Airborne Toxin in Afghani High School

I know that we aren't required to post another blog this week, but while compiling my log I couldn't find my post for Week 11, so I thought I'd post this interesting article that I read yesterday. I hope you guys find it as interesting as I did!

http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/03/what-caused-illness-at-3-girls-schools/

This article discusses the attack of 3 girls schools in Afghanistan last month. Three schools were gassed, harming 124 girls total. It is still unknown who attacked the school, or why, but many speculate that the Taliban is responsible. The attack itself, however, is not the most interesting part. One week after the attack, 80% of students from the three schools had returned back to school. Although parents were reluctant to send their daughters back, they decided that the risk was worth educating their daughters. These girls are the future of a war-torn country, and therefore an adequate education is necessary.

I found the growing importance of female education in Afghanistan to be quite interesting. As many of us know, the Middle East holds a reputation for failing to educate their female population. This article lets it be known that women do in fact receive and education, and that it is quite important to them and their families. In addition, the importance of education is a result of constructivism, created by each individual nation's necessity for an educated population and driven by social values among the population. As time as passed, a growing necessity for an educated population (due to the effects of war) caused the growing importance of education among women.

Yuhui's Blog Post :China’s Economic Power Unsettles the Neighbors

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/world/asia/10jakarta.html?_r=1
This article is primarily concerned with China’s swift economic growth and its impact on its neighbors. Many Asia countries, such as Indonesia and Vietnam, have to compete with an ever-growing Chinese economy, which is not easy.
This article reminds me of the arguments about semi-peripheral countries in the Wallerstein’s World Theory. Semi-peripheral countries have to be very cautious in terms of economic development to accelerate their development and become a core country; otherwise, they will one day find themselves peripheral countries, like Jamaica. Generally speaking, there fierce competition between semi-peripheral countries because they all desire becoming cores. The ever-growing tensions between China and other developing countries in Asia adequately demonstrate this perspective. Countries, like Vietnam and Indonesia, all strive to become cores and have to compete with an ever-growing China. Thus, there are tensions between these countries.
Constructivism does not work very well here. It cannot be applied to account for the tensions between these Asia countries.I will take the relationship between China and Vietnam as an example. China and Vietnam have very similar culture traditions and they got along pretty good in history. Before the PRC was founded, there were some trade between China and Vietnam. It might be argued that it was because of the Vietnam War that demolished the two countries relationship by Constructivism. But I think it was not very appropriate to argue this way because it is hard for constructivism give a reason for which accounts for China's decision on the Vietnam War in the first place.The problem with Constructivism is that it prioritizes political reasons over economic factors and it does not take economic relationship between countries into account. Thus it is cannot give a good explanation for the tensions between China and Vietnam.