Sunday, March 18, 2012

IB Student's Worst Journal Entry Ever

How you can tell that the student only read the first page of the chapter:

"Two major conflicts occurred during the Cold War; the Korean War and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Korean War lasted three years, from 1950-1953, and was a conflict between Chinese, Korean, Soviet, and American forces. In late November Chinese forces attacked and overwhelmed the United Nations forces, this caused General MacArthur to drop five atomic bombs on the Chinese forces on the peninsula. This action killed 150,000 Chinese forces and caused two atomic bombs to be dropped on two UN controlled Korean ports, and later two bombs were dropped in Western Germany. The Soviets also issued a warning to the US that if it didn't halt its military action in Korea that it would face the consequences."

I read it in front of the class, without giving the student's identity. Then I asked them, "How many atomic bombs have been used in combat?" Amazingly, all the other students had the right answer. Yes, this was one of my IB students, trying to get away with BSing his way through an assignment. Hopefully, he was humbled by this experience. Now before you think I must be a horrible History teacher for this to even happen, the other students commented about how we had discussed this very part of the chapter in class, and where was this student during the discussion they wanted to know? The chapter in the reading book starts out with a one page hypothetical discussion of what might have happened if the US had decided to use atomic weapons in Korea. The rest of the chapter is about how the US developed a policy of using limited war instead to avoid starting WWIII and MAD (mutually assured destruction).

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