Week 16: Final Thoughts

I will be honest.  I signed up for this course as a prerequisite for a nursing program.  At first, I questioned why I would need to take such a class to go into nursing.  I am always interested in learning about new people and places but I could not see the connection between sociology and the practice of medicine.  However, after taking this course I now see how important knowing about societies is.  Working in medicine, you come across people from all types of backgrounds.  Especially in an area as diverse as Northern Virginia, you need to appreciate where people come from.  People have different cultures, religions, and customs.  Many Middle Eastern women cannot be touched by a male doctor and many minorities from poor neighborhoods cannot afford health insurance.  Through this course I have gained a better understanding about the different places that people come from.  Globalization will only continue to put us all on paths that intersect and cross with others from around the world.  It is important to keep in mind how everything interacts so you can understand why things happen the way they do.  This course is not just helpful for medicine, but all fields.  If more people took this course I think that we could help many understand and appreciate all societies.  Maybe we could end a few stereotypes or prejudices.  I am glad I got to take this course, even though I may have just barely scratched the surface of all the complexities that make up societies.  I think that learning about sociology will make me a better nurse and a better person.

Week 16: Shift Happens

I think this video shows that the world is in for some major changes. However, I don't like the scare tactics.  China and India may be growing at a larger rate than  America but that means more competition for goods and probably a bigger gap among the wealthy and the poor.  With increased population comes a lot more work to take care of those people.  It is hard to make predictions for 50 years down the road because we do not know if current trends will continue.  Who can say that a computer will actually be able to compute more than the human race?  Who can say we would actually let something like that happen?  There are plenty of videos out there that will throw numbers and predictions at you but that is not important to me.  I want to know what changes we can make to improve life.  There is clearly a problem with education.  Our textbook made it clear that American children are constantly outperformed on math and reading tests.  If we are expecting to keep up with the growing world of technology then we need to figure out a solution.  If Nintendo can spend lots of money on research for development then so can the American government.  If everyone would get their minds away from making money we could start to make a real difference in the quality of life. 

We cannot deny that the world is going to continue to grow and we are all going to continue to interact with each other.  We need to start teaching about globalization and how that will affect us as we grow up.  We cannot teach children like we live in an American bubble that has nothing to do with the outside world.  We need to remain competitive and knowledgeable.  I believe that technology does improve our lives but we need to be careful of the consequences.  If we do not think about the future then we will end up making ourselves obsolete. 

I think that the future holds a lot of exciting prospects to make the world a better place.  I also think that it holds a lot of scary possibilities.  I just hope that we can all work together to make the world better for everyone, not just the powerful and rich.  Not all change is for the better.  If this video can show us what might happen if we continue down this road then we cannot say we were never warned.  If we know now what might happen then we need to start making changes to make sure our world starts down a new road towards positive progress.