A large part of the reason for choosing this book was that the title of the book, 'the big book of american facts', seemed interesting to me. At the same time, the subtitle of '1000 interesting facts and trivia about usa' raised the expectation of 'Would it be possible to obtain a vast amount of knowledge?'. I usually don't know much about other countries' cultures. Also, the international situation was not an area I was interested in watching. So, 'the big book of american facts' was selected as a determination to develop international literacy by reading this book and to become a global citizen in a global society.
This book, as the title suggests, tells many facts about America. The detailed table of contents is divided into several fields such as 'government and crime', 'history', 'animals', and 'laws'. Among these, I read the book focusing on 'laws' and 'education'. Education is deeply related to my current life, and law was selected because I was interested in politics and law at school.
The first thing that came to my mind while reading the table of contents ‘laws’ was ‘there are so many different laws’. As I read the table of contents, I wondered whether it was necessary to regulate even the smallest details. The three most memorable are: ‘It's illegal for boys to throw snowballs at trees in Mount Pulaski, Illinois. It's perfectly legal for girls to do so.', 'Kansas once had a law that made it illegal to serve cherry pie with ice cream on top.', 'Between 1838 and 1976, it was legal to kill Mormons in Missouri.'. From a universal point of view, there were quite a few laws that were considered anti-human and discriminatory, so I was shocked. I moved on to the next table of contents with the will to explore further what was the cause of such a law.
The table of contents 'education' seemed to contain mainly novel facts that had been in the educational world over a long period of time, rather than the education currently being received by American students. It was different from what I wanted to know, but I enjoyed reading it nonetheless. There were two things that stood out to me in the table of contents.
First, 'The first school in the U.S. opened in 1696 in Maryland.' to be. After reading this part, I was curious about when the first school in Korea was built, so I searched it. Wonsanhaksa was established in 1883 as the first modern school in Korea. Wonsanhaksa taught Chinese classics and military history (etc.). I was curious about what the first school in the United States would have been taught, so I tried to find it, but unfortunately there was no related material, so I couldn't get an answer to my question.
Second, 'American spend more money on shoes and jewelry than they do on higher education.' to be. I came to realize once again that the perception of the importance of education differs from country to country. In Korea, most of the youth spend more than half of their day in school-related places, and the level of education compulsory by society is quite high. However, in the case of the United States, it was surprising that education does not seem to be as important as ours.
Finally, I would like to seek answers to two questions that arise while reading the book.
First, do you think school education is important in Greece? If so, to what extent?
Second, are there any special Greek laws as introduced above?
Thank you for reading my article :)
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