the power in the Parliament, where the House of Lords have lost their power.

The Lower House is therefore the ones to:
- Make laws
- Decide the level of public spending and of taxes
- Watchdog over the government
- A recruiting office for the top jobs in government
- Can give different groups in Britain a voice
- Can or cannot give its assent to the government, can defeat a government and force it to resign.
The Lower House or the House of Commons consists of 659 members, one from each constituency and they are members of the party that won in the constituency. They are called MPs- Member of Parliament. The members of the Parliament represent the country- it’s not the same to be a member of the Parliament- being an MP, as being a member of the Government-because the one party with most seats in the Parliament rules the country.

The House of Lords
The House of Lords is the Upper House or Second Chamber. Today they don’t have the power they had before.

The Government
There are about 100 members of the Government. The Prime Minister also has a Cabinet- a group of twenty ministers. They are his closest and often called the Secretary of State

The Prime Minister
The leader of the party that gets most seats in the House of Commons is elected as Prime Minister.

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is a part of Great Britain together with England and Wales.
We all know that there has been an ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland. Here is an explanation of why the conflict even occurred. It was between the Nationalists (Roman Catholics) and the Unionists (The Protestants). The Nationalists wanted to be a part of Ireland and politically united and they felt like Irishmen. The Unionists, who felt like Brits, wanted to continue being a part of Britain. The conflict is not based on religion but ethnic, resources and historical reasons. It is about power, where religion is used as a sorting key. The two groups of people felt so different, even though they lived at the same area. Even though the conflict ended years ago there are still some disagreements. A couple of months ago IRA splinters bombed and killed two British soldiers. Why a new conflict now?
• The compensation given to both sides in the conflict (I have written about this earlier), all that loss someone. That brought a lot of problems.
• Fight for leadership, the new generation fights to show they can lead.
• Change of government from a coalition to an ordinate one.
• They are basically mad!

OneNote

I have now used OneNote for a couple of months and find the program quite helpful. It is a program made by Windows to help organize, and it sure has helped me to systemize my work. I especially like the Print Screen function, where you can take a picture of a web site. It also gives you the time and date of the virtual print. You can also record for example lectures and put them into OneNote. If you have forgotten where you wrote about a specific thing you can just search for a word or a phrase, and it will find the document. OneNote has a lot of smart applications and I truly recommend it, and will continue using the program in the future.

Is plastic surgery the only option!?

Blonde (a story by Katherine Min)

Blonde is a story about wanting to be someone else than you actually are. You feel that everything about you is wrong, the hair, the nose, the height- the list is endless. The fact is that we always want what we cannot have. This makes us the victim of wanting to be a different person. The others, like the blonde girl in the story Lisa Ogleby or Marylin Monroe, are perfect. They have everything, the right looks and the right moves. As humans we struggle to imitate those we find perfect. The people we imitate don’t have to be tall and blonde; maybe their movements and ways of acting are enough to regard them as perfect. As the girl in the story says: “I studied her movements, her laughter like low sneezing, the way her part was etched down the middle, revealing a reddish scalp, “Studying to be blond,” I called it to myself. “

We also tend to believe we are someone else, to feel better. To make up stories f. ex about our background, will be the same as dreaming to be a different person, a person we find more interesting , prettier, more perfect and successful. Doing so will only make us feel worse about ourselves. At one point everyone will think negative thoughts about themselves; it’s a natural part of being a human. If they are sp unsatisfied they could either work on their self esteem or (take a plastic surgery!?), just make the best out of it- not focusing at the negative sides.