Students

I normally post this sort of thing to facebook, but I have a funny student anecdote to share that wouldn't fit in that space. Plus, it happened awhile ago. I don't know what made me think of it today, but it has been on my mind so I'm going to write it down. I hope it makes you laugh/groan at the state of education too. A few years ago I asked my World Geography students to write a short essay describing the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan. I provided them with news articles and they were merely to summarize the conflict: who were the major combatants and what were they fighting about, etc. I suppose it was mostly a reading comprehension assignment, as it didn't involve much if any critical thought. The essays were horrible, but that's not what stuck with me. What made me laugh, and still makes me laugh when I think of it was this: most of the articles talked about the conflict occuring between Arabic groups in the north and black ethnic groups in the south, but a majority of my students, apparently not wanting to use the word "black," wrote that the conflict was between Arabs and African-Americans. I had to go to class after I'd graded them and say, "no, they are just Africans." It still makes me laugh (and groan at the state of education).