GLOBAL ISSUES FINAL REPORT (W 10:45 TO 12:15)

WILL CAPATI (1491084)

1. Which TED speeches remain strong in your memory? Which one
inspire your thought? Explain why.
The three speeches regarding the conditions of a liberal society were
remarkable for me. This is because I believe that a liberal society will make our
world a better place because of equality and freedom among people without
living in stereotypes.
Michelle Obamas speech which was about liberating education has inspired
my thought. Through her speech, I remembered one thing I experienced in the
past. People tend to judge others who think differently and we cannot identify if
that is the so-called crab mentality or just a plain ignorance from other people.
This is especially that my country, the Philippines, is a very conservative country
to the point that most Filipinos live in stereotypes. In addition, our education is
not liberalized. When I became a part of the college of liberal arts, however, we
experienced education which has widened our perspectives towards the world
we live in. We have gender studies which teaches us that feminism is not a
women over men thing but rather empowering women for the sake of gender
equality. In our theology class, we learned that all beliefs should be accepted and
respected in spite of its variety because in the end, they have similarities which
strengthen us as human beings. Through her speech I believe that liberalization
in education should be achieved. It is not about only removing ignorance but
rather eliminating stereotypical judgments and biased opinions. With that, I
believe that education is very important in spite of it being systematic. What we
need is a liberalization of education in order to have a better society.
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2. What is the lesson about your presentation? What did you learn from
other group presentations and their comments on the forum?
Our presentation was about religion. With our presentation, I learned
through further research and background in theology that beliefs are based
on what we see which results for having a worldview. The speeches about
religion have highlighted the importance of beliefs based on their
experiences in their respective lives. Moreover, our presentation asked the
questions regarding the possible bad aspects of religion as well as the good
aspects. With the speeches, we realized that ones belief enables a person to
strengthen oneself and have faith. On the other hand, some bad aspects
include extremism just like what is happening to the group of terrorists called
ISIS where they use religion as their way of pushing their own ideals to the
point that they claim lives of hundreds of people, mostly their fellow Muslims.
On the other presentations, I learned the significance of the issues of
poverty, population, peace, and others to the society and the world that we
live in. The TED speeches are considered as eye-openers to us college
students on what is on the real world or the outside world aside from our
school life. The presentations were able to analyze the importance of social
issues and how the different sectors of our society such as the government
and the common citizens cope up with issues that we have. The comments
that every student who is taking the Global Issues class made are proof on
how we think differently in spite of being exposed to almost the same issues
we have in our society. With issues such as equality, liberalization, and

GLOBAL ISSUES FINAL REPORT (W 10:45 TO 12:15)

WILL CAPATI (1491084)
politics, we have different opinions towards these yet we are able to live in a
society where we idealize perfection.
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3. How did you understand connectivity or relationship between

topics? Raise examples and explain them.
As mentioned in the previous question, issues such as poverty,
democracy, equality, and peace are connected in a way that they
enable to open our eyes (as college students) to the present society.
For an instance, we need to learn about the food consumption of every
country in order to know what kind of society they are. Issues such as
obesity and hunger varies through countries. Furthermore, this issue
may be connected to our issue of overpopulation because populated
areas who lack food are existing as of the moment. In my country, the
Philippines, there is an ongoing issue towards overpopulation.
Moreover, the people who suffer from poverty are also suffering from
hunger. In spite of being a democratic country which promotes equal
rights to vote, these problems are difficult to solve because there are
problems in our government as well such as corruption. Elitists,
however, argue that the problem with poverty is from the people
themselves because they tend to depend on other people instead on
working for their own. Also, there are people who use the power of
religion by saying Its Gods will or Everything is possible with God
and wait for miracles for them to be saved from poverty. In the case of
my country, these issues are interconnected which affect the Filipino
society. Speaking of religion, there are also people who have Islamic
belief living in the southern parts of the Philippines as well as extremist
terrorists who seek peace by killing their fellowmen who are against
their ways.
Based on the example I have given, these issues are
interconnected and one issue may relate to another issue which affect
the society as a whole as well as some group of people from middle
class to the elitists. These issues vary from one country to another and
may also depend on the culture and history of a country.
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4. What did you find or realize through the LTD in the final class on July
22?
During the final class, we had our sharing based on what we have
learned through all the speeches as well as the presentations which
consisted of analyses of the speeches assigned. We discussed our
thoughts towards the different issues in Japan. One discussion from our
group has talked about the difference between the democracy in the
Philippines and the democracy in Japan.
From there I learned the
difference because so far I only knew the difference was the Philippines is
being led by a president whereas in Japan, Prime Minister is the one who
leads the said country. It was explained to us that the prime minister is
being voted but the people in the government has more power in

GLOBAL ISSUES FINAL REPORT (W 10:45 TO 12:15)

WILL CAPATI (1491084)
choosing the leader while in the Philippines, the common citizens or the
Filipino people in general are the ones who vote for the president. This
was a new knowledge to us Filipino exchange students in the Global Issues
class. The class has made me interested in the different issues further
especially that my major is in the field of International Relations. Through
this class, we were able to analyze the different issues through the
speeches that were assigned to each group. It was a class full of learning.
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Total Word count: 1066 words