Food for Thought

Superstition: A Mind Stalker Lynn Shehab (9B) “Superstition, the mother of those hideous twins, fear and faith, from her throne of skulls, still rules the world”. This quote asserts and proclaims that superstitions clog, fetter, shackle, and manacle people’s competency to flourish and thrive their intellect. Superstitions are old traditions and rituals that lack logical explanation; they’re mere presumptions that linger in our contemporary world despite the logical and scientific reasoning. In fact, one cannot lose sight of the negativity accompanied by superstitions. Superstitions, a piece of fiction dealings, encapsulates a plethora of drawbacks on the social, physical, and academic aspects. To begin with, superstitions hold a bunch of social drawbacks, for it prevents logical thinking and precludes adequate decision making. To start with, being affected by it, superstitions blind man’s power of rational judgment. For example, people generally hate losing more than they l...

Mysteries: Egregiousness of Nescience Miriam Kassem (9C)       “The gateway to mystery swings open at a touch of human weakness and we have entered the realms of darkness. One false step, one slurred syllable together reveal a man's thoughts.” This quote asserts and alludes that mysteries are the ideology and tenet of the inadequate and weak-minded, the cretinous and moronic prattle of backwardness, the phantoms and phantasm of countries with sparse abilities to prosper, and the gruesome and loathsome series of intellectual retardation. They have the uncanny wand of ruses, artifices, and tricks to stealthily trap the core of the easily hooked to imbecile and stupid babble. In fact, one can only notice the nuisances, pitfalls, and drawbacks of mysteries. Indeed, mysteries need ludicrous and preposterous bodies with absent minds and that have enough inner strength to shoulder the snags, flaws, and disadvantages of mysteries that vary between social by-produ...

Superstitions: The Counter of Reality          Carla Hamieh (9B)       “Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.” This quotes asserts and alludes that superstitions have always ruled over intellect and brainpower, altered history with human tragedies as witch hunts and more, and manipulated the week’s minds —those who underestimate their capabilities in science and create with their emotions a border preventing science to invade and reduce enthusiasm, hold one’s emotions at bay, and banish superstitions with logic. Humans have always been emotional and enthusiastic creatures which allows the flow of superstitions along with these feelings and the only medicine to this contagious disease is through sanity and rationality. One can’t lose sight of the negative drawbacks of superstitions. After all, the shelter to all fragile minds, superstitions, encapsulates a myriad of byproducts on the soci...

      Bullying: The Silent Epidemic Paragraph Writing by Aya Ayash (9 C)    Bullying is a serious global issue that affects mental health causing an individual to commit suicide and suffer anxiety. To begin with, bullying can be a tremendously painful experience for young people since it gives them the feeling that they are alive only to get insulted and are deeply weak so they end up with the idea of committing suicide to escape that reality. For example, Brodie Padlock, age 19, was an Australian waitress that died after jumping from a multilevel carpark, her suicide was attributed to serious workplace bullying. Another disadvantage of bullying is suffering from apprehension, where a person feels unaccepted, isolated, and withdrawn. He or she always wonder how they can do better in enhancing relationships and escape a bully’s notice. A bullied person gets frightened once he or she is in contact with anyone, fearing that they would bully him or he...

   Paragraph Writing: Bullying is Still Rife in Schools        Reem Rammal (9C)   Bullying encompasses a plethora of byproducts in the academic domain such as causing deterioration in scholastic results and leading to school dropout. To begin with, low academic achievement in school cannot be addressed while ignoring bullying because the two are directly linked. Students who are repeatedly bullied receive poorer grades and participate less in class discussions. Some students may get mislabeled as low achievers because they do not want to speak up in class for fear of getting bullied.  A UCLA study conducted with 2,300 students in 11 Los Angeles–area public middle schools and their teachers asked the students to rate whether or not they get bullied on a four-point scale and to list which of their fellow students were bullied the most — physically, verbally and as the subject of nasty rumors. A high level of bullying was consistently associa...

Paragraph Writing by Lynn Shehab (9B) Bullying: A Menace to Academic Performance    Bullying encapsulates a plethora of academic consequences, for it is the reason behind school dropout and deterioration of the scholar results. To start with, bullying can lead to fear of school and absenteeism. A school where children don’t feel safe and secure is a school where children struggle to learn; it’s a school where kids dropout and tune out. To illustrate, according to statistics reported by ABC News in 2012, 160,000 kids stay home away from school because of fear of bullying. Moreover, from bullying and corporal punishment to sexual assault, violence at schools affects the scholar results of students and confuses their thoughts. Bullying, verbal harassment, substance abuse, and disruptive classrooms all interfere with a student’s ability to learn.  As an example, a study conducted by Virginia High School Safety suggests that teasing and bullying at the high school level ...

Paragraph Writing by Carla Hamieh 9B A Predator Chasing Victims                  Bullying influences one’s social life by changing one’s behavior to an aggressive one and leading to delinquency . To begin with, bullying affects a person by making him aggressive and violent. He or she will no longer care about ethics and morals and considering himself or herself as a victim of bullying, savagery, and barbarity might be printed in one’s personality and have a role in changing the way they deal with people and how they act around them into total lack of responsibility and cruelty. For example, according to a study by researchers from the Washington University and Indiana University in 2006, 97 percent of children involved in bullying and who are bullies, were also victims of bullying in the previous years. Bullying also leads a person to go astray. For one to be accepted in his or her community, he or she woul...

                                                     Bullying                  Jad Darwish  '9A' “You should never make fun of something that a person can't change about themselves.”   This quote asserts that people are born as they are, and they can’t change their physical appeal or become normal if they’re disabled so they shouldn’t be bullied for anything they were given. Bullying is a major disaster that is spread all around the world. There are various physical and social causes for bullying that lead to devastating psychological and academic effects on the student.           To begin with, the physical appearance is the main instigator of bullying which has a myriad effect on the people like having suicidal thoughts and struggling in socia...

Trusting the Devil Outline: I.         According to me, online shopping has various disadvantages such as being subjected to online fraud and lacking definite delivery duration. II.        A.                       Online shopping subjects one to online fraud or cybercrime. 1.       15.4 a million consumers becoming victims of identity theft or fraud 2.       FBI arresting24 people in the CrediCard Theft Plan. B.                        Another con for online shopping is lack of accurate delivery duration. 1.         noticing that delivery of the product to customer’s doorstep takes about 1-3-5 weeks 2.   ...

The Positive Influence of Online Shopping Outline: I. People need to embrace this technology and tame it to their needs because e-commerce has innumerable advantages and excels in comparison to traditional shops and stores in the matters of investment, and exposure. II. A.  To begin with, e-commerce is significantly less expensive to start a business with than a standard physical shop. 1.        Being exempted from paying a renting expense 2.        Having less number of employees which decreases the salaries paid by the owner     B. In addition to what has been discussed, creating an e-commerce business guarantees a wider exposure to the products and appeals more to potential customers which in turn generates more money.             1. being exposed to a variety of items due to international business   ...

Is Homeschooling a Recipe for Geniuses? “Anything one can teach in an indoor classroom can be taught outdoors, even in homes, in ways that are more enjoyable for children.” Cathy James’ quote asserts and proclaims that what good education means is never teaching pupils, but providing the conditions in which they can learn. As such, homeschooling is an educational method that advocates learner chosen activities as a primary means for learning. Homeschooling portrays two faces of a coin, so a homeschooler should be aware of its construction as well as its destructive impacts. To begin with, homeschooling has various advantages such as changing the negative school environment and getting a higher quality education. The highest rated reason parents choose to homeschool is the negative environment of their child’s school. To illustrate, according to NHS, over 26% of the parents cited a negative environment as their most essential reason, and over 90% listed it as one of their reas...

Death within Minutes   Dana Sannan 9B It was an unforgettable night. The Moon played its strange song and engraved the fearful symphony in the villages, memories, and hearts. It was a tune of death. Minutes were enough for the hungry monster to finish his meal, to devour every spark of life from the village. It took him two minutes to change everything into nothing but to me, it seemed like forever. The natural disaster happened in the blink of an eye. And here it was the first time I survived an earthquake. The sky was decorated with a full moon, and the night air was a bit cooler than any July night had the right to be. My parents were at some neighbor’s house and I was alone with my little brother. At exactly 8:07pm, while I was at the balcony engrossed in reading a book and somehow diving in another world, a small shake put me back to reality “that’s strange” I thought the chair was shaking under me perplexed, I headed inside to see whether my brother was still awake...