★ Life in Vietnam would be perfect if everyone were totally equal. Do you agree or disagree? Explain your answer in complete sentences.
- I strongly disagree to this statement because of a lot of reasons. First, people are unique in their own ways, so it is fair for them to express themselves. Even though there are people that don't have that much ability to do things like the others, but they can still try to achieve greater things. In Vietnam, there are people who can do different things well, like someone who was a math genius, or someone who was a great poet or a wonderful writer and that "inequality" that made Vietnam better. They were good at different things and brought to Vietnam many beautiful work of arts or pieces of writing. If we pulled everyone to the same level, none of them would be special anymore; none of them would bring anything new to our country. To me, that's actually a bad thing. Therefore I think it would be better if we just keep things the way they are.
★ You are designing a society in which everyone is equal. What are the laws?
- Everyone must be able to access education.
- Everyone must have a comfortable house to live in.
- Smarter people must help less intelligent ones to be smarter like them.
- Everyone must be able to access health care.
★ What would you do to help people who were less capable mentally, physically, or socially to “catch up”?
- Everyone should have some empathy and sympathy towards people who have mental, physical or social problems. All of those people should be getting support from their family or friends or people around them. I would build a place for those who are physically and mentally disabled; a place where they can feel that nobody's better than them because they can just be themselves in it. They can improve many skills that would not require their inabilities. For those who are socially disabled, I would help them with their communication ability just by being friendly to them. Maybe I can talk to them more and introduce them to everyone else. Sometimes simple things are the best solutions. I really hope that others could do the same thing.
★ What problems can you foresee that might come in a society with laws that force “equality for all”? How would you handle those problems?
- I think that the most obvious problem that will occur is a revolution from the citizens. If the government forced everyone to be equal by making strong people weak, smart people dumb, or beautiful people ugly, then that was just not fair. Everyone has the right to be themselves, so they will fight for that right. If I were the government, I would handle this problem by keeping the law of equality but in a different way. I would let people to do what they're good at but also help the non-professional ones to become better. With that solution, people would still be equal, but at a higher level.
★ Do you believe that total equality is possible, or would human nature make sure that some people would eventually dominate others?
- I think that total equality is impossible. Even in the story "Harrison Bergeron" when the government tried to keep everything and everyone equal by many ways, there was still inequality because the government itself had overpowered the citizens.Therefore even if you tried your best to make everyone equal, there would still be someone who was different and special.
★ In what situations have you felt similarly to any of the characters? What persons, places, or ideas from your own experience came to mind while you were reading this story? Try to list as least two examples.
- I think equality is kind of the same to those experiments we have in science. We always have to keep many things the same to make a fair test. For example, to test how the concentration of salt will affect the growth of the plants, we need to keep the amount of water, the amount of soil, the temperature, etc. That would make the test fairer because we can be pretty sure that the other factors can't affect how much the plants grow.
- This story also reminded me of the time when I stood up to my mom and got scolded. Usually I would never dare to talk back to her because most of the time she's right. However, I didn't do anything wrong that time, and that was why I wanted to show her that I was right. It was a small argument over a pair of Converse shoes. The result was that she yelled and screamed at me in the middle of Parkson HV. It was quite a memory! ♥
