During the last term of study for one of my classes, the students had to write 1,000 word essays on assigned topics. One of my students chose the poverty topic, and wanted to focus on Africa. We had a thirteen week long battle about Africa, revolving around the fact that it’s a continent, not a country. We started a new term last week, and I gave them their essay topics. One of them directed students to research the effects of colonisation on a country of their choosing. The student chose this topic, and today I asked him which country he’d be focusing on. He beamed and said, “South America!”
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Don’t even mention Australia.
I DID mention Australia! I thought it might spare him additional confusion…
Ooohhh! That really annoys me, even miles and miles away. Africa is the second largest continent in the world! It’s thirty million square miles! There are many very different cultures involved!
Also, what was the battle? Couldn’t you just say “Africa is not a country. You should write your paper about a country in Africa.” Or perhaps just “It is not a country, write your paper about Swaziland (or any particular country within Africa).”
Alternatively, you could try to start speaking about “Asia” as if it was a country. (This might be fun - “Asians love drinking vodka and eating coconut curries”)
i found today that some of my (UALR) students can’t take the average of three numbers.
thank god we don’t do geography.
Tevebaugh: Thank god WE don’t do averages…
Mark: I know. To be fair to my student, who’s not bad enough to deserve mocking on my blog, I think he just kept forgetting to rework the Africa section in his paper because I kept giving him such huge lists of other major things to fix. Still, though, my students are AWFUL about the whole Africa-is-the-second-largest-continent thing. Of course, so are Americans. Maybe it’s not so bad when they’re not speaking in English, though, because I’d imagine that African country names aren’t very high on their vocabulary lists (although given China’s current international policies, maybe they should be). They’re very comfortable talking about South Africa, but if I mention any other African country’s name it produces the Blank Face of Learning Death.
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