Our Purpose
The purpose of this website is to draw attention to original projects done by 8th graders in Utah, USA who have seen problems in their society and want to address them. We, the students, came up with ideas and wrote letters to legislators and leaders around the state. While our' teacher helped in the editing and abridging of the writing and also orchestrated the project, everything else was accomplished and arranged by the students. We hope to close the political divide and unify Utah, along with the rest of our country. As a guideline, we used the Declaration of Independence's structure: the ideal, grievances, and what can be done about it. To find information about the projects, look to the tabs above the main title. For more project pages, click on More.
Contact us at: mrs.smiths.ushistory.class@gmail.com
Project Overviews
We have worked hard to make their projects come together. To spark interest in our work, we have provided a quick summary of each project.
Speed Talking at Libraries Around the State: This class sent letters to libraries around the state, asking for an activity to be held that can help people with different backgrounds come to understand one another.
Media Campaign on Respect: These students came up with the tag "#UnifyUtah" to bring communities together by sharing messages of respect on social media platforms. They hope to get other states and communities to join their efforts.
Media Bias Responsibility: Recognizing that many people are not exposed to opinions outside of the ones they already have, these students are hoping to get mainstream media newspapers to not only share facts from both sides of the issue but to also ask those they interview, on BOTH sides of an issue, why they feel the way they do. By sharing "the why," both sides will learn about the perspective of a side they may not understand and help break the "tunnel vision."
Ranked Choice Voting: These students wrote to the state legislators covering their district to share why they think Ranked Choice Voting would help Utah and to urge them to adopt it for state and national elections.
Share Your Perspective Night: These teens wanted to have an event where people could share their viewpoints without conflict or judgment, to bring better understanding in the community. They're sending a letter to the Rotary Club for the launch of this project.
In an ideal world, people would listen to each other, recognize the person underneath the label, and accept each other for who they are as a person, not their political party.
American politics is divided into two parties, the Democratic left-wing party and the Republican right-wing party. Having only two parties for American voters divides people. An article by FacingHistory.org says that “People often change their political beliefs to match the positions of their party, which reinforces divides between the parties. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are extreme, and the beliefs and ideology of each party are taken further than ever. This is a problem. Voters cannot get their real voice heard, instead, the majority of people’s voices have been distorted, and the original belief they had has been transformed into an extreme they do not completely agree with. ABCNEWS.com ran a poll where the results showed that 38% of Americans did not agree with either of the big political parties. The ideal we need to work for involves more parties. We believe that to have people’s voices heard, we need to spread the power held by the Republican and Democratic parties to smaller parties so people can say what they want to say. According to TheGreenPapers.com the total percent of votes cast for neither republican nor Democrat was 2.12%, that means that 97.88% of votes in the 2024 election were cast to the Democratic and Republican parties, none of these other parties had even one electoral college vote, this shows that these two parties are extremely powerful, and we feel that it is imperative that power be spread to more parties.
The political divide has caused many grievances and frustrations in America. Because of the divide, political violence has increased. This causes more protests and educational, and economic disruption. The political divide has also caused more aggression between the two parties, this aggression can desensitize children to violence. Extreme political division can also severely damage a democracy. It makes compromise impossible and transforms politics. (AIC)
REASONS FOR THE DIVIDE
The political divide in America has happened for several reasons. First, people have different beliefs about what is important, like how much the government should help its citizens. Some think that the government should provide more services, while others believe in personal responsibility. Second, the media plays a big role by showing news that often supports one side more than the other. This can make people only hear opinions that match their own, leading to misunderstandings. Third, social media allows people to connect with others who share their views, but it can also create echo chambers where different opinions are not heard. (Polarization)
Additionally, many people feel frustrated with the economy, especially if they have lost jobs or feel left out. This frustration can lead to anger and a desire for change, pushing people toward extreme political views. Social issues, like race and immigration, also create strong feelings that divide people further. Lastly, political leaders sometimes use these divides to gain support, making the situation worse. All these factors together have created a big gap between different groups in our country. (Polarization)
We can help fix the political divide by using an idea proposed by The University of Rochester, which is correcting the misconceptions of the other side. This could work because one big issue with the political parties is their misconceptions of the other party. We could also use the ideas that first, second, third, fourth, and fifth period are doing, like writing to the legislators or speed talking at libraries or doing a media campaign like #UnifyUtah.
We could also fix the political divide if we changed the Electoral College to make it less party-based by creating an amendment in the Constitution. In the 5th Article of the United States Constitution (Constitution), it says the states or both houses of Congress can call a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution. If the states call the convention and three-fourths of said states agree, then the amendment becomes part of the Constitution. We need to fix the political divide by encouraging the people of America to choose to unite instead of divide and help America to truly become the UNITED states of America. We hope that after the political divide is lessened, we can use our unity to solve world issues.
As an 8th-grade history class, we have devised an idea to make a website containing all of the information from other classes and their projects. This year, we have focused on asking the 6 historical questions: who, what, where, when, why, and how. We also focused on civic virtue and ways to improve it in our world today. We have asked ourselves how we could instill civic virtue to help our future generations. In our teacher’s other class periods, they have been writing letters to different authorities. We decided that our job in sixth period would be to put all of the other classes’ information together to create our website! We feel that a website is a great way to let people from all over the world see the problems that are going on all over. It's also a lot easier to advertise if they can easily access it while still being cheap. “Websites serve as a powerful marketing tool. You can use your website to promote your products or services, run online advertising campaigns, and engage with your target audience through various digital marketing strategies.”(linkedin) Because of this, we decided to gather our projects onto a website so our target audience - anyone who is interested - can see what we have done.
We have also done some research of our own. We asked some questions to the other classes, we researched solutions of civic virtue, and we researched what website-making platform would work the best for our class to use.
As all of Mrs. Smith’s US History classes began to question what the biggest concerns we had were today and how we, as kids, could make a difference, we began to focus on the polarization due to political partisanship. We researched this issue to learn the severity and its causes, and then each class chose a different way to address the issue, and then we carried out our plans.