Geography class. I passed out current event magazines, and they had various assignments associated with it. For an article about the world's population hitting 7 billion, they were to write five sentences about what this means for our planet. (This is not the article, but it's as close to it as I could find online, and it's by the same publisher as their magazines.)
Much of the class ignored the assignment.
"We should nuke China."
A boy seated in the front row said this when he flipped to the article. How was that going to help anything? He explained: that would get rid of half the Earth's population.
Last I heard, China's population was one billion. One billion is not one-half of seven billion. I explained this. The boy insisted, saying that China's population was four billion.
(I also brought up the whole killing-people-is-wrong argument.)
The boy explained that Chinese officials don't take into account the population in the rural areas. They only count people in the cities. I pointed out that this difference wouldn't be three billion.
But, I was willing to concede that I don't know China's population for sure. I decided to consult the Internet. A quick search ("population of China") led me to a figure of 1.3 billion as of mid-2008. I showed the boy. Still dubious, he conceded the issue.
"So, we should nuke China and Russia... Russia is scary."
Again, I attempted the killing-people-is-wrong tack, but the boy soon found something else to talk about: Vladimir Putin's resemblance to Daniel Craig and Adam West. (There was an article on Russia in the magazine, too.)
The stuff they come up with!
Your turn: Give me a completely outrageous statement.
Friday, December 2, 2011
3 comments:
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I can't think of any myself but if I were a teacher like you in a class of middle school students I'm pretty sure I'd hear outrageous statement daily.
ReplyDeleteWhat an idiot. That boy will go from being stupid young man to a stupid old man. The reason that he doesn't know these things? Because he doesn't read.
ReplyDeleteOH REPUBLICANS...WE GOT ANOTHER ONE FOR YOU TO JOIN BACHMANN AND CAIN AT MAKING OUTRAGEOUS STATEMENTS. GROOM HIM NOW WHILE YOU CAN!!!
Earth is flat and the center of the universe.
ReplyDelete