DIscussion Comments

1) Idea or question that's lingering after your discussion.
           My group failed to discuss the child deaths in the Congo.  I thought that was a large part of the issues and maltreatment of the Congolese during Leopold's rule.  Additionally, it seemed that the group came to the conclusion that Leopold in the Congo was equivalent to the Americans and the Native Americans.  My opinion is that while faintly similar, there is no real equality between what happened in the Congo and what happened to the Native Americans.  While both used trickery in order to take the land from the people, the treatment of the Congolese was incredibly worse than the treatment of the Native Americans.  Additionally, the land that the Natives had was actually needed by the Americans, while the Congo was not needed by Belgium.

2) Evaluate your small group discussion.  What worked well? How can you improve?
              The discussion was alright.  There seemed to be a much better transition and smoothness to the conversation when the questions came directly from members of the group.  This way whoever had the question will have probably already formed an opinion on it, making it easier to discuss.  There was a huge lack of interest from half of the group, myself included.  The topics we were discussing were very straight forward to me.  It seemed like we were just talking to talk, not to gain a better understanding or to support opinions.  The questions needed to be easier to counter argue or have more than one right answer.  It was too easy to come to a conclusion.  The discussion was basically over 5 minutes in.