Summary of Article

Aaron Rucinski
1/18/10
Socratic Seminar
Our Socratic seminar was a great way to see everyone’s views on the environment. It allowed us to see how people look at the environment and how things are today. It was enlightening to see that everyone believes something needs to change whether it is us or the giant corporations so we can all be on the same page to protect our earth. It was really different to hear that the earth will be here way after we are gone and no matter what we do we can never destroy the earth, we can only hurt it and thus hurting ourselves. This path we are going on full of destruction and pollution is so small to the earth but could be an essential factor in the survival of the human race. The ideas that were brought up about community farms, food limitations and stricter food laws were all great ideas just hard to implement during these tough economic times and how cheap unhealthy food is ingrained into our economy and as I heard someone say during the seminar, “Our gluttonous way of life.”
Personally I feel we strayed way off of the article, we used it as a stepping stone to go on to talk about our own feelings using that as a example of things to change and what is needed to be done for the world to progress. It allowed us to see both the pros and the cons to mass produced food and how it may be good for the large scale farmers, the smaller scale farmers are hurt was well as all the people who eat all the pesticides and other hazardous materials every day. These are all issues that need to be raised and a question that was asked was how much would prices go up if we were to change our food production methods, who could fast food restaurants sell the food for the low prices at they are if they are having to pay for their food at such a higher price. These are all questions that were asked that are very hard to answer. Another big thing is getting people to change their way of eating, who’s to say that they never will until they are forced to whether it be diabetes or a new law, what will need to happen to cause the American public to eat healthy and maintain themselves better. In the end we were left with what the government should control and what they are able to control. Do they really have the right to control what people eat? Can they decide where you go for dinner? Those are not things the government can choose for you that is what a person can choose, whether it is to go to a Mcdonalds or to the farmers market to pick up some freshly grown fruit. These are personal issues that may need to be stressed more. In America it is accepted to be fat or obese, people do not look down on you because in most cases, people are just the same weight as you. We are in a country that the average weight of a person is growing every single year, where is it going to stop. Taking from the article, should we go back to our old way of farming or to go and make this public farming areas so people can eat all the vegetables they need and have all the fresh fruit they want or will that be an unachievable goal. In the end I really liked the Socratic seminar and would love to do more of them. I feel I learned a lot and it allowed everyone to voice their opinions and see what everyone else thought. I feel we need to work on letting everyone participating and not 2 people talking but that will be fixed with time.