March 25th meeting

Over the past 2 months, the Eastside IB students have been doing some data gathering. They found that research tells us that today's youth are spending more time in front of the t.v. than in the classroom.

They also did some interviews on their own. While high school students and middle school students say they watch t.v. to relax and they don't think it impacts their lives in terms of violence, they unanimously felt that T.V. impacted their satisfaction with their own lives. The interviewees said that they felt they wanted more materialistic things when they watched t.v. and that they felt worse about their own bodies or personalities after watching actors/actresses on shows. The impact was most significant for women. There were several positive effects mentioned by the interviewees. Several students felt that t.v. improved their sense of humor, allowed them to relax, and taught them about social skills.

Shows such as 'the discovery channel', 'oprah', 'beauty and the geek', and 'ugly betty' were given positive accolades. Other popular shows that today's youth are watching, but that they said taught them more negative values included: mtv, the OC, Made, Cribs, and vh1.

The peacejam students decided to broaden their topic a little. They decided that their end goals were to get people to help others more than just 'stop watching t.v.'. To this end, they decided that they wanted to find out how much adults in our community think that today's youth think of global issues, want to volunteer, or spend their free time helping others. The theme that will guide further investigation will examine: 'The climate of youth today'. Peacejam students want to explore what messages surround youth today in terms of helping others vs. materialism.

The next month will be spent finishing out the investigation of Gainesville climate. This summer, peacejammers will plan their community service project to be carried out over the Fall. Then they will travel to present their program to a Nobel laureate early Spring '08.