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From "Spencer,Thomas" Sent Thursday, April 12, 2007 4:37 pm Subject RE: Difficult situation in survey Hello all -- I'm with Susan, my fellow Trinity University alum, on how you shouldn't be "grading your student's political opinions." However, you do need to make sure that he's making a factual case. I've had my own problems on that score this week. I just got finished grading 160 freshman history papers. It's been a hard week. The book I had them read was John Crawford's _The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq_. I then had them write a paper about it. It's a fascinating and well-written book that tells the story of a college student who was a soldier in Iraq for 18 months in 2003 and 2004. After serving for nearly two years, he comes back to a very different world. His wife has left him, he's addicted to valium and he finds the adjustment to life at home very difficult. It's a touching tale and one that I felt my students need to become familiar with given current events. Last spring I used Colby Buzzell's _My War: Killing Time in Iraq_ for a similar purpose,although I asked a very different question. Anyway, here's the question I had them tackle: Write a 4-6 page essay with an introduction, body, and conclusion that at least answers the following questions: Who is John Crawford? What kind of experiences does he have in Iraq? How do these experiences affect him? What does the title of the book mean? During the Vietnam War era, there were many large protests against the war. Why do you suppose there aren't similar protests against the Iraq War today? Does Crawford's book provide any insight into this last question? I got back a very nice set of papers and I think my assignment achieved its objective: to make students think about war and what we're doing to a generation of American soldiers. A lot of students admitted in their papers that they hadn't thought about what the war was doing to our soldiers and what the experience was like at all. Here's the scary part: about 1/3 of the papers in answering the part of the question about the lesser number of protests of the Iraq War said something like this: "The major difference between the Iraq War and the Vietnam War is that Iraq attacked us on 9/11. Therefore, our war against Iraq was entirely justified." Wow. I was floored by the number of my students who believed this. That's one heck of an historical error, eh? Now, they were middle school students (isn't that scary?) back in 2003 and apparently believed what Bush said back then. However, if you remember, even he used a lot of weasel words and tried to be weaselly in how he "suggested" the connections between Saddam and al-Qaeda. He kept insisting that Saddam had "terrorist ties" but wouldn't say Iraq was behind 9/11. After the war, Bush repudiated the connection entirely and even refused to admit he'd made such a connection. My goodness, I had to write so many times on these papers comments like "What did Iraq have to do with 9/11? Even President Bush says Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11." Today as I returned the papers I had a "special comment" moment and said this: "Apparently many of you believe that Iraq attacked us on 9/11. That is false. The President and Vice President did suggest this before the war, although it was an unsupported claim, just as accurate and supported as their claims about WMDs. However, even the President and his administration have completely backed away from these claims - and had by the summer and fall of 2003. However, most of you were just starting high school by then and, with the war now declared over, probably paid no attention to this belated retraction. Nonetheless, I do understand why you think this. It would make the Iraq War much more reasonable. It would provide a reasonable justification for the war. That's why people are so frustrated by this war now. All of the justifications provided by the administration before the war have been disproven. This claim is false, categorically false. This isn't a debatable point or a controversial view that I hold. The assertion that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 in any way, shape or form, is false." I felt bad but felt it was my duty to correct the historical record on this. I told some of them that they looked like I'd just killed Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. What followed was a pretty detailed discussion about this in one of my classes. It was a pretty shocking thing for me. It does go to show that you can teach with current events. Anyway, I tried my very best not to grade them on their opinions about the Vietnam War or even the Iraq War but I did point out they were making a big historical error by making this positively false claim. Sincerely, Tom Spencer -- Dr. Thomas M. Spencer Associate Professor of History Northwest Missouri State University