Assignment for Thurs, Oct 22
2. Write a paragraph on your blog about the stories that jumped out at you as interesting. Why are they interesting to you?
I have read several stories that are interesting to me. One of them is “Many child deaths come despite CPS visits”, it says that nearly half of all Texas children killed by abuse belonged to families previous investigated by Texas Child Protective Services. Since 2004, there are at least 1227 children died of abuse or neglect in Texas, and about 516 of them came from families with CPS histories. These numbers really break my heart and make me worrisome somehow. The children are too young to suffer pain. It seems that CPS has nothing to do about the situation. So, I am interested in doing some research on the issue, and may find out some ways to make development. Another story titled “Internet killing the newspaper star” is also a good one. It talks about the Internet has gradually taken place of our old-fashioned newspapers. The Internet monopolist movement seduced the general public with cheap, on-demand illusions of information. Due to this, quality journalisms is disappearing. However, the loss of newspapers will be terrible not only for journalism, but also for the whole world culture. It looks like a good issue for me to do some resarch as well.
3. If you chose one of those stories (choose your favorite) as the starting point for your Practical Proposal paper, what would your research question* be? What information do you think you would need to find out to answer your research question? Who could you interview and where could you look (on what websites, in what publications) to find those pieces of information? Spend 1-2 paragraphs answering these questions.
If I chose the first story “Many child deaths come despite CPS visits” as the starting point for my paper. I would begin my research with the question what mostly caused children’s deaths and what can CPS do to develop the current situation. I think I would need the inforamation about the reason why the children died. The story says it is due to abuse or neglect from families. So, what happed to these abused children? and why they were abused? For what reason, they were neglected by their families? To collect the information based on these problems should be helpful to answer my research question.
If it is possible, I could interview some related staff from CPS, and also the neighbors of these children’s families, too see if they know any facts or not. For websites and publications, I could go to CPS and HHS official webcites, as well as the publications whose target is about children’s life and family. I think I would find out some useful and accurate information for my research.
4. What other local issues are you considering for the Practical Proposal paper? Why are they interesting to you and/or why do you care about them? Spend 1 paragraph answering these questions.
Actually I am also considering about some other local issues like the swine flu “trickle in” to Houston, the parking problem on the UH campus, and the murder and robbery around the Houston downtown near UH. These issues are very closely related to our daily life and personal safety, which are attracting the most attention of people, especially for the students on UH campus. So, I think it is worthy to do some research on these issues that are closed to ourselves.
