Emerson’s argument in “The American Scholar” about American society is very true even in today’s society. One way that Emerson’s idea is still true today is in the way Americans work. “The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry.” (Emerson). Today we believe that our occupation is the only job we can do. We don’t see that there is a bigger picture. The bigger picture is that our job is part of a cycle that keeps us living and prospering. There is a farmer, a doctor, and a soldier. The farmer produces food, the doctor makes sure the people are healthy, and the soldier defends the people. If you take one of those careers out of the picture, the people of the country would wither away. If the farmer is taken away the people would starve, take the doctor out the people would die from illness, and lastly take out the solider the people would be killed by foreign countries.

The second reason why Emerson argument is still true is the way we educated our children. We teach our children different subjects, so that they can decide what they will progress in at life. School gives us an oppurtunity to accomplish in a vast majority of fields, and yet when we grow up we only have one job that defines us. In conclusion, Emerson's idea is very common in our world today.

I found the debate about Rwanda to be a very useful tool in understanding the situation in Rwanda and how all major parts contributed to the genocide. My group, Paul Kagame, though played a major part in the genocide was not called on that much, because most of the questions were directed to the countries rather than the groups of people that actually were involved in the fighting part of the genocide. I was upset that I wasn’t able to answer many questions, yet I learned so much from the other groups. I was surprised that so much of the blame went on Belgium for leaving Rwanda in their time of distress. I was surprised that no one really called on the Interahamwe, the Hutu Rebel group, because they did most of the killings along with Rwandan Armed Forces. Instead most of the blame was aimed at the MRND, a Hutu group that supposedly brainwashed the Hutu people into killing the innocent Tutsi people.

I do believe that the MRND did help to get the Hutu people to become enraged, but I believe more that years of racial conflict really caused the genocide, and over years and years of fighting they just snapped and started to go out on a killing spree. The event that caused the thin wire to snap was we Hutu leader Juvenal Hirotayama’s plane was shot down. Most people believe that Paul Kagame was the one who ordered his plane to get shot down, so he could use the opportunity to become a leader of Rwanda, but there is no proof. After the genocide ended however, Paul Kagame did become vice president, later the president of Rwanda. Therefore, all of us are to blame, but some of us contributed to the genocide more than others.

I hope that in the future that we will do debates again. They really cleared things up for me that I didn’t understand, like who is to blame. I really like how all of have opinions that clash with each other. I hoped that we could have come up with a resolution together, because a whole class has more ideas than a group of two or three people. All in all the debate was a great opportunity to get ideas off your chest and see what other people think about them, I believe that we should do debates more often than not.